Around The Republic

Right. So, as we reported last week and in a separate announcement on Tuesday, we have tabled our regular news blurbs so we can better focus elsewhere. So you don’t miss a beat, consider getting your news updates from such places such as BoardGameGeek, Purple Pawn, ICV2, Today in Board Games, and DiceTowerNews.

On Tuesday Ryan also mentioned that we’ve opened up the doors for interested parties to come forward if they have an interest in writing for us in some capacity. If that sounds like you, then be sure to drop us a line!

Now, with that said, let’s dive right in to our Kickstarters!

Crowdfunding Corner Top Three

Title: Stuff and Nonsense
Publisher: Cheapass Games
Designer: James Earnest
Buy-In: $30

Why It’s Special: James Earnest has been doing the whole game design thing for a long time, with a very long list of titles attributed to him. Granted, not all of them were smash hits or even, well, good. Every now and then, though, a game came along that was a hit at the time but has since fallen into disrepair. Cheapass of late has been making a concentrated effort to revive and reboot some of those titles with modern conventions. That’s what we have here with the card game Stuff and Nonsense, a re-envisioning of their 2002 game Captain Park’s Imaginary Polar Expedition.

In Stuff and Nonsense, players are all members of London’s Adventurer’s Club, where everyone gets together and regales one another with their exciting tales of harrowing encounters and exotic locales. The thing is, no one has actually left the city. Yeah, everyone’s sort of just lying to each other to save face in that typical British way.

That’s the game, really. Players gather various item and location cards to “prove” to the other members of their tale’s authenticity. Sounds like a bunch of nonsense to us!

Title: Killer Croquet
Publisher: Mackenzie Cameron
Designer: Mackenzie Cameron
Buy-In: $40

Why It’s Special: What do you get when a shadowy secret organization kidnaps a bunch of people and forces them to battle one another in an anything-goes croquet match? Why Killer Croquet of course!

In this game, players each enter an arena-styled croquet pitch. The winner is the one who gets out of it alive. Played out on a gridded board, you can try to win in a few ways. The most direct way is to get your ball through all the wickets to the end and then back again.

Wait, sorry. The most direct way is to just club your opponent with your mallet. And that’s possible too. If you’ve ever played croquet with family members, Killer Croquet is essentially a fictional rendition of what all those games devolve into.

You can expect a more detailed preview of the game from us on Friday, September 5th!

Title: Duel of the Magi
Publisher: Cool Nerd Games
Designer: Jared Misner
Buy-In: $45

Why It’s Special: We’re big fans of deckbuilders as core mechanics, so we’re always curious to see how people continue to tinker with the design space. In the case of Duel of the Magi, they’ve sort of ran with the idea of “What If you turned Magic: the Gathering into a self-contained deckbuilder?” The game works in two parts, with the first half having players draft cards to build around a central card, and the second part having players use those decks to decimate one another.

The game looks cool, and it seemingly plays in a way that’s really interesting. It taps into same vein of aggressive style deckbuilders you see with games like High Command or Star Realms, but it appears to be doing so in its own unique way.

Honorable Mentions: 4Kingdoms, The Orcfather

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And if you have any updates or interesting stories, send them to news@cardboardrepublic.com.