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.

• Comments Off on Star Wars The Force Awakens Board and Card Games

I had talked about Game of Thrones Risk after Toy Fair, but I wasn’t able to post any pictures. Now, with the game coming out in July, pictures are starting to pop up.

Retailing at just a smidge under $75, the game will come with:

• 2 separate game board maps: Westeros and Essos
• 315 Army Pieces represent noble Houses: Stark, Baratheon, Lannister, Martell, Tyrell, Targaryen and Ghiscari (generic soldier army piece represent 1 unit)
• 7 Seats of Power represent noble houses
• 7 Player Boards represent noble houses
• 188 Cards include Territory, Objective, Character and Maester cards
• 63 Special Unit tokens
• 75 Gold Dragon coins
• 9 Dice

That’s a ton of stuff packed in there, and worth the price of admission. There will also be two new ways to play that feature the warring of the noble houses and Daenerys’ rise to power in Essos.

• Comments Off on Risk: Game of Thrones

For latest news on all the Star Wars games see: Star Wars The Force Awakens Board and Card Games.

I had the privilege of attending Star Wars Celebration VII in Anaheim, CA this past weekend and one of the many awesome things that caught my eye while wandering the rows and rows of vendors in the exhibitor hall was Hasbro’s upcoming revamped version of Star Wars Risk.

In this asymmetric version of Star Wars Risk, the Rebel player is trying to get the shields down on the Death Star in order to destroy it while the Empire player is trying to destroy the Rebel fleet.

The game is designed for tow to four player ages 10 and up. Gameplay takes approximately 25 – 40 minutes.

Star Wars Risk from Hasbro will launch this fall for $29.99 for the standard edition and $49.99 for the special Black Series edition.

• Comments Off on Hasbro is updating the Star Wars Universe for Risk

USAopoly surprised me at Toy Fair. I mostly know them for their licensed versions of Monopoly, Clue, Risk, Yahtzee, etc…, but a handful of original titles filled their booth this year. Before I get into those, I’m going to post a gallery of all the licensed products that are new.

OK! There’s a lot of material to cover above.

Monopoly

The Legend of Zelda version is new as of last year, and has been an excellent seller. New to the scene are Mass Effect, Pokemon, Jurassic World, Doctor Who: Villains, Firefly, and Penny Dreadful.

Yahtzee

There’s Back to the Future (the Flux Capacitor case lights up!), Firefly, The Legend of Zelda, and new versions for The Avengers, Age of Ultron. These I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of, but the dice come in either an Iron Man or Ultron head.

Clue

Doctor Who. It rhymes.

BANG!

It was really cool to see that there’s a Hereos of the Storm version, and a comic book Walking Dead version. Also, Halo.

Munchkin

A Walking Dead expansion for Munchkin Zombies was shown, as well as Adventure Time Munchkin. I actually took a copy of the latter home from a Steve Jackson party, and it’s pretty sweet. USAopoly did an excellent job of capturing the feeling of the show and fitting it in with the equally zany world of Munchkin.

Puzzles

Two beautiful Legend of Zelda puzzles. One is of the Hyrule Map, and the other is a colorful piece from The Wind Waker.

Risk

I wasn’t able to take pictures of either Risk title I saw, but they’re both very exciting. The first is an Avengers: Age of Ultron version that comes with little painted miniatures of the Avengers. The packaging said something about “collect them all,” but the rep showing me around didn’t know what that was about. It could be a pretty interesting mechanic if there were an element of randomness to the figures in the box.

The second, and by far one of the most exciting licensed products, was the Game of Thrones version of Risk. This thing was huge. It comes with 2 giant boards depicting Westeros and Essos, and the game is played over both maps at once. The pieces were amazing in their detail, and the box was minimal and beautiful. This is one I’d go out of my way to purchase.

 

---

 

OK. That horizontal line above is where we break from the licensed copies of classic and well known board games and get into original titles USAopoly is putting out.

TacDex – $9.95

TacDex is a newer game to the USAopoly line, and is a War-style card game developed by Richard Borg. Already having a Pirates! deck, they’ve now added a Super Mario Brothers deck, Walking Dead deck, and Halo deck. I was told you can mix and match the decks, if so desired. Right off the bat I’m interested because of Richard Borg’s involvement.

Rollandia

Rollandia is a really cool looking game where you’re rolling dice to try and build your castle. You need to roll groups of numbers to build each piece, and there’s a component of using your already-claimed numbers to effect other players. The whole look and feel of the game caught be totally by surprise after seeing such a huge amount of licensed Monopoly, Clue, Yahtzee, etc… games. Nothing against those, but it’s always nice to see new and innovative titles hit the market.

Nefarious – $29.95 – Ages 13+

Rollandia was really cool looking, but one look at Nefarious and I had already moved on. In Nefarious you’re playing evil scientists trying to take over the world. You do this by inventing devices, performing espionage, and doing research. Visually stunning, designed by Donald X. Vaccarino, and slick looking game play make this one to keep an eye on.

Pass the Blame : The Party Game for Irresponsible and Telestrations 8: After Dark  – $29.95 and $19.95 – Ages 17+

Two adult games following the new trend in the wake of Cards Against Humanity. Both party games involve compromising situations and foul thoughts. Pass the Blame has situations cards that players must write excuses for. Not as filthy as Telestrations After Dark, but it can get a bit dicey. Telestrations After Dark has you playing a game of Telephone, but with sketches. One player sketches a phrase, the next guesses what the phrase is and tries to draw it again, and so on. This one is a bit more intentionally dirty with terms like “doggie style”, “human centipede”, and more.

Wonky

Wonky comes with a box of mostly-cube-like pieces and cards that tell you what color cubes to place and where. Players have to follow the directions on the cards and build a tower as high as they can without it falling. A quick, easy, family game.

Tapple

A word game with an interesting twist. A card is drawn with a category, after which each player takes turns naming something in the category and tapping down the letter the word started with. Once a letter is tapped down it can’t be used again. Players who can’t think of a word are knocked out.

Lift It

This one had a pretty cool hook to it (pun intended.) Lift It has you trying to build certain structures with the pieces provided, but you must do in within a time limit, and by only using your hook on a string to pick up and place pieces. Some challenges are even cooperative, where 2 players need to each hook pieces and work togehter to build something. I gave this a shot, but was met with an almost insurmountable challenge trying to get my shaky, carpal tunnel ridden hands and wrists to do as I asked.

 

• Comments Off on Toy Fair 2015—USAoploy