» Card Games
Thursday, September 17, 2009
PAX 2009 – Gaming News Updates uploaded
We’ve got a trio of OgreCave Gaming News Update podcast episodes just posted from our trip up to Seattle for PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo 2009. First up, our bi-weekly update mentions a few PAX highlights (though this will be nothing compared to our upcoming PAX ’09 Audio Report episode). Then we have an interview with Will Schoonover of Steve Jackson Games, who tells us all about the current state of things for the company, and describes the upcoming Nanuk in full detail. Finally, we had a chat with Matt Forbeck about his Guild Wars novel, all the other projects he has a hand in these days, and his thoughts on PAX, the industry, and bygone companies. Have a listen, let us know what you think, and be sure to check back for more.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Live at PAX 2009: Munchkinless in Seattle
Okay, admittedly I haven’t searched that hard yet – I’m still getting the lay of the land around here at PAX 2009. But near as I can tell, Steve Jackson Games has decided to add challenge to an event here which I find oddly compelling: the PAX ’09 Photo Scavenger Hunt. The event combines the ease of digital cameras with the time sink of searching the entire show for random things to be in a picture with, and so, I approve (I like how the list is constructed partly just to mess with certain people – for example, “someone with a media badge”). The added Munchkin challenge? A photo with the Munchkin mascot is on the scavenger hunt list, and I haven’t seen the sneaky dungeon-looting rascal anywhere. I’ve heard reported sightings, yes, but haven’t laid eyes on him myself. I’ve seen plenty of folks playing Munchkin Quest and having a grand time of it, but haven’t seen the weapon-wielding maniac. Perhaps he’s just shy…
He’s around here somewhere. I’ll have to offer my thanks to the big lug and Paul at SJ Games for helping me sort something out. Yes, I owe the Munchkin mascot a favor – how the hell did this happen…?
Sunday, August 16, 2009
This Just In from Sunday afternoon at Gen Con 2009!
It’s Sunday, the final day of Gen Con 2009. To go out on a high note, Ryan Macklin has recorded the final ’09 episode of This Just In… From GenCon! from the show floor. The Sunday 3pm show has multiple guests from Pirate Jenny – Emily Care Boss of Black & Green Games, Danielle Lewon of Cream Alien Games, Anna Kreider of Tasty Bacon Games, Michelle Mishko, and Willow Palecek from The Forge. As promised, OgreCave has the show notes, so here’s the final write-up for this year:
- Convention goers have been excited about Pirate Jenny. The indie RPG landscape has evolved, and titles are more spread out between The Forge, Pirate Jenny, and such.
- Arm dragons are neat.
- Fear of the recession affecting customer turnout has been replaced by relief.
- Penny For My Thoughts is very nearly sold out.
- Kagematsu – the RPG nearly sold out the first day.
- Willow won a Shadowfist CCG tournament.
- RPGirl, a zine on women gamers.
- The community of RPGBloggers.com, and two great tastes could go great together.
The OgreCave crew extends its thanks to Ryan and all his co-hosts and guests for a cool series of TJI shows this year. We’ll be happy to watch your back again in the future. We’ll also have to corner you for an interview or podcast appearance, so don’t wander off.
OgreCave reviews – Timestreams & Candyman
A pair of new reviews are up today. First is Dennis’ look at Timestreams from Bucephalus Games, a new card game that pits different eras of history against each other. Then I’ve thrown in my review of Run For Your Life, Candyman! from Smirk & Dagger. For my money, it’s the only way to revisit the dreaded childhood game Candy Land, and far more enjoyable, too. It seemed only fitting to post this now, since S&D’s sequel game Shootin’ Ladders has just hit Gen Con.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
This just in from Saturday morning at Gen Con 2009
Allan isn’t doing this one, dammit! LOVE ME.
Show notes for the Saturday 11am This Just In… From GenCon! episode are as follows:
- A Penny For My Thoughts
- Complete ENnie results. Congratulations to All Games Considered and a whole lot of other winners.
- That ENnies Twitter account. Twitter is a real thing for gamers, folks – holdouts might want to reconsider.
- Geek Chic. Look, it’s linked again!
- The Pathfinder line. Told you it’d be a theme.
- Geist: the Sin-Eaters, the big White Wolf release.
- MWP’s Supernatural RPG.
- Dresden Files RPG, amidst general discussion of licensed games.
- Pelgrane Press, purveyors of
PailTrail of Cthulhu. - The Pirate Jenny booth.
