New Game Round-up: Subs vs. Surface, Goblins vs. Stones & Players vs. The Holiday Spirit

New Game Round-up: Subs vs. Surface, Goblins vs. Stones & Players vs. The Holiday Spirit
Board Game: They Come Unseen
• In addition to launching its games line with Peer Sylvester's The King Is Dead, a reworking of King of Siam that will debut at Gen Con 2015 ahead of its Sept. 22, 2015 release date, UK publisher Osprey Games has two other titles due out before the end of 2015.

They Come Unseen is an asymmetrical game created by Andrew Benford, a retired Royal Navy Officer and submarine commander. One team must use submarines to sneak troops into enemy ports and destroy vital strategic targets, while the other team deploys a surface fleet to hunt down the subs and protect their crucial supply lines. The game uses two boards: one for action on the surface, seen by both players, and one for movement underwater, seen only by the submarine commanders. The game also comes with specially designed control panels to aid each player in tracking vital information such as fuel, ammunition and current cruising depth.

Board Game: Secret Santa
• The other game is much more lighthearted in nature: Secret Santa from Duncan Molloy. Here's an overview of this title, which like They Come Unseen, is due out on October 20, 2015:

Quote:
At Christmas, it's important to remember that it's better to give gifts than to receive them — but what's better than that is to be the best.

Secret Santa is a festive card game of proving to friends and family that you're a better person than they are. Be the first to give away every gift you've got to win the round. Some gifts trump others but good presents are rare, and a big stack of stuff is always exciting. Mix things up with Santa's Elves and Christmas Carol, give away all of your Gold Rings, and try not to get stuck with the Fruitcake.
"Prove to friends and family that you're a better person than they are" — now that's an inspiring holiday message for all!

Board Game: GobbleStones
GobbleStones is the second title coming from designer Stephen Glenn in 2015, and the short description that I've received from Glenn reminds me of the clever way that your hand size rises and falls in Lumis, his first release in 2015 and one that I really need to cover in more detail soon. As for GobbleStones, which is due out in September 2015 from R&R Games, here's an overview:

Quote:
GobbleStones is a tile-laying game in which players are hungry little goblins who love to eat stones. During play, you gobble up the most valuable stones across the board, and in the end the fattest goblin wins. It's CRUNCH time!!!

In more detail, players set up the game board by laying nine game boards in a 3x3 square; each game board features 25 spaces on it in a 5x5 array, and each space has both a color (one of five) and a number (one of six). Thus, you'll have a game board that measures 15 spaces on each side.

Players start with several 1x1 tiles, with each tile being one of the five colors. On a turn, you take exactly five actions, first playing 0-5 tiles, then drawing 5-0 tiles, e.g., playing three tiles, then drawing two. You play tiles onto the game board akin to playing words in Scrabble, with you covering the appropriate colors with your tiles as a single word and scoring the numbers that you cover. One tile-laying restriction: You can't place tiles so that a 2x2 area of the game board is covered.

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