Board Game News

Ares Games Offers a Colorful War of the Ring for 2016

Has it been five years already since the release of the second edition of War of the Ring? Well, not quite as the second edition of that game debuted in December 2011, but it's close enough for...

Kevin Wilson Constructs TMNT's Shadows of the Past

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has appeared in many formats since its debut as a Rōnin homage/rip-off in the 1980s, with different writers and artists using the characters to tell comic stories of...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Rainbow Dinosaur Merchants Rally Round the Flag, Then Brawl

• When did Kickstarter start allowing creators in Japan to launch projects? Perhaps I've been sleeping, but this is news to me, news brought to light by designer Koota Yamada and publisher...

Designer Diary: Artifacts, Inc., or Rose-Tinted Visions in a One-Star Casino Hotel

Music is a big deal in my family. My parents both play saxophone and graduated college with music degrees. My mom and dad had us learning piano, singing in choirs, and playing various wind...

For Late 2015, KOSMOS Features Revolting Teubers, Steamed Dorn & Licensed Rejchtman

• German publisher KOSMOS has unveiled seven of its late 2015 releases, and while a Klaus Teuber title is (as you might expect) included in that group, it's neither a Catan title nor a new...

Ystari Launches Shakespeare Revival for Spiel 2015

French publisher Ystari Games has a long history of what developer Cyril Demaegd calls "management games" — e.g., Ys, Caylus, Amyitis, Sylla — but in recent years it's branched out into other...

Prepping for Spiel 2015 and How You Can Help

Now that the Spiel des Jahres winner has been announced for 2015, I can move on to "alle die Spiele des Jahres" — all the games of the year, more specifically, everything that will be dropping...

Colt Express Wins the 2015 Spiel des Jahres; Broom Service Named Kennerspiel des Jahres

Colt Express from Christophe Raimbault and Ludonaute has been named the 2015 Spiel des Jahres (SdJ), Germany's Game of the Year, beating out fellow nominees Machi Koro and The Game. (You can view...

Crowdfunding Round-up: A Tale of Amusement, Violence, and Revised Editions

• It's peak season for amusement parks in North America, so it's savvy timing for print-on-demand veterans The Game Crafter to launch a KS project for Parkies. This game of bidding and...

PLAYthisONE and Reiner Knizia Offer Ducks, Robots & Stingy Pirates

• All right! Time to highlight a couple of late 2015 releases that will be present at Spiel 2015. I've listed more than 75 titles on the Spiel 2015 Preview so far — with this preview going...

Rio Grande Games: New Travels for Old Elves in Elfenroads & Previews of Xeno Invasion

• In October 2014, Rio Grande Games released a newsletter that detailed some of the upcoming releases from the company, including this teaser: "We are also working on a reprint of Elfenland,...

Asmodee Spots Sales, Acquires Spot it!

If you're like me, you've seen the game depicted at right in any number of stores, often showing up as one of the lone representatives of games in a store that is otherwise gameless. Spot it!...

New Game Round-up: Samurai Renewed, The Little Prince Revisited & World's Fair 1893 Relived

• Following on the release of a new version of Reiner Knizia's Tigris & Euphrates in May 2015, Fantasy Flight Games has announced a new edition of Knizia's Samurai for Q4 2015, with this being...

New Game Round-up: Dividing Booty, Shrinking Catan & Rolling America

• Pirates rarely do much pirating in games — seeing as such behavior is frowned upon by 98.3% of those who aren't pirates — so it's no surprise that in Alexander Cobian's Booty, due out in...

Publisher Diary: The Journal of Discoveries

Everything started with a call from Cédrick Chaboussit in June 2014 just to have a little chat. (Since our common work on Lewis & Clark, which he designed and we as Ludonaute published, he has...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Time Travel, Magic Poker, Nuclear War & More Time Travel

• Another week, another triumph for designer Scott Almes on Kickstarter, with two games collecting funds right now. Tiny Epic Kingdoms: Heroes' Call from Gamelyn Games expands upon the original...

New Game Round-up: Subs vs. Surface, Goblins vs. Stones & Players vs. The Holiday Spirit

• In addition to launching its games line with Peer Sylvester's The King Is Dead, a reworking of King of Siam that will debut at Gen Con 2015 ahead of its Sept. 22, 2015 release date, UK...

New Game Round-up: Peloponnes with a Box, Dice City with a Grid & The Game with New Subtitles

• It's almost that time of the year when I have two browser tabs open so that I can update convention previews for both Gen Con and Spiel throughout the day, as with the news that...

New Game Round-up: 504 in 6 Languages, Dinosaurs in Battle & Skiers in a Race for Their Life

• I posted an overview of Friedemann Friese's 504 in April 2015, and here's a short description of the game for those who missed it at the time: Think of a children's flipbook that has the...

Gale Force Nine Multiplies Fireflies, Tosses WWE into the Ring, Then Heads to Sea Under Black Sails

• Gale Force Nine has a trio of new expansions for Firefly: The Game, with the biggest of the three being Firefly: The Game – Kalidasa, a "Rim Space Expansion Set" along the lines of 2014's...

Treefrog Games: Emerald Polished, Ships Incoming, Invaders Printed, Discworld Lost & Brass Attacks

• While bouncing from one convention to the next (and preparing for the next couple of cons), I often run behind on posting everything that I'd like to post, such as a rundown of the latest...

New Game Round-up: Terra in English, Steam Works for the English & Zombies Assault Those Who Speak English

• Friedemann Friese's Terra, a sequel to his Spiel des Jahres-nominated Fauna was released by German publisher HUCH! & friends in late 2014, and the cry went up immediately for an...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Space, Sports, Spells & A Spot on the Wall of My Gallery

Okay, Matt Riddle has tackled some of what's undergoing crowdfunding in the world of games right now, and I aim to tackle...more of it in this post. Not all of it, good heavens, no — just...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Monster Trucks, Dark Lords, Planets Go Kablooie, & ZombicidapocalypseZ (Or Something Like That)

Con season is here! I love the summer because my lovely wife is a teacher, so she and my girls are home and everything decompresses for a couple of months. More vacation, more hanging out, more...

Game Preview: Star Trek: Five-Year Mission, or Sometimes You Don't Make It Past Three Years

One of the advantages (for me) of the Origins Game Fair and Gen Con taking place so close to one another is that coverage of one convention can serve as a preview for the other, as in this...

Introducing BGG's Gen Con 2015 Preview

The day after the 2015 Origins Game Fair ended, I contacted dozens of publishers scheduled to show their wares at Gen Con 2015, which takes place July 30 to August 2, and asked them to send me...

Origins 2015 Round-up: News and Pictures from the Convention Floor

I've posted previews of a few upcoming titles that I saw and played at the 2015 Origins Game Fair — Epic, Tides of Time, and Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot — and I have more games to preview...

Warriors Come to Middle-earth to Expand War of the Ring

Just a few days after the announcement of an expansion for the highly ranked Eclipse, Italian publisher Ares Games has announced an expansion for the nearly equally highly ranked War of the Ring,...

Game Preview: Epic, or Fantasy Gaming with Impact

If you play Magic: The Gathering, you'd probably give anything to be able to cast a first-turn 10/15 flying dragon with protection that pumps all of your other dragons in play. In Epic, you can...

FTC Brings Legal Action Against Failed Kickstarter Game Project

In somewhat surprising news, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has taken legal action in its first (but probably not last) case involving crowdfunding, with the target of this action being Erik...