- Ye olde Forge booth, and the more linkable retail source IPR.
- Serial Homicide Unit
- Zombie Cinema
- Tales of the Fisherman’s Wife
- Principia and How to Host a Dungeon
- Revolution! and The Stars Are Right
- At-Will, an intriguing site devoted to D&D 4e.
- Smirk and Dagger, at the show with their new one Shootin’ Ladders, thematic sequel to Run For Your Life, Candyman!
- Jess Hartley on how to schmooze Gen Con.
- Apparently the Hite Trifecta is actually a quintuple: Greg Stolze’s Grim War [linked now, thanks Hobbes], and The Antarctic Express are also at the show. That’s on top of Rough Magicks for Trail of Cthulhu, The Day After Ragnarok for Hero 6 as well as Savage Worlds, and Cthulhu 101.
All OgreCave tourists and visitors are directed to the information booth. See you again this afternoon, if not sooner.
Friday, August 14, 2009
This Just In from 5 pm Friday at Gen Con 2009
Gen Con 2009 rages on, and the Friday evening episode of This Just In… From GenCon! is online for all to hear. OgreCave is helping out with some show notes, so here’s the lowdown for the Friday 5pm show, with co-host Sean Nittner from Narrative Control, and guests Will Hindmarch & Jeff Tidball from GamePlaywright.net:
- Much love is expressed toward Things We Think About Games (some of it sordid).
- Putting faces to names: Clark & Amanda Valentine of The Dresden Files RPG; Joe MacDonald of Ribbon Drive; John Wick.
- @RyanMacklin offers love for Twitter, and for retweeters @fredhicks, @GamerTraveler (Daniel Perez), and @CUnderkoffler
- The vote: chairs.
- Gorilla Games’ Who Would Win, over at booth #403.
- Another Pirate Jenny shout-out, next to the t-shirts and corsets.
- More talk of Geek Chic, and how the company is working to bring the game table back into the family room.
We’ll keep the notes going tomorrow. If you’re new to OgreCave, come on in and sit a spell. We have reviews, interviews, daily news, podcasts, and other neat stuff.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Dominion wins 2009 Diana Jones Award
Huzzah and congratulations. My game group played three consecutive games just last night; I’m pretty sure that’s a record for us. Dominion beat out multiple big-name nominees, which are listed over here.
Other news coming in via Twitter: lots of people hate lots of airlines.
Monday, August 10, 2009
My next band is called Stardust Overdrive: Yu-Gi-Oh rolls on
Yu-Gi-Oh sets TCG lifetime sales record at 22.5 billion cards. Thing about TCGs is once they have enough momentum, they don’t seem to ever stop rolling, ever. It’s like comics: there will always be people who act like comics collectors, even though neither the paper drives of the 40s that made Golden Age comics rare nor the 90s Image boom are ever going to happen again. It might perenially shrink like a radioactive half-life, but it will always be with us.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
The Stars Are (nearly) Right
Steve Jackson Games has let the world know The Stars Are Right is nearly here. This Cthulhu-themed game of strategic card positioning – and manipulating said positions with the requisite minions or Elder Gods – should be arriving in stores early September, though it will get some major exposure at Gen Con next week as well. I had a glimpse of the original German version, Die Sterne Stehen Richtig, when a friend brought it to DunDraCon in February, and played the translated SJ Games version at GTS in April. My initial thoughts: The Stars Are Right is a fun, deceptively deep strategy game most gamers will enjoy and Cthulhu gamers will love. And I’m not very good at it… yet.
Smith and Tinker steps to the (gold-plated) plate with Nanovor
When Jordan Weisman first announced his new company Smith and Tinker, he stated its mission as being to create toys, games, and other real-world media that leverage networks in order “to compete with the dynamic and exciting world of the internet.” Further, they foregrounded two maxims: “There is nothing on the planet more entertaining than other people; There is no one on the planet more creative than the audience.” Since then, he’s announced a new MechWarrior video game project that looks awesome, but certainly sounds more like that thing they said they were competing with… and now there’s Nanovor, a new collectible game aimed at kids.
It starts as a downloadable PC game, and then there are some gift cards that get you in-game cash; but then there’s this little hand-held mini-Gameboy thingy that plugs into a USB port on your PC, presumably downloads “cards” or what have you, and possibly plugs into other thingies to play competitively. Price tag on the device, as part of a starter kit: $60.
