Board Game News

Elizabeth Hargrave Takes to the Skies Again with Mariposas

How will Elizabeth Hargrave follow up the amazing debut of 2019's Wingspan? A Wingspan expansion? Check — that's already on the market. An indie release? Sure, but Tussie Mussie was a...

Welcome the Animal Kingdom to Your Table with Dominion: Menagerie

Designer Donald X. Vaccarino and publisher Rio Grande Games have another Dominion expansion coming your way, with Dominion: Menagerie due out in March 2020. In case you're still trying to decide...

Lang, Chiarvesio, and CMON Unite with the Marvel Universe

Publisher CMON Limited and Spin Master are working together on a miniatures game set in the Marvel Comics universe titled Marvel United.Yes, another game based on the Marvel heroes following in...

Designer Diary: Sorcerer City, or Smashing Tile-Laying and Deck-Building Together

Author's note: This designer diary originally appeared on the Sorcerer City page prior to the Kickstarter launch. As of January 7, 2020, almost two years later, the game is in backers' hands and...

Game Preview: The Game: Quick & Easy, or Five Colors, No Waiting

In my "highlights of the 2010s" article, I included Steffen Benndorf's The Game as one of my top picks — well, all the titles in The Game series, even though by doing so I was already dipping...

Collect Goods, Nab Bad Guys, and Play Tricks with Jekyll and Hyde Thanks to Mandoo Games

Non-final coverKorean publisher Mandoo Games releases a mix of strategy games (Queenz, Castello Methoni) and quick-playing, party-style games (Kushi Express, Cocobanana), and it's already...

Japanese Game Round-up: Walking Labyrinths, Tiling Capsules, and Fishy Teetotalism

• Let's continue to explore the unexpected in game design by checking out a few other games released by Japanese designers, such as ダイジョブ迷宮 (Fine Job Labyrinth) from designer...

More on My City and the Rest of Thames & Kosmos' 2020 Line-up

I've already posted a first summary of titles coming in 2020 from German publisher KOSMOS, along with a follow-up of additional releases and the news of Targi: The Expansion being released in...

New Game Round-up: Kemet Returns with Blood and Sand, Treasure Island Expands, and 7 Wonders Duel Gains a Senate

• In a post SPIEL '19 wrap-up, I mentioned that French publisher "Matagot is working on version 1.5 of the [Kemet] base game's rules to update and streamline everything to get people playing...

AMIGO Challenges You to Take Tiles, Chuck Chips, Drop Dice, and Hoard Honey

• German publisher AMIGO has announced an early 2020 line-up of five game releases, with one of them being a (relatively) larger boxed game similar to the 6 nimmt! Brettspiel title that it...

Ride the Rails Again with Capstone Games in July 2020

U.S. publisher Capstone Games has announced the second title in its "Iron Rail" series, a series that started in 2019 with a new edition of Tom Russell's Irish Gauge.The new release is Ride the...

My Highlights of the 2010s: Innovation, The Mind, Abluxxen, Strike, Battle Sheep, and More

With the year of Steinbeisser upon us, I thought I'd do something unusual by doing something completely normal, namely highlighting my top-ish ten games of the past decade.I don't normally make...

New Game Round-up: Practice Spy Lies, Arrange Night Skies, and Become Tile Wise

• Russian publisher Hobby World has released three Spyfall titles to date from designer Alexandr Ushan, and for 2020 it's offering something similar but different with Spycon, a game for 4-10...

Tascini and Board&Dice Invite You to Gather Around Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun

• Following the release of Teotihuacan: City of Gods in 2018 and Trismegistus: The Ultimate Formula in 2019, designer Daniele Tascini and publisher Board&Dice are continuing their...

Designer Diary: Wicked & Wise, or How My Game Outgrew Its Theme

[Editor's note: While at BGG.CON 2019, I heard a number of people talking about an amazing trick-taking prototype from a designer who had attended Tabletop Network ahead of BGG.CON on the New...

Targi: The Expansion Coming in English in 2020

Not a dream, not a hoax, not an imaginary tale — in its 2020 catalog Thames & Kosmos, the North American branch of KOSMOS, has included a listing for an English-language version of Targi: The...

Big Boxes Inbound for Rococo and Kanban EV

Rococo-old• U.S. publisher Eagle-Gryphon Games has announced a January 22, 2020 preorder date for Rococo: Deluxe Edition, a new edition of the Rococo board game from designers Matthias Cramer,...

Japanese Trick-Taking Round-up: Ballet, Weather, Split Cards, and Time Travel

Many games released by Japanese designers through their own publishing brands are card games since these types of designs are relatively inexpensive to produce, don't take up a lot of space, and...

Links: Limits to Civilization Games, Distribution, and Growth in the Industry

• On Vice, Gabriel Soares writes about "one of colonialism's most toxic narratives" in 4X video games and how new titles might be moving on to fresher ground. (Soares mentions only video games...

New Game Round-up: Steal Goods Repeatedly, Answer Questions Quickly, and Throw Coins from a Tortoise Shell

• In a mid-December 2019 newsletter, Michael Mindes of Tasty Minstrel Games noted that the company is changing course in 2020: "TMG will publish fewer new titles. This is both fewer TMG...

New-ish Game Round-up: Identify Murderers, Run a Hospital, and Risk Blowing Up

Time to catch up on more older game announcements that have been languishing in my inbox:• St. Noire is a murder mystery game from new publisher X2 Games and designers Zai Ortiz and Nolan...

New-ish Game Round-up: Make Tools, Farm, and Deliver Dishes in Japan

[Editor's note: I often have lots of posts in preparation at the same time, and sometimes a draft of a post will sit in my queue forever, having been pushed off the front page by other posts,...

Designer Diary: Black Angel

After the release of The Ladies of Troyes in 2012, the three of us — Xavier Georges, Alain Orban, and myself, Sébastien Dujardin — did not want to stop our collaboration on games that had...

Game Overview: Mandala, or Color Me Rich

Mandala feels like a lost member of the old KOSMOS two-player game line, one of those titles that made that line something to hunt for at used game vendor stalls on eBay and at SPIEL.I started...

Japanese Game Round-up: Testing the Limits of Game Design

The second occurrence of "Is This a Game?" ("これはゲームなのか？") took place Dec. 7-15, 2019 in Tokyo. I wrote about the first such event in a Dec. 2018 post that featured the final...

Links: Awards for Artists, Cash for Kittens, and Tips for Translation

I'm still cleaning up my inbox ahead of 2020, but thankfully many of the items there might be of interest to you no matter when I post about them, such as the news that Michael Loth's Belratti...

Knizia Game Round-up: Traveling the Silk Road into Bavaria and on to Doomsday

Original and new lookHere's another "inbox clean-up" post, this time with each item featuring something from the greatest living game designer:• In early December 2019, U.S. publisher GMT Games...

Welcome New Houses Ixians and Tleilaxu to Dune

• If you're a fan of Dune and looking for a present this holiday season, you can ask someone to preorder Dune: Ixians & Tleilaxu for you, this being an expansion due out in Q2 2020 from U.S....

More Variety Coming for Teotihuacan, Rune Stones, and Through the Ages

• In November 2019, publisher Czech Games Edition announced that Through the Ages: New Leaders and Wonders — which was originally scheduled to debut at SPIEL '19, but was delayed due to card...

Mergers, Splits, and Distribution Deals: Collecting Sets, Pulling the Pin, and Finding Good Things in Small Boxes

• Even in December 2019, I'm still working through industry announcements that ended up in my "to do" folder because they arrived during the run-up to SPIEL '19.One such announcement: In...