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That time has now passed as FFG has made it official and placed a Q2 2015 release date on this new edition, which is listed for 2-4 players and "features all the components necessary to play advanced variations, from a double-sided game board and civilization buildings to a wonder tile and accompanying idol".
What's more, Tigris & Euphrates is the first title in FFG's new "Euro Classics" line, which FFG states "is dedicated to making select Euro-style games widely available and introducing new audiences to them". The announcement of this line might seem odd given Asmodee's acquisition of FFG in November 2014, specifically FFG CEO Christian T. Petersen's statement then that "You'll probably see a few suitable games from FFG's catalog find their way to other publishers in the Asmodee Group, and vice versa".
That said, this line has surely been in the works for a while. For one thing, at BGG.CON 2014 FFG's Marketing Operations Manager Anton Torres confirmed (without exactly putting it in the same words) something that I had heard from Asmodee, namely that they're not in a rush to change anything, so FFG's publication schedule will roll out as planned for at least a year and perhaps even up to two years. FFG produces most of its line in China, which means that everything is produced several months before it's released, and once you add in time for art and development and rules editing and whatnot, you're talking about a year right there.
For another thing, the T&E cover was in a folder for the press that had been made available by FFG in mid-October 2014, weeks prior to the Asmodee announcement. (I was at Spiel 2014 at the time, then recovering from Spiel/prepping for BGG.CON, etc., so I didn't even look at the folder until early December 2014 — and apparently no one else looked at it before I did.)
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Intruders have made their way onto your ship, and their goal is total destruction! Twenty bombs have been detected onboard, and the countdown has begun. Your elite Bomb Defusal Team (BDT) has been called upon to neutralize the threat. Does your team have what it takes to work through the intricacies of the bombs and defuse them all in time? You'd better get moving because this game will self-destruct in ten minutes...
As you can imagine from that introduction, FUSE is a real-time co-operative game that employs 25 dice and 76 cards. Details of gameplay are still to come.
Renegade Game Studios was founded in 2014 by former Cryptozoic COO Scott Gaeta, and to date it's released a new edition of Corey Young's Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension and announced a number of titles formerly published by or announced by Cryptozoic, including Double Feature, a new version of the trivia party game Cineplexity in which players are presented with different characteristics of movies — starring "Brad Pitt", set in Europe, and so on — and race to name a movie that includes all of the given characteristics.As you can imagine from that introduction, FUSE is a real-time co-operative game that employs 25 dice and 76 cards. Details of gameplay are still to come.
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Cacao is a tile-placement game that immerses players in the exotic world of the "fruit of the Gods". As the chief of your tribe, you must lead your people to prosperity through the cultivation and trade of cacao — and to do that, you'll need to put them to work in the best way possible.
In the game, each player has an individual deck of square worker tiles, with the number of workers on each side of the tile varying from tile to tile. The playing area starts with only a couple of tiles in play: a cacao field and a small market; three tiles are laid face up in a row, and the remaining tiles stacked as a draw pile.
On a player's turn, she places one of her worker tiles on the board adjacent to a tile already in play, then adds the front tile of the line to the playing area; if she pays a special token, she can choose any of the three tiles on display instead of being forced to take the first. Her workers then get busy and deliver the results of their effort: If you placed workers next to a cacao field, you receive one or two cacao markers per worker; if they're next to a market, you can choose to sell one cacao marker per worker; if next to a well, you receive water; if next to a temple, they stand and look good until the end of the game; and so on. She then refills her hand from her personal deck to three worker tiles.
Once all players have used all of their worker tiles, the game ends. Players score (or lose) points based on their water supply, and each temple rewards whichever players sent the most workers to it. In the end, whoever has collected the most gold wins.
ABACUSSPIELE sent me a prototype copy of Cacao in late 2014, and I've played it three times to date, twice 2p and one 4p. The gameplay is simplicity itself, with you trying to manage the ebb and flow of cacao within the restriction of you holding at most five cacao markers at the end of your turn. Markets pay off at different rates, so you've got some luck-pushing in terms of whether to sell now or hold out for a bit more money later. Worker tiles turn into threats because you'll often be able to leave an unused worker in a position where someone else wants to play something, thereby allowing you to mooch off the tile played by that opponent. ABACUSSPIELE's Matthias Wagner says that the game has changed somewhat from when I played, and my copy is bare bones in terms of graphics, but I'll record a video soon so that interested parties can at least get a better idea of how all the parts mesh during play.
In the game, each player has an individual deck of square worker tiles, with the number of workers on each side of the tile varying from tile to tile. The playing area starts with only a couple of tiles in play: a cacao field and a small market; three tiles are laid face up in a row, and the remaining tiles stacked as a draw pile.
On a player's turn, she places one of her worker tiles on the board adjacent to a tile already in play, then adds the front tile of the line to the playing area; if she pays a special token, she can choose any of the three tiles on display instead of being forced to take the first. Her workers then get busy and deliver the results of their effort: If you placed workers next to a cacao field, you receive one or two cacao markers per worker; if they're next to a market, you can choose to sell one cacao marker per worker; if next to a well, you receive water; if next to a temple, they stand and look good until the end of the game; and so on. She then refills her hand from her personal deck to three worker tiles.
Once all players have used all of their worker tiles, the game ends. Players score (or lose) points based on their water supply, and each temple rewards whichever players sent the most workers to it. In the end, whoever has collected the most gold wins.
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