News & Week In Review - Mini War Gaming Updates, Steamforged Red Flags, CMON Still Going & More!!

0:00 Hey, I'm Alex Radcliffe from Board Game Co, and welcome to news and weekly review where we go over a variety of news pieces, the videos of the week, the games I've covered, the games I've played, all of that and more. Links and timestamps to everything down below. Before we dive into it, reminder this channel is sponsored by All Play. If you go to allplay.com, you can find a variety of things from board games to board game bags to board game tables to board game shelves, all of that and more. Board game play mats, they also have board game play mats. They have a lot of different things for your gaming needs. With that, let's go ahead and dive into the news. Uh the news is going to start off with two light things and then one slightly heavier piece or just bigger piece, I guess. On the light side, we have Asmodee buying uh the Welcome To brand. I can't remember um it's Blue Blue Something. I can't remember what the name of the company is, but Asmodee's buying the uh Welcome To brand and the company. Apparently, it has 3 million plus plays. I think it was 3 million plays on Board Game Arena. And likely, we will all get to see more and more things in that line, for better and for worse. I do find whenever you have a popular line, Pandemic, Ticket to Ride, whatever it is, there does tend to be a degree of oversaturation as you milk that line by putting out more and more for different target audiences. It's one of those very fascinating I should probably do a full video on this. But it's one of the fascinating things that when you're putting out something like Ticket to Ride, having a ton of different options to attract different people is a good thing in a variety of ways. The problem is when you're a board game completionist like many of you and myself, it's not like it's simple as oh, we have different Ticket to Rides for different people. It's like no, I want all the Ticket to Rides. And now you're milking Ticket to Ride. And so we'll have conversations around this too much of it all, there's too much Zombieside, there's too much Ticket to Ride.

1:29 Sometimes is the right amount for different audiences, but there's too much if you feel you need to own it all. It's an interesting conversation. Maybe I'll do a full video on that. But anyways, point is expect more Welcome To stuff, which will probably make you want it, and some of it you probably should get, and some of it you definitely shouldn't. Welcome to the Moon is currently my favorite in that series. Now there's Hegemony. Speaking of uh 3 million plays on Board Game Speaking of 3 million plays of Welcome To on Board Game Arena, Hegemony just got added to Board Game Arena. So if you wanted to try that game out, if you've been intimidated, if you just haven't done so yet, now you can go ahead and try it out on the world's most popular board game website. Well, playing games popular website like there's Yucata, there's all these other sites, but if you're going to play a board game online, Board Game Arena is by far the most popular way to do so. And then lastly, in the larger category of news, we have a whole thing on Mini War Gaming. This is fascinating by the way.

2:17 I always find it interesting whenever you have like a degree of news in the tabletop hobby, but not in board games. Like none of the board game sites that I've seen have covered this. This is all being covered by miniature war game enthusiasts, not being covered by like, I don't know, Board Game Geek, by Board Game Wire, by Board Game Beats. Any of these standard board game sites, I've seen no coverage on this, at least not yet, which I find so This is not the first time this has happened. As soon as you move outside board game, it's almost like it doesn't exist to a lot of people in the tabletop hobby. But, Mini War Gaming, I'm going to give you the somewhat short version of it. There was a lot of drama this past week over the fact that Mini War Gaming did a bunch of things that makes people wonder, are they getting their games? What's going on with Mini War Gaming? Uh you know, the Shattered Shattered Shattered Star Ravaged Star Ravaged Star is years late by now at this point. Uh they recently put up their building for sale. They let go of some employees. They've been selling their personal collection of miniatures. All the kinds of doom and gloom stuff that that result in internet detectives putting two and two together and coming up with four. And the problem with that, the problem when you're not transparent with your audience, the problem when you let people figure it out and guess themselves, is sometimes they go to 2 + 2 = 4, when really 2 + 2 = 4.5 in this particular situation. I don't think that's the best example because 2 + 2 always equals 4.

3:30 But, the point being that when you let people jump to conclusions, they will sometimes come to reasonable conclusions that's not the full picture. Fortunately, I think they did a good a good job. I think they did it 3 days too late, but they did do a good job putting out what I thought was a well-done update video, being very frank about all aspects of the situation. Of course, being very frank comes with the asterisk, very believable, I should say. I I speak to what's going on behind the scenes, so I'm just going to say it's believable as opposed to, you know, the truth. Uh but effectively they say everything is siloed. Ravage Star is coming. You're going to get your game. They apologize for the delays. They talk about how they are and have been backers. They know it sucks. They have nothing else to say other than we're sorry. It's late. It It is coming. It's just, you know, It would just We took We took on too much and it's just too much of a project. But separate from that, again, this is all the stuff they say, but everything did come across as believable. There wasn't like brushing things under the rug. There wasn't ignoring situations. There was just like, "Here's the situation. The good, the bad, and the ugly." As far as the bad and the ugly part, they had they had whatchamacallit? They had as far as the bad and the ugly part, they had they were letting people go.

