Board Game News

Designer Diary: Five Tribes, Part 1

In Q4 2014, Five Tribes will start appearing on game store shelves worldwide. I am often asked to talk about the game creation process, so I decided to take this opportunity to try to lay out on...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Special Black-and-Gold Edition — Coup Reforms, Gods Reborn & Bellbottoms Revived

• Coup: Reformation debuted at Spiel 2013 and sold out in hours, leaving nothing but an empty table in the La Mame Games booth for the rest of the show. Now U.S. publisher Indie Boards and...

New Game Round-up: Whaling in New Bedford, Railing in Yardmaster & Impaling in The Last Banquet

• Fantasy Flight Games has announced a Q3 2014 release date for The Last Banquet, an English-language version of a 2012 release from German publisher GameHeads in which 6-25 players split into...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Rabbits, Realms, Rentinels, and Reavy Ream... Yup, That's What I'm Going With

So many dang projects! I am trying to get back on a decent schedule here, so let's see what is out there that W. Eric has not already covered: only eleventy billion projects and seemingly more by...

New Game Round-up: Ambassadors for Madeira, Mages for Mage Wars & WizKids for Germans

• WizKids Games has announced a partnership agreement with Asmodee Germany to release German language editions of Mage Knight Board Game, Quarriors!, Star Trek: Attack Wing and Attack Wing:...

Core Worlds to Experience Revolution, Digital Development & Serial Storytelling

Placeholder cover imageU.S. publisher Stronghold Games has announced a trio of forthcoming releases related to its Core Worlds deck-building game from designer Andrew Parks, all due out in Q4...

Designer Diary & Short Story: Baseball Highlights 2045

Now that I'm a full-time game designer, I am able to spend more time developing games that I have always wanted to do. I have been a baseball fan since my dad took me to games at Yankee Stadium...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Chopstick MegaChallenges, Braille-Based Gaming & The New, New Society in Saint Petersburg

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more to see what possible treasure and foulness lies in wait amongst the crowdfunding sites that now seem to encompass half the game market, but in...

New Game Round-up: Zombies Head to Class in Student Bodies, Blood Bowl Sees New Foul Play & Players Buy Games in Essen The Game

• Games fail on Kickstarter for all sorts of reasons, but failure doesn't doom a game to permanent prototype status. First-time publisher Angry Duck Games didn't succeed with its KS project for...

Prove Yourself to Caesar & Become Praetor

I first saw Andrei Novac's Praetor at Spielwarenmesse — the annual toy and game fair in Nürnberg, Germany — in 2013, where I recorded an overview of the game in prototype form before it even...

Put on the Scrubs and Try to Save a Life in Roberto Fraga's PanicoBloc

In amongst all the other photos and videos shot at Festival International des Jeux 2014, which took place in Cannes, France from February 28 to March 2, comes an image from Nicolas Soubies that...

Game Preview: Splendor, or Gem-Grabbing Made Easy, Quick and Dirty

Splendor from designer Marc André is the first release from Space Cowboys, a French publisher formed from three of Asmodee's founders, with Cyril Demaegd from Ystari and Sebastien Pauchon from...

New Game Round-up: Sell Games at Spiel in ESSEN, Sic Goblins Against Zombies & Take to the Air in Planes...Maybe

• With Trains already in its catalog, Alderac Entertainment Group plans to add David Short's Planes in Q4 2014. (No word yet on whether Automobiles is in the offing, but I'd wager money it will...

Stone Blade Entertainment Brings Heroes Together in Ascension: Realms Unraveled

Justin Gary launched Gary Games in 2010 with Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer, which put a twist on the Dominion-inspired deck-building genre by confronting players with a constantly...

Cathala, Chevallier and Bombyx Prepare an Abyss for Your Entertainment

• Like that ugly mug staring at you? Credit goes to French publisher Bombyx and artist Xavier Collette, who have adopted a bold look for the cover of this August 2014 release from designers...

Manor of Ravens and the Manor-Born Lieutenant Skarn Join Descent Second Edition in Q3 2014

Fantasy Flight Games has announced a pair of new expansions for Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition), one being the new boxed set Manor of Ravens that brings six new quests, 16...

