Spielwarenmesse 2018 Round-up I: Lookout Line-up, Ice Cool 2, and Feld's Carpe Diem

Spielwarenmesse 2018 Round-up I: Lookout Line-up, Ice Cool 2, and Feld's Carpe Diem
Board Game Publisher: Lookout Games
I'm back home from a whirlwind tour of Spielwarenmesse, the annual toy and game fair held in Nürnberg, Germany, and I'll start the reports from that show by reprinting various tweets and adding additional commentary when possible. If you want to check out everything there for yourself, head to the BGG Twitter feed and scroll backwards in time; if not, well, you'll see less than everything. Your call.

Let's start with the most eye-catching line-up of the show, this being the huge number of titles on display by Lookout Games:




We filmed overviews of the city-building game Neom from Paul Sottsanti, the second expansion for Isle of Skye, the Caverna "lost peoples" pack (with these originally existing as a fan project you could download from BGG), Patchwork Express, and Piepmatz (a.k.a. Little Songbirds). We'll publish those videos ASAP, and ideally we'll have everything available ahead of our trip to the game fair in Cannes in late February 2018. We'll see.

We wanted to film overviews of more titles, but (1) we had appointments elsewhere, (2) some items won't be out until 2019 (Patchwork Xtrem, the Bärenpark expansion) so coverage seems premature, and (3) artist Klemens Franz had the contents of Phil-Walker Harding's Lebkuchen Haus (Gingerbread House) with him, so we had only an empty box. Such is life at Spielwarenmesse. As one of my son's teachers says, "You get what you get, and you don't fuss a bit." I will confess to still fussing, though, as no matter how much we do, I always wanted to do more.

I'll note in passing that I appreciate Lookout's approach to displaying prototype games. The boxes are slathered with tape, so you're unlikely to mistake them for the final look, but you know something is coming. Expect to hear much more news from Lookout in the near future.

Board Game: ICECOOL2
• I did not expect the huge reaction that this pic of Ice Cool 2 from Brian Gomez and Brain Games generated. Apparently folks are stoked for more penguin-flicking action.

On its own, this game is essentially Ice Cool with a few twists. The 1-point cards now have tasks on them, such as going through two doors on a single turn, and if you complete one of these tasks, you can reveal the card, then take another point card at random from the deck. Thus, you're now not punished with 1-point cards with no recourse to get anything better. A 2-point card can be revealed to move one of your fish to a location where you had previously grabbed a fish.

If you combine Ice Cool 2 with Ice Cool, you can make one of the four layouts included in the rules — or create your own layouts, of course. The central area in the pic below slides within the outer ring, and you can move it before you take a shot to try to reach an area otherwise unavailable.


Board Game Publisher: alea
• We had our first look at the next Stefan Feld title from alea: Carpe Diem. This is a big box game — #18 in the series — and that's all the info available other than it being a tile-placement game with this short description:


Funny thing: A few minutes after I snapped these images and tweeted them, alea editor Stefan Brück showed up in the Ravensburger booth and was surprised to learn that Carpe Diem was being displayed, saying that it probably shouldn't be visible until August since the game won't be available until at least 1-2 months after that. He also revealed that the image on the wall was an older version of the cover (on the left below), showing off the tweaked, yet still not final cover that he had on him:


From gallery of W Eric Martin


Board Game Publisher: AMIGO
• After snapping a pic of the mock-up box at Spielwarenmesse 2018, I've since confirmed with designer Jim Harmon that AMIGO Spiele does plan to release Lighthouse Run in late 2018, most likely with a release date of September 1. Here's what the game is about:

Quote:
In Lighthouse Run, you control a set of five sailboats as they race along the coast from lighthouse to lighthouse. Unfortunately, the lighthouse company is understaffed, with only three workers to man the six lighthouses. To make matters worse, a storm is coming up the coast. You have to manage which three lighthouse will be turned on at any one time to move your sailboats. Some moves will help all players, while others will help only you. How far will you manage to get you sailboats before the storm catches you?

In more detail, each player has an identical deck of fourteen cards. The game is played over twelve rounds, and each round a player has a hand of three cards. Each turn, the player plays a card to move a number of boats, some their own and some belonging to other players. The cards also adjust which lighthouses are lit, and the boats may move only if the lighthouse they are approaching is lit. At the end of each round, a wave is placed on the board. Any boats caught by a wave are out of the game and will score points for the last lighthouse that was passed. The game ends after the last wave is placed at the end of the twelfth round. Player add the points earned for each of their boats and the highest total wins.

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