Upsizing Kingdom Builder and The Castles of Burgundy

Upsizing Kingdom Builder and The Castles of Burgundy
Board Game: The Castles of Burgundy
Board Game: The Castles of Burgundy
Ahead of a game's appearance on retail shelves, it might debut at a convention...and ahead of that debut, it might be crowdfunded...and ahead of that, the crowdfunding campaign will likely be teased with multiple previews so that those who are looking to plan a game night in late 2023 can figure out what they might be playing. With that spirit in mind, I offer teasers of games that might become physical objects somewhere down the road:

• In February 2022, publisher Ravensburger announced an investment and partnership with crowdfunding site Gamefound, and with Ravensburger being the publisher of Stefan Feld's The Castles of Burgundy and with Gamefound being owned by publisher Awaken Realms, it might come as no surprise that Ravensburger and Awaken Realms are partnering on a giant special edition of The Castles of Burgundy that will be crowdfunded through Gamefound.

From gallery of W Eric Martin

Hundreds of comments have been posted on that project page, with wildly conflicting desires about what exactly a special edition of The Castles of Burgundy should contain and how much it should cost. Will anyone be happy with the final product?!

Board Game: Kingdom Builder
• A similar-ish project is in the works from German publisher Queen Games, which is crowdfunding a comprehensive version of Donald X. Vaccarino's Kingdom Builder that it calls Kingdom Builder: Empire Edition, which will "contain everything in print for Kingdom Builder...plus 3D plastic houses and castles, 'bakelite' resin ability tokens, and 25% larger game board tiles".

Why are the tiles larger? As a Queen Games representative explains, "The idea behind the product was to upgrade Kingdom Builder with plastic, 3D houses. We worked with our manufacturer to get them designed, and from the samples we got they look fantastic. However, to have the level of detail we wanted they had to be bigger than the wooden houses were, and while they fit on the boards for KB, they take up the whole space and the board becomes a bit crowded. Therefore, in the empire edition, all of the tiles are larger to accommodate the houses."

Board Game: Kingdom Builder: Empire Edition

Here's the landing page for this Kickstarter project, which will include a small expansion of "twist" cards that will be available separately at a later time.

Board Game Publisher: Plan B Games
• This item isn't quite in the same vein, but I neglected to post about it at the time, so here it is: In May 2021, Sophie Gravel posted the following on The Boardgame Group's forum on Facebook:
Quote:
Plan B is working on the creation of a Master's Collection to include Samurai, Euphrat & Tigris, and a few more "must have's" in any dedicated gamer collection.

These games were originally published in a rectangular format and included wooden components instead of plastic.

Wooden or bakalite components are a clear choice for us on this classical collection.

But what about box size ?

I welcome all your thoughts and suggestions !
I'll note that in March 2021, Gravel sold Plan B Games to Asmodee with her committing to work for the Asmodee Group, then in August 2021 — roughly three months after this post — Gravel was named Head of Studio at Z-Man Games, which had previously released new versions of both Samurai and Tigris & Euphrates (along with three other classic Reiner Knizia designs) before canning its "Euro Classics" line in...April 2021.

From gallery of W Eric Martin
Gone but not forgotten

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