Board Game News

New Game Round-up: Donning the Mask of the Pharaoh, Investigating Arkham Noir, and Exploring Cosmogenesis

• In April 2017, I wrote about the Hasbro Gaming Crate, a quarterly release from Hasbro that would contain three party or family-themed games (depending on which you choose) for $50. My...

Game Preview: Skyward, or Reaching for the Heavens One Card at a Time

Gen Con 2017 is only five weeks off, so I plan to start posting several individual game previews in this space for titles that will debut at that show or otherwise be more widely available than...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Casually Trash Lucidity in a Green Box with Short Love

As often happens during convention time, I've neglected to post crowdfunding round-ups for a couple of weeks, so the number of current c.f. projects not previously mentioned in this space is...

New Game Round-up: Feld Summons Merlin, Atlas Holds Court, and Carcassonne Gets Big Boxed...Again

• In mid-June 2017, Queen Games posted an announcement on French gaming site Tric Trac that it was returning to the French market, with Atalia and Oya serving as distributors of their games for...

Plan B Games Purchases Eggertspiele; Licensing Situation Currently Unclear

In February 2017, while previewing upcoming games at Spielwarenmesse in Nürnberg, Germany, I played a sample game of Century: Spice Road with Plan B Games owner Sophie Gravel. Gravel used to own...

Westeros Meets Catan in A Game of Thrones Catan: Brotherhood of the Watch

Fantasy Flight Games has a long history with author George R. R. Martin, having launched A Game of Thrones: Collectible Card Game in 2002 and published the A Game of Thrones board game in 2003.In...

New Game Round-up: Superheroes Battle Debt, Pirates Battle Poor Memory, and A.R.K. Agents Battle Raxxon

• Debtzilla from designer Xeo Lye and Singapore-based publisher Capital Gains seems like an inspired mash-up of familiar game tropes, with superheroes fighting villains while also needing to...

New Game Round-up: Preparing More Escape Rooms, Revisiting Ground Floor, and Reading a Column of Fire

• English rules are now available (PDF) from Thames & Kosmos for Michael Rieneck's A Column of Fire, the third game in the Ken Follett series that started with The Pillars of the Earth. Thames...

Origins Game Fair 2017 III: Lisboa and Immortals

Two of the longest game demonstration videos recorded in the BGG booth during the 2017 Origins Game Fair involved passionate designers who had a lot to say about their giant creations.•...

WizKids Offers New Gaming Fronts in Cannibalism, Dungeon Acquisition, Time Management and Time Management

• You can tell that Zev Shlasinger is indeed now Director of Board Games at U.S. publisher WizKids because the company feels like the Z-Man Games of old, releasing a ridiculous number of games...

Origins Game Fair 2017 II: Edge of Darkness, Alien Artifacts, Star Realms: Frontiers, Hero Realms: The Ruin of Thandar, and Rob Daviau Randomness

• As many people know, Mystic Vale introduced John D. Clair's "card-crafting system" — in which plastic cards with bits of information on them are overlaid in card sleeves to craft unique new...

New Game Round-up: Meet Roland Wright, Welcome the Carnies, and Explore the World of Pandemic Legacy: Season 2

 • We will know that "roll and write" games — designs in which players roll dice, then write something in response — have made it big when a character emerges from the mists to don the...

Origins Game Fair 2017 I: Czech Games Edition — Codenames Duet, That's a Question!, and Pulsar 2849

Thanks to the efficient editing efforts of Nikki Pontius of BGG's own GameNight!, I can start posting game demonstrations and overviews recorded in the BGG booth during the 2017 Origins Game Fair...

New Game Round-up: Imhotep Welcomes the Gods, Agra Prepares for a Birthday, and Canada Awaits Exploitation in Okanagan: Valley of the Lakes

• Admittedly with Gen Con 2017 being the next major convention in the offing, much of the gaming news popping up relates to that show, but SPIEL 2017 looms even larger ahead of its October 26...

New Game Round-up: Get Buffed for Summer, Fold to Attack Others, and Assemble Your Feline Forces

• After a week of the 2017 Origins Game Fair plus a few extra sick days, I have a lot to catch up on, starting with the revelation that Legendary: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a deck-building game...