Okay, why? It seems like you get a decent device for the money, but every kid in the target market already has a DS. This thing isn’t visibly delivering anything it can’t do. If I’m S&T, I can certainly understand not wanting to pay Nintendo’s licensing fee, nor wanting my game’s public perception to sink into a morass of ordinary cross-media Pokemon-esques. But as a player, or the parent of one, who’s apparently going to have to pay for even more stuff on top of the $60? In This Economy™? No dice.
Maybe the free-to-start PC game will do better on its own, but irrespective of the merits of the game (which I haven’t actually played yet), I’m not seeing S&T’s alleged dream manifested in this product. Even if that dream is just “stay in the black.” And that makes me sad.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Ku-Mighty, latest collectible game from Richard Garfield
Magic: The Gathering designer Richard Garfield has taken the plunge into collectible game design once more with Ku-Mighty, a new game from Ultimate Gaming Hideout. According to the press release, the game will use “cards and figures as elements of gameplay” in a system designed to play through in 20 minutes for ages 10+. The background story of “an epic tale set in the not too distant future weaving the entirety of human history in a fantastic pop Sci-Fi tale” (whew!) is planned to fuel not only the game, but an animated series as well. When we hear more, we’ll let you know.
Read More…
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Decipher embezzler sentenced to six years
Decipher was once a major force in the tabletop game industry, with nearly 100 employees and some of the most popular CCGs and RPGs on the market. It didn’t last, though, due primarily to a massive amount of embezzlement. The embezzlement lawsuit against Rick Eddleman, former VP of Finance for Decipher, has continued, and now a verdict has been reached. Eddleman, who has been convicted of stealing $8.9 million from Decipher over a ten year period, has been sentenced to 36 years in prison, of which he will actually serve just over 6 years. Upon release, Eddleman has been ordered to pay $910,000 to Decipher, but since Eddleman hasn’t accumulated any obvious signs of wealth that could be repossessed, repayment will take time. WKTR News out of Norfolk, VA has video interviews with both Decipher CEO Warren Holland (Eddleman’s brother-in-law) and now-convicted embezzler Rick Eddleman.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
OgreCave reviews – Forsaken Bounty & Middle Kingdom
A pair of new reviews are up today. First, Chris joins the Cave staff and carves his thoughts on FFG’s Rogue Trader: Forsaken Bounty into the nearest wall. This Free RPG Day offering gives roleplayers a taste of next month’s Rogue Trader RPG, and Chris tells us if the flavor’s savory, sweet, or sour. Then Dennis has given Middle Kingdom from Z-Man Games a try, and his review sheds light on this Far East-themed card game. Have a look, or browse our review index for more.
EDIT: Fans of Rogue Trader should also head over to FFG’s website for the Forsaken Bounty follow-up adventure, Dark Frontier, just posted for download today – and it’s free, too!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
2009 Diana Jones Award shortlist announced
This year’s nominees for the Diana Jones Award have been announced, and as always, they include a worthwhile assortment of game innovations. They also pit two Origins Award Best RPG nominees against each other again:
- Dominion (Rio Grande Games)
- Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition (Wizards of the Coast)
- Jeepform (the Vi åker jeep collective: http://jeepen.org/)
- Mouseguard (Archaia Studios Press)
- Sweet Agatha (Kevin Allen Jr)
The winner (or winners – there’s been a tie before…) will be revealed on August 12th, the night before Gen Con begins.
Read More…
Friday, July 24, 2009
Family Games 100 contributor list announced
Following in the footsteps of the excellent Hobby Games: The 100 Best – which we recommended in our 2007 Christmas Gift Guide – Green Ronin has been hard at work on its follow-up book, Family Games: The 100 Best. Edited once again by James Lowder, the 400 page paperback will offer essays on favorite games from a wide range of game industry luminaries. The contributing authors for the new book have been announced, and include Alan R. Moon (Ticket to Ride), Richard Garfield (Magic: The Gathering), Mike Selinker (Risk: Godstorm), Keith Baker (Eberron), James Ernest (Kill Dr Lucky), Kevin Wilson (Decent), Luke Crane (Mouse Guard), Fred Hicks (Don’t Rest Your Head), Stan!, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson (co-founders of Games Workshop), a foreword by Senior Director of Product Acquisition for Hasbro Games Mike Gray, and an afterword by author and actor Wil Wheaton. Due to release later this summer, this is sure to be another must-read.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Get ready to count the 4E jokes: interview on card-based RPG in development
LivingDice is definitely a blog to keep in the ol’ aggregator – most recently, it’s brought Untold to our attention. It’s still under development – and maybe I’m cynical, but when I see someone developing a full color card-based roleplaying game, I take “coming soon” with a grain of salt – but the free primer PDF is at least an interesting read.
