Here are the latest announcements and stories that caught our eyes this week:
Some weeks, there just isn’t much news. This is one of them.
- Fantasy Flight has a new expansion pack for X-Wing. Guns for Hire features both a Vaksai starfighter and a Starviper Mk. II to give the galaxy’s Scum and Villainy factions some heavy firepower. Look for Guns for Hire to make it to store shelves in Q3.
- USAopoly announced Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – Gear Up and Rock Out! An Awesome Mix Card Game and the title alone makes me cringe just a little bit, but it’s set to retail at just $19.95, so expectations have been adjusted accordingly.
- CMON put out a trailer for the upcoming Eric Lang game, The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire. It looks like a fun area control game, especially if you’re a fan of the movies. I saw a prototype at Gen Con last year–I can’t remember if it comes with a horse head mini or not.
- Renegade Games announced a title that has a few of us pretty excited: In Ex Libris, you “are a collector of rare and valuable books in a thriving fantasy town. The Mayor has just announced a new seat in the Village Council, Grand Librarian. The prestigious and lucrative position will be awarded to the citizen with the most extraordinary library! Unfortunately, several of your book collector colleagues (more like acquaintances, really) are also candidates. To outshine your competition, you’ll need to expand your personal library by sending your trusty assistants out into the village to find the most impressive tomes.” (From their press release.) Sounds really clever and a fantastic theme and it’s just around the corner, releasing this summer!
- Not often do we look at the business side of gaming, but like I said, it’s a slow week. Some of these decisions may affect you and your collection, so… Iello introduced a minimum advertised price policy, better known as MAPP. This is a price that is within a certain percentage off the MSRP (in Iello’s case, 80%). The policy is meant to stabilize pricing, prevent online vendors from deep cutting into prices, and to support brick & mortar stores. A vendor is not required to abide by Iello’s MAPP, but they violate it at the risk of not getting any more Iello product to sell. CMON already had a policy, but is updating it. Their percentage looks to be about 15%.
- On Thursday, Asmodee announced they would be shifting to an exclusive distribution agreement with Alliance. You may recall that after 2015’s consolidation, Asmodee had pooled its distribution among five distributors, Alliance among them. Thursday’s announcement pushes all distribution to Alliance. Time will tell what that means for stores and consumers–whether there will be hiccups where product is in short supply or efficiencies that hadn’t been realized until now–is yet to be seen. For us at GeekDad, it makes little difference. Asmodee doesn’t even reply to our emails, so it’s not like we’ll have games to review anytime soon anyway!
- If you are into all thing Pathfinder, be sure to read Ryan Hiller’s summary of PaizoCon, below, but you should also know about an announcement that Paizo made yesterday. In a nutshell, no new ACG on the horizon, Pathfinder Adventures will be appearing in digital form very soon, and, alas, no Starfinder ACG anytime soon, either. Lots of details in the link.
- Finally, Gen Con event registration started this past week. If you’d like to play games with us, we have two events scheduled for Thursday evening. We’re still working out the details, but if last year was any indication, it’s going to be lots of fun. We hope to see you there!
At GeekDad, we write a lot about tabletop games. Here’s what we’ve written about this past week:
- Ryan Hiller brought us up-to-date with all the latest news and announcements out of PaizoCon.
- Rob Huddleston dug deep in his treasure trove of words to find enough to describe the huge game that is Star Wars: Rebellion.
- And Michael Harrison and his crew got together again for the entertaining podcast, The Dice Section. In this episode, they get back to us with their thoughts on the dice-rolling character builder Roll Player. It’s a pretty neat game!
Finally, here’s what some of the GeekDad Crew has been playing this week:
- Ryan Hiller: Pathfinder RPG, Starfinder RPG, Delve RPG, End of the World RPG
- Jonathan Liu: The Pyramid’s Deadline, Codenames, Deep Sea Adventure, Happy Salmon, Epoch: The Awakening (upcoming Kickstarter), Aura, Magic Maze, Monikers, Click Click Boom (upcoming Kickstarter), Crabs! (upcoming Kickstarter), Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space, Pentaquark, The Princess Bride: A Battle of Wits, Telestrations, Tournament of Towers, Vast: The Crystal Caverns, PACG: The Mummy’s Mask
- Michael Harrison: Coup, New Bedford, Roll Player, Stone Age
- Mike LeSauvage: Roll for the Galaxy; Imperial Assault
- Chris Wickersham: The Pyramid’s Deadline, Codenames, Deep Sea Adventure, Happy Salmon, Magic Maze, Monikers, Telestrations, Tournament of Towers, Vast: The Crystal Caverns
- Dave Banks: Great Western Trail, Exit, The Game: The Abandoned Cabin, Roll Player
[Note: This post was corrected because it originally said Asmodee’s deal was with ACD, rather than AGD (Alliance Game Distributors).]
