Hasbro is partnering with Epic Games to produce Fortnite-based toys and games. Of course, there’s to be a Fortnite Monopoly (due this fall) but also other unspecified games.

Shinobi 7 announced acquisition of the Conan license for tabletop games. Two products are planned. The first, a miniatures game via Kickstarter project. The second, a direct-to-retail card game.

With a license from Sony Interactive, Steamforged Games is pursuing plans for a miniatures-heavy Horizon Zero Dawn board game via Kickstarter. Pledges already total more than $1 million, though Steamforged estimates delivery not until March 2020.

Things from the Flood is a just-launched Kickstarter RPG project that’s a sequel to Tales from the Loop and based on another of Simon Stålenhag’s art books. The new one from Free League Publishing is more grim and bleak than its predecessor.

Coming to Kickstarter on the 1st of October is The Hunger Games: Mockingjay from River Horse.

Then scheduled for November 13th is Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice from Triton Noir. The company promises a cooperative miniatures game focused on stealth mechanisms.

WizKids recently announced a licensing arrangement with WWE. The company will add WWE wrestling personalities to HeroClix and Dice Masters and create WWE board games.

Available now from WizKids is Star Trek Galactic Enterprises, a game in which you play as Ferengi.

Also available now at retail is Munchkin Starfinder. It’s the Munchkin grab-the-loot card game from Steve Jackson Games, based on the Starfinder sci-fi RPG from Paizo Publishing.

Next up for Munchkin is Munchkin Warhammer 40,000 based on the property from Games Workshop. I love the meta of this previewed card, Unpainted.

But Steve Jackson isn’t the only company with a new Warhammer 40,000 license. Devir has made a racing game, Gretchinz, out of the property. WizKids has adapted Warhammer 40K to Dice Masters in Battle for Ultramar. Ulisses did Wrath & Glory, a Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying game. And USAopoly has made Warhammer 40,000 Monopoly.

Based on Warhammer Age of Sigmar, PlayFusion recently launched Champions, a collectible card game with an online play option. A non-collectible card game, Warhammer Doomseeker is available from Ninja Division.

EN Publishing, under license from Rebellion, is launching a Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD roleplaying game on Kickstarter.

IDW will ship to retail this coming February Nickelodeon Splat Attack!, as well as an expansion, Reptar Rampage. The game represents a food fight between teams of characters from various Nickelodeon shows, including Spongebob Squarepants, Hey Arnold!, Rugrats, and Invader Zim.

IDW also signed on with Toei Animation for a series of Dragon Ball games. The first two are due in stores this holiday season. Dragon Ball Super: Heroic Battle has players flicking tokens at each other, while Dragon Ball Z: Over 9000 is supposed to provide a more strategic gameplay experience. In 2019 (after a planned Kickstarter campaign), IDW will release a Dragon Ball Z miniatures game.

Coming this fall from USAopoly is the Dragon Ball Z Power Up Board Game in 3D. Also scheduled to deliver soon is a new Disney Chess Set celebrating 90 years of Mickey Mouse. Available now is one celebrating 25 years of Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas. The company’s latest Monopoly games include Five Nights at Freddy’s Monopoly, Ren & Stimpy Monopoly, and BoJack Horseman Monopoly.

Looney Labs recently released Mary Engelbreit Loonacy, a matching card game with the artwork of Mary Engelbreit.

Dog Might Games is now making officially licensed Vampire: The Masquerade dice trays, storyteller screens, and storage boxes, each with a choice of clan symbol. Orders ship with exclusive V5 loresheets tied to the new Geek & Sundry show, LA by Night.

Elderwood Academy is taking preorders for a Vampire: The Masquerade Spellbook gaming box made from walnut and leather. It also ships with LA by Night loresheets.

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On display by Games Workshop at New York Toy Fair were two new board games representing an effort by the company to provide a fresh point of entry for “the hobby”. The games, which feature less violent language and imagery and somewhat simplified rules, are being promoted to specialty toy retailers and mid-tier mass-market sellers as a way to expose new players to Games Workshop’s most popular IPs.

Both are planned for release later this year at a price point of around $40-50.

Blitz Bowl is the no-death version of Blood Bowl. It’s still a fantasy, full-contact version of American football, just with less blood and players being “taken out” instead of killed. The concept behind this version is monsters playing a scrimmage game while trying out for the main team.

Blitz Bowl’s rules are streamlined from the original (it’s supposed to play in about 40 minutes). Also, in addition to scoring touchdown’s for the win, completing certain objectives randomly selected each game (for example, three monsters making run actions) unlocks various benefits for the team.

Space Marine Adventures: Labyrinth of the Necrons is a Warhammer 40,000 dungeon crawl with a squad of marines drawn from those troops’ various chapters. The game is cooperative and scenario-based, the first of which is a tutorial and the last of which is a “massive labyrinth adventure” that can be adjusted for difficulty level. Each player gets a plastic space marine figure but the enemy necrons are represented by cardboard tokens.

Inside both game boxes, as alternatives to the standard rule books, are series of cards with instructions that work like game tutorials.

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WizKids Signs 40K

WizKids has announced a license for Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 universe. With initial products releasing mid-2018, WizKids is planning games in “multiple categories”, including dice-building games and and two board games. WizKids is also working with GW to republish Fury of Dracula and Relic.

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With a new edition of Warhammer 40,000 due later this year, Games Workshop appears ready to introduce a range of new factions (or faction variants). The first announced among several new types of Space Marines is the Primaris Space Marine, raised by Primarch Roboute Guilliman on Mars.

