Portal Challenges You to Manage Eleven Players and Assemble a Dreadful Circus

Portal Challenges You to Manage Eleven Players and Assemble a Dreadful Circus
• In September 2021, Polish publisher Portal Games plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign on Gamefound (draft page) for Eleven, a design by Thomas Jansen that he originally self-published under the name Club Stories through his own Elven Ear Games. Here's an overview of the game:
Quote:
Eleven — the number of players you have on the pitch at any given time, with those players making all the difference between being the best team and the worst. But every team knows that to be the best in the league it takes a lot more than players; it also takes an incredible manager.

Board Game: Eleven: Football Manager Board Game

Eleven: Football Manager Board Game is an economic strategy game set in a world of sport. Your task is to manage and grow your own football club over the course of a season. During the game, you hire staff members, including trainers, physical therapists, PR specialists, and directors. You acquire sponsors, expand the stadium infrastructure, and take care of your club's position in social media. Among the many tasks on the list are transferring new players and choosing the right tactics for each of the upcoming matches.

Eleven is a scenario-driven game. It includes six different scenarios that challenge players with different starting situations and goals for the season. In the beginning, the task is simple: You have to climb the steps of the football leagues and achieve the appropriate experience. You may have to manage the club in a crisis, and at other times you will have to rejuvenate a football team of players that are not so young anymore. You may also have to fight against time to try to complete the stadium before the deadline!
Board Game: Club Stories
Club Stories was a co-operative design for 1-2 players, whereas Eleven is for 1-4 players and appears to be competitive. If history is a guide, Portal Games has greatly reworked Club Stories, leaving only the framework the same — and possibly not even that.

Throughout EuroCup 2021, which ends on July 11, Jansen and developer Ignacy Trzewiczek are sharing their thoughts on the football matches and game design daily on Trzewiczek's "Board game that tell stories" blog on BGG.

• Another Portal Games release, one due out in October 2021, is Dreadful Circus, a 4-8 player card game from designer Bruno Faidutti — and while Faidutti and Portal strike me as an unexpected combination, the game description has a Tides of Time feel to it, so I can understand how this release came about. An overview of the setting and goal:
Quote:
No longer do you anxiously await the arrival of the wicked — for they have just arrived! In the dead of night, the gloom rolls in. Melodies whisper in slow rhythms as children wake from their slumber. Leaping from their beds, they rush to their parents and startle them awake. The mix of fear and excitement fills the room. The lure of exotic sweets wafts in on the warm summer wind. The lives of this dull, small town are revitalized with the anticipation of this dreadful circus.

From gallery of Jwareluk

Dreadful Circus is a set-collection game in which players try to create the most successful circus! The game comes with an unique twist: Over the course of the game, players buy cards that have special final scoring rules. As the game progresses and more cards are gained, each player develops their very own final scoring rules. No game is the same, and no player at the table scores the same way.
• Ahead of that title, Portal Games will release Million Dollar Script in August 2021, with that Daniel Stamm design challenging players to pitch story ideas — typically with one team competing against another — to win over a studio executive who holds the purse strings.

Here's an overview of the game that BGG recorded in March 2020 before it was delayed a year:


• Portal has also revealed the cover of Dune: House Secrets, which will debut in October 2021 and be available at SPIEL '21.

Board Game: Dune: House Secrets

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