New Game Round-up: Plan for Battle During Winter, Escape for Trickier Chambers & Prepare for New Silent Death

Winter introduces new rules and 54 new cards to both games that will reward gamers who prefer sustainable development over unpredictable agression.

Winter lasts six weeks – i.e., six rounds – and during that time players prepare for the war that will take place after winter. Each round players can send their workers to Frozen City, a special mini board, to hire mercenaries and find new leaders. With Winter, the aim of the game has changed; you no longer fight for 30 victory points (VPs), developing in a rush to hit that total and win before the other player. Now you have a precise amount of time in which to plan and build, in which to develop your faction.

Winter introduces a new Texas faction that's crowded with people (four workers in the production phase) and has the possibility of using one of its faction contacts twice in a round.

Escape: Illusions includes two new modules for the Escape base game that can be used individually or mixed with any other available modules.

The "Illusion Chambers" module consists of six chamber tiles that replace the tiles with only one magic gem in the basic game. After players return to the starting chamber during the game – something they must do twice in order to avoid losing a die – all illusion chambers in play are removed and returned to the bottom of the tile deck. Hopefully you already completed your business in any section of the temple now disconnected from the rest!

The "Special Chambers" module consists of six new chamber tiles, divided as follows:

-----• Three linked chamber tiles that allow you to activate magic gems, thereby making it easier for the adventurers to escape the temple – but the gems can be activated only if players are in two separate such chambers at the same time.
-----• Two double chamber tiles that consist of a front and back room, with access to the back room being available only if you add tiles to the temple and snake around to the back. Why do you want to reach this room? More opportunities to activate magic gems and ease your way out of the temple.
-----• One treasure chamber tile, containing a chalice that adventurers must bear to the exit tile. If they fail to do so, they lose the game – even if they otherwise would all escape!

Components for a sixth player are included, as well as two copies each of one new curse card ("Soul Exchange") and one new treasure tile ("Large Torch").

Metal Express is back and under new management. Veteran Silent Death authors and designers Sheldon Greaves and Leland Erickson are ushering a new era in SciFi miniatures gaming.

Our first year will focus primarily on Silent Death. We are in the process of upgrading and fine-tuning various aspects of this classic miniatures game. In response to requests for greater internal consistency, we are revising Silent Death's unique ship design system that lets players create their own ships. These refinements will improve play balance and allow for greater varieties of ship designs. In addition, all the core ships are being revised to comply with the new system. For players new to Silent Death, MX is preparing a new starter set.

We are also releasing some ships that never quite made it into production before Silent Death went out of print. The first of these will be the Colosian Totenkopf warhound, followed by some freight and passenger hulls, soon to be part of a new Silent Death Campaign System, currently undergoing revision and testing.

We are developing additional new rule sets and revisions for mines, boarding actions, logistics, and more. All of the original house books are available, and a new revised version of the main rulebook, Silent Death: The Next Millennium is also in the works. This will include the new design system and a few other tweaks to the basic and frequently used optional rules.