Gen Con 2016 Post Part I: Top 5 Game Expansions
Gen Con 2016 Post Part II: Top 5 Reprints/Re-implementation
Gen Con 2016 Post Part III: Honorable Mentions
Alright, is everyone back? Good! Now I can move on to the five games we’ll be taking a look at in this post, specifically games 6-10 on the Gen Con top 10 list. These are all games that have been confirmed (although things happen) as being for sale at the convention even if it may just be in limited quantities. Enjoy your read!
#10 – Hit Z Road (Space Cowboys/Asmodee)
Hit Z Road is a push-your-luck, dice-rolling, auction, zombie game designed by Martin Wallace and published by Space Cowboys and Asmodee. This game finds players in the role of a survivor of the zombie apocalypse who is traveling along Route 66 in order to make it to Santa Monica, CA where there is supposedly some respite from said zombies. This is an interesting number from Martin Wallace as it has a fair amount of luck based rolls (although there is a fair amount of mitigation involved as well) while you are facing off against the zombie hordes. You start a round by bidding on the turn order. This is important because the winner gets to choose the first route they want to go on and thus can choose the easiest or best payout route. However, they will have to give up a fair amount of resources in order to pull this off. The only problem I’m seeing with this release is that it seems to have the classic Martin Wallace trait where his designs work great for 3-4 players but fall significantly short at the 1-2 player count. This isn’t a huge deal but I do tend to play mostly two-player with my wife. That said, this is Space Cowboys and thus is a lavish and beautiful production and I’ll be looking more closely at it in the coming months.
#9 – Islebound (Red Raven Games)
Islebound is a card-drafting, pick-up-and-deliver, worker-placement style designed by Ryan Laukat and published by Red Raven Games. This game is set in the same world as some of Ryan’s other games (Above & Below, City of Iron, Near& Far) and finds the players in the role of a sea captain who is setting sail to gain treasures and resources and crew members in order to build up and commission buildings in their own capital city. Each player sails and recruits helpers in order to build different types of buildings which will give them bonuses and benefits that will help them along the way. I like that Ryan has placed different routes to victory and you are able to be a cunning and ruthless captain or more diplomatic if you prefer. As always with these games, Ryan’s art is amazing and truly evocative of the worlds he’s created. I’m looking forward to this one and really hope that Em and I like it as much as we do Above & Below!
#8 – Legendary Encounters: A Firefly Deck Building Game (Upper Deck Entertainment)
Legendary Encounters: A Firefly Deck Building Game is a deck-building, hand-management, co-operative game designed by Ben Cichoski and Danny Mandel and published by Upper Deck Entertainment. This game is set in the Firefly universe and uses the popular Legendary Encounters engine which has previous used the Alien and Predator licenses. This game will give you a bunch of the main characters and you will build your deck in order to defeat the villains and go on missions. There isn’t a ton known about this yet but just the fact that it is the Legendary IP and the Firefly IP mixed puts it up very high on my radar!
#7 – New Bedford (Dice Hate Me/Greater Than Games)
New Bedford is a tile-placement, city-building, worker-placement game designed by Nathaniel Levan and published by Dice Hate Me/Greater Than Games. This game takes place in the whaling community of New Bedford, MA in the height of the whaling industry in the mid-1800’s. You will take your workers and your ships and use some worker placement to get resources and build buildings as you are improving the town. These buildings will give you better actions which in turn give you better stuff. Over the course of the game you will send your two ships out to sea in order to capture whales. You draw them from a bag and hope to capture the biggest/best whales out there. As you continue to go out the whales start to disappear as they aren’t going back into the bag which gives this game a thematic draw to it. I Kickstarted this game and am expecting it very soon (probably here by the time this is posted!) otherwise I think that this game would be even higher on my interest list. That being said, I can’t wait to try it!
#6 – Fantasy Fantasy Baseball (CSE Games)
Fantasy Fantasy Baseball is a card-drafting, hand-management, fantasy baseball game designed by JR Honeycutt and Daryl Andrews and published by CSE Games. This game finds you in the position of a wizard who is also the manager of a baseball team of classic fantasy creatures. You may have a team with a zombie, a vampire, and an ogre side-by-side fighting to win their games. It is a play on fantasy baseball where you will draft your perfect team of players and go head-to-head against the other managers in a system that uses cards and stat tracking in order to win. I love the idea of this game and really can’t wait to try it out. This is one I’m not 100% sure will be there, but it should be so it made the list. This could possibly be my first purchase of the list as the game looks great and the price point is perfect! Way to go JR and Daryl, this one looks like fun!
And there are the bottom 5 of the top 10…did you get that? These games are all very high on my “to-check-out” list and at least two of them (New Bedford and Fantasy Fantasy Baseball) will be in my collection. The other three are ones that I’ve very interested in but still not quite ready to pull the trigger on. Stay tuned as games 1-5 on the top 10 will be out in the next day or so and those are REALLY high up on my acquisition list. Thanks so much for reading and feel free to post any questions or comments below! Until next time, game on!
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