Board Game News

Game Previews from Spielwarenmesse 2016: Bunny Kingdom, Oceanos, Cry Havoc, Dynasties, Cacao: Chocolatl, Costa Rica, Fight for Olympus, and the Future of Mayfair Games

• Time for the final round-up of videos from Spielwarenmesse 2016, which means that we have processed and published everything in less than three weeks from when the show ended. Whoa, that's a...

Game Previews from Spielwarenmesse 2016: First Martians, 51st State: Master Set, Stone Age Junior, West of Africa, Imagine, Ice Cult, Ice Cool, and In the Name of Odin

• After pausing for a quick trip to NY Toy Fair and some technical help with videos (since some of the ones that I processed picked up popping noises along the way), I've started posting the...

Tweets from NY Toy Fair 2016: Legendary, Colony, Sushi Go Party, Deadpool, TMNT Dice Masters, Pyramid Arcade, Back to the Future, and Much More

I zipped into NY Toy Fair 2016 this past weekend to check out the upcoming games being shown there, leaving home at 4:30 on Saturday and returning at 22:30 on Sunday, taking home a few hundred...

New Game Round-up: Terraform Mars, Run Through a Bank, and Smash Doors the Mighty Marvel Way

• Jacob Fryxelius' Terraforming Mars — an involved strategy game for 1-5 players — was originally going to be released by FryxGames, a company run by Jacob and three of his brothers, but...

Crowdfunding Round-up: On the Success of Humor, Hot Genres, and Established Audiences

• The multiverse is ending! OblivAeon is the final expansion for Sentinels of the Multiverse from the Greater Than Games creative team of Christopher Badell, Paul Bender, and Adam Rebottaro....

New Game Round-up: Protect the Enterprise in Star Trek Panic, and Prepare for Viking Life with Stefan Feld

• In a merging of IP rights with existing game design, U.S. publisher USAopoly has announced a May 2016 release date for Star Trek Panic, which is based on Justin De Witt's Castle Panic from...

Matagot Prepares Monuments, Meeples, Cattle, Escape Rooms, Panicky Submarine Operators and More

French publisher Matagot has been in business for more than a decade, and in addition to releasing a tall stack of new games for 2016, the company is also reorganizing its catalog to present its...

Game Previews from Spielwarenmesse 2016: Imhotep, Kerala, Smugglers, Glupschgeister, 90 Grad, and BANG! The Dice Game – Old Saloon

Let's check out a few more game overview videos that BGG recorded at Spielwarenmesse 2016 in late January, noting while doing so that you can find all 59 (and counting!) of these videos on the...

Details on the 2016 Models of Agricola

As I noted in early 2015, designer Uwe Rosenberg and publisher Lookout Games have been revamping their 2007 release Agricola, a game that is arguably one of the two most important releases in the...

Game Previews from Spielwarenmesse 2016: Happy Pigs, Sea of Clouds, SOL, World Monuments, Risky Adventure & Mighty Monsters

• Time for another round-up of some of the game preview videos that BGG recorded at Spielwarenmesse 2016, starting with Kuraki Mura's Happy Pigs from IELLO. I've played the original Swan...

New Game Round-up: Field a New Ogre, Knock Blocks in Kaboom, and Create Your Own Boss Monster

• Designer Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games has announced that sometime in 2016 SJG will release a new "Ogre 6th Edition" in the same scale as the Ogre Designer's Edition, but it "will...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Falling Through Time into a Past Filled with Electable Turtles

• As Dustin Schwartz noted in late January 2016, a new year has brought a tidal wave of crowdfunding projects for games both new and not-so-new, such as the deluxe edition of Vinhos from Vital...

Links: The "Z" in WizKids Now Stands for Zev, and Hasbro and Mattel Talk Merger

• On Feb. 3, 2016, WizKids Games announced that Zev Shlasinger will "head up its expanded Board Game operations".Shlasinger, for those who don't know, founded Z-Man Games in 1999, and as noted...

New Game Round-up: Monsters Evolve in New York, Geister Comes to the U.S. & Spies Get Trickier in Russia

• Brian Yu's Geister, Geister, Schatzsuchmeister! from Mattel won the Kinderspiel des Jahres in 2014, but despite that success and many requests for an English-language version, the game seemed...

Game Previews from Spielwarenmesse 2016: Pegasus Spiele — The Great Chariot Race, Camel Up Cards, Animals on Board, Yeti & Much More

Hoo boy, did we record a lot of videos at the Pegasus Spiele stand during Spielwarenmesse 2016? And despite recording as much as we did during that time, we still didn't cover everything as some...

