Announced at Gen Con, Fantasy Flight Games is entering the fantasy miniatures category with a game set in the same universe as its Runebound series. Scheduled for release in early 2017, the RuneWars Miniatures Game employs a rules system inspired by X-Wing, with template-based movement (instead of rulers) and command dials for ordering units.

RuneWars miniatures will ship unpainted, though FFG is working with The Army Painter to develop matching paint sets.

FFG also promised organized play support for the game.

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The winners of the 2016 Origins Awards, as given out by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design at the Origins Game Fair, are:

• Game of the Year—Codenames from Czech Games
• Best Board Game—Star Wars: Imperial Assault from Fantasy Flight Games
• Best Card Game—7 Wonders Duel from Repos Productions
• Best Collectible Game—DC Comics Dice Masters: War of Light from WizKids
• Best Family Game—Codenames from Czech Games
• Best Game Accessory—Terrain Tiles from Lost Battalion Games
• Best Miniature Game—Star Wars Armada from Fantasy Flight Games
• Best Roleplaying Game—Star Wars: Force and Destiny from Fantasy Flight Games

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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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Apparently no longer limited by its license to roleplaying and miniatures, Fantasy Flight Games has revealed plans for its first straight-up Star Wars board game. Star Wars: Rebellion, set during the period of the original movie trilogy, incorporates both military and political conflict. It also embraces asymmetrical gameplay. The Imperial player benefits from a stronger military with a goal of locating and rooting out rebel forces. The Rebel player needs to focus on more strategic military targets while building public support for full-scale revolt.

Star Wars: Rebellion is scheduled for release in the first quarter of next year at a retail price of $100. The game is supposed to accommodate 2-4 players and take 3-4 hours.

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Fantasy Flight Games is taking over Legend of the Five Rings from Alderac Entertainment Group. The two companies have entered in to an agreement for the sale of all intellectual property in the Asian-inspired game series.

AEG’s final L5R products will be the Evil Portents CCG expansion and the Atlas of Rokugan. Fantasy Flight announced intentions to switch L5R over to its living card game distribution model (i.e., regularly released, non-randomized card sets), with initial products debuting at Gen Con 2017. The company stated that there will be significant changes as well to the card game’s mechanics, though it intends to maintain the game’s “spirit and emotional impact”.

In regards to the roleplaying game, FFG said that it is “excited to explore new possibilities” but does not yet have specific plans.

Recognizing that Evil Portents, a new card set for a lame-duck CCG, will be a hard sale, AEG announced that it will be “virtually giving it away for free”.

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Friday marked the launch of a new crop of Star Wars toys. Based on the upcoming movie, The Force Awakens, these included lightsabers, action figures, animatronic characters, and programmable rolling droids. But what about the games?

Don’t worry! Hasbro’s got you covered…

Of course, there’s the obligatory The Force Awakens version of Star Wars Monopoly. It has a round board and replaces purchasing properties with establishing bases on planets (Coruscant, Endor, Tatooine, Hoth, and others). Player tokens in this version are miniature figures of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Finn, and Kylo Ren.

Then there’s the game everyone’s been excited about since we first got a peek at it back in April, Risk: Star Wars Edition. Not only is the board in the shape of a TIE fighter, the game comes with over 100 miniature space ships—X-wings, Y-wings, B-wings, and TIE fighters. Game play involves two opposing teams battling on three fronts—the Death Star, the shield assault, and the personal confrontation of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

Another one that looks like fun is Loopin’ Chewie. This one’s a dexterity game where the goal is to protect your storm troopers from being knocked off by a flying Millennium Falcon.

Back with strategy games, we have Star Wars Chess. The game’s the same but on one side the figures are Imperial characters and on the other side they’re Rebel characters. To help with identification, the base of each has an image of the matching traditional Chess piece.

In Star Wars Battleship one person plays with the Tantive IV, Millennium Falcon, X-wing fighters, and A-wing fighters, the other with the Finalizer, Imperial shuttle, Slave I, and First Order Special Forces TIE Fighters.

Star Wars Duels is a card game based on War. However, when played by more than two, individuals can team up to combine the strength of their cards.

For a younger crowd there’s Star Wars Hands Down. The goal with this one is to get rid of all one’s cards by being the first to slam down the card matching the image on a spinner.

And finally, there’s the word-guessing game, Star Wars Catch Phrase. Of course, the words are all from Star Wars and the electronics are housed in a little Millennium Falcon.

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Leaked images of the Star Wars Episode VII starter set for Fantasy Flight Games’ X-Wing game appeared on Reddit’s XWingTMG subreddit earlier today. Images featuring the three ships included in the base game (from the Resistance and the First Order) and quite possibly the opening crawl from the upcoming movie.

“Some people are wondering about what’s going on with [Star Wars: The Force Awakens] and what’s going on with that is I can’t tell you anything about it,” Christian Petersen, CEO of Fantasy Flight Games, joked at the Inflight Report at Gen Con 2015. “The secrecy and the level of death imposed upon me, if I tell you anything about [Episode VII] is enormous.” While he was speaking at the end of July, finished product was being shipped to the FFG warehouse. Reportedly, forum threads at FFG’s site that point to the leaked images are being deleted almost as soon as they are created.

