Board Game News

BGG.CON 2013: Greed — Making Your Fortune on a Wing and a Prayer (and Two Thugs and a Gin Joint)

BGG.CON 2013 has come to an end, but since I was able to check out a few upcoming releases at the convention, I thought I'd share one of those discoveries with you — me being the game news guy...

New Game Round-up: Baseball Moves to the Future, Blue Max Takes off for the U.S. & Deep Space Nine Hogs Your Shelf

• The 2013 edition of Phil Hall's WWI dogfighting game Blue Max from Italian publisher Stratelibri will be "exclusively distributed" by Fantasy Flight Games, according to Stratelibri, with...

Designer Diary: Race for the Galaxy: Alien Artifacts

Alien Artifacts "reboots" Race for the Galaxy with two different play experiences: a full expansion set, plus an Alien Orb exploration game.Expanding the Race UniverseThe 55 expansion cards in...

A Preview of What Exhibitors Are Featuring at BGG.CON 2013

Admittedly I've been slow to get this preview list for BGG.CON 2013 out the door. BGG.CON 2013 starts in, what, just over two days from when I'm posting this. Sheesh! Recovery from Spiel 2013 has...

Spiel 2013: Demos from the Messe Floor — Marvel Dice Masters, Ka-Boom, Ignis, Mauna Kea, Sagario & Rock, Paper, Scissors, BANG!

• To continue the wave of game previews that I recorded at Spiel 2013, Scott D'Agostino from WizKids Games shows off a preproduction copy of Marvel Dice Masters: Avengers vs. X-Men from...

New Game Round-up: Fighting Monsters Together in Fireteam Zero, Racing Anew in Formula D & Receiving Presents Against Humanity

• Emergent Games is a new publisher founded by Mike Langlois, Gary Simpson (artist on many games) and Christian Leonhard (1960: The Making of the President co-designer, among other things), and...

Spiel 2013: Demos from the Messe Floor — Istanbul, Abyss: Perdition's Mouth, Polterfass, Geistesblitz 5 vor 12 & Zicke & Zacke: Ran an die Federn

• Is anyone still interested in Spiel 2013? Anyone? I hope so because all of the videos that BGG recorded at Spiel 2013 are now live on our YouTube channel and they're on two playlists since...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Printing Miniatures, Becoming Pilgrims, Building Altars, Destroying Cities, Creating Love Stories & More

• New U.S. publisher Gigaloth Games is launching with Tug O' Lords from designers Chris Dixon and Jascha Frei, and as the name might clue you in, the game has a tug-of-war element to it with...

Tokyo Game Market - Autumn 2013: Live Streaming by NicoNico & Live VLOGs by Danboard Chan

Ever since I found out about this wonderful hobby, I've dreamed of going to Spiel / BGG.CON / Gen Con, and hopefully one day I'll be able to make it. That said, my friend Robert invited me to the...

Time to Save the World Once Again in Pandemic: The Cure

If you've scanned the official schedule for BGG.CON 2013 — the annual convention in Dallas, Texas run by this very site, a convention that opens on Wednesday, Nov. 20 and runs through Sunday,...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Keyflower: The Farmers, City Council, Stak Bots, Dungeon Roll: Winter Promo Pack & Board Games That Tell Stories

• Whoa, it's been a while since I posted one of these. Something about giant game conventions that take months out of your life, then weeks from which to recover. Amazing how that happens.Let's...

Tokyo Game Market — Autumn 2013

A small report on the Tokyo Game Market that was held November 4, 2013, and a history lesson on What Caused This to HappenThere is actually little to be said about Game Market in Japan that...

New Game Round-up: Time to Play in the Dead of Winter & Games Coming to BGG.CON 2013

• U.S. publisher Plaid Hat Games has announced the first title in a new series of games titled "Crossroads" that "tests a group of survivors' ability to work together and stay alive while...

Help Choose the Cover for Boardgame Designer's Marketplace

My wife Linda and I are working on an e-book (Kindle and PDF) called Boardgame Designer's Marketplace. If you're familiar with the Writer's Market series of books, this is the same idea: A...

