Board Game News

Links: Convention Clips, Design Advice from Jon Shafer & Yet Another Mensa Award

• The 2012 Toy and Game Expo in Sydney, Australia takes place June 9-11, and publishers scheduled to be in attendance include "Mayfair Games, 93 Made Games, Treefrog Games, Purgatory Games,...

Göttingen Game Designer Convention 2012

On June 2-3, 2012, the Game Designer Convention in Göttingen, Germany will be held for the 31st time. Since its humble beginnings in 1983, the first – and still largest – convention of its...

New Game Round-up: Work the Underground Railroad, Alspach Reinvents Suburbia & Time to Play Games on the Couch

 • In an April 2012 BGG News item, designer Brian Mayer mentioned in passing that Academy Games had picked up his print-and-play game Conductor for release in Q1/Q2 2013. The game, which...

Designer Diary: Make It Square – Creating Edo

It's amazing where a single idea can lead to...In June 2009 during the Game Developers' Gathering in Göttingen, Germany, my son Louis and I were sitting at our table, waiting as usual for any...

Links: Flash Mob Game Reviews, The Hasty Cheater & (Yes) Another Post on Tabletop

Jesse Dean (doubtofbuddha) United StatesChicagoIL Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious predator on Earth! Patron Badge for 2008 through 2012 • BGG user Jesse Dean kicked up a lot of...

New Game Round-up: Filosofia's Mid-2012 Release Schedule, Dangerous Eggs & Casus Belli-aching

• I've pried release dates from Canadian publisher Filosofia for its upcoming French-language publications and have paired that info with release dates for English versions of the same...

New Game Round-up: GMTrio of Games, Kill Your Crew in Redshirts & Bling Bling Replaces Toc Toc

• GMT Games' Bomber Command has reached retailers in the U.S., and two other titles from the publisher – Ed Beach's Virgin Queen and Jason Matthews' and Ted Torgerson's 1989: Dawn of Freedom...

Richard Borg on Samurai Battles

Russian publisher Zvezda popped Samurai Battles onto the public radar in early 2012 with little fanfare, despite it including the next iteration of Richard Borg's "Commands & Colors" series....

Links: Protospiel Prep Time, Auctioning Chess History & a Totally Off-Topic Video

• Designer David E. Whitcher has posted dates for Protospiel 2012, which will take place July 6-8 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For those not familiar with the event, a short description from the...

Designer Diary: Garden Dice

Garden Dice, my first game, went live on Kickstarter in early April 2012. I've been working on it for over two years and the launch represents an important milestone and an exciting moment for...

New Game Round-up: Corruption Returns to Tammany Hall, Ogre as Big as Promised & Dice Head to Pasture

• Nathan McNair of Pandasaurus Games has announced that it will release a new edition of Doug Eckhart's Tammany Hall in 2012, with the game going the Kickstarter route at some point. Tammany...

Fantasy Flight Games' Line-up for May and June 2012

Somehow the info on Fantasy Flight Games' May 2012 releases was swallowed up in my in-box by news on New York Toy Fair in mid-February 2012 – and then the info on the June 2012 releases went...

New Game Round-up: Less Obscure Power Grid Maps, Templars Become Less Mysterious & Lands Less Unknown

• Friedemann Friese's 2F-Spiele and U.S. publisher Rio Grande Games will release German and English versions, respectively, of Power Grid: Québec & Baden-Wuerttemberg in April/May 2012. This...

New Game Round-up: The Banquet Is Set, Friedrich and Burgundy Arrive & Info About Infiltration

• Das letzte Bankett, a gorgeous-looking game from German publisher GameHeads and designers Britta Wolf, Michael Nietzer and Oliver Wolf that was shown at Spiel 2011, has finally been released...

Queen Games Goes Exclusive in the U.S. with ACD Distribution

Just three weeks after Z-Man Games announced an exclusive distribution deal with Alliance Game Distributors, as covered on BGG News at the time, German publisher Queen Games has signed an...

