New Game Round-up: What's in Who, Hexy Dancers for Neuroshima & Expansions for Qwirkle

In Doctor Who: The Card Game, players act as the Doctor and his companions to defend specific locations while sending the Doctor's enemies to conquer locations your opponents are trying to protect. Each player starts the game with one location, and cards in the deck consist of attackers, defenders, locations and support cards. To start a turn, you draw two cards, pick up any cards banked from a previous turn, and take the three cards passed to you by the previous player. You play or bank cards until you have only three in hand, then pass those to the next player on your right and end your turn.

Attackers target specific locations and earn points for the player wielding them if they're in play at the end of the game. Defenders try to remove attackers so that the location owner scores points for protecting the location. Support cards provide different abilities, such as enlarging your bank or providing time points (which can be used to draw additional cards). Whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins!

I think most BGG readers know that I am a very open and informative person, especially where my games are concerned, but in business, it is often the case that situations behind the scenes cannot or should not be discussed in public. I was advised that it would be a bad idea to discuss the issues surrounding the European editions of Alien Frontiers. I was told that releasing the details could mark Alien Frontiers as "damaged goods". I see now that keeping the details secret was a mistake and has lead to these questions and doubts.

Here is the truth...

Ystari had every intention of publishing Alien Frontiers in several European languages. They had rules translated and commissioned new box cover art that was geared to European consumers. That box art was even posted here on BGG, so things were indeed moving forward. However, while Ystari was hard at work, their primary production and distribution partner had a change of management and the new regime decided that Alien Frontiers was no longer a good fit for them. Ystari worked hard to change their minds but in the end, they could not be swayed. Ystari scrambled to find another way to get Alien Frontiers into European production but were unsuccessful. In April 2012, Ystari's license to produce Alien Frontiers lapsed due to non-production and the license was picked up by LocWorks.