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Richard Garfield, the genius behind Netrunner and that little game Magic: The Gathering is coming out with a sequel to his hit game King of Tokyo. King of New York has been mentioned before, but we've finally got some details. Read on!
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In their never-ending quest to separate me from my money, Fantasy Flight has announced Honor & Profit, a new expansion for Android: Netrunner—this time a deluxe expansion.
This one focuses on the Jinteki Corp, and the Criminal Runners—though you're free, of course, to use these cards in any deck you'd like. Though it'll cost you...
There are also some new neutral cards. The 165-card expansion is scheduled for release in the first quarter of next year. 
It's awards time again, and now we've got the nominees for the International Gamers Awards. According to their Web site, "The International Gamers Awards were created to recognize outstanding games and designers, as well as the companies that publish them. The awards are truly international in scope, with committee members representing countries throughout the world. As such, it is our belief that these awards will truly select the ‘best of the best’ and come to be respected by not only hobbyists, but the general public at large. We hope that this will lead to greater exposure for these wonderful games to more and more people and help spread the word of the 'wonderful world of gaming' on a global scale.
There are two categories (that we're concerned with, anyway): The Multi-player General Strategy category and the 2-Player General Strategy. Last year's winners were Trajan and Agricola: All Creatures Great and Small, so I automatically have more faith in these than the sketchy Origins Awards...
So who are this year's nominees? Let's take a look...
Bora Bora—Stefan Feld
Bruges—Stefan Feld
Clash Of Cultures—Christian Marcussen
Ginkopolis—Xavier Georges
Keyflower—Richard Breese and Sebastian Bleasdale
Myrmes—Joann Levet
Nieuw Amsterdam—Jeffrey Allers
The Palaces of Carrara—Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling
Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island—Ignacy Trzewiczek
Snowdonia—Tony Boydell
Terra Mystica—Jens Drogmuller and Helge Ostertag
Tzolk'in—Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini
Android: Netrunner—Richard Garfield and Lukas Litzsinger
Antike Duellum—Mac Gerdts
Le Havre: The Inland Port—Uwe Rosenberg
Mage Wars—Bryan and Benjamin Pope
Polis: Fight For the Hegemony—Fran Diaz
So what's your favorite of the nominees? Will Feld win again, or will the juggernaut Terra Mystica take it. Will a once-dead CCG come back like a zombie of awesomeness to flatline the competition? Who knows?!
Thanks so much for reading. Please check out our new YouTube channel, and also Twitter and Facebook.
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!
Good Friday everyone! It's that time of the week when we look back on the rest of the week and tell you , what you missed!
Monday's news brought us glad tidings of more Star Wars and more Netrunner from the busy, busy folks over at Fantasy Flight Games!
Tuesday's Review was a Double-Take on one of our favorite kids games - Catan Junior.
Wednesday's Interview was with our very own Scott Firestone IV!
And our Kickstarter Weekly featured the campaign launched by The Dice Tower as they gear up for their ninth season!
As always, we truly appreciate your support; we know people come here and read our posts and we can't even begin to say how cool that is!
Please head over to Facebook and "like" us, and if you have a Twitter machine you can follow us there as well! And if you're a game publisher, designer, artist etc. and would like us to review your game, accessory, or whatever, take a look at how we go about that right here!
Thanks everyone and we'll see you next week!
Fantasy Flight is working overtime! They've announced A Dark Time—the third Force pack for Star Wars The Card Game. As if that weren't enough, they also announced Humanity's Shadow—the fifth Data pack for Netrunner.
"With a new Criminal identity, a daring new resource, and unique sysops for the Corporations, Humanity’s Shadow profiles some of the most talented individuals pulling the strings behind the game’s cyberstruggles. New events for the Runners allow you to customize your strategies while the game’s Corporations look to increase their security with a more hands-on approach based upon new operations, talented sysops, traces, and traps."
