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Delighted at GMT Games' Weekend at the Warehouse, April 2023

Brett Murrell
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Board Game Publisher: GMT Games
[Editor's note: Brett Murrell reached out to me after attending GMT Games' "Weekend at the Warehouse" in April 2023 to see whether I'd want to publish his report about it. I said sure...then somehow overlooked Brett's article until recently. Whoops. I'm sorry, Brett!

GMT's next "Weekend at the Warehouse" event takes place April 18-21, 2024, with April 3 being the final sign-up date. Strangely, the only place I've found information about this event is in GMT's February 2024 newsletter, about one-third of the way down the page. If you want to know what this event is like, Brett's report will (finally) give you a taste. —WEM]


From gallery of SpitfireIXA

I managed to make my way out of The Shire (a.k.a., Boise, Idaho) and get to GMT Games' "Weekend at the Warehouse" event in Hanford, California, which took place April 20-23, 2023. Although I have a long wargaming past, it was the first time I was able to make it to the event — and I am glad I did!

It's a small event, with perhaps a couple of hundred people total, and that's its charm because I have never been to any convention and come away from it having met and gotten to know so many completely new people — and not "Hi, wanna play?…Bye, that was fun!" types of meeting.

The convention began Thursday and ended Sunday. On Thursday, I browsed the games being laid out and the designers showing their new designs. Being able to rub shoulders and chat with fellow designers, especially ones I have admired for years, made the entire trip worth it, even if I didn't play a single game.

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

That evening, Mark Simonitch and I spent three hours discussing gaming and reality with Kurt Miller, who is a great host. Mark is a true veteran of both board game design and the board game business, having handled GMT's art direction and graphic design for years. I play few computer games, but we discovered that we both play Age of Wonders III, one of the greatest turn-based strategy games ever.

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

As advertised, Weekend at the Warehouse is at GMT's main warehouse, a hard-to-find building tucked away in the country town of Hanford, California, close to Fresno. I arrived late on Thursday, knowing no one, but by noon Friday I had five new friends and spent the entire convention hanging out with them.

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

Kurt Miller has been a powerhouse artist for many years. I spent some time at his home in Hanford and was shocked by the number of books and games I have that use his art. I created the solitaire rules for the Avalon Hill Titan game, and there, on Kurt's wall, was the Titan remake cover art.

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

Age of Sail, Railroad Tycoon, Evolution...Kurt's art history is truly amazing.

During the weekend, Mark and I played five different games together, and the best part of the play was watching him evaluate the game from a designer's perspective, and him knowing that I was doing the same. We got into some fun conversations over that.

As part of the event, GMT announces its plans for the upcoming year. This includes an update on new GMT designs with designers providing updates on their current work. I may get some of these details wrong, but, as examples:

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

Gene Billingsley showed Mr. President: The American Presidency, 2001-2020, a sweeping solitaire game about achieving the White House.

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

Mike Bertucelli had Wolfpack: The North Atlantic Convoy Struggles October 1941 - March 1943 (a WWII submarine game) and some expansions for Tank Duel: Enemy in the Crosshairs.

John H. Butterfield had the planetary exploration game Away Team: The Voyages of the Pandora.

Joe Chacon showed Decisive Action, a modern day tactical game.

Chris Janiec gave updates on advances in his specialty, air games like Down in Flames.

Kai Jensen had Fighting Formations (WWII tactical) out.

• Mark Simonitch was making progress on France 40 and Gustav Line.

Kenneth Tee was excited to show his release People Power: Insurgency in the Philippines, 1981-1986, covering the Philippines during the 1980s.

• Jerry White and Mark Austin had a really cool game about civil war submarines called, I believe, Infernal Machines.

I also got to watch the play of Banish the Snakes: A Game of St. Patrick in Ireland, which is a block game played co-op.

And I played games as well. There are so many games! And all types of games are played, not just GMT games.

On Friday, I met a fellow newbie to the convention, Mike Tran. We talked for an hour before the first game started. So much for both of us being an unknown first-timer at a new convention.

Manuel Ruiz joined us as a friend of Kurt, and so did Avo. Manuel has a collection of 32,000 painted miniatures — yes, that's the right number of zeroes — and those are just the ones he hasn't sold. He has the entire army for both sides of the Alamo, as just an example.

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

Kurt and Mark warned me that Avo was an excellent strategist, and they weren't wrong. He's good! Avo introduced me to Ryszard Tokarczuk; I am a huge fan of the art, games, and other culture that modern Poland and Central/Eastern Europe as a whole produces, so I enjoyed the chance to meet him.

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

The six of us started with a game of my own Worldspanner Factions. Mark and Avo barely shaved out a win, coming through on the tie-breaker with more gold. It was a joy to share the game with veteran players outside of The Shire.

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

Afterward, we tried a six-player game of Cyclades in which we broke into three teams of two. Avo had a great start, but Kurt and I came through in the end using the artifact that allowed flight (overpowered!).

Later we got in a five-player game of Ikusa, a remake of Shogun. It's an interesting game that initially makes you believe you will be playing a Risk-style game, but then goes way beyond Risk. It's not so much territory conquest as it is jockeying for position to take out the last army of one player. Manuel did just that, slipping in to take out Mike Tran's last army and sealing the win.

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

Mark enjoys Inis, so we took on a five-player game of it. What I like about Inis is that you can never tell who is winning. Winning is a sneaky thing. Avo was completely wiped off the map, only to return and win within a few turns. The game has the wonderful design feature that never lets you rest assured that one of the players can't win. You have to keep track of everyone all the time.

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

Finally, Kurt, Mark and I played Evolution. Kurt knows the game well, and he schooled Mark and I on the power of an enormous predator with Fat Tissue and Intelligence. That was good because in the past, I've seen predators played so poorly that they seemed underpowered.

On the last day of the convention, I was admiring one of GMT's recent games, Charioteer. GMT has been making a number of excellent games that aren't traditional hex-and-counter wargames, and Charioteer looked great. One thing that struck me was the incredible art of the game box, which may be the best cover of any game I've seen.

