New Game Round-up: Scott Almes Prepares Heroes of Land, Air & Sea, and Strawberry Studio Offers Three Wishes

New Game Round-up: Scott Almes Prepares Heroes of Land, Air & Sea, and Strawberry Studio Offers Three Wishes
Board Game: Heroes of Land, Air & Sea
Scott Almes and Gamelyn Games have created recurrent tiny, epic waves in the game industry that swell higher and higher each year, but the newest project by this pair fits only one of those adjectives. Here's an overview of Heroes of Land, Air & Sea, a 4X fantasy game that will head to Kickstarter in January 2017 ahead of a planned 2017 release date:

Quote:
Heroes of Land, Air & Sea is a 4X-style board game with miniatures that tells the epic tale of orcs vs. humans, dwarves vs. elves, battling kingdoms, and the individuals who turn the tides of war.

Players control one of these classic factions, competing to expand their kingdom into new territory. Even the greatest kingdoms begin as small townships, therefore players begin with only a basic town hall, a couple of peons, and a single warrior. From there, players must explore the territory around them, build up their work force, fortify their army, and develop their kingdom — all through careful action selection, exploitation, war, and resource management.

As players reach milestones in the development of their kingdom, they gain access to many advantages. Peons become warriors, warriors become powerful heroes, and town halls eventually become castles. Players gain access to water, and even air, vessels and creatures. Boarding these vessels and creatures with your units allows for faster travel across the vast game board and for positioning armies for powerful attacks.

War in Heroes of Land, Air & Sea features a cost/reward system carefully detailed on tactics cards from which players must secretly choose. The availability of these tactics cards depends on the units participating in the war. It is here that players wage their wits and legacy in an attempt to exterminate one another. For as we all know, "history is written by the victors".

Heroes of Land, Air & Sea also boasts two economic systems, one being the risky acquisition and careful management of the resources (food, ore and mana), while the other is a twist on worker placement that requires the leveraging of peons to construct buildings, peons that could otherwise be exploring, expanding, exploiting, and exterminating! Finding this balance is crucial to victory!
Board Game: Heroes of Land, Air & Sea
Promotional artwork


Board Game: Trick of the Rails
Terra Nova Games has picked up Hisashi Hayashi's Trick of the Rails — an 18XX-like card game in which players collect stock certificates of railway companies and expand their networks to increase their value — for release on the U.S. market with new art and graphic design.

Strawberry Studio is a new publishing brand for NSKN Games that will release microgames suitable for families and friends, and its release in August 2016 is Chris Castagnetto's 3 Wishes, a 3-5 minute card game in which players need to balance their wishes — by peaking at wish cards and swapping cards with opponents or the table — between super powers, benefits for the world, and selfish gifts in order for the genie to dub you the winner. No actual wishes will be fulfilled.

• The second title coming from Strawberry Studio is Crazy 5 from Dennis Kirps and Christian Kruchten, with this being a dice-rolling game in which you first try to collect more than five pips on three dice before rolling other dice to match the difference between five and your sum. If you can't break the five threshold, however, an opponent can possibly strip you of points depending on how well they roll.

Board Game: 3 Wishes

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