Board Game News

Design Diary: Lords of Waterdeep

I was pretty sure my co-designer hated the game he had helped me make.Wait. No. Let me back up.I'm sitting on a train in the middle of Glacier National Park in Montana. I've just spent the last...

Convention Preview: PLAY: The Games Festival

PLAY: The Games Festival – which takes place March 24-25, 2012 in Modena, Italy – has more than 15,000 square meters dedicated to games, with hundreds of tables available for open play. More...

New Game Round-up: D-Day for May, Talisman Meets 40k, More Deckbuilding from Alderac & A Giant – Nay, Ogre-ish – Box

• Valley Games has tweeted that D-Day Dice will be available "probably later in May". As long as it hits by June 6th, everyone will be happy and no one in Canada will be invaded.In the same...

Links: Knizia Talks Game Design, A Nightfall Windfall & Real-Time Colorblind Tests

• Alderac is giving away complete sets of Nightfall if you pimp the contest through Twitter or Facebook. (No credit, alas, for writing about such things in this forum.)• Not a game but rather...

New Game Round-up: Pirates Reborn, Ascension Redux, Avatars Reoffered & Lupin Retailed

• WizKids is relaunching its Pirates of the Spanish Main constructible strategy game – which debuted in 2004 and died in 2008 when Topps shut down WizKids – as a card game titled Pirates of...

New Game Round-up: French-Canadian Zombies, Mage War Expansions & More Innovation

• I goofed in a March 7 post by announcing that Ares Games' Wings of Glory: WW2 Starter Set was being released that day. In fact, the Starter Set has a U.S. and Canada street date of March 19,...

New Worlds to Conquer in Small World Realms

At the GAMA Trade Show, taking place now in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. publisher Days of Wonder has announced a new expansion for Philippe Keyaerts' Small World and Small World Underground – Small...

Upcoming Releases from Eagle and Gryphon Games: Sackson Sampler, Multiple Solitaire & Launius' Battlefields

FRED Distribution, which publishes games under two brands – Gryphon Games for family-friendly designs, and Eagle Games for more involved games – has a trio of Kickstarter-funded titles that...

New Game Round-up: A House Divided and Reissued, Make-Believe R&D, Vegas on Track & Rules for Steel Police

• Mayfair Games has now placed its new version of Frank Chadwick's A House Divided more firmly on the calendar with a June 2012 release date. As noted earlier on BGG News, developer Alan Emrich...

Game Preview: 7 Wonders: Cities

On March 5, 2012, designer Antoine Bauza posted a note on his blog about the forthcoming 7 Wonders: Cities expansion: "Le développement est quasiment terminé mais prend (comme souvent) un peu...

Links: Hippodice Game Design Winners for 2012, Never Scene It Again & Game Gifts Reborn

• The results of the 2012 Hippodice Spieleclub game design competition have been announced, and the winners are:-----1. Brethren of the Coast, by Brett Gilbert (UK) -----2. Druid Stones, by Alf...

Convention Report: Toronto Toy Fair 2012

(My apologies to Chris for not posting this report sooner. He filed it at the end of January 2012, but I got caught up in Nürnberg, NY Toy Fair, and other things, and this report fell behind the...

Designer Diary: Importing the Age of Industry to the Great Lakes!

Even though I have a nice badge above my avatar indicating «Game Designer», I don't consider myself a game designer per se. Given that I've never designed a full game, "Variant Designer" would...

New Game Round-up: Vermin Arrive, Digging Under Waterdeep & Moriarty Joins Holmes

• Ryan Amos at Sands of Time Games reports that Catacombs (second edition, second printing), Catacombs: Cavern of Soloth (second printing), and the new Catacombs: Horde of Vermin are all either...

Designer Diary: The History of GUBS

The Gub characters began a long time ago. They have been in my life for so long that I can't even accurately pinpoint the date of their creation. Perhaps it was 1992. I was in the fourth grade, a...

