The box art and description of an expansion for the rather excellent Tiny Epic Galaxies have been put up on bgg. The new expansion will be hitting Kickstarter at the beginning of September. Which I'd hazard a guess means we might be seeing it at the start of 2017 if previous Gamelyn kickstarters are anything to go by (for example the Tiny Epic Kingdoms Heroes Call, which was kickstarted at a similar time).

“Your galaxies have expanded to the extent of known space. You overlap with your rivals and fight tooth and nail for fertile planets. Now it is time to extend the horizons. Now it is time to upgrade your ships to the limits of today’s technology, and ready them with the brave pilots. Now it is time to go beyond the deep blackness of space into the truly unknown universe…

In Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black, players have access to four new ships that they can upgrade their original ships to. To do this, they will need to hire specialized pilots. There are many pilots to hire, each possessing a unique special ability. Pilots are also specialized in what ships they are trained to use. Hiring the right pilot for a ship reduces that pilot's cost. The more ships a pilot is specialized in, the weaker their special ability is. Pilots are hired by spending unused dice that correspond with the four different ship types, and are worth victory points during play. Pilots are shuffled into a deck and splayied out like planets.

Additionally, Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black introduces a press-your-luck exploration option for players. This allows players to venture beyond the planets and into deep space where they might encounter dwarf planets worth victory points, or rare materials that yield resources… or they may encounter cosmic threats like solar storms, black holes, and even supernovas. Either way, exploring deep space provides a player with exploration badges. These badges are tallied up at the end of the game and players are rewarded bonus victory points based on who has the most of a certain badge type. They are four types of badges to collect.

Lastly, Tiny Epic Galaxies: Beyond the Black comes with additional planets and new and exciting secret missions to explore!”

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There wasn’t anything last from the goodies we got showered with that caught my eye.

However from their bountiful riches that they deem us worthy to have three things caught my eye.

First up is a game I backed on Kickstarter Kodama, which is hitting the shelves at an rrp of £17.99. 

The game hasn’t hit my table yet, so I can’t pass comment on the game apart from its beautiful art.

Next up hot on the heels of the Omens of Ice expansion for Elder Sign comes Grave Consequences at £10.99. This did take me by surprise because somehow it had avoided my radar.

Apparently this expansion adds fifty new cards to the game.

“The cards from Grave Consequences are divided into three modular decks: Phobia, Epic Battle, and Epitaph. These decks and their cards can be used together or separately, and they’re all fully compatible with the core game, as well as all of its expansions.”

So sounds interesting.

Finally I’m not even sure why this was made. Thirty Munchkin meeples for £17.99! Why? I’m trying to think what game I’d use them with and coming up with nothing. 

So that’s the treats to look forward to next week.

It was just a matter of time, a bloody long time actually when you consider it, but finally the worlds of Dungeon and Dragons have collided with the worlds of Magic the Gathering to give us Plane Shift:Zendikar, a set of rules for running a D&D campaign in Zendikar.

“Plane Shift: Zendikar was made using the fifth edition of the D&D rules. D&D is a flexible rules system designed to model any kind of fantasy world. The D&D magic system doesn't involve five colors of mana or a ramping-up to your most powerful spells, but the goal isn't to mirror the experience of playing Magic in your role-playing game. The point is to experience the worlds of Magic in a new way, through the lens of the D&D rules. All you really need is races for the characters, monsters for them to face, and some ideas to build a campaign.” Quoted from the original story here on magic.wizards.com

Considering that Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are effectively the same company the surprising thing is we haven't seen a cross over like this between these two giant fantasy ip's before.

And the great thing about this epic collision is that Plane Shift: Zendikar can be downloaded as a PDF for free.

You can get the PDF HERE

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So Captain America Civil War hits the UK cinemas today, and surprise surprise a certain small box themed expansion for the best comic book themed deck builder Marvel Legendary hits the shelves of your FLGS.

If you have all the existing expansions you have soooo much variety, then add in this, wow! Plus I'm a Cap fan, oh yes I'm Team Captain America in this civil war.