I told Kurt about it, and he said, "Oh, I did the cover for it." Kurt is everywhere! He won the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles Silver Medal for the cover, and I can see why!

From gallery of SpitfireIXA

I spent two-and-a-half days nearly full time with five other players I had never met before. We went out for dinner at a delicious Thai restaurant. (Mike said the food was "Good, but not authentic", but the good part was what mattered to me.) It was a weekend and a set of new friends that I'll not forget.

If you are in the Fresno area during April or October and you want a truly excellent convention experience, GMT's "Weekend at the Warehouse" is the best I've had.

Brett Murrell

From gallery of SpitfireIXA
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New Looks — and Old! — for Robo Rally, Acquire, Heroscape, Risk 2210 A.D. & Nexus Ops

W. Eric Martin
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Board Game: Robo Rally Transformers
U.S. publisher Renegade Game Studios has been holding regular livestreams since 2020 to announce new titles, and its most recent event took place at the start of March 2024 to coincide with the company's tenth anniversary. I got to see — and play! — some of these titles while visiting GAMA Expo 2024, so let me review them now:

Robo Rally Transformers was announced at Gen Con 2023, and this design from Dan Blanchett is an ideal merging of an existing game design and an established non-game IP.

Gameplay is much the same as in earlier iterations of Robo Rally: Players each control a figure, and at the start of each round you program the movement of this figure by placing cards from your hand into program slots, then you reveal cards one slot at a time, with everyone moving their figure. Everyone has a laser shooting out of the front of its head, so if you end up "looking" at another figure, your laser damages them, which can mess with their ability to program in the future. Your goal is to reach the finish line first, which can come after a series of flags or consist of a single flag, depending on how long you want to play.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Sorry for the glare!

Robo Rally Transformers modifies gameplay in several ways. First, each player controls one of six Transformers, and each Transformer has a bot form (i.e., a robot form) and a vehicle form. Whereas the vehicle has only a front laser like normal, the bot fires straight, left, and right. Bots can enter buildings and vehicles can't, but vehicles can use jump ramps and arrows on moving walkways to travel additional spaces or turn without needing to spend a program card. You can convert from bot to vehicle or vice versa once each round while programming your movement.

Each Transformer starts with a set of personal upgrade cards in hand, along with a random upgrade from the deck. Players start with two "Energon", which you can spend to draw new upgrades or put ones in hand into play.

Board Game: Robo Rally Transformers

Robo Rally Transformers, which is due out in May 2024, contains four double-sided game boards, is for 2-6 players, and can be combined with other Robo Rally expansions. I played a few rounds in a demo, and it felt like Robo Rally of old, with me immediately misreading the board and running into a wall to waste a move and screw up the rest of my turn. Classic!

• In addition to this item, in August 2024 Renegade will release Robo Rally: 30th Anniversary, with this edition of the Richard Garfield and Michael Davis design being for 2-8 players, with four new double-sided game boards, wooden tokens, pre-painted robots, dual-layered player boards, and a US$120 price tag.

Board Game: Robo Rally: 30th Anniversary

• In June 2023, Renegade announced that it had received a license from Hasbro to bring HeroScape back to market, and now it's unveiled plans for doing so, with the Heroscape: Age of Annihilation – Master Set scheduled to debut in August 2024.

Board Game: Heroscape: Age of Annihilation – Master Set

Hasbro had tried to crowdfund Heroscape: Age of Annihilation in a massive package for US$250, and Renegade is breaking the new material into smaller parts, with this Master Set selling for US$125. All of the components in this set are compatible with past (and future) Heroscape products, and the miniatures come unpainted, with a "premium" pre-painted edition of Heroscape: Age of Annihilation – Master Set being available for US$225.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Demo during game night at GAMA Expo 2024

Heroscape: Age of Annihilation – Battle for the Wellspring is a smaller standalone set for those just dipping their toes into Heroscape, with this set coming in both unpainted and painted editions as well. Heroscape: The Grove at Laur's Edge is a terrain expansion that lets you add trees and underbrush to any landscape you set up.

Board Game: Heroscape: Age of Annihilation – Battle for the Wellspring
Board Game Accessory: Heroscape: The Grove at Laur's Edge
Board Game: Axis & Allies:  Guadalcanal

• I covered three Axis & Allies titles — a new edition of Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition, plus the new titles Axis & Allies: North Africa and G.I. JOE: Battle for the Arctic Circle — in a January 2024 post, but I had overlooked a new edition of Axis & Allies: Guadalcanal that will beat all of them to market in April 2024.

• Two other new editions of older Hasbro titles coming from Renegade are Rob Daviau and Craig Van Ness' Risk 2210 A.D., with this July 2024 release having "quality of life updates to components" but no other apparent changes...

Board Game: Risk 2210 A.D.

...and Charlie Catino's Nexus Ops, with new illustrations and graphic design, team play and variant rules from the Fantasy Flight Games edition, a molded plastic 3D monolith, and "blacklight glow" miniatures akin to the original Avalon Hill edition. This game is due out in August 2024.

Board Game: Nexus Ops

• One of the few non-IP titles coming from Renegade is Ezra and Nehemiah, the latest release from Garphill Games, with this S J Macdonald and Shem Phillips design being due out in June 2024. Here's an overview of this 1-4 player design:
Quote:
The aim of Ezra and Nehemiah is to be the player with the most victory points (VP) at game's end. Points are gained primarily by building a temple for the returning Israelite exiles, rebuilding the city walls and gates, and by teaching the Torah. Players may also seek to develop their land, travel to settlements outside the city walls, or stoke the altar's fire to keep it burning day and night. The prophets Haggai and Zechariah will be doing their part to keep the people focused on what is most important.

Board Game: Ezra and Nehemiah

Over three weeks (rounds), players will use their hand of cards, workers, and resources to do their part in rebuilding the great city of Jerusalem. After six days of work comes a Sabbath day of rest when food will be needed, and the week's work will be reflected upon. The game ends after the third Sabbath has been completed.
• Finally, October 2024 will bring us Acquire: 60th Anniversary Edition, with this edition of Sid Sackson's Acquire featuring "Acquire-themed poker chip style money", a drawstring bag for the tiles, player powers (which were last included in the 1995 edition, and "upgrades" to the game board and headquarter buildings.

