Though timing like this rarely happens and we usually try to avoid it, right now we have some great games from terrific designers, all ready to produce at the same time. Rather than spacing their releases out over a prolonged period of time in multiple campaigns, we have decided to offer them simultaneously. This way the fans of these renowned designers won’t have to wait long to play these new and inspired titles.

For the fans of the illustrious Phil Walker-Harding (designer of Sushi Go!, Imhotep, and Bärenpark), we have an innovative 2-player tile removal game:

TANIS

Tanis, named after the ancient city in Lower Egypt, is a unique tile-digging game for 2 players. The game begins with 40 beautiful wooden domino-sized tiles randomly placed in the custom-made box. These tiles represent pieces of scrolls that the players are trying to reassemble in this fast-playing competitive game.

Tanis is designed by Phil Walker-Harding, the award-winning designer of more than 70 games, including Sushi-Go!, which has sold more than 1 million copies worldwide, and Imhotep, which was nominated for the prestigious Spiel des Jahres prize in Germany in 2016. His other designs include Gizmos, Barenpark, Silver & Gold, and Cacao. His games provide unique and exciting challenges to players while featuring easy rules and accessible gameplay.

The game of Tanis is unique in many ways as it is played using a custom-made box filled with 40 wooden tiles. The players will enjoy discovering and collecting the tiles during the game. The tension of removing tiles from the layers to reveal the tiles below them in the box creates excitement during gameplay. The players also have cards that provide special powers that may be used to enhance their actions. A single game generally takes under 20 minutes to complete.

CRUNCH TIME

For fans of Mike Fitzgerald, the creative mind behind Baseball Highlights 2045, Football Highlights 2052, Wyatt Earp, and multiple Mystery Rummy games, we are offering a new 2-player basketball game:

Basketball Highlights: Crunch Time is also a two-player game, but this time with a familiar sports theme, basketball! Designed by Mike Fitzgerald (with co-designers Ian Bach and Richard Yaner), designer of the Baseball Highlights: 2045 and Football Highlights 2052, this game extends the series to hardwood. The game is a tactical 2-player or solo game in which two basketball teams try to score the most points during the final critical moments of a game: CRUNCH TIME.

In Basketball Highlights: Crunch Time, each coach has a team of 5 players. As the coach, you will use your shot cards to set up your plays in several zones on the basketball court. The more players you have undefended in the proper zones, the more points you will score. If one of your players is in a zone that matches your star card, they can make an incredible shot and score extra points. Score more points than your opposing coach to win the game!

Basketball Highlights: Crunch Time may be played in 30 minutes or less. There is also an exciting solo mode.

As an add-on in the pledge manager, we are also offering Basketball Player Meeples for each team. This set will include 10 laser-cut silkscreened meeples to be used as the players for each team (shown below).

A BARD DAY'S NIGHT

A BARD DAY'S NIGHT

For fans of Alf Seegert, the quirky and full-of-fantasy mind behind the diverse titles Fantastiqa, Musée, Illumination, and The Road to Canterbury, comes the clever new card game:

You and your fellow tight-belted minstrels meet at the Hungry Troubadour Tavern. There is precious little coin to be found here, but there are vegetables galore to fill your empty bellies if you sing for your supper.

A Bard Day’s Night is a 2-4 player card game of bidding, bluffing, and belting out verses. Players compose ballads by putting together verses made of 5 cards. The ballad cards can combine into over 2 million different hilarious sentences like “A One-Eyed Barn Cat Charms a Lonely Vampire Who is Cursing a Vindictive Warlock.”

In playing cards, they also receive a reward of onions, tomatoes, or cabbages tossed at them! Using that bounty of food, bards bid on the right to perform each part of the verse for the crowded house of tavern-goers. The winners collect those ballad cards, hoping to have the majority of certain symbols by the end of the game. When playing the game, the bottom of the box also serves as the tavern table, holding extra food cards for those who lose their bids.

Play continues until the tavern closes for the night, after which the bards are awarded coins for having the majority of each theme. The minstrel with the most coin in their pocket wins!

THE SID SACKSON LEGACY COLLECTION

And last but not least, for fans of the legendary Sid Sackson, the ingenious mind behind the classics Acquire, Can’t Stop, Focus, and I’m the Boss, we have two new anthologies, each containing 3 new games:

Sackson Legacy Collection (Red): Cinema, Bowling Solitaire, Dig Site

Sackson Legacy Collection (Blue): I'm the Boss Dice Game, Banana Blitz, Scope

The brief version of the back story of these games begins with a trip that the EGG Team and friends took to the Strong Museum in Rochester, New York six years ago. We read about 20 years of Sid Sackson's diaries and noted the games he was particularly enthused about -- which had never been published. We then combed through the Strong's archives of Sackson's rules and prototypes and found about a dozen titles that gave us enough information to consider re-vitalizing them and developing them into currently-publishable titles. More details are covered on the box and in the rules about this process. The end result, six years later, is this anthology of six titles, most of which have never been published before. We think they demonstrate Sid's creative and innovative genius; and the variety of games he designed and re-designed; and the mechanics that he developed which were later used by many more designers in more recent games.

THE DISCOVERY of SCOPE

"I had the chance, back in 2014, to take a tour of the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester. It was a very enjoyable tour, but the highlight of the tour for me was when we visited the library, which houses Sid Sackson's diaries, an incredible resource full of interesting information about his game designs. One of the other folks on the tour noticed an entry for the contract for Acquire being signed - in September of 1963, when it was believed at the time that the game was first published in 1962.

Following up on this information, I reviewed all of Sackson's 1963 diary - and buried in the pages were three games he designed as alternatives for folks in the veteran's hospital to play in place of Bingo. And one of the three game immediately stood out to me - it sounded interesting, and made me interested in playing it. So I got the components together to try it out - and it was, in fact, a fun game. Digging further during subsequent visits to the Strong Museum, I found out that Sackson eventually called the game Scope, and tried to sell it to Whitman and Hallmark, among others. But it never did see the light of day - and I wanted others to have the chance to try the game. It's great to have it finally get a chance to be more widely appreciated, 60 years after Sackson first showed it to a small number of veterans." - Joe Huber

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