Orcs Come to Caverna, Llamas Find a Home, and Lookout Revisits 1880: China

German publisher Lookout Games has unveiled its 2021 line-up, with the titles largely falling into the expected categories of Rosenberg expansions, a two-player game, a giant involved strategy game, and a family game from Phil Walker-Harding.

Release dates and prices were not included in Lookout's announcements, so you are welcome to conclude that these items are all free and will appear on your shelves the moment that you wish them to do so. You would be wrong, however. Note that the images shown in this post are mostly preliminary.

In more detail:

• Caverna: Frantic Fiends from Koal, Morphy, and Uwe Rosenberg challenges you to protect your cave from uninvited visitors. An overview:

Quote:

Orcs are ravaging the lands and threatening your caves and families! Can you defeat the ravaging orcs and bring back peace and prosperity to your people?

In Caverna: Frantic Fiends, the second large expansion for Uwe Rosenberg's Caverna: The Cave Farmers, you have to face these hostile plunderers. Luckily, you can either use your proven axes to teach them a lesson or build traps to keep them away from the cave entrances altogether. You can even push them into these traps with stone or bribe them with wood to weaken their strength. Defeating orcs will bring precious rewards, but if you fail to drive them off, all your plans might be in jeopardy.

• The cave action continues — or rather, is revisited — in Caverna: Cave vs Cave – The Big Box, which collects both the Caverna: Cave vs Cave base game and the Caverna: Cave vs Cave – Era II expansion. From the description, this edition doesn't seem to include any new elements.

• The Agricola: Consul Dirigens Deck contains 120 cards for use with the revised edition of Agricola, 96 of which are the missing numbers from the Corbarius and Dulcinaria decks and 24 of which are their own thing.

• Gamegenic plans to release card sleeves specific for the 91x55 mm cards in Agricola, with the backs showing Minor Improvement and Occupation imagery.

• Continuing its trend of 18xx reprints, in 2021 Lookout Games will release a new version of 1880: China, which first appeared in 2010 from Double-O Games, the company run by designers Helmut Ohley and Leonhard Orgler.

• Another game getting a new edition is Family Business, a card-based mob warfare game that is the only published design from David B. Bromley, a game that was first released by Mayfair Games in 1982.

• In the two-player category, we have Great Plains from Trevor Benjamin and Brett J. Gilbert, the design team of the wonderful 2019 title Mandala (covered here). Here's all I know so far about this game:

Quote:

Our ancient ancestors created images on the walls of caves to tell stories about the world around them and the animals they shared it with — and perhaps they, like you, played games to make those stories come to life...

Great Plains is a mysterious game about a not-so-mysterious behavior of our kind: two players competing for the dominance over the Great Plains! With help from the spiritual animal world, they overcome hills, cross the lowlands, and invade each other's territory in order to become the tribe who will live on.

I'm bummed that the Spielwarenmesse toy fair isn't taking place as normal as in 2020 I got to play Glasgow in prototype form and write a decent preview of the game. Ah, well, all things in good time.

• Finally, we come to the 2-4 player game Llamaland from Phil Walker-Harding, who has previously collaborated with Lookout Games on Bärenpark and Gingerbread House. Here's the cursory overview of this title:

Quote:

The plateaus are wild, stunningly beautiful, and...full of llamas?!

Being a farmer in Llamaland isn't exactly easy with all the hills and mountains around, but even so, growing potatoes, corn, and cocoa on the slopes of the mountains is what you love. Luckily the llamas are a big help, too!

By fitting your fields in giddy heights, you gain the necessary crops in order to obtain the desired llama cards. These cards not only provide victory points, but also allow you to place a llama on your farm. After about 45 minutes, you will have an impressive crop-growing area in front of you, including your sweet and cuddly llamas.