As the exhibit hall was shutting down on Thursday, we sat down with Geoffe Bottone and Cliff Bohm from Slugfest Games to talk about new products, Tiki Mountain and Red Dragon Inn, old products like En Garde, Kung Fu fighting, and Fishing for Terrorists, Expansion products, red Dragon Inn II and More Kung Fu Fighting, and top secret products we can't tell you at this time but will be out in the 2009 timeframe and sound way more than cool, as if there would be any doubt with a Slugfest product.

It's not that we give Slugfest a free pass when it comes to their games, it's that we've never met a Slugfest game we didn't like.  It may also be that while all of their games are fun to play with just two people, as you add players to the mix, it's an exponential increase in the fun factor.  If you've never played a Slugfest game, I almost envy you, since you'll have the joy of discovering the irreverent design, easy-to-understand rules, and just plain fun of their games.

But let's slow down and take a look at how things are going at Slugfest.  Firstly, they are working with Paizo Publishing on distribution and sales and they are looking to take advantage of the organization available so they can concentrate more time on their games.  And what about their games?  Let's break it down by title, shall we?

• Fishing for Terrorists
  • Less than 600 units left from the 2500 production run
  • The title is being redone with new art and updated cards
  • The new version of the game will cost less
  • We wondered if a certain administration was using the game to plan it's foreign and domestic policy
  • No comment
• En Garde
  • Less than 1500 of the original production run are left
  • A convention only card "INCONCEIVABLE!" is available - and gives you an answer to the pistol
• Kung Fu Fighting
  • First production run of 2500 sold out
  • The second production of 5000 is selling well, around 40% stock remaining
  • The expansion, More Kung Fu Fighting, is on the books to be release in the Spring of 2008

Now, how about the new stuff?  Between the time of our interview (6:00 - 6:40 PM) and 10:00 PM, we had cracked open and done a two player game of both Red Dragon Inn and Tiki Mountain and while we'll wait until we play the 3 player version of the games, we'll give our fist glance impression.

Red Dragon Inn

Red Dragon Inn is a 2-4 player game about what happens after the adventure is over.  The mighty adventurers are sitting in the tavern, chuckling over their well gotten gains and making a nice evening of it; waiting for the other players to fall asleep or pass out so they can steal their gold and helping them along the way by spiking their drinks, cheating while gambling, and generally making a nuisance of themselves.  Our first glance impression was very positive for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the one (1) page set of rules and that the cards explained everything required to use them.  another great thing about Red Dragon Inn is that each player has their own private deck.  This lets you flavor your play style, or, for us even more fun, be randomly assigned a deck and have to deal with it.

Tiki Mountain

How to describe Tiki Mountain.  If Chutes and Ladders met Joe vs the Volcanoes, that'd give you a pretty good idea of your end goal and the game board travel.  Tiki Mountain is a very dynamic 2-6 player board game that allows you to indulge your less pristine desires and throw truly bad things at your opponents.  It's a fast paced game with more variety than you can shake a stick (even a nice walking stick) at as you try to make it to the top while paths are blocked, other players steal your equipment, and the Volcano God works his own special magic to keep you hurting.

Both Tiki Mountain and Red Dragon Inn are generating good industry buzz.  An indication of how good is that we had people stop and watch and ask questions and even ask to borrow both Red Dragon Inn and Tiki Mountain while we were playing.  in case you wondered, that's not an incredibly common thing to happen.

And on the horizon?  Well, there's More Kung FU Fighting due in the spring of 2008 and you can read our review from Dexcon 9 here.  There's also Red Dragon Inn II.  This will be both an expansion to Red Dragon Inn as well as a stand-alone game, giving people the capacity to host up to 8 players.  While the mind boggles at eight players, it's because of the hilarity involved, not because of any game play issues.

And that sums up the main reason we look forward to every new games these folks bring out.  We've never hit a point were the rules were confusing or contradictory, and we're the type of people who argue over Monopoly and Risk rules.  Woe unto the game we pick up that assumes folks will never pull some unlikely stunt.  Slugfest games, as a rule, are made to employ the unlikely stunts and they spend the time and effort to play test their games to make certain a balance of play is maintained.

This attention to detail lets us play the games hard and fast and enjoy the hell out of them, even, on the rare occasions, I assure you, that we may not actually win.  Rare being subjective, of course.