Board Game News

New Game Round-up: UK Games Expo 2013 – Czech Games Edition, Disgrace & Favours, Key Celeste, Clacks & Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice

The 2013 UK Games Expo takes place May 24-26 in Birmingham, and with only a few days remaining before the Expo takes place, I thought I'd highlight games debuting at the show or available in...

Nominees for the 2013 Spiel, Kennerspiel and Kinderspiel des Jahres

The nominees for the Spiel des Jahres – Germany's "game of the year" award and the most influential award in boardgaming – were announced today by the jury of ten German journalists, and the...

Links: Making Games Mainstream, Finding the Villain & Guessing the Spiel des Jahres Nominees

• Ben Kuchera at The Penny Arcade Report riffs on the 2013 stakeholder report from Steve Jackson Games, highlighting the successful entry of the dice game Trophy Buck into the U.S. retail chain...

New Game Round-up: Foragers, Fallen, Star Trek: Attack Wing and Road/Kill Ultimate Car Combat

• While dropping word that an advance copy of his Gunrunners has arrived – with the bulk of the shipment due in June 2013 – designer Steve Finn of Dr. Finn's Games has announced his next...

Game Preview: Galaxy Defenders

Quote:Welcome, soldier! If you are reading this document, it means that your physical or mental capabilities are excellent and our planet needs you! You are joining a secret agency whose mission...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Eight Minutes of Dystopian Superhero Martians & Other Odd Creations

• The wave of miniature/science fiction games continues on Kickstarter with All Quiet on the Martian Front from designers Ernest Baker, Alessio Cavatore, and Rick Priestley and publisher Alien...

New Game Round-up: Expansions and Reboots Galore – Duel of Ages, Age of Steam, Seasons, Rolling Freight & DC Comics Deck-Building Game

• Designer Brett G. Murrell has been prepping Duel of Ages II – a new version of the Duel of Ages system first released in eight sets in the early 2000s – for some time, and he's now...

Links: Open Source Lovecraft, Gaming in Greece, New Crusoe Scenario & The Most Complicated Board Game Ever

• In a May 8, 2013 BGGN post, I linked to what I thought was the current issue of Portal Publishing's online magazine STORYonBoard. Turns out that wasn't the case due to the page layout on the...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Domus Domini, Promised Land, Hexica, Snowdonia & Many More

• Designer Heinz-Georg Thiemann blasted out Planet Steam in 2008, and the game was the talk of Spiel 2008 due to both the gameplay and the enormous box in which the game was sold. Planet Steam...

New Game Round-up: More Civilizations from Fantasy Flight, Revised Civilization Powers in Vinci II & A Goblin-Led Alternate Civilization from Evertide

• U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games has announced a second expansion for Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game titled Wisdom and Warfare, due out Q3 2013. Lots of new bits included in this...

Game Overview and Rules Explanation: Lost Legacy

Seiji Kanai's Love Letter has been discussed and reviewed and filleted and chopped and grilled and salted and eaten many, many times on BGG, so I regret to say that I add my take on the game in...

Designer Diary: Steam Noir: Revolution, from Idea to Launch

The most popular question presented to game designers is "Do you start with a theme or with a certain mechanism in mind?" The standard answer is, of course, "It depends..."The Spark2011 was a...

New Game Round-up: A New Confrontation in Middle-earth, More Exploring in Catan & Robinson Crusoe's Finally at Sea

• More exploring! More pirating! In September 2013 Mayfair Games will release a five- and six-player expansion for Catan: Explorers and Pirates, which was released on the U.S. market as of...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Amerigo, Ars Victor, The Mystique Deck, HEX: Shards of Fate & Archon: Glory and Machination

• Who knew German publishing behemoth Queen Games was so stealthy? Out of nowhere Queen dropped a Kickstarter project for Stefan Feld's Amerigo, due out October 2013 and the fourth Feld title...

Links: One Hundred Years of Little Wars, Why We Play Games & The Esoteric Order of Gamers

• On the one hundredth anniversary of H.G. Wells' Little Wars, the first known publication of rules for combat with miniatures, The New York Times featured an article by Mark Wallace in its...

