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What's new in this iteration of Risk is that the world changes from game to game in response to the outcome from previous playings. How this works is that the box contains a number of small card packets and sealed envelopes, and these will be opened and integrated into the game over time: stickers are added to the game board, cards are added or removed, and so on. One packet, for example, instructs you to open it once the ninth town is founded on the game board. What's in that packet? I don't know, but you can find out once this game hits the market – or when someone spoils the surprise in a session report...
• Designer Mac Gerdts and German publisher PD-Verlag hope to release Casus Belli, a two-player strategy game "based on modified rules from Antike", according to Gerdts. He adds this description: "The game includes two scenarios – Punic Wars (Rome vs. Carthago) on one side of the board, and Peloponnesian Wars (Athens vs. Sparta) on the other – and the goal of the game is to be the first to gain nine ancient personages (Kings, Scholars, Generals, Citizens, Navigators)."
• Designer Bryan Johnson notes that he's reclaimed the rights to Huang Di after waiting more than three years for JKLM Games (now Prime Games) to publish the game. He hopes to announce a new publishing arrangement soon.
I've played Huang Di a few times, as far back as 2007 before Cambridge Games Factory was the first to sign on as publisher, and can't believe that after this much time the game still isn't in print. Ideally the wait won't be too much longer, and once the game is near publication I'll work with Bryan to republish and update his 2008(!) designer diary from BoardgameNews.com.
• And for a little déjà vu, designer Nigel Buckle has stated that the game formerly known as Alien Ascendancy – also in limbo for years at JKLM Games – has been picked up by Spiral Galaxy Games for publication at an unaccounced date. Buckle would like your help now, however, with a new name for the game since Ascendancy was the name of a 4X-themed video game released in 1995. Take his name poll and offer your own suggestions in this BGG thread.
My one play of this game dates to the 2008 UK Games Expo and wish Nigel well in finally getting a published copy on the table. His prototype was nicely done, but you're a tad limited in who can play the game when only a single copy is out there...
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