Links: Z-Man Games Goes Exclusive, British Toy Fair 2012 & Ouija: The Movie

• Z-Man Games, owned by the Canadian publisher Filosofia, announced today that it's signed an exclusive distribution deal with Alliance Game Distributors and its parent company Diamond Comic...

New Game Round-up: Vinhos Comes Close, Bleasdale Cracks Nuts & FFG Launches Sky Traders

• Vinhos will be available (finally!) in the U.S. the week of March 12, 2012, according to Filosofia's Martin Bouchard.• In a March 5, 2012 news item, I noted that German publisher Pegasus...

Links: Compete for Wings of Glory, Hasbro Cuts, Tasty Minstrel Hires & Online Work in the Real World

• Ares Games is holding a WWII trivia contest about planes, pilots and related matters in honor of the release of Wings of Glory: WW2 Starter Set, which has a U.S. street date of today, March...

New Game Round-up: Plans from the Game Forge, Rats in Space & (Sigh) Yet Another Game About Limbo

• Polish publisher Kuźnia Gier has unveiled its plans for 2012, and in addition to the already announced – but not really revealed – Alcatraz: The Scapegoat expansion due out at Spiel...

New Game Round-up: Kim Satô Goes from Goblins to Dragons, Police Preview, 3D Go & Escape on Kickstarter

• Kim Satô's Gosu series of games might be over (at least for now) with the release of Gosu: Kamakor in early 2012, but French publisher Moonster Games has another title coming from Satô in...

New Game Round-up: Texas Zombies Shuffle Forth, Rules for Hunger Games & Looney Labs Reels in Arkham Fans?

• In a March 1, 2012 post mostly focused on the forthcoming Oz Fluxx, due out March 23, Looney Labs drops this teaser: "To those obsessed with Cthulhu: we're planning to bring out Cthulhu Fluxx...

Designer Diary: Rocket Jockey

Thought you might be interested in hearing a little about the game and my design philosophy, so here we go.My background: I've been a playtester for almost thirty years now (geez) for a broad...

Links: Donald X. Talks a Lot, Secrets of Becoming a Kickstarter Rock Star & Something I Really Shouldn't Include

• Designer Donald X. Vaccarino is interviewed by Derek Thompson at Meepletown, and a few of his answers make clear why I'm such a big fan of his creations. First:Quote:Kingdom Builder is a game...

Designer Diary: Fleet – It All Started with Emperor Palpatine...

Welcome to the designer diary for Fleet, covering everything from from The Idea to The Game. Fleet was co-designed by Matt Riddle (riddlen) and Ben Pinchback (bno70_1), both first-time designers....

New Game Round-up: Worldwide Africana, A New Neuroshima Army, Blue Max Flies Again & It's Time to Win!

• ABACUSSPIELE's Matthias Wagner has passed along news that Michael Schacht's Africana – the publisher's big release in the first half of 2012 – has been picked up by a few other...

Designer Diary: Wilderness

This is a story about one of the largest families in Sweden and how their game Wilderness came to be. More than a decade after the first prototypes were created, it became known to gamers...

Links: Westeros Reimagined, China Heads North & Days of Wonder's Digital – and Cardboard – Success

• In mid-May 2012, at the Days of Fire and Ice weekend that celebrates all things Game of Thrones, U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games will debut the new A Dance with Dragons scenario that...

Designer Diary: Briefcase – A Timeline of Events

The article below was written by Sotiris Tsantilas, one of Briefcase's designers. I helped him with the translation into English and am posting it here on his behalf:When Konstantinos Kokkinis,...

New Game Round-up: Nefarious Nears, Dual Dixits, Cranio Quartet & Count Down the Days 'Til the Bomb Goes Off

• In early February 2012, I posted a rundown of releases from the U.S., French and German branches of Asmodee, with one of those items on the calendar being Dixit: Journey, which I described as...

Links: Best-Sellers in Late 2011, More Maps from which to Escape & Global Localization

• Hobby news site ICv2 interviews retailers, manufacturers and distributors to compile lists of the best-selling board games and card games (among other things) in the U.S. hobby market on a...