Compared to regular troops, the Primaris Space Marines are bigger, can hold up to small-arms fire longer, and carry bolt rifles with additional range and armor-piercing power.

Primaris figures can be incorporated in to companies with other factions or can be used to make their own compact army.

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Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition Announced

Games Workshop has announced plans for a new edition of Warhammer 40,000 due sometime this year. With just 3 years since the last revision, GW promises that every figure and all current armies will be supported in the new edition. The setting will remain the same, though some advance in the story line is expected. And a version of the core rulebook will be free.

The company’s main goal for a new Warhammer 40,000 appears to be to streamline game-play significantly, bringing a typical game down to 1½-2 hours and much easier for new players to learn. At the same time, veterans will have options for adding depth and complexity. Among the new elements being added to the game are command points rewarding players with special abilities for thematically-built armies.

The big news from Games Workshop was the Warhammer Quest re-issue, but that wasn’t on display at Toy Fair this year. Instead, the main booth was all about the recently-released version of Blood Bowl. I loved the old version of Blood Bowl, and getting to see the newer line — with the professionally-painted miniatures — was really neat. The new boxed set, retailing at $99, contains 12 miniatures for the Ork and Human teams, in green and blue respectively, ready for assembly and paint. Additional teams come in colored plastic to easily identify teams without the need for painting miniatures before play. Skaven and Dwarven teams are priced at $35.

New to this edition are different fields to play on. The board that comes with the base game has a human field on one side and a distinctively orkish field on the reverse. Additional themed pitches include the $38 Skaven/Dwarven double-sided board with rules for underground “weather” effects and a $32 Blood on the Snow pitch with a winter-themed pair of fields “covered in reindeer skulls, squashed presents, loads of blood and some slightly dubious patches of yellow snow.”

However, you’ll really need Death Zone, a 48-page book containing seven team types (Skaven, Nurgle, Dwarf, Elven Union, High Elf, Dark Elf and Wood Elf) with background, rosters and famous examples of each, to complete your game. The book also contains additional rules for the coaching staff, season play, star players, additional skills… Throwing rules like this into a separate product is what Games Workshop did for the previous version of Blood Bowl to keep the entry point to the game low. Arguably, the same case can be made for this edition, as the base game is just under $100. But if you really want to get into the new version of Blood Bowl, you’re going to need this $25 softcover book.

Cards replace the punchboard tiles from the earlier version, and — for those of you who remember the last incarnation of Blood Bowl — the box is actually sturdy enough to hold the game.

Downstairs in Games Workshop’s second booth, the two newest lines showcased are the Warhammer 40k Starter Sets and the Warhammer 40k Build+Paint series.

Both Starter Sets retail for $50 and will be shipping soon. Battle for Vedros contains 28 miniatures that require no glue for assembly: nine Space Marines (including a Dreadnought) and nineteen Orks. A basic rulebook and dice for the game are included in the package. Tyranid Encounter! is at the same price point but comes with 40 miniatures: twenty-four Tyranids and sixteen Space Marines.

The Build+Paint sets will be available in waves. Series 1 is being released now with miniature kits that contain glue, paint pots, and a brush starting at $14.99. Items on display included three Ork and three Space Marine kits. The Ork Blastabike and Space Marine Attack Bike retail for $14.99, the Ork Trukkboyz and the Space Marine Speeder Strike retail for $24.99, and the larger forces for Orks (Raiders) and Space Marines (Heavy Assault) are priced at $39.99. Like the Blood Bowl miniatures, the Build+Paint sets come in colored plastic to allow for quick play at the table before painting.

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Deadly Terrain for Warhammer 40K

Games Workshop is shipping later this week Deathworld Forest, a $130 box filled with the makings of deadly terrain for Warhammer 40,000. Included are 84 plastic pieces that can be mixed and matched to assemble grapple weed, shardwrack spines, barbed venomgorse, and eldritch ruins. Also in the box are the specific rules for each individual component.

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PETA Don’t Like Your 40K

Never mind the destruction of civilizations, the human skulls, or the other violent themes, PETA (specifically the UK organization of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) wants Games Workshop to stop sculpting its Warhammer 40,000 miniature figures with images of animal fur.

PETA has written to Games Workshop CEO Kevin Rountree asking that the leading British miniature war-gaming brand ban “fur” garments from all Warhammer characters. While we appreciate that they are fictional, draping them in what looks like a replica of a dead animal sends the message that wearing fur is acceptable – when, in fact, it has no more place in 2017 than it would in the year 40,000.

Come to think of it, how do they know it’s not fake fur?

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With Burning of Prospero, Games Workshop gives the boxed game treatment to another battle in the Horus Heresy saga (last year at about the same time, the company release Betrayal at Calth). This one pits the Space Wolves, Sisters of Silence, and the Custodian Guard against the psychic Thousand Sons for control of the city of Tizca.

Included in the box are 47 miniatures, alternative weapon pieces, tiles, dice, a rule book, and a story book for $150.

the-horus-heresy-the-burning-of-prospero

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fantasy-flight-gamesgamesworkshoplogo.jpgGames Workshop and Fantasy Flight Games have terminated their license agreement. According to an announcement by FFG, the company will end sales of all products based on GW properties—Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40,000, and Talisman—as of the end of February, 2017. All previously-announced products, however, will be delivered before that date. That includes a couple of Talisman and Warhammer 40,000: Conquest expansions.

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