Castles of Mad King Ludwig from Bezier Games has hit the app stores. There are pass-and-play and play-against-AI modes. Also a campaign mode with levels based on real castles.

Fantasy Flight Games has released Road to Legend, a companion app for Descent: Journeys in the Dark. The app acts as the overlord, giving everyone a chance to play on the same side. Road to Legend also includes a new campaign, Kindred Fire, and automatically adjusts content to the expansions owned by the players.

Long-term agreements with the National Football League and National Football Players Association has Topps publishing digital football trading cards through its Huddle app.

Antidote Lab Assistant provides a note-taking platform to help players with Bellwether Games’ deduction title, Antidote.

ScorePal is a board game scoring app for Android that features score sheet templates customized to individual games. At least 100 are included but more can be created by the user.

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Fantasy Flight Games has announced Bonds of the Wild, a new Hero and Monster Collection for Descent: Journeys in The Dark Second Edition. Four new heroes are included in the 22 plastic figures included in the expansion, and a ton of new goodies for the overlord.

“Call your companions and prepare to begin your quest! Terrinoth needs you to find a branch from the Tree of Life, and the overlord’s monsters rush to oppose your quest. Can you harness the magic of Challara and Brightblaze to triumph, or will hordes of kobolds overwhelm your defenses?“

Release is Q3 of 2015, with no set price in place yet.

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Remember the plastic miniatures from the 1st edition of Descent? Miss them? Here’s your opportunity to bring that wonderful, plastic goodness to your copy of 2nd edition.

Guardians of Deephall Hero & Monster Collection includes four heroes, two crypt dragons, three wendigos, and four dark priests along with two brand-new quests chronicling their battles for Deephall.

MSRP is $34.95.

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The annual In-Flight Report is a Gen Con presentation by Fantasy Flight Games’ Christian Petersen covering the state of the company, as well as previewing some of its upcoming products. After giving away the Star Wars RPG beta free to attendees last time, FFG had to turn away hundreds this year.

Though there were no product giveaways, the presentation was, as usual, highly informative.

Business

Regarding FFG’s business, we learned this year that the company continues to experience strong growth—greater than 25 percent every year since 2000. After the presentation, Christian also told me that FFG was up to 106 employees.

Fantasy Flight Games is in the process of moving its office and consolidating warehouse space in the same building. The Event Center will join them shortly.

FFG experienced its three biggest product launches ever, all in the preceding year: X-Wing Miniatures Game, Netrunner, and Descent 2nd Edition.

By product line, 37 percent of FFG’s sales are board games, 24 percent card games, 16 percent miniatures, 10 percent roleplaying games, 9 percent supplies, and 4 percent other products. Comparing this to last year’s numbers, it appears that as a percentage of the company’s business, board games dropped significantly, while card games, miniatures, and roleplaying games rose.

Fantasy Flight Games has acquired CardGameDB.com, an independent website dedicated to deck-building in FFG’s living card games. All of the website’s tools will be integrated in to FFG’s website. Drew, CardGameDB’s developer, will stay with the project. And all existing data will be preserved when the transition takes place in early 2014.

New Products

For the fans in the audience, the new product announcements were the most anticipated part of the presentation…

For Descent, FFG will be releasing The Trollfens, an expansion with new rumors and a mini campaign, and Lieutenant Packs. The latter will be individual plastic miniatures in the $9-14 range. Each miniature, however, will also come with a selection of Evil Plot Cards, material from which the overlord can choose in order to customize a game.

FFG’s Diskwars game will return as a Warhammer product in December. Warhammer: Diskwars was actually the first idea that Christian Petersen pitched to Games Workshop many years ago, before their licensing arrangement.

The next products in the Star Wars RPG line are Beyond the Rim, an adventure, Enter the Unknown, a sourcebook for explorers, and print-on-demand Specialization Decks, reference cards with specialization tree information.

Eldritch Horror, a “sister game” to Arkham Horror but presenting a “global experience”, will ship in December.

Fantasy Flight is bringing back BattleLore with a new Runebound theme. The rules will be slightly updated, though the game will maintain the same left-center-right and command-card mechanics of the Commands & Colors system. Changes include a fog-of-war element in setup and more objective-based victory conditions. Those pesky banners will be gone from the new edition. And instead of defining specific scenarios like the previous version, BattleLore 2nd Edition will include a scenario generator and rules for army-building.

Several developments are underway for the Lord of the Rings Card Game. Game modes being incorporated in to all new adventure packs are meant to provide better experiences at different levels of play. There will be an easy mode for new players. And separately sold $7 Nightmare Decks will give advanced players new challenges with old adventures. Additionally, while past releases introduced new stories to Tolkien’s Middle Earth setting, future products will give people the opportunity to play out the original adventures from the books. These Saga Expansions will also feature campaign play.

For the X-Wing Miniatures Game, FFG announced the addition of larger ships to the line, starting with the Rebel Transport and the Tantive IV Blockade Runner. Priced at $60 and $90, respectively, their arrival in early 2014 will usher in a new Epic tournament format to accommodate the larger sizes and higher point values.

And finally, FFG is planning the rerelease of Blue Moon. With all the previous products in a single box, they’re calling it Blue Moon Legends.

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