A couple of forthcoming games have caught my attention recently:

TROYES is designed by Xavier Georges who created Royal Palace and Carson City – both of which I like a lot, especially the latter. Troyes is a city building game using dice – it sounds like players use a central pool of dice but can also buy them off of each other too.  Players have secret agendas too.  Definitely one I have to try and/or buy.

STRONGHOLD: UNDEAD is an expansion for Stronghold and itsounds like there is an undead army storming the walls of the castle instead of the goblins, orcs and trolls.  One big difference sounds like there is no glory points this time – purely the task of breaking into the stronghold before 8 game turns are up.  The glory points of the original game were an interesting system but people I have played with (and myself) found the amounts of them required to win meant it was very difficult for the invader to win after turn 6 (out of 10).  So, a straight break-in or not  with a new type of army sounds great.

I’m really looking forwards to trying these at Essen and I may even pre-order them.

James.

(Note to publishers out there: I’m much more likely to pre-order and buy a game without trying it first if the rules are available to read beforehand.  Sure, reading a few rules can make me realise a game is not for me, but not having rules to read means I’m much less likely to pre-order it).