In this Box Breaking Matt takes a look at Templar from Queen Games. Templar is a board game that focuses on hiding treasure from the king.
My first box breaking on a Queen Games Product – how awesome! I hope to have a written review up shortly after I return from Gen Con
Alien Uprising: X-14 Expansion
$14.99 SRP
The X-14 Expansion introduces a new character to the Crew known as X-14. She is a headstrong android who’s been programmed to help her shipmates any way she can. Also included is a new Character Sheet as well as 11 personal Crewman cards and a custom sculpt of X-14 herself. Tighten up your nuts and bolts!
With only two days left I’m super anxious, I want to give out prizes, see friends, make new ones, and play some games. In fact I’ll be running an event that materialized from my kickstarter, a scavenger hunt. While the hunt is largely for the backers there are a couple of ways others can join. The first is to be asked by one of the backers to play. The other is for you to find me on Friday and mention this article, I have three slots that I can award out.
All players will receive a set of cards that have instructions on the back. Most of these involve exploring the exhibit hall to play a game demo at particular booth. Since it’s a scavenger hunt there are a few quests like find your favorite cosplay and get a picture with them.
When the exhibit hall closes all players will meet near the stage for a drawing. I have a quite a few prizes to give away like Mage Wars core set, A looney labs bundle, The Amega Weapon, and more.
Alien Uprising: Zothren Expansion
$34.99 SRP
BUGS! Everywhere! The Crew has encountered more trouble as they travel through Space. Can you and your Crew take on more Zothrens and survive the Alien Uprising?
Contains:
23 finely sculpted Zothren aliens: -2 Archers
-9 Slashers -2 Scavengers
-2 Tunnelers -2 Champions
-2 Brutes -2 Leaders
-2 Scouts 1 brand new scenario and Wound tokens!
Numenera: Tech
nology Compendium
$39.99 SRP
The namesake of the entire game line, the “numenera” are artifacts, oddities, and little bits of almost magic-like technology left to the Ninth World by a billion years of previous civilizations. Now the Ninth World’s foremost expert, the redoubtable (though perhaps not entirely sane) Sir Arthour, brings nearly 1,000 new items to the Numenera gaming table!
The Technology Compendium contains 400 new cyphers, 225 new artifacts, and 300 new oddities. For the players, it introduces a new race: the artificial intelligence. And it includes extensive GM advice on integrating incredibly advanced technologies into your game.
With only three days left I have way too much to do. The excitement is building.
Today I’d like to focus on RPG’s that I’m looking forward to; Numenera and Mindjamer.
The internet has been buzzing about Monte Cook’s Numenera well since before the kickstarter. The world he has created must truly be phenomenal. It features an amazing setting, where a future earth is a playground of past technology. The humans use these artifacts to achieve all kinds of weird. Numenera uses a fast play character system that allows players to enter the story more quickly than other games.
Mindjamer is another Science fiction RPG that looks more than promising. Set in the far future this game uses the Fate Core System. Like Numenera it is a story focused game. But since it is a complet rules set it does include some really cool rules sets, like starship construction.
If you’re a science fiction role player looking for a new experiences these two worlds should fill your cup.
Tomorrow I might rest, but I look forward to writing you again.
Alien Uprising
$69.99 SRP
Tensions have been high with the alien “bug” races of the galaxy – the Zothren – and your ship has crash landed on the planet Hive IV, one of the more renegade “bug” planets. You quickly set up perimeter force fields and begin surveying the surrounding terrain for debris from your ship, only to find it scattered everywhere. Then you see them – at first only a few “bug” scouts, but then the numbers begin to increase all around you: archers, slashers, and even the monstrous brutes. This is more than a scouting party; this is a war party! They begin to attack the shields as the crew starts to retrieve debris. The SOS has been sent and a ship in the sector has responded, but can it get to you before the “bugs” overwhelm your crew? Can you repair parts of the ship and use it as a defense? Can you repair the hull and fire up the engine to lift off? It’s all in the hands of the crew – your hands.
In Alien Uprising, the player crew must either hold off the Zothren attacks until the rescue ship arrives, or repair the ship and lift off from the hostile planet before being destroyed. To achieve either of these goals, the crew must work together, using their unique skills and chosen actions to perform a number of tasks, defend themselves, and retrieve and repair equipment and the ship.
To establish the actions available each turn, the first player rolls custom dice, then each player chooses an action for the turn, starting with the first player. The available actions include combat, engineering, reload/recharge first aid, scout, and wild; the dice also have an alien icon that shows the speed of the enemy while limiting the actions that players have available to them. Players also have unique character skills, and the game can be set to higher levels of difficulty for more experienced players.
1-5 players
Ages 14+
90-120 minute play time
THE STRANGE Player’s Guide
$19.99 SRP
This will be a 96-page softcover book that will give a brief introduction to the setting and provide information needed for character creation. GMs can give this to their players to introduce them to the game. It’s also really handy at character creation time, or any time it’s useful to have another copy of the most important rules at your gaming table.
Sorry I didn’t post Yesterday, I had a a ton of computer problems.
Anyway, with only four days left I was reminiscing about conventions I had been to in the past. one of the things that came to my mind was Mech Pods
These massive cockpits Are rolled off the trucks and made ready for players to ensue all kinds of Battletech carnage. Virtual World Entertainment has done a great job with the programming for all metal mashing mayhem. Any one can easily climb in and get lost piloting an Atlas. The only problem I have is I haven’t hear anything about the this year.
THE STRANGE Core Book Hardcover
$59.99 SRP
Beneath the orbits and atoms of our natural universe lies a network of dark energy. Those who have learned to access and navigate this chaotic sea have discovered an almost endless set of “recursions” in the shoals of our Earth: Worlds with their own laws of reality, reflected from human experience or imagination, given form in the swirling Chaosphere of the Strange. Worlds teeming with life, with discovery, with incredible treasures, and with sudden death.
Worlds sometimes jealous of our own.
The secret plunder of these worlds draws the brave, the daring, and the unscrupulous – and it draws dangerous enemies from these recursions back to our Earth.
And slowly but inexorably, it draws the attention of beings from beyond Earth’s shoals – beings of unfathomable power and evil from the unknown reaches of. . .
The Strange is a game that crosses multiple worlds, called recursions, which player characters can explore and defend. In The Strange, your characters change with each world they travel to, taking on new aspects suited to that recursion’s unique laws and structures. Eventually, as characters progress, they might even gain the ability to create a recursion of their own!
This will be a full-color hardcover coming in at 416 pages. It will be lavishly illustrated and organized, referenced, and annotated, very much on the model of Numenera. The goal is to make it a breeze and a joy to run this game, and–if you get the print version – something beautiful that game lovers will want to keep on your coffee table in between games.
