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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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I've already covered a bit of what's coming from Steve Jackson Games in 2012 – in this post a half-dozen new colors of Cthulhu Dice and a new set of six Munchkin Level Counters; in this post a passing reference to work on Munchkin Zombies 3; and on Gone Cardboard three-quarters of the way down this page you'll see listings for two new Munchkin base sets – Munchkin Conan and Munchkin Apocalypse – among many other items.
At NY Toy Fair, SJG's Phil Reed was showing of one of the new Cthulhu Dice colors as well as a solid metal version of the Cthulhu die that will be released sometime in 2012. That thing is heavy! Do not bring it to table if you fear that players will be spiteful when losing.
Reed had an advance copy of Zombie Dice 2: Double Feature, due out in April 2012, and those dice look as nice as the ones in the original game. I recall seeing a tweet from SJG about tests for Zombie Dice 3 – a tweet I can't find at the moment – and it's easy to imagine the game being expanded in any number of ways. That said, Steve Jackson Games is also tweaking the original Zombie Dice game to appear under a new title: Dinosaur Dice Dino Hunt Dice, with that title matching its 1996 card game of the same name. Some mainstream retailers are leery of presenting that scrawny rotting zombie on Zombie Dice to their customers, so SJG is reconfiguring the game in a more family-friendly direction for those zombie-averse retailers. Reed pointed out that the footprints shown on the three types of dice match the dinosaurs on those dice – a nice touch.
Reed gave a quick demo of Halloween Dice, due out in August 2012 and another entry in SJG's line of quick-playing dice games. Here's the game description:
Quote: Halloween Dice comes with a set of big orange-and-black six-siders, with custom Jack o' Lantern designs on each face. Your goal: roll those dice and try to reach the lucky total of 13. (Normally 13 is considered an unlucky number, but for Halloween, when darkness and otherworldly things are celebrated, luck stands on its head.)
On a turn, you choose one, two, or three dice and receive respectively $2, $5, or $9, with money being represented by tokens. You then roll those dice. If the sum on the dice equals 13, you end your turn and keep the money you collected. If the total is less than 13, you can stop and pay $1 times the difference between your sum and 13, or you can again choose 1-3 dice (receiving more money) and roll again, adding the newly rolled sum to your previous sum. You again face the same options of stopping or choosing more dice and rolling again. If your sum goes over 13, however, your turn ends and you pay $2 times the difference between your sum and 13!
The player with the most money after three rounds wins.
Finally, Reed showed off the components for the two-player game Castellan – due out in Q3 2012 – and give enough of an overview that I've updated the game description:
Quote: In Castellan, two players work together to build a castle. Finely-detailed wall and tower pieces link together to form courtyards, and the player who finishes a courtyard claims it with a Keep, scoring points for that courtyard equal to the number of tower pieces surrounding it.
In more detail, each player starts the game with two decks of cards: a wall deck and a tower deck. Each card allows a player to play the components shown on it, with the wall deck cards always depicting at least one wall (and some combination of walls/towers) and the tower deck cards always depicting at least one tower (and again some combination of walls/towers). On a turn, a player can play as many cards as she wants, but she draws only one card at the end of her turn. The goal is to create courtyards – and subdivide existing courtyards – while keeping your opponent from doing the same. Players have the same cards in their decks, so the challenge is all about what to use when. The game ends when all the castle pieces are used up, and the player with the most points wins.
Two different pairs of Keep colors are available in Castellan, so with two copies of the game – and the right combination of bits – up to four players can play.
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