In Hemloch, each player has access to his own deck of minions belonging to five different factions: The Courtesans, The Darkened, The Ghouls, The Alchemists, and The Geared. Each turn, players place these minions into one of four locations in the city. Minions grant the players special abilities on their own, but playing Minions of certain factions into certain cities grants the player additional abilities.
Players score points by acquiring Potions and Trinkets (which may also be used for additional abilities at the cost of points) and by placing Influence markers in the various Locations.
• After getting updates on the production of its Spiel 2011 releases, Queen Games has passed along the following release dates for the following new titles in the U.S.:
November 2011
—Kingdom Builder
—Lancaster: The New Laws
—Res Publica (new edition)
December 2011
—Sparta
—Wallenstein (2011 edition with two expansions)
• At Spiel 2011, Abacusspiele will sell a "bare bones" version of Reinhold Wittig's Spiel Mini which includes all of the components – pyramidal base, twenty dice and a plastic lid – and none of the rules, for a discounted price. Says Abacus' Matthias Wagner, "We ask all players to submit their own games for the mini pyramid, and we will include the best games in the retail edition (the same as with all the games in the different Spiel editions since 1980). We will have prizes for the best games but don't know exactly which or how many yet. Right now, orange and green minis are planned, but other color suggestions are welcome."
• Chris Cieslik at Asmadi Games expects the published version of R. Eric Reuss' Fealty to be available in late November 2011.
• Spanish publisher nestorgames has released a couple of new titles in the past few weeks – Tattoo Turtles and Isaac, which has a neat "scoring marker affects game play" aspect – but the bigger splash comes from pics of its Shibumi family of games, which started from a concept by Cameron Browne (he of Yavalath, the game designed by a computer).
All games in the Shibumi system (with seven games and puzzles being included initially) can be played with the components of a single Shibumi set – a 4x4 set of holes in a playing area, along with 48 balls (16 each in white, red and black) – but geez Louise, the top-of-the-line model is a beaut in a coffee-table-friendly, want-to-stroke-somewhat-obsessively kind of way. Here are pics of the Shogun, Samurai and Ninja models:
Just don't look at the price tag of that Shogun model or else you'll need smelling salts!