Giant Fire Breathing Robot

News Roundup: Kaijudo to Debut in the U.S., Gunship on Kickstarter, and More!

Wizards of the Coast recently announced its partnership with Hasbro to bring Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters to the States. The Duel Masters has been a popular CCG in Japan for ten years. Now, the franchise is coming to the states. Along with the card game, an online game and a new television series are planned.

Japanese created products have been very popular in the U.S. of A. I’m excited to see what Kaijudo can bring to the market.

Similarly, About.com is reporting that Hasbro has inked a deal with Zynga (creators of Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc.) to develop games and toys based on Zynga’s brands. I remain highly pessimistic about this union. I don’t enjoy the Zynga games, and Agricola is already a better Farmville. But, hey, I thought Battlestar Galactica would be a terrible board game and I love it. So I’ll try to keep an open mind.

Podcast listeners will recall my recent interview with Steve Wood, creator of Gunship: First Strike. Well, it looks like today is the day. The Kickstarter campaign launches today (February 15) so be sure to check out the interview, the website, and Kickstarter. See if this is something that might tickle your fancy.

Victory Point Games has announced the second expansion for Parsec. It includes eight Factions for play as well as new methods of getting credits and research into the game quicker.

Ares Games has announced the first expansion for War of the Ring. The expansion, Lords of Middle Earth, will feature new characters and miniatures – including dice and abilities tied specifically to those characters. New introductions will include Galadriel, Smeagol, and the Balrog.

In what will surely win the approval of game geeks everywhere, Alan Gerding contacted the fellows at Ascension about a marriage proposal. The result was the above card which made it into a game he and his girlfriend were playing. He even caught it all on camera.

In other corporate news, Universal Pictures has paid a large sum of money to not make movies about Hasbro’s board games. About four years ago, Univeral bought the rights to Hasbro’s properties. But, having now soured on the idea, they are paying an enormous penalty to avoid having to go through with the films. Does this mean Battleship is so bad that they are abandoning even the idea of board game movies?

Although Fantasy Flight had debuted a prototype of its Star Wars LCG at GenCon, it recently announced its intention to scrap the project and start over. Essentially, FFG admits that, while Star Wars was a good game, it wasn’t great. So they are going back to the drawing board to make it great. I applaud that decision. Too often properties – especially licensed properties – are rushed out early to make quick money on a so-so game. I think it will be very worth the wait if FFG can create a better game.

The Thunderstone Advance updates continue to roll in. Among the highlights are Curses, the new form of Disease. Curses have the same general effect (clogging your deck and hurting your attack), but they also have a new method of removing them, which leads to more engaging play and less needless resting.

Not to be outdone, the previews for Coldest War continue to stream out. I was especially intrigued by Fresh Meat. Apparently, it has usefulness even outside of the chain. I think this opens up some interesting avenues for Nightfall. They’ve also posted a PDF preview of the rulebook.