Plaid Hat Games Announces Dead Of Winter: A Crossroads Game

Plaid Hat Games, makers of the hit games Summoner Wars and Mice & Mystics have announced Dead Of Winter: A Crossroads Game. According to the Plaid Hat Web site, the Crossroads games are a new series of games "that tests a group of survivors' ability to work together and stay alive while facing crises and challenges from both outside and inside."

Dead Of Winter is the first game in the new series, and it finds 3-5 players trying to survive in a world full of zombies. Dead Of Winter is a "meta-cooperative psychological survival game. This means players are working together toward one common victory condition--but for each individual player to achieve victory, they must also complete their personal secret objective. This secret objective could relate to a psychological tick that's fairly harmless to most others in the colony, a dangerous obsession that could put the main objective at risk, a desire for sabotage of the main mission, or worst of all: vengeance against the colony! Certain games could end with all players winning, some winning and some losing, or all players losing."

Sounds cool. I love that people are playing with the boundaries of social games, such as The Resistance, and Two Rooms and a Boom. This sentence from the description has me very excited about it:

"Dead of Winter has players making frequent, difficult, heavily- thematic, wildly-varying decisions, that often have them deciding between what is best for the colony and what is best for themselves."

Sign me up. What are your thoughts? Does it sound cool? Are zombie-themed games played out?

Thanks for reading! And don't forget: You still have a chance to win a copy of Pixel Lincoln. Just listen to our third podcast to find out how. It's easy!

Rob Daviau Announces a New Legacy Game!

Rob Daviau is the genius designer behind some of the most innovative and genre-stretching games of the last few years—including Heroscape and Risk: Legacy. Well now that Rob's left Hasbro and branched out on his own, he's teaming up with Plaid Hat Games to announce the newest Legacy design: Seafall.

According to the announcement on Plaid Hat's site, "SeaFall is a 4X game (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) set in an age of sail world that is reminiscent of our world.  In SeaFall the world is just starting to claw its way out of a dark age and has just begun to rediscover seafaring technology.  Players take on the role of a main land empire who each consult with a consortium of advisors to discover new islands, explore those islands, develop trade, send out raiding parties, take part in ship to ship combat, and more...Just as in Risk Legacy, SeaFall will evolve as player play it.  Players will become personally invested and the game will remember their grudges.  The narrative will swing as players open up the world.  Unlike Risk Legacy it does all of this without being tied to the Risk license and gameplay engine.  SeaFall will be a medium-heavy weight gamer's hobby game with original game play systems.  Expect the epic.  The game is slated for release in 2014."

I (Firestone) was able to get on the playtesting team for this, and I'm SUPER excited. Sounds like a blast! Have you played Risk: Legacy yet? What would you like to see in this new game?

Thanks for reading!

The Best Board Games of 2012!

Thanks for joining us for Post #200 here at Theology Of Games. In the Better Late Than Never category: Here they are—our picks for the best games of 2012! Now, realize that even though we both have a board game group that meets weekly, there are some games we just didn't get a chance to play. So games such as Mage Wars and Snowdonia and Myrmes just didn't get played. They might have made the list, and I'm sure we'll play those at some point. You'll just have to wait for the review. :) We also went off of the release dates as seen on each game's page on Boardgamegeek. There are a number of games I was sure came out this year, but I was surprised to see they were actually released earlier (Mage Knight, King of Tokyo, Kaispeicher). So without further ado... 10. Mice & Mystics—It's essentially a dungeon crawler. You go through rooms, you fight swarms of baddies, you have weapons and armor and special powers, you roll dice, and you're following a loose sort of plot. My group is eight missions into the campaign and we're having great fun. One big reason it doesn't rate higher is that once I've played through the campaign, I'll likely never play the base game again. (Or at least until the expansion comes out.)

9. Lords Of Waterdeep—This is a worker placement game with a thick veneer of fantasy to it. There's a fair bit of mess-with-your-neighbor-ness to it, but I was okay with it.

8. Smash Up—A card-battling, shuffle-building game, featuring different factions that you can combine to smash up one of several bases on the table. Light rules, cool cards, and fun faction combos. Check out our review here.

7. Plato 3000—This was a surprisingly fun little filler! It's basically rummy with special powers—if you can snag a copy, you should do so! You can read the review here.

6. Gauntlet Of Fools—This is another filler that grabbed our attention. You grab your hapless hero and head into the dungeon, where you'll almost certainly die. Sounds fun, right?! Well it really, really is. Read our detailed thoughts on it here.

5. Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game—The minis are way cool. The gameplay is fast and fun. AND IT'S STAR WARS! This is the kind of game I expect to sink a ton of cash into, but the looks on my kids' faces when we play makes it worth it. Here's our review of this terrific game.

4. Android: Netrunner—The first of two LCGs on the list is a remake of the classic CCG from the 90s. This reboot is excellent. The key is the asymmetrical play—with one playing the powerful corporation and the other playing the plucky, tricky hacker. This has so much potential for interesting expansions...I can hear my wallet screaming now... Here's our review.

3. Star Wars Card Game—This is the start of something really great; the base set is already climbing to the top of our lists, and they haven't yet expanded it for 4 players. With the unique Edge Battle mechanic, paired up with some pretty awesome card artwork, the sky is the limit for this LCG. We're really looking forward to what Fantasy Flight has in store. In the meantime, check out Jeremiah's review.

2. Tzolk'in—I can't remember the last time I was this enamored with a game. Rather than gush over it here, I'll just point you to my review.

1. The Resistance: Avalon—What can we say about this game that we haven't already? The Resistance is one of our favorite titles of all time, and Avalon adds just enough variance and depth to keep us coming back for more back-stabbing, lying, skulduggery and intrigue. The new/optional roles have increased re-playability even more. Read our review here; then go get the game. Now. What are you waiting for?!

So what did you think were the best games of last year? Let us know in the comments, and make sure you "Like" us on Facebook. And over on Twitter too!