This edition will retail for US$100, and all I have to show of it for now is this crummy image from the GAMA Expo 2024 presentation:

From gallery of W Eric Martin
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Mon Mar 18, 2024 7:00 am
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From GAMA Expo to Gen Con 2024: Arcs, Harvest, AI Space Puzzle, The Gang & More

W. Eric Martin
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Board Game: Arcs
Board Game: The Gang
Board Game: Seers Catalog
• A decent portion of my notes from GAMA Expo 2024 consist of updated release dates for games, along with what's debuting at Origins or Gen Con since most of what's shown is coming from U.S. publishers.

For example, Cole Wehrle's Arcs from Leder Games will debut at Gen Con 2024, as will the co-operative poker game The Gang from John Cooper, Kory Heath, and KOSMOS.

Taylor Reiner's Seers Catalog, another Gen Con 2024 debut along with Chris Wray's Xylotar, includes fourteen extra cards compared to the earlier edition of the game, Of What's Left. OWL contains four special powered cards, with each player getting one of them at the start of each round, whereas Seers contains many more...which can be a bad or good thing depending on whether you prefer to play against known unknowns or against developer-injected variability.

• Yet another Gen Con 2024 debut is Trey Chambers' Harvest, which Keymaster Games had previewed at Gen Con 2023. The circle of promotion will soon be complete...

Board Game: Harvest
Mock-up at GAMA Expo 2024

• And how about one more Gen Con 2024 release: AI Space Puzzle, which I first covered in October 2023 and which Portal Games is bringing to markets outside of Poland.

In this 2-5 player co-operative game, most players take on the role of people who have been evacuated from Earth on spaceships and one player performs as a distressed AI that has partially malfunctioned. Its task is to help passengers during this difficult journey, and to do so it must try to create an effective communication system so that the passengers can be directed to the proper rooms while holding the correct security keys. The AI player uses various tokens to convey the required combination of colors and pawns, but the meaning of the tokens is up to the players to decide.

The game includes dozens of scenarios with increasing levels of difficulty, each with new challenges that you must overcome to survive. Beep boop!

From gallery of W Eric Martin

Wandering Towers: Mini Spell Expansion 3, which consists of two spells released separately in Germany by ABACUSSPIELE, will hit the U.S. retail market in May 2024 courtesy of Capstone Games.

• Additionally, Capstone has licensed Reiner Knizia's Butterfly Garden — first released as Indigo in 2012 — from Korea Boardgames for release in North America in September 2024.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Mock-up at GAMA Expo 2024

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Pagan: Fate of Roanoke is another upcoming Capstone release, due out in August 2024

• The eight titles in Chris Handy's Pack O Game: Set 3 from Perplext — BOG, FAR, IRK, MAD, NUT, SLY, WIN, and YET — will hit retail in April 2024.

Board Game: BOG
Board Game: FAR
Board Game: IRK
Board Game: MAD
Board Game: NUT
Board Game: SLY
Board Game: WIN
Board Game: YET
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Sun Mar 17, 2024 7:00 am
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Defend the Dictionary, Let Loose Your Water Dragon, and Fuse Forgeborn on Whitefang Pass

W. Eric Martin
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Board Game: Defenders of the Dictionary
• At GAMA Expo 2024, Adam Rehberg of Adam's Apple Games presented two upcoming titles that will head to crowdfunding this year.

Defenders of the Dictionary is a co-design between Rehberg and Danielle Seidner that puts players into a co-operative, campaign-style game that features Scrabble-like gameplay. You are the aforementioned defenders, who want to keep the English language from being eroded by emojis and TikTok slang, so you embark upon missions to protect it. These missions will be presented in a spiral-bound book, and you can play them in any order, although if you play through them as a campaign, bonuses from villains captured early can pay dividends down the road.

Players reveal letters collectively, then use them to form words to achieve whatever objectives are present. Ideally over time you will place individual letters on the mission's mastermind with the long-term goal of spelling their name to send them packing.

Board Game: Defenders of the Dictionary
Mock-up at GAMA Expo 2024

• The other game coming from Adam's Apple is Lóng Soul, a design by Jeremy Rozenhart for 1-4 players that was previously announced as "Dragonfest". Here's an overview:
Quote:
In Lóng Soul, you play as a water dragon competing to return honor and good fortune to your island-dwelling creators. Your gameplay is influenced by your dragon's elemental alignment, and you will need to gather raw elemental rings from the sea purifying them at elemental shrines. Once the elemental rings have been purified, they are placed onto your island, protecting your creators and also scoring you points. May the best water dragon win.

Lóng Soul provides a new spin on the classic archetype of resource drafting and set collection by funneling resource gathering through the player's dragon avatar on the gameboard. The 3D board physically holds all of the ring resources, stacking them up to four rings deep, so you peer into the depths of the board and examine how these rings are stacked when making plans for future turns. As the game arc advances, new late game mechanisms will emerge as a result of the evolving board state.

Board Game: Lóng Soul
Mock-up at GAMA Expo 2024

On a player's turn, they must fly, then do one of three actions: ability, shrine, scale. Flying is a single point-to-point movement adhering to the 5x5 grid, often gathering a single ring from the space you left. An ability is a positional puzzle for your dragon avatar to solve with the potential to gather two rings. Visiting a shrine is your opportunity to convert gathered rings into points on your player board. Shedding a scale is an alternate path to pursue to gain points, taking advantage of particular board state opportunities.

When you're done with the game, simply reload the 3d board for storage and affix the lid to enable a quick set-up next time you play.
You can play Long Soul with individual player powers for each dragon or keep things simple and opt to play without them.

Board Game: SolForge Fusion: Battle for Whitefang Pass
• In May 2024, Stone Blade Entertainment will release SolForge Fusion: Battle for Whitefang Pass, which is labeled on the box as a standalone expansion for 2022's SolForge Fusion from Richard Garfield and Justin Gary — but the box contains no rules or components other than four decks of cards, so I slotted it into the BGG database as an expansion.

