Time to continue the previews from last week with a fresh batch! This time we’ll tell you about 3 projects – some starting tomorrow and some launching next week.
Dice Hospital: Community Care – July 9th
“Dice Hospital”’s title already tells a lot about what to expect from the game. Inspiration from the all-time classic Theme Hospital video game is visible, although it feels slightly less absurd with its sense of humor.
Worker and dice placement are the key mechanics here. Dice results can be altered – introducing an element of dice manipulation. Players place nurses on their hospital’s mini board, fill ambulances with dice to determine who’s the first player, unload patients and bring them to specific wards. Next: they work on improving the health of all patients with the help of specialist doctors.
The “Community Care” expansion will actually consist of 3 modular expansions – all coming in one box. The City Expansion adds city tiles, and a dash of realism to the ambulance mechanics, as now you have to collect patients on your own by driving around town. The Maternity Expansion adds mother and baby dice to the pool as well as new mechanics related to player objectives. The Improvements Expansion increases replayability and customisation by adding a new worker placement board to the game.
The creators promise many stretch goals and surprises like the helicopter mini, that will replace the punch board 1st player token.
Margraves of Valeria – July 15th
Valeria is a series of games with various mechanics that all take place in the same fantasy kingdom. Valeria: Card Kingdoms is probably the most recognizable one, but the series has developed quite a dedicated fanbase over the years.
Margraves of Valeria, the 5th entry in the series, merges a card game with a worker placement board game. You use a single citizen card per turn. There are always at least 2 actions a card can perform (described on its face) and 2 additional ones, when you place it face down and treat as a resource for activating the two board related actions.
The game is aimed at 2 to 4 players and seems to be strategy heavy. You play as one of city’s military leaders aiming to help the kingdom (and get a province of their own). Gameplay includes lots of hand building, managing resources, effectively using city workers (shared by all players), fending off monsters with your own knights, fighting for influence of 4 different guilds and much much more.
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Etherfields – July 16th
One of the most anticipated Kickstarter board game campaigns of 2019 is only a week away. We wrote about some early details a while ago, but with the launch day being so close, more and more is getting revealed through the social media.
First: some story bits have been detailed. You play as a person, who apparently lost their body and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, suffers from amnesia. A collection of ominous masks lies in front of you and each of them leads to a different dream world. The only way to learn what’s going on is to try one of them, and go on a journey. The dreams, contrary to what the early visuals have suggested, are located in various settings including some modern ones.
Etherfields has its own combat system, but always offers alternative solution(s) to avoid fighting. Card illustrations, similarly to 7th Continent, may contain hidden data leading to hints, shortcuts or unexpected events unfolding in the story.
Michał Oracz, the lead designer of the game, wrote that almost every element of the game is related to deckbuilding: from items in your inventory to the world map. He also confirmed that, despite being long and story heavy, Etherfields is not by any means a legacy game.
The campaign launches next Tuesday on July 16th.
