• Designer D. Brad Talton, Jr. has a new release coming from his Level 99 Games in July 2013, one that takes a far different look at the world of Indines that he's created than his more serious involved designs, such as BattleCON: Devastation of Indines. In 7-Card Slugfest, you're simply trying to knock out other players or avoid being knocked out through the use of – wait for it – seven cards. Here's a summary of the setting and gameplay:
At the start of 7-Card Slugfest, each player chooses one of eleven characters and takes a set of seven cards associated with that character. In each set, four cards are simple punches – doing a variable amount of damage – while three also have special effects. At the beginning of each round of the game, shuffle your deck and place it face down in front of you. A stage card is turned up to show the rewards for most, second and third most KO points this round.
When someone yells fight, the players simultaneously start picking up cards from their decks, looking at them, then playing them on another character. Whenever a player runs out of cards, they take a drink token from a common supply. Their character's stamina is ten, plus or minus the value of that drink token. When everyone has played his cards, the next step is to resolve the stacks of cards played on characters, applying damage. If a character's stamina is equalled or exceeded, the character who achieved the knockout earns a KO point. If a character survives all the punches aimed at him, then he receives the KO point. Players can also score two KO points for knocking out Boris, a non-player character. KO points are turned into gold according to each round's stage card, and the player with the most gold at the end of seven rounds wins.
Alspach also passes along word that the second printing of Suburbia, which is out of print right now, has been completed and should be available in the U.S. in mid-July 2013 and in Europe before then since the game was printed on that continent. As for the Suburbia expansion, which he's mentioned a few times consists of more than just more buildings, Alspach says, "The entire expansion will be available for playing at Gen Con in August, but copies won't be available until Spiel 2013."
• In Origins news of its own, Steve Jackson Games notes that it will have 36 copies of each color/edition of Beau Beckett's Castellan available at the show, with the bulk of the delivery – four containers worth! – showing up in the U.S. after the con ends.
• Asmodee, which distributes titles from Swiss publisher Hurrican in North America and Europe, notes that while Paolo Mori's Augustus – nominated for the 2013 Spiel des Jahres award – won't go on sale in the U.S. until the Gen Con convention in August, copies will be available for demos at the Origins Game Fair in June 2013. For those who want to find out more about the game now, here's an overview of the game that I recorded at the Nürnberg Toy Fair in February 2013: