A passle of demos

Whoo-eee. There were so many demo games on the counter at THE GAME PARLOR the other night, you'd have thought GENCON was just over or something.

Of immediate interest was a constructible card game (the first one not put out by Whizkids!) called RACER KNIGHTS OF FALCONUS. Racer Knights of Falconus is a constructible card game created by Arthaus Games and distributed by White Wolf Publishing. Apparently Arthaus is not immune to copying a good idea...



In any event, the game appears to be CAR WARS in constructible miniatures format with a huge layer of fantasy hooey dumped on top for a theme. Check the link to the website to get the back story. In my opinion the cars look fantastic and they should probably just have stayed with a car to car combat theme and jettsioned the fantasy world.



Didn't have time to read the rules (I had bored children with), but you can right HERE. Racer Knights has some nice components to measure distance and shooting ranges with, so I suspect the similarities to CAR WARS will be manifold (pardon the pun).



Here's a better picture not taken with a Palm Zire!



The new Wild West card game from WhizKids, HIGH STAKES DRIFTER, was also in evidence:



I didn't have time (as mentioned) to play. The cards have an "Up Front" kind of look to them with loads of random numbers and statistics printed right on the card. The cards look pretty independent of the rules to me, and the "poker mechanics", while overdone (this has been used before as a visual theme, in Pinnacle's Deadlands card game), certainly has a good visual look and feel.
The Rules are online, for free.



Lastly, the da Vinci folks have released a new BANG! expansion, but I am not sure of what it's called. The website says it might be "A Fistfull of Cards", but there wasn't any lable on the demo to tell me and the guy in the shop wasn't much help either. No more details than this, as I was in a hurry.



I will certainly get the expansion to Bang and look to give High Stakes drifter a try, although it's not really capturing my eye at the moment. Racer Knights really is too silly to ignore.