New Game Round-up: Two Takes on Dice-Building with Rattlebones and Marvel Dice Masters: Avengers vs. X-Men

• Stephen Glenn's Rattlebones — first mentioned on BGG News in Feb. 2011 just after I started posting game news on this site and in the works since 2009 — finally has a game page on the Rio...

New Game Round-up: Escaping from Zombies Yet Again, Space Station Argo Finally Docks & a Seafood Offering from Dr. Finn

• Okay, Spiel 2013 is in the books and while we still have bucketloads of demo videos to decrypt and upload — more than two hundred! — it's time to turn our eyes toward the future and check...

Spiel 2013: Tricks and Treats for King of Tokyo, Moonster Games' 2014 Agenda, Sheep-Collecting in Japan & Cocktail Signs the Best Game Evar!

• French publisher IELLO debuted the King of Tokyo: Halloween expansion at Spiel 2013, but a problem has arisen with the costume cards meant to be shuffled with the power cards in the King of...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Drink Beer, Murder a Medical Professional, Do Cowboy Stuff, Run from Zombies, and Attract Tolkien — or What W. Eric Did in Essen!

Spiel 2013 is over! Tons of hot new games have flooded the market WITHOUT the help of crowdfunding. It's funny, though, as I glanced over at the hotness on Friday during Spiel and saw a mix of...

Spiel 2013: Sellouts, No Shows, Rankings, Surprise Appearances & Roads & Boats on the Boat

• Possibly the most anticipated Spiel 2013 item that wasn't guaranteed to be at the show in the first place was Hansa Teutonica: England, an expansion for the highly-regarded Hansa Teutonica...

Spiel 2013: Peeking at Las Vegas Lights, Going Coconuts & Rolling Out the Barrels in Polterfass

In addition to hundreds of new games being available at Spiel 2013, the huge game convention in Essen, Germany that ran October 24-27, companies demoed future releases — just in case you didn't...

Spiel 2013 Update: Seasons: Path of Destiny, 7 Wonders: Babel & The Builders: Middle Ages

Friday morning at Spiel 2013 — sellouts from the first day of the fair seem to be fewer than normal. As Heiko Günther pointed out in yesterday's BGGN post, Japon Brand probably leads the pack,...

Spiel 2013 Update: Blueprints, Patchistory

Spiel 2013 has been open for a couple of hours — with the doors opening at 9:50 for some reason, at least at one entrance — and everyone is learning how to navigate the new layout, finding...

Spiel 2014 Preview – Time Stories

What's that, you say? We're previewing Spiel 2014 already? Aren't we still a handful of hours away from Spiel 2013 opening to the public?Well, sure – but it's never too early to get a jump on...

Spiel 2013 Update: Mayfair Games Buys Lookout Games

As noted on October 8, 2013 on BGGN, U.S. publisher Mayfair Games will distribute the three most recent titles from Lookout Games — Caverna: The Cave Farmers, Bremerhaven and Karnickel — in...

Bézier Games Prepares One Night Ultimate Werewolf

While most game publishers are trying to sell new games at Spiel 2013, many others are showing off prototypes of games that they plan to release in the months and years ahead, including U.S....

Designer Diary: Cruel, Cruel Galaxy, or Designing Quantum's Mechanics

Quantum took three-and-a-half years of design and development to create. It's a game of which I am very proud and also one that represents a tremendous amount of work and collaboration. In this...

Designer Diary: Folder, or From Friday Follows a Game That's Not a Game

A lot of people say that a one-person game is more of a puzzle than a game. I think I proved this idea wrong with Friday, and a lot of people were surprised by how much of a game a solitaire...

Game Preview: Sushi Draft! (Chopsticks Not Included)

Takahiro's Sushi Draft! from Japanese publisher KogeKogeDo is, believe it or not, one of two sushi-drafting card games to be released in the recent past, the other one being Sushi Go! from...

Game Preview: Machi Koro, or Catan Writ Small

Despite the worldwide success of The Settlers of Catan in terms of it introducing people to modern game design, one common complaint is that the die rolls don't happen frequently enough to "even...

Designer Diary: How The Outcast Heroes Came to Life and Why It Was So Difficult

The first thing I usually do when starting work on a new game — whether something designed to order with a strictly determined theme, or my own original idea — is preparing a specification of...