New Game Round-up: Laying New Tracks for Trains, Flicking Discs in the Wild West & Shopping for Dinner

• Designer Karol Madaj has another title forthcoming from Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, one that was created, as is the case with all IPN games to date, as an educational tool to help people...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Exploring Catacombs, Playing with Time, Running the Field & Fighting Stalin

Sure, Matt Riddle just pounded out a c.f. round-up of his own, but he missed a few dozen projects along the way. It's almost like he's doing this in his spare time instead of being devoted enough...

Days of Wonder Prepares Memoir '44 for the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day Landings

Days of Wonder introduced Richard Borg's Memoir '44 on June 7, 2004 to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Normandy landings by Allied forces in World War II. (June 6, the actual landing...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Gold, Wine, Zombies, Pirates and Other Things Never Before Seen in Strategic Board Games! Or More Likely Things Already Seen in a Bunch of Other Strategic Board Games, But Now Different and More Better! Well, at Least Newer...

Wow. This is my one year crowdfunding round-up thingy anniversary! As much as I like to jokingly give W. Eric a hard time, I completely respect what he does and the rate at which he does it. He...

New Game Round-up: Mare Nostrum to Sail Again, Another Trip to the Moon & Munchkin Invades Castle Panic, Love Letter

• Now here's an interesting combination of forces: Munchkin Panic is, as the name suggests, a blending of Fireside Games' Castle Panic and Steve Jackson Games' Munchkin. This hybrid design from...

New Game Round-up: Eric Lang Conquers Warhammer 40k, Kevin Wilson Explores The X-Files, Doomtown Returns from the Dead & Machi Koro Heads to U.S. Shores

• U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games has announced a new Living Card Game (LCG) in its line-up — Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, with Eric M. Lang leading the design. (For those who don't know,...

New Game Round-up: Stronghold Signs Up for Kanban, Ares Revisits Tolkien & Another Mission to the Red Planet

• U.S. publisher Stronghold Games has announced that it will publisher Vital Lacerda's Kanban: Automotive Revolution, which has been in development since at least 2010. (Stronghold co-published...

New Game Round-up: Playing the Villain in Legendary, Making Waves in Dungeon Fighter & Building Like a Madman in Bavaria

• Fresh on the heels of Legendary: Paint the Town Red hitting the U.S. market, Upper Deck Entertainment is announcing its next release for the Legendary game line — Legendary: Marvel Villains...

New Game Round-up: From Himalaya to Xidit, Dual Doodle Drawings & Dots and Hexagonal Boxes

• Designer/publisher Régis Bonnessée of Libellud has transformed his Spiel des Jahres-nominated Himalaya to place the action in the world of Xidit, the land first explored in his game...

New Game Round-up: Fitzgerald Hones Diamonds , Anderson Reveals Chimera & Bauza Exhibits Samurai Spirit

• I visited U.S. publisher Playroom Entertainment during my trip to NY Toy Fair, and for 2014 the company's release schedule includes both new titles — some announced during earlier years but...

Spielwarenmesse 2014 — Game Previews XIII: Difference, Tutti Frutti, Gloobz, Animal Suspect & Fatal Rendez Vous

• Time for another group of videos shot at Spielwarenmesse 2014, the annual toy and game fair in Nürnberg, Germany, with cameraperson John K. and I having shot more than ninety videos at the...

New Game Round-up: Cargo Shipped, Heroes Passed, Spells Forgotten & Eggs Exploded!

• U.S. publisher Alderac Entertainment Group has added another Japanese designer to its "Big in Japan" line: Kuro, who seems to release a handful of games at each Game Market under the name...

New Game Round-up: Totally Hip, Half of the Oniverse & None of the Galaxy-Rolling

• All too often, I write notes to myself or email/bookmark links or save catalogs and press releases, then never get to that material because so much other stuff has followed it down the pipe...

Game Preview: Pairs, or How to Revel in (or Curse) the Winds of Fortune, Then Get Over It One Minute Later

In my preview post about AbluXXen, a few people noted that it would be easy to mock up a copy on your own to test out the game. I hadn't done so (as I had received a published copy before...