Celebrate the Year of Moloch, Lead Your Colony to Survival in the Cold, and Fight Mutants on Your Journey Home

Celebrate the Year of Moloch, Lead Your Colony to Survival in the Cold, and Fight Mutants on Your Journey Home
On September 5, 2020, Portal Games announced and opened pre-orders for Neuroshima Hex! 3.0: The Year of Moloch, a fancy, new limited edition of its best-selling Neuroshima Hex! from designer Michał Oracz. Initially, Neuroshima Hex! 3.0: The Year of Moloch edition was available for pre-order exclusively on Portal Games' website, but now it appears to be more widely available for pre-order with retailers.

From gallery of candidrum

Board Game: Neuroshima Hex! 3.0
Board Game Publisher: Portal Games
If you're not already hip to it, Neuroshima Hex! 3.0 is a 1-4 player strategy game set in the post-apocalyptic world of Neuroshima, a Polish role-playing game in the vein of Mad Max or Fallout, with humans fighting against machines in a hostile environment after a nuclear war as described in the high-level overview below from the publisher:
Quote:
Neuroshima Hex! is a strategy board game set in the post-apocalyptic world of Neuroshima. Each player leads one of the four Armies: Borgo, Hegemony, Moloch, or Outpost. Each Army deck consists of 34 tiles including Warriors, Modules, and Actions. You begin the game with your HQ at 20 hit points and wage war against your opponent in a back and forth strategic battle as you place and manipulate your tiles. You win once you've destroyed your opponent's HQ or once a player runs out of tiles and your HQ has less damage than your opponent's.
Board Game: Neuroshima Hex! 3.0: Troglodytes
In the lore, the vast cybernetic entity, Moloch, launched an attack which led to a machine revolt on September 5, 2020, which is the reason Portal Games chose that specific date for their announcement of Neuroshima Hex! 3.0: The Year of Moloch, the new Troglodytes army expansion designed by Marcin Zapart, and the Neuroshima Convoy card game iOS/Android app, as a celebration of "The Day of Moloch".

The Year of Moloch special collector's edition of Neuroshima Hex! 3.0 includes a large box with new unique cover art and room for 19 armies (4 base and 15 from expansions). It also includes a dual-layered board with new graphics, HQ markers for all armies, new boards for all armies, new illustrations on the four base game army units, and FAQ in a handy dandy brochure.

Neuroshima Hex! 3.0: The Year of Moloch also includes a new campaign expansion: Moloch the Beginning, in which two players will be transported back to the battlefield for five consecutive missions to experience the origin of Moloch as described below:
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The Moloch the Beginning campaign depicts the beginning of humanity's fight with the rebellious artificial intelligence, Moloch. The first months on the battlefield are pure madness, which means that even one insignificant soldier or bad day could lead to mission failure!

At the beginning of the campaign, players must choose a Faction — Moloch or Outpost — that they will lead through the entire campaign. Each mission consists of special rules that change the gameplay of the Mission.
Neuroshima Hex fans will also be pleased to hear there's another new army expansion: Neuroshima Hex: Beasts, which is designed by Joanna Kijanka and targeted for a 2021 release:
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In Neuroshima Hex: Beasts, the new army represents various animal species that survived Moloch's attack. These beasts are fierce, and they have but a single goal — to protect their territory. They spare no one, including their own. The expansion introduces a new game concept: friendly fire. Ferocity and wrath are unstoppable and units in the new army can damage their own friendly tiles.

Neuroshima Hex: Beasts was designed by Joanna Kijanka and developed by Michał Walczak, both names highly respected by fans and well known for their work on previous expansions for Neuroshima.
Board Game: 51st State: Master Set
• More on the topic of Moloch, Portal Games is also releasing a new Moloch semi-cooperative expansion for Ignacy Trzewiczek's ever-popular, tableau/engine building game 51st State: Master Set to celebrate its tenth anniversary. The Moloch expansion, also designed by Joanna Kijanka, plays with 1-4 players and intends to add a new twist to 51st State: Master Set as described by the publisher below:
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The Moloch State Pack introduces a semi-cooperative experience. It consists of 27 Moloch cards to be shuffled in the Base Set cards and 23 double-sided Machine cards.

