New editions of Dominion and Dominion: Intrigue are being produced by Rio Grande Games and should be on retail shelves within a few weeks. The second editions will replace six card groups and add one new (replacing the blanks) in each set. Additionally, there will be new box cover art, new card art for the base Treasure and Victory cards, clarified card text, and revised rule books.

Base cards are being dropped from Intrigue, meaning it’ll no longer work standalone. Suggested retail price, though, will also drop for Intrigue, from $45 to $40.

For those who want to stick with their first edition sets but want access to the new cards, Rio Grande is producing Update Packs with the new Kingdom, Treasure, and Victory cards for $15 each.

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A new expansion for Rio Grande Games’ Dominion is due in May. Dominion: Empires, with 300 cards and 96 metal tokens, will revisit the Events mechanism from previous sets but also feature Landmarks for a new way to score. The suggested retail price will be $45.

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Rio Grande Games is preparing for an upcoming release of a revised version of Alan Moon’s Elfenroads, which combines Elfenland with its expansions, Elfengold and Elfensea. This is not a new edition of the 1993 White Wind game, but a single game based on the above listed titles.

Players take on the roll as elf girls and boys on that must race against each other across distant lands to prove they are ready to become grownups. Players must make the best use of available transportation, like boats, unicorns, and dragons, to get to each location.

The Elfengold portion of the game provides gold coins, which players use to bid for Travel Counters. It also adds Gold Value Tokens, which increases a player’s score for visiting towns. There are also two different magic spells, two additional round cards to extend the game to six rounds, and new obstacles. The Elfensea portion adds a different map and new transportation restrictions.

Elfenroads supports two to six players ages 13 and up. Gameplay takes between 45 and 90 minutes. There is no official word on the release date for the game, but it will retail for $70.

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After settlers encountered a violent xenophobic race, the “Xenos”, the galaxy finds itself under relentless assault… Can you build the most prosperous and powerful space empire while defending it from Xeno invasions?

Being the 3rd story arc of the series, Race for the Galaxy: Xeno Invasion works around worlds occupied by the named vicious horde of aliens, as well as special powers and keywords against them. Aside from 51 new cards, this expansion also features an optional game end called Invasion Game, which allows players to repair their damaged worlds, earn VPs by defeating the Xenos, etc. However, it is important to note that this expansion is not compatible with other story arcs in the RftG series.

Race for the Galaxy: Xeno Invasion plays 2 to 5 players, and will be released in 2015 with an MSRP of $24.95.

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Rio Grande Games announced Dominion: Adventures, the ninth expansion for the Dominion card game. The game’s designer, Donald X. Vaccarino, suggests that Adventures is the first of a series of “occasional expansions” for the game line. In a 2012 interview with Andrea Ligabue of OpinionatedGamers.com, Mr. Vaccarino stated that he saw Dark Ages and Guilds as the last of the regular expansions to Dominion, citing several factors including a desire to develop other games and caution at over-complicating the basic game. “…[E]xpansions get more complex over time,” the designer says. “Many people would prefer them not to be more complex. At the same time a spin-off – a standalone game that has the same core premise but adds some components and rules – can have new simple cards that involve the new stuff. ”

Adventures will have 400 cards, making it the largest expansion to Dominion. In addition to the 30 kingdom cards, the expansion adds event cards, tokens that modify cards, and “Reserve cards that can be saved for the right moment”. The title is scheduled for a 2015 release with a MSRP of $44.95.

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Designed by Donald X. Vaccarino, Temporum is a card game that allows players to travel through time and attempt to change the course of history. It features a board that is divided into 4 rows, with each row representing a different time period. Each time period has a certain number of zones that have various effects, but only 4 out of the 10 zones are “real”. Since players can only visit the zones that are currently “real”, it is their goal to modify the path, take advantage of the powerful zones and move all their power tokens to the last time period.

Temporum plays 2 to 5 players in 30 to 60 minutes, MSRP $49.95.

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For the final expansion to Dominion, Rio Grande offers one of the smaller boxes, including 13 Kingdom cards themed around medieval professions.

Dominion Guilds also features cards with two new mechanics. Some provide Coins, metal treasure tokens that can be saved and spent across multiple rounds. Others allow a player to “overpay” when purchasing, with the excess treasure providing a variety of benefits. For example, when purchasing the Stonemason, a player gains two Action cards that cost the amount overpaid. Each extra coin overpaid for the Doctor allows the player to look at a card from the draw deck, trash it, discard it, or put it back. Though these benefits apply only at the time of purchase, it’s an interesting way, I think, of keeping less expensive cards relevant throughout the game.

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