Board Game News

Links: Brathwaite (Again) on Train, Voting Opens for the DSP & Cthulhu Warms Your Face

• From now through July 31, 2012, you can vote on the games you feel should receive the Deutscher Spiele Preis, the annual award run by Spiel organizer Friedhelm Merz Verlag and voted on by...

Even More from Libellud in 2012: Tom Thumb, Animals, Stickz, Seasons & Ladies and Gentlemen

• In addition to Ali, which I covered in yesterday's new game round-up, French publisher Libellud has a number of other releases lined up for 2012, such as a French version of Dong-hwa Kim's...

New Game Round-up: Guess the Treasures in Ali, New Faction for Rune Age & Dungeon! Will Open Once More

• In August 2012, French publisher Libellud will release Ali from Antoine Bauza and Corentin Lebrat. Here's a short description of the game:Quote:In Ali, players re-enact the story of "Ali Baba...

Links: Mensa Mind Games 2012, Talk of Dreams and Games & Knizia Explains Whoowasit?

• Mensa has announced the five winners of the 2012 Mensa Mind Games competition with 300 "judges" rifling through 68 games in 48 hours to vote on their favorites. The winning titles...

New Game Round-up: Surviving for Three Decades, Mage Wars for Two & One New Import Company

• Designer Steve Finn says that a new print run of Biblios from IELLO has been finished, but still needs to ship from the manufacturer, which means the game won't be available for a couple more...

New Game Round-up: Lots of Expansions to (Super Dungeon) Explore, Tsuro Asea & Alien Artifacts in May

• Calliope Games will release Tsuro of the Seas in August 2012, and while game play largely resembles that of Tsuro – with players trying to stay alive on the game board longer than anyone...

News from Italy: Beer & Vikings, Winter Tales, Wild Oltrenatura, Micro Monsters and Sheepland

While most of my writing on BGG News has been game previews, this post is my first periodical round-up of what's happening in Italy. In such posts, I'll mostly focus on things that could be...

Links: Africana Online, BGG Auctions Aggregated & Connecting Designers to Their Creations

• Michael Schacht's Africana – released in Germany from ABACUSSPIELE in early 2012 and due in the U.S. from Z-Man Games in May – is now available for play online at Schacht's own...

New Game Round-up: Keyaerts Does Robots, Congo Does a Name Change & Teuber Does...Something

• Toy Vault has announced that Richard Borg's Abaddon has a U.S. street date of April 30, 2012. The English rules can now be downloaded from this page on BGG.• Designer Klaus Teuber will...

Want to Make the BGG Database as Complete as Possible? Here's Your Chance...

In my role as editor of BGG News, I run across many, many new games that are not in the BGG database. As an obsessive completist, this makes me sad. While I add some of these games to the...

New Game Round-up: Pirate Previews, German Snow(donia) & Andrea Meyer Makes Us Sing for Our Supper

• Alderac Entertainment Group has started posting previews of the factions in Paul Peterson's Smash Up, highlighting four cards from the pirate faction with four more cards scheduled to debut...

Designer Diary: The Phoenix Syndicate

Design on The Phoenix Syndicate started over five years ago on a cross-country car trip from Los Angeles to Boston. My wife Rebecca and I were moving east due to a job I'd just taken, and it...

Links: Game Genres as Music, Dice Tower Award Nominees & How to Decide What to Play

• Not sure what to choose during game night? Perhaps this handy-dandy "How to Choose the Perfect Board Game" flow chart will allieviate your worries:(HT: That other Eric Martin)• In a Tasty...

Gathering of Friends 2012 - Video Demos

While in Niagara Falls last week - we recorded several demos of games that are newly released or are slated to come out this year. Check em out!Thanks to Beth who brought her BGG jersey just in...

Designer Diary: Puzzle Strike, the Quest for a Tournament Quality Deck-building Game & Making Casual Play Matter

Casual versus(??) Hardcore"Casual" and "hardcore" can be a false dichotomy. Which one is World of Warcraft, for example? It's pretty casual friendly, and yet it's not at all casual to the...

