Board Game News

Designer Diary: Eggs and Empires — No, Really, That's the Name. For Reals.

Hi! I am Matt Riddle, and this is the story of Eggs and Empires, a card game from Ben Pinchback and me courtesy of Gryphon Games. You may remember us all working together on Fleet and, errrrr,...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXVIII: Mangrovia, Beasty Bar, Zombie Mania, 5 Minutes, Magi Kitchen & Pinocchio: True or False

• Let's kick out another half-dozen game demonstration videos from Spiel 2014, starting with a trio from Zoch Verlag and parent company Noris Spiele.Zoch focuses on family games and designs for...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXVII: World of Yo-Ho, Time Masters, Carnac, Terra, Kamisado Max & Pints of Blood

• Didn't I finish posting all of these? No?! Okay, fine — here's another half-dozen game demonstration videos that BGG recorded at Spiel 2014, this time focusing on videos recorded outside of...

New Game Round-up: More for Mage Knight, Western Flicks from Z-Man & Coal, Vikings and Underwater Cities from Spielworxx

• Another expansion for Vlaada Chvátil's Mage Knight Board Game is in the works, and developer Paul Grogan notes that the material has been handed off to publisher WizKids Games, it won't be...

Game Preview at BGG.CON 2014: Elysium, or At Play in the Elysian Fields

Throughout BGG.CON 2014 and shortly afterward, I had many people ask for my favorite game from the show, and as is often the case at cons my answer was not even on their radar because I tend to...

Game Preview at BGG.CON 2014: SeaFall, or Riding the Tides and Raiding the Towns

Shortly before BGG.CON 2014 was due to take place, designer Rob Daviau of IronWall Games posted the following on Twitter:Also, going to BGGCon with four prototypes including 3 copies of SeaFall...

Game Previews at BGG.CON 2014: Love Letter Gets Rewritten with The Batman and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies

• My goal at BGG.CON 2014 was to speak with a few publishers and designers about upcoming games, ideally on camera, while also trying out said games so that I could write about them in more...

Confessions of a Geek: Musings on Tokyo Game Market, November 2014

The tables are filling up...I hate Game Market.It's a one-day event in Tokyo where several publishers (that would be regarded internationally as everything from mid-sized to very small) and half...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXVI: Tash Kalar: Everfrost, Dungeon Lords Anniversary, Astro Jam, Kryptos & Family Bingo

• After a couple of off days (uh oh), it's time to continue with the game demonstrations recorded in the BGG booth during Spiel 2014.At that convention, Czech Games Edition unveiled a new...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Snake Oil, Losers, Dead Family Members & Much More

As a personal challenge for this crowdfunding round-up, I'm going to see whether I can restrict my description for each game to a single sentence. Why? Just because.• Conveniently enough, Out...

Asmodee to Acquire Fantasy Flight Games

Three months after the merger of Days of Wonder into the Asmodee Group, another big deal in the games industry is going down, namely the merging of U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games into that...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXV: Ars Alchimia, Villannex, Jushimatsu, Aristo-Maze & Colors of Kasane

• With Tokyo Game Market taking place — well, already having taken place — today, November 16, 2014, I thought I'd roll out another handful of game demonstration videos from Spiel 2014 that...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXIV: The Ravens of Thri Sahashri, Onitama, Rolling Japan, Secret Moon & One Night Werewolf: Super Powers

• Another day, another handful of game demonstration videos from Spiel 2014, specifically another batch from the Japon Brand marathon that took place on Saturday when frequent translator Simon...

Crowdfunding Round-up: Whales, Dragons, Nazis, Strippers, and Joel Eddy for $100. What Is "All Things Best Seen From Afar"?

All right! Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la la lalalala and such. I figured we could check out some projects that will be done just in time for Christmas...2016! Not that anyone reads this...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXIII: Antike II, Concordia: Britannia & Germania, Takamatsu, Lunte, Dawn: Rise of the Occulites & Roll Through the Ages: The Iron Age

• Designer Mac Gerdts has an amazing reputation, with his lowest rated game on BGG out of nine releases being 6.99. For Spiel 2014, he brought two items to the fair, one being the Britannia &...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXII: Wir sind das Volk!, 7 Steps, Drecksause, Co-Mix & Dungeon Fighter: Stormy Winds

• With the news that IELLO has picked up the [thing=102548]Dungeon Fighter[/thing] license for release on the U.S. market, let's start this round-up of game demonstration videos from Spiel 2014...

