Wait a minute, you say, Red Glove? Isn't Ares Games itself an Italian publisher? True dat, but in this case Ares is primarily responsible for the English-language edition of War of the Ring, which is due for release in December 2011. In late November, Ares announced that the first shipment of this new edition has sold out at the publisher level, and while a second shipment of games is in transit, it likely won't hit retail stores until the end of December at the earliest.
For much more on the new edition of War of the Ring, you can read the ten-part series of designer notes on the Ares Games website.
• New expansions include Space Empires: Close Encounters for Jim Krohn's Space Empires: 4X from GMT Games (on its P500 preorder list so no release date has been announced) and Nightfall: The Coldest War from David Gregg and Alderac Entertainment Group. Technically Nightfall: The Coldest War, due out February 2012, is both an expansion for previously released Nightfall games and a stand-alone game in its own right.
• Italian publisher dV Giochi says that Bang! Gold Rush and Lupus in Tabula: Lady Werewolf's Revenge – both introduced during Spiel 2011 in October – will go on sale in the U.S. market on January 9, 2012.
• Academy Games' 1812: The Invasion of Canada, from designers Beau Beckett and Jeph Stahl, is due out in the U.S. in late December 2011, with FRED Distribution now handling, um, distribution for this title and all other releases from Academy Games.
• Stephen Glenn's 1st & Goal from R&R Games has a U.S. street date of December 4, 2011. R&R's Frank DiLorenzo has posted a list of twenty North American game stores that are participating in game demoes during the month of December 2011.
• Yet more Kickstarter projects:
– Daniel Quodbach's Caveman Curling (Gryphon Games, KS link), a disc-flicking game replicating the famed Canadian sport of curling with this project limited to regions outside Europe due to licensing restrictions.
– Bryan Johnson's Island Fortress (Frost Forge Games, KS link), which is possibly finally maybe going to bring Huang Di – now in a new setting – to print.
– Luke Peterschmidt Miskatonic School for Girls (KS link), a self-published deck-building game in which you place cards in opponents' decks that they later encounter, driving them slowly insane.