The Star Wars pack includes assassins from Anzat: 
"Long-lived and ruthless, the Anzati are tentacled predators, nearly indistinguishable from humans when their tentacles are withdrawn into their cheeks. Anzati have telepathic powers that grow in strength as they age, and they are frequently sought as highly paid assassins and mercenaries. In standard practice, they stun their prey with a telepathic blast and then feed on their victim’s life essence.
Anzati aren’t naturally evil, but their need to feed on the life essence of other, often sentient, races makes them susceptible to the lures of the dark side, as does the hunger that grows as they age. In Star Wars: The Card Game, the Anzati Elite (A Dark Time, 239) appears as a sleek and stealthy four-cost dark side Character. The Sith excel at manipulating their opponents by making tactical strikes, and the Anzati Elite fits right in with her two [Target] icons and Force Sensitive trait.
Part of the Sith affiliation’s Serve the Emperor objective set, Anzati Elite costs just as much as such iconic light side units as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, though it has considerably less damage capacity. Nonetheless, the [Target] icon is an incredibly versatile combat icon, both on attack and defense, and the fact that the Anzati Elite has two, neither of which is edge-dependent, means she’ll likely feature prominently in future Sith decks."
Sounds fun to us! Thanks for reading, and don't forget to follow us on Twitter, and Like us on Facebook!
It was a lighter week here at Theology Of Games, but that doesn't mean there was nothing to see! We reviewed Fantasy Flight Games' new LCG Android: Netrunner.
We gave you a heads-up on the re-theme—back to the original theme—of It's Alive. It's now Candle Quest: The Game of Light.
And we brought you the exciting news that Wok Star will finally see the light of day thanks to an upcoming Kickstarter project.
That's it for this week. Have an amazing weekend, and we'll see you on Christmas Eve!
It's been a busier week than usual here at TOG; here's a quick look back at this week's posts!
Monday's news: Or maybe this wasn't really news, but we brought you a little more info about the new reboot of Wizkids Pirates of the Spanish Main.
Tuesday we brought you a special Election Day review of Pixel Lincoln!
Wednesday we didn't have an interview for you, but there was some exciting news about the new data pack for Fantasy Flight's Netrunner.
Thursday's Kickstarter Weekly this week featured Lost Legends.
And today we brought you a bonus review, which is also our first Double-Take Review, of the Kickstarter project Ruse!
Thanks so much for reading; feel free to write us if there are any games you'd like us to review.
Have a great weekend!
So we don't have an interview this week, but we're working on a couple cool ones, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, Fantasy Flight announced Cyber Exodus, the third expansion for Netrunner—which would be more exciting if the first one was available yet. Aww...who am I kidding? It's still exciting! I (Firestone) have played Netrunner a few times now, and it's pretty stinking fun. I'm working on the review, and I should have it in the next week or so.
Well, we're not sure why it happened, but it was a record-breaking week here at Theology Of Games! And we couldn't have done it without you. (No, seriously. That's how it works.) Thanks for reading. Here's the week's wrap-up.
First we told you about the 2nd Netrunner pack that's coming (we haven't even seen the first one!).
We reviewed that great, cheap, fun, and easily-found-at-Target game Spot It!
We gave you a bonus interview, with the folks behind the Extra Life benefit.
Then we interviewed the folks behind the upcoming deck-builder Pixel Lincoln—both Jason Tagmire and President Lincoln himself!
We gave you the news that Looney Labs is launching an iPhone version of their popular card game Fluxx.
This week's Kickstarter spotlight was We are Dead, a zombie game—from the zombies' perspective...
And finally, we revealed that the GenCon exclusive adventure in the Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is now available as a print-and-play deck.
Again, thanks so much for giving us a chance. We're doing everything we can to bring you fun, interesting, thoughtful, and useful posts regarding this crazy hobby of ours. Have a great weekend.
Two Geeks, Hundreds of Games, One God. We bring you the best in board game talk, tabletop news and compelling interviews with those in the boardgame industry! Stay tuned for all things gaming, here on Theology of Games!
