Concluding our three-part look at what we've got planned for 2018, here are the games that didn't fit into either of the previous categories. Here we go!
The Big Push
Renaud Verlaque, the designer of Age of Napoleon, created this strategic World War I trench warfare card game. We were really smitten with this one the moment it hit the table. There are plenty of agonizing decisions for both players as they contest control of six different areas. Each turn you'll draw a big ol' hand of cards equal to your production capacity, said capacity being diminished by the actions of the enemy and the demands on other fronts. Maybe you have sixteen cards in your hand, maybe you have twenty. Plenty of cards, right? You got this, right? But then you start playing them, and suddenly there's not enough troops to go around. You have to choose where to leave weaknesses and where to concentrate your attack, and also where to deceive the enemy and where to go for (wait for it, wait for it…) the big push.
We're wrapping up testing and are proceeding to the art and layout. Our anticipation is that the game will release in the first half of 2018.
At All Costs!
Another game on the Great War, this eastern front game by Tim Taylor is based on the same card-driven system that powers his To The Last Man! Tim has been diligently working on finishing the game since we announced that we would be publishing it in April. Once he's turned it over to us, testing will begin, so it's likely that this will go into production in the second half of 2018.
Boom & Zoom
This is a two-player combinatorial abstract game from designer Ty Bomba, a game that he legitimately considers his finest work. You're probably wondering, why are you guys publishing an abstract game? Isn't that a little off-brand? Maybe! There's nary a hex or a counter in sight, but what it comes down to is, we really dig the game, and part of the fun when you own your own game company is that you can publish games simply because you really dig them. If all goes according to plan, this should be coming out in February.
This Guilty Land
While this borrows some of the basic concepts from my earlier game Optimates et Populares, it's different enough that I didn't feel right calling it a "sequel" or denoting it as part of a series. This Guilty Land is a two-player political struggle game that's centered on the legislative fight over slavery in the forty years prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War. It's a heady and difficult topic, and navigating the pitfalls of the subject matter is as difficult as getting the mechanisms right. This is likely going to come out at the end of the year.
In conclusion…
Across these three blogposts, we've listed off a little more than twenty titles. Whew! It may be that not all of these make it to your table in 2018 - some might get pushed into 2019 - but that's okay! We've got a dozen-or-so other titles we're working on that we're not at liberty to discuss yet.