New Game Round-up: Fresh Iron from 1A Games, More Middle-earth Deck-Building & the Dead Walk into Mainstream Games

Preliminary cover• It's amazing how quickly time passes. In March 2013 I had opened a tab – one of dozens – on my browser to pop out a press release about Fantasy Flight Games licensing the...

New Game Round-up: Two from Cwali, Two from Spielworxx, Two Move to Battlefront & Too Few from Z-Man

• Interesting to see all the places in which information about upcoming games can appear. For example, designer Corné van Moorsel, who releases his own designs under the Cwali label, is trying...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Leelawadee, Dwarven Miner, Moby Dick & KS Projects Galore

• Dutch designer/publisher Corné van Moorsel releases a few titles each year through his company Cwali, and for the past several years he's released a small print run of a game – e.g.,...

New Game Round-up: Teasers for Late 2013 Releases, Tidbits on a Second Cyclades Expansion & an Incandescent Inkognito

• In an April 29, 2012 BGGN post, I listed seven upcoming games from French publisher Bombyx, and since rules are still being written and games developed, I don't have more to tell you about...

Designer Diary: Promised Land: 1250-587 BC, or Ragnar Brothers Breaks New Ground in an Old Location

Promised Land: 1250-587 BC was first designed in 1992. Following the surprising success of History of the World we naively thought that Avalon Hill would snap up another BIG theme game from...

Links: Voting Opens for the 2013 DSP, Pegasus Moves Matagot's Goods & Playing While Drinking

• Voting is open for the annual Deutscher Spielepreis, an award run by Spiel convention organizer Friedhelm Merz Verlag that allows gamers from around the world to vote on five titles. Your top...

New Game Round-up: Bruges and More from Z-Man Games, Another Visit to The Red Dragon Inn & Bitter Euphoria

• U.S. publisher Z-Man Games has announced that it will have a limited number of copies of Stefan Feld's Bruges for sale at Origins Game Fair in mid-June 2013 ahead of the game's general...

Designer Diary: Canterbury, or A Game of City-Building in Dark Age Britain

Initial ConceptOne of the first things that popped into my head after playing Caylus in 2005 was how much I loved the idea that everyone was building the same city. Of course, I also enjoyed the...

Tokyo Game Market — Spring 2013

A short personal report from Tokyo Game Market, held April 28, 2013Game Market is the biggest board game event in Japan, boasting about 5,000 visitors for this event – but visitors who come to...

New Game Round-up: Thunderstone and Guildhall Get Bigger, Railways Gets Dice & Bombyx Gets the Urge to Fill All of Your Gaming Storage Space in a Single Year

• In addition to all of the other recently announced titles from Alderac Entertainment Group, the U.S. publisher plans to release Mike Elliott's Thunderstone: Starter Set in June/July 2013,...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Galactic, Guilds, Gears, and Gaiman! (also Fable, but that screws up the "G" thing I was going for... stupid "F")

Hey! It's been a whole month already since my last crowdfunding round-up!! There should be a lot of great games to cover... Oh, snap! W. Eric Martin managed to cover EVERY SINGLE game of note...

PLAY: The Games Festival – Report from 2013

PLAY: The Games Festival took place in Modena, Italy on April 6-7, 2013, and it was another great success, with more than 25,000 visitors (an increase of 15% from 2012) for an event dedicated...

Game Overview and Rules Explanation: Enigma

Finnish publisher Competo released Touko Tahkokallio's Enigma in 2012, and if you were wondering what type of game might be 180º away from Tahkokallio's 2011 smash hit Eclipse, you're looking at...

PAX East 2013: The Board Games II

While at PAX East – which took place March 22-24, 2013 – I snuck away from my digital game news duties for a few hours to talk with designers and publishers of analog board and card games....

Links: Mensa Mind Games 2013, Game Designer Rights in Germany & The Physical Glory of Board Games

• The annual Mensa Mind Games event was held April 19-21, 2013, in St. Louis, Missouri and the line-up of Mensa Select winners – that is, the five games rated best by the 300 or so attendees,...