Tail Feathers

Plaid Hat games finally released previews of their closely guarded secret, “Project TF” at the NY Toy Fair. The game will be set in the company’s popular Mice & Mystics universe featuring anthropomorphic Mice and Rats battling in the skies on winged mounts. Jerry Hawthorn, a designer for Plaid Hat games has been mentioning his playtesting for project TF for months on the Plaid Hat Podcast and it is wonderful to finally see some information coming out. The game will be a head to head skirmish game with a possibility for some crossover with the Mice and Mystics fantasy adventure game. Below are some images of the miniatures that will be included in the game.

Chew The Card Game

IDW announced a card game based on the graphic novel “Chew” by Rob Guillory to be released this May. The game will allow players to use different characters with special food related powers and cyborg animals to solve cases for the FDA. Chew is one of my favorite comics and I am very excited to play a game based on the franchise.

Repos Production leaked the above image for their expansion to Cash n’ Gun$. The Cop expansion will add 2 new guns to the game, a revolver and a deringer. A new character will also be introduced, the cop, whose job will be to send an alert the rest of the police before the criminals discover him.

Tabletop Day 2015

April 11th will mark Geek and Sundry’s 3rd annual table top day. To celebrate they will be offering promotional material from a wide variety of game publishers. They are offering a regular promo kit that carries $250 worth of merchandise and a premium kit values over $600.

The regular kit contains

1 custom Geek & Sundry card deck

1 Reverse Charades Geek & Sundry edition

1 Dead Man's Draw TableTop Day edition

2 Dead of Winter Felicia Day Survivor Promo packs

1 Evolution Promo Coaster Pack

1 Boot Hill Extra Character Promo Sheet

3 Castle Panic TableTop Day Towers

20 Munchkin TableTop bookmarks

14 Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day Fluxx Promo Packs

1 Three Cheers for Master TableTop Promo Card

8 X-Wing Promo Cards

4 Sheriff of Nottingham TableTop Trophy of Awesome Promo Cards

2 Cash n Guns Blackmailer Cards

2 Dixit Card Packs, 4 Terror in Meeple City Space Cowboy Shuttles

1 Roll For It! Owlbear Promo Card

1 Batman Love Letter

2 Geek Out! TableTop Edition Promo Packs

4 Killer Bunnies Promo Card Packs

1 Zombie Romeo & Zombie Juliet Promo Cards

1 Where Art Thou Romeo?

1 Krosmaster Promo Figure

1 Custom International TableTop Day 2015 Poster

While the premium kit will contain:

1 Reverse Charades Geek & Sundry edition

1 Dead Man's Draw TableTop Day edition

1 Dead of Winter TableTop Day edition

2 Dead of Winter Felicia Day Survivor Promo Pack,

1 BioShock Infinite The Siege of Columbia

1 Clubs

1 Evolution Promo Coaster Pack

1 Boot Hill Extra Character Promo Sheet

3 Castle Panic TableTop Day Towers

20 Munchkin TableTop bookmarks

1 Munchkin Premium Hoodie

1 Fluxx 5.0

14 Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day Fluxx Promo Packs

1 Three Cheers for Master TableTop Promo Pack

8 X-Wing Promo Cards

4 Sheriff of Nottingham TableTop Trophy of Awesome Promo Cards

2 Cash n Guns Blackmailer Cards

2 Dixit Card Packs

4 Terror in Meeple City Space Cowboy Shuttles

4 7 Wonders Wil Wheaton Cards

6 Roll For It! Owlbear Promo Cards

1 Batman Love Letter

1 Dark Seas

2 Geek Out! TableTop Edition Promo Packs

1 Geek Out! Alternate Cover

4 Killer Bunnies Promo Card Packs

1 Zombie Romeo & Zombie Juliet Promo Cards

1 Where Art Thou Romeo?

1 Council of Verona Collector's Edition

1 Krosmaster Jr.

1 Krosmaster Promo Figure

1 TableTop Collector's Coin Pack

1 Custom International TableTop Day 2015 Poster

Catan The Movie

Gail Katz, notable producer of Air Force One, recently purchased the TV and Movie rights to popular board game, Catan. I’m not entirely sure how a story will be made from the game but if it doesn’t involve Harrison Ford screaming at a robber to “GET OFF MY GRAIN!” I’m not that interested.

Above and Below - Kickstarter

Red Raven games started a kickstarter for their new game, Above and Below. The game will have players building cities and exploring a cavern system with their workers. Based on which workers are exploring the labyrinthian depths different stories will develop guiding interesting choices to be made by the players that will affect the course of the game. The kickstarter has two pledge levels for $42 you get can get the base game and $50 will get you the game plus all stretch goals. There’s a reason there is only one backer at the $42 level and FOUR HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT at the $50 level. It’s a far better deal for just eight bucks.

