Board Game News

New Game Round-up: Pandasaurus and IDW Present Godfathers, Clones, Zombies, Thieves & More Machi Koro

• In what's possibly the most unexpected licensing deal in recent months, IDW Games has announced a deal with Paramount Pictures that will allow it to release "a line of The Godfather tabletop...

Game Overview: Diamonsters, or Bluffing Made Small and Cutting Made It Even Smaller

Seiji Kanai's Love Letter blew the doors off the game industry in 2012, demonstrating that (a) good games can come in smaller-than-expected packages and (b) everyone should start paying more...

New Game Round-up: Explore Forbidden Stars, Climb Hills in Ogre: Operation 218 & Drive Recklessly in Car Wars Arenas

• For various reasons I'm not at the GAMA Trade Show taking place this week in Law Vegas, but I can report on some of the titles that have been announced at the event, starting with yet another...

New Game Round-up: Another Run for Snow Tails, Credited Apocrypha & New Characters for Adventure Time Card Wars

• Cryptozoic Entertainment has two new additions for its Adventure Time Card Wars series of two-player card games, with Ice King vs. Marceline due out in June 2015 and Lemongrab vs. Gunter due...

Game Preview: Pandemic Legacy, or Goodbye, Mumbai

On March 12, 2015, Z-Man Games announced that as of that date it had received preorders for 52,000 copies of Pandemic Legacy, its Spiel 2015 release from designers Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau...

New Game Round-up: Mexica Returns, Zombies Recess & King Ludwig Reveals Secrets

• New French publisher Super Meeple was established to reissue out-of-print masterpiece games, and for its first release in April 2015 it will publish a new version of Michael Kiesling and...

Normal Posting to Resume in the Near Future

My apologies for the radio silence this past week. My wife got back surgery this past Tuesday, and my son has gone through two illnesses sandwiching that operation, which led to much time out of...

Game Overview: Träxx, or I'm Walking a Line, Visiting Hexes in Order

At Spielwarenmesse 2015, German publisher Nürnberger-Spielkarten-Verlag took a few moments from adding additional syllables to its name to present me with an overview of its two new titles for...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Blood Rage, Thunderbirds, Between Two Cities, Above and Below & Far Too Much More

Maybe I'm late to the party with this line of thinking, but more and more Kickstarter feels to me like the new normal for game publication. Eric M. Lang's Viking-themed combat game Blood Rage...

New Game Round-up: Glenn Drover Returns with WarQuest, Expansions for Abyss and Five Tribes & An Overhaul for Agricola?

• Glenn Drover hasn't released a game design since 2007's Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery, which was the first — and last — title from his own company Tropical Games, but 2015 will...

Game Overview: The Game: Spiel...so lange du kannst!

Spielwarenmesse, the annual toy and game fair in Nürnberg, Germany, is a trade fair and not a retail show, so often game publishers don't have copies of finished games on hand because they're...

Videos from Spielwarenmesse 2015 IX: Da Luigi, Lumis, Dohdles!, Harry Hopper, Crazy Time, ZomBee, Tschakka Lakka & The Big Bang Theory: Das geniale Spiel

BGG recorded eighty or so game demonstration videos at Spielwarenmesse 2015, and one-tenth of those were in the KOSMOS booth. Amazing!Most of these videos clock in at less than three minutes, and...

Videos from Spielwarenmesse 2015 VIII: The Big Book of Madness, Sapiens, Pingo Pingo, Kenjin, Master Fox, Welcome to the Dungeon and Tales & Games: The Grasshopper & The Ant

Yes, I have still more game demonstration videos to post from Spielwarenmesse 2015, lots more. I meant to jam all of these out in the two weeks between that show at NY Toy Fair 2015, but things...

BoardGameGeek at PAX East: Will You Be There?

It's that time of year again, time to gather in Boston for PAX East, one of the best board and video game conventions of the year. Next week, I will trek to the frozen, post-apocalytpic wasteland...

Designer Preview: Pandemic: State of Emergency

Pandemic: State of Emergency expands Pandemic with five new roles, seven new events, and three new challenges. It is compatible with Pandemic's earlier expansions — On the Brink and In the Lab...

New Game Round-up: Recon for Arctic Scavengers, Rewind 20th Century Railroad Growth & Repos Releases in 2015

• Despite much doubt about the issue since it released a new edition of Robert K. Gabhart's deck-building game Arctic Scavengers in 2013, it turns out that Rio Grande Games will indeed release...

