Board Game News

Crowdfunding Round-up: BattleBots, Cowboys and Aliens, Guzunganators, 21st Century Idolatry & Today's Obligatory Zombies

Hey! WTF?! That is NOT the floating earth dice thingie avatar; it's some stupid wiener self-promotional game cover! Imposter! Guards! Hello there! My name is Matthew D. Riddle, and I put my...

New Game Round-up: New Heroes for Mythic Battles, More Werewolves in the Village & Corto Maltese Comes to Games

• French publisher IELLO has released some info about Mythic Battles: Expansion 1, due out May 5, 2013 in France and Q2 2013 in North America, specifically the following: Quote:Mythic Battles:...

Links: Gaming While Irish, Designing Small Games & Playing Games from Other Designers

• Game designer and co-owner of Twilight Creations Todd Breitenstein died on March 24, 2013 as a result of cancer that had spread to his lungs. BGG user Paul DeStefano had led a campaign to...

Cryptozoic Entertainment's 2013 Line-Up: Zombies, Hobbits, Vampires and More

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Deck-Building Game, first announced by Cryptozoic Entertainment in April 2012, now has a release date of March 28, 2013. The Walking Dead...

New Game Round-up: Hidden Elves, Scheming Archons, Sailing Captains & Mystic Warlords of Ka'a

• Greek publisher Artipia Games has settled on the final look for Archon: Glory & Machination, an October 2013 release from designers Nikolas Sakaloglou and Sotirios Tsantilas. I have no idea...

New Game Round-up: Spielworxx and Ludonaute Explore 19th Century History, Asmodee Preps the Track & Moonster Goes Uchronian/Politico/Steampunk

• German publisher Spielworxx has posted new images for Scott W. Leibbrandt's Colonialism, suggesting that the game will be available for preorder starting on April 10, 2013 with rules in both...

Interview with Sheila and James Davis, Game Collectors Extraordinaire

Piotr Siłka: Can you please introduce yourself in a couple of sentences?Sheila and James Davis: Both of us are originally from Utah, with James growing up in Moab and Sheila in Salt Lake City....

Crowdfunding Round-up: Krosmaster: Arena, Teramyyd: Earthsphere, Succubus: The Reborn, Magic: The Gathering Retrospective & One Item with No Colon in the Title

• Krosmaster: Arena was first released in late 2012 by French publisher Ankama. Some folks who picked up the game at Spiel 2012 went gaga over the colorful components, and the gameplay seemed...

Links: Ticket to Ride in the News Again, Japan Boardgame Prize 2012 & Are Kickstarted Games Worse on Average?

• Following appearances in The Wall Street Journal and on the BBC, Alan R. Moon's Ticket to Ride and publisher Days of Wonder now grace Forbes in an article by Caleb Melby titled "Ticket To...

New Game Round-up from GTS: More Legendary Heroes, Flying Frog's Blood in the Forest, Treasure in Ascension & Trains, Zombies, Romance, Love and Thrown Objects from Alderac

• While I covered the trade shows at Nürnberg and New York in person – and will be at ACD Games Day in Madison, Wisconsin in early April – I'm not at the 2013 GAMA Trade Show (GTS) in Las...

Interview with Touko Tahkokallio

The happy designer in 2010 withthen-new games Aether and ArvuutinPiotr Siłka: Are board games very popular in Finland? What does the board game scene look like? Are there many convents and...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Vacationing in Small World Before Walking a Plank of Deadwood and Getting the Shakes

• Following on the heels of its successful Pirates vs. Dinosaurs fundraising campaign, U.S. publisher Jolly Roger Games is heading 180º away from the fantasy realms to invite players onto...

Cool Mini Or Not and Eric M. Lang Ready Kaosball for the Playing Field

U.S. publisher Cool Mini Or Not has been blowing the doors off of Kickstarter projects since early 2012 with Zombicide, Sedition Wars, Relic Knights, Rivet Wars, and (the currently in progress)...

New Game Round-up: Planet Steam Revisited, Ragnar Brothers in the Promised Land & Beer, Belles and a Buzz from Dice Hate Me Games

• U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games has announced a new edition of Heinz-Georg Thiemann's Planet Steam, first released in 2008 from LudoArt and Heidelberger Spieleverlag in a box large enough...

