Let’s start by talking about some Kickstarters that I will have coming in. I’m counting reprints/second editions with this, so the first one is:

Middara – This game rivals Gloomhaven in terms of size and is bigger in terms of story. There has been so much put into it, and the first kickstarter took forever to fulfill. However, I’m just backing what came out in that Kickstarter so I expect to get mine next year, and projected date places it the middle of next year. In Middara, you are in an anime-esque world and fighting through a massive story with lots of different dungeons and interactions. You make decisions that might change up things in the future, and you upgrade your characters with interesting skills and weapons. This game looks amazing, when I’ll play it, who knows, but I’m excited for it.

Village Attacks – Another reprint, I played it at GenCon last year, got a scenario and a few bits for it, found out that it was impossible to find, but then they kickstarted an expansion for it, which I backed so I could use my GenCon scenario. In this game, it’s tower defense, but you’re the bad guys who are keeping those pesky villagers with their torches and pitchforks from running you at of your house. It’s fully cooperative which I like, and the theme is just a lot of fun. I’m excited for this one to get it back to the table and properly deal with those villagers again. The scenarios are a lot of fun, and depending on what villagers come out when, the game will feel different playing the same scenario.

Dice Throne Adventures – I’ve talked about how much I like Dice Throne. This Yahtzee/King of Tokyo style game where you are fighting a character against another character. You’re part of a massive tournament that the evil emperor has set-up that isn’t at all like Mortal Kombat or anything like that. But in Dice Throne Adventures, you are fighting your way through the evil emperors lands, leveling up your characters, and playing cooperative against the game with whatever characters you want from Season One or Two of Dice Throne. It sounds like a campaign dungeon crawl, and while it does have some of that feel, it’s shorter in terms of campaign so you can get through it and play again without the time commitment like you need for bigger dungeon crawls.

Shadows of Kilforth – I blame Rolling Solo Youtube Channel for getting me into this game, the original, Gloom of Killforth is a one shot adventure game where you are in a world where things are going poorly and you as an adventurer are leveling up, exploring locations, fighting monsters, hoping to get strong enough to be able to take down whatever monster is blighting the land. The original game had a fantasy feel, and while this maintains the fantasy, it also has an eastern feel to it as well, which is cool. This game is also a smaller footprint game as you’re not setting up massive dungeons and needing a million tiles to play it.

Those are ones that I’ve kickstarted already that I’m really excited for. There are two that I know I want to kickstart in 2020, so let’s talk about those.

Frosthaven – Sequel to my #1 game of all time, no brainer I want this. I expect to get it sometime in 2021, but it kickstarts in March of 2020, so I’ll have paid for it then. It builds off of Gloomhaven and the Forgotten Circle expansion to tell you a whole new story set in the same world. But unlike in Gloomhaven where you start out of a set city, in Frosthaven, it adds in some city building and you have to worry about defending the town as well as going out on adventures. The out of the box characters seem a bit more challenging but also seem amazing to play. I’m curious to see how this game differs from Gloomhaven, but I hope it keeps a ton of the same feel.

ISS-Vanguard – A story game from Awaken Realms, sign me up. I have Tainted Grail that I’m dying to play (I’m going to try and play it over my time off around Christmas), but ISS-Vanguard is supposed to be more of an open world sort of game (or open worlds since you’re in space). You can go to different planets in different orders and experience the story that way. The art work that came in the Tainted Grail surprise box is amazing and I really love the style. I’m going to be curious to see how an open world game with a story comes together, but I like the idea of a non-fantasy big story exploration game.

Roll Player Adventure – Now, I don’t like the base game, but I got to play an early prototype of this at GenCon, and this is very different than a game where you’re rolling up your character like Roll Player is. In this, it’s a campaign game, but as compared to some games with campaigns, like from Awaken Realms or Gloomhaven, it isn’t nearly as heavy. The story is a little bit sillier, but the mechanics are fun. Can you manipulate the dice to be able to get through all the story and encounters that you run across. The mechanics were cool, and the game at GenCon, even in an early form, was a ton of fun. Helped that I might have been a power hungry sorcerer.

And, finally, and these aren’t last or least, but there are a few games that are coming out in other ways that I’m definitely interested in. Might just be normal publisher, but also might be kickstarter, I haven’t researched enough.

Deranged – Wait, you’re saying, it doesn’t say 2020, but for it coming to the US, it’s coming in 2020. I played this at GenCon and it was amazing. The game play was smart and simple, the world building of the game was really cool. While it’s not story driven, there is a lot going on, and the card play is really really fun in the game. I like the light horror theming as you’re trying to avoid monsters, get rid of your curses and not become deranged. But it’s very possible that you will or that you’ll die, and then you’ll need to get rid of more curses. It seems like a cooperative game where you’re trying to escape this town with no curses, but it’s competitive, and only one person can escape, so if someone gets too close, time to get kill them and give them another curse. Can someone win in all that fighting, who knows.

Time of Legends: Destinies – I almost kickstarted this game, then I decided I wanted Oathsworn instead. But this one seems really interesting. Each character has secrets that they are trying to solve as well as solve the story that is happening in this game that is set in the same world as Time of Legends: Joan of Arc. But in this one they combined with Lucky Duck games that did Chronicles of Crime, so there’s app integration. And there is a scenario builder that people can use to create more, since out of the box it seemed to come only with a few. For me, I really want to try this one next year, and hopefully if I can make it to GenCon it’ll be there for demoing.

Pandemic Legacy Season 3 – Some of my best gaming experiences have been playing through the first two season. I’m so excited for the 3rd season and last season. I don’t know anything about the game, I just know that I want it and I’m going to be ready to play it the second that I get it. No official release date yet for it, but it sounds like it should be a 2020 release and I’m guessing first half of 2020. That’s about it that I know about it, but it’s an instant buy for me.

There’s so many games coming out and with my proclivity for campaign games, I need to get cracking on the ones that I already have. I need to figure out a more consistent time to play them on Malts and Meeples, but we’ll talk about that in a future article about New Years Nerdsolutions.

What games are you looking forward to, is there a game coming out or to kickstarter that you just need to play?

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So, is there a point where a board game isn’t a board game? And do you qualify something like Onirim, Onitama, Ascension, and other games that can be played fully digitally to be board games in that form?

This is a question that a lot of board gamers have been grappling with. There are those who really enjoy breadth of what can be added to gaming. There are those who like there fact that it helps with book keeping. There are those who don’t like it, because they don’t want technology around when they game. There are those who don’t like it because they want their board games to be only board, cards, and dice.

I think that I can see both sides of the argument with this. Now, I will say, personally I enjoy when games have apps integrated into them. But I can also understand not having technology at the table. It’s nice, when playing Gloomhaven, to be able to sit down and just play without checking a phone much or at all for a couple of hours. Just because some games have an app doesn’t mean that all of them do, so there’s always going to be the option to play games without an app.

Now, I can understand that with a game like Journeys in Middle Earth, where the app helps out a lot with the game play and making things run smoother. In some ways, you don’t really need to set it up on the table because of how much of the heavy lifting the app does. So, that leans into the app a lot, and it doesn’t offer a way to play without the app. Games like Descent 2nd Edition and Star Wars: Imperial Assault both can be played with an app, almost to the level that you could Journeys in Middle Earth, but they also allow for options where there doesn’t need to be an app. So is that pushing it too far away form a board game, or is, because Lord of the Rings is a theme that a lot of people enjoy, something that bugs the people who want board games without apps, because they can’t get that game with that theme like they’d want?

In some ways, I think because you can’t get a handful of games, with whatever themes they might have on them, per year, that’s not that much of a reason to be up on arms about it. There are thousands of games that come out each year, and the vast majority of them don’t have an app with them. Now, a number of the ones that are talked about a ton, do end up having an app with them or something along those lines, because they are something new and different. But being new and different doesn’t make them the only games that are worth it out there, as we’ve seen with some of the hottest games this year being Wingspan and Tapestry, in terms of hype, which don’t have an app with them.

So, I personally think, whether you fall on the side of app or no technology, you are going to have plenty of games to play. For that reason, I don’t think there’s much of a reason to complain when game does come out with an app.

That brings me to the second part, though, does playing game like Onitama or Onirim on your phone count as playing a board game? Or a larger game like Small World or Scythe, are those board games still or when you are playing them on your tablet or phone, does that change it up so that it’s not a true board game experience.

Here, I actually am going to go with saying that they aren’t playing the board game. Though, it is close. Onirim is the one that makes this tricky. The reason it’s tricky is that Onirim is a solo game experience, when I think about the others, you lose the face to face, sitting around the same table aspect of the board game experience. With Onirim, you never have that experience. So, I’m going to say, my reason for saying they aren’t truly a board game experience is because you aren’t getting the tactile experience that you do with a board game. You aren’t flipping the cards and shuffling in Onirim, which for a lot is really nice, but you lose that tactile experience.

This really then does take us into Teburu. I got to barely see it through a window at GenCon, but it was interesting to see live as well as see the video for it. It’s an interesting thing, because while most games with apps still have you do most things, Teburu is going to allow the games to track even more things. In Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition, you track where the monsters and you are on the board, the same with fire, the game only cares that there are still monsters, investigators, and fire on the board. So you’re still involved with that, and you still track when hit a monster or number of successes for a given roll. In Teburu, whatever game you are playing on the system, you’ll be able to roll the dice and it’ll automatically calculate your successes or possibly prompt you to see if you want to reroll something or use an item or something along those lines to improve your roll.

So, does that take it away from being a board game? If we’re going by my tactile board gaming experience, it seems like it wouldn’t because you are still rolling dice and moving pieces on the board. But it does feel a whole lot closer to being a video game when it’s doing all the house keeping. Journeys in Middle Earth definitely falls into the same issue, while you still have to enter successes, there are definitely things that feel like you don’t need to set-up the board, you can just play the game in the system, or if not fully doing that, be able to almost do that. In think that Teburu is going to be an interesting enhancement to board gaming. It makes we wonder what they’ll be able to use it for, and if I were to ever get it, if it would still feel like a board game experience.

Overall, I think that technology in board games is interesting. I don’t think that it’s needed for a great gaming experience, though. And there are so many games out there, that I’m always going to have the option to play a board game without the use of an app. I’m excited and curious to see how technology will be used in the future, with story driven games like Time of Legends: Destinies or Chronicles or Crime where they are offering content creation tools since the story is contained in an app, to Star Wars: Imperial Assault that allows you to do a cooperative dungeon crawl without as much busy work. There are a lot of fun things out there, and even playing games like Onirim and Onitama as an app can be fun, because it gives you a chance to try it before you buy it.

What do you think about board games having apps or needing apps to play them? Do you want them to only be cardboard, dice, and cards? What is your favorite game that integrates an app?

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Join me as I look at Kickstarter and see what games I’ve saved and am or was considering Kickstarting.

Dice & Ink: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…

Aeon Trespass: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…

Up Your Game: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/… Isofarian Guard: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…

Detective City of Angels: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…

Monster Cards: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…

Time of Legends: Destinies https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…

Godspeed: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…

Wicked Foundations: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…

Which one of these games catches your fancy? Are there any that I missed in September that I really should have checked out?

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Bottoms up!