• At PAX Unplugged 2023, which ran December 1-3 in Philadelphia, Mindclash Games demoed the 2024 release Ironwood from Maël Brunet and Julien Chaput. Here’s an overview of this 1-2 player design:

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Ironwood is a rules-light, highly asymmetric, card-driven tactical game. Each round, you and your opponent alternate playing a total of three of your faction-specific cards for their action effects. These effects include positioning your warbands, initiating combat, extracting crystals, bestowing temporary passive effects, and more. When combat occurs, you use the same cards for their combat values instead in a simultaneous bid to gain combat bonuses, inflict and fend off casualties, and augment the tactics value of your warbands to win the combat.

The two factions are completely asymmetric in their play styles, decks, victory conditions — even in which parts of the map they can access.

Demo at PAXU 2023 (Image: Beth Heile)

As the Commander of the Ironclad, your primary goal is to lay down the foundations of your forges in the outer mountains, and once you have collected enough crystals, build forges on the foundations. As the Chieftain of the Woodwalkers, your mission is to locate your people’s ancient totems through vision cards, clear the path to them by defeating Ironclad warbands, and secure them in the outer forests beyond the Ironclads’ reach. Once you have retrieved the third totem as the Chieftain or built the third Forge as the Commander, you immediately win.

Ironwood also features a low-upkeep solo mode against the Ironclad or the Woodwalkers. Although both solo opponents work on the same main principles, each of them bears its faction’s unique aspects and features.

• U.S. publisher Wise Wizard Games has announced a new imprint — Wacky Wizard Games — that will debut with three titles in 2024. These games are intended to be family-friendly, lightweight games with a more whimsical, cute vibe that what’s released by the parent company.

Star Realms Academy, for example, is a simplified version of the spaceship combat deck-building game Star Realms from Rob Dougherty and Darwin Kastle that that will feature less math and no reading.

In the party game Caution Signs from Danielle Reynolds and Scott Brady, each round you’re presented with a secret combination of adjective and noun: stylish rhino, gassy monkeys, flexible cow, melting babies — ten thousand combinations are possible. You have twenty seconds to sketch an image of this combo on a caution sign. All of these images are then revealed to the round’s guesser, along with the individual adjectives and nouns, and the guesser tries to figure out what each sign is warning them about.

Pack the Essentials is a lightweight, abstract strategy game from Jacqueline Atkins for 1-4 players about packing cats in suitcases. (Yes, cat = essential.)

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• Crabs in a Bucket is the debut design of Rick Gardner, founder of Blue Rondo Games, and it’s a card shedding game for 2-6 players. An overview:

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Players start with seven cards in hand from a deck comprised of 52 suited cards (resembling a standard deck) and 22 “Joker Crabs” that are unsuited. During play, players use two discard piles, one for suited cards (referred to simply as “The Discard Pile”) and another for Joker Crabs (referred to as the Joker Pile).

Suited cards may be played on the discard pile on top of other cards that match their suit or number. Once a suited card is played, a player may also discard all cards of higher value of the same suit from their hand. When a Jack, Queen, or King is on top of the discard pile, no Joker Crabs may be played. Additionally, if a player cannot play, they must draw cards at the end of their turn.

Creative display at PAXU 2023 (Image: Beth Heile)

Joker Crabs, which are all based on real crab species, have unique effects. All but one of them can benefit a player by, for instance, forcing an opponent to draw from their hand or allowing them to play unique combos. The final Joker Crab — the Lobster — is a barrier to victory as it cannot be played; should you hold the Lobster, you must find a creative way of discarding it without playing it.

• In November 2023, Bézier Games announced that Silver Eye, the fifth title in the Silver series from designer Ted Alspach, will debut in 2024 — and at PAX Unplugged 2023 it revealed that the game series will wrap that same year with Silver Fang, a standalone game that introduces team rules to Silver, along with another set of cards from 0-13 with new powers.

Each Silver has a small totem that grants a special power to the winner of a round that they can use in the next round, and the silver fang creates a second discard pile that anyone can discard to, but from which only you can draw. Maybe your teammate can discard the perfect card for you to play next turn…

Not very sneaky werewolves at PAXU 2023 (Image: Beth Heile)

• I’m not at PAX Unplugged 2023, but Candice Harris and Beth Heile are — and they’ve sent along a few pics aside from the ones above:

Design your own landscape booth…

…and some of the final results (Images: Beth Heile)

Ed Bryan of the new version of Mayfair Games shows off a future release (Image: Beth Heile)