New Game Round-up: Rediscover City of Chaos, and Celebrate 42 Years of Cosmic Encounter

New Game Round-up: Rediscover City of Chaos, and Celebrate 42 Years of Cosmic Encounter
Board Game: City of Chaos
• Italian publisher Ares Games plans to release an updated edition of Martyn Oliver and Colin Thornton's City of Chaos, which was first released in 1996 by Monocle Games. This design is a "paragraph-style" game along the lines of Tales of the Arabian Nights, but with an original setting and premise, described as follows by the publisher in its press release:

Quote:
In City of Chaos: The Fantasy Board Game, players explore the twisting, smog-filled streets of Byronitar, the "city of Chaos". The city and its inhabitants are in the grip of strange, entropic forces threatening to rip the city apart. Players must uncover the clues that will lead them to the sources of Chaos to restore order to the city.

Byronitar is a richly detailed setting that offers an immersive experience to players. The game uses a random plot and world generator to ensure that no two games are ever alike, combining features such as tile-laying (to create the game board), random events, combat, and role-playing. Players can improve their characters by enrolling in many strange guilds, like The Somatologists (pacifists and healers) or The Pneumologist (use your breath as a physical force). The eccentric atmosphere of Byronitar is generated from "The Tome of Chaos" with hundreds of unique paragraphs and interactions. The players must explore the city, uncover its locations, and interact with its unusual denizens to discover one of the multiple sources of the chaos plaguing the streets. Byronitar is unlike any other place you have experienced.

"City of Chaos is an imaginative game, with a unique setting and an innovative use of storytelling. It was groundbreaking when it was first published, and more than twenty years later, it still has a cult following. We are very excited to bring it back to the market with a new edition, improved and updated, as we feel it can still be a strong addition to today's gaming scene", said Roberto Di Meglio, Director of R&D of Ares Games.

"We are so excited with the agreement with the team at Ares Games, an exceptional, quality publisher. Most of all we'd like to thank the dedicated players on BoardGameGeek that kept the game alive. Now we're off for a wild dance through the streets with the Lord of Demons, join us soon!", declared the game's authors, Martyn Oliver and Colin Thornton.
No release date was given for t This new edition of City of Chaos is due out in the second half of 2019.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Fantasy Flight Games has announced a 42nd anniversary edition of Cosmic Encounter for release in Q3 2018, with the only changes to this edition seeming to be the inclusion of a Demon species (previously available only at Cosmic Con), "Cosmic Combo" cards that recommend groups of species to be combined in a game, translucent player tokens, and a revised rulebook and quick start player book in comic format.

Schmidt Spiele has confirmed to me that its two Kennerspiel des Jahres-nominated games — Die Quacksalber von Quedlinburg and Ganz schön clever — will appear in English-language editions, most likely in September/October 2018. No word on whether Schmidt will release these editions on their own or whether they have licensed one or both games to other companies.

• I've been receiving information about new game releases from publishers for both the 2018 Origins Game Fair — BGG con preview here — and Gen Con 2018, with the con preview for that show scheduled for publication on June 18, the day after Origins ends. While I love our new convention preview format, I can't add anything to the preview that doesn't have a listing in the BGG database, which means I have no place to highlight these funky dice "tumblers" created by game designer Corey Young and The Broken Token.

Says Young, "The Broken Token did a soft launch at KublaCon and sold out of most models. They'll make a bigger splash at Origins. At Gen Con, they will release three new models, which will all feature moving parts." You don't need to combine all five tumbler chambers into a single tower to randomize dice rolls, but doing so will certainly create an impression on those who see it!

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