New Game Round-up: Looking to 2015 – Chunky Fighters, Zero Day & Mucho Munchkin

New Game Round-up: Looking to 2015 – Chunky Fighters, Zero Day & Mucho Munchkin
Board Game: Chunky Fighters
• While I'm mostly focused these days on what will be on hand at Spiel 2014 (and consequently in stores in the final months of 2014), publishers are already working on titles for 2015 and beyond, so I thought I'd round up a few of those for folks who are also forward-looking or unimpressed with what's been announced for the rest of 2014.

French publisher Robin Red Games, for example, is producing a nice version of Nick Hayes' Chunky Fighters, which first appeared in 2009 as a print-and-play design and which has grown to include eleven sets of four fighters. This new version will debut at the Festival International des Jeux in Cannes in late February 2015. Here's a description of the game:

Quote:
In Chunky Fighters, humorous characters fight it out in an all-or-nothing brawl. Players choose their fighters, then roll them to determine hit points and weapons. Each fighter is composed of four dice — head, body, legs, and weapon — along with a unique special ability card. Combat involves rolling damage and hit location dice. As fighters take damage, you rotate their body parts to show the remaining hit points until they're finally destroyed.

In addition to the standard attack, players can choose to change weapons, perform first aid, disarm an opponent, or make called shots for increased damage. Be the last fighter standing to win the game!
The publisher has stated on BGG that the PnP files will stay in place for those masochistic enough to assemble their own stickered dice, and a look at the BGG game page for Chunky Fighters shows how the structure of the BGG database has changed over time. All eleven CF sets are listed on that one page, which makes sense as they are all components in the same game — but they're also playable on their own, yet they can't be rated on their own in an effective way to let others know which sets stand out over the others. (You can, in fact, add multiple versions of a game to your collection in the "User Information" section at the bottom of a game page, and you can rate and comment on each version, but those ratings aren't labeled by version when you look at the general ratings page. So many details to consider for this database!)

Board Game: Chunky Fighters

Board Game Publisher: Jolly Roger Games
Andy Van Zandt develops game designs for Tasty Minstrel Games, but he's also a designer, and U.S. publisher Jolly Roger Games has placed a 2015 release date on his Zero Day. Here's an overview of the setting and gameplay:

Quote:
SECURE MESSAGE RECEIVED from _Unknown_User_:
Probability Grid intercept: 0.9%

We need to act now. You know the Grid has grown in power and reach. There's not a registered CPU remaining it doesn't access. Everything is known, everyone is known. If the Grid isn't burned, it will control everything and our humanity will be lost.

I've got the coordinates. It does have a physical mainframe we can strike, burn every program in it. We can show the world the danger complacency created, that we almost gave up our liberty for convenience.

I've got Drone2004 and E-Terrier ready, but we can't do this without you. We lose, and humanity's freedom is gone. Of course, we do this, we'll be heroes. I figure we've got zero chance anyways, so let's call this Zero Day.


In Zero Day, you are a hacker in a civilization built on technology. Your commensurately useful skill set will allow you to write code or reverse engineer it from ...other sources... and piece it together to find exploits that can be used against the oppressive Mainframe. The first player to inject enough exploits into the Mainframe to bring it under their own control wins — but be warned as the Mainframe will not sit idle when it detects intrusions!

Every round you get three hacker action markers that can be used for one of three things:

• Building up programs by "writing" them using appropriate sets of code cubes.
• Running your programs to acquire exploit discs.
• Reverse engineering other programs by swapping your resources for what's already there (which is also how you inject exploits into the Mainframe).

You may retain action markers from round to round, but they (as well as your unused code and other discs) count against your limited total resource capacity. As a result, you must manage your actions and available space, and balance it with the risk that comes with having programs available to others.
From gallery of W Eric Martin
• Just prior to Gen Con 2014, Steve Jackson Games announced Munchkin Steampunk as a mid-2015 release. During that con, SJG then proceeded to unveil multiple other Munchkin projects for 2015:

Munchkin Gloom from Gloom designer Keith Baker for Q3 2015, with you trying to make a family of monsters miserable until you kill them off.

Munchkin Apocalypse: Judge Dredd, a fifteen-card non-random booster pack expansion for Munchkin Apocalypse and other standalone Munchkin games that promises "a very Munchkin take on playing in Mega-City One", according to Munchkin brand manager Andrew Hackard.

Munchkin Adventure Time 2: It's a Dungeon Crawl!, a small boxed expansion for Munchkin Adventure Time released in co-ordination with USAopoly.

Munchkin Love Shark Baby, a fifteen-card non-random Valentine's Day-themed booster pack with artwork by Katie Cook due out January 2015.

External image
SJG's Phil Reed welcomes the apocalypse

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