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As for the gameplay, you represent one of eight fantasy races that's beating on another fantasy race, or possibly several of them. I'm probably overlooking a few details, but that description will get you started. (KS link)
• Battle for Biternia from Chris Faulkenberry and Stone Circle Games covers similar ground, with players in this MOBA-style board game each taking a team of four heroes, then beating on one another and destroying towers and crystals. (KS link)
• Polo Schlemmer's Card Castle from SHEL Games also features knights, wizards, and whatnot, but the gameplay is more akin to War and Slap Jack, with players slapping the cards to win rounds of combat. (KS link)
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• If you're prefer to build something smaller than an entire civilization, you might look at Jeffrey D. Allers' Skyways from Eagle-Gryphon Games, a city-building game that takes the tile-laying mechanism from Allers' Heartland and has you instead building city blocks, most often pairs of blocks that are connected to one another via a skyway. (KS link)
• For another take on city-building, we have Card City XL from Alban Viard of AVStudio Games, which starts you with a single building — City Hall — from which you will place other buildings — residential, commercial, leisure, etc. — while working toward whichever of the five victory conditions you chose at the start of play. (KS link)
• To create something even smaller than a city, you can go with The White Box from Jeremy Holcomb and Atlas Games, which functions something along the lines of Emperor's New Clothes, except that it describes exactly what it's offerings: a game design workshop in a box, with lots of generic game components being paired with a 128-page book of essays about game design. (KS link)
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• More traditionally game-y combat comes in Dead Man's Doubloons from Jason Miceli and ThunderGryph Games, with piratey players taking simultaneous actions to move their ships and captains to steal loot from one another and find yet more loot on an island that they've all just happened to land on at the same time. (KS link)
• Brandon Young's Code Triage from Brando Gameworks hits notes familiar from other games, with players needing to coordinate care in an emergency room to avoid the three ways of losing. Can you make it to the end of your shift, after which it's all someone else's problem? (KS link)
• In 2016 we saw Not Alone from Ghislain Masson and Geek Attitude Games, with one player being an alien creature that tried to take control of others. In 2017, we have the unrelated game Alone from Andrea Crespi, Lorenzo Silva, and Horrible Games in which a single player is the hero who's getting picked on by everyone else, with that hero seeing only tiny bits of the map at a time while the masterminds plot terrible things. (KS link)
• Let's end where we began this week, but in space! Galaxy of Trian: New Order is, as the name suggests, a new version of 2014's Galaxy of Trian from Seweryn Piotrowski and CreativeMaker LLC features eight alien races that are beating on one another, with players trying to control planetary systems (which come into play through double-sided triangular tiles) to get resources in order to grow bigger and beat harder. (KS link)
Buy game parts by the pound!
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
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