Crowdfunding Round-up: Thunder Alley, Argosy, 1969 & A Quarter of Titles from Nestorbooster

Crowdfunding Round-up: Thunder Alley, Argosy, 1969 & A Quarter of Titles from Nestorbooster
Board Game: Thunder Alley
• Jeff and Carla Horger's Thunder Alley has been listed on GMT Games' P500 preorder system since September 2011, and while the game has attracted decent support since then – with just over three hundred orders – GMT has now gone on to list the game on Kickstarter as well, perhaps feeling that the title will attract more interest from mainstream gamers than its many other offerings on the P500 list. (KS link) With twin backing systems in place, GMT has offered an extra pair of race tracks on Kickstarter as a way of enticing support from those who have backed the game via P500. While I'm not sure other publishers could do something similar (since few have a P500-style system in place), it's an interesting marketing experiment. As for what the game's about, here's a rundown of gameplay:

Quote:
Thunder Alley is a stock car racing game for 2-7 players with the feel and flexibility of a card-driven simulation. Drafting, teamwork, accidents, yellow flags, pit strategy, working to lead laps, and sprints to the finish are all included and bring the feel of racing to the game. Players control not one car, but a team of 3-6 cars. Thus, each race is not only a run for the checkered flag but an effort to maximize the score for every car on your team. Winning is important, but if only one car crosses the finish line, your team might end up outside the winner's circle looking in.

The game includes four different types of movement, often with many cars moving with the play of a single card, and each type has its place and time:

-----• Solo movement allows you to break away from the pack.
-----• Draft and pursuit movement are best used for keeping your team of cars together.
-----• Lead movement can create a pack of cars that moves toward the front.

Turns are fast, each play is important, and the track situation is fluid. The wrong movement in the wrong situation can be disastrous, with you possibly being left out of the draft and all alone. Experienced players will be able to identify the best type of movement for the current situation.

Cars suffer wear over the course of a race and need to take pit stops. Tire wear, suspension difficulties, fuel issues, and major engine and transmission problems are all modeled in the game. If you feel lucky, you might try to hold it together just a little bit longer in hopes that a yellow flag will come out and cause a mass rush into the pits. Waiting on a yellow that never comes can be maddening as the rest of the pack moves by your worn-out car. What's more, an events deck can make your strategy pay off or punish you for your failure to take precautions. Accidents, yellow flags, worsening track situations, and deteriorating cars are all part of the game. Could all of your perfect strategy be derailed by those incoming rain clouds?

Included in the game are two different race tracks: a tri-oval super speedway for wide-open free-wheeling racing and a short track for a tight wheel-to-wheel bumper car duel. Each track uses the same deck of racing cards but the cards that work best on one may be useless in the other.

Most racing games call for a large number of players to play the game at its best. An unusual bonus for Thunder Alley is the very playable and exciting two-player version with six cars on a side.
Board Game: Argosy
• Designer/self-publisher Mark Hanny from Joe Magic Games, Inc. is on Kickstarter with a new version of his game Argosy, and with a modest goal of $700, he's already cracked that. (KS link) The game description on BGG is minimal, but the fourth edition rules (PDF) are available should you be curious to explore further.

Quote:
Argosy is a Euro game with a space theme in which players draw wooden tokens from a bag in order to gain offensive power, defensive strength, and movement ability with their space fleet. Their race also gains genetic and intelligence engineering, weather engineering, and matter manipulation credits that allow them to manipulate their playing surface and other players' as well. Players gain points for colonizing, for collecting identical chips, and for spending their resources on evolution cards that give them different advantages.
Board Game: 1969
• Closer to Earth, Coffee Haus Games is running a KS campaign for a new print run of 1969, a title from the Cranio Creations design team that debuted at Spiel 2012. (KS link) Co-designer Lorenzo Silva wrote a designer diary about 1969 for BGGN, and the summarized version of the game is below:

Quote:
The Space Race has begun!

In 1969, this prestige contest will decide who is the world leader – who will win? The U.S.A.? The U.S.S.R.? Or a nation of the old Europe perhaps? Who will be able to build the most technologically advanced rocket and bring Man to the Moon without crashing? Will you be able to defend your space program from the saboteurs sent from the other world powers?
From gallery of nestorgames
• Since its founding in 2009, Néstor Romeral Andrés' nestorgames has released more than one hundred titles, many of them perfect information abstract strategy titles from designers old and new. Andrés has an unusual production method in that he manufactures the components himself, (mostly) limits himself to producing games that fit in a small cotton zippered tube, and produces games on demand.

While that business model has benefits – such as never being stuck with tons of inventory on a slow seller – it also has limitations. Designing artwork and figuring out how to laser cut acrylic pieces does take time, after all, and if you're unsure of selling at least a few copies, you risk not getting a return on the time invested. Thus, in November 2012, Andrés founded nestorbooster, a crowdfunding system set up to "fuel" small-scale productions of titles, roughly 15-20 copies based on a target of €500 per title, with those titles then appearing in the regular nestorgames line-up. To encourage preorders, Andrés is offering a 20% discount off the eventual final price. The titles being fueled to date are:

-----—The third edition of Andrés own Way of the Dragon, which includes customized dice. He notes that this title is a good candidate for boosting as "in order to get an 'affordable' price, I have to manufacture 20 sets of dice (100 in total) or more".

Board Game: Way of the Dragon

-----Battles of LITS from newcomer Grant Fikes, in which two players take turns placing Tetris-style tetronimoes on the game board in order to cover their Xs or Os. The rules for placement:

Quote:
1. Every new piece must share an edge with at least one of the pieces already on the board.
2. No two congruent pieces may share an edge.
3. No four cells in a 2x2 arrangement may all be covered by pieces.
-----—A new version of Stephen Tavener's Crosshairs that replaces the intricate biplanes with d6 dice bearing a biplane (to show direction) and a smaller playing area.

-----—Ben Stanley's Questor, a fifteen-minute dungeon crawler for 1-4 players, hits nestorbooster on Dec. 10, 2012. Not much info yet on this title as you really need to know more than just "dungeon crawler" to know what distinguishes it from other such titles. Time will tell!

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