There seems like there is no end in site to the boom of IP games. Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid Board Game is a 2-5 player co-operative game. Based on the hit kids T.V. which ran longer than you think it did (it’s still on T.V. now). Base on the original team, you will be tasked with defending Angel Grove from Rita Repulsa and her foot soldiers. Each Ranger comes with a unique combat deck representing their particular skills and fighting style which makes each character unique. In each game, you’ll protect four combat zones that are being targeted. Every round enemies will invade these zones, and your mission is to defeat them. With six days to go this Kickstarter is shy of $500,000. You can fund the game here.

Crazier Eights: One Thousand & One Nights is a card game based on the premise of crazy eights. I know your scrolling down on this already, but hear me out. Players take turns drawing a card, discarding a card, and playing a card for an effect. The first player with zero cards wins. Despite being light in nature, two things make this game shine, the asset cards and the art. The asset cards can give you special powers or even change the end game conditions. And the art is AMAZING! There have been a couple of versions of this game (first edition, Camelot) and the art is always incredible. The price point is $14 and can be found here.

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WizKids has a packed booth at Toy Fair with lots of items from their Dungeons & Dragons line on display as well as more Heroclix items and some standalone games.

The first thing that grabbed my attention was the wall of unpainted Dungeons & Dragons miniatures. In the first wave of miniatures (this month, $2.99 each), sixty different miniature packs are available with some coming in with multiple figures. Also planned: Pathfinder miniatures! (No date or price on those as of yet!)

But if you like painted miniatures, they’ve got you covered with the Adventurer’s Campsite as part of the Icons of the Realms’ Monster Menagerie II line. This $50 box comes with a painted covered wagon, two saddled horses, three treasure chests, two kegs (of course), and all the little things: sacks, camp fires, bedrolls, spellbooks, scrolls, bags of holding…

And just released the day of the show, Assault of the Giants. This newest entry into the line of D&D boardgames comes in a standard edition for $80 or a premium edition with fully-painted miniatures for $130.

Coming soon in Heroclix are two new lines: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Return and Marvel’s Deadpool & X-Force. TMNT will come in blind bags for $3 each. Deadpool & X-Force will be available in a brick of boosters for $130, which is probably your best bet at obtaining that Deadpool riding the unicorn ultra-rare piece (one is available in approximately every four cases).

Recreating a classic oversized comic book I had when I was a kid, the Heroclix Superman vs. Muhammad Ali set comes with a boxing ring, the greatest, and a Superman wearing boxing gloves. Debuting in March, this set will retail for $50.

Three new games were also shown: The Banishing, Tower of London, and Tournament at Camelot. Relasing in March, the Banishing is a difficult strategy cooperative game where you’re banishing creatures. Tower of London is a zone control game available in April. Tournament at Camelot, a May release, is a trick-taking game with box artwork inspired from illuminated manuscripts. All three games will retail for $20.

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Reaper Miniatures launched a second Kickstarter with their Bones miniature line, being fully funded within three minutes of launch.

Reaper’s Bones line is a plastic line of miniatures. In August of 2012, the company ended a campaign to create new miniature molds based off of existing metal miniatures and ones created specifically for the Bones line, overfunding their goal by 11,430%, generating $3.43 million, making it the most funded non-video game related Kickstarter as of October 2013. The 2012 Bones campaign is currently the seventh-most funded campaign on Kickstarter. Bones II will be funded on Saturday, October 26.

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Games Workshop will be holding an event called Tyranid Attack at participating game stores in the US on January 30th.  Tyranid players can bring EVERY Tyranid model they own to play with, while non Tyranid players may bring a 1500 point army to play.

All players who participate will be entered to win a piece of artwork from the Tyranid Codex cover.

You can follow the event (and more) from the GW North American Twitter feed.

Sounds pretty awesome if you’re a Tyranid player, and pretty challenging if you’re not.

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Business of Games (BoG) is our regular series looking at the business of games from the perspective of the gamer.

Six months ago, we brought you word of GW’s announcement that they were raising prices and questioned how GW was doing in the current economy. Well, they’ve just released their second half numbers and the results are very interesting!

The number everyone has been most interested in is the supply cost figure (the formal name is the “input cost”, particularly given the rapid increase in the cost of metals that has been driving up costs across the board in the miniature gaming hobby (no pun intended – I swear!). While these costs aren’t reported directly on earnings statements, you can see their result by looking at margin and the result is impressive. GW somehow managed to increase their gross margin to 71.4% from 70.1% – for those who aren’t mathematically inclined, that means that GW managed to make a bigger profit on each sale than they did last year. A cynic might point out that the company-wide price hike might have had something to do with this increase, but I doubt that’s the whole picture – GW’s supply managers are working some serious magic. All of this is on top of raw sales being up £7.3MM over the previous year.

What else was interesting the last half numbers? Well, we made a rather big deal out of the fact that GW has been operating at a loss lately. Well, they’ve certainly turned a corner on that front as well – going from taking a pre-tax loss to actually turning a profit of 3.1MM. I think its safe to say that if GW can show improvements like this, they may have have finally shrugged off some of their earlier issues. Heck, they even opened more stores than they closed this year – I’m pretty sure that most retailers can’t say the same.

So how is GW using their new found profit? Essentially, they’re using it to pay down debt. There seems to be a little bit of use around expanding hobby centers and some basic reinvestment, but the majority has gone into paying off the debts they’ve accumulated over the past few year (reducing their debt by 4.2MM to 11MM).

So what does this mean for your average gamer? For the most part, things seem good. While you’re not likely to see a drop in prices (things just don’t work that way generally), you’re very likely to see a greatly increased GW presence in your area (though if you’re in the US, that’ll probably be through a hobby shop) with greater levels of support and product. I’d also expect to see the continuation of the recent trend of rapid, high quality releases as this has likely contributed a fair bit to that increase in sales. Bottom line, GW seems to have recovered from their recent illness which is going to make it more likely that you can find product, find gamers and otherwise have a positive hobby experience.

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