Board Game News

New Game Round-up: Schmidt Spiele - Taking Tricks, Stealing Assets & Lying Through Your Teeth

• Among the other titles on its release schedule — such as the ones covered in this Jan. 7, 2014 BGG News post — German publisher Schmidt Spiele is publishing a version of Naoki Homma's...

New Game Round-up: Schmidt Spiele - Dancing Cockroaches, Ghost Eggs & 100 Years of Mensch Ärgere Dich Nicht

• Another day, another batch of new game information from a German publisher, this time from Schmidt Spiele and its children's game subsidiary Drei Magier Spiele.Let's start with Jacques...

Team Play on Small Worlds, Now Seating Six

As part of its Kickstarter campaign for Small World 2, an updated digital version of Philippe Keyaerts' Small World, Days of Wonder included a few analog additions to that game, including an...

New Game Round-up: Cards from Kramer & Kiesling, An Inn from Pearl Games, Lots of Bamboozling & The Nürnberg/NYC Convention Preview

• Designer Jay Cormier has posted an update of anticipated releases in 2014 of games designed by him and fellow "Bamboozle Brother" Sen-Foong Lim, starting with Belfort: The Expansion...

New Game Round-up: AMIGO Spiel in Early 2014 - Bullheads, Lemmings, Kobolds, Wombats & More

• German publishers are starting to push out information on their 2014 game releases ahead of the Nürnberg toy and game fair at the end of January, so here's an overview of AMIGO Spiel's...

New Game Round-up: Purple Brain Creations Prepares Hares, Tortoises, Wolves, Ants and a Giant WAT-AAH! to the Face

• French publisher Purple Brain Creations has passed along word of its publication plans for 2014, starting with Shinobi WAT-AAH! in March 2014. Purple Brain's Benoît Forget describes Shinobi...

Links: Orphaned Game Mechanisms, Games of the Year & Japanese Minimalism

• On his personal blog, designer Kevin G. Nunn has been posting an interesting series of articles for game designers titled "The 10 Best Game Mechanisms You Aren't Using". Part one covered...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Cross Hares, Mega Man, Way of the Dragon, Elemental Clash & No Pathfinder Dice Arena

• While U.S. publisher 1A Games was established to carry on the Tide of Iron game series from Fantasy Flight Games, the publisher plans to release original games as well, with the first such...

New Game Round-up: Riding the Tricky Track/s, Confronting Ever More Ultimate Werewolves & Finding Knizia on the Game of Thrones

• What's this, you might say? Information on a new title from Austrian publisher Piatnik? Yes, indeed, your eyes aren't deceiving you, but in this case I heard directly from designers Jordi...

New Game Round-up: Nürnberg 2014 — Basari and Qwixx Get Carded

• German publisher Nürnberger-Spielkarten-Verlag has two titles scheduled for release in early 2014, one being a new version of Reinhard Staupe's classically simple "simultaneous action" game...

New Game Round-up: Three Players Needed for Three Kingdoms Redux, Munchkin Joins the Toy Shelves & Another Day, Another Apocalypse

• Singaporean publisher Starting Player plans to launch its first title — Three Kingdoms Redux, from designers/company owners Christina Ng Zhen Wei and Yeo Keng Leong — in Q4 2014. Given...

Links: Rob Daviau on Legacy Games & The Cones of Dunshire

• In November 2013 at PRACTICE — a three-day annual conference held by the NYU Game Center that "takes a close look at the concrete challenges of game design" and "explore[s] the day-to-day,...

New Game Round-up: A Pair of Talisman Expansions, A Pair of Otherworldly Threats & Pairs from Cheapass Games

• Cheapass Games' James Ernest has released the new card game Pairs, co-designed with Paul Peterson, in a print-and-play format on his website, in addition to making a published version...

BGG.CON 2013: What More Could a Gamer Want?

BGG.CON took place November 20-24, 2013 at the Hyatt Regency DFW Airport in Dallas, Texas. The location is super convenient as you could actually walk from the terminal, but the free shuttle...

Links: Patching Board Games, Questioning Reprints & Honoring Your Country

• On the blog I Slay the Dragon, Andrew writes about patching board games, and no, he's not referring to Patchistory, but rather to the infinite resource-generation engines discovered in Uwe...

