Grand Melee is a four-player swiss-style draft variant, where each player drafts and builds his own deck of ten units to play against the other players. Each game one grants a Victory Card, and the first player with two Victory Cards wins the Grand Melee.
Pure Deck Building allows each player to build his own deck (or decks) to play against opponents who have done the same. This variant requires both players to own a copy of Omen: A Reign of War and the Shattered Aegis expansion.
Aside from new units and play variants, Shattered Aegis also introduces the first status effect: Enrage, which turns non-beast units into beasts for short time, allowing players to turn the tide of war in their favor, help achieve a feat, or turn the opponent's most threatening unit into a mindless beast.
• Alderac Entertainment Group has released English rules (PDF) for Ninja: Legend of the Scorpion Clan, which will debut at Gen Con in August 2011.
• German publisher Zoch Verlag will release a new edition of Jacques Zeimet's Hamsterrolle in Q3 2011. Rules are available now in German, English, French and Italian; link on the BGG game page.
• Fantasy Flight Games has announced a new expansion for Battles of Westeros titled Brotherhood Without Banners. As promised in the title, this expansion contains no banners.
• North Star Games will debut Crappy Birthday at Gen Con 2011, with an general release date of August 16, 2011.
• Not a new game announcement, but timely info about a game that's still new to most: David Sirlin's Yomi will be reviewed on G4TV's X-Play on Wed. July 27 at 6:30 pm EDT/PDT (GMT -4/-7). Sirlin notes that this is the first time X-Play will cover a card game instead a video game, but with Yomi simulating a video fight game, the coverage seems understandable.
• Designer Antoine Bauza has uploaded the cover for Ghost Stories: Black Secret, due out Spiel 2011.