Upcoming Alderac (AEG) board games

Sounds like one of those kids games from the 70's and 80's. When you are 9 years old, all games have infinite replayability, especially ones with huge crushing boulders and squishing walls.

Come on now, you know a lot of us still play Thunder Road.

Well, there is a serious lack of what I'd call entry level AT games right now. Stuff like GW and Pressman were doing back in the 90s I mean. Heroscape was one of those, but it's gotten to be a real mess. It looks like people are starting to spend as much money on the tubs they need to store all the crap for it as they did for the game itself.

The Dungeons, and HeroQuests are fewer and farther between than they used to be, and I don't think that's a good thing. Those games were produced by hobby game publishers, so it was easier to go from Space Crusade to Space Hulk as opposed to Hasbro who don't really have anything with which to follow up a game like Heroscape.

So yeah, a DoW of AT? It certainly couldn't hurt. Whether or not anyone wants to step up and fill that gap remains to be seen, I guess.

I spent a good part of my weekend at GenCon in the AEG booth. Tomb must have done really well for them, because it seems that they have really kicked it into high gear with their boardgames. Of course they had about 25% of their booth devoted to L5R, and another table was set up with Tomb (the first couple of days also featured the expansion as well, but once they sold out they just switched back to the base game). I had only known of AEG from the big splash Tomb made last year at GenCon, and because I had never been all that big of a fan of fantasy themes I wasn't all that pressed to try out Tomb.

About a month before the Con started one of the guys from AEG posted a list over at the other site showing off some of the titles that they had coming out at GenCon and Essen this year. I was blown away, and I had never added so many games to my wishlist at one time. The artwork was stunning, the themes were mostly right up my alley, and the components looked pretty good as well (the three things I am a whore for in my board/card games).

They did not have Pressure Matrix, Myth: Pantheons, or Infinite City demoing during GenCon (which are three games I was really interested in trying out), but these will be available at Essen as I understand it.

They did however have three other games that I was really interesting in trying.

The Island of Dr. Necreaux
This is a card game set in a pulp sci fi universe that is co-operative. This is also probably one of the most unique games being offered, from a mechanics standpoint. I was only able to get one game of this in, but it definitely felt like this could see quite a bit of play from me. Of course the artwork is great, and the card quality is pretty good too. In the game you play as a group of heroic characters who are trying to find the scientists that the evil Dr. Necreaux has kidnapped and forced to create a doomsday device. In response to the device the government had a a team go in and plant a massive bomb under the island that will blow everything to kingdom come. You only have so many minutes (one round = one minute) to find the scientists and the escape shuttle to get out alive. The basic gameplay is that you start with three characterstics for your character that will help you will searching through the good Dr.'s lair. Each turn you pick the speed (number of cards) which your party will search the lair. All of these cards must be resolved before your characters can rest, and recoup from their encounters with minions, monsters, and traps. Find both the scientists and the escape shuttle cards and any characters not dead win the game.
It's a fun little game that really meshes well with it's theme. It's also only $25 which is a great deal for how much playing time this one could see.

The Adventurers
There are plenty of people reporting on this one so I won't go into such a detail mini review. Basically it's the first five minutes of Indiana Jones. This was one of the first games AEG did in conjuction with Dust Games. The artwork on this one is awesome, and the components are top notch (and I did splurge on the $70 prepainted set). The game is light, and fun, and it would be a great game to play with kids. The tension is tight throughout most of the game, and it is always great fun to see an Adventurer die in the game. There isn't much interaction between players, but I can see them doing an expansion if this does well for them. Hopefully more modular boards and more interaction will be included in the expansion. As is though the game is great. A see a number of people complaining about the replayability in the game due to the lava trap tiles you can look at, and that are numbered. I simply don't understand this complaint. Yeah, if you play the game ten times in a week you might be able to memorize the mayan numbers that are on the tiles, but hell who has time to play one game that many times. At most I would be playing this maybe twice a week (and that is stretching it). I can barely remember all the rules, let alone memorize all 14 of the tiles. You would also have to memorize the Mayan symbols on the back of the tiles (which can look a lot alike). If you think this really is a problem don't make the trap tiles public knowledge. If you hide the tiles, then it really is a crapshoot when you are walking through the lava room. Or better yet just hide them and still let players look at them to figure out where the traps are, but no one else can see the numbers on the tiles.

Bottom line is: that game is a lot of fun, looks great, has great components, and because of the short playing time can be enjoyed many times over.

Arcana
Now we come to what I consider the game of convention this year. Arcana is set in the Rackham universe of Cadwallon (a Ventian-like Fantasy City), and features the greatest artwork I have ever seen in a game. It's simply beautiful. The game centers around various gangs fighting for territory, personalities, and ancient relics in Cadwallon. You play as one of those gangs. There are a number of face up cards each round depending on the number of players. In your hand you have four cards you draw from your gangs deck, and each player takes a turn placing one of their cards around one of the face up cards until all cards have been played. At the end of the round if you have enough power in the arcana that that personality, territory, or relic is based in you get the card and it goes to your gangs deck (to be shuffled in later). Each card you win also contributes to your victory at the end of the game. Personalities help you win future fights for cards, relics help you bribe personalities later (which you can steal out from under someone), and territories help you do special things in the game. There is also a deck of objective cards that you can use in the game, which I haven't had a chance to use. Overall the game plays quickly, but has some deep strategy going on. It also has a good amount of player interaction (especially with the won Territory cards). After playing this game a few times it immediately went into my Top 10.

This is another small size card game, that will probably be about $25. Do yourself a favor and pick it up.

I also wanted to get in a play of Rush N' Crush but didn't get the chance. I'm hoping to play that sometime soon.

Well that was the the three AEG games that I played at GenCon (other than Tomb). AEG is now the publisher I am going to for a lot of new games, and I can't wait to give some of their other games a try as well.

LA

Thanks for the scouting report, and good to see you around here again!

I didn't realize ARCANA had ties to CADWALLON. I'm more interested in it now. I guess Rackham's deal with FFG didnt' pan out, since RUSH N' CRUSH is also a Rackham property.

THE ADVENTURERS looks fun. It has a definite FIREBALL ISLAND kind of vibe, and it's good to see that make a return. $70 is a little outrageous, hopefully the unpainted set will be sub-$50. Although, that's the kind of game that really needs to be sub-$40.

LA,

Tnx for the skinny on some of the other AEG games.

What number of players are Dr N and Arcana best played with? Or are they set at a specific number of players?

As far as The Adventurers goes, other than Uba's excellent comment that kids could see nearly infinite replay value, I'd think the game would tend to be much the same every time for adults because of the basically linear series of events. I agree with you that unless you are playing with a group of people who think fun is memorizing the entire stack of Trivial Pursuit cards before playing, the memory element of the mayan ruins cards wouldn't be much of, if any, barrier to replayability.

At a 30-40 price range, I think this game is a huge winner. At a 50-60 price range, I really don't see it unless an expansion comes out that opens some possibilities up. It's clever, it's components are cool, but it needs something more for me to recommend it to many people with a 40+ price tag.

I traded for Tomb and don't think it is the evil spawn of AT as others here do. I'm interested if the expansion helps clear up some of the games flaws.

AEG does seem to be making a major play for board games. I wish them success as they are SQUARELY in the AT camp. I'll definitely check out the other games you have mentioned and I'm also looking forward to seeing some of the games they have yet to release this year.