(Also at LivingDice at the moment is copious and depressing evidence of marketing-fail on the part of the upcoming minis-and-iPhone game Ex Illis. If I didn’t already know what it was, I’d look at those banners and think it was some kind of product for the disabled.)
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Warhammer Fantasy LCG announced by Fantasy Flight
There have been hints and rumblings over at Fantasy Flight about another Living Card Game, and today FFG finally spilled the beans. The next LCG property we can expect is the Warhammer: Invasion LCG, which is based on the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay setting and continues to take advantage of FFG’s licensing arrangement with Games Workshop. Just in case Warhammer fans aren’t excited enough by this announcement yet, FFG also announced the Core Set would also contain codes for two exclusive items for the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMO.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Paizo celebrates number 7
It can’t be seven years already, can it? Paizo Publishing is holding a little celebration sale in honor of the company’s seventh anniversary: seven products are on sale for seven days at $7 apiece – the 7-7-7 sale. The Harrow Deck, our selection for Best Accessory in last year’s Ogre’s Choice Awards, is among the discounted products, as are some Pathfinder and Game Mastery materials and The Anubis Murders by the late Gary Gygax. Paizo’s sale ends on the 7th, so your time to strike is now.
OgreCave review – Master of Rules
Thursday seems like a good day for another new review, and Andy has us covered with his review of Master of Rules by Z-Man Games. Find out if you should pick up a copy for your summer travels or your next game night.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Dominion wins 2009 Spiel des Jahres
Not content to win the 2009 Origins Award for Best Card Game, Dominion has now also won this year’s Spiel des Jahres. The card game that takes the collectible card game side-activity of card drafting and makes it the game’s central activity is at the height of its popularity right now. The first expansion, Dominion: Intrigue, was shown at Origins this past weekend, and should be in stores soon. I know several gamers who’ve ordered it already – and you probably do, too.
OgreCave reviews – Kung Fu Fighting
Today we’re joined by Dennis, who provides his take on Kung Fu Fighting by Slugfest Games. This card game is fast becoming a go-to favorite in local gaming circles, so if you haven’t checked it out yet, see what Dennis has to say, and go try it out for yourself. And if his write-up puts you in the mood for other martial arts themed games, don’t forget our Games of the Ninja 2008 feature.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
2009 Origins Award winners
We’ve known the nominees for a while now, and resisted judging too harshly for having a t-shirt in the “Game Accessory” category. This year’s winners were awarded in a ceremony overseen by James Ernest last night at Origins. A notable winner was the Mouseguard RPG for Best RPG, despite being up against the Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition Player’s Handbook and Trail of Cthulhu. (I could say it “eeked” out a win, but then I’d feel ashamed.) Serenity Adventures won for Best RPG Supplement, and Magic: The Gathering – Shards of Alara was named Best CCG Supplement. As many expected, Dominion took the title as Best Card Game, while Pandemic got he nod as Best Board Game. Click below for the full list of nominees and winners.
Read More…
Friday, June 26, 2009
Upper Deck Signs Long-Term Deal with Marvel
Today Upper Deck Entertainment signed a multi-year licensing deal to use characters from the Marvel Universe. Covered products will include trading card games (TCGs), miniature games and trading cards. The agreement also includes rights to develop products based on Marvel’s upcoming films. The first products are expected to be released in January of 2010.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
OgreCave reviews – Genji
To keep our flow of reviews moving along, we offer Demian’s review of Genji from Z-Man Games. The attractive card game gives players the opportunity to win the hearts of Japanese princesses through poetry – but how much challenge does the game offer? Click through to find out.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Toys R Us wins lawsuit against Amazon
Toys R Us is in the news again. No, it’s not buying another competitor. This time, the company has won $51 million in its lawsuit against Amazon.com. This comes three years after the early end of the ten year exclusive contract Toys R Us signed with Amazon in 2000, which made Amazon the only online sales venue for certain Toys R Us products. In that supposedly-exclusive partnership, Amazon didn’t remain exclusive on its end, and allowed other companies to sell identical toys, games, and other items through its site (hence the lawsuit). While there’s still talk of appeals, Toys R Us seems to be on the upswing right now.
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