New Game Round-up: Words from Ragnar, Rumble Reprint & More Details about GOSU2

• The UK publisher Ragnar Brothers will debut a new game at the 2012 UK Games Expo, held May 25-27, and as is sometimes the case with the Ragnars, the design is perpendicular to past releases....

Designer Diary: Ace of Spies

[A blank screen clicks on with a burst of static. An isometric view appears of a practically bare room, bathed in darkness. A shaven-headed man in glasses sits handcuffed by a table in the centre...

Martin Wallace Round-up: Yet Still More Hobbits & A Few Acres in a Different Universe

• Polish gaming magazine Świat Gier Planszowych has posted a cover shot of – yes, can you believe it?! – yet another game based on The Hobbit, this one a card game designed by Martin...

New Game Round-up: More Ships for Star Wars, More Forces to Clash & More Hopes of Seeing Glory to Rome

• In a Kickstarter update, Jeremiah Lee at Cambridge Games Factory notes that "advanced shipping orders" of the black box version of Carl Chudyk's Glory to Rome will leave China by plane before...

New Game Round-up: A Game with Gears, Conan and Skullkickers & More Puzzles, More Strikers

My apologies for the briefness of today's post. I'm on the road with limited Internet access, so I'm making do in short time!• Steve Jackson Games has announced a July 2012 release date for two...

Designer Diary: Titans of Industry

I love games, and I know I'm not alone since you're reading this on BoardGameGeek, which means you share the same passion for games that I have developed over the years. The following story...

New Game Round-up: Yet More Hobbits, Shiny Revamped Goblins & Stone Age Architects

• In the wake of recent announcements of Cryptozoic's handful of Hobbit board, card and deck-building games and WizKids' Clix-based Hobbit game, it might seem odd to run across yet another...

New Game Round-up: New Marks for Hamblen's Venus and Realm, Jolly Good Math & Eclipse, Trajan and Nefarious Come Closer

• For those not scouting the Merchant of Venus and Magic Realm game forums, BGG users Will Crane, Scott Lewis, and others have been scouring U.S. trademark records (as covered in this thread)...

Hidden Depth

(This column first appeared on BoardgameNews.com on Sept. 25, 2007. —WEM)I recently ran across a quote from Greg Aleknevicus, editor of The Games Journal – a fantastic (and unfortunately...

Links: Honors for Eclipse, China Moves to the Stars & Deciphering What You Like in Games

• Costin Manolescu, owner of the Romanian site BoardGames Blog – in his words, "the first Romanian blog dedicated entirely for board and card games on the Romanian territory" – announced...

Cocktail Games' 2012 Release Calendar: Acting, Silliness, Riddles, Consonants & Murder

French publisher Cocktail Games has a newly designed website – one with information in both English and French across the board, even though many of its games include rules only in French or...

New Game Round-up: Wonderland Comes to Games (Again), Noises from Space & More Hobbits, More Games

• In light of yesterday's Cryptozoic Entertainment round-up, which included a handful of Hobbit-related game releases scheduled for late 2012 and 2013, I should point out that WizKids is...

Ogre Lands on Kickstarter, Crushes It

In a first for the company, U.S. publisher Steve Jackson Games has launched a Kickstarter project, with the game being kicked the "Designer's Edition" of Steve Jackson's Ogre – a 14-pound...

Cryptozoic Entertainment's 2012 Line-Up: Pennies, Politics, Food, Hobbits & Deck-Building Galore

U.S. publisher Cryptozoic Entertainment has announced, hinted at, teased, and flashed a huge number of forthcoming titles since the start of 2012, but I've received direct information on only a...

New Game Round-up: Rosenberg Harvests Another Game, Gerdts Rebuffs the Rondel & Clowdus Preps for War

• Designer Uwe Rosenberg seems destined to be associated with beans and farming for the rest of his career, not simply due to the long-running success of Bohnanza and the explosive power of...