Crowdfunding Round-up: Book Space for Commie Hives in Montana

• Let's lead off this week's round-up with an unusual project: Book of Dragons from Robert Burke Games, with designer credit for this item going to Robert Burke (unsurprisingly), Martin Wallace, Mike Fitzgerald, Jon Gilmour, Gil Hova, David Short, Sen-Foong Lim, Jay Cormier, Daniel Solis, and many others.

Why so many? Because Book of Dragons isn't a single game but a deck of cards that functions as a game system, specifically a forty-card deck that features four copies each of ten different dragons. The published version of the game will include a rulebook with eighteen designer games and modified versions of public domain games that can be played with this language-independent deck. Very cool idea! (KS link)

• Wings of Glory: Tripods & Triplanes is the latest take on the Wings of Glory/Wings of War system, with Andrea Angiolino, Marco Maggi, Francesco Nepitello, and Ares Games combining World War I planes with the tripods from H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. The game functions as a standalone item, in addition to being integrable with other Wings of Glory planes. (KS link)

• Pedro Mendoza's Bushido from Grey Fox Games is, to quote from the KS campaign, a two- or four-player "card driven drafting dice rolling game of martial arts combat", which seems like a lot of words shoved together. In slightly more detail, I believe that you draft technique cards, then use dice to fight against one opponent or team. That's about all I get from it at a quick glance. (KS link)

• Relive the past (sort of) in Stephen DeBaun's Commies! from Trip West Games, with 4-7 players trying to bring the Bolsheviks or Mensheviks to power. Who doesn't love internal governmental power struggles? (KS link)

• Core Space from Battle Systems Ltd seems like it could be as large as you want it to be, with the game itself being for 1-6 players, either in one-off missions or campaign mode (with character upgrades between games) and the publisher selling 3D modular terrain in which to enmesh all the bits of the game. What is the game? Each player has a team of traders who they are trying to keep alive in a dangerous galaxy. (KS link)

• Roll to the Top! is the latest game from Dutch designer Corné van Moorsel, co-designer Peter Joustra, and van Moorsel's company Cwali. In this roll-and-write game, players want to fill their score sheet as quickly as possible, but each number placed in the grid must have equal or lower-valued numbers in the blocks directly supporting it. Where do you get these numbers? From five dice — D4 / D6 / D8 / D12 / D20 —
that players will roll each turn, although players will be able to add and remove dice from the pool to make the best of their situation and turn the odds against others.

At least five different grid designs are included in the game, with an additional one for KS backers, one more in the stretch goals, four more in an expansion pack, and probably still more to come after that. (KS link)

• Big Kid Games is funding a new print run of Rüdiger Dorn's Montana, which White Goblin Games debuted at SPIEL '17, with many of the bits upgraded over the original release thanks to screenprinted wood bits. (KS link)

• Luke Tedman's Hives & Honeycombs is a card game from, I believe, a first-time designer. Everyone chooses one queen and one hive from the two in their starting hand, then work to build up valuable active hives. (KS link)

• I regret my ignorance of wargames, but that's mostly because I then have no idea how to approach something like Mark H. Walker and David K. van Hoose's Platoon Commander Deluxe: Kursk from Flying Pig Games. I know that Walker is a "name" designer, but I can't put the game in context with anything else, so I'm left pointing it out and saying, "Here's something." (KS link)

Editor's note: Please don't post links to other Kickstarter projects in the comments section. Write to me via the email address in the header, and I'll consider them for inclusion in a future crowdfunding round-up. Thanks! —WEM