Re-Roll: This Week’s Tabletop Game News for Week 35 — Aug 26 to Sept 1, 2017

The board game world has pivoted from Gen Con to Essen, and it’s an exciting time with lots of announcements and news being generated. Let’s get to it!

• Grey Fox Games announced a partnership with Polish publisher Board & Dice to release three of their games in the United States: SUPERHOT: The Card Game, Pocket Mars, and Multiuniversum.
• River Horse is taking pre-orders on the Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Board Game. You can place your order now, but it won’t ship until early 2108.
• Fantasy Flight has a secret Star Wars product launching today. We don’t know what it is but check out this page with other info about Force Friday and FFG … and it’s been revealed! It’s a boxed set version of Destiny, with new cards and everything you need to begin playing right away.
• Renegade Game Studios formally announced that the rest of the North Sea saga games would be joining Raiders of the North Sea in their catalog. Look for Shipwrights of the North Sea, Explorers of the North Sea, and The North Sea Runesaga later this year.
• Mattel is getting in on the escape room trend. Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment turns players into “werewolves” the moment they open the box, and then they have an hour to solve 19 puzzles. It will be on shelves in November.
• The Rise of the Empire expansion for Star Wars Rebellion is now available. Can you stop the Empire’s rise? Head over to your FLGS and pick up a copy today.
• Boardgamegeek revealed the fourth and final art print in their series of board game illustrations. This one is Galaxy Trucker by Kwanchai Moriya (Catacombs, Flip Ships).
• Z-Man temporarily announced a new game under the Pandemic banner, Pandemic: Rising Tide. The game, which will feature dikes and floods, had its page pulled down in light of the disaster in Texas.
• Fantasy Flight announced the seventh wave of expansions for Star Wars: Armada. The Profundity expansion has a star cruiser and the Chimaera expansion has Grand Admiral Thrawn’s super-bad looking Star Destroyer. Check it out!
• Plan B announced their second game, releasing at Essen and on shelves soon after. Azul is a beautiful tile laying game… with actual tiles!
• Fantasy Flight also announced Battle for Rokugan, an area control game set in the Legend of the Five Rings universe.
• Roleplay with your kids? Wiz Kids has pre-painted minis on the way in Q1 of 2018 that feature kid adventurers in all the standard classes. Such a great idea!
• Finally, there are some great games headed to shelves next week:
  • One of the big hits of Gen Con, Bunny Kingdom, hops on to shelves at the end of next week.
  • The fifth edition of Alien Frontiers settles into FLGS, along with the second edition of the Factions expansion.
  • GeekDad approved racing and betting game, Downforce, will be racing into stores, along with another Restoration Games title, Indulgence, a trick-taker.
  • The cooperative firefighting game Hotshots blazes its way to shelves. (From Fireside, Games, natch.)
  • Another Gen Con sell-out, Whistle Stop from Bezier Games, will be pulling into the station.
  • If you want more than a bit of excitement at your gaming table, Paramedics: Clear! hits tables, sirens blaring, from Smirk & Dagger.
  • Smash Up gets another expansion, this one’s called Big in Japan. Chances are it’ll be big wherever you play it!

At GeekDad, we write a lot about tabletop games. Here’s what we’ve written about this past week:

• Ryan Hiller did an overview of Starfinder before diving deep and looking at the key differences between Pathfinder & Starfinder.
• Jonathan Liu unloaded all the photos he took at Gen Con, playing it out in three massive posts.
• He also looked at a couple Kickstarters, Horizons and Champions of Hara, and reviewed the amazing and beautiful Photosynthesis.
• Robin Brooks wrote about a Kickstarter for Expedition: The Horror, an expansion for (you guessed it) Expedition. He also laid into Games Workshop about representation.
• And I wrote about QST, a tabletop subscription on Kickstarter and wrote a review of the new Codenames Duet (so good!).

Finally, here’s what some of the GeekDad Crew has been playing this week:

• Ryan Hiller: Pathfinder RPG, Starfinder RPG
• Will James: Starfinder RPG, Heroes of Kaskaria
• Jonathan Liu: Reef Route, Custom Heroes, King Frog, First Martians, Startups, Okey Dokey, Pathfinder ACG: Mummy’s Mask, Sticky Chameleons, Unearth
• Anthony Karcz: Starfinder RPG
• Randy Slavey: Leverage, SmartAss, Greed
• Gerry Tolbert: Wasteland Express Delivery Service, Las Vegas, Century Spice Road, Custom Heroes, Starfinder RPG, Fate of the Elder Gods
• Robin Brooks: Cluedo, Citadels, Concept, Codenames: Pictures, Outfoxed, Expedition the Card Game, Nanofictionary
• Mike LeSauvage: Scythe, Terraforming Mars, Clank! Sunken Treasures
• Michael Harrison: Fate of the Elder Gods, Welcome to the Dungeon
• Dave Banks: Photosynthesis, Rock Paper Wizard, Codenames Duet, That’s a Question!, Shark Island, First Martians

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