The publisher notes that Battle for Whitefang Pass features new Forgeborn abilities and over ten thousand new cards, including new card types like exalts and solbind, with that vast number of new cards being possibly because the cards are algorithmically generated. Every deck produced is unique, and to play this lane-battler card game, each player shuffles any two decks together, then plays. Each turn you play only some of the cards in your hand, then discard the rest — and each card you play has its higher-level counterpart added to your discard pile, so your deck scales up in power over time.

• Stone Blade will follow this release in July 2024 with Shards of Infinity: Saga Collection, which contains the Shards of Infinity base game from Gary Arant and Justin Gary, along with all expansions and promo cards for the base game, as well as new and upgraded components and a new Shard Master that enables up to six players in a game.

Board Game: Shards of Infinity: Saga Collection

In addition to the standard PvP, solo, and co-op modes, the Saga Collection introduces a new legacy mode that lets players delve into the game's lore, while being led through a story that unlocks new game mechanisms so that everything isn't tossed in their lap at once.

Ascension Tactics: Inferno is also due out in July 2024, with this being a standalone expansion for Arant and Gary's Ascension Tactics: Miniatures Deckbuilding Game that features new scenarios in a new campaign, along with a new monster faction and new questing mechanisms.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Mock-up at GAMA Expo 2024

• And now that I'm home from GAMA Expo, I discover that Stone Blade also plans to run a crowdfunding campaign for Ascension Legends, a standalone title intended "for both newcomers and long-time fans of the series". I would have liked to learn more about this while standing in front of the SBE booth last week, but so be it...

From gallery of W Eric Martin
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Make a Grand Plan for New York City, Experience a Western Twilight, and Await Stellaris

W. Eric Martin
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Board Game: Stellaris: Infinite Legacy
Board Game: Fief: England
Board Game: Reality Shift
• At GAMA Expo 2024, Uwe Eickert gave me a rundown of what's coming from Academy Games, with the biggest and most anticipated title being Stellaris: Infinite Legacy, which was crowdfunded in April 2021 and which is scheduled to reach backers in Q3 2024, along with the Empires and Frontiers expansions.

I talked with Eickert a bit about the delays related to this project, with the bottom line being that licensed projects can be far more complicated than they appear on the surface for all sorts of reasons that will likely never be made public. Delays can be incredibly frustrating for crowdfunding backers, yes, but they're frustrating for publishers as well since their progress is stymied and future success hampered until the project finally resolves and people discover whether the final result was worth the wait.

From gallery of W Eric Martin

Fief: England is a streamlined version of Fief: France 1429 from designer Philippe Mouchebeuf and co-publisher International Team, and this crowdfunded project will also be shipping to backers in Q3 2024.

Mat Hanson's Reality Shift, which was crowdfunded in 2020 and shipped to backers in 2022, will hit U.S. distribution in May 2024.

• Gen Con 2024 will mark the debut of Grand Plan: New York City, a 2-4 player design from Brian Leet and Kevin Worden. An overview:
Quote:
New York City is one of the most iconic and influential cities in the world. While the city was founded in the 1600s by Dutch settlers, over the next few centuries New York City transformed from a small trading post into a global center of commerce, culture, and innovation.

Board Game: Grand Plan: New York City
Mock-up at GAMA Expo 2024

In Grand Plan: New York City, players are urban planners who build this city from the 1600s through the early 2000s against the backdrop of historical events. A unique system of historically based chronicle cards allows new rules to come into effect and expire over the course of the ten turn game.

Players lay out the grid plan of Manhattan across the island and into the sky, developing new neighborhoods, placing influence, and engaging with the news of the day.
To add a bit more detail, the game includes cards from different eras, e.g., early, mid, and late 1600s, and not all of those cards will come into play, giving each playing a different feel. Only three cards remain in play at a time, so effects age out as you progress through time.

• Coming in Q4 2024 is Western Twilight, a design by Edward Castronova for 2-5 players that features a multiplayer Twilight Struggle-ish competition in which you might have to make the world lose in order to win:
Quote:
The empires of Europe have been expanding their influence across the world throughout the 1800s. They have fought countless petty wars that have spurred their military and economic growth. Their influence and conflicts extend around the globe, and the aristocracy have no wish to see it end...but change is coming. Great alliances are forming, and the nations of Europe are consolidating their power for the final struggle. Will one nation's imperialist dreams raise them up as the world's sole power, will the world leaders form a great League of Nations to end all wars, or will the century old rivalries pull the world into the most horrific war ever seen?

Board Game: Western Twilight
Mock-up at GAMA Expo 2024

As the leader of one of the five great powers in Europe, you will compete to spread and protect your influence around the globe using military, economic, and diplomatic might. Use the press to sway public opinion to force nations into alliances or war, and upgrade your empire's capabilities by establishing control over important regions of the world. You must be careful, though, because the world is on the brink of all-out war and it could spell the end of the West's dominance.

In Western Twilight, you will perform actions using your personal rondel, with opportunities to upgrade it with enhanced and new abilities for a unique engine-building experience. Compete with the other nations of Europe for control of territories around the world by competitively drafting cards to place your nation's military, economic, or diplomatic influence markers. You must be cautious because every action you take can bring the world one step closer to the war to end all wars.

Board Game: Western Twilight
Mock-up at GAMA Expo 2024

Western Twilight can end in three ways: diplomatically, economically, or militarily. Each ending will change how your different influence markers will score, so you must steer the world down the path you are most prepared to win, whether that be peace or war.
Note the cool/warm/hot tracker in the upper right of the game board, with the effects of actions changing depending on where the two countries lie on that tracker.

• Finally, we come to Guderian's Harvest: Smolensk 1941, a design by Ed Welsh and Jeffrey Lange that's designed to played in 45 minutes. Beyond that, I know nothing...other than that the map was designed to be more colorful than is typical for wargames. Artist Patrick Ward details the evolution of the map in this post on his website.

