GenCon in Indianapolis is always an exciting event, expanding and growing every year. Once again an amazing slate of tabletop games is premiering there, so let’s check ’em out.
First off, Via Nebula by Asmodee will become available and the creator Martin Wallace will be in attendance. It’s a competitive, but sometimes cooperative, exploration, and building game that will have you trying to build faster than anyone else but also depend on them to get the resources you need.
USAOpoly will debut the Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle cooperative deck building game. You play Hermoine, Harry, Ron, and Neville, fighting to save Hogwarts against, we’re assuming, wand-wielding spell-slinging Death Eaters. Hopefully this time Tonks doesn’t die.
Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu by ZMan Games is set to rise from the darkness. Instead of fighting disease this time around, you’ll be fighting cultists and the Elder Gods. It’s cooperative, because who wants to work against each other when eldritch beings are invading from unfathomable alternate dimensions. Pandemic is fun and tense on its own. This adds a whole new layer of nail biting.
Upper Deck Entertainment’s Legendary Encounters: A Firefly Deck Building Game will debut, because even though Firefly was cancelled thirteen years ago, game makers know we still pine for one more season. This is a cooperative game, using the same system as the superheroes team focused Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game and the hoards of aliens fighting Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game, both of which have been well received.
Rob Daviau’s new game SeaFall will be released by Plaid Hat Games. Like Daviau’s previous work with Pandemic Legacy and Risk Legacy, SeaFall is an unfolding story, changing each time it’s played in a kind of competitive evolving campaign. It’s set in a high seas pseudo-Earth setting, with lots of opportunities for rivalry. You’re essentially writing the history of this world through your ongoing games. Needless to say this is a highly anticipated game.
Mythic Battles: Pantheon by Mythic Games will have its American debut at GenCon. This is a competitive game set in a post-apocalyptic ancient Greece. Hera has shattered Olympus and the known world, and the survivors gather warbands to struggle for the divine shards necessary to forge a new pantheon in the aftermath. You’re calling ancient Greek heroes to your side from the now unregulated afterlife. Why aren’t you working together to accomplish this? Well, fighting is more fun.
Finally, on the RPG front, Star Trek Adventures by Modiphius will have a playtest available. Though the game has only just recently been announced, it’s built on the existing 2d20 system that was used in Mutant Chronicles 3rd edition, Infinity, Robert E. Howard’s Conan, and the John Carter Warlord of Mars game. It’s a system designed specifically for cinematic action, so we’re excited to see how it plays out with planetary exploration and tense Federation-on-Romulan space battles.
Seeing all this amazing stuff coming down the pipeline, it’s hard not to feel like our pocketbooks are a little too light. What are you excited to see? Tell us what you’re willing to go broke to play in the comments.
Featured Image Credit: ZMan Games