I’m not sure where this post is going.

A quick Nan update. Nan improved a lot yesterday. It was easier getting food and drink into her. She was brighter. More herself. I think she has started to get over the urinary infection. The medicine from the doctor that she started taking yesterday afternoon will make sure of that. So good news.

Now onto game stuff.

Tail end of last week I found out that unsurprisingly there is an expansion for Dune: Imperium coming out called Rise of Ix.

Rise of Ix will give us 3 new houses to play. “Acquire technological innovations from the planet Ix for a lasting strategic advantage.” which will be via some sort of board extension I assume. The expansion will also have a new epic game mode.

Pretty excited about this expansion, despite not having got the core game to the table yet! I’d also like to get the deluxe upgrade kit, but not seen that for sale in the UK. But then again with the expansion coming out you’d think they might offer a deluxe upgrade for that too. Otherwise there will be a mismatch in player components when using the upgraded core game with the expansion.

I’ve mentioned previously (a long time ago) that Lost Ruins of Arnak was getting an expansion. That should be out pretty soon. It was given a GenCon release date. But with the mess shipping is at the moment it’s possible there might be a delay.

The expansion introduces six unique leaders that have their own unique powers and starting decks. So basically introducing an asymmetrical element to the game. It also brings in an alternative research track, new item and artifact cards, plus more guardians, assistants and sites.

Another no brainer. Luckily I have got the core game to the table. Guess what I liked it a lot. As did those I played it with. Within the week Gavin had his own copy!

One game I will be getting once it’s possible to order it is Rolling Realms by Stonemaier Games.

Jamey created Rolling Realms as a free print and play at the start of the pandemic. It stands out from other roll and writes in that it has no maximum player count!

However Jamey listens to his fan base that asked for a commercial release of the game. Which this is. Although this version of the game has a player count maximum of 6. It will play more with more copies of the game. So you are basically increasing the maximum player count by an additional 6 players per extra copy.

But like all things these days Rolling Realms release has been delayed by the world wide shipping issues.

There is also a new Tapestry expansion due to come out before the end of the year. But whether that happens is due to the shipping gods. If delays to games is our only problem in life the we should count ourselves lucky. However I still need to, you guessed it, get Tapestry and the first expansion to the table.

With GenCon next week there are bound to be lots of announcements about new games etc by the companies there and those that are not attending this year (of which there are a few).

First out of the block was this post by R Talsorian Games creators of Cyberpunk Red RPG. Funnily enough this post is about that RPG and their The Witcher RPG.

I’ll let you go read the post for The Witcher stuff. But I’m very interested in the Cyberpunk Red stuff they have coming out, such as the Data Pack (GM tools), Netrunning Deck (deck of cards), and Interface Red (a collection of the free articles). Plus an update on a couple of Cyberpunk Red projects that are currently being worked on.

The interesting thing other than the product info is the information about how not only the already mentioned shipping issues are affecting them. But also how world wide shortages of materials such as paper and cardboard are also having a knock on affect on production and release schedules. Let alone the difficulty of getting a slot in the over busy production companies production runs.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg in the UK. We are experiencing the perfect storm here of the above issues, plus the effects of the pandemic and the fallout of Brexit (self inflicted). Which adds up to it being harder, more expensive and slower getting stuff into the UK.

There will be implications to the consumer in the UK in the form of price rises. Asmodee UK has never been shy of passing these on as quick as possible. Funnily they don’t seem to drop prices.

There will be another post after GenCon about anything that caught my eye. Until then stay safe.