Friday Tabletop Kickstarter Update: Two Asteroid Miners are better than one, right?

Hello! Welcome to Friday Tabletop Kickstarter Update! For info on what is going on here, check out this introduction. Sorry for some of these being a little short on time. There have been a ton of games that are all ending in the next week.

Remember that I am in no way endorsing these games, I have not played them, I have not talked to the publishers. Back at your own risk.

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Asking for Trobils
Apparent Weight: Medium
Genre: Worker placement, space adventure

A few weeks ago I talked in depth about who really has creative control over a game, specifically using Asking for Trobils as an example. Long story short: Trobils is back with an easier on the eyes graphical layout, and it is looking better than ever. They have done their work on keeping their old fans and pulling in more, Trobils is looking like a solid worker placement game.

 

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Pack the Pack
Apparent Weight: Light
Genre: Tile laying, dungeon loot, simultaneous play

For those of you up to date with your canonical NP-complete problems, Pack the Pack has a striking resemblance to the knapsack problem. Each player is frantically trying to fit the most loot into their bag, trying to maximize value in a constrained space. I think I am going to be backing this one if only to pull it out when someone wants to play my arch nemesis… Bananagrams.

 

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Florenza
Apparent Weight: Medium-Heavy
Genre: Worker placement, Economics, Art

Some games are Eurogames by mechanics, and some are Eurogames by theme, Florenza is firmly in both camps. This is a reprint of a game published in 2010, so there is plenty of information online to inform your choice as to if you would enjoy Florenza. With lots of strech goals announced, this new print run could turn out a game with far better components than previous editions.

 

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Clockwork Wars
Apparent Weight: Medium
Genre: War game, Modular board, Variable player powers

I have a hard time figuring out if this is a war game or a euro game. It is certianly marketed like a war game, but taking a cursory look over the mechanics leads me to believe that is is more akin to Eclipse than a miniatures game. Take a look at the project page to see some sweet art along with a bunch of videos overviewing the game.

 

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Nautilus Industries
Apparent Weight: Medium
Genre: Economic, Stock market manipulation

Nautilus Industries caught my eye due to its simple and straightforward stock market mechanism. I really enjoy games that utilize a floating market, however my fascination might be tied to how horrible I am at playing with them. This game looks like a brain burner that has been streamlined into a more accessible and enjoyable game.

 

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Sentinels of the Multiverse: Wrath of the Cosmos
Apparent Weight: Medium
Genre: Card based superhero combat, cooperative, expansion

This is not actually a Kickstarter, this is a stand alone preorder for the next Sentinels of the Multiverse expansion, Wrath of the Cosmos. I know this is breaking from my form a little, but I have to tip my hat to Greater than Games for avoiding Kickstarter for what is obviously a preorder of a game. If you have not played Sentinels, you really should. The premise of the game is simple, but the interconnections between the heros are vast and engaging.

 

Taking a look at more trademark shenanigans
Thoughts on the world of Tabletop Kickstarter.

As I was preparing for this week, I went to find a project that I noted a while back, called Asteroid Miner. Normally, I search using the Kickstarter’s built in search function, but I was surprised I could not immediately find what I was looking for. I know that Kickstarter masks failed and canceled projects, but not normally when you search for them by name. This is an annoyance of mine, but I will save that for a later post (fun fact: I remember reading somewhere that about 10% of Kickstarters are successful, yet you will only ever come across successful ones using the Kickstarter website.)

So I did a little searching and found that Asteroid Miner was renamed Perihelion, and that the project was canceled. Investigating a little more, it turns out that Perihelion Games found themselves in the middle of an unfortunate trademark issue. Please refer to my previous post about Trademark law for my opinion on lay people making statements of fact regarding the legal process.

When researching for their game, Perihelion looked around online for other games titled “Asteroid Miner” and only found one previous game that shared the same title (I am going to refer to it as The Original to avoid confusion). The Original had a Kickstarter campaign that was ultimately unsuccessful about seven months ago. The Original seems to be defunct as there is no word on a relaunch, and there does not seem to be any indication that the company is still active on any social media sites or boardgaming resources. The last posing to their Facebook page was in October 2013, the last Kickstarter update was before the campaign failed, and their BoardGameGeek page is empty.

Perhelion assumed that this meant that the game was not coming back. They did however contact the original publishers to notify them that they were starting a new game with the same title. It turns out The Original was not too happy about that, and filed for a Trademark shortly after being notified of Perhelion’s intentions.

Fast forwarding to today. Perhelion was forced to change the name of their campaign, and in doing so put a hold on all of their advertising. Perhelion made the choice to halt the campaign and refocus their media outreach and branding.

Let me know what you think about this, as I think it is an interesting predicament. Either way, I will post when Perhelion’s new game is launched as it looks really cool!

If you have KS topics that interest you, let me know @Scooter_TTTD

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