New Game Round-up: Games from Eagle/Gryphon, Impending War, Near Eclipse & Time to Prep the Grill

New Game Round-up: Games from Eagle/Gryphon, Impending War, Near Eclipse & Time to Prep the Grill
Board Game: Empires: Builder Expansion
• Keith Blume at FRED Distribution has said that three titles – Empires: The Age of Discovery: Builder Expansion, Gryphon Games' new version of Bazaar, and the international edition of Pastiche (including 14 new commission cards and easels for the artwork on sale) – have arrived in the U.S. and should be available via retail outlets by mid-December 2011.

FRED Distribution also expects Santiago de Cuba to be available in North America by the end of December 2011 and Dragon Rampage to arrive between now and the end of January 2012. FRED is also distributing the Portal titles The New Era and Prêt-à-Porter in the U.S., and expects them to be available by the end of December 2011.

• Ares Games has now announced a December 15, 2011 U.S. street date for the second edition of War of the Ring.

• Stefan Brunelle at the North American branch of Asmodee says that Eclipse is scheduled to arrive in its warehouse this week, with copies likely to appear in stores before the holidays.

Board Game: Grill Party
• The first banner has appeared over the horizon from the upcoming Nuremberg 2012 Toy Fair with the inclusion of Grill Party, from designers Jordi Gené and Gregorio Morales and publisher Kosmos. To celebrate, let's include the game description here:

Quote:
In Grill Party, each player has a deck of twenty cards depicting the conditions for the meal – e.g., "More Steaks than Corn", "More Fish than Steaks", "No Fish", "More Wurst than anything" – and a set of wooden tokens: fish, corn, wurst and steak.

On your turn, you can exchange one token from your hand with one token on the central barbecue or in the possession of another player, then play as many cards from your hand as you can that meet the condition depicted. The first to rid himself of cards wins.
Cryptozoic Entertainment has announced the deck-building game [thing=113996]World of Warcraft: Clash of Champions[/thing] from designers Mike Donais, Matt Hyra and Paul Sottosanti for release in Q2 2012; MSRP is $45. Players take on the role of a hero from WoW and add special cards to their deck unique to that hero as they level up.

• Czech Games Edition says that Galaxy Trucker: Another Big Expansion has been delayed again "due to a couple of unexpected reasons that we couldn't prevent" and now expects to release the game early in 2012.

Board Game: Exile Sun
• And let's finish with another round of board and card games looking for backing on Kickstarter, starting with:

Exile Sun from Eric A. Martin and Game Knight Games (KS link). Sheesh, not only have Eric Martins infiltrated rock music and the NFL and other industries, but BGG has at least three of them with accounts: this designer, the owner of the Death of Monopoly blog, and yours truly. I've used the "W." since the late-1980s – long before that other W came to national prominence in the U.S. – as "Eric Martin" was too generic. Glad to have made that decision so long ago!

In any case, that other Eric Martin has been compiling a designer diary for Exile Sun on the Game Knight Games website for those who want more detail about this multi-player conflict game featuring hand management, worker placement, deck-building and all sorts of other mechanisms.

Genegrafter, this being "a superhero card and dice game" from yet another Erik, this being Erik Dahlman and Data Spire LLC (KS link). Dahlman has created a Genegrafter diary blog on BGG.

Frontline General: Spearpoint 1943 - Village and Defensive Line Map Expansion from designer Byron Collins and publisher Collins Epic Wargames (KS link). Collins also offers suggestions for Kickstarter success on a BGG blog post.

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