Hitman Holiday Ending March 12th - Kickstarter

In other kickstarter news, Hitman Holiday will be ending it’s campaign on March 12th. The game is a deductive logic game where each player will be given a secret target to kill before that target can figure out who is out to murder them. Lots of reviewers have been giving Hitman Holiday very positive reviews despite mediocre artwork (no one on this box looks like they’re from the same game) and muddled looking miniatures (see below). The game is very close to reaching its target goal of $18,000 so if you want a chance to straight up murder your friends in a fancy paradise hotel the time to get on board with this project is now.

GHOSTBSUTER The Board Game - Kickstarter

Cryptozoic opened the floodgates of funding on it’s kickstarter for Ghostbusters: the board game last week to flurry of backers.

There is not a whole lot of information concerning actual gameplay at the moment except that it will be a 1-4 player co-op with varying tile placement and varying difficulty depending on which enemy your team of paranormal scientists will be facing. The game seems to have a basic roleplaying stat based combat mechanic along with some roll and move aspects to get to different spots on the board being plagued by ghosts.

I was a little hesitant to back this project myself given the pretty high price tag, $80 for the base game and $125 for a “deluxe” set including exclusive minis and glow in the dark dice. Also Cryptozoic has a pretty spotty track record with board game duds featuring the Walking Dead, Hobbit, and Big Bang Theory properties. However their Adventure Time: Card Wars, Archer, and DC Deckbuilding properties have proved that this company is capable of making some decent games once in a while. Something I’m hoping to see with their entry into the Ghostbusters franchise, one of my most beloved fandoms.

The thing that put me over the edge and convinced me to jump in on this project was the amazing kickstarter exclusive stretch goals. The original game only offered up a few recognizable enemies but now that they are including a miniature of the ecto-1 instead of the proposed cardboard piece as well as some Zuul, Vinz, Gozer, and Jeanine Melnitz minis I am far more interested in the $80 base game. The $125 version only offers up a few different bosses, a sandman and a “Super Sized” 100mm Stay Puft Marshmallow man (Which I would just use my pop vinyl stay puft and design my own rules around anyways), an art print, glowing dice, and a few extra game tiles. Not quite worth the extra moolah in my opinion.

Another interesting thing that builds value is ALL OF THE STUFF that comes with this game. Despite the possibility for some pretty uninspiring mechanics this game has a lot of great miniatures and artwork.

If you are a big fan of the Ghostbusters I strongly suggest checking this kickstarted out HERE.

Floating Market - Kickstarter

Floating Market is another interesting game looking to get some dollars on kickstarter. The premise is based around the players acting as kids trying to get enough fruit from a Taiwanese floating market to make a yummy fruit salad. They do this by placing their miniatures at different boats and rolling a set of dice to see which boat produces the fruit they want. The first player to get all the fruit they need wins the game.

The worker placement mechanic combined with a settlers of catan style resource production mechanic seems like it will make a pretty fun lightweight strategy game. The artwork and components seem to be of good quality and the production company has a good history of putting out quality games. The $29 dollar price tag is a great deal on this game especially since it will undoubtedly be a $50 MSRP when it releases to the public.

Shield Wolf Miniatures

Shield Wolf Miniatures in Greece is producing some pretty nice 28mm fantasy miniatures for it’s “War is Coming” game. The funding on this project is a bit more unorthodox than others since instead of a “pledge x get product x” system Shield Wolf is offering different “Coin Purses” based on each pledge level. The Coins, in turn, can be redeemed for different miniatures in their line, adding a whole extra step to the kickstarter process.

The upside on this project is that the miniatures look extremely well detailed and the project is already pretty well funded. Also Shield Wolf is offering a 100% money back refund if you are not satisfied with their product, a sign that they are supremely confident in their work.

The downside is that very few of the actual miniatures are shown on the site. Most images seen are only 3d computer models which can vary greatly from the actual product. Also this is a young company without any mass production experience. These kinds of companies with grand plans and not much solid product to show off oftentimes can be skeptical investments and y’know the whole investing in anything from Greece can be seen as little risky too at this moment.

If you’re feeling like taking a chance on a young company with big dreams this seems like it will be a pretty decent product especially if it means you can get your hands on this mammoth.

Magic: The Gathering board game

Wizard of the Coast released the box art for their new Magic: the Gathering board game featuring miniatures of their most popular planeswalkers. The initial impressions that I’m getting from this is that we are going to see a lot of the same slap dash paint jobs, googly eyes, and droopy staffs that we see from their heroclix lines. Low budget miniatures aside it seems that this game will be borrowing heavily from the heroscape game system featuring highly customizable armies and terrain which isn’t a bad thing at all.