Word Slamming My Way Through Origins 2017

My apologies for the quietness in this space since the end of the 2017 Origins Game Fair, which corresponded with the launching of the Gen Con 2017 Preview, but in the past three days I've eaten...

Gen Con 2017 Preview Now Live

The 2017 Origins Game Fair is over, so it's time to look ahead to Gen Con 2017, which takes place August 17-20 in Indianapolis, Indiana.I'd say more about one or both of these shows, or the rate...

New Game Round-up: Raiders in North America, Antiquity Anew, and Doomtown: ReReloaded

I'm in Columbus, Ohio to cover the 2017 Origins Game Fair, with five days of live game demos and interviews starting Wednesday, June 14, but before we get to that, let's round up a few...

Designer Diary: Stroop, or Coaxing a Game out of an Established Phenomenon

Some things are far more obvious in retrospect. Such is the design of Stroop, a speedy perception card game with simple rules.Psychological OriginsI can't remember exactly when I first saw a...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Rush, Rise and Tumble Through a Radiant Kitchen Dawn

• Let's start this week's c.f. round-up with what's simultaneously the quietest-looking and the most graphically striking game on the line-up: Todd Sanders' IUNU. Sanders first released this...

New Game Round-up: New Editions, Expansions and Spinoffs for Wildcatters, The Climbers, Sellswords, Quartermaster General, and Legends of Andor

• U.S. publisher Capstone Games has announced the Q4 2017 release of two titles, the first being a new edition of Wildcatters from designers Rolf Sagel and André Spil, which first appeared in...

Designer Diary: Pinball Showdown, or Quarter Up!

Pinball Showdown is a game that had a long and varied road before it reached its final destination. This is due in large part to my love of pinball and the fact that I've run a business restoring...

Links: Diana Jones Award Announces Nominees, Go Machine Goes, and HABA Asks for Submissions

• The nominees for the 2017 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming have been announced, and as usual they cover an interesting cross-segment of the gaming community. The nominees...

New Game Round-up: Fantastic Four Head Back to Print, Andor Keeps Expanding, and Tomb of Annihilation Welcomes Visitors

• A reprint of Legendary: Fantastic Four — which quickly went out of print after its initial release in 2013 and which has sold for up to $200-250 on the BGG Marketplace and eBay — is...

Dungeons & Dragons + House on the Hill = Betrayal at Baldur's Gate

On June 3, 2017, during its "Stream of Annihilation" — a special event to announce its new Dungeons & Dragons storyline "Tomb of Annihilation" — Wizards of the Coast revealed a separate...

New Game Round-up: Tile Your Way to Dragon Island, Expand Magic Maze, and Prepare to Say F*That!

• BGG's Gen Con 2017 Preview, which will go live on Monday, June 19, now has more than one hundred listings on it, with the latest being Dragon Island, an explorations game from Mike Fitzgerald...

Asmodee North America to Go Exclusive with Alliance Game Distributors

In December 2015, Asmodee North America announced a plan to reduce the number of distributors that it deals with for the hobby game market to five: ACD Distribution, Alliance Game Distributors,...

New Game Round-up: Claim Crystals, Crush Kaiju, and Compete to Be a Superpower

• Crystal Clans from newcomer Andrea Mezzotero seems to tick some of the same boxes as Plaid Hat Games' Summoner Wars — with each player take charge of one of six clans to summon units on a...

Games Played and Seen at BGG.CON Spring 2017: Wettlauf nach El Dorado, Ethnos, Kreus, Mini Rails, Pulsar 2849, Tokyo Highway, Downforce, and Terraforming Mars

The 2017 BGG.CON Spring convention took place this past weekend, and I attended for 1.5 of the four days given that I only recently returned from one trip and will be heading to the 2017 Origins...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Delve and Loot Manhattan, Untold Minutes to Halloween

• After an intense dose of combat-driven games in the c.f. round-up last week, let's see whether we can find games featuring other subject material this time around, starting with Hand of Fate:...