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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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• Designer Touko Tahkokallio has posted a rules draft for his Eclipse, due out in 2011. Tahkokallio is also up to designer note #9 in his history of the game design. Links to the earlier notes are included at the end of #9.
• Ystari Games has posted two-player rules for Philippe Keyaerts' Olympos in English (PDF), French (PDF) and German (PDF). Ystari's Cyril Demaegd notes that Olympos is "now nearly printed". As for the two-player rules, which won't be included in the box, Demaegd says, "Our goal here was to find a good variant, without changing too many things, but with all the challenging aspect we like so much in the 3-5 players versions."
• Eagle Games has announced that it will publish Richard Launius' Dragon Rampage sometime in 2011. In this dice game, players are adventurers trying to fight/run away from a dragon, while collecting treasure and gold along the way – possibly from other players.
• Pegasus Spiele is releasing a small expansion for Michael Schacht's Mondo in June 2011, a ten-card pack called Mondo: Das Duell. Using the components of the base game, two players reveal one of the duel cards, which shows a challenge like "most forest" or "largest desert". The player who wins this challenge claims the card; the first player to claim two cards wins the game. This expansion is intended to be a giveaway to people who purchase Mondo in game stores. Schacht notes, "At the moment it is unclear if there will be also an English version."
• In the category of "not really new, but perhaps new to most people" we have three titles distributed by Fantasy Flight Games that will be released in the U.S. in late May 2011, according to Alliance Game Distributors. Those titles are Olympus, from designers Andrea Chiarvesio and Luca Iennaco, A La Carte from Karl-Heinz Schmiel and the A La Carte: Dessert expansion. Both of the latter games, retailing for $50 and $30 respectively, are the German editions packaged with English rules. Olympus was released in an inadvertantly limited Italian/English edition at Spiel 2010, but the game will be more available – or will it? For all three of these games, Fantasy Flight's hobby market sales manager Tim Huckelbery says, "They are expected to sell out fast."
• Valley Games has announced an expansion for Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage called Hamilcar: First Punic War with Hannibal designer Mark Simonitch teaming with John Rodriguez. The expansion consists of 25 new generals – nine who fought under Hamilcar, nine Roman generals and seven generals for use in the base game – as well as a double-sided game board. Rather than announce a release date, however, Valley Games is inviting people to place a no-obligation preorder and when enough folks preorder the expansion – "enough" being undefined – Valley will bring the game to print, offering those who preordered a 40% discount of the $60 MSRP.
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