COVID-19 at the Gaming Table VII: Game at Home with Cats, Dragons, Pigs and Pencils, Then Visit a Clinic to Fight COVID-19

COVID-19 at the Gaming Table VII: Game at Home with Cats, Dragons, Pigs and Pencils, Then Visit a Clinic to Fight COVID-19
Board Game: The Isle of Cats
RPG Item: Player's Handbook (D&D 5e)
Frank West of The City of Games has released a "remote edition" of The Isle of Cats with modifications that allow you to play with others via a camera as long as at least one player owns the game.

• Along similar lines, Wizards of the Coast has set up a Dungeons & Dragons remote page with free material that you can download, primarily adventures for those playing the game and coloring pages for youngsters who love fantasy material.

• Designer Mitsuo Yamamoto of Logy Games has designed dozens of games that use ceramic or wood bits — that is, items similar to what you might find around your house — and in response to the current situation, he's been designing lots of games that use precisely those components you'll find around the house. You can find all of his home made games here. Says Yamamoto, "I have already created twelve games and will finally have a total twenty games at least. All ideas are free to make games by yourselves. I am sure and hope this suggestion will be helpful for all people who are protecting to coronavirus all over the world."

From gallery of W Eric Martin

Board Game: Tiny Farms
• Do you want another roll-and-write game to play at home or via cameras with others?

If so, then designers Mike Mullins, Ben Pinchback, and Matt Riddle are happy to present Tiny Farms to you, this being a game for 1-4 players available in a print-and-play format here on BGG courtesy of publishers Dice Hate Me Studio and Motor City Gameworks. Here's an overview of how to play:
Quote:
Each player is a farmer managing two 4x4 farms. On a turn, animals are drafted and placed on the farm by writing their initials (or by drawing, if you're feeling creative). Drafting involves a special rondel with eight sections containing the animals. The rondel is overlayed by a wheel with different hole patterns — the patent-pending Rolldel Wheel-o-Matic! — that reveal only two animals in each section. As the wheel rotates, different animals will be available. One red and one blue meeple travel clockwise around the rondel.

Each round, roll dice equal to the number of players, plus one. Players then take turn drafting a die, moving either the red or blue farmer meeple that number of sections, and placing the two animals from that section onto their farm that matches the color of the farmer. The last die remaining after all players have taken one is used to rotate the wheel.

Board Game: Tiny Farms
Image from BGG user EllenM

Players also start with some milk tokens that can modify the values of dice by ±1.

The game ends after ten rounds (with your farms hopefully now being full), and players score points. Each animal has a different scoring conditions, such as sets of adjacent animals of the same kind or different kinds, or the most animals of a kind between all players. You also get points for unused milk tokens, and lose points for any size difference between your two farms.
Board Game: Clinic: Deluxe Edition
Board Game: Clinic: Deluxe Edition – The Extension
Board Game: Clinic: Deluxe Edition – COVID-19 Pandemic
• Designer Alban Viard is running a Kickstarter campaign (KS link) for a new Clinic Deluxe Edition: Covid-19 expansion from AVStudioGames that transforms Clinic: Deluxe Edition into a co-operative game.

You can purchase just the expansion — or the base game, the extension, and the expansion — and for each copy of the new Covid-19 expansion backed, Viard has promised to donate €10 from his personal funds (up to €15,000 total) to Institut Pasteur and Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Update, April 22, 2020: In Germany, Oktoberfest — which was scheduled to run Sept. 19 to Oct. 4 — has been cancelled. Here's an excerpt from an NPR article about the closure:
Quote:
"The risk is quite simply too high," Bavarian Minister President Markus Söder said during a press conference on Tuesday.

Munich's mayor, Dieter Reiter, described the cancellation as a "bitter pill" for the city but said that officials had no other choice. "You can't host a folk festival in a time like this," he said.
On top of this, Berlin has cancelled the Berlin Marathon following a decision by the Berlin Senate to ban "all events of more than 5,000 people through Oct. 24", as reported in The New York Times.

That said, these announcements coincide with Germany relaxing some of its stay-at-home restrictions. Again, from the NPR article:
Quote:
A number of small shops with a retail space of less than 8,600 square feet were allowed to reopen on Monday.

"The increase of infected people is slowing down, and our medical services are not overrun by people requiring hospitalization," German MP Jürgen Hardt told NPR last week.

Germany reported 1,775 news coronavirus cases on Monday, which was the lowest number of new infections since mid-March.
Essen is located in a different land — that is, a German federal state — than both Munich and Berlin, and the organizers of the annual SPIEL game convention in Essen, Friedhelm Merz Verlag, sent this notice to exhibitors on April 21, 2020 following these cancellations:
Quote:
At the moment most of the exhibitors from all over the world are already registered and we hope that the fair can take place in 6 months, even though the Oktoberfest was cancelled yesterday by the Bavarian government and the city of Munich. For North Rhine-Westphalia, the federal state in which Essen is located, it is currently the case that events are not allowed to take place until 31st of August 2020. After that date, the city or state will make a new decision. Of course, we are also dependent on this expected decision and have to wait until 31st of August.

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