Tabletopia News

Fight for gold, blood and glory in asymmetrical skirmish game Valknut which is available on Tabletopia and Kickstarter now!

Valknut is a competitive game, where two players assume the role of a warband commander with unique powers that try to eliminate each other by flanking enemy warriors. The battlefield expands as the game progresses, providing limitless combinations and replayability!

Have you ever wanted to manage a fantasy guild of adventurers starting from fledgling adepts up through heroes and legends? With Guild Master from Good Games Publishing, now you can. Playing up to 4 over the span of 1-2 hours players will try to become the most renowned guild in the land.

Guild Master has a unique mixture of mechanics up its sleeve. At first glance the gameplay loop might seem simple: order your adventurers to go out and attempt contracts to gain coin or fame, recruit adventurers to do more complex contracts, or hire builders to upgrade your guild… but designer Chris Antony has made each of those choices carry weight, meaning, and tension.

Adventurers have things they’re good at, and combining those skills is a core part of the game. These will get you a larger chance at winning skill checks, giving a dice per skill point in order to beat static numbers, or rival guilds. They also have abilities that can only be activated in certain rounds of the game.

Giving your adventurers tasks is done in secret simultaneously by all players, programming out what you hope to achieve for the round, and combining skills of adventurers to help (Robo Rally, Root). Once revealed however, you may find that an order you programmed was too late and a rival guild got there first, or possibly worse, you are both attempting to do the same thing, and are contesting.

Contesting guilds behave differently depending on the action they’re contesting, with some actions simply requiring the adventurers to use their skills to beat the contest, or have the player have offered an adventurer more than another guild. But in the case of contracts, you’ll be negotiating with other guilds openly, discussing what facets of the contract you’d like to split, and then finally secretly revealing if you intend to cooperate, or conflict further.

Normally, negotiation in games becomes a centrepiece (Twilight Imperium, Rising Sun, Cosmic Encounter), but with Guild Master, there is tension to every action so that it becomes a seamless part of the game instead. Some games also restrict you in what you can negotiate on, but here even flat out bribing is encouraged.

There is a lot of depth, nuance and tension in Guild Master, with each action you can take being crafted to be as interesting as possible. With so many branching paths to victory, this is a game that will keep you wanting to play again for different outcomes. Do you have what it takes to make the most famous guild in the land? Or will your accomplishments lie unremembered through the sands of time.

Tabletopia Tip: Some games have zones where only you can see what is in them. Where you give out orders in Guild Master is one such place.

The gods weep. Having been abandoned by their mortal followers who instead choose to wage war, their power is waning. As the last of their worshippers turn their backs on their once loved gods, they die. Their tears crash into the ground causing destruction and mayhem in their wake… but they also contain power, power to outrun death itself, and perhaps even the power to ascend mortals to godhood. Now war is waged anew, one in which a new pantheon is born.

Godtear by Steamforged Games Ltd. is a tabletop skirmish and area control game for two in which larger than life champions, already infused with the powers from these tears, come together to form warbands and face off to control those that remain. These powerful titans, along with their followers clash in a brutal game of war for those that love a bit of strategic carnage.

Warbands are full of Champions and their followers, and you get to choose which fill your warband. If you like to mould the world around you perhaps the Shapers will be for you. Want to get in your enemies face and deal damage? Slayers or Maelstroms are your best bet. Playing defensive is the role of Guardians. These different abilities ensure those who prefer different aspects of combat in games get to use characters that match their playstyles.

Designers David Carl, Alex Hall, and Steve Margetson have created an interesting premise of a game which manages to capture the turning tides of battle. Actions performed when combat is likely to be the thickest can get the richest rewards, but also carry with them greater risk. Defeat in one turn may be turned into victory the next.

Some skirmish games can be very restrictive about letting certain heroes/champions be fielded with others (Underworlds, Guild Ball, Blood Rage). Not so with Godtear. Want nothing but champions that can manipulate the world? You can absolutely do that. Thanks to each champion having its own followers, games are easy to setup and involve simply picking what champions you would like in your warband, what scenario to play, and jumping into combat.

Each of the scenarios not only offer replayability, but add features that provide a shifting landscape over time, often allowing a player who was defeated in a turn a tactical advantage to use in future turns. When coupled with synergy between champions the number of decisions you can make during a game is simply staggering.

Godtear is the skirmish game that you can pick up and play no matter what your experience with the genre is. While it has significant depth within its mechanics, the gameplay is incredibly familiar to those who are used to miniature combat in other games with grids (Pathfinder, Mice and Mystics, Descent), and so becomes easy to teach. It’s fun just controlling a single champion, but really hits its stride when you create warbands.

Find out if your warband has the strength to claim the tears of long perished gods to gain immortality… and beyond.

Until the end of the month of April Steamforged Games Ltd is providing an event where you can win the ability to choose which miniatures on Tabletopia get alternative digital sculpts! All you need do is play on Tabletopia and submit a screenshot of your game for a chance to win.

Publisher Garphill Games brings Bethel Woods; a fast paced co-operative adventure for 2-4 players where you must prevent the destruction of your home. By gaining the knowledge required to construct a machine mysteriously known as the ‘Daydreamer’ throughout the course of the game you will be able to protect your home... and hopefully from there, protect the world.

Set in the universe of “Hours” created by author Jessy Ribordy (Falling Up, The River Empires), you play as overseers of a ragtag group of young mechanics, engineers and more to repair the various ancient machines scattered throughout the forest and defend them from spies trying to bring apart calamity and the end of all you know.

Bethel Woods is played with a mancala style mechanism (Trajan, Five Tribes, Istanbul). Each turn players will pick up and move a group of workers from the machine they’ve been working on to assist other workers in a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion. Unlike many games with mancala mechanisms, Bethel Woods provides each worker with the ability to perform actions, and the freedom of direction provides strategic depth.

These workers will then be able to fix various malfunctions that have occurred throughout the game, gaining knowledge for the player overseeing the work. Workers are specialists however, and can only repair what they know how to fix. If the player has gained enough knowledge of a single type through a set collection mechanic (Terraforming Mars, Spirit Island, Pandemic), they can start to rebuild part of the ‘Daydreamer’.

If slowly malfunctioning machines weren’t enough of a problem to deal with, spies are attempting to cause more chaos and discord by actively trying to make the machines they are near go critical. Thankfully, each player has a unique character ability which will provide them with benefits to hopefully counteract these problems as they arise.

Designer Shem Phillips has truly made a game of possibilities and complex decisions. As the game comes closer to reaching its conclusion, the situation will often become more and more dire, with more interesting and far reaching choices to make. This provides a steady difficulty curve through its entire playthrough, and additional difficulty options and random player powers make replayability high.

Repair almost forgotten technology. Uncover and fend off spies. Use long forgotten knowledge to build your own defences. Will you protect the orphanage? Or will the ominous force threatening Bethel Woods succeed, and plunge the world into darkness.

Tabletopia Tip: You can select multiple pieces by holding shift and selecting individual pieces to group them together. Alternatively shift and left mouse will create a bounding box to make a selection.

Control territories, develop your character and battle rivals in mysterious world of Planet Fulcrum!


[h2]Planet Fulcrum[/h2]
1-4 players; 30-90 minutes

Planet Fulcrum is a strategic, area control board game with tech-tree character development and deck-driven battle. Players assume the role of an unwitting adventurer. Transported, stranded, and endowed with powerful abilities by the mysterious planet to compete for its gifts.