Board Game News

Suburbia Gets Supersized for a Collector's Edition in 2019

Has it really been seven years already? In 2012, U.S. publisher Bézier Games released the tile-laying, city-building game Suburbia from Ted Alspach, with the title winning a Mensa Select award...

Designer Diary: Show & Tile

Every year, Matt Loomis and I try to get together for a weekend to design games. Between our spouses, kids, and dogs, it's not easy to get some peace and quiet. To make it worse, Matt and I don't...

Prime Yourself for Trick-Taking Challenges with Yokai Septet and Mit List und Tücke

• Yokai Septet is a new version of the little-known trick-taking game 7 Symbols, and 7 Nations from designer Muneyuki Yokouchi, which first appeared in early 2015 from Japanese publisher...

Travel with Trek and Trip Through Time with Looney Labs, Then Head from Portugal to Mars Courtesy of Vital Lacerda

• Let's dig into more upcoming game releases for 2019, with a trio of titles from U.S. publisher Looney Labs, two of which will strike a familiar chord with fans of the publisher.Star Trek:...

AMIGO Welcomes 2019 with Bulls, Llamas, Dwarves, and Multiplication

Time to start surveying what publishers will demo at Spielwarenmesse 2019, the annual trade fair in Nürnberg, Germany that attracts all the well-known German game publishers as well as designers...

Top(?) 1-24 Games(?) of 2018(?): An Exploration

Since 2019 has started, I thought that I'd sample what I played in 2018 for a year-end wrap-up — not a "best of" video, mind you, but more of a "here's what has stuck in my head a bit and I...

Let's Start 2019 with Previews of Spielwarenmesse, FIJ, and NY Toy Fair

With the dawn of a new year comes the dawning of a new convention preview on BGG, specifically a preview of games that will be demoed at the Spielwarenmesse trade fair in Nürnberg, Germany; at...

Designer Diary: Venture Angels

(This diary was first published on my website on September 30, 2018.)Venture Angels is a bluffing and half-secret bidding game, a genre I had already given a try fifteen years ago with...

Mergers, Splits, and Distribution Deals: Changes at GAMA, and Distribution Dealings

(While cleaning up ahead of 2019, I ran across this first item in a Sept. 2018 draft. I was sure that I had published something on this topic, but nope, I had done everything except actually...

Designer Diary: New Frontiers

With New Frontiers, Race for the Galaxy comes full circle. Inspired by Puerto Rico and with permission from Andreas Seyfarth, New Frontiers blends together elements from both games.For 2-5...

New Game Round-up: Recover from Earthquakes, Replay Egizia, and Reach from Estoril to Outer Space

• U.S. publisher Stronghold Games has dropped details on a couple of its 2019 releases, with both of them heading to Kickstarter for funding.The first title is Aftershock from the design team...

New Game Round-up: Adventure Games Await Courtesy of Harding, Dunstan and KOSMOS, and Welcome the Gloom of Thrones

• German publisher KOSMOS has had great success with its Exit: The Game series of "escape room" games from Inka and Markus Brand, even winning the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2017.Now for 2019,...

New Game Round-up: Cleopatra Returns, Torres Expands, and New Frontiers Come to Earth

• In a report from the 2018 Lucca Comics & Games fair, I mentioned that Italian publisher uplay.it edizioni was founding a new brand for the re-release of a decade-old Days of Wonder release....

Designer Diary: Flamme Rouge: Meteo, or Under the Weather

A Personal InterludeI apologize up front, but I'm going to start with a quick personal detour, a detour very much made possible by the BGG community. You see, back in February 2018 I was lucky...

New Game Round-up: Europe vs. Russia, Greeks vs. Ottomans, and Everyone vs. Everyone Else

Non-final cover• In an effort to continue highlighting history-based games, I present two games due out in 2019 from Polish publisher PHALANX, the first being a two-player game from Vangelis...

Links: The History of Unique Games, Gaming in the Amazon, and Pop-Up Publishing

As often happens at the end of a year, I discover all sorts of interesting game-related articles in my inbox that I had forwarded to myself and meant to read but didn't. Here's a sampling of...

Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, and Cities: Skylines Come to the Tabletop

• Let's continue with coverage of games announced in 2018 that have heretofore been uncovered in this space, kicking off with Crusader Kings from designers Tomas Härenstam, Nils Karlén, and...

New Game Round-up: Return to West Kingdom, Relive Panic at the Castle, and Reimagine Troyes

• Designers Shem Phillips and S J Macdonald have shifted the focus of their next Garphill Games release from knowledge to knights, with the second title in their "West Kingdom" trilogy being...

Play the Works of Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, and Miguel de Cervantes in 2019

• In mid-2018, Brotherwise Games ran a Kickstarter project for Johnny O'Neal's Call to Adventure, in which 2-4 players send their heroes to complete challenges in order to upgrade their skills...

New Game Round-up: Support Art, Rewrite History, and Fight a Second Second Hundred Years' War

• Sometimes these BGG News posts serve as notes to myself as much as an introduction to games to you, gentle reader.In a Feb. 2018 post, I listed several games scheduled to be shown at the...

Designer Diary: Last Heroes, or Genesis of an Author's First Game

Last Heroes is a game of my design published by Ludonaute that was available at SPIEL '18 in October and released in North America on Dec. 6, 2018. English rules are available on BGG, and...

New Game Round-up: Free the Maiden, Engage in Sabotage, Battle Hell, and Become a Cosmic Spirit

• I don't know all that I missed at PAX Unplugged in late 2018, but I do know that I missed out on playing Tim Fowers' Sabotage, co-designed by Jeff Krause and due out in April 2019 from Fowers...

Cryptozoic Takes Batman to Japan and Challenges You to Play Quickly with Rick, Morty, and the Superfriends

We're closing in on the end of the year, which means that game companies around the world are preparing new releases for their first public showing at Spielwarenmesse, NY Toy Fair, the Festival...

Game Preview: Stonehenge and the Sun, or Building History One Block at a Time

I know that it might make sense in my role as BGG News editor to pay attention to the most anticipated games from the hottest designers when deciding what to preview in this space, but I possess...

Leave This Atmosphere for Alliances, Odysseys, and Shy Planets

• One of the familiar settings of modern games is outer space, with players typically focusing on fighting, finding things, or figuring out how to stay alive — and sometimes all of the...

New Game Round-up: Revisit Glen More, the Weimar Republic, and the Dawn of Mankind

December used to be a slow month for game announcements, but these days it seems like we have only busy months and really busy months. Let's get to it:• In Q2 2019, Tasty Minstrel Games plans...

PAX Unplugged 2018 IV: Pics from the Show — The Stuff of Legend, Quantified, Battlestations: Dirtside, In the Hall of the Mountain King, and More

Let's close out my PAX Unplugged 2018 coverage with a round-up of random pics from the show, which took place Nov. 30 to Dec. 2. Well, not truly random since I chose what to aim the camera at in...

Power Grid Gets Recharged for Its 15th Anniversary

Friedemann Friese's Power Grid turns fifteen in 2019. Fifteen years, and that guy still can't get the setting right on that knob — or maybe he just likes holding knobs.With that anniversary on...

Tokyo Game Market 2018 Autumn: Report from Table Games in the World

Editor's note: Game Market took place in Tokyo on November 24-25, 2018, and Saigo — who translates game rules between Japanese and English and who tweets about new JP games — has translated...

Re-Unite an Independent Poland and Take a Long Trip with a Brown Bear

In late November 2018, I wrote about Jeffrey D. Allers' card game Rolnicy that's available only from Polish publisher Nasza Księgarnia. Well, here's two more "hidden" titles from that country,...