From gallery of W Eric Martin

From gallery of W Eric Martin
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Invest Wisely in Stalk Exchange, Bounce Across the United States, and Embrace Dadada

W. Eric Martin
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Board Game: Stalk Exchange
• One of the games I played at GAMA Expo 2024 was Stalk Exchange, a design for 2-5 players from Christopher Ryan Chan that The Op Games will debut at Gen Con 2024 in August.

How has someone not created a game with this title previously?! So obvious and clever to combine Holland's tulip fever of the 17th century with the term for tracking such values. (While researching where else this title has been used, I did discover a previously-unknown-to-me graphic novel from Matt Howarth, creator of Those Annoying Post Bros, so that's a nice bonus.)

To set up, each player takes flower tokens in secret and places them behind their screen. Six flower tokens are placed on the game board, with all five types of flower being worth nothing at the start of play. Flower tokens are double-sided, with a bulb on one side and a mature flower on the other.

Board Game: Stalk Exchange
Starting set-up

On a turn, take two actions, with the possible actions being to:

—Take a token from the public "stalk exchange" and place it on an empty space bulb side up.
—Swap one of the tokens behind your screen for a token on the stalk exchange.

End your turn with the upkeep step. First, if a group of flowers of a single type has no empty hexes around it, harvest them from the planting board and set them aside. Second, if a bulb has an empty hex next to it, flip it to the flower side; otherwise, leave it be. Third, place harvested flowers on empty spaces of the path at the opposite end of the scoring track and advance the appropriate flower marker on the scoring track a number of spaces equal to the number of tokens placed. Finally, remove the rightmost token on the stalk exchange, slide remaining tokens right, then re-fill the market.

Board Game: Stalk Exchange
The lone orange flower will be harvested

Players start the game with three trowels and can spend them to take additional actions on a turn.

Continue taking turns until the value of a flower overlaps the path of harvested flowers, then crash the most valued flower type by cutting its value in half. Everyone then reveals their tokens and sums their score based on the final values of the flowers.

Stalk Exchange began slowly since the planting board is mostly empty at the start of play, then we hit an inflection point with the board being half to two-thirds full at all times, with the path of harvested flowers filling much more quickly than I had anticipated — which meant that I did almost no swapping and ended up holding lots of white flowers that crashed from 9 to 4 at game's end.

From gallery of W Eric Martin

I appreciate the shared planting field, with everyone quietly trying to work together with others to boost a color that you hope you have the most of...but without boosting it too far. Every token you place in that field can serve multiple purposes: surround a flower group to harvest it, set up a future scoring group, expand a group that you don't want to score so that it's harder to surround, remove a token that an opponent might want.

You also have the nice complication that harvesting happens before bulbs bloom, so you can't place a token that will then immediately be harvested. You're playing for the present and future at the same time, trying to make the most of each action, as simple as it is. Now that I have a better sense of the game's pace, I can see swapping serving dual purposes as well, with you trading for a more valuable flower while also placing a flower type on the stalk exchange that might not be present, giving you a chance to play it immediately to boost its value later.

• Another Gen Con 2024 release coming from The Op is Gnome Hollow, an Ammon Anderson design for 2-4 players. Your goal is to form mushroom rings, and on each turn you draft a tile, place a tile, and take a gnome action. Anderson plans to submit a designer diary to BGG News, so we'll all learn more about the game before it debuts.

The production includes magnetic player boards and pieces, with an upgrade kit planned for folks who prefer wooden bits in their game instead of cardboard.

Board Game: Gnome Hollow

• In Q2 2024, The Op will release a new edition of 10 Days in the USA from designers Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum.

I think 10 Days in the USA is a fantastically simple design for players of all ages, and if you're not familiar with this game that debuted in 2003, I covered it in writing and on video in 2019 when Hong Kong publisher Broadway Games released a new edition.

From gallery of W Eric Martin

• In September 2024, The Op will release Avatar: The Last Airbender – Aang's Destiny, a co-operative design from Patrick Marino that is analogous to 2016's Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, with 2-4 players going through seven boxes of unlockable playing material as they take on the role of Avatar characters to restore balance to the world.

Board Game: Avatar: The Last Airbender – Aang's Destiny

• We'll close with brief, possibly inaccurate of descriptions of two more upcoming titles from The Op, starting with Eric Olsen's Flip 7, a card game along the lines of Reiner Knizia's Cheeky Monkey in which you might be inspired to press your luck to earn more points, but end up moving backwards instead.

The deck contains cards numbered 1-12, with one 1, two 2s, etc., along with a few special action cards. On a turn, you flip a card into a personal row, then choose to stop and bank your points or flip again. If you flip a number that's already face up, you lose all of these cards. Flip "Flip three", and you must flip three more cards, like it or not. Flip "Freeze", and your turn ends, like it or not. The deck includes point cards that add to your temporary score without increasing your risk. The first player to bank 200 points wins.

From gallery of W Eric Martin

• And in the category of "give clues to get players to guess something", a category that seemed larger than normal this year, we have Dadada, a delightfully silly game that was being shown in rough form.

To start, turn over a sound card, e.g. "PU", then an image card, then assign this image to the sound and say its name: "PU!" The next player then reveals an image, and if they agree that "PU" is a suitable name for the depicted object, they slide it next to "PU" and say "PU!"; otherwise, they flip a new sound card and place the image there: "PEH!"

Repeat this for some number of sounds and images, then lay out other images without designating a sound for them. The active player then secretly chooses one of the images and names it using only the sounds of your new language: "PU-PEH-PEH!" Can others figure out which image you mean?

I've seen a few games over the years that feature an alien language players must decipher or communicate in, and this feels like the cleanest such design with almost no overhead. Patrick Marino taught me how to play using practically no words, just demonstrating by doing, including taking an image that I had assigned to one sound, then sliding it across the table and questioningly saying, "PU?"

Looking forward to trying this game with others once it's out in the second half of 2024...

