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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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• German publisher Queen Games has passed along details of nine titles on its 2012 schedule, and while info is scarce for a number of them, here's what I know so far. As I receive more updates from Queen or as info comes in from the Nürnberg trade fair in early February 2012, I'll update the various game pages to provide more details about game play.
January 2012
-----• 3 in 1: Mückenstich, Danger, Zwickern, which is – as the title suggests – a three-pack of older card games from Queen in a new package for those who weren't around ten years ago when these games were originally released.
February 2012
-----• Kingdom Builder: Nomads, which I posted about earlier in January 2012. This expansion includes bits for a fifth player, four new game boards (and consequently four new powers), three new scoring cards, and a bunch of nomad and location tiles of which I don't yet know the use. Soon!
March 2012
-----• Maharani, a tile-laying game from Wolfgang Panning in which players take mosaic tiles from a rondel in order to build a palace. Seems like an incredibly inefficient way to build a palace, but I have no experience doing such things, so what do I know?
April 2012
-----• Edo, which I previewed in a November 2011 post following a demo at BGG.CON.
-----• Kairo, in which you try to maneuver customers to different-colored stalls by competitors keep popping up in their way and the customers themselves keep disappearing.
May 2012
-----• Urbanization from newcomer Johnny Ebsen in which "the players follow the development of a rural area, from the beginning of the industrial revolution to modern times. They guide their villages through hard times and try to attract citizens by building houses. Later, factories are erected and the villages grow into prospering cities."
June 2012
-----• Thebes: The Tomb Raiders, a card game version of Peter Prinz' Thebes, with players once again spending time to dig for glory.
July 2012
-----• Escape, which I also previewed following a BGG.CON demo.
August 2012
-----• Locomotive Werks, a fancy edition of the Winsome Games release from 2002 in which players "purchase the ability to produce engines, pay workers to produce them, and sell to the volatile, dice-driven market".
• Jay Tummelson at Rio Grande Games has posted a general news update, mentioning that the English edition of the Puerto Rico: Anniversary Edition is sold out at the publisher level and not coming back, so what's on the market is all there will be – at least for the English version.
• In news of upcoming games from Rio Grande, Tummelson says that Upon a Salty Ocean, Lamborghini, Leader 1: Hell of the North, Hawaii, Last Will, Stone Age: Style Is the Goal and Roll to the South Pole – a dice game from Kristian A. Østby and Eilif Svennson – will be available "in a few weeks", which puts them as February releases on Gone Cardboard, BGG's game release calendar. Tummelson didn't mention that RGG is importing the Giochix release The Forgotten Planet, but the game is listed on the RGG website with a February 2012 release date, so throw that on the list, too.
In the world of Dominion, a digital version of the game is planned for release early in 2012. A replacement pack of treasure, victory and curse cards will be available in March 2012 for those who have roughed up theirs or who want to play something like Dominion: Prosperity without owning the base game or Intrigue. The next two Dominion expansions will be Dominion: Dark Ages – out at Gen Con 2012 in August to coincide with the Dominion World Masters Tournament taking place there – and Dominion: The Guilds for Q2 2013. (Please don't submit listings for these titles. Let's have a bit more info than "they will exist" before opening everything up to speculation. Thanks!)
• Z-Man Games reports that Ora et Labora, just released in the U.S. at the start of 2012, has sold out at the publisher level, which means that whatever copies are in the distribution system are all that will be available until whenever the game is reprinted – assuming, of course, that it will be reprinted...
• WizKids has announced a May 2012 release date for the semi-cooperative game The Lord of the Rings: Nazgul.
• Spanish publisher nestorgames has released two new titles: Sheep, Dogs & Wolves, a two-player game in which one player tries to save as many sheep as possible while the other aims to feed them to the wolves, and Sugar Gliders, in which these marsupials jump from branch to branch Domination-style in order to grab fruit, but with the ability to use fruit already collected to keep moving to new places.
• In addition to all of the above, I have created game listings – or recruited others to create game listings – for many, many games scheduled to be on display at the Nürnberg trade fair, so I would encourage you to check out the Nürnberg 2012 Preview to see new titles coming from AMIGO Spiele, ABACUSSPIELE, alea, eggertspiele – why do so many of these German companies use irregular typography?! – Kosmos, Ravensburger, Schmidt and Pegasus. I still have more games to add, and Hans im Glück and HABA (among others) haven't released any info yet, so that's even more games to be added to the list at some point.
And I've also been working on a separate Preview for the 2012 New York Toy Fair, with an eye towards publication around the end of this week once I get those new games in the system. Phew! Maybe it would be easier if ya'll just subscribe to me, at least for the new game listings I create, so I can just stop posting news otherwise...
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