That is all that interested me from the baubles that Esdevium left for us mortals this week. I'm not into Heroclix or Pokemon.

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I love bandwagons and jumping on them. Hence this post.

If like me you have no life you'll know who Wil Wheaton is. If you don't he stared in the movie Stand By Me, played the “fan favourite” Wesley Crusher in Star Trek The Next Generation, plus numerous guest appearances in tv series like The Big Bang Theory. He's also an author, micro beer brewer and the important part for this blog post, avid boardgamer and host of the web series Tabletop.

Among the gaming community there is much interest in which games they will be covering in upcoming episodes. So a portion of the internet went into meltdown when Wil Wheaton on his blog announced the list of games that they will be featuring on series four of Tabletop.

It's a handy list to be aware of, because normally once a game has been featured on the show it is hard to get hold of, sales figures spike, it goes out of stock, etc etc. It's why I bought Marvel Legendary when I did, I knew it was going to be on the show, I had been undecided about getting it. But knew once I'd seen the show I'd get it, so,I bought it early, and boy am I glad I did. It meant I was able to luckily get the Fantastic Four expansion before it went out of print (that expansion goes for stupid money now). Mind you Council of Verona has never been easy to get hold of over here in the UK as far as I can tell.

Anyway here are a list of the gaming big winners this season:

• Lanterns
• Fury of Dracula
• Mysterium
• Code Names (with six players for maximum funtimes)
• FATE Core RPG
• Dragon Farkle
• Flashpoint
• Harbour
• Eldritch Horror
• Star Realms
• Monarch
• Star Trek – 5 Year Mission
• Champions of Midgard
• Steam Park
• Tiny Epic Galaxies
• Welcome To The Dungeon
• Misspent Youth RPG

Six of those games are already in my collection, with only one of them sitting on my pile of shame. So I'm very happy about that. The rest apart from Champions of Midgard have not been of interest, or even been considered for my wishlist.

It will be interesting to see which “celebrity” (some times this word is applied in a very very very lose way) friends/guests he has on the show to play the games with him.

Season four will be hitting the interweb sometime in June/July according to Wheaton. With a second series of his hit (well relatively speaking in Interweb terms) RPG Titansgrave sometime in the Autumn.

There that's my bandwagon ride all over. Boy was it a dozy.

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There wasn't anything last week from the gifts that Esdevium deemed us worthy to receive that caught my eye. However this week we are rewarded with a couple of items that interest me.

The first is Android Mainframe, the latest game from FFG set in the Android universe. Android Mainframe reimplements a game called Bauhaus, which I understand was an abstract area enclosure game. So I'm not sure how well the actual theme will come across in this game. I'm curious about the game. Definitely want to have a play of it. I love the Android universe.

Lastly the fourth instalment of Lost Legacy is out next week. Now this is good news for me, but bad news and of no interest what's so ever to Jonathan who hates the game! I won't go into what Jonathan dislikes about the game, I'm pretty sure he will contribute in the comments (I'm hoping he will to save me typing) with a rant about the failings of the game. However as I said I like the game. So I'm excited about this release.

So there we have it two interesting releases next week from my perspective.

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FFG and Esdevium drop the big one next week, not only in scale but cost, with the release of the latest in their licenced games from the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars: Rebellion. This game has been described as the original trilogy of movies in a box. Will I be getting it? Not sure at the moment. It has been getting great reviews, but cost and time to play are the main draw backs at the moment.

Next the Matsuri expansion for Tokaido comes out officially! How come I got this early through proper channels? Curious. I love Love Letter, have a problem keeping copies because I always seem to be giving mine away! However these versions that come in a box and not the nice velvet bag puzzle me. Why would you want the boxed version? Especially when the Adventure Time one comes in such a cute Jake bag.

Finally the nine Kickstarter versions of Tiny Epic Kingdoms (a restock) and the new expansion Tiny Epic Kingdoms: Heroes' Call come out.

Well that wraps up the stuff from next weeks new releases that caught my eye. Don't forget you can see the full list over on the Esdevium website.

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