Board games you may have missed this summer

This summer on our portal, there was already a news article about the cooperative adventure "New Time: Renaissance," as well as a couple of digests on fresh releases. However, apart from those, there have been several interesting projects among board games over the past months.

"Wandering Cities"

A cozy family strategy where you grow a settlement on the back of a wandering titan: you lay paths, harvest crops, breed animals, build mills and houses, and invite settlers of different professions. Each turn consists of three steps: take a square of field, continue the path, and take a building (mills improve settlers, cottages provide housing, towers animate the fields), then choose a settler and settle them, gaining points for vegetables, after which you replenish the market. You can also use up to three animals (the cow peeks at stacks, the pig trades vegetables, the dog moves buildings), and parks provide bonuses. Eight different cities on four double-sided boards change the rules and increase replayability. The winner is the one who first scores 25 points or fully builds the meadow, after which everyone takes a final turn and counts points.

"Heroes III"

The board series of Heroes is gradually catching up with the computer version. It features its own factions with unique mechanics: mushroom people infect regions with mycelium, werewolves power up on wolf nights, archons start with ready but decaying buildings, lizards negotiate with monsters, dark elves entangle buildings in webs and grow warriors from cocoons, and cyclopes use paths to reduce building costs and weaken enemies. Over 16 rounds, players must conquer the world by gathering resources for construction and hiring troops, unlocking new tactical maneuvers, and destroying the spawns of darkness. The system of movement on the map and tactical battles makes each encounter unique, and victory requires out-of-the-box thinking and the ability to instantly adapt to changing circumstances.

"Hunger"

An atmospheric deck-building game about vampires from the creator of Magic: The Gathering, where you need to gather and upgrade your deck over 15 rounds while hunting humans for victory points, performing dark rituals, hiring familiars, and gaining abilities like turning into a bat. The more you hunt, the slower you and your deck become, so it’s essential to return to the castle before dawn and find a balance between power, speed, and risk. The order of play depends on the vampires' positions: in the first round, the slowest go first, then the one furthest from the castle goes first. On your turn, you play all cards, spend speed on movement or hunting, can push an opponent off a space, and hunting brings new cards from the chosen area, where humans are the primary victims, although some are "bad tasting" and affect the vampire in unexpected ways. Powerful cards provide bonuses but can complicate movement or feeding, so every decision determines who will be the first to obtain the eternal rose and survive the night.

Expansion "Storm Frontier" for the strategy "Twilight Imperium. Fourth Edition"

"Twilight Imperium. Fourth Edition" is a vast and multi-faceted economic strategy for 3-6 players, set in deep space. The game board consists of 51 tiles of the galaxy on which there are planets, supernovae, asteroid fields, gravity rifts, etc. Players take turns moving their fleets from system to system, capturing new planets, engaging in battles, and trading with other factions. At the end of the round, players gather in a grand council to pass new laws and programs, directing the game in unpredictable directions.

"Storm Frontier" adds five new factions (there are 17 in the base version), exploration and conquest of worlds with neutral armies, unique artifacts, planets with dual technological specialization, and the mysterious Rift with the terrifying Vuil'raight. Additionally, large-scale galactic events change the course of the game each time, and the number of players can be expanded to eight with this expansion.

"Spin-off. Major Grom: Monarch"

A board investigation inspired by the Bubble cinematic universe, where players help Major Igor Grom solve crimes and can reach one of twelve endings. The game is based on sequentially revealing cards with instructions: red ones are executed immediately, cards with a seal are removed from play after execution, and actions with activation symbols are available only if there is another card on the table with the same symbol. Some instructions require spending money from the game bank account, and if there are insufficient funds, those actions cannot be executed. Specific "Upcoming Events" cards are flipped when the required number of specific symbols (for instance, five shields) is accumulated on the revealed cards.

"This is the Base"

A board game about associations and logic for 2-16 players, where the host secretly distributes five pictures into a tier list from the least fitting "bottom" to the most fitting "top" under a given theme, while the other players try to reconstruct that order by discussing (or silently in competitive mode) and rearranging the pictures; three modes are available — cooperative, competitive, and team with two hosts, and after each attempt, the host only reports the number of matches, offering a second attempt, and so rounds continue until a winning result.

"Egyptian Monsters"

A dynamic cooperative tabletop platformer lasting half an hour, where players descend into an ancient tomb featuring a double-sided board: the calm mode "Exploration" or the tense "Escape" with a falling ceiling and a race for survival. The goal is to explore floors, blow up walls, peek into chests, find the pharaoh's crystal, and escape with it, making up to three moves per turn and flipping tokens which may contain items, traps, or monsters; combat is resolved with dice rolls, while the pharaoh has three lives. The main feature is that a fallen hero does not drop out of the game but switches to the pharaoh's side and begins to control monsters, knowing all the weaknesses of former teammates. If in "Escape" mode the collapsed ceiling destroys both keys, instant defeat ensues.

"Berserk. Heroes. New Idols"

The new expansion pack for the collectible card game "Berserk. Heroes" is dedicated to the snake-headed beings from the desert of Zhara, who worship the sleeping god Sot and dream of his awakening. The key mechanic of the faction is "Spawn X": when playing a card with this property, you can pay up to X times for 1, creating as many cheap Offspring of Sot to overwhelm the opponent with a mass of small creatures. Snake-headed beings can also turn defeated enemies into their own kind, and the desert itself serves as their sword and shield, gradually expanding their territory. The commune must constantly grow, priests care for the eggs, and the goal is to survive and wait for the great Sot to rise and transform the "disgusting humans" into perfect snakes.