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Fight for Tiles in Dorfromantik: Das Duell, Claim Heroes for Sale, and Relive the Fischer/Spassky Showdown

July 23, 2023

• One of the neat things about D. Brad Talton, Jr’s Millennium Blades is that it’s a game about playing a game, so in a sense you’re one step removed from playing while still playing.

I love metafiction and self-referential creations, so I’m intrigued by Paolo Mori‘s Match of the Century, which is about a game, but not played like the game being featured.

This two-player game debuts from Deep Print Games in October 2023, with Pegasus Spiele likely to have the game at SPIEL ’23 and with Capstone Games releasing it in the U.S. later. The setting:

In the summer of 1972, the final match of the World Chess Championship in Reykjavik saw the ultimate showdown: American Bobby Fischer challenged the reigning world champion, Boris Spassky from the Soviet Union. Touted by the media as the most important sporting event of the Cold War, an incomparable thriller unfolded…and now, you can be right in the middle of it.

In Match of the Century, you play one another over a series of games, just as in a real championship match. However, here each game lasts only a few short and intense turns, so every decision counts in pulling off the win. As you play cards with unique effects from your asymmetrical decks, each of you manipulates the mental endurance of the other and the outcome of each quick game, but weigh your options carefully because only by giving up the advantage can you use your cards’ effects.

Frosted Games’ Matthias Nagy is part of the Deep Print Games team, and I’m getting Watergate vibes from this new release — although that might just be the combination of a two-player game set in the early 1970s.

• The day that Pegasus Spiele won the 2023 Spiel des Jahres for Dorfromantik: The Board Game, the press release announcing this award mentioned that Pegasus expects to release Dorfromantik: Das Duell from the same design team of Michael Palm and Lukas Zach at SPIEL ’23.

Dorfromantik: Das Duell is a standalone, competitive game for two players or teams — or four players if you have two copies — and each side builds its own landscape. Two new types of tasks are part of the game, and two independently playable modules provide more challenge, with four of the new special tiles being integrable in Dorfromantik: The Board Game.

Pegasus editor André Zottmann has noted that expansions for the original game as in the works for release in 2024, which should not be a surprise to anyone.

• I’ve already posted a fair amount about KOSMOS‘ SPIEL ’23 releases, but it keeps adding more to the list, such as Heroes for Sale, a two-player game from Christian Kudahl. Details are sketchy at the moment:

In 2077, the world is dominated by huge corporations. All they care about is money, more precisely: credit.

Promotional image with non-final cover

In Heroes for Sale, you enter a dynamic card duel and send superheroes into the game round after round. Whoever bids the most gets the heroes and tries to take over the opponent’s bases.