From gallery of W Eric Martin
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Thu Mar 14, 2024 7:00 am
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Darth Maul, Captain Phasma, and War of the Ancients

W. Eric Martin
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North Carolina
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Osprey Games — publisher of Undaunted, Bolt Action, and General Orders: World War II — has announced a new conflict game for release in Q4 2024: Battalion: War of the Ancients. Here's an overview:
Quote:
Take charge of the formidable Roman legions and their allies. Command the powerful crossbowmen of the Han dynasty as they traverse unfamiliar deserts. Steer the renowned Greco-Bactrian cavalry, and fight for every oasis. Direct Hannibal's diverse array of mercenaries, elephants, and the Sacred Band of Carthage.

Board Game: Battalion: War of the Ancients

To lead is to walk the tightrope. Choose a faction, consider its ranks, assemble them into units, and as they fight, carefully balance their orders and sustain your forces in the field. The unique traits of each rank tile will make your units stronger, but combine too many and your units will become unwieldy.

Battalion: War of the Ancients is an accessible two or four-player game. Command a wide range of units from four playable historical factions, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Employ faction-specific tactics cards to outmaneuver your opponents. Compose your unique forces with rigor. Judge the tempo of battle with precision. Seize victory for your people!
This game is designed by Paolo Mori and Francesco Sirocchi, and from the description it seems reminiscent of their Pocket Battles game line from Z-Man Games, which was released from 2009 to 2014.

Board Game: Pocket Battles: Celts vs. Romans
Board Game: Pocket Battles: Elves vs. Orcs
Board Game: Pocket Battles: Macedonians vs. Persians
Board Game: Pocket Battles: Confederacy vs Union

• To follow up a post from January 2024, Ravensburger has now revealed the Star Wars: Villainous expandalone title that it hinted at previously, with Revenge at Last featuring Darth Maul and Captain Phasma as the two new villains that you can embody.

Star Wars Villainous: Revenge at Last is due out in July 2024, and while Ravensburger didn't announce any details of their objectives, I'm sure both characters start by climbing out of a pit.

Board Game: Star Wars Villainous: Revenge at Last
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Wed Mar 13, 2024 3:00 pm
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Game Previews from GAMA Expo 2024: Rivages, Château Combo, Temple Code, and Ink It!

W. Eric Martin
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Board Game: Rivages
At GAMA Expo 2024, I took tons of pics and notes, but I also got to play several games as well, so let me give you first impressions of a quartet of French games due out in 2024 that will likely end up seeing print from other publishers as well. Thanks to Matthieu Bonin for introducing these titles to me!

• We'll start with Joachim Thôme's Rivages ("Shores"), which I first wrote about in January 2024. This May 2024 release from Catch Up Games is a draft-and-write game. Yes, the pool of X-and-write games is expanding with this one featuring some mildly interactive elements.

Each player starts the game with a laminated island card, one of 25 in the game, and with two laminated hand cards. On a turn, choose one of the top unmarked symbol rows on one of your hand cards, then use those symbols to mark matching spaces on your island.

To start, you choose one of the two ship icons on the island, then mark hexes adjacent to this ship or already marked spaces. For each landscape symbol on a hand card, you can mark an available matching landscape hex on your island. White spaces can be marked by "spending" any landscape symbol on a hand card, then you get the bonus on that space: a scroll (worth 1 point), a spyglass (which lets you mark any available space immediately), a statue (which lets you mark an available space on a separate bonus board), a blue bag (which allows you to draw a bonus tile from a bag that you can spend when you wish), a gold symbol (as at the top right of the island card below), or other stuff.

Board Game: Rivages

Why are you doing all of this? To score points, of course. Each island card has scoring conditions printed on it. On the card above, the first brown area I cross off completely earns me one scroll, a.k.a., 1 point; the second brown area filled will earn me 2 points. Crossing all four gold symbols earned me 3 points, and each had a different landscape under it, which meant I spent a few turns to mark it.

After each player has chosen a symbol row, marked it, and crossed off the appropriate spaces on their island, they pass the hand cards left, then choose a top unmarked row on one of the cards they receive and keep repeating this process. If you receive a hand card that has been marked through completely, discard it and draw a new one from the deck. When you get to a certain point in the deck, the endgame is triggered.

Board Game: Rivages

Whenever you mark the second ship on an island — which you can choose to do on any turn without needing to X a path from the first ship — at the end of that turn, you draw a new island card, then start marking that island on the next turn. Having a bonus blue bag that lets you mark all of a brown area, but the brown areas don't score anything on your current island? Maybe you want to seek new land! Playing in a two-player game with no desert symbols on the cards you're passing — and you really need desert to score — head to a new island!

Rivages feels akin to Phil Walker-Harding's Silver & Gold in how you have intermediate goals, then skip to a new card, but in this design you can island hop more frequently to focus on what you want or make the most of what's available — and the game includes a bonus for whoever visits the most islands, giving you extra incentive to be flighty.

Board Game: Château Combo
Board Game: Faraway
Faraway has proved to be a big hit for Catch Up Games, winning a 2024 As d'Or among other things, and the publisher has a game with a similar feel coming in September 2024: Château Combo from the design team of Grégory Grard and Mathieu Roussel.

The game lasts nine turns, with each player drafting a card each turn to build a 3x3 grid. Players start with two keys and some money, with three cards revealed from each of the gold and silver decks. An administrator stands at the end of one of the card rows.

From gallery of W Eric Martin

On a turn, you spend money equal to the cost of one of the three cards in the administrator's row, then add this card to your grid. Most cards have an effect when they enter play, earning you money or keys based on what you already have in your grid, although some cards have an ongoing effect, such as reducing the price of cards you acquire in the future. Cards have 1-2 symbols on them, with six symbols in the game (military, clergy, etc.) All cards have an endgame scoring condition at the bottom of them, and some cards have a small arrow on them to indicate that the administrator changes rows when you choose this card.

If you wish, you can spend keys at the start of your turn to discard and replace the three cards in the administrator's row or move the administrator to the other row. Alternatively, you can take the top card of the deck and place it face down in your grid, earning five coins and two keys immediately, while giving up any other benefits of that card...although you might have a card in play that earns you points for having a face-down card, just as I did.

