New Game Round-up: Foxy Bluffing Madness in the Dungeon from IELLO & Broom Service from Alea

New Game Round-up: Foxy Bluffing Madness in the Dungeon from IELLO & Broom Service from Alea
From gallery of W Eric Martin
• I've covered some of the new items coming from IELLO and its distribution partners in the first half of 2015 — new art for a new version of Stefan Dorra's Nyet!; a reimplementation of Roberto Fraga's Squad Seven as Pingo Pingo; an overview of Yoann Levet's The Grasshopper & The Ant in Purple Brain Creations' "Tales & Games" series; a write-up of Cyrille Leroy's Sapiens, which IELLO will distribute; a summary of other releases teased on a "Happy New Year" card — but now IELLO has revealed what it plans to show off at Spielwarenmesse in Nürnberg, Germany, so that gives a few more things to talk about.

First up is probably the largest item on the schedule (in terms of box size if not also attention-grabbingness): The Big Book of Madness from Maxime Rambourg with art by Naïade, with an expected release in Q3 2015. I had only a line or two of description before, so here's a more robust overview:

Quote:
So far your first year at the Elementary College has been slightly disappointing. They taught you to light a flickering flame at the tip of your finger, but other than that you've spent much more time reading books than learning powerful spells as future great wizards like you should.

So when you heard about the Big Book of Madness hidden in the great school library, you couldn't help but to sneak in and peek in this intriguing tome in spite of your professors' warnings. When you slowly lift the cover of the terrible book, dozens of dreadful creatures rush out, threatening to destroy the world itself! This was your mistake, and only you can fix it now! Learn from the library to fight back against the monsters, and try not to sink into insanity...

The Big Book of Madness is a co-operative deck-building game in which the players are magic students who must act as a team to turn all the pages of the book, then shut it by defeating the terrible monsters they've just freed.

Each player has their own element deck that they build during the game and use for several purposes, such as learning or casting a spell, adding a new element to their deck, destroy or healing a curse. Spells allow you to support your playmates, improve your deck, draw cards, etc. — but the monsters from the book fight back. Each comes with terrible curses that are triggered every turn unless you dispel them in time. They will make you discard elements, add madness cards to your deck, or lose spells...

If you manage to turn six pages and defeat all of the monsters, you win the game!
Board Game: Welcome to the Dungeon
Welcome to the Dungeon is a Frenchified — although also available in English — version of Masato Uesugi's Dungeon of Mandom from Oink Games. Welcome to the Dungeon is reminiscent of Gauntlet of Fools in that players are adventurers who try to prove how brave they are by going exploring with as little equipment as possible. In more detail:

Quote:
Welcome to the Dungeon is played in rounds. The player sets up the base character and all the equipment equipped. This represents every player as a fully equipped dungeon delver.

Each round, the start player (the person who challenged the dungeon last or the last player to be in a dungeon) can choose to draw a card from the monster deck or pass their turn.

If they choose to draw, they can do one of two things -- keep it and de-equip an equipment or place it face down in the dungeon. Placing it face down in the dungeon creates the dungeon deck and fills the dungeon with monsters that the challenger will have to face later. If they choose to pass their turn, they cannot participate in the rest of the round. Once only one person is left after all the other players have passed their turn, that player then becomes the challenger and must go into the dungeon with only the equipment he has equipped.

The player then flips cards off the dungeon deck and fights the monsters within. Some equipment allow you to null the enemy damage or be able to withstand it by increasing your HP. If the player survives the dungeon with at least 1 HP, they win that round. If not, they lose. The players then reshuffles all the cards to make a new monster deck and re-equips all the equipment to start a new round.

The game ends when someone has won twice or one player is the last man standing.
Board Game: Kenjin
• French publisher Superlude Éditions has two titles being distributed by IELLO, one being Kenjin from Nicolas Sato:

Quote:
Kenjin is a quick and subtle card game of bluffing and tactics. You share two random battlefields with each of the players next to you: one worth 4 points, the other 6.

You get a hand of thirteen cards numbered from 0 to 3. They are your peasants, thugs, lords. On your turn, send two of them to one or two of your battlefields. When all the cards have been played, each battlefield is won by the player with the highest sum of card values there. Some cards are always played face up, others always face down. Some of them also have a special power: Use your peasants (0) to lure your opponent's troops to a battlefield, or to score more points if they survive. Play a Lord (2) early as it's strengthened by each new reinforcement thereafter.

Terrains also impact a battle's outcome: Peasants take arms to protect their rice fields, while military strength is not always enough when you fight over a palace. Once each battlefield has been scored, the player with the most victory points wins.
Board Game: Master Fox
• The other Superlude title is Frédéric Vuagnat's Master Fox, which I got a glimpse of at Gen Con 2014 in prototype form, where it seemed like something that would be fun for both players and onlookers. An overview:

Quote:
Each round in Master Fox, you flip three cards to reveal the animals you must capture, then shuffle the pawns inside the box, put on your fox blindfolds, and start feeling around with your hand for the right pawns! But your bag isn't big enough to hold more than four catches, so you can't grab everything you touch...

Whenever you think you have the right pawns, shout "Stop!" to end the round. Everyone scores one point for each wanted pawn in his bag, but loses one for incorrect or extra pawns.

Later rounds add tricks to the game: Catch fox cubs for extra points, steal from your opponent's bags with sneaky snakes, or defend yourself with the mighty hammer! Whatever you do, don't be hasty because the shapes can be deceiving!
Board Game: Witch's Brew
• The Feld era is over! Well, interrupted at least as the next big box title (#17) coming from alea is Broom Service, a reworking of Witch's Brew by original WB designer Andreas Pelikan and Alexander Pfister with art provided by Vincent Dutrait. For those not familiar with this 2008 release, here's a summary:

Quote:
Each round in Witch's Brew players choose five of twelve role cards in their hand, setting the rest aside. On a turn, the active player declares "I am the [role]!", playing the card from hand. Each other player in turn either passes (because they don't have the card) or plays it; if they play it, they can declare either "So be it!" (and take a small favor) or "No, I'm the [role]!", getting a large favor if no one else takes on the role but risking no reward at all if someone else declares it later.

Players use the roles to acquire spell ingredients, brew potions, acquire or spend gold, cast spells or buy victory point cards.
At Spiel 2014, alea developer Stefan Brück told me that this design would feature a role system similar to Witch's Brew, with players trying to outguess opponents in terms of the roles they choose and outplay them in when they play what, but with a game board element not present in the original game.

Broom Service is due out in mid-to-late March 2015 in Germany, with a separate English/French version (due to the text on the cards) coming no earlier than May 2015, according to Brück. Right now I have only the cover to show off with no other details about gameplay, but I'll be at Spielwarenmesse in Germany soon — the end of January! — to record an overview of this game and many others.

Board Game: Broom Service

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