New Game Round-up: Practice Clacks on Discworld, Teach Youngsters to Grow Beans & Discover Factions to Smash Up

New Game Round-up: Practice Clacks on Discworld, Teach Youngsters to Grow Beans & Discover Factions to Smash Up
Board Game: Clacks: A Discworld Board Game
• Designers Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw from Backspindle Games are taking preorders for Clacks: A Discworld Board Game, with the game scheduled to debut at the Irish Discworld Convention in early October 2015. Here's an overview of the game:

Quote:
Clacks: A Discworld Board Game is based on the "Clacks" semaphore messaging system — the fastest (non-magical) messaging system on the Discworld — featured in Sir Terry Pratchett's novel Going Postal.

Using a semaphore system of shuttered lamps on top of high towers, the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company has revolutionized long-distance communications on the Discworld. Their network of towers covers most of the Unnamed Continent, but now the old postal service is fighting back. Driven by the determination of newly "volunteered" Post Master Moist Von Lipwig, the Ankh-Morpork Post Office has challenged the Clacks operators to a race from Ankh-Morpork to Genua.

Play against your friends and claim the title of Fastest Clacks Operator on the line, or play together as a team to win the race across the Discworld and prove that Clacks is here to stay. In more detail, Clacks: A Discworld Board Game contains rules for a player vs. player game, a co-operative race game against the Post Office, and a children's introductory game.
Preorders by midnight UK time on May 14, 2015 receive an unpainted miniature of Moist von Lipwig. Not sure what you might do with this miniature, but the offer is out there. PHALANX will release a Polish version of this game (Świat Dysku: Sekary) in 2015.

Board Game: Grog Island
Board Game: Hospital Rush
Pegasus Spiele and Passport Game Studios have announced a partnership deal that will bring the eggertspiele/Pegasus titles Grog Island from Michael Rieneck and Hospital Rush from Laursen, Storgaard, and Thomsen to the U.S. in July 2015.

• Whoa, I totally missed the timing on this competition. In April 2015, AEG solicited factions for a future Smash Up release to be titled Smash Up: It's Your Fault, and I tweeted a notice about this call to action. On May 11, 2015 AEG announced the top 32(!) submissions (mechs, kaiju, jocks, hipsters, hippies, etc.), then placed them in brackets March Madness-style, and held daily votes until they settled on four factions today when I'm finally putting up a general game round-up and it's too late to do anything but announce the winners: dragons, sharks, superheroes, and Greek myth. Smash Up: It's Your Fault will now head to design for a release in Q2 2016.

Board Game: My First Bohnanza
Board Game: Dominion: Guilds & Cornucopia
Rio Grande Games will release an English-language version of My First Bohnanza, which debuted in German from AMIGO in early 2015. This new version of the bean-planting classic allows for play with children as young as four thanks to a stripped-down version of the game, then it introduces more complexity through additional bean cards and one new rule at a time. No release date has been announced.

• Also coming from Rio Grande Games is Dominion: Guilds & Cornucopia, which combines the previously separate small box expansions into a single larger box.

• Rio Grande Games has also reacquired the rights to publish Franz-Benno Delonge's TransAmerica in English. The RGG website lists a release date of May 18, 2015, but I've double-checked with RGG on that date, and a more accurate release date right now is "2015".

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