• The German branch of Mattel won the Kinderspiel des Jahres in 2014 for one of its designer game releases — Geister, Geister, Schatzsuchmeister! from Brian Yu — and for Spiel 2014 it released another Yu title: Bania, a revamping of his Desert Bazaar design that the U.S. branch of Mattel released in 2006.
• I thought that I had wrapped up all of the Japon Brand presentations in a few posts earlier, but here's one that I had missed: OWACON, a.k.a. Old World And Code Of Nine, from designer BakaFire and his publishing brand BakaFire Party. Despite my obsession with Japanese games, it's one (of many) that I've yet to play. Time is a fickle friend...
• I'm also getting disjointed in my efforts to group a publisher's titles together as I posted a demo video featuring a title from RedImp Publishing the other day, but overlooked the Stratego-style Warships in the process. The nature of most work cycles, I think, being organized and enacting your plan, grouping activities together in order to be efficient, but then everything becomes messy and more chaotic as time passes and new data impinges on previous plans. Hey, that sounds like warfare, so I made a connection. Ding!
• Dutch publisher Quined Games adds one or two new titles to its Master Print series each year, and one that's been well-received but not much highlighted is the 2014 release The Golden Ages from designer Luigi Ferrini, who showed up at the BGG booth to talk about his creation.
• New publishers tend to show up in the farthest, most barren reaches of Spiel, as was the case with Dutch publisher Spellènko with its late 2013 release CIRCUS! Viola Volente's Sensational Show from designers Jaap de Graaf and Henk Jan Gerrits. Yes, this game was released in the Netherlands prior to Spiel 2013, but since most of the gaming world was not aware of the title, Beth Heile took a few minutes to speak with them to find out what the game is about.