How was your week of gaming? What are you looking forward to as we near the yeas end? We have Betrayal Legacy making its way to us soon. We can’t wait! Look out for a review later in the month. Anyway, enough of our wants, what news do we have? A few bits and bobs.

Patchwork Doodle

The roll-and-write genre of games are very popular right (hehe!) now and the classic Patchwork game gets a version of its own.

Each player gets their own 9×9 grid to fill in over the course of the game. Players set up by drawing (not literally) a unique polyomino card from the starting deck, then drawing (yes, now you can!) that on their sheet.

Each round, players lay out a number of polyomino cards in a circle, then place the rabbit between two cards. On a turn, someone rolls the die, moves the rabbit forward, then removes the card indicated by the rabbit. Each player must draw the polyomino indicated on this card in their grid. Once a certain number of cards have been played, the round ends, players score points, then you lay out more cards for the next round. Whoever has the most points at the end of the games wins. Don’t forget though, if there are any blank spaces left on your sheet, you lose points!

Mixed into all this are various special powers that can be used to gain an advantage. It plays pretty much like Patchwork but without all the fiddliness, which is a great thing. The market is pretty much flooded with roll-and-write games at the moment with many of them average at best. But as long as quality games come along like Patchwork Doodle, Railroad Ink and Welcome To the genre can hold its head up high.

Ghostbusters x Men in Black: Ecto-terrestrial Invasion

Well, well. IDW Games have obtained the licence for Ghostbusters and Men in Black. The previous 2 Ghostbusters games from Cryptozoic were not great at all so let’s hope IDW can do better and from this announcement they have gone all in. Their first game being a crossover of both franchises!

From the publisher:

Men In Black/Ghostbusters: Ecto-terrestrial Invasion is a miniatures games that pairs the world’s foremost protection teams to take down a threat like they’ve never faced. The Ghostbusters team includes Peter Venkman, Egon Spangler, Ray Stanz, and Winston Zeddmore, and the MIB team includes Agent J, Agent K, Agent L, and Zed. The game features fast dice-rolling and take-that card play as well as detailed miniatures from Ninja Division.

We optimistically await more news on this one.

Underwater Cities

Vladimir Suchy is one of our favourite designers out there. His wonderful Pulsar 2849 is a favourite here along with Last Will. We are super happy that Rio Grande Games have picked up his latest game for publication.

In Underwater Cities, players represent the most powerful brains in the world, who are tasked with the job to establish the best and most livable underwater areas possible. The main principle of the game is card placement. Cards! We love em! Three coloured cards are placed along the edge of the main board into 3 x 5 slots, which are also coloured. Players then place cards into slots of the same colour. Once this is done they can take the action depicted in the slot on the main board and also the advantage of the card.

These actions and advantages allow players to intake raw materials; to build and upgrade city domes, tunnels and production buildings such as farms, desalination devices and laboratories in their personal underwater area; to move their marker on the initiative track (which is important for player order in the next turn – like Pulsar 2849); to activate the player’s “A-cards”; and to collect cards, both special ones and basic ones that allow for better decision possibilities during gameplay. All of the nearly 220 cards — whether special or basic — are divided into four types according to the way and time of use. Underwater areas are planned to be double-sided, giving players many opportunities to achieve VPs and finally win.

Coming in early 2019 this is definitely on our watch list.

Atlantis Rising

This weeks Kickstarter highlight is the easy on the eye, Atlantis Rising. Already funded (which is a good thing) and is in the process of trying to get all those stretch goals unlocked. If you want to splash your cash and help out then go here.

Atlantis Rising is a co-operative worker placement game in which you must work together with up to five other players to deploy citizens across your homeland, gathering resources in order to build a cosmic gate that can save your people. Workers placed close to the shoreline are more rewarding, but are more likely to be flooded and the actions lost.

Every turn, each player draws a misfortune card that will flood certain locations along the ever-shrinking Atlantis shoreline, or may otherwise work to undermine your efforts to save your people. So you must race to gather the necessary resources to build and power the gate before the island disappears beneath the waves forever.

The Kickstarter campaign is actually to get a second edition out to the masses. It contains all new art and graphic design, created to bring even more attention to the thematic setting of the game. The Athenians Attack phase has been replaced with the Wrath of the Gods phase, requiring more strategic planning and adding to the sense of urgency. Now, instead of placing workers in an Atlantean Navy, players must cooperatively decide to flood a set number of tiles at the end of each round. To further aid them in their task, Councilor player powers have been expanded and made more impactful, and the knowledge deck has similarly been revised and expanded. The variable gate components, once built, no longer offer one-time bonuses, but create new worker placement spots where players can send Atlantean workers to unleash actions to help save their island.

Worker placement. Check. Co-op. Check. Beautiful art. Check. Must have? CHECK.