Crowdfunding Round-up: Domus Domini, Promised Land, Hexica, Snowdonia & Many More

Crowdfunding Round-up: Domus Domini, Promised Land, Hexica, Snowdonia & Many More
Board Game: Domus Domini
• Designer Heinz-Georg Thiemann blasted out Planet Steam in 2008, and the game was the talk of Spiel 2008 due to both the gameplay and the enormous box in which the game was sold. Planet Steam will be released in a new edition by Fantasy Flight Games in 2013, and a second title from Thiemann will also be released this year – Domus Domini – from German publisher franjos, which has turned for fundraising to the German platform startnext for a proposed game release prior to Spiel 2013. (startnext link) Here's a less-than-inspired overview of the gameplay:

Quote:
Anno Domini 1088. Hugo von Sémur, abbot of Cluny, decides to build a new monastery church, Cluny III. To achieve this goal, Hugo von Sémur calls on the Cluny-affiliated monasteries in support. The monasteries are to support the workers with food.

In Domus Domini, each player is an abbot of a monastery. The players work out in each year (each round) a benefit which they will deliver to Cluny, where it is used to build the new church. Whoever delivers the highest yield in a round is rewarded with the most victory points (VPs). However, he gets the least support (coins) for further investments. Whoever in a round delivers the lowest yield gets the least fame (VPs) but he gets the most coins for further investments. So the players have to decide in each round whether they want to get more coins to invest in the development of their monastery, or want to get more fame points to end up as the winner.

But every player has his own plans and so in each round there is a scramble at Cluny that brings some surprises to the players. There is a lot of interaction when players try to find their right order.
The basic and expert rules are available in English and German through the BGG page, and franjos owner Franz-Josef Herbst has posted a rules explanation video in English on BGG. Perhaps someone can go through all of these materials and provide a more lively game explanation?

Board Game: Promised Land: 1250-587 BC
Promised Land: 1250-587 BC, a new design from Gary Dicken, Steve Kendall and Phil Kendall – a.k.a., Ragnar Brothers – is now looking for backing on Kickstarter in anticipation of a November 2013 release. (KS link) Dicken wrote a designer diary for BGGN explaining the long design process of this game, and here's the executive summary of gameplay:

Quote:
Promised Land: 1250-587 BC is a history of the Promised Land from Joshua through to the Babylonian captivity. Players compete in two teams, out of which just one individual will be crowned the winner. Hebrew units are split between Northern and Southern kingdoms, but Hebrew players will have the opportunity to use both these factions through the game. Similarly there are eleven Heathen kingdoms for the Heathen players to use. Play happens at an individual, human level as well as at the movement of nations level.

Each player has two Farmers, two Merchants and two Priests. A number of these can be placed after conquest into lands occupied by the kingdom just played. Farmers collect two bronze coins for plains and one for hills. Merchants collect two silver coins for ports and one for roads. Priests collect two gold coins for temples and one for cities. Players may have only one of their Patriarchs in any one land. Players may share occupation of a land, but only one type of Patriarch may be in each land.

Players use the coins generated by their Patriarchs to buy artefacts that influence game play but can instead choose to secure objectives on the Kingdom track to highlight the development of the nation and score victory points of course! A variety of strategies are available, and players must make choices throughout the game in order to emerge victorious.
Board Game: Hexica
• Eric Terry and Eli Ortiz released a first edition of Hexica in early 2013 by making the games by hand, but now they're ready to move up to a full production run of the game, but that requires – wait for it! – a crowdfunding campaign to help cover the costs of production. (KS link) I appreciate the reassurance in the KS project from Terry that "Hexica's co-designer and myself both read and speak Chinese, and have been in close contact with the factory's owner and manager since that first meeting. We are confident that this factory will be able to produce a game we are proud to stand behind." Not many on KS can make a similar claim. (Well, actually they probably could, but it might not be a truthful claim.) Here's an overview of the game:

Quote:
Hexica is a 2-4 player capture the flag/fleet combat game set in space. At the start of each player's turn, a flag spawns on a random spot. After three rounds, flags run out and players are forced into combat to steal each others flags. Aside from the specialized six ships that compose each fleet in the game, players also have access to twenty Advanced Systems cards. Each player starts with two of these cards and more can be purchased throughout the game. These cards temporarily affect four aspects of the game: the economy, movement, attack, and defense of each player's fleet.

At the start of a game, players secure an economic foothold using carefully placed Harvesters to earn money. During the second round, players begin building an army to defend their Motherships and capture flags. During a player's turn, all of his or her ships can move and attack.

