![New Game Round-up: CMON Welcomes Lorenzo and Council of 4, Antiquity Returns Anew, and Richard Breese Announces a Keyper](https://cf.geekdo-images.com/tHUUeWa2JxpGYw-Qo5cUiw__thumb/img/IDE6cEZQ1ZvKlx7E5RLKmd_y1I8=/fit-in/200x150/filters:strip_icc()/pic643185.jpg)
• Cool Mini Or Not, now using the handle "CMON Limited", has announced that it will release Lorenzo il Magnifico — which debuted at SPIEL 2016 from Italian publisher Cranio Creations and designers Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli, and Simone Luciani — in English in Q2 2017 with no changes to the packaging or gameplay.
At the same time, CMON Limited will also release an updated version of Council of 4 from Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini, with the gameplay being identical to the original 2015 release from Cranio Creations, but with new graphics and plastic miniatures to give the game a snazzier, more-CMON feel.
• Dutch publisher Splotter Spellen has confirmed that it will reprint the long-out-of-print Antiquity in 2017. Says co-designer Joris Wiersinga, "We do not yet know anything more and are not taking orders yet, as we would first like to get all the Indonesia and Zimbabwe boxes out of the door", those two titles having been reprinted in 2016.
• SPIEL 2016 darling Round House will "be quickly to the U.S.", according to Taiwanese publisher EmperorS4 Games, but no details yet of a distribution plan or co-publisher.
• An English-language version of Junta: Las Cartas "will probably be released in 2017" according to Pegasus Spiele editor Andre Bronswijk.
• The next title coming from ADC Blackfire Entertainment GmbH is King's Will from Hans-Peter Stoll, with this title due out in February 2017 according to editor Uli Blennemann. Here's a one-line description of the design, followed by a prototype pic from December 2015: "In King's Will, players must discover the victory point conditions over the course of the game, while also deciding on their own individual scoring."
• Getting a jump on SPIEL 2017 — yes, already! — designer Richard Breese of R&D Games has announced that he will release Keyper in late 2017. Breese has published a GeekList explaining some aspects of the gameplay, the history of the Key-series of games, and his plans to Kickstart a special edition of this game starting in November 2016, but here's an overview of the gameplay for those who want the summarized version:
The country boards are also noteworthy in that they can be manipulated and folded at the beginning of summer, autumn and winter to show one of four different permutations of fields for that season. A player will chose the one to suit their strategy, often hoping that another player will complement their choice. Certain fields on the country boards are available only in certain seasons, e.g., raw materials can be upgraded to finished goods only in spring and summer after which you can only convert using tiles in your own village. Gem mining occurs only in autumn and winter.
A player's strategy is likely to be influenced by which (seeded) spring country tiles they acquire and by the particular colored keyples they have available in the later seasons. Different combinations will encourage a player to develop their farm or village, help with their shipping or mining activities, and prepare for the seasonal fairs. Players constantly need to evaluate whether or not to join other players, when to claim a country board, whether to play on their own or another player's country board, when to use their own village, and whether to create a large or small team of keyples for the following season. The winner is the player to gain the most points, usually through pursuing at least a couple of the different strategies.