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• Let's kick off the video coverage from the BGG booth at Spiel 2014 with designer/publisher Friedemann Friese talking about Power Grid deluxe: Europe/North America, a revamped version of his best-selling Power Grid game from his own 2F-Spiele.
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It's funny how ingrained Power Grid is in the modern gaming world, with people automatically expecting something new for the PG line each year, whether a single power plant card, a new set of game boards, or something even bigger. Gotta deliver on those expectations!• At Spiel 2014, Friese also unveiled a new version of Fresh Fish, the original version of which dates to 1997 when 2F-Spiele released only a few hundred copies of each title. How times change — well, change for Friese because plenty of companies still release only a few hundred copies of a new release at Spiel. Wonder what those companies will be like seventeen years from now.../pic2220379.jpg)
• I wish that I had something to say about each game, but alas nothing comes to mind for Purple Games' 27th Passenger: A Hunt On Rails. Just too many games on the market these days to pretend that I know something about all of them or can riff on some little-known detail about this design. I need to clone myself./pic2054454.jpg)
• Speaking of clones — or more generally duplications of reality — designer/publisher Ted Alspach of Bezier Games debuted Castles of Mad King Ludwig at Spiel 2014 after demoing the game at Gen Con 2014 and various other 2014 conventions. I feel like this game has been out forever after seeing it pop up in so many places, but no, those were only spectral apparitions that presaged the reality of this game, Fight Club-like pre-echoes that prime the mind so that you feel like this game has always been with you, an integral part of your life that you can't do without. In other words, Alspach's a good marketer./pic1961827.jpg)
• And that lets us segue into One Night Ultimate Werewolf Daybreak, the other title that Alspach presented in the BGG booth at Spiel 2014. In general, we curtailed presentations of games that weren't available for purchase at Spiel because with hundreds of new games available at the show, it made no sense to feature prototypes of forthcoming games — yet a few sneaked on anyway. I think in this case Alspach took advantage of his first-on-the-roster Wednesday morning presentation as we had scheduled only a few titles in the opening hours in order to give us a cushion if things didn't work perfectly, so he got to ramble a bit to fill the air./pic2225958.jpg)
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