Newsletter No# 91

What a stunner! This labour of love has taken a whopping seven years to make the journey from idea to table, and you can feel those many years of effort oozing from its beautiful pores (yuck).

Remarkably, though, these years have not manifested in bloat, but instead oodles of refinement and charm. See, The Old King’s Crown is the small-box-bluffing game blown up into a table-filling treat; a simple lane battler packed with nuance and detail, lacquered in some of the best art direction we’ve ever seen in a board game. It’s been hitting the table with a frightening frequency and has delighted every time! And, as our grip on the game tightens, we’re finding ever more ways to pull off nasty tricks. This one is very special indeed.

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We’ve been dusting off this Carl Chudyk classic for a little review, now that its bigger brother - Innovation: Ultimate - is landing on folks' shelves.

It’s been a delight! Tom’s O.G copy is battered and bruised after being chucked in a bag for basically any trip abroad, and playing it again feels like a warm (and kind of nasty?) hug. The ‘Ultimate’ edition is a curious character indeed - trading the svelte small box format for a chunky treasure trove replete with all the expansions, add-ons, bells, and whistles! It’s also been reworked in lots of small and subtle ways - making it feel like either the ideal terminus for folks’ Innovation obsession, or the starting point for your weird new hobby.

The script for this one, though undoubtedly displeasing to long term Innovation-heads, is intended to stand as a neat entry point into why this unassuming game has compelled so many (including us!) over the years - expect to see it very soon!

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We played Moon Colony Bloodbath five times at PAX East, and it’s lived rent-free in our brains ever since. This one is a new game from ol’ D.X.V (of Dominion fame) and has players assembling rival moon colonies - piecing together an engine from a vast deck of possible structures and schemes. 

Where’s the bloodbath? We thought exactly the same thing, as we peacefully assembled gently whirring engines that pushed out points and prizes. Well.

Very quickly, the shared central deck that determines what players do on their turns gets stuffed with dangers - mostly a cast of deadly robots who delight in hacking up the population of your lunar home. Moon Colony Bloodbath then becomes its namesake - as players rapidly disassemble their engines to stave off the oncoming horde of problems.

It’s great. It’s weird. We can’t wait to cover it on video.

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Tom: Originally myself and Matt were going to use this segment to talk about Elden Ring: Nightreign, but it seems as though basically everyone and their mother is yapping about that game right now

Matt: Yes! But it is really really good.

Tom: Truly! It’s another banger from the studio that never misses.

But no! Instead, I have a slightly more niche recommendation for folks - a recommendation more suited to the taste of most board gamers reading these words right here…

Starvaders is a roguelike that combines Slay The Spire, Into The Breach, and Space Invaders. It’s my frontrunner for ‘Roguelike of the Year’, and I think you should buy it right now. Each encounter has you piloting a little mech that’s trying to stave off a slowly encroaching hoard of aliens. Spend energy to play cards that’ll let you move, shoot, draw more cards, place little bombs… you get the idea!

Most roguelikes at the moment shoot for a weird hook - and Starvaders doesn’t really have one! The sauce here comes from how well these simple actions combo into deeply satisfying turns - using every tool at your disposal to turn a board full of enemies into, somehow, nothing at all. Each of the three characters you’ll unlock is pleasingly different, with their own selection of pilots to master and difficulties to clear; and on top of this, the game has a chunky roadmap of free gubbins being funnelled into it over the next year or so. It’s really good! I have played a huge amount of it, and will certainly buy it again if it makes its way to Switch…

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