New Game Round-up: Courtier Completes the Tempest Trilogy, Rolling for Scripts and Scribes & Many Terrible Cow Puns

• Alderac Entertainment Group has passed along a brief description of the third title in its "City-State of Tempest" game line that I covered in this BGGN item on March 27. For now, the Phillip...

Samurai Battles: Command and Colors Meets Art of Tactic in Japan

• Russian publisher Zvezda is releasing a game – which is perhaps better described as a game series – titled Samurai Battles, with rules by Richard Borg and Konstantin Krivenko. Here's a...

New Game Round-up: Friedrich Approaches, Another Take on Dinosaur Evolution & Tentacle Bento

• The third edition of Richard Sivél's Friedrich – the anniversary edition that includes updated images and minor changes to the game board – should be available in North America in April...

Links: Designers on Why They Design, Magic: The Movie, How to Pitch & Why Finish Games?

• Tap: Max's Game – a film inspired by and based on Magic: The Gathering – premiered in the Czech Republic on March 3, 2012. Director/producer Kamil Beer sends this invitation to potential...

Alderac Founds a New World to Serve as Your Sandbox

In addition to the previously covered Smash Up, at the GAMA Trade Show in mid-March 2012 U.S. publisher Alderac Entertainment Group unveiled a trio of new titles – well, two of the three –...

New Game Round-up: Intergalactic Pizza Delivery, Play Through Storytelling & Stereotypical Viking Behavior

• On March 22, 2012, I linked to an article in The Boston Globe that mentioned a forthcoming release from Cambridge Games Factory: Kevin Spak and Sam Liberty's Cosmic Pizza. That game now has...

New Game Round-up: Pictomania, Hemloch, Get Bit! – All Revamped & A Peek at Countdown: Special Ops

• Dutch publisher The Game Master has unveiled the cover artwork for Countdown: Special Ops, its Spiel 2012 release from designers Hans van Tol (who is also the company owner) and Gert-Jan...

Links: Settlers of Catunes, Guess the Spiel des Jahres & Why Critics Said Nothing about A Few Acres of Snow

• Music to play Catan to? The music group Pax Dei has teamed with Tobias Strauss on "Catan-Projekt", an effort to musically interpret The Settlers of Catan novel by Rebecca Gablé. The entire...

New Game Round-up: Smash Up the Game Genres, A Peek at Realms & Galaxy Trucker Near Docking?

• French website Le Repaire des Jeux has posted a video of designer Vlaada Chvátil at Cannes 2012 explaining what gamers will find in Galaxy Trucker: Another Big Expansion: cylindrical...

Links: Nominees for the Origins Awards & More Hobby Goes Mainstream

• A mere day after I finally got off the pot and posted shortlists for the 38th Annual Origins Awards – information available since mid-December 2011, mind you – the Academy of Adventure...

New Game Round-up: Psychiatric Parties, Goblins Meet Mad Max, Uncharted Goes Cardboard & Twister Twists Again

• Stratus Games has announced its next release, a party game called Off Your Rocker in which players take turns in the role of a psychiatrist while the other players act out some quirk with...

Links: Origins Awards Shortlistsss, Spot It on Facebook & Wil Wheaton on a Tabletop

• The shortlist for the 38th Annual Origins Awards was published in December 2011 (but overlooked by me previously – whoops!), with the following categories likely to be of interest to the...

New Game Round-up: Breese Boards Keyflower, Rejiggered Contraptions & Ignacy Makes Big Promises

• Following Tony Boydell's fraudulent description of the next title from R&D Games, designer Richard Breese has now revealed what's really on the R&D agenda, namely Keyflower, a co-design with...

Links: Pizza Talk, Dueling Designers & How Many Pink and Blue Pegs Can You Shove in a Prius?

• Brothers Brian and Greg Powers are profiled in the Napa Valley Register upon the release of their first game: Pizza Theory from Gryphon Games. From the article:Quote:The pizza theme was...

New Game Round-up: Later Omens, Catan in Europe, Tsuro of the Sea & Native-American Dinosaurs

• John Clowdus at Small Box Games has posted an update on the second edition of Omen: A Reign of War, noting that while the publisher paid for printing at the manufacturer's stateside U.S....