Board Game News

Winners of the 2019 Mensa Select: Architects of the West Kingdom, Gizmos, Gunkimono, Planet, and Victorian Masterminds

Following its two-day Mensa Mind Games event in which approximately three hundred participants played and rated games released in the past twelve months, the U.S. branch of Mensa has announced...

New Game Round-up: Adjusting for Noisy Success, and Moving Toward War in Our Place in the Sun

Five-player game of Our Place in the Sun on a prototype from 2017• Polish publisher PHALANX has a number of titles on its 2019 release docket — Europe Divided, Nanty Narking, Freedom!, 1941:...

New Game Round-up: Blood Feuds in Vampire: The Masquerade, and a Battle for Survival in Final Girl

• U.S. publisher Everything Epic Games has announced the October 2019 release of what it dubs the first "Mega Board Game". The game in question is Vampire: The Masquerade – Blood Feud —...

New Game Round-up: Prosper in Babylon, Prevent Plague in Europe, and Run Around in Korea

• April is the second-slowest month for game announcements — December being the slowest — so I find myself with time to catch up on some of the notes that I've sent myself since the...

Enter Sanctum to Confront the Lord of Demons, Courtesy of Czech Games Edition

 Publisher Czech Games Edition likes to stick with publishing the same designers, and for its Q4 2019 title Sanctum it's partnering once again with Filip Neduk, designer of Adrenaline and...

New Game Round-up: Ride Gondolas, Design Games, Collect Eggs, and Break Oaths

• Incubation is the first title from designer Carl Brière, founder of publisher Synapses Games, and this 2-5 player game will be released in North America via distribution from Luma Games....

Japanese Game Round-up: Two from OKAZU, A Menu from a Board Game Café, and Animalistic Trick-Taking for Two

• I'm missing out on Tokyo Game Market in May 2019 as it takes place the same weekend as BGG.Spring, but I'm still following announcements from JP designers and publishers to see what they plan...

New Game Round-up: Dig for Curios, Paint in an Atelier, and Do Unexpected Things in an Age of Dirt

• In its quest to keep up with Renegade Game Studios' release schedule (see here), U.S. publisher WizKids has announced a new title for release in October 2019, and while comparable to Stone...

New Game Round-up: Surviving While Deranged, and Chasing Tricks Through Time

• In case games aren't enough of an attraction for you, apparently collectible pins will be a thing at Gen Con 2019. At right is the pin for Deranged, a gothic semi-cooperative adventure...

Explore New Worlds from Red Raven Games, and Embrace the Singularity in Sarah's Vision

• Bâloise Holding AG is a Swiss insurance holding company, and its associated Baloise Group has just released its first board game: Sarah's Vision from Anthony Howgego, co-designer of the 2018...

Game Overview: Covet All the Onions in Heul Doch! Mau Mau

I've been away from the game previewing scene for a month, but it feels like forever, seeing so many games pass me by while instead I've focused on packing my house for a move in early April,...

Save Your Thruppences for a Magic Bus to Ticket to Ride: London

Days of Wonder has announced the next title in its long-running Ticket to Ride game series from designer Alan R. Moon, with Moon returning (in spirit) to his United Kingdom homeland for Ticket to...

Designer Diary: Warhammer: Age of Sigmar – The Rise & Fall of Anvalor, or Reverse Deck-Building in the Realm of Fire

Like most gamers, I am part of the wider gaming hobby. Over time my focus has varied among RPG, LARP, computer games and miniatures games, in addition to board games.Twenty years ago, my main...

Links: Gaming in Uganda and Egypt; Winning Awards in Italy and France

• Ben Parkinson is overseeing crowdfunding for the third Uganda Village Boardgame Competition, which is scheduled to be held May 22-25, 2019 in Koro Barogal, which is in Gulu District in...

Revive the Dead and Get Punchy in Plaid Hat Games' Early 2019 Releases

• I've already talked about Quirky Circuits, a Nikki Valens design in which players collectively (and somewhat blindly) program house-cleaning robots, but U.S. publisher Plaid Hat Games has...

