Board Game News

Crowdfunding Round-up: Roam Fields of Green for Herbs, Nectar, Cake, and Malia, the Lady of Disease

Man, I haven't put together one of these c.f. round-ups since Dustin Schwartz posted his send-off column at the end of July 2016. (My thanks to Dustin for his fine writing, and I hope to lure him...

Designer Diary: Jolly & Roger, or Make a Friend, Make a Game

By Shaun Graham and Scott HuntingtonScott: It's a frosty Sunday morning in Hamburg, Germany. I emerge, bleary-eyed, out of bed with the blanket still wrapped around me, my breath condensing in...

Links: CMON and Ultra PRO Acquire, Portal Expands, and Hanjin Stops

• A lot of announcements (and other things) piled up in the inbox during Gen Con, and I'm only now clearing them out, such as the news that Cool Mini Or Not (technically CMON Limited) "acquired...

New Game Round-up: Final Fantasy and The Reckoners Come to the Tabletop; Deputies Do Their Job in OutLawed!

Let's dig out some more recent and not-necessarily-recent game announcements from the inbox:• Square Enix is a Japanese video game publisher best known for the Final Fantasy franchise, and in...

New Game Round-up: More Fields to Explore, Monuments to Build, and Castles Upon Which to Panic

Time to clean house — my inbox house, that is — with many short announcements:• In mid-August 2016, Frank Heeren from Feuerland Spiele announced that a three-player expansion for Uwe...

Sail to New Waters in Small World: River World

Days of Wonder has announced a SPIEL 2016 debut for Small World: River World, a new expansion for Philippe Keyaerts' Small World that sets the familiar races squabbling over territories in a new...

New Game Round-up: Building High, Digging Deep, and Floating on Water

• Jeffrey D. Allers' Skyways, coming from Eagle-Gryphon Games in 2017, is an evolution of sorts from his 2009 design Heartland:Quote:The cities of the future continue to expand…upward! As...

Gen Con 2016: Video Round-Up IV — Thornwatch overview and playthrough

We scheduled dozens of game overview demos in the BGG booth at Gen Con 2016, but I also scheduled some in other locations, including one with Lone Shark Games — and unbeknownst to me LSG had...

New Game Round-up: Boarding Nautilion, Paddling Up the Amazon, and Riding Ohley and Orgler's Railroads

• To follow up on my note from the other day, let's sample some of the new titles that I've dropped on the SPIEL 2016 Preview, such as Shadi Torbey's Nautilion, the next title in his Oniverse...

New Game Round-up: Nominating Cthulhu for King, Fighting Wizards with Rocks, and Exploring Key to the City

• IELLO has announced a new line of Monster Packs that will serve as mini-expansions for both King of Tokyo and King of New York with the first pack due out Q1 2017, and who else are you going...

Gen Con 2016: Video Round-Up III — Rising Sun, Bloodborne: The Card Game, Mansions of Madness, Hit Z Road and Joking Hazard

• The most talked about game at Gen Con 2016 wasn't even known publicly before the fair opened, this being Eric M. Lang's Rising Sun, which Cool Mini Or Not announced on Friday during the fair....

Gen Con 2016: Video Round-Up II — Captain Sonar, Covert, The Goonies, Eight Epics, Love Letter: Premium Edition & Thunderstone: Third Edition

• Let's start another round-up of game overview videos from Gen Con 2016 with one title that might be the definition of "convention game", by which I mean a game that excels in a public...

Gen Con 2016: Video Round-Up I — SeaFall, Vast: The Crystal Caverns, Clank!, Terraforming Mars, and Ice Cool

We're ten days past Gen Con 2016, and by this point Aldie has processed most of the game overview videos that we recorded over the four days of the convention, and we've been posting them...

New Game Round-up: Stealing from Giants, Escorting a Princess, and Carrying a Parasite Back to Earth

• In February 2016, WizKids announced that Zev Shlasinger — formerly of Z-Man Games — would lead its "expanded Board Game operations", and the first titles chosen by Shlasinger have been...

