ICv2 reports that WizKids has opened a retail store in Redmond, WA (yes, home of the Microsoft campus), in a highly youth-visible location. The stated purpose of the store is advance playtesting of new games and expansions, not an eventual global empire. “[ExecVP Martin] Stever told us that WizKids has
Author: Mike Sugarbaker
Trading Cards, Flying Robots and Shouting People
At long last, I’ve completed my review of Z-G, the CCG/action figure combat game from Mark Rein*Hagen and his new friends at Atomoton. This game hasn’t gotten the kind of press it merits, and I suspect it’s the fact of its apparent aim at a kids’ market (that it isn’t
Delta Delta Delta, Can I Help Ya Help Ya Help Ya?
See, ’cause the last headline said Delta, and one of these games has… Delta in the… right. FFG has posted details about two new board games, Delta V and Maginor. The former, designed in house, appears to build an interesting strategy game onto a Memory board, while the latter is
Delta Green On Your Screen
John Tynes, Pagan Publishing principal and co-creator of the justly praised Delta Green series of Call of Cthulhu supplements, recently announced on his weblog that the Pagans have signed a deal with an unspecified game developer to put DG on your PC. He says: “[W]ork is underway. The project is
Oh, Hey, I Just Noticed Something
Steve Jackson Games is hard at work on Munchkin 2: Unnatural Axe, a new set of 112 cards for the popular hack-and-slash card game Munchkin. New art from John K (no, not that one), a new race to play (orcs, baby!) and a price that seems to be missing the
Friends And Foes Shipping, Diskwars Fixing, Dragonstar Dragging
FFG finally got the Lord of the Rings board game expansion Friends and Foes back from the printer, and is kicking it back out the door as fast as they can. It looks like the rebranded FFG version of last year’s award-winning (heh) board game will be going great guns
Details on Cheapass’ Diceland
James Ernest, proud father of a baby girl as of yesterday (congratulations to you and Carol!), released details of the long-awaited Cheapass project Diceland to the Cheapasses mailing list today: Diceland is a tabletop game played with large paper dice, about 2 inches to a side. It’s a cross between
Hârn Now Fortified With Essential Peppers & Spices
Columbia Games today announced Trobridge Inn: Pepper & Spice, a HârnMaster/D20 module detailing “a fortified trading post on the major trade route between east and west Hârn.” This new module expands on articles from the old Kaldor “kingdom module,” zooming in to city-book levels of detail. Get ready to meet
WebRPG Needs Women! Uh, I Mean Money!
Gamegrene‘s on a roll. This opinion piece on the stripped-down online RPG tool WebRPG is interesting and should raise some hackles (and harvest plenty of WebRPG alternatives in the comments section – hey, there’s one), but it’s really about software and the Internet more than it’s about… you know… us.
Speaking of Monopolies…
Well, as I’m sure you all know by now, this Thursday the 25th marks the release of a major new piece of software that some say is a godsend and a breakthrough, others say will waste untold hours of computing productivity, and virtually all agree is an extension of America’s
I Got Your Forgotten Realms Right Here
Allan and I always used to talk about how cool it would be to write a regular gaming feature about all the games that languish unplayed in the back of our closets… the longer the better. We were going to call it The Gamer’s Closet, and it would be all
You Know, For Kids!
According to ICv2, that goofy Bionicle stuff is actually taking off. Maybe I’m just predisposed to see any new high-concept Lego thing as hopelessly lame. The Upper Deck-produced Bionicle CCG also appeared hopelessly lame, but I didn’t look very closely at it at Origins. Has anyone played it? Also, that
Lost Identities Found, Now Shipping
Looney Labs‘ Origins award-winning card game Chrononauts has a new expansion called Lost Identities, a fixed set of 13 new ID cards (IDs are one of the game’s three win conditions, and the most likely of them in my experience). Chrononauts can get a little bit frustrating when everyone’s familiar
2002 Games 100
Funagain Games just released this year’s Games 100, the annual best-of list and unofficial holiday buyer’s guide compiled by Games Magazine. The year’s #1 game according to the 100 is Evo, in which dinosaurs try to get to warm climates and “bid for genes.” Many other interesting nuggets can be