Links: Eskridge on The Resistance, Lang on Future Releases, Orbanes on Monopoly and Money & Polar Bears on Shrinking Floes

• The Resistance designer Don Eskridge participated in an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit on March 11, 2013, which included this brief comment on possible future releases from...

Designer Diary: The Little Prince: Make Me a Planet

Written by Antoine Bauza and Bruno CathalaAntoine: The initial idea for The Little Prince: Make Me a Planet goes back to March 2011. Digger had just been released in the then-new "cylindrical...

Links: New Exclusives in the U.S. from Cryptozoic, Ludonaute and What's Your Game? & Game-Designing Boy Scouts

• U.S. publisher Cryptozoic Entertainment has entered an exclusive distribution deal for hobby stores with Alliance Game Distributors and Diamond Comic Distributors (Diamond being the parent...

Attack Wing from WizKids Promises Star Trek Wars

On March 5, 2013, I noted that U.S. publisher WizKids Games had a counter on its website counting down the seconds until March 11, with the numbers appearing in a Star Trek font. Obviously...

Links: Uwe Rosenberg Is Tops in 2012, Panda Is Hiring & Gettysburg Is Open to Your Donations

• On The Opinionated Gamers, Larry Levy posted his annual "designer of the year" column, choosing Uwe Rosenberg as the top designer of 2012 based on the breadth and strength of his designs...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Drum Roll, Emperor's New Clothes, Karesansui, Baldrick's Tomb & Kolossus

• Wow, just a couple of days more, and here we go again, unto the crowdfunding breach to see what's floating around on Kickstarter and other sites looking for funding. To start with, Greek...

Gen Con 2012: Reports from Elsewhere

(Okay, this news item consists only of old news – old being relative, of course, since the items all relate to the Gen Con game convention held in August 2012 – but I just discovered this...

News from Italy: Ludoteca Ideale, PLAY: The Games Festiva, Sails of Glory l and Galaxy Defenders

Ludoteca Ideale is about the closest thing we have in Italy to a "Game of the Year", with hundreds of gamers from more than fifteen different associations and clubs – along with a jury of...

Designer Diary: Quarantine – A Hospital Game from Conception to Delivery

Like most good stories, this one begins in a hospital. After my cord was cut and a few years passed, I find myself about to see my first published game, Quarantine, hit the market. I'll share...

New Game Round-up: Karesansui Rocks, Sharks Attack in RYŪ & Tasty Minstrel Buys City Hall

• In a March 6, 2013 "Ask Me Anything" thread on Reddit, Tasty Minstrel Games' Michael Mindes noted that he had added Michael R. Keller's City Hall to the TMG release schedule, which also...

Links: The Wall Street Journal and BBC Discover Modern Games, TableTop Pushes Others to Play & Six Games That Ruin Gaming

• A March 2013 article in The Wall Street Journal profiles publisher Days of Wonder and co-owner Eric Hautemont and puts some numbers on the sales figures for Alan R. Moon's Ticket to Ride: "It...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Dragon Whisperer, Sails of Glory, Hearts and Minds, Napoleon, The Guns of Gettysburg, Expedition: Famous Explorers & The Battle of Red Cliffs

• U.S. publisher Albino Dragon – which originally tried to crowdfund this Richard Borg design with a Tracy Hickman-inspired setting, dressy miniatures, a big box, and a different name – has...

Game Previews from NY Toy Fair 2013: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings Card Game, Words of Art, Stop It! & Qwirkle Trio

• Time for a few more game previews from NY Toy Fair 2013, with a trio of titles from Playroom Entertainment. (I would have had more four more videos featuring Playroom, but I botched the audio...

New Game Round-up: Another Army for Neuroshima Hex, Upcoming Releases from Rio Grande & Mascarade's History and Future

• Portal Publishing has announced a new army pack for Neuroshima Hex! with a publication date of March 2013. The Sharrash army pack will include rules in English and Polish, and here's a...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Odin's Ravens, Zombie House Blitz, Loka, Triassic Terror, Dungeon Roll & The Card Game of Oz

 • Wow, I haven't done one of these since mid-December 2012. Where does the time go? Oh, that's right – it went into convention coverage of the toy and game fairs in Nürnberg and New...

Game Preview: Bora Bora

• So, Stefan Feld – people seem a tad excited about his quartet of upcoming designs, so here's an overview of the first game released in 2013 that bears his name: Bora Bora from German...