Crowdfunding Round-up: Smash Monster Rampage, Sangoku, Stalingrad, The Offensive Band Name Generator & More

Crowdfunding Round-up: Smash Monster Rampage, Sangoku, Stalingrad, The Offensive Band Name Generator & More
Board Game: Smash Monster Rampage!
• Bauza and Maublanc's Rampage is not the only city-smashing monster game in the offing for release in the near future, but Mike Swindall's Smash Monster Rampage! – first released as a print-and-play game in 2010 and coming again in February 2014 from 5th Street Games – takes the more traditional route in this setting by pitting the players against the monster. (KS link) Here's an overview of the game:

Quote:
A huge monster, taller than the highest skyscraper, is attacking your city! Work together to mobilize your troops and exterminate the beast before every building becomes a heap of rubble.

In Smash Monster Rampage!, players work together to defeat an attacking monster before the town is destroyed or too many survivors are lost. The "Monster Die" generates random actions for the Monster, making the beast unpredictable and dangerous. It sets buildings ablaze, creates devastating quakes, and destroys everything in its path. Taking turns to move their tank and helicopter units, players get into position to attack the Monster. They can win "Monster Hit" cards by successfully firing at the Monster and fulfilling the conditions on the cards.

If the city is flattened before the Monster is defeated, the Monster wins!
Board Game: Tide of Iron: Stalingrad
• U.S. publisher 1A Games, which took over the Tide of Iron line from Fantasy Flight Games in March 2013, is running a crowdfunding project for Tide of Iron: Stalingrad, its first release in the line (in addition to a new edition of the ToI base game). (KS link) Here's a briefing on this expansion:

Quote:
Tide of Iron: Stalingrad introduces a new campaign game for Tide of Iron players. This particular campaign requires players to manage different resource aspects through a series of linked scenarios as they assume command of either the German 6th Army or the Soviet 62nd Army. This expansion adds Soviet Army infantry, Soviet T-34/76 and T-70 tanks, and German Panzer III and StuG III armored vehicles in city street fighting to the existing world of Tide of Iron.
Board Game: Sangoku
• While Game Salute started out publishing first-time designers (and to some degree continues to do so), the U.S. publisher/distributor/agent conglomerate has been signing up more experienced designers as well, such as Thunderstone and Lost Legends designer Mike Elliott for Sangoku, the design of which is based on Chinese Poker. (KS link) Here's a summary of the setting and gameplay:

Quote:
In a mythic oriental universe, great powers battle for control of Three Realms: The Heavens, The Earth and The Hells.

In the elegant and thematic card game Sangoku, players recruit warriors – Dogs, Samurais, Oni and Dragons – to their armies by playing poker hands to each of the Three Realms. The best hand in each realm wins, and a Warrior is summoned from the winning cards – but the weakest cards also summon the most powerful Warriors, with the 2 card in each suit (Fire, Metal, Earth, Water, Wood) summoning a mighty Dragon. With these recruited Warrior tokens, players advance on their opponents to gain ascendancy in the Realms. They can also wager and collect Legend cards, which when combined into sets can be used to powerful effect, including bringing forth uniquely damaging Warriors.
Board Game: Legends of the American Frontier
• Designer Richard Launius is best known for Arkham Horror, Elder Sign and Defenders of the Realm, but he doesn't just stick to fantasy and horror, and not every design of his is a co-operative game. Legends of the American Frontier from Game Salute is set in the colonial days of the United States:

Quote:
Patriot, Frontiersman, Southern Gentleman, Soldier, Trapper, Settler, Indian Scout, Statesman, or Explorer – you decide the course of your character's life and tell the tales that tamed a continent.

Legends of the American Frontier is an adventure game for 3 to 7 players in which you live the life of a newly-minted citizen in the colonial days of America, starting just after the Revolutionary War in the 1780s and running through the early 1800s.

Over the course of the game, the history of your character will unfold through the adventures you choose to seek Status, Fame, Wealth, and Happiness and the story cues you collect or purchase to define your character's life and deeds. As you craft a tale of adventure, hardship, and discovery, you will be revealing your own Legends of the American Frontier.

The objective of the game is to score the most points through completing Adventures and purchasing Rewards. All Adventures and Rewards are added to the characters Legend, so are not hidden during the course of the game. At the end of the game in the Legend Phase, each player will tell his character's life story to the group based on their Legend developed over the course of play then proceed to the final scoring where -1 VP tokens, Failure tokens and unspent Reward tokens are calculated and added/subtracted to create the final scores.
Board Game: Alien Uprising
Board Game: Infamy
Alien Uprising, from Richard Launius (yes, him again) and Sean Brown and Brown's Mr. B Games, is a "fight off the aliens while you try to catch a ride from this planet" co-op game for 1-5 players that I previously covered in this BGGN post. (KS link)

• That same post includes Travis R. Chance's Infamy, a cyberpunk game in which players work toward secret goals that's coming from Mercury Games before the end of 2013. (KS link) Chance wrote a designer diary about the game for BGGN that detailed his passion for cyberpunk.

• I know several people have asked for relief from zombie-themed games, but they're out of luck this time, as they are most weeks. They're Coming is a two-player zombie survival game from Super Magical Powers Studio in which one player can control the survivors and the other the zombies, or in which both players can have their own survivors and zombies and they sic one on the other and vice versa. (KS link) "They're Coming" also summarizes the non-stop onslaught of game projects on Kickstarter, whether zombie-related, zombie-free or somewhere in-between.

Board Game: Willkommen auf Allofall
Willkommen auf Allofall from designers Till Meyer and Nicole Stiehl and publisher Spieltrieb, an English/German game undergoing fundraising on German site Spielschmiede, covers the same thematic ground as Alien Uprising above. Funny what gets into the creative air sometimes. (Spielschmiede link) An overview of this game project:

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In Willkommen auf Allofall ("Welcome to Allofall"), up to four stranded space travelers try their luck escaping the horrors of the planet "Allofall", either in a cooperative or competitive version as the players prefer.

The aim of the game is simple: Board on your miniature mining vehicle, the "Rollator MK-V", leave the ship, and get to the landing point of your shuttle on the opposite side of the game board before it leaves again. On your way to the shuttle, you'll have to struggle through deserts, jungle and mountains, with your only equipment being some mining tools and a handful of food and water. You'll become acquainted with Allofall's fauna and flora, and you'll encounter friendly (more or less) aliens who either are going about doing their normal every day business or are struggling to survive on this planet themselves (and are therefore a bit resentful). Whether you fight, avoid, or fool them in order to get past them depends on you, your equipment, and their values of strength, frustration and intelligence.
• Robert Burke's The Offensive Band Name Generator from Robert Burke Games seems like a cross between Cards Against Humanity and You've Been Sentenced!, with players using word cards in hand to create names for bands, as well as band names and titles for album covers. (KS link) Note that the "Super Offensive" costs extra. If you want the filth, you need to pay for it — or create your own, of course...

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