Tasty Minstrel Games Brings Back Luna, Flips Design Town, Expands the EmDo Universe & Mines for Gold

Tasty Minstrel Games Brings Back Luna, Flips Design Town, Expands the EmDo Universe & Mines for Gold
Board Game: Luna
Board Game: Flip City
• I posted something about this on BGG's Twitter account, but not here. Alas, you think you've covered something, but you've done so only for some of the people reading you.

In any case, Tasty Minstrel Games has acquired the rights to Stefan Feld's Luna, and this new edition of the game, which has no changes other than the insertion of the TMG logo, is due out Oct/Nov 2015. TMG posted an image of the pre-press copy — that is, what's presented to publishers as representative of how the final product will look — for those who want visual proof.

• Another upcoming TMG release, due out sometime in Q3 2015, is Chen Chih-Fan's Flip City, originally released by Taiwanese publisher Homosapiens Lab as Design Town. This design is a super clever deck-building game in which the cards are double-sided with different abilities on each side. You can play as many cards as you like from your deck — getting a peek at what's coming since you know what's on top! — but if you collect three unhappy faces on a turn, you can't do anything. If you stop in time, you use the coins and powers of the cards you've played to acquire new cards or flip the cards already in your deck. If you manage to reveal 8 VP in a single turn, you win.

Board Game: Eminent Domain: Battlecruisers
• Other titles coming from TMG include Seth Jaffee's Eminent Domain: Exotica — an expansion for Eminent Domain that adds exotic worlds, alien cultures, and asteroids that await mining to the base game — as well as Philip duBarry's Eminent Domain: Battlecruisers, a 3-5 player, thirty-minute standalone game set in the EmDo universe. Here's an overview of that title:

Quote:
Captain a mighty battlecruiser in the middle of a firefight as you try to gather 15 units of precious ore and get out — or die trying.

In Eminent Domain: Battlecruisers, you want to be the first to escape with 15 victory points, or be the last ship standing. Each round you and your opponents each play a card from your identical hands. If you play the same card as an opponent, you'll clash and bad things will happen! But if you manage to sneak a card through unhindered, then you'll reap the benefits.

Collect points or knock cards out of your opponents' hands. If you lose all of your cards, then you're out of the running. At the end of each round, check to see whether any player has won; if not, prepare to play another card!
In late May 2015, Jaffee noted that a Kickstarter for both EmDo titles will likely start by the end of the month.

Board Game: Gold West
• What else is coming from TMG? In a March 2015 newsletter, TMG's Michael Mindes noted that printing has begun on J. Alex Kevern's Gold West. Here's a description of that game, followed by an overview video that we recorded with the designer at Gen Con 2014:

Quote:
In Gold West, players compete as prospectors building their mining empires while vying over the precious metals of the frontier. In a delicate balance of resource management and area control, players must plan their building strategies while carefully managing their supply tracks to refine the right resources at the most opportune times. Stay a step ahead of the competition and you could lead the West into the Golden Age.

The goal of Gold West is to accumulate the most victory points through clever management of your growing mining empire. There are five resources in the game: the metals Copper, Silver, and Gold are used to acquire victory points in a variety of ways, while Timber and Stone are building materials used to build camps and settlements on the board to collect more resources and influence the landscape.

Each hex contains either two or three resources. Gold generally earns players the most points, with silver and copper yielding slightly less. In addition, each terrain type scores points for the player with the most influence therein at the end of the game. Copper terrains are the most valuable, with Silver, Gold, and Forest Terrains earning slightly fewer points.

When gaining new metals and materials, players place them in their "supply track", a mancala-style track in which you will manage your resources. You get points to further back in the track you place them, as this creates a more refined product, but it will take longer to get these resources to the front of the supply track where they can be used. Shipping, investments, and Boomtown offices often reward players who fulfill them earlier, so it's a careful balance of risk and reward.


• Oh, and there's also this little number, which has only the artwork and short description tease for now:

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