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In case you're wondering, no, Strain is not a game about hernias but rather about competitive bioengineering. (Someone please design a game about hernias.) Rules in multiple languages are available via the BGG page. One final note: Despite Strain's appearance on multiple Essen geeklists, the game will not be available at Spiel 2011. "This is my first game, so I didn't plan to make it there this year," says Tobias. "Hopefully we'll make it there next year."
• The Lamont brothers have closed preorders for Poseidon's Kingdom, the 2011 release from Fragor Games, as they've hit their 900 copy limit. Says Gordon Lamont, "There may be a small number of games available at Essen as we will only know the exact final print run number when we get there. We cannot take pre-orders for these games as we have no control over the precise number of games produced."
For those curious as to why the Lamonts would not know how many copies of the game they'll receive, most manufacturers have an allowable margin of error on every order they process. For this one thousand copy edition of Poseidon's Kingdom, the margin of error is (presumably) 10%, which means the manufacturer can deliver anywhere from 900 to 1,100 copies and fulfill the contract, with the Lamonts paying for however many copies they actually receive. (Richard Breese ran into this situation in 2010 when he received the bare minimum of 900 copies of Key Market.)
• Mayfair Games expects to receive copies of A Few Acres of Snow in the U.S. by the end of September 2011.
• Designer Michael Schacht has released the next map in his "12 Months of China" project, with the setting this time being North America during the time of the U.S. civil war. Interesting to see this period of history abstracted into a Schachtian connection game, with everything blocked in simple colors and (unsurprisingly) no alliances between the Union and Confederate territories. You can play this China variant, earlier China settings, and other Schacht games online at his website.
• And yet more Kickstarter board game projects:
-----—Flapjacks and Sasquatches, a "take that" card game with the players as lumberjacks. I'm late to the party on this one, as the Kickstarter project has already successfully ended. (KS project)
-----—Eaten By Zombies! from Max Holliday and Mayday Games, a zombie deck-building game in which – well, you probably don't need to hear more than that, do you? (KS project, which is already 400% funded)
-----—Get Bit! from Dave Chalker and Mayday Games, in which players try not to get eaten by a shark via blind bidding for how fast they'll swim each round. (KS project)
-----—Toc Toc Woodman from Justin Oh and Mayday Games yet again, with this being the more interesting version of the game in which players try to knock off chunks of "bark" from a stack of wood chips in order to score points. (KS project)
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