In Praise of Small Box Games

[hepcat]

I recently came across this small, husband and wife board/card game developer outside Atlanta that makes some of the best indie games around.   Small Box Games.  I can't recommend two of their currently available games enough:  

Omen: A Reign of War and Tooth and Nail: Factions.

Both are great, but Omen is up for boardgamegeek's best 2 player game of 2012 award.  I HIGHLY recommend checking out their games if you're a fan of this hobby.

[Jimmy the Fish]

Thanks for the tip! I just ordered Omen from their website. All their games are 10 dollars off right now with free shipping-- I think. Their website is doing very strange things at the moment, but I was able to place an order for $35.

My daughter is fully into Greek mythology now so she'll get a real kick out of this game.

[hepcat]

I'm glad you were able to grab a copy.  John and Britt (the husband and wife team that runs the shop) only do limited print runs, so once a game is sold out, the odds of it coming back in print are minimal unless there's a huge demand.  

I played Omen last night and I absolutely love this little gem.  It's easy to learn but each turn gives you so many options.  And the artwork is amazing.  Greek mythology via what appears to be water paints?  Gorgeous...just gorgeous.  

p.s. Yeah, the sale is great and it's still going on.  I couldn't resist and ordered EVERYTHING they currently offer last week when it started.  While Omen is my favorite game so far, Tooth and Nail is a close second with quite a few plays in our group because of how fast it can be setup/played and the elegant and fun 4 player variant that's included. 

[Bullwinkle]

Make sure you go to the Super Sale page.

You can buy the games (including a bundle of all three) for regular price, too (which came out to be $20 more expensive for the bundle).

[hepcat]

They have a bundle sale too.   It's off their twitter and face book pages.  All 3 games for 75 bucks with free shipping. Click on the Twitter link on the main page and you'll see it in one of their latest tweets.  I wasn't aware of that when I ordered last week.  However, with the super sale, I only spent two dollars more than the bundle sale price.

[kronovan]

I've seen Omen ARoW played at out gaming societies' monthly meets, but I've always been too busy playing in BatttleTech sessions to get in a game. There seems to be at least 1 session every meet now, so I know its popular. I'll likely pick it up for a filler game.

[hepcat]

Omen's sold out from smallboxgames.com.  However, boardsandbits.com has copies still available.

Played another game Saturday night and got my butt handed to me after my opponent was able to pull a metric ton of Oracles out of the deck during his draw and fuel his economy.  In most games, that would be the kiss of death, but Omen does have some mechanics that allow you to get past that...I just wasn't good enough yet to know how to do that effectively.   

...but hey, I'll keep practicing.   

[Misguided]

These look nice...they should get someone to adapt them for iOS.

[hepcat]

John put up the preview page for his next kickstarter campaign. Three full games this time.  I'm going the 62 dollar route when it goes live so I can get all three games.  

I also just noticed that the stretch rewards include mini expansions for many of his earlier games.  Nice. 

[hepcat]

Anyone wanting to get in  on the ground floor for their next three games, John over at SBG has started a kickstarter for them.

He's already got all the art and assets ready to go and is just trying to raise 10,000 for production costs.  Because of that, he's only set it to 18 days and it will ship by January of next year.

Oh, and he made over 9,000 in the first 24 hours.   

[hepcat]

grab tooth and nail: factions and Hemloch for 22 bucks with shipping today.