New Releases : 3rd November 2009

The first of Rio Grande’s Essen releases hit the UK on Tuesday 3rd November

Tobago gets an official UK release from Rio Grande this week. Its top of my family game picks.

Carcassonne Wheel of Fortune is a standalone Carcassonne game, with a .. Wheel of Fortune

Jambo expansion 2 adds three new games elements to the base game

I was impressed by the description and look of ‘Longships’ (a Viking plunder and trading game) at Essen so i am importing some. They should arrive by the end of the week. If you would like to know more about this game there is an excellent review here.

There are three new releases from GMT

Command and Colors Ancients: Expansion four takes the action into the later Roman Empire

Command and Colors Ancients : Expansion five adds more players and new game play to the base set

Hellenes : The Peloponnesian War is a block game, recreating the struggle between the Greek city states.

Erosion from Sierra Madre games is back in stock. This is a quirky card game in which players attempt to build up mountain ranges, erode them and claim victory points by collecting the resulting debris. Highly recommended and in a way reminiscent of ‘Glory to Rome’

I have managed to play a few more Essen releases. ‘At the gates of Loyang’ (which i’m expecting next week) is a great game, a lot more tactical and quicker to play than the other games in Ewe Rosenberg’s ‘Harvesting’ cycle. ‘Dungeon Lords’ is fantastic, a hard core Euro with a fun theme. This is rather difficult to get hold of and i don’t expect to get any copies until its official UK release later this year. ‘Colonia 1322AD’ from Queen is a resource management game, with the twist that you have to vote on edicts during the different phases of the game. Quite intricate, this is for gamers who like long term planning. I’m expecting this to arrive in a few weeks.

Stronghold will be with me at latest by Thursday, i’m afraid my distributor has dragged their heels on getting this to me when promised (i.e before the official UK release on Tuesday). I will make sure that those of you who have pre-ordered a copy get it by the end of the week.

I am hoping that some copies of Carson City will arrive next week, along with quite a few other Essen releases. I will send out another newsletter when they arrive.