New Game Round-up: Deceiving in One Night Ultimate Alien, Drafting in Ethnos, and Drinking in Raise Your Goblets

Wow, a week has passed since my last post! This is the longest I've gone without writing anything for BGG News, but this absence is not without reason. The final two weeks of preparation before...

Say Hello to the SPIEL 2016 Preview

Gen Con 2016 has ended, so let's move on to what's next with the launching of the SPIEL 2016 Preview. Yes, already!While I'm happy to kick off this preview, I regret to say that it contains...

Explore Arkham and Westeros Anew; Android, Too!

In an effort to ensure that Gen Con 2016 attendees spend no time anywhere but its booth, Fantasy Flight Games has announced two more Q4 2016 releases in the past couple of days, including Arkham...

Designer Diary: Terraforming Mars, or Life to Mars and Mars to Life!

My first Spiel was 2011, the year that FryxGames was founded. We were five brothers there, of which four were in the company, and the fifth was just company. Our few handmade Wilderness sold out...

New Game Round-up: Race to a New Galaxy with Jump Drive, Explore Alternate Realities for Temporum, and Briefly Relive the Cuban Missile Crisis

• While preparing our broadcast schedule for Gen Con 2016, I heard from Rio Grande Games' Jay Tummelson, who asked about showing a few upcoming games on camera since he had presented all of the...

Final Pre-Gen Con 2016 Preparations

Gen Con 2016 starts on August 4, and I'll be in Indianapolis with the BoardGameGeek crew starting on Wednesday, August 3 — i.e., tomorrow (yikes!) — to help set up our booth (#1949) and to...

Crowdfunding Round-up: The Heart and Solo of the Party

• As board games amble out of the back alley and into the social conscious, shrewd merchandising mavens have turned a hungry eye, and geek-magnet IPs are cropping up in cardboard form....

Star Wars: Destiny Wants You to Play Dice for the Fate of the Universe

In what is perhaps its final announcement prior to Gen Con 2016 (but not likely), Fantasy Flight Games has revealed yet another game set in the Star Wars universe: Star Wars: Destiny, a...

New Game Round-up: Previews at Gen Con 2016 — New Doom, Tickets for Tots, and Inventing Bit By Bit

• The pre-Gen Con 2016 announcements continue, with Fantasy Flight Games announcing DOOM: The Board Game, an adaptation of the Bethesda Softworks and id Software, for demo at the convention...

Origins Game Fair 2016 — Part 2

[Ed. note: Head here for the first half of Mary Prasad's report from the 2016 Origins Game Fair. —WEM]Food!As usual, many trips were made to the North Market. Hot Chicken Takeover was as good...

New Game Round-up: New Mansions to Explore, Digital Cards to Purchase, and Tasty Cupcakes to Save

• Pre-Gen Con 2016 announcements continue from Fantasy Flight Games, with the revelation that Mansions of Madness: Second Edition from Nikki Valens, based on the original Corey Konieczka...

Designer Diary: The Networks, or Plugging at MacGuffins

What follows is the long, sordid design history of The Networks. It's been a wild journey over the past six years, starting with me fumbling around in the dark as a part-time hobbyist game...

New Game Round-up: Cosmic Thrones Encounter Westeros, Invaders Arrive in Érin, and Thieves Invite Suspicion

• The sixth season of the Game of Thrones television series has ended, but before too long players will have a new way to re-enact all the struggles of that show thanks to Game of Thrones: The...

Asmodee in Negotiations to Acquire F2Z Entertainment

Following Asmodee's acquisitions of Days of Wonder (BGG News story) and Fantasy Flight Games (story) in 2014 and the worldwide English rights to Catan (story) in 2016, many people have wondered...

New Game Round-up: Crowing in Detroit, Building on Other Planets, and Drawing Like Lightning

• I've mostly been working on the Gen Con 2016 Preview the past couple of days — 340 game listings and counting! — and in the process of doing so, I've added a few new game listings to the...

Codenames Wins the 2016 Spiel des Jahres; Isle of Skye Claims Kennerspiel

Codenames from designer Vlaada Chvátil and publisher Czech Games Edition has won the 2016 Spiel des Jahres, Germany's game of the year award, which is intended to highlight an outstanding design...