I had lots of fun looking at HABA’s new games last night. These will be released at the Essen game fair this year, and should be available at your local Dragon’s Lair Comics and Fantasy® this coming Fall. The first was a stand-alone expansion to the Dragon’s Breath game of removing stacked rings and spilling gemstones. This expansion can be used to add additional players to the Dragon’s Breath game, but also be a stand-alone game. The German name is Funkelschatz das Drachen-Ei which, I’m told, roughly translates to “Dragonsbreath: the Dragon Egg.” In the stand-alone part of the game, you stack up three rings, fill them with plastic gemstones, and place a dragon’s egg at the top. One player is the dragon mom, and she lifts the first ring, spilling some of the gemstones (and hopefully not the egg). The other players draw three cards, and each card has three color gemstones indicated on it. If the player gathers all the indicated gemstones, they score the points on the card. The mommy dragon will also draw gemstones, and so long as the egg hasn’t spilled, she can draw two. Once all the rings are removed and all the spilled gemstones gathered, the next player clockwise is the new dragon mommy and play begins again. Once everyone has had the chance to be the dragon-mom, you total up the points of completed cards to see who wins.
While that game was fun, Cloaked Cats really tickled my fancy. In this deductive guessing-game, each player draws three cat attribute cards. These could be color or posture, stripes or spots, or the toys the cat is playing with or wearing. You keep your three attributes secret from the other players. Then you draw three cards from a different deck. These cards have cats on them. When it’s your turn, you play one of your cat cards in the middle of the table. Everyone, including you, who has one of the attributes displayed on the card drops a little colored mask token (but only one, even if you have multiple attributes) on the card. Then you try to guess which of your fellow players has which attribute cards. If you guess correct, they lay that card face up in front of them for everyone to see, and you score a point. If you guess wrong, they score the point. Play continues until one player has revealed all their attribute cards.
We also got to look at neat stuff coming from Cubicle 7. Their Rough Nights & Hard Days for the fourth edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying can be played as seven connected adventures, part of The Enemy Within campaign, or simply woven into your homebrew campaign to spice things up. The adventures are organized by time of day, making any campaign they’re part of feel like a living, breathing world.
Finally, we also got to see the Acquisitions Incorporated book for D&D 5e. I’ll admit, when I first heard about this book, I was kind of meh about it. While I enjoy the Acquisitions Incorporated shows, dark office humor isn’t something I’m looking to add to my campaign. But I’m glad I took the time to look at this book because it adds a lot of neat stuff to a campaign, not the least of which is taking tasks that players often perform to keep a campaign running smoothly, and creating in-world titles and benefits (as well as tools) for doing so. If you’ve overlooked this book as well because you’re not a fan of Acquisitions Incorporated, I highly recommend you give it a look.
There’s a lot more to talk about, but I have to run off to the ENnie Awards. More reporting on that, and other cool stuff at GenCon, tomorrow. This is your roving reporter on the scene, signing off and wishing you a great weekend!
