Build Your Own Publishing House in Machi Koro

In November 2021, I posted an overview of titles coming from German publisher KOSMOS in the first half of 2022, and now a few more titles have come to light, starting with a special edition of Masao Suganuma's Machi Koro in March 2022.

Board Game: Machi Koro: Bau dir deine Verlagswelt!

KOSMOS first released Machi Koro in 2014, and this new edition is meant to honor KOSMOS' 200th anniversary, the company having evolved over time from Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, which started in 1822 with the publication of the novel Phaeton by Johann Friedrich Franckh.

In this edition of the game — Machi Koro: Bau dir deine Verlagswelt! — instead of developing a city through the addition of new buildings, players each develop their own publishing house by adding departments for editing, marketing, sales, and so on. It's unclear from the publisher's short description whether this edition contains changes to the gameplay or only to the graphics and branding.

• I covered the new entries in the EXIT: Das Spiel line in that earlier post, but I'll note that KOSMOS now reports sales of over 14 million copies for that line, which debuted in 2016. No wonder then that KOSMOS is expanding its line of narrative games with Cartaventura and Suspects...

• KOSMOS is repackaging a number of titles to serve as entry points to certain game lines. CATAN, for example, will have yet another "starter set", with this one containing the base game, the Seafarers expansion, and the Hawaii and Iberian scenarios.

Catan: Das Duell and Legends of Andor will each receive big boxes, although neither of them appears to contain all of the material ever released for these game lines. That's not the point of these big boxes, after all. They're essentially gift items for someone who is interested in a title, but currently owns no part of it. These sets get you started, and if you like the game, you'll go on to get more in time (or add expansions to your birthday wish list).

This is not the case, however, with Frank Bebenroth's Drecksau Total, which contains both the Drecksau base game and the Sauschön expansion. I've never played this title, but KOSMOS notes that it's sold more than 750,000 copies of the base game since it debuted in 2012, so clearly it has fans.

• Other titles are being spiffed up and relaunched, such as nearly all of the titles in the Ubongo line, although a couple of them won't be relaunched until 2023.

Reiner Knizia's Einfach Genial — which has sold 500,000 copies — is also being relaunched, and it will be joined on the market by new editions of Einfach Genial: Das Kartenspiel and Einfach Genial: Wer zu viel riskiert, verliert!, both of which first appeared in 2008.