4:31 They are selling the building and they are selling part of the personal collection. Basically, Mini War Gaming has grown too much and has not been able to keep up with the with the actual cost of the business at the size it is, and so they are downsizing. They're downsizing what Mini War Gaming is. It still does exist. I think they've gone from like, you know, 12 people to four people, something like that. I don't remember the exact numbers, but effectively they are letting a lot of people go and they are shrinking the building and they are selling some of their stock to go ahead and cover the cost of the business, but supposedly Ravage Star is separately covered like the finances. Again, if you run things correctly, you do have your money siloed for each project to make sure things can be delivered. You never know when things are going to be run correctly and obviously when money is tight, people make decisions based off of, "Well, I'll figure that problem out later." So, who knows as far as whether things actually are aren't good, but I did think it was an overall good update. I'll link to the update down below. You can check that out. There's a ton of miniature wargamer commenters, you know, talk talking about this if you want the different takes on the situation. And then lastly, Steamforged Games. There was a little bit of a miniature drama speaking of companies that are having issues with outstanding games. Steamforged Games has a little bit of a small drama going on because there was a basically an issue with statement from I guess the government, I think, basically saying that, "Hey, you know, if you don't release data and information, we are going to the government is going to seize your assets." This is a somewhat what thing when they have not released the information. It does not mean that there are infinite problems that will not be taken care of, but it certainly is another red flag.

5:53 Steamforged did release an update I already talked about. Yes, you know, we have it covered. Sorry about that. It's going to be taken care of. It's one of those many things that doesn't look good and probably isn't good, but it doesn't necessarily mean that all the boats are falling over at least not yet. Speaking of which, this is not my plan on my list, but CMON had another update across a variety of campaigns. It does seem like CMON is still charging forward on multiple deliveries across multiple projects. So, how far will this go? Is the company going to be able to deliver all of their ascending campaigns? No idea, but at the very least they seem to be still in the process of delivering more. These are not the signs of a company that is about to go belly up. These are the signs of a company that still believes that making good on its promises, as well as their reputation, matters. These are good things. These are not guarantees. None of these things are guarantees.

6:38 It's just like listen, every time there's an update saying things are closer to delivery, especially on projects that I very much want, like God of War the board game. Uh yeah, it's going to be it's going to be a thing. It's going to be a thing. Anyways, with that let's go ahead and dive into the videos of the week. Videos of the week we had an all play sale video going up on Sunday. This is covering the all play sale that was going on at the time, just telling you what I thought would be the best deals in that sale. Then there was a vlog, a vlog going up on Monday for the filming games from Gen Con vlog. I I took a break from the vlog. We'll be coming back to it soon, but the vlog is just this thing that I'll be doing when I have the interest and bandwidth. Well, the interest is always there. The bandwidth is another conversation. Then there were two videos around upcoming crowdfunding campaigns. There were so many for September that I broke it up into two videos. One for the Gamefound upcoming crowdfunding campaigns and one for the Kickstarter upcoming crowdfunding campaigns. Those went up on Wednesday and Friday respectively, which means you got multiple Did I do jokes in the second video? I think I did. Yeah, you got jokes in both videos. You got my picks of the month for both videos.

7:29 There were a lot of campaigns that are worth being excited about. Some of them are already live. Some of them will be going live. Lots of fun things before October hits and October will likely be just as bad. I might end up splitting up October into two videos again. I think the the last few months, you know, September, October, November tend to have a lot of crowdfunding campaigns as people prepare for not having crowdfunding campaigns in December. And then from there we have the games I've covered this past week. We had three party games going up this past Saturday. We had a Got 5 review going up on Saturday. Got 5 is strangely addictive. I've been playing it so much. It is a little bit insane. There was an Opera Magna gameplay and review. A sponsored gameplay and a non-sponsored review with the proper disclaimers because obviously if one thing sponsored they're still muddying the waters over there. But overall I thought Opera Magna was very well done. Someone did comment that whenever there's a game that has only nine actions they just feel too constricted within how much you can do in the space.

8:17 As someone who felt that way about White Castle, I totally get that. I'm not yet sure where I'm going to land on Opera Magna. I think Opera Magna is very well done. It is it's a great time. I do agree with the idea that sometimes when you have too few actions there's only so much you can actually spread as far as how many interesting decisions you can make versus how much you're constricted to the format the game needs you to take. I don't know yet. I do like it more than White Castle, that's for sure. But obviously that's some meat taste and may not be your taste. But we'll see how things go over time. Then there was a Cola Wars review, a rapid fire review for Cola Wars. That is basically from One More Turn Games I think. One More Turn Games, the people who did Ascendancy. Overall I enjoyed it. It hit every box. It was a great game. I just didn't feel the wow factor personally. I gave that a 3.5. Oh, Opera Magna got a four and Got 5 got a 3.5. Although that pro It's It's always interesting to me when I play a game more than I enjoy it.

