Board Game News

Designer Diary: Frontline General: Spearpoint 1943 Map Expansion

Box art byMarc von MartialSomewhere in Italy, 1943 – U.S. Infantry occupy a small Italian village...Migs tossed his cigarette...and crawled to the room's other window. Below him, on the small...

Links: Lots of This and That and Some of the Other...

• The Norwegian Årets Spill (games of the year) have been announced by Brettspillguiden.no, with Michael Schacht's Mondo taking home best family game over Fresco, Uluru, Dominion: Intrigue and...

Designer Diary: From Olympus With Love – Omen: A Reign of War from First Illustration to Second Edition

A few days ago, we launched our first Kickstarter project for the second edition of Omen: A Reign of War. Luckily for us, the game went over pretty well the first go-round – at least that's...

New Game Round-up: A Game Quartet from Giochi Uniti, More Penny Arcade & Two, Count 'Em, Two New Tactical Space Battles

• Cryptozoic Entertainment has announced the Q1 2012 release of Penny Arcade: The Game - Rumble in R'lyeh, which is both a standalone game and an expansion for the deck-building game Penny...

Designer Diary: Flash Duel: Second Edition – Expanding Without Expansions

Flash Duel: Second Edition is such an unusually large leap over the first version of Flash Duel that I think I should explain how that came to happen. It started out simply enough, but ended up...

Fantasy Flight Games' Line-up for March 2012

U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games has announced its "sell sheets for March 2012", presumably meaning that these titles will be released in March 2012. We'll see. In any case, let's kick off...

Designer Diary: Rise! or the Climb to Creation

"Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it." –Winston ChurchillRise! is a simple game with a simple story, an abstract strategy that commands imagination. I wish I could tell you that...

Designer Diary: FrankenDie, or the Role of Dogs in Game Design

I Design Games while Walking Dogs...... and I walk a lot of dogs. I've been a "professional" dog walker for twelve years, but I've been designing games only for a year or so. This is the story of...

New Game Round-up: Burgundy Comes to U.S. Shores, Spell Combos Lead to Epicness & Become a Soldier in Omen

• Ravensburger is now distributing a number of its titles directly in the U.S. instead of going through licensing partners, and it expects English-only versions of Asara and Sealand to be...

Game Preview: Memoir '44 Campaign Book Volume 2

I love movie previews, so much so that I refuse to buy a ticket to a film unless I know I'm going to get to see the trailers before it starts. And that's my function here today, to act as a movie...

Links: Risk Creates a New Legacy, Holiday Goodies & Game Collection Value Assessment/Heart Attack Instigator

• "Morning Edition", a radio program on U.S. public radio network NPR, interviewed designer Rob Daviau to talk about Risk: Legacy. An excerpt:Quote:"Why do board games always start over?"...

Designer diary: Ticket to Ride: India – 10,000 Reasons to Say Thank You!

It's a Monday morning in late June 2011. I've just started a long train journey, and it's giving me time to reflect on the events of the last few months. I hope today's journey isn't as eventful...

Gone Cardboard Returns

It's back! Yes, Gone Cardboard – a game release calendar showing which forthcoming games are being published when and which games have been released recently – is live once again.Gone...

Designer Diary: Cambria – Walking the Many Roads between Self-Publication and Publication

At the beginning of 2008 I was feeling pretty pessimistic about my prospects as a hobby game designer as a design of mine, a majority control game a bit like Samurai which was set in Mycenaean...

Links: Netrunning Again?, Filosofia Wants to Hire You (Maybe) & More

• Could Netrunner, a Richard Garfield design that's one of the earliest (and best-loved) collectible-card games, be returning to print? Gamer Ludovic Schmidt has been all over the Netrunner...

Sold Out at the Publisher Level – What Does That Mean for You?

In two recent posts on BGG News – a news item about Ares Games' second edition of War of the Ring and Touko Tahkokallio's designer diary for Eclipse – the phrase "sold out at the publisher...

Designer Diary: Eclipse - New Dawn for the Galaxy

Note: I developed Eclipse together with Sampo Sikiö, and during the development process, Sampo and I both wrote detailed designer notes in the game's forums. In this diary, I try to not...

New Game Round-up: Games from Eagle/Gryphon, Impending War, Near Eclipse & Time to Prep the Grill

• Keith Blume at FRED Distribution has said that three titles – Empires: The Age of Discovery: Builder Expansion, Gryphon Games' new version of Bazaar, and the international edition of...

Origins 2011 – Part 1

The 36th Origins Game Fair was held in Columbus, Ohio, June 22-26, 2011. Attendance increased from 2010 by 7.8%, going from 10,669 attendees to 11,502, while the number of full show badges ($75...

New Game Round-up: Many Wars for Many Rings, Bang in the New Year & More

• Italian publisher Ares Games has announced that Galakta will publish the Polish version of the second edition of War of the Ring – Wojna o Pierścień in the local tongue – with that game...

Designer Diary: Polis – Fight for the Hegemony

I think that sitting down in front of a person to enjoy a board game with a certain level of complexity to it is the best leisure experience possible. If you know that opponent well, a very...

Links: An Intro to Game Design, Vote for TIA's Game of the Year & College-Level Game Courses

Once again I'm catching up on links from the past couple of weeks as stuff piled up during BGG.CON and subsequent traveling across the southeast. Here we go:• Magic: The Gathering head designer...

Designer Diary: Warparty

I played Dungeons & Dragons for the first time in 1978 at the age of nine. From that very moment I was intrigued with the fantasy genre, and over the years I collected many D&D miniatures.It...

Fantasy Flight Games' Line-up for February 2012

U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games has announced a short list of titles for release in February 2012, including its new version of Richard Hamblen's Merchant of Venus, which was announced in...

Designer Diary: DiceAFARI – A Safari-going, Photo-taking, Dice-rolling Extravaganza & a Kickstarter Secret

Dice games are hot, no question about it, so in 2010 I set out to design a dice game, doing something that I don't usually prefer to do: Start with game mechanisms and discover a theme later on....

Not Necessarily the News – Help Make the BGG Database Better

While I spend much of my time researching upcoming games, contacting designers and publishers, and navigating a thousand-plus RSS feeds, newsletters and websites in my role as editor of...

Designer Diary: Survival Camp

You're probably wondering how another zombie apocalypse game came to life. Scratch that – you're wondering why did someone make another zombie game? Well, this isn't just another zombie game....

New Game Round-up: A Slew of Titles from Rio Grande, a Trio from Nestorgames, a Pair from CGF & Queen Games' Edo

• Rio Grande Games has added a number of games to its website, with the following dates attached to particular games:November 2011-----—Dominion: Hinterlands-----—Friday-----—Power Grid:...

Designer Diary: The Crow and the Pitcher

As a kid, I loved reading Aesop's Fables: "The Tortoise and the Hare", "The Lion and the Mouse", and my personal favorite, "The Crow and the Pitcher". Here's that last fable from one of many...

News from BGG.CON 2011: Innovation Brings in Historical Figures, Builders Come to Empires & Eric Plays a Game

• Chris Cieslik at Asmadi Games gave me the run-down on Innovation: Figures in the Sand, the second expansion for Carl Chudyk's Innovation which he hopes to have ready for Gen Con...