The six ships used in the game are: (1) The Mothership, the slow but hardy flagship of every fleet. (2) Harvesters, which harvest materials in space and earn money. (3) Salvagers, which collect the wreckage of destroyed ships for a money reward and pick up and carry flags. (4) F13s, cheap, fast, and weak fighters meant for quick skirmishes and surprise attacks. (5) F35s, expensive, slow, and strong fighters used for heavy assaults. (6) Bandits, used to steal enemy ships.

Mastering Hexica requires an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the ships used in the game, a familiarity with the Advanced Systems cards, creative thinking, and skill in successfully distracting and misleading the enemy.
Board Game: Snowdonia
• U.S. publisher Indie Boards and Cards is stepping outside of its small game comfort zone – a zone lined with The Resistance, Coup, and Triumvirate – to produce a second edition of Tony Boydell's Snowdonia, first released at Spiel 2012 from Surprised Stare Games and others. (KS link) This new edition includes custom railworker miniatures along with a new pair of scenarios that challenge players to build rails in new locations. Boydell detailed the history of Snowdonia's development in an August 2012 BGGN diary, and the summary of gameplay reads as follows:

Quote:
The peaks of Snowdonia rise before you, encased in mist, their summits barely visible. The highest is Snowdon (Wyddfa) herself at 1,085 metres. The year is 1894, and the Snowdon Mountain Tramroad and Hotels Company Limited has been formed to build a branch line from Llanberis to the summit. You can scarcely believe it's possible!

In Snowdonia players represent work gangs providing labour for the construction of the Snowdon Mountain Railway. Unlike other train games you will have to excavate your way up a mountain side, as well as make and lay the track, construct viaducts and stations. All this in competition with the weather of the Welsh mountains (and the game itself)!

You may be assisted by a train (though that's not always best) and you'll be able to collect essential materials from the Stock Yard. You will obtain special work contracts that give you bonuses.

Can you contribute more than the other players to the magnificence of the Snowdon Mountain Railway?
A Hand Count of the Hands Out

The list of game-related crowdfunding projects goes on and on, but since both my time and yours is limited, I'll summarize the other projects that have seeped into my awareness.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
• Alban Viard's third edition of Town Center now has rules posted for the second new expansion available for the game as well as the solitaire game board for "Manhattan" that's printed on a T-shirt. Yes, that's a game board that might shrink in the wash, which is a first as far as I can tell. (Indiegogo link)

• In partnership with Clever Mojo Games, Game Salute is running a campaign not for the fourth edition of Alien Frontiers – which the project notes is "already at the printers" – but for an AF promo pack of an ever-changing number of cards, and additional AF faction packs, and possibly rocket dice, and Alien Frontiers itself if you don't already have it, not to mention the AF: Factions expansion and, and... How is Kickstarter not like a store again? (KS link)

• As best as I can figure, Sum Wars = Bananagrams with numbers and mathematical symbols and a pledge level in which the designers/publishers promise to do your math homework. Only one problem, mind you, and not for anything tricky like real analysis, so don't get your hopes up. (KS link)

• Yet another game about food fights? Yes, that's what we have in What the Food?!, the title of which is meant to be said (I would guess) in an exasperated, near-vulgar way despite the game being a clean-cut game of gross airborne vittles. (KS link)

ZynVaded!, from John Vogel, is a tabletop miniatures game in which the figures are at a 1:1 scale as the figures represent an inch-high group of aliens. One player controls the invaders, the other the peacekeeping forces, and the game can take place on flat surfaces of any type, incorporating everyday items like coffee mugs and forks into the conflict. (KS link)

• Mike Wallace's FlashNics has illustrated cards with four sets of numbers on them. The gameplay elements escape me, but perhaps I'm not grasping the description of the game well. (KS link)

• To bleed into RPG territory for a minute, Epic Level Entertainment wants to fund the World's Worst Dungeon Crawl. (KS link) Why? Um, to see if it can be done? To set a bar below which someone else will have to try real hard to sink lower? Whatever the reason, they're doing it and you can bear some of the responsibility for it.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Da Clash! is a miniatures board game from Ammon Miniatures "inspired by the Mexican Lucha Libre, Z movies, and weird comics". (Indiegogo link) Okay, not much more to go on in terms of the game than that ounce of description and lots of resin miniatures, but perhaps this video will clear things up:


No? Well, it was worth a shot.

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