• Spielworxx has released a few more details about Haithabu from designers Wolfgang Heidenheim and Andreas Molter, noting that this July 2015 release is not a mechanical heavyweight with lots of victory point chains and nested processes. In the game, players take turns performing individual actions on an action rondel, and what's most critical in the game is the timing of the actions because in each round each color of action can be selected only once. Players must react to market price changes and event dice that can cause complications.
• Stronghold Games has confirmed that it will release Luigi Ferrini's The Golden Ages in September 2015 with "no material changes".
• Along similar lines, Alderac Entertainment Group will release Simon Havard's Why First? in September 2015 after debuting the game in the U.S. at Gen Con 2015 in August. I've played this game a few times and will preview it soon in this space.
• German gamer Matthias Nagy has founded Frosted Games in order to publish a special holiday treat for gamers around the world: the Brettspiel Adventskalender 2015, which contains 24(!) small game expansions from 21 different publishers. Matthias mentioned this idea to me at Spielwarenmesse 2015 when I ran into him at that trade show, and I was blown away by the idea, amazed that no one had ever published such a thing previously.
Several Spiel des Jahres winners and nominees, as yet unnamed, as well as award winners from countries other than Germany have expansions included in this advent calendar. In a press release, Nagy notes that "[m]ost expansions are exclusive for this advent calendar up to Spiel '16 in Essen". Artwork for the advent calendar is by Klemens Franz, and €4 from the sale of each unit will be donated to charity. The board game advent calendar will debut on October 8 at Spiel 2015 in Essen, and it will be distributed in Europe through Spiel Direkt and available in the U.S. in a small quantity through BoardGameGeek (which is news to me).