Board Game News

Spiel 2015: Hall 2 Walkthrough

Each morning at Spiel 2015 we arrive roughly an hour before the doors open so that we have time to set up our equipment, buy games, breathe comfortably, etc., and during that time each day we've...

Designer Diary: The Golden Ages, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying About Civilization Games

When I started thinking about the game now called The Golden Ages, it was February 2010. For a long time, I was mumbling about civilization games, a kind of game that I have loved since the first...

Spiel 2015: Pre-Preshow Non-Report

Spiel 2015 opens on Thursday, October 8, which means that many exhibitors have already spent a day or longer on the construction of their booths, especially the larger publishers that create more...

Designer Diary: The Big Book of Madness, or Through Designing Vagaries and Multiple Themes

Every time I start working on a new idea, I always ask myself the same question: "What would I like to play?" This time I thought: "I like the feeling of cooperative games; I love the dynamics in...

Spiel 2015: A Pre-Event Lament

Spiel — more completely, Internationale Spieltage — is an annual game convention in Essen, Germany for which I create a huge preview highlighting hundreds of new games that will debut there...

Designer Preview: Favor of the Pharaoh

Favor of the Pharaoh is a dice game for 2-4. Players roll dice to claim tiles — which grant more dice, powers to manipulate dice, or tokens — preparing for a final roll-off for the Pharaoh's...

Designer Diary: Ekö, or The Long Voyage

"This story takes place in the dark times from which legends come."These are the opening words for the rulebook of Ekö. For those of you who have already played the game, I hope that this...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Mafia de Cuba, or I Havanan't Taken Your Diamonds

At Gen Con 2015 in August, Asmodee ran a press event where it showed off many of the games that it planned to distribute in North America in the second half of 2015: Pearl Games' The Bloody Inn,...

Designer Diary: Pirates of the 7 Seas, or Two Humans vs. Forty-Four Dice

The theme for Pirates of the 7 Seas came about after inventing an interesting engine for a battle system that involves an unusual use of dice. It allows you to realize truly massive and...

Designer Diary: Sylvion and Castellion, or Oneiric Onslaughts in the Oniverse

Sylvion was born out of my desire to create a "tower defense" game in the Oniverse.I always had a thing for this type of game, maybe because they have so much in common with board games. I...

Designer Preview: Roll for the Galaxy: Ambition

Preview by Tom Lehmann and Wei-Hwa HuangAmbition expands Roll for the Galaxy by adding fourteen factions, seven start worlds, two new types of dice, five game tiles, and optional...

Designer Diary: All About the Atmosphere, or The Design of Heroes

Those of you who have already had a chance to experience some of the games I've designed know that until now they have exclusively been set in historical periods. Sigismundus Augustus, The...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Fram R'lyeh, or Say It, Don't Spray It as You Descend into Madness

At this point, Cthulhu in the game industry is like oxygen in the atmosphere — present in 21% of the environment, yet seemingly even more omnipresent given all the attention it gets.Even so, I...

Designer Diary: Dice City, or Crafting Your Dice, One Side at a Time

February 2012: I am sitting at my dining table with a copy of Quarriors! on it. I have just gotten the game, and I can't wait to play it. I've read all about it, how it takes the deck-building...

Designer Diary: CVlizations, or How to CVlize a Game

CVlizations and my other game Andromeda (which I wrote about previously) are being published at the same time, but their stories are very different.I started working on CVlizations a year after...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Sapiens, or Dominoes at the Dawn of Time

One way to ease a player into a particular game is to give them something familiar, while pairing it with something new. Sometimes the effect works wonderfully, putting a twist on a game that you...

Designer Diary: Clacks! A Discworld Board Game, or Going Postal on the Game Board

The Magic of the DiscworldBack in September 2011 Leonard Boyd and I (David Brashaw) who run Backspindle Games had recently published Guards! Guards! A Discworld Boardgame in conjunction with...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Hack Trick, or Magic Card Play Squared

In October 2014 in the run-up to Spiel 2014, I posted an overview video for József Dorsonczky's Six MaKING from Mind Fitness Games, one of the few abstract strategy games that has reworked Chess...

Designer Diary: To Andromeda and Beyond! Approaching Destination...

Near final coverIn the life of every boardgamer comes a time when you start asking yourself, "Maybe I should design a game?" For me it was in early 2013. I gave it a deep thought, and I still...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Adventure Land, or Dense Fog Monster Advisory in Effect

When considered in tandem, designers Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling might be best known for Tikal, Java, and Mexica, a.k.a. the "Mask Trilogy", three games that allow players to explore a...

Designer Diary: The Making of Termity

In September 2009, I was still looking for a new game concept to present at the Spiel game fair in October. Usually, I'm the most creative when there is some time pressure. The short delay to...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Yo Dawg, I Heard You Like Campaigns in Your Campaigns...

• The hobby is experiencing a mini Nordic renaissance it seems, with more than one-quarter of all Viking-themed games in the BGG database having been published since 2013. Saga of the Northmen,...

Designer Diary: A Game of Gnomes, or The Most Ludicrous Piece in Boardgaming History: The Complete Story

Gordon and I are always trying to push the boundaries of what components can be included in a game (sometimes unintentionally...Spellbound anyone?), but still managing to keep the cost lower than...

New Game Round-up: Bruce Glassco Delivers Mystery, Alexander Searches for King Chocolate & Riddle and Pinchback Head Back to the Future

• I'm privileged to state that Edward Gorey now has an artist listing in the BGG database thanks to the announcement of Bruce Glassco's Mystery! Motive for Murder from Mayfair Games. Here's an...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Karuba, or Temple Stroll

Designer Rüdiger Dorn has designed three well-regarded, thinky strategy games — Traders of Genoa, Goa, and Louis XIV — but the newest of those games dates to 2005. In the past decade,...

Knizia's Medici Returns in a New Edition from Grail Games

Reiner Knizia's auction game Medici has been released in a few different versions since its debut in 1995, and while the game design itself is brilliant, the published forms of this game have...

Designer Diary: The Magnates: A Game of Power

In 2014, we published a game about western European history: 1944: Race to the Rhine. This year it will be about ours.The Magnates: A Game of Power tells the history of the first Republic of...

Spiel 2015 Preview: Spookies, or Roll for the Most Ghosts

German publisher HABA is well-known as a publisher of children's games — heck, the publisher of children's games for many people — but in the second half of 2015 it's launching a family game...

Designer Diary: Carson City, or This Town Wasn't Built in a Day

I have not taken the time to transcribe, day by day, all the different stages of the creation of Carson City. This is therefore not a "diary" as other authors have written with great care and...

Fantasy Flight Games to Purchase Legend of the Five Rings

• Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) debuted in 1995, just two years after Magic: The Gathering created the collectible card game money-sucking tornado from thin air, and unlike nearly every other...