Let's Talk...Spiel 2014

So this thing is happening in a few weeks, if you follow new releases what are you all looking forward to hearing about?

Greenland - New Phil Eklund game about trying to settle Greenland 600-1000 years ago, supposed to be pretty brutal and surprisingly deep for a small card game, check out the episode of The Long View if you're interested.

Mythtopia - Wallace's second take on A Few Acres of Snow, this time multiplayer in a fantasy setting. Not super into deckbuilders, but am pretty into Wallace's recent stuff.

Onward to Venus - Another Wallace game based on the Doctor Grordbort comics, riding Mythtopia's coattails. I know basically nothing about this, but want to read about it for sure.

Clinic - Followup from the Designer of Town Center, AoS Team usually puts out good stuff, hoping this is near the level of Town Center.

Fief: France 1429 - A friend has this on pre-order so I'm sure I'll play it as soon as it hits the states, but Academy Games have had a really good record and this *looks like* their most interesting game.

La Isla - A new Feld and a new Alea medium box, both of those reasons automatically grab my attention. This game looks ugly.

Red 7 - New card game from Carl Chudyk, looks like a more traditional kind of card game and flux? Chudyk will always be on my list of games to explore.

Kobayakawa - A bluffing game, not new but being picked up by Iello, looks neat, hopefully it hits the states.

Nosferatu - Social deduction games are a dime a dozen and most are seriously flawed at the design level, but I'm looking forward to this because it's published by Kosmos, a quality publisher, and the theme of Dracula and Renfeld vs. vampire hunters sounds cool. Low hopes but want to know more.

Aqua Sphere - Another Feld, I know a bit about this one because it's being distributed in the US by Tasty Minstrel, looks kind of busy.

One Night Werewolf: Superpowers - Not sure Okui is as reliable as Alspach in tinkering with werewolf games, but curious to see how this turns out.

Evolution - North Star's first strategy game and an interesting reworking of an already interesting Russian card game. This game probably rules.

Post about what games you all are looking forward to hearing about, or alternatively, how you don't care about any of these games because you have El Grande and that's enough.

Potential Purchases
Coup: Guatemala 1954 - Coup with 25 different roles to mix and match.
Antike II - Another attempt at the elusive 2hr civ game
Uruk II - Another attempt at the elusive civ card game
Attack on Monster - A Chinese bluffing and push your luck game in the style of Incan Gold. Each player has 3 'lives' and on a turn either moves away from the monster or stays and fights it with the other players who stayed using cards that they've drawn. You get points for beating the monster and points for surviving the longer than other players. There's a variety of cards you can draw that will affect your options and the locations you move to can either help or hinder you in battle.
Abraca...what? - Hanabi style deduction of your own tiles but with spells

Interested
Prohis - Another take on the smuggling goods bluffing game. Looks okay but has big competition from that other smuggling game recently reprinted that I can't recall the name of
Pandemic: The Cure - Dice games tend to be shit but this looks good, as do Roll for the Galaxy, Nations: Dice Game and RollttA: Iron Age. Happy to wait and see.
Gaia - cute looking family game but meh.
Lost Legacy - More light Love Letter-esque games
Secret Moon - as a follow up on Love Letter I'll be interested to see how it plays.
Melee - A small game of hoarding money, bluffing and conquest. Not sure how the juxtaposition of bluffing and auction will go down but it sounds good as possible alternative to Condotierre.
Deus - Another light Civ/Settlers family game. Meh.
Dark Moon - BSG Express rethemed and professionally published. Spiel release?

Expansions - looks like a strong showing to me
Terra Mystica: Fire and Ice - Love TM but don't own it. This looks cool.
Robinson Crusoe: Voyage of the Beagle - Still waiting to get the base game played more.
7 Wonders: Babel - I like 7W but this seems to take the game a step beyond how I like it
Mascarade Expansion - Great party game
Hansa Teutonica: Britannia - Maps of Germany are a turn off so I never tried HT even though it sounded good. This map is more to my liking and I might actually try the game
Cyclydes: Titans - Haven't played the base game but it's on my wishlist and this looks awesome
Keyflower: The Merchants -

Already Out/Reprints etc
War Stories: Red Storm/Liberty Roads - looks super cool, quick to play and easy to teach but I don't need another wargame that hardly gets played (lack of opponents)
La Granja - Have actually played this one. Excellent Feld-like efficiency and resource conversion euro with elements reminiscent of Agricola, Castles of Burgundy, Glory to Rome and Luna. I think it is already sold out.
Verona - Looks fun but it's a crowded genre
Fantastiqa - Deckbuilding questing with weirdness, new smaller box version
St Petersburg - excellent old german-style game, now with more modern (ugly) art

Ugghh I just saw the new artwork for St. Petersburg. Jesus that's hideous.

What the hell is wrong with geeks that this is considered an improvement?

Legomancer wrote: Ugghh I just saw the new artwork for St. Petersburg. Jesus that's hideous.

What the hell is wrong with geeks that this is considered an improvement?

Yea, I saw that new art and thought the exact same thing. People seem thrilled about it too. New and shiny doesn't always equal better....

St. Petersburg's old art isn't jaw dropping or anything, but it has a stylistic charm to it.

It looks like they wanted to work real humans into the pictures. Was this a pledge goal or something?