Board Game: 51st State: Master Set – Moloch

Each round, a number of new enemy Machines are deployed and threaten all the players. Players may fight the Machines using two new actions, by hacking or destroying them.

Hacking a Machine requires you to pay the resources indicated in the Machine's code, and lets the player who does the action flip the Machine's card and build it as their own location, offering that player a new ability. Another way to fight a Machine is destroying it, which requires spending Contact tokens equal to Machine's defense level. Doing this brings the player victory points.

If Machines are left in play because no one hacked them or destroyed them, they will attack all players in the Assault phase and deal damage as specified on the Machine's card. Players may choose to work together fighting the Machines or face the dangers alone.
Board Game Publisher: Glass Cannon Unplugged
...and if post-apocalyptic games are your jam, surely you'll want to check out Frostpunk: The Board Game from designer Adam Kwapiński and publisher Glass Cannon Unplugged.

Frostpunk: The Board Game is a co-operative, city-building, survival game for 1-4 players based on the popular video game, Frostpunk. It was successfully funded on Kickstarter in October 2020 and is now available for pre-order. Here's what you can expect to bundle up for in the game:
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In Frostpunk: The Board Game, up to four players take on the role of leaders of a small colony of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world that was hit by a severe ice age. Their duty is to effectively manage both its infrastructure and citizens. The core gameplay is brutal, challenging, and complex, but easy to learn. The citizens won't just be speechless pieces on the board. Society members will issue demands and react accordingly to the current mood, so every decision and action bears consequences.

Board Game: Frostpunk: The Board Game

The players will decide the fate of their people. Will you treat them like another resource? Are you going to be an inspiring builder, a fearless explorer, or a bright scientist? Is your rule going to be a sting of tyranny or an era of law and equality?

The game is based on a bestseller video game by 11bit studios, the creators of This War Of Mine. The original (digital) edition of Frostpunk is a highly successful strategy-survival-city-builder, a BAFTA-nominee that originally launched in 2018.
Board Game Publisher: Mighty Boards
Board Game: Posthuman Saga
• Another exciting post-apocalyptic release to look out for is Posthuman Saga: The Journey Home, the latest expansion in the Posthuman Saga world from designer Gordon Calleja and publisher Mighty Boards.

Posthuman Saga: The Journey Home was successfully funded on Kickstarter (KS link) in February 2021 and is targeted for delivery in Q4 2021. I would imagine it'll be available at a later date for late pledges and/or retail if you missed out on the Kickstarter campaign.

In Posthuman Saga: The Journey Home, 1-4 players fight their way back to the safety of the Fortress through a mutant infested world as described below by the publisher:
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In your quest to scope out the slave camps, you've gone deep into the mutant heartland, further than anyone from the Resistance has been in years. You've seen cruelty, horrors and tragedies that will stay with you for the rest of your days. It's time to let your path take you back home, to the Fortress. It'll be a long, eventful journey, taking you through uncharted territories. Along the way, you'll have plenty of occasions to gather intel for the Resistance, help out strangers and allies you meet, strike another crucial blow or two in the war against the mutants, and garner even more renown before you walk back through the Fortress' gates.

Board Game: Posthuman Saga: The Journey Home Expansion

Posthuman Saga: The Journey Home adds several new mechanisms and more alternate ways of scoring to the base game. Enjoy Posthuman as it was always intended, with more player interaction, evolving narrative missions and a heavier tactical experience.

The Journey Home also adds a lot of new content; pick from two new playable characters, recruit new followers, collect more weapons and equipment and fight your way through a nasty bunch of new mutants.

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