Crowdfunding Round-up: Krosmaster: Arena, Teramyyd: Earthsphere, Succubus: The Reborn, Magic: The Gathering Retrospective & One Item with No Colon in the Title

In Hormonde, a strange world deep in the folds of time, the Hour Demons have finally found a hobby worthy of their cruel hearts... the Arena! The idea is simple. They select warriors of all ages and lands and whisk them away to the Hormonde where the enslaved gladiators must fight for their souls and the chance to become the ultimate champion. Why don't the gods put an end to this macabre circus? Why does Xelor himself turn a blind eye to the demons' meddling with time's delicate web? Well, you may ask, but it is not for us mortals to know the minds of the gods.

Krosmaster: Arena is a player-vs-player, tactical card game with anime-style miniatures that offers the craftiest tacticians among you the chance to challenge other players to heated battles in arenas scattered around Hormonde. All players build their team using a pre-determined method, whether a point system, draft, or at random. Equip your team with spells, weapons and other items adapted to their requirements, then utilize their various talents and abilities to create a powerful fighting force. Every figure has a point value attached to it to help balance things out. Randomly drawn event cards spice up the game at each turn, and the winning conditions differ for each game based on the scenario you choose to play. Only those who are able to create a strong, yet versatile, strategy will prevail!

All of the artists involved in The Gathering art book had complete creative freedom. Some chose to commemorate the 20th anniversary with a re-imagining of one of their early Magic cards, while others chose to focus on their artistic development in the intervening years. This has resulted in a rare collection of art demonstrating that same amazing, eclectic range of talents and styles that was the hallmark of early Magic sets...

The book also features a foreword by the game's creator, Richard Garfield, and an afterword by the game's original art director (and designer of the famous Magic card-back), Jesper Myrfors.

Teramyyd: Earthsphere is a turn-based fantasy adventure board game set in the world of Teramyyd, a rich and fully-realized setting with a nuanced and detailed history and mythos.

In the game, you play a skyship captain, adventuring across the land to secure the resources you need to complete quests, defeat creatures, plunder the ship of your fellow captains, or to defeat the fearsome Kobolos dragon. Where lies your destiny? The choice is yours!

While at first glance nothing more than a deck of vampire-themed playing cards, Succubus: The Reborn is a new take on a classic game tool: cards. Each card bears a symbol – Rock, Paper, Scissors, Bomb – that makes the deck ideal for fans of Live Action Role Playing (as they often need some randomizing element during play).

What's more, each card contains one or more unique (and sometimes hidden) symbols, which allows the deck to be used for Succubus: The Reborn, the first title in the Party Poker RPG line of games which is playable by 8-90 players (with one deck needed for each ten players). One player serves as the Dealer, who oversees gameplay and leads others in what to do; everyone else is divided as evenly as possible into four teams, the teams being vampires who are members of four great Lineages represented by the four card suits:

• Diamonds – The Marquisi (The Elite Ones) blend in among mortals that they might trade in money, power, and control, all while clinging to an old world sense of protocol and social decorum.

• Hearts – The Copeadora (The Beautiful Ones) are universally insane, but also very beautiful – a benefit which they utilize in order to slake their unholy thirsts at the necks of beautiful socialites and wealthy benefactors.

• Clubs – The Bas-Bazouk (The Outlaws) are the enforcers, criminals, anarchists, and street-toughs of the Vampire world, plying their wits and their supernatural strength to devastating effect in combat.

• Spades – Unlike other Vampires, the Profugos (The Forlorn) do not possess a soul; they are therefore cursed with deep, soulless, black eyes, and are prone to acts of immorality and depravity.

Succubus: The Reborn is played over three acts, and in each act, players try to improve their hand of cards to create the best poker hand. In the first round players can trade however they wish amongst each other as long as each player always has five cards; if a player manages to trade away a joker, that player takes a card at random from the other person's hand instead of any card agreed upon. When the Dealer calls time, the player on each team with the highest card in that team's suit is the Captain, and all the Captains then compete in a single poker hand with the cards they hold, trying to win chips in the process.

From the second act on, players can trade cards with the Dealer for the cost of one chip, taking a random card from what remains in the deck. To trade cards in the second act, you trade in the same manner as the first act or you challenge another player, paying them a chip to do. In a challenge, each player chooses and reveals a card from his hand, with scissors beating bomb, which beats rock, and so on. The winner of the challenge decides whether or not to trade. For the third act, you can trade only with your teammates. After the second and third acts, each team Captain again competes in a poker hand, with the winner of the third such hand winning the entire game and bringing glory to his team.

Succubus: The Reborn includes a number of advanced rules that add quests, shadow symbols that allow for better trades with the dealer, character sheets that add special powers to the game, and more.