It's not like most gamers/geeks have any sense of taste or aesthetics. Look at the kinds of ugly shit they venerate as "beautiful". These are the kinds of people who likely think that Larry Elmore is the pinnacle of 20th century art. Look no further than Mike Doyle or that godawful Paul Niemeyer art that people used to fawn all over.

The original St. Petersburg had an evocative look appropriate for its setting. It was very distinct, very stylized. The new version just looks like any other game.

What is it with Doris Matthaus art suddenly getting stripped off these older games? She's not the most technically proficient illustrator in the world or anything, but her style practically defined how German games looked in the late 1990s along with the work Franz Vohwinkel did. I can't imagine lots of those games with her art traded out for some ugly bullshit. I still have my original 1998 E&T because I hated that Mayfair changed the art.

But gamers just LOVE overdone, tacky trash.

It looks like they wanted to work real humans into the pictures. Was this a pledge goal or something?

I absofuckingloutely hate this trend.

Ugh, really? There wasn't anything wrong with the old art besides it was old. This replacement stuff looks like something out of a overproduced iOS game.

Is it possible that there's some kind of art rights problem with different publishers/printings? Clutching at some straws, I know.

Michael Barnes wrote: It's not like most gamers/geeks have any sense of taste or aesthetics. Look at the kinds of ugly shit they venerate as "beautiful". These are the kinds of people who likely think that Larry Elmore is the pinnacle of 20th century art. Look no further than Mike Doyle or that godawful Paul Niemeyer art that people used to fawn all over.

Dude, why are you always picking on Larry Elmore?

Greenland for sure. Eklund is pretty much auto buy for me at this point.

Mythtopia - meh. Fantasy theme doesn't do it for me, and I am not convinced he ever fully understood what he did wrong with A Few Acres of Yellow Snow.

I dunno, biggest target? I like his classic work just fine and that was the look of D&D for many years. But that stuff is just so dated to me, really pretty tasteless. Not quite velvet Elvis level though.

duckgoatwombat wrote: Expansions - looks like a strong showing to me
Robinson Crusoe: Voyage of the Beagle - Still waiting to get the base game played more.

Wasn't that released last Spiel?

Edit: Ah, I guess you mean the shiny new Z-Man english edition. Didn't know it was language restricted.

Columbob wrote:

duckgoatwombat wrote: Expansions - looks like a strong showing to me
Robinson Crusoe: Voyage of the Beagle - Still waiting to get the base game played more.

Wasn't that released last Spiel?

I thought the base game was released last year. But maybe I am shady about that because I didn't get to play.

Stuff that gives me a good feeling
15 DIas. My old time friend: el Conde-Duque de Olivares
1944: Race to the Rhine. Always been fascinated by the logistics of this campaign
Coup: Reformation.
First to Fight. will be interesting to see what they can make out of this
Gothic Invasion. great subject, plus multiplayer
Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice. Dice rolling, and looks good.
Mahardika. Fascinating to find a game about the Indonesian War of Liberation. As a Dutchman I'm used to watch it from the other perspective so I should learn a lot from this (maybe more about current perceptions of the war in Indonesia than what actually happened). But I'll be curious about their handling of British troops, Dutch internees in camps, Dutch atrocities, Moloccans etc

Marchia Orientalis. As a fan of the Holy Roman Empire (although I do not seek a return to it), this could be right up my alley

Mat Goceng. Interesting piece of Dutch/Indonesian colonial history from the Indonesian viewpoint
Mythotopia. Wallace's multiplayer version of A Few Acres of Snow
Raid and Trade. theme and minis promising
Samurai Spirit. The 7 samurai in game form, with a very postive review from SU&SD
Tragedy Looper. See Charlie Theel's review on 2D6
Wir sind das Volk!


Stuff that might be good, but perhaps not
€uro Crisis
Abraca... what?
Abyss
Airborne Commander
Athlas: Duel for Divinity
Conan: Hyborian Quests
Corto: The Secrets of Venice
Cyclades: Titans
Dixit: Daydreams
Empire Engine
Fantastiqa
Fief: France 1429
Fresh Fish
Greenland
Guatemala 1954
Hyperborea
Illegal
Lost Legacy
Memorable Stories
New Dawn
Night of the Grand Octopus
Onward to Venus
Patchistory
Pocket Imperium
Quartermaster General
Romans Go Home!
Stimmvieh
Swedish Parliament 2014
The Walled City: Londonderry & Borderlands
Tiny Epic Kingdoms
Unicum
Uruk II: Die Entwicklung Geht Weiter
Vérone

Mahardika. Fascinating to find a game about the Indonesian War of Liberation. As a Dutchman I'm used to watch it from the other perspective so I should learn a lot from this (maybe more about current perceptions of the war in Indonesia than what actually happened). But I'll be curious about their handling of British troops, Dutch internees in camps, Dutch atrocities, Moloccans etc

Well, I had one of the developers explained it to me in the last local con. Didn't have the chance to try it, got my own games to lead.

Basically it's a Pandemic game, with some pretty interesting theme integration. Don't expect too much historical details or chronological accuracy. There are event cards that can happen randomly, before or after independence declaration.

It has all the good parts (I like Pandemic), but I'm not sure of the overall dynamics.

There's all sort of interesting things like how attacks are more intense on the western part of Indonesia, how the enemy attack gets furious when more Indonesian movements are made, and during the second phase of the game you can nominate any characters (all historical) to get some titles (president, vice president) that give special powers.