Plans from Portal Games: Robinson Crusoe Tracker, Imperial Settler's Expansion, and More!

Portal Games sent out a newsletter at the end of last week full of exciting news. If you aren't familiar with Portal Games, you should be. They are the Polish board game publisher headed by Ignacy Trzewiczek. He's the guy that designed the siege boardgame Stronghold (can't wait for the next edition), the huge hit Robinson Crusoe and most recently the empire building card game Imperial Settlers. Since forming his own company that enabled him to get his games directly to market, he has picked up several titles like Neuroshima Hex. If you are unfamiliar with any of these games do yourself a favor and go fix that! Enough introductions, lets get to some goodies from Portal's newsletter. First off is some more news about Imperial Settlers. As Dice Tower News first reported here, the first expansion, Atlanteans, will be premiered at Gen Con in July and then available for the masses in August. This expansion introduces a new faction with a new mechanic as well as cards for all four existing factions. The newsletter provides more fuel for fans of the game by revealing artwork from the expansion, specifically artwork for some of the new Roman cards! In more Imperial Settlers news the first Empire Pack (of 55 cards) Why Can't We Be Friends added new card mechanics to all four core Factions as well as solo play. Adding cards to the core opened up a new aspect for the game, Deck Building! Although you can just add the new cards in, it is advised you remove core cards out as you add new cards in. Wow! the possibilities for this game in the future just opened wide with more Empire Packs and expansions. There is a suggested method for this Faction deck building and Ignacy himself has added a video walkthrough to this process here. Ignacy visited the UK Games Expo where he previewed Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot as well as Tides of Time. Both are new Portal games that will be made available at Gen Con. Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot is a dice chucking game with modifiable pirate ships that DTN wrote about here, whereas Tides of Time is a "micro" card drafting 2-player game that we announced here. Having a chance at a sneak peak may have well been worth a trip across the pond! The Portal newsletter provide a link to a user created "spin down" life counter for the very popular Robinson Crusoe. This beautifully drawn life counter was created by BoardGameGeek user Rom Brown and can be downloaded for free here from the BGG site. Board Games Insider is a bi-monthly podcast by Ignacy Trzewiczek and Stephen Buonocore (president of Stronghold Games) that is geared toward designers and insiders but any fan of boardgames would enjoy. The newsletter directs readers to the link for Episode 7 where the hosts talk about BGG Fam con, the UK Games Expo and a Mysterious Origins Announcement (spoiler: a new game from Stronghold)! Go ahead and check out the podcast here. Neuroshima Hex is Portal's hugely popular tile placement game that is heavy on combat and tactics. The newsletter directs fans to a BGG link that provides a user made faction, The Gurrak Tribe. Two last news bit from the newsletter. First, Ignacy has started his second Kickstarter for his writing endeavors. The first one for Board Games That Tell Stories was successful and enabled him to publish a book collecting articles from himself and other board game designers about many topics including board game design. Now Ignacy is kickstarting Board Games That Tell Stories 2! Lastly, the 6th annual PortalCon took place on June 6th in Poland. That was a lot of Portal news! In short, if you enjoy Portal games, get ready for some new games and expansions in the next couple of months!