• While Path has aspects of area control on a map, it's only a "dude on a map" game since you have only one dude. Clash of Rage from Frédéric Guérard and La Boite de Jeu adopts the more familiar formula of placing many dudes on their map, with players both trying to overcome a failing elvish empire and other competitors for the remains of that empire. (KS link)
BGG shot an overview of Clash of Rage while at the game fair in Cannes in early 2017. Components shown are not final, of course.
• Want even more face-smashing action? Luke Seinen's Carthage from SAS Creative is a 2-5 player arena combat game with a deck-building element. Should you be eliminated from play in a game with more than two players, you can come back to life as a sabertooth tiger or another beast to attempt to get revenge for your former human self. (KS link)
• Magitics from Norbert Kiss and A-games is also an arena combat, but one set in a fantasy realm in which players can use spells and magic items in addition to more traditional figure-based combat. (KS link)
• I feel like A.E.G.I.S.: Combining Robot Strategy Game from Zephyr Workshop has been around forever since I've included it on two Gen Con previews, yet the game won't be released until January 2018. Funny how that works. Here's a short description of the game from the Kickstarter project: "We love strategy games, and noticed there was a severe lack of combining robots and simple strategy games. We decided to change that..." (KS link)
• Even more combat comes your way courtesy of Phil Vestal, Eddie Zakoor, Anneke Zakoor and newcomer Shadow Squirrel Games with the 1-7 player game Wanted Earth, in which players must defend the Earth against several invading alien races — unless players want to play as those races, that is, in which case the game becomes 100% less cooperative and you can play as a frog whose tongue is longer than its body. (KS link)
• Tradewars: Homeworld – Exterra Edition from Kristopher R. Kycia and Outer Limit Games presents the mirror image of the game above, with humans leaving Earth to colonize other worlds under the leadership of four megacorporations. Naturally you and the other megacorporations can't play nicely, so you'll need to build a fancy deck and manage your resources well in order to show them up. Solitaire rules are included in case you want to head spaceward on your own. (KS link)
• Diceborn Heroes from Keith Donaldson and his Diceborn Games seems like an old-school RPG-style co-op dice chucker, and I can't think of much to say about the game beyond that. (KS link)
• Deadly Premonition: The Board Game from newcomer Rising Star Games is a deduction-driven card game based on the video game Deadly Premonition. (KS link)
• Given the huge number of games with miniatures in this round-up, I thought I'd also mention the crowdfunding campaign for the Skirmish Box from Dog Might Games, this being a fancy wood box with a metal plate under the felt bottom so that your miniatures with magnets will not get tossed around in the box when you travel with them — and should your miniatures not have magnets on them, well, Dog Might will sell you magnets as well. Problem and solution in one step! (KS link)
• We'll close with Barker's Row from Steven Aramini and Overworld Games, which has the amusing scoretrack of "rube" meeples being placed in your grandstand. Yes, your goal is to put butts in seats. In the game, you draft and play cards to use their powers and attract those rubes, but with each attraction you play, you have to work harder to attract more rubes in the future — just like real life. (KS link)
Editor's note: Please don't post links to other Kickstarter projects in the comments section. Write to me via the email address in the header, and I'll consider them for inclusion in a future crowdfunding round-up. Thanks! —WEM