More Dominion Among Rio Grande Games' 2016 Line-Up

• In what comes as a further blow for those who were sure that their Dominion storage solution would be sufficient following the unexpected announcement of Dominion: Adventures, Rio Grande...

Game Previews from Spielwarenmesse 2016: The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game, Broom Service: The Card Game, Legends, Make 'n' Break Architect & Memory: Das Brettspiel

This past weekend I took a trip to Spielwarenmesse 2016, the annual toy fair in Nürnberg, Germany, and I've already uploaded a dozen game overview videos to BGG's YouTube account. Woohoo! Much...

New Releases from F2Z Entertainment: Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu from Z-Man, Dead of Winter: The Long Night from Plaid Hat, Junk Art from Pretzel & More

• The biggest news for hobby gamers from Spielwarenmesse 2016 is the soft announcement of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu from designer Chuck D. Yager and publisher Z-Man Games.Sophie Gravel of F2Z...

Links: Selling Yourself to Gamers and Publishers, and Knowing When to Kill a Game Design

• On his Hyperbole! blog, designer Grant Rodiek suggests how game designers can sell themselves — and by extension their games — at conventions:Quote:When I play my games with people at a...

New Game Round-up: Escape a Dying Solar System, Create Weapons for the Third Reich, and Discover Animals in Taiwan

• Believe it or not, I have still more overlooked (by me) new game announcements that have been nestled in my inbox for months — typically due to me sending myself a link, then having those...

Game Pics from Spielwarenmesse 2016

My cameraperson John and I have been at Spielwarenmesse 2016 — the annual toy fair in Nürnberg, Germany — only one full day (and two hours of a second day), and we've already recorded a few...

Links: Asmodee and Z-Man Redistribute Distributors, Nature Explores Evolution & Computers Learn Go

• Continuing its acquisitive habits, the Asmodee Group announced on January 27, 2016 that it has purchased Bergsala Enigma, a board game and collectible card game distributor in Scandinavia and...

New Game Round-up: Martin Wallace Visits Via Nebula, Libellud Reveals Hidden Signs for Mysterium & Witches Fly Again in Broom Service: The Card Game

• What's this? A fantasy-based Martin Wallace design from Space Cowboys? Yes, at first glance Via Nebula — a 2-4 player design due in Q2 2016 — isn't something I would have expected from...

New Game Round-up: Bézier Games Sells America, Libellud Visits More Loonies & NSV Invites Existential Despair

• Like Fauna or Terra? America from Bézier Games reworks the game system at the heart of those Friedemann Friese designs to, according to co-designer Ted Alspach, "make it more accessible and...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Embrace the Chaos or Find Your Zen

• Publisher Cool Mini Or Not had a banner year in 2015, raking in over $8.7 million in pledges across five projects, and the publisher is out the gate in a hurry already in 2016 with XenoShyft:...

New Game Round-up: SeaFall Lands at Plaid Hat, Days of Wonder Establishes Monuments & Indonesia Returns to Print

• Designer Rob Daviau says that he has delivered the final version of SeaFall to publisher Plaid Hat Games. As for when the game will actually be released, well, I'll be visiting the F2Z...

Portal Games Cries Havoc, Revives 51st State & Takes You to Mars

• Polish publisher Portal Games is hosting Portalcon 7 on Jan. 23, 2016, and as part of that event designer Ignacy Trzewiczek is announcing titles that you can expect to see from Portal in...

New Game Round-up: Journey North in Andor, Create Stories of Doctor Who and Bugs Bunny & Learn About Matt Leacock, Knit Wit

• Thames & Kosmos, the North American branch of German publisher KOSMOS, has announced its new releases for 2016, and as with its 2015 line-up, the list includes titles both old and new.To...

New Game Round-up: Noshing on Sushi, Building Walls, and Fighting for Treasure

• Time for another look at some of the titles coming in 2016, with these being only a few of the dozens of games on BGG's Nürnberg/New York 2016 Preview.Designer Phil Walker-Harding appears to...

New Game Round-up: Gods Reborn in Thunder & Lightning, Unexpected Meals from a Magician & Knot What You Expect from Matt Leacock

• Matt Leacock and cooperative games go together like oxygen and more oxygen, but his next release is (surprisingly) a party game. Here's an overview of Knit Wit, which Z-Man Games plans to...