Designer Preview — Roll for the Galaxy: Rivalry

Preview by co-designers Wei-Hwa Huang and Tom LehmannTo Boldly Go In New DirectionsRivalry is the second expansion for Roll for the Galaxy. In many ways, however, Rivalry is three complementary...

New Game Round-up: Fold Space, Slide to Triumph, and Build Villages (or Don't)

• Jonathan Woodard's Potemkin Empire from Indie Boards & Cards takes inspiration from the historic — although likely exaggerated — tale of a lover attempting to please his bae, specifically...

GAMA Trade Show 2019 Overview Videos: Pipeline, Sorcerer, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth, and Dozens More

Today I've been focusing on publishing game overview videos that we recorded during our GAMA Trade Show 2019 livestream.We recorded continually for 2.5 days, and now we've chopped those streams...

New Game Round-up: Revivals of Valley of the Kings, Exodus, Hammer of the Scots, and War of the Worlds

• With the pace of the game market being what it is, new titles coming and going with every breath you take, I'm not surprised to see games getting rebooted into new editions sooner than they...

New Game Round-up: Build Porto, and Be Friendly with Fish

• Portuguese publisher MEBO Games unveiled its next release at the LeiriaCon event that took place in mid-March 2019, with that September 2019 release being Porto by Orlando Sá. Here's an...

New Game Round-up: Return to Andor, Rediscover a Crown, and Rake in the Green

• I have seen so many bits of game news during all my recent convention traveling that I can't keep track of it all. Did you know, for example, that in the second half of 2019 German publisher...

Osaka Game Market 2019: Report from Table Games in the World

Editor's note: Game Market took place in Osaka on March 10, 2019, and Saigo — who translates game rules between Japanese and English and who tweets about new JP games — has translated a...

Teasers for Troyes Dice, BANG!, Michael Strogoff, and More Bali

I've been focusing on publishing the game overview videos that we recorded at FIJ 2019 in Cannes, France — all 110 of them have now been published in this playlist! — and at GAMA Trade Show...

FIJ 2019 II: Highlights from Cannes — Antoine Bauza, Tom Lehmann, Julien Delval, Claude Leroy, Namiji, Last Hope, Res Arcana, and Turbulences

On our new BGG Express YouTube channel, a channel devoted to publication of lightly edited convention coverage videos, I pushed out thirty game overview videos yesterday, with nearly all of those...

It's a Good Day to Die Hard on the Tabletop

Following the revelation of not one, but two forthcoming licensed versions of Talisman in the past few weeks, U.S. publisher The OP (née USAopoly) has now revealed that it has yet another...

Relive GAMA Trade Show 2019; Watch Bonus BGG Show Wrap-Up

GAMA Trade Show 2019 ran from March 11-15. For those who don't know, GTS is a trade-only event in which game retailers attend seminars for business advice and news of upcoming game releases,...

New Game Round-up: Traveling to Normandy, Terramara, and Other Dimensions

• UK publisher Osprey Games typically has a literature tie-in with its game releases, but that's not always the case, as with Undaunted: Normandy, a two-player card-based wargame from designers...

New Game Round-up: Passing Trains, Dominating New Species, and Developing De Vulgari Eloquentia

• At BGG.CON 2018, Mercury Games was showing a prototype of Rail Pass by Ref Tom Green, and it looked like a hoot.In this co-operative game for 2-6 players, everyone plays simultaneously,...

Asmodee to Distribute CMON Limited Titles in North America

During a seminar at GAMA Trade Show 2019 on Tuesday, March 12, Asmodee North America announced that it had a new distribution deal with CMON Limited in which it would distribute titles from CMON...

New Games from GAMA 2019: Build with Mental Blocks and Lanterns Dice in Aquicorn Cove

• U.S. publisher Pandasaurus Games has already announced the 2019 North American release of puzzley games passtally and Arraial — first published by analog lunchbox and MEBO Games...