Gen Con 2021 VII: AEG Teases Wormholes, Wallpaper, and More Ways to Smash Up

During Gen Con 2021, U.S. publisher Alderac Entertainment Group held a press event in a nearby hotel to highlight the two titles it debuted at that show — Whirling Witchcraft and TEN, the latter of which I covered in depth here — then present an overview of its release schedule for the remainder of 2021 and much of 2022.

For some games AEG revealed little more than a title, and for others I wrote as quickly as I could, and since we weren't allowed to record anything, those notes will have to do for now. Here's the list:

• Smash Up: Knights of the Round Table — released Sept. 17, 2021. This single faction expansion for AEG's long-lived Smash Up game series from Paul Peterson will (as far as I know) be available solely at conventions and from AEG's online store, similar to other single-faction expansions such as Sheep, Penguins, and Goblins.

• Dog Lover — due out November 2021. In this 2-4 player design from David Short, players use their trick cards to draft dogs, bones, food, walks, traits, and more from a 3x3 grid of cards.

• The Captain Is Dead: The Problem with Priggles — Q4 2021, with this being a microexpansion for The Captain Is Dead featuring small furry critters that might remind you of other small furry critters spelled "*ri**les".

• Meeples & Monsters — Q1 2022. In this Ole Steiness game, which was funded on Kickstarter in March 2021, you draw from a personal bag of meeples each turn, then put them to work, with peasants building things or being exchanged for more specialized classes such as warriors, clerics, and mages. You can level up these meeples, add new buildings to town, fight monsters, and complete quests.

• Space Base: The Mysteries of Terra Proxima — Q2 2022. The second "saga expansion" for John D. Clair's Space Base consists of a series of games with a linked story that adds new material to the game that can be replayed as part of this story or used as expansion material in the Base base game.

Board Game: The Guild of Merchant Explorers

• The Guild of Merchant Explorers — Q3 2022. Candice and I played several turns of this flip-and-build game from Brett J. Gilbert and Matthew Dunstan, so I can provide more details:

Quote:

Each player starts with one city on their personal map board. Shuffle the deck of terrain cards, then reveal most of these cards one by one. Based on the terrain revealed, each player places on their board cubes that are connected to their starting city or other cubes. You want to complete areas on your board, cross the seas to new land, and establish new cities on the board. You can explore capsized ships for treasure — which gives you special placement capabilities — and create linked connections between locations to score bonus points. Common objectives can be completed by all players, with those who complete it first scoring more points.

Treasure cards

At the end of a round, all cubes are removed from each board, leaving only the cities behind, so if you don't establish new cities, you'll be stuck in the same places.

The Guild of Merchant Explorers contains multiple copies of six different maps, and the game is designed so that you can play remotely with one or more copies.

In round #2

• Wormholes — Q3 2022. This Peter McPherson (Tiny Towns) design is a pick-up-and-deliver game set in space, with you being able to create wormholes to "find" shorter connections between locations and with others being able to pay to use those wormholes.

• Ready, Set, Bet! — Big Game Night during Gen Con 2022. In this horse-racing game from John D. Clair, you have a limited number of spaces in which to bet on the horses, so if you wait too long to decide where to bet, you might find yourself out of luck.

• This Old Wallpaper — Big Game Night during Gen Con 2022. In this game, you attempt to rebuild a house from memories of wallpaper — or at least that's what I wrote down.

• Dead Reckoning: Saga 3 — Kickstarter in the second half of 2022. The original Kickstarter campaign for Dead Reckoning, a card-crafting game from John D. Clair, included two saga expansions — Deep Legends and Salt & Thunder — and this new KS campaign will contain new content, while also allowing those who missed the original KS to board ship.

Vladimir Orellana shows us how to roll

• Rolling Heights — Kickstarter in the first half of 2022. This is yet another pairing of John D. Clair and AEG, with players collectively building a city.

On a turn, you take all the meeples in your personal box, then roll them on the table. If a meeple lands standing up, you receive two cubes of the appropriate type to use for building; if it lands on its side, you receive one cube; and if it lands on its back, you get nothing because it's goofing off. You can re-roll workers on their back, but you can bust out on additional rolls, similar to Clair's Cubitos, an early 2021 release from AEG.

Dozens of building tiles are available, with many powers and bonuses.

• Finally, but possibly most importantly, AEG plans to release a tenth anniversary set for Paul Peterson's Smash Up in Q4 2022. Smash Up has been a mainstay in the AEG line-up since it debuted in 2012, and the company wants to honor its longevity and ensure that players continue to have new things to smash up for many years to come.

Treats to smash up in the AEG press room