News Bits: 8/20/2012

For those of us who had to live vicariously through GenCon attendees, this past week was rough. Not only did we have to live through the bragging tweets of "Look what I got!"—inevitably followed up by the news that "THIS GAME IS SOLD OUT FOREVER"—we had to live through the long periods of radio silence as people selfishly played games instead of tweeting about them. Oh well. For some GenCon recaps, here are some various sources:

• Fantasy Flight released a video update for each day of the con (1, 2, 3, 4).
• Board Game Geek News points to some first- and secondhand sources for GenCon updates.
• Dice Hate Me has a pictorial overview of his time at GenCon.
• Finally, Matt Carlson of The Opinionated Gamers has a pretty comprehensive overview, as does Dale Yu.

Stay tuned as I'm sure our own @Futurewolfie reports on his own (condensed) time at the con.


"Fremde Federn" Features Photos
Friedemann Friese's new game Fremde Federn (Rio Grande's English name is "Copy Cat"), a mash-up of mechanics from the top ten games on Board Game Geek, is set to debut at Essen. This week Friese released the first images of the starting deck of cards for the game (and yes, these are intentionally related to the starting deck in Dominion). Look closely at the hood ornament on each of the different cards. That's awesome attention to detail!

Dominion App Fails to Launch
After much initial fanfare and buzz about Goko, a new online game mediator that utilizes HTML5 to allow play across platforms, and its app implementation of Dominion, Goko has pulled its games back to beta after several launch-day failures. Interested people may apply to test in beta, but my faith has been shaken, especially after accusations of security threats (see long comment thread here). Still, I'm hopeful that this can be resolved, and the possibility of cross-platform gaming seems worth the wait...if it can be made to work. (See full coverage of this story here.)

Pandemic Infects Mass Market
Z-Man Games announced that Toys R Us will begin carrying Matt Leacock's cooperative game Pandemic starting in September. Granted, customers will have to sift through legions of Monopoly repackages to get to it, but still: progress. Pandemic has always struck me as a game with mass appeal, so I'm excited to see it take root in the mass market.

Kickstarters of Note
Apparently August is the month for awesome Kickstarters. There are lots of games I'm interested in (and I didn't have to pad the list!).

• The Great Heartland Hauling Co.: This one's still truckin' toward its stretch goals. $25
• Gauntlet of Fools: A new Donald X. Vaccarino game about great boasts. It's already funded. I love the idea of this game, even if I doubt I'll back it. $28.
• The Resistance: Avalon: This Arthurian retheme of The Resistance has already funded almost three times over. The stretch goals are a little lame, but the publisher has assured the public that there is no possible way to make the game more awesome than it already is. I'm sure this is true. $20 gets you the game.
• Unexploded Cow: One of the games that brought me into the hobby, this new edition looks fantastic. $25.
• Consequential: A board game with new content continually released that furthers the story. Looks like a very interesting concept. A bit pricey at $60.
• I'm the Boss: The Card Game: Continuing Sid Sackson rereleases, Gryphon Games has a card game version of the popular negotiation board game on Twitter, based on Sackson's game notebooks. $25.

Unrelated Awesomeness of the Week
Ever wondered what The Dark Knight Rises would look like if it featured the cast of The Lion King? Wonder no longer!