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Videos from Spiel 2014 X: Dragonscroll, Planes, Empire Engine, Munchkin Loot Letter, Yardmaster & Yardmaster Express

Videos from Spiel 2014 X: Dragonscroll, Planes, Empire Engine, Munchkin Loot Letter, Yardmaster & Yardmaster Express
Board Game: Dragonscroll
• Every year in the run-up to Spiel my most pressing question is "What costume will Gordon Lamont wear this year?" Okay, that question is not actually forefront in my mind, but Gordon does like to entertain everyone with a thematically appropriate look for the Fragor Games release of that year. For Spiel 2014, the game was Dragonscroll, co-designed by brothers Gordon and Fraser Lamont, and thankfully Gordon did not attempt to embody the spirit of a "fireball flaming tower of death".





Board Game: Planes
• I never got a final list of Spiel 2014 titles from Alderac Entertainment Group, so we all got to be surprised for once as to what a company brought to Essen, such as the New Town, New Rules saddlebag expansion for Doomtown: Reloaded. That item, however, was not on the demonstration agenda for AEG in the BGG booth, so instead I have three other games to show off, starting with David Short's Planes, which was in a larger than I had imagined. Perhaps I've been too conditioned by AEG's "5 Minute Fun" line to expect tiny boxes...





Board Game: Empire Engine
• That said, AEG has been releasing many tiny titles, such as Empire Engine from designers Matthew Dunstan and Chris Marling. While that game is part of AEG's "5 Minute Fun" line, this video with AEG developer Mark Wootton clocks out at ten minutes. We can blame Katherine for that, right?!





Board Game: Love Letter
• And here's another quick-playing game from AEG, this time partnered with Steve Jackson Games for Munchkin Loot Letter, a Munchkin-themed take on Seiji Kanai's industry-altering Love Letter. It's funny how much can result from one chance encounter, as was the case when AEG's John Zinser just happened to show up at Game Market and Kanai managed to bend his ear for a few minutes.





Board Game: Yardmaster
• We'll close with a pair of titles from Crash Games, which made its debut as an exhibitor at Spiel 2014. Steven Aramini's Yardmaster comes in a box so thick and impenetrable that people have apparently run their car over the box and it's survived — the box, that is, as a car should have no trouble clearing a 1.5" tall box. Now if the box destroyed the car, that would really be something to talk about!





Board Game: Yardmaster Express
• Hey, we get to close with another David Short design: Yardmaster Express, which is a spinoff game of sorts from Yardmaster that resulted from Short working on the development of that title for Crash Games and wanting to stuff the feel of the original game in a smaller design. This BGG blog post from Short is an fascinating explanation of a personal design challenge: Transforming a 2- to 4-player to play with up to five players while adding the fewest carads possible.

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