New Game Round-up: King of Siam in England, Tons of Mini Games in France & Bottom of the 9th in Dice Hate Me Greater Than Games

• Osprey Publishing, which has released hundreds of illustrated military history books since its founding in 1969 and which has also co-published books of wargame rules, plans to release its...

Videos from Spielwarenmesse 2015 VII: Discoveries, Zambezi, Pronto, Bermuda & Think Str8!

• Cédrick Chaboussit's Lewis & Clark from Ludonaute received heaps of praise when it debuted in late 2013, and for 2015 the designer, publisher and artist Vincent Dutrait have come back...

Videos from Spielwarenmesse 2015 VI: Broom Service, Stichling, Tausch Rausch & Drachenhort

• Game publishing is a funny business. Andreas Pelikan's Witch's Brew is in high demand for a reprint and sells regularly for $60-80 on the BGG marketplace, yet German-language copies are...

"New Games Are for New Gamers": Reflections on NY Toy Fair 2015

So I wrote this today, not really planning to write this much, but then doing so:While I was on @MeepleSyrup last night (https://t.co/yKenWlAIej) w/ @425suzanne and @Aldie, @darylmandrews asked...

Pics from NY Toy Fair 2015 II: StoneBlade Entertainment, Bombyx, Kosmos, FoxMind and MindWare

Time for another round-up of tweets showing off new and nearly new games on display at NY Toy Fair 2015. I'm still posting more images on BGG's Twitter feed, and I'll post another round-up or two...

Pics from NY Toy Fair 2015 I: Epic Spell Wars & More Adventure Time: Card Wars from Cryptozoic; Dice Masters & Much More from WizKids Games

I noted just the other day that I might not compile summaries of the pics I've been tweeting from NY Toy Fair 2015 because going through the effort of uploading images and writing about them...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Fruit, Cops, Goblins, Magicians and Ferris Wheels, or All Things Found in W. Eric's Bedroom!

Apparently I missed posting anything in January 2015, yet SOMEHOW Kickstarter managed to generate funds without my help. What's more, while I know a TON of games are always on KS, it felt like...

Coverage of NY Toy Fair 2015 via Twitter

The 112th North American International Toy Fair, a.k.a. NY Toy Fair, opens Saturday, Feb. 14, 2015, and I'll be at the show for part of Saturday and all of Sunday as long as my plane doesn't land...

Videos from Spielwarenmesse 2015 V: Steam Ship Company, Kraftwagen, Cacao, Mmm! & Camel Up: Supercup,

• We'll start the next handful of game demonstration videos from Spielwarenmesse 2015 with a game that might not even be released in 2015: Mac Gerdts' Steam Ship Company from PD-Verlag. As...

Videos from Spielwarenmesse 2015 IV: Doctor Panic, Ultimate Warriorz & 7 Wonders: Duel, Playmat, Art Pack and iPad App

• In May 2014, I posted a prototype pic of 7 Wonders: Duel, and now after a trip to Spielwarenmesse 2015 I can give you 87% of the scoop on this game from 7 Wonders designer Antoine Bauza and...

Ghostbusters Cross the Kickstarter Stream Thanks to Cryptozoic Entertainment

In a BGG News post about the forthcoming injection of something from the Predator universe into Upper Deck Entertainment's Legendary Encounters game based on the Alien movies, one commenter...

Videos from Spielwarenmesse 2015 III: Elysium, Loony Quest, Downgo Dungeon, My Neighbor Monster, Sing It! & Oath of the Brotherhood

• It's time for another round-up of game demonstration videos from Spielwarenmesse 2015, starting with a second attempt at an overview of Matthew Dunstan and Brett Gilbert's Elysium from Space...

New Game Round-up: Lehmann Courts Power in Favor of the Pharaoh and the Tracy Family Gets Fancy Ships for Thunderbirds

U.S. publisher Bezier Games has announced its Spiel 2015 release: Favor of the Pharaoh by Tom Lehmann, a reworking of his 2006 dice game To Court the King that keeps the same gameplay at heart...

New Game Round-up: Spielworxx Timeline, Timeline Teaser & A Teaser for Homeland

• Following the success of Spartacus, Sons of Anarchy and Firefly: The Game, Gale Force Nine continues its efforts to roll out transformations of television shows as board games with the...