From gallery of W Eric Martin

Château Combo plays in 20-30 minutes, is for 2-5 players, and feels like a prime example of what I saw a lot of at GAMA Expo 2024: quick-playing, puzzle-style games with just enough interaction to make you care about everyone else at the table, while also allowing you to just keep your head down and do your own thing should you wish.

Board Game: Temple Code
• Following the 2022 release of Turing Machine, designer Yoann Levet is suddenly popping up everywhere with deduction games, as with Temple Code, a game for 1-4 players that Bankiiiz Editions will release in May 2024.

The main part of the game is a deck of cards that each feature three different symbols in a row from a set of seven symbols. Each player starts with one card in a stand facing away from them, and your goal is to deduce which symbols you have in which order on your hidden card.

At the start of a round, two cards are dealt face up in front of each person. The first player chooses a card in front of someone else, then everyone else does the same. You then take your chosen card and hold it directly above the card that you're trying to guess, seeing something like this:

Board Game: Temple Code

Each triangle means that the card you chose has a symbol in common with your hidden card, but that symbol is not in the correct position. Each circle indicates a correct symbol in the correct position. Which symbols in which positions? That's something you need to figure out by getting clues from multiple cards.

Whenever you wish, you can guess what's on your hidden card. If you guess correctly, you receive a half coin and get a new card to guess; guess two cards correctly, and you win the game. Guess incorrectly, however, and you'll be given a new card to guess, wiping out whatever knowledge you had previously.

Board Game: Temple Code

The comparison with Mastermind is obvious, given the nature of the clues you receive about your hidden code, but Temple Code is competitive, with you racing to be the first to guess two cards correctly. If you want to guess without being absolutely sure, go ahead! Aside from the direct clues, however, you can possibly get hints of what's on your hidden card by the card that people first choose from in front of you. Normally you can't choose a card in front of you, but if that's the only choice available, then you must take it — and if possible, people wouldn't want to leave a card that gives you two clues.

Board Game: Ink It!
Ink It! from Romain Clément, Kevin Gauvin, and Bankiiiz Editions is one of several "interpret the clue" games I saw or played at GAMA Expo 2024.

In each of five rounds, one or more players take the role of captain (depending on the player count), then everyone else draws a word card from the deck, then creates an image representing this word using the included stamps, with the circle always being red, the triangle green, the square blue, and the rectangle yellow. You can use as many stamps as six minus the round number, so five stamps in round one, four in round two, etc. Depending on the player count, someone might need to create an image for multiple words.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Matthieu attempts to decipher my images

The captain then takes all of the word cards, adding some from the deck when playing with 2-3 people, then tries to associate each image with the correct word. If the captain gets them all correct, great! If not, note any errors — and if the number of errors in the game ever reaches the number of players, you all lose. If you make it all the way through round five when people attempt to convey an image with a single stamp, then the team wins.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Not the official paper included in the box

You can't "paint" with the stamps by smearing them across a page, but you're open to using them in other ways, such as stamping overlapping images or going off the edge of the paper. It's interesting to explore how much you can communicate with only one or two stamps based solely on positioning on the paper. Of course you don't have to communicate much more than "not any of those other words", but unless you're part of a two- or three-player game, you don't know what anyone else is making, so you're ignorant of what that round's possible "conversation" will be.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Down to a single stamp — what am I saying here?
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Wed Mar 13, 2024 7:00 am
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Game Preview: Compile, or "¡AI, Caramba!"

W. Eric Martin
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Board Game: Compile
Many of the upcoming games I saw at GAMA Expo 2024 were quick-playing designs with a US$20-25 price point. Larger games were present as well, but the general trend among publishers seemed to be toward smaller, cheaper boxes to fit a market of buyers that has overloaded its shelves...but surely they have room for one or two card games, yes?

Compile, a two-player card game from Michael Yang that Greater Than Games will demo at PAX East and debut at Gen Con 2024, is a prime example of this trend, with this design also exhibiting the current tendency to include a variable set-up that promises endless replayability thanks to ten septegijillion combinations of factions. Think of what might result from Smash Up and Riftforce canoodling, and you'll know what to expect.

The premise of the game is that you are artificial intelligences pitting your digital brains against one another to determine the top bot. To set up, choose six of the twelve protocols included in the game. Each protocol consists of a small deck of cards and an identifier card — light, plague, gravity, etc. — that mentions the playstyle of that protocol; spirit, for example, is "flip, shift, draw". One player chooses a protocol, then the next player chooses two, then the first player chooses two of the remaining three, giving each player three protocols. To win, you must compile your protocols first. Let's learn how...

Lay out your three protocol cards in a row facing your opponent's protocols, then shuffle your cards to form a deck, drawing five cards as a starting hand. Each card lists its related protocol and a numerical strength that's zero or higher; additionally, it has three fields that might feature, from top to bottom, an ongoing ability, a comes-into-play effect, and another type of ability.

On a turn, either you ditch as many cards as you wish from your hand, then refill your hand to five cards, or you play a card into its matching protocol area. When you do this, you stack this card on any others in this protocol so that only the top ongoing ability field is visible, then carry out the comes-into-play effect, if any.

If the total strength in this protocol is at least 10, you announce that you're compiling this protocol next turn. If the opponent doesn't drop your strength below 10, on your next turn, you discard all cards in this protocol as well as all of the opponent's cards in the facing protocol, then flip the protocol to the "compiled" side. You can continue to play cards to this protocol on future turns, but you can't compile it again, so you're only getting the effects of those cards...which might still be enough of a reason to play them.

Board Game: Compile
Mock-up cards and packaging at GAMA Expo 2024

Card effects do all the things you might expect — draw cards, move cards from one row to another, force the opponent to discard, force you to discard (when you play something really good) — along with other things that might surprise you, like swapping protocols, which might trigger a "compile check" that your opponent could not anticipate, or flipping cards face down or face up again. You can see a face-down card at the middle left of the image above; it has a strength of 2 and no effects, but if you flip it face up, its comes-into-play effect triggers again, and as in other games of this type, you want to abuse card powers as much as possible.

