New Game Round-up – Sackson x2 from Gryphon, Reverse Connection in Talpa & Slacking Quakers

• Grpyhon Games has announced an October 2011 release date for its new edition of Sid Sackson's BuyWord, with the game being packaged in a bag Bananagrams-style instead of the hydrogen bomb proof box used by Face 2 Face Games.

• And further good news for Sackson fans – Gryphon Games will also release its new version of Sid Sackson's Can't Stop in October 2011, with the familiar (at least to U.S. eyes) stop sign game board now bearing thematically appropriate traffic cones.

• Spin Master is giving away a Harrier promotional card for its collectible card game Redakai at the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, which means the press announcement went out a few days too late as the Con is underway as I'm writing this announcement.

• Dice Hate Me Games has started a weekly newsletter to provide info on Carnival and other games in development, such as these two new-on-the-BGG-database titles: Soapbox Derby and Take the Bait, both labeled as 2012 releases.

• Spanish publisher nestorgames has released a published version of Artyom Tchebotaryov's Talpa, a reverse connection game of sorts in which each player wants to create a chain of empty spaces that connect his sides of the game board. On a turn, a player must move a piece to capture an opponent's piece in an adjacent space, removing the captured piece and leaving an empty space where he moved from – an empty space effectively owned by both players, which complicates the challenge of winning without allowing your opponent to connect at the same time.

• IELLO has released French rules (PDF) for [thing=73421]Uchronia[/thing], which has an announced release date of September 2, 2011.

• Minion Games will have four new titles on hand at Gen Con in August 2011: Nitro Dice, Grave Business, Five Fingered Severance (timely in light of Borders closing its final 400 stores in the U.S.), and Nile DeLuxor, which is an expansion of the 2009 release Nile.

• New (and updated) games of interest in the BGG database include:

-----* Leader 1: Hell of the North – Originally tagged an extension of Leader 1, this is now a standalone game with new cobblestone terrain tiles, revised rules and new miniatures.

-----* Loose Cannons – From the prolific Bobby Doran comes a game in which players build a brick wall, then take turns firing cannonballs at the wall, trying to knock out all colors of brinks not their own. This is apparently a print-and-play game, so the game will not have actual bricks and cannonballs, alas. Bobby, I've said it repeatedly – publish more games as physical objects and I'll give you my money! I'm still bummed about missing out on the awesome carpet riders in Rug Amuck...

-----* Trophy Buck – A dice game from Steve Jackson in the same vein as Zombie Dice, but different.

-----* Unable, unwilling – Deserves props in the department of "theme you never previously considered for a game". Here's a description from the BGG page:

Quote:

A light, satirical card game set in a Quaker meeting. Membership has declined so far that you, the players, are all that are left. Unfortunately, the meeting still has over 40 nominated positions, and they all need to be filled by teatime. Can you persuade your Friends to nominate someone else? Or will you be the first to collapse from overwork, resign your membership and write an angry letter to The Friend?

The players each have a handful of cards, comprising nominations for jobs and increasingly-desperate ways of trying to get out of them. The game uses a line mechanic, similar to Family Business or Guillotine, with players eliminated when they succumb to too much work; the winner is the last player standing.