New Game Round-up: Discover New Friends for Imperial Settlers, New Villains in Fear Itself & New/Old Solar Cycles in Sky Tango

• Well, how about that? BGG.CON has apparently become a "release" con, at least to some degree — that is, a convention at which publishers feel its worth their time to debut new items. To...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XXI: Lost Legacy II & III, Isaribi, Ninja Taisen, See-Know-Buzz & The Edict of King Budeaunia

• For this game demonstration round-up from Spiel 2014, I thought that I'd start tackling the pile of videos featuring titles from Japon Brand and its minimalGames spinoff brand. Translator...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XX: The Witcher Adventure Game, Armymals, Korrigans, Sun Tzu & Room 25: Season 2

• While we generally have a tightly packed game demonstration schedule for Spiel, with a new game demo every 10-15 minutes for roughly eight hours each day for five days, we do sometimes have...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XIX: The Staufer Dynasty, Saint Petersburg, Carcassonne, Spyfall & Viceroy

• As is its custom, German publisher Hans im Glück debuted one somewhat-involved new strategy game at Spiel 2014, the game in question being Andreas Steding's The Staufer Dynasty. I played a...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XVIII: Pandemic: The Cure, Fields of Arle, Akrotiri, Waggle Dance & Frankenstein's Bodies

• I previewed Pandemic: The Cure in November 2013 after trying out the prototype at BGG.CON 2013, even interviewing designer Matt Leacock to talk about the gameplay, and now nearly a year later...

New Game Round-up: Smash Up Pretties Up, Kwanzaa Gets Fêted (Sort Of) & Mars Gets Remade

• Successful game series keep having new titles announced for them — whodathunkit? One of those series for which a new item is coming is Paul Peterson's Smash Up from AEG, which come March...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XVII: ZhanGuo, Elysium, Illegal, Te Kuiti & Helvetia Cup

• What's Your Game? typically publishes one game each year — such as Vasco da Gama, Vinhos and Madeira — that makes a splash with those who prefer more involved modern strategy games, and...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XVI: Deus, ESSEN, [redacted], Town Center & Monster Chef

• Sébastien Dujardin's Deus from his own Pearl Games ended near the top of both BGG's Geekbuzz and Fairplay's Scoutaktion ranking systems at Spiel 2014, and the game has been skirting the...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XV: Ciúb, Eat Me If You Can!, Kobayakawa, Dark Tales & Dark Tales: Snow White

• Designer Tom Lehmann wrote a diary/preview for BGG News for his dice game Ciúb, which debuted at Spiel 2014 from German publisher AMIGO Spiele, but for those who prefer to see things in...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XIV: Royals, Panthalos, Agents Secrets, Boom Bokken & New York Kings

• In addition to now publishing his own designs through Kayal Games, Peter Hawes still works with other publishers to bring his creations to fruition, as with Royals, which ABACUSSPIELE debuted...

New Game Round-up: Pandemic Welcomes State of Emergency, Saint Petersburg Heads to the U.S. & Fantasy Flight Dusts Off A Game of Thrones

• Not content with releasing one spinoff title (Pandemic: The Cure) and one quasi-spinoff (Pandemic: Contagion) for Matt Leacock's Pandemic, Z-Man Games has announced a new expansion for the...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XIII: Greenland, First to Fight, Ark of Animals, Prohis & Haru Ichiban

• I recorded an overview of Sierra Madre Games' Greenland at Gen Con 2014 thanks to Geof Gambill having an advance production copy on hand, but there's nothing like hearing about a game from...

Videos from Spiel 2014 XII: Spike, Spellcaster, Coup: Guatemala 1954, Melee & Nations: The Dice Game

• Here is yet another handful of game demonstration videos from Spiel 2014, leading off with Rustan Håkansson's Nations: The Dice Game, of which five hundred copies were available in Essen...

Designer Diary: The Road to Progress: Evolution of Technology

Civilization games — ask any heavy gamer what is their favorite genre and more often than not you'll hear this answer: "Civilization games, of course." In today's world, with everyone being...