Castles of Mad King Ludwig Secrets coming soon, Cards Against Humanity for free, Avengers Assemble for tabletop gamers, & much more!
Castles of Mad King Ludwig Gains Secrets Expansion
This October, Castles of Mad King Ludwig is expanding with 30 new room tiles and some pretty cool new game mechanics.
The expansion, titled Secrets, adds barbicans and moats. Barbicans are outer defenses, which I totally knew without having to consult Dr. Google. From the picture provided – and included in the show notes out dogandthimble.com – the moat isn’t just some little room tile. It creates a sizable frame around your castle.
Also added are secret passageways, which can connect rooms in interesting ways and can also provide a sound buffer for noisy activity rooms.
Castles of Made King Ludwig: Secrets
Hidden within the 30 new room tiles are swans, which can be turned in for a quick cash infusion or for victory points. Of course, there are new Kings favors as well, adding extra goals to tackle in your game.
Castles of Mad King Ludwig Secrets is available for pre-order at Bezier Games’ website. And if you don’t own the core game yet, check the Dog and Thimble YouTube channel for a review.
The most popular card game since 52 pick-up happens to be published under the creative commons license. What’s that mean? Well, as long as you aren’t making money off it, you can do pretty much anything you want with Cards Against Humanity. Want to print your own cards? Sure thing. Heck, the Cards Against Humanity website even provides an easy to print PDF for just that.
It’s also allowed a fan to create a free mobile and Web app. Cards Against Originality features all the cards from the core set and the five expansions. You can now play the most disgusting and hilarious card game around digitally, for free. It’s a nice app to be certain.
But, since Cards Against Humanity is great as a thing you bring out when everyone is getting drunk together, having a digital version you play with strangers seems to defeat the entire point. But hey, give it a try. It is free. You can find it at cardsagainstoriginality.com or on the App Store.
Pandemic State of Emergency Delayed
Sad news. Pandemic: State of Emergency, which was expected to hit store shelves last week was delayed. The game is finished, printed, and ready for store shelves, but the aftermath of a labor dispute on the West Coast still has thousands of crates held up.
State of Emergency should be out next week, though, so at least the wait won’t be too much longer. In the meantime, you can read the State of Emergency rulebook to find out what kind of cruel punishments to expect from the expansion. They turned the difficulty to 11, then were like, nah let’s put it to 12.
7 Wonders Creator Brings Ali Baba to Life in Open Sesame
In 2012, Antoine Bauza, famed for creating 7 Wonders, released a game in Europe called Ali. Now it’s coming to the States courtesy of IDW Games. But it won’t be known as Ali here. IDW has rebranded this one Open Sesame.
Open Sesame is a memory game, where one player is Ali Baba and the others are the thieves he’s trying to steal from. Ali Baba is faced with a press-your-luck style of game. He can keep adding treasures to his pile, but the more he adds, the more he risks being caught by the thieves. The thieves, on the other hand, are trying to recite the list of treasures being stolen. Which should get pretty hard thanks to greedy ol’ Ali adding so much to his stack.
Open Sesame is set to arrive in stores on June 30th.
Avengers Assemble for New HeroClix Set
The Age of Ultron is almost upon us and WizKids is celebrating with a slew of Heroclix games. We already learned the details of Avengers: Age of Ultron, a new Clix set debuting this summer and tied to some major in-store events. Now, we have details on the Avengers Assemble set.
Coming this spring, Avengers Assemble contains 71 total figures. So, pretty much every Avenger you could ever want. This includes offshoots of the Avengers, such as Avengers Academy, the New Warriors and Avengers: Arena. There has been no mention of the West Coast Avengers, which is simply unacceptable. Maybe that’s a surprise waiting for us in a booster pack.
The set also includes some great villains. Red Skull and Arcade are confirmed, but there will be many others.
There’s also a Classic Avengers Fast Forces pack. Pick that up and you’ll get Hulk, Cap, Thor, Ant-Man, Wasp, and Iron Man. Plus an exclusive Hank Pym Avengers ID Card. That ID card, plus the ones hidden in some booster packs, enable you to call in a one turn reinforcement from the sidelines.
Perhaps the coolest addition, though, is the Ant-Man, Legacy of Hank Pym box set. This includes every version of Ant Man. So you get Hank Pym the scientist, leeeetle micro Ant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, the Wasp and a colossal sized Giant Man.
Want.
Onitama the Third Dice Tower Essentials Game
And lastly, the third entry into the Dice Tower Essentials lineup has been revealed. Onitama joins Sheriff of Nottingham and the soon-to-be-released City of Gears as Arcane Wonders titles to bear the Dice Tower Essentials stamp of approval.
Onitama is an abstract strategy game, played in under 10 minutes. You are, essentially, a king and your goal is to either end up in the other player’s throne or to capture his king. You do this by playing cards that have specific movements listed on them.
Here’s the catch. Only five cards are dealt for the entire game. Two to you, two to your opponent, and one as a discard. When you play a movement card and move one of your pawns or your king, you discard to your opponent. And then you take the current discarded card into your hand. In this way, you are trading movement cards as you play a sort of micro chess.
Looks cool. And short, for sure.
Kickstarter Spotlight: Lord of the Fries
Let’s close it out with our weekly Kickstarter Spotlight. And this week, the light shines on Lord of the Fries by Cheap Ass games.
As a side note, I grew up on Cheap Ass Games. In the ‘80s, Cheap Ass was dedicated to inexpensive, but fun games with almost no production quality. Among their hits were Kill Dr. Lucky, which was turned into a fully produced bona fide board game published by Paizo, and Give Me the Brain.
The later was a simple zombie game about idiot zombies trying to get menial tasks done, but without enough brain power between them.
Lord of the Fries was its sequel. It’s a hilarious, light hearted and fast-paced card game. And now, Cheap Ass wants to remove the cheap part and reprint a high quality version. With, like, color card and everything.
This Kickstarter campaign has already surpassed its goal of $25,000. There’s still two weeks to back it and you can get the game for $30. Hardly cheap, but worth it if you want to support a great indie company and get a fun card game to boot.
That is all the news worth spitting into your ear. Join me again next Monday for another blast of board game news.
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Until next week, go inside and play.