Ship cards indicate that the “Blue Ace” T-70 X-Wing has a 1 Hard Turn Boost ability built in, plus a slightly better base statline (3/2/3/3), and a 3-green straight. The First Order TIE has four actions on its bar: Evade, Barrel Roll, Target Lock, and Focus.

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The Warhammer community is getting a fun new adaptation of a dungeon adventure set in the Old World. You don’t have to pull out your minis or set aside an entire corner of your living room for this game. This version of Warhammer Quest, just announced by Fantasy Flight, is a stand-alone card game.

In this cooperative style dungeon crawl game, up to four players become heroic warriors and head deep into the dark recesses of Schompf’s underbelly. You’ll fight against ghouls, Skaven, goblins, giant spiders and swarms of rats.

You can play as a Bright Wizard, a Waywatcher, an Ironbreaker, or a Warrior Priest. Each, of course, has special abilities that will help get the adventuring party to the center of the dark lair.

Players explore the dungeons of Schompf by tunneling through caverns and exploring the underground city. Find the dark lair by advancing though the location deck. Exploring the tunnels will not be easy. Every time you reach a new location, new dangers are drawn at random from the quest’s enemy deck.

From the game’s description, it is likely that Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game will be nearly identical to the Lord of the Rings Card Game by Fantasy flight, at least in game mechanics.

The game is scheduled to launch in the third quarter of 2015. There is no official information at this time about the pricing. However, it will probably be prices similar to the base LOTR Card game, which retails for $40.

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Early this morning, Fantasy Flight Games briefly posted a page on their website about a Fury of Dracula reprint. Like the titular vampire, the page soon fled away and investigators were left trying to determine where they will find the game next, speculating the game will show up at Gen Con 2015. Fury of Dracula was one of the earliest hidden movement games, sometimes described as “Scotland Yard with Vampires”. Originally published in 1987 by Games Workshop as The Fury of Dracula, and in 2005 by Fantasy Flight Games, the game has been out of print since 2008.

Fury of Dracula is a one-against-many hidden movement game with one player as Dracula travelling through Europe, expanding his vampire family, while up to four other players hunt down the villain and try to put an end to him.

The new version of the game, listed as in development, features new art and graphic design and some changes to game play: “Rounds are now broken into day and night: hunters take actions during both, but Dracula can only act at night. Combat is now more streamlined and decisive, and new rumor tokens allow Dracula to mislead hunters and extend the terrible reach of his influence,” read the game description. Rather than winning the game if he sires enough vampires, “Count Dracula triumphs if he advances his influence track to thirteen; if the hunters can defeat him before then, they save the continent of Europe and win the game.” Playtime is estimated at 2-3 hours.

Fury of Dracula will retail for $59.95.

Edit: Fantasy Flight Games has relaunched the Fury of Dracula page at their website. “Mina, we’ve spotted him,” I cried out. “He’s heading to Indianapolis!” At Gen Con, demos of the game will be run in FFG’s city within the exhibit hall. The game will be available in Q4 of this year. More information at https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/7/23/fury-of-dracula/

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In 2010, Fantasy Flight Games released a collector’s edition of their popular War of the Ring game, based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring novels. That version contained nearly 250 hand-painted miniatures, larger cards and game board, all-new art by John Howe, and of course the huge wooden box. Selling for just under four hundred dollars, used copies of the game with dings and scratches can be found on ebay for the low, low price of $1525.

Ares Games then released the second edition of War of the Ring. Now, to celebrate the fifth year of the new edition (and the 60th anniversary of the publication of Return of the King), Ares has announced the Anniversary Release of War of the Ring Second Edition. This version will not be in a wooden box like the collector’s edition, but will include 205 hand-painted miniatures, a larger board, two hardcover books in a slipcase (one rules, the other a companion book), and dice produced in new colors specifically for this edition.

Preorders begin at 2 PM, EDT, on July 20th, according to the countdown clock on the website. Preorders begin at 1 PM, EDT, on July 20th, according to the press release. However, no need to rush to the website at one o’clock or two — Ares does not have a limit on how many copies will be printed. Although initially saying the run will be just 2000 copies, there was concern about disappointing fans who were not quick enough to the website. “We hope 48 hours is an adequate time to make sure all interested War of the Ring fans, who cannot be in front of their computer at the time pre-order opens, will have a chance to get a copy,” said the company.

The game will be sold only during this two-day pre-order period for $369 per copy, plus 19% VAT for members of the EU (about $71), postage and handling (anywhere from $20 to $75).

Ares estimates the game will be shipping in Spring, 2016. They say that they “may need to consider shipping the product out in waves” if they receive significantly more than 2000 pre-orders. “Realistically, we should be able to fulfill all such orders in Spring or Summer 2016, at the latest.”

Once all three expansions for the base game are released, Ares states they would like to manufacture a similar Anniversary Release-like expansion companion. But, as many factors can come into play regarding the practicality of doing all expansions as a single release, the company recommends not basing “your purchase of [the Anniversary Release] on the expectation of a future release of painted expansion sets.”

And, as a personal note: Please give me $389 so I can get a copy.

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