New Game Round-up: Build Quickly in Mad City, Build Up in Lords of Vegas, Build Mines in Steam & Build Stacks in SEVEN

• U.S. publisher Mayfair Games has announced several releases for early 2014, starting with Kane Klenko's Mad City for February 2014. Here's an overview of the setting and game:Quote:Welcome to...

New Game Round-up: Making Squares, Toppling Kings, Evolving Critters & Ironing Cities

I've been holding off on news posts due to the image server not working and image uploads not being available. After all, I often upload images to correspond with new games or feature images of...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Conflict of Heroes, 4 Thrones, Argent, Dead@17, War of Omens & Much, Much More

• U.S. publisher Academy Games has been taking preorders for Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear - Solo Expansion for some time, and now its French publishing partner Asyncron Games has a...

BGG.CON III: Galaxy Trucker, Through the Ages, Infamy, Buccaneer Bones & Velociraptor! Cannibalism!

• To close out the videos from BGG.CON 2013, we'll start with an overview of Travis R. Chance's Infamy from Mercury Games, which was available for purchase at Spiel 2013 but not for demo. Since...

BGG.CON 2013 II: Chaosmos, Pay Dirt, Think Again & Spurs: A Tale in the Old West

• Let's continue the game previews recorded at BGG.CON in November 2013 with Chaosmos, which designer/publisher Joey Vigour from Mirror Box Games expects to release in 2014. • While focusing...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Where Old Literature Is the New Hotness and W. Eric is Old and Busted

It is early December 2013 and because I have 8- and 9-y.o. girls, I have been listening to Christmas music for five weeks already! It used to annoy me but not so much anymore. I enjoy watching...

BGG.CON 2013 I: Baseball Highlights: 2045, Argent: The Consortium & BattleCON: Devastation of Indines

• In addition to Pandemic: The Cure, which I've already previewed on BGG News, at BGG.CON 2013 I was able to check out at a number of other future game releases. Even better, I recorded...

New Game Round-up: Car Wars (Re)Starts Small, More Factions for More Smashing Up & Temple-Building in Ophir

• Now that it's delivered copies of Ogre Designer's Edition to Kickstarter backers and the game has reached its retail release on December 6, 2013, U.S. publisher Steve Jackson Games is...

Game Preview: Chicago Stock Exchange, or Game Tree Tribulations

At heart, perfect information games like chess and checkers are game tree exercises. The first player in chess makes one of twenty possible moves, the second player does the same (creating one of...

New Game Round-up: Machi Koro en Français, New and Improved Amsterdam & Hanabi for Every Market

• Masao Suganuma's Machi Koro was the three-star, runaway winner of the Japon Brand line-up at Spiel 2013, with copies of the game in constant play during BGG.CON 2013, too. While we're still...

BGG.CON 2013: Impulse — Breaking Your Mind at the Speed of Light

Q: "Why did the man drop his game at the convention?"A: "Poor Impulse control."Let's get this out of the way up front: I've written a lot about how much I love Carl Chudyk's Innovation. Here's...

New Game Round-up: The Nile Will Run Red While You Explore Valley of the Kings for Illegal Tiny Epic Kingdoms

• Designer John Clowdus of Small Box Games posted this update on Facebook on Nov. 25, 2013 about The Nile Will Run Red: Quote:Last game of the year/first game of 2014 will be a collection of...

BGG.CON 2013: Pandemic: The Cure — Gambling on the Job

To answer the first question people have had about Pandemic: The Cure — a dice-based version of the best-selling Pandemic board game — the packaging shown at right was created by designer...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Fighting Fears, Reinventing the Past, Building a Reputation & Ogling Templars

You know what's out of control? Kickstarter projects for board and card games. Okay, that's not news to you, dear reader, as you've undoubtedly seen a continuous wave of announcements for such...

BGG.CON 2013: Escape from Zombie City — Rolling, Running, Reaping and Riding out of Town

Non-final coverIn addition to trying Queen Games' Greed at BGG.CON 2013, as described in this BGGN post, I also tried that company's prototype of Escape from Zombie City, a spin on Kristian...