Losing all of your played cards on a protocol can be a devastating setback, so you have to decide whether to spread your attacks evenly or push in just one or two protocols, although you also must make do with what the deck gives you. Ideally, you can lay a trap so that your opponent commits, then you swoop in to compile and trash their work, and I'm sure that will happen plenty of times until you both have experience with the various factions and know what tricks might lie in hand.

As you might expect, Michael Yang already has expansions in the works, probably standalone boxes so that each item can be sold on its own. Maybe in the future we can look forward to Execute, Assemble, and Collate...

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Mock-up 3D packaging in which the designer's name is hidden under the protruding box. This will change prior to production.
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Tue Mar 12, 2024 3:00 pm
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Designer Diary: Salton Sea

David Bernal
Spain
Guadalajara
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Board Game: Salton Sea
What is now Salton Sea started after the end of the pandemic lockdown. I imagine that being stuck at home for a few months without much to do makes your head generate disjointed ideas waiting for the spark that joins all the pieces of the puzzle.

At the beginning of 2020, I came up with the main mechanisms of the game: Players would have dual-use cards, and on one side would be the actions of the game, while on the other were resources to be spent. In this way, players would face a dilemma when making decisions.

With that premise, I started looking for themes that would help me with the game's engine. I looked for 20th-century events that I might find interesting as I like realistic themes as opposed to more fictional or parallel universe themes.

After discarding a few themes, I happened to read about the beginnings of oil exploitation in the United States, which seemed an interesting topic. I thought that practically everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, has a slight idea of how an extraction process of this type works. It seemed that actions could be quite intuitive, and I thought that a game could be there, although at this point, I still didn't know whether it would go ahead...or stay in the drawer with my other prototypes.

Once I had defined the main mechanisms and chosen the theme, I had to implement the actions to be performed in the game. To do this, it is very helpful to have a theme since that basis establishes what we are going to do during the game. The initial actions were things such as extracting oil, drilling, refining, and selling the final product.

Another important issue that arises for me early in the design process is choosing the components with which I will be working. Only cards? Will I need personal boards? How much wood and die-cut elements will I use? A priori, I find it useful to stick to just a few components. Opening the possibilities and adding more components is easy; what's complex is reducing a game, so I prefer to start with the minimum possible components, which can be easily expanded in the future if necessary.

Considering all these parameters, the first decisions I took during the planning process were to work mainly with cards, the common and personal playing areas, and some wooden pieces.

Board Game Designer: David Bernal

I did the first playtesting sessions with my wife. I don't usually playtest with her, but given the circumstances, it wasn't the right time to get together with my usual gaming group, and I hadn't yet assimilated the use of TTS as a gaming platform.

From those first tests, I got an important breakthrough for the game. When players earned money, my first idea was that it wouldn't go directly to hand, but instead you had to wait until the end of the round to get those benefits — but regardless of how many times I told my wife, she always took the money she earned straight away, so she introduced the first major change. The design would no longer be a deck-management system, but a much more flexible hand management system.

Progressively, TTS was introduced into our lives, and many groups of people appeared willing to exploit this "new" way of playing the game, so the evolution of the game was much faster than I had thought it would be. After many games, you begin to understand the things the game "requires". These online playtesting sessions helped me understand that the game required personal boards from which to manage actions instead of limiting everything to a hand of cards.

In addition, once I added a board that could be used for many other things, the game began to grow around this board. I added stores, extraction areas, research areas — everything grew around the personal board, but a major change was still missing: the inclusion of worker meeples. Up to that moment, everything was done with cards. There were options to get neutral workers, but everything changed when I incorporated workers that would serve to indicate how many actions you could perform per turn, besides blocking personal spaces.

Board Game Designer: David Bernal

At this point, the game improved greatly, and I started to expand my playtesting circles. The game worked. The management level was quite demanding, but I noticed that it fell a little short.

Then came another big breakthrough in the game: I implemented a market on a common board, which allowed me to make the game grow in other ways.

Board Game Designer: David Bernal

A major headache came when I had to make the new elements fit with the existing ones. I had to undo and redo the game many times, tweaking the numbers, combinations, and other construction processes so that everything made sense. There were moments during this phase when I wanted to throw in the towel and leave the game in a drawer.

I must thank once and a thousand times the closest players (Kor, Moon, Heras, Ferran...) for the immense support I received from them, which encouraged me not to quit. They probably had more faith in me than I had in myself.

Board Game Designer: David Bernal

In March 2022, during the Protos y Tipos gaming event organized by the Ludo Association, I showed the game to different publishers. I had brought three physical prototypes, and all three were taken by different publishers to be evaluated. Throughout the event, I had a good feeling and left convinced that I finally had something good enough.

At the same time, I submitted the game to a prototype contest organized by the podcast Última Ronda. It passed on to the first rounds of the contest...then I had to withdraw the design from the contest when a publisher became interested in it. Unfortunately, eventually the publisher was unable to take charge of the game, so it was free again.

That was when David Esbrí from Devir contacted me to say that he was interested in the game had seen at Protos y Tipos and that he wanted to play it again. Finally, Devir decided to publish the game. At that time, the game was mostly finished, but they suggested a new theme as the oil extraction theme had been used in many games, and they needed something different, a modern-day theme with a more ecological feeling.

Since the mechanisms were already well-defined, it wasn't easy to look for a theme that would fit all the requirements. Among all the themes we thought about, the one we felt would be the best fit was that of lithium extraction thanks to its use in electric car batteries.

Then by chance, I came across some information about a special case in California, specifically in the Salton Sea. The information I gathered referred to the extraction of hot brine, which allowed the extractors to take advantage of the dissolved lithium and the steam generated by the temperature of the extraction, resulting in the generation of geothermal energy. We understood that this positive aspect, within all the setbacks that the place has suffered, could be a story worth telling, so finally we decided to choose this theme.

And finally, now in 2024, after many hours of testing, modifications, adjustments, and researching for interesting themes, we can say that the game is ready to be enjoyed by all players.

David Bernal

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Salton Sea on display at GAMA Expo 2024
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Tue Mar 12, 2024 7:00 am
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