Loodo Ninja – Board Games to Back on Kickstarter in November

Hello friends! There are less than 60 days until the end of the year and we still have so many KS board game campaigns running (and coming soon). If your wallet needs some guidance or you simply want to check out which board game campaigns are my favourites right now, be my guest! Today I picked 5 unique projects. The order is random. Enjoy!

🎲 Darkest Dungeon

The most successful Mythic Games campaign ever, with over 3 million dollars pledged so far by almost 20.000 backers. This cooperative dungeon crawler based on a popular video game allows up to 4 players to explore various randomly generated areas in a series of scenarios called “quests”. Completing them makes you fight powerful bosses and after 3 of these – the final dungeon becomes ready for exploration.

Darkest Dungeon has a great flow and keeps you uncertain of what’s going to happen next. Players can scout the surrounding areas, which is helpful, but makes them stressed. Overdo it and your adventurer will become mad and leave the party forever.

The game does a lot to adapt mechanics and ideas known from the original video game by Red Hook Studios, while still remaining fun for people who have never played it or even heard about it. Add-on expansions are also available for backers who want to have even more locations, enemies and heroes at their disposal.

🎲 Nova Aetas: Renaissance

Nova Aetas universe is growing bigger and bigger with each new release by Ludus Magnus Studio. The series is made of various strategy tabletop games set in a fantasy version of Renaissance era Italy. Some popular entries include Black Rose Wars, Dungeonology and more.

Nova Aetas: Renaissance is an attempt to remake the original 2016 “Nova Aetas” game, the one that started it all. The new edition adds lots of content and overhauls the entire experience. The action takes place during a war between Rome and Venice. Each player picks a character and develops them during the course of the game. The gameplay is similar to smaller scale wargames, but puts all players on the same team making the experience fully cooperative. 

🎲 Grand Austria Hotel: Let’s Waltz! Expansion & Deluxe Upgrade

Now this is unexpected. Who would have thought that one of my favourite euro games ever will get an expansion and appear on Kickstarter? I have loved Grand Hotel Austria since it released and it still lands on my table every now and then. So what can you add to an already good and seemingly complete game?

First: we have a component upgrade. If you ever wanted to replace colorful cubes representing wine and cakes – you finally have some official meeples to do this. There are also new guest cards, new staff, new hotel layouts and the 5th resource: Champagne. Cardboard components and cards also got refreshed illustrations.

The biggest addition are the ballrooms which are placed near your own hotel board. Guests can now be either invited to the hotel or escorted to your own rehearsal room which provides some useful bonuses. Later on they can move to Vienna’s popular ballrooms, although entering is expensive and requires payment in champagne. Ballroom expansion module also adds new political requirements and some new emperor’s wishes.

🎲 Freedom Five: A Sentinels Comics Board Game

If you like cooperative board games, this one is certainly worth checking out. And even more if you happen to be into superhero stories. Freedom Five makes you team up with your friends and together fight a team of villains in the city of Megalopolis. The game is based on Defenders of the Realm (by Richard Launius) from 2010 but was completely rethemed and reworked by the Sadler brothers. With names like these, it seems we have some sort of co-op board game designer dream team here.

Each hero has unique abilities, cards and a miniature which seem really great when painted (there’s an add-on painting option if you prefer somebody else do it). The city has plenty of location tiles where you’ll face the henchmen and villains while protecting the local population. The game covers  both parts of the super hero life. First: the private life where you can heal yourself and do other activities. Second: the hero life where you fight and cooperate with others to create powerful combos and get rid of villains for good.

🎲 ENDLESS WINTER – Paleoamericans

Here’s something for all euro game addicted people (such as myself). The highly complex game by Stan Korodonskiy turns players into leaders of competing tribes, trying to survive and rise in power in North America 12.000 years ago. 

ENDLESS WINTER – Paleoamericans features numerous ways to victory and honestly, I don’t often see board games with so many different systems included. Want to develop culture? Use special cards and reap benefits right away. Want to hunt for colossal animals or gather food? You can do it. You can also build villages, watch for sun eclipses to manipulate turn order, build megaliths and much much more. The mechanics mix deck building, worker placement, tile placement, set collection and area majority to name a few. The components also look great – both the minis and minimalistic tokens. In short: count me in.

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