9:07 Got 5 is like a 3.5 for me. I don't know I don't I don't think I can bump it to a four. I don't think I can. But I've probably played that game like 30 times in the past month, something like that. May at least 20, probably 30. So like what do you take away from that? I don't know. I'm not sure. Anyways, lastly there was a review for Forbidden Legacy. I gave Forbidden Legacy a three out of five. It's a spoiler free review. Effectively the overall takeaway is it's the game that I probably should have expected it to be, which is fine. It's still good as opposed to the game that I wanted to be which would have been ideally been better. It's fine. I just think there's better legacy games out there. And that brings us to the games I played this past week. As usual, this is a smattering of some of the games I played. Cascadia Alpine Lakes, I've been charging through that one a ton. It's replaced my afternoon video game time. I've been playing afternoon Cascadia Alpine Lakes with my coffee for my solo game time. I have been going through that like crazy. I I will be doing a 12 by 12 review soon, but I'm still going through every single aspect. Every player count, well I've already done every player count. I've done most of the scenarios. I've done most of the challenges. I haven't won these things.

10:05 That would That's going to take a lot more time. But right now right now my process is I play one of these things and I either win or lose and I move on to the next one so that I can do a full review covering I mean at this again at this week alone I probably have 20 plus plays of Alpine Lakes and more coming before I do my 12 by 12 review. And then from there is Toy Battle. I dove into Toy Battle, got a few plays in. This is one that I haven't played in a bit. It's one that I'm still mixed on. I think there's a lot of interesting decision space in Toy Battle. I just don't think I'm charmed enough by what it's doing. I think it's a good game. I understand people like it. There's like it's it's both accessible while also giving you strategy. There's a lot to it. I just think it's a good enough game. And then My City Roll & Build, I played through another full arc of the 12 games of My City Roll & Build. My City was a game that for a long time I played a ton of My City as well as a ton of My City Roll & Build. And then I kind of stopped at a certain point. And I went back to My City like earlier this year or last year, I don't remember. My City Roll & Build just did a full arc.

10:56 I'm sure I'll come back to it again, but it's one of those games that I think at this point I have finally played out My City and played out My City Roll & Build. At this point I just go back to it cuz hey, why not? It's not the worst thing you can do, but I have a ton of games. Between the two of them I have a ton. My Island was a disappointment. I I wanted that game to be more for me. It wasn't unfortunately. We'll see. Maybe if they throw it on BGA I'll give it a try again, but like I I I tried. I tried. Anyways, with that the games today today we're going to have a few things. We're going to have a Sagrada game play going up later today as well as a Trials of Maya preview that will go up as well later today. It's an upcoming crowdfunding campaign for for week. We'll have a game play next week, but the preview is going to go up today. And then speaking of next week, we'll have a campaign game purge, kind of sort of. It's a small little another purge. Like yeah, I keep finding ways to get rid of more games because more games are always coming in and trying to figure out which ones I'm most likely to see the table time is always a challenge. But we should hopefully have that going up next week as well as an all play shelf review. I did a building of the studio and now I have a review video coming which will be going up next week.

11:57 I don't know what day of the week. Either Monday or Wednesday. Probably one of those things. As far as the games on the table, as usual these are games I hope to be playing this week. We have Deco which is a heavy box beyond belief. It's all the poker chips over here. But Deco is basically a Belatro style competitive game. Like you have these decks of cards, you're building hands, you have these jokers. I'm partially through the rules. I will hopefully be playing it today if not tomorrow. Well, tomorrow if not today. We have Gang Wars. Gang Wars over here. This is coming to you from Red Zen. This is their new Scarface game. It's set in the universe of Scarface but a different game. We have Jolt over here. Jolt is an interesting one. Shuffleboard with magnets. That sounds appealing. I am intrigued by it. And then lastly we have Gloomhaven which I also have been going through a lot. Again, it's another one I want to do a 12 by 12 review of. There's a bunch actually coming up. There'll be Enchanted I will be doing 12 by 12 for Northwood deserves one by now.

12:44 Gloomhaven Cascadia Alpine Lakes. Gloomhaven might take a little bit more time. We'll see. But all these games I'm really starting to dive into. Certain games are just you know, my jam. But that's basically your week in review. Until next time, I'm Alex Radcliffe from Board Game Co. I hope you enjoyed this video. And as always, I hope you have a good one.