by Steph Hodge

A heavy hitter today with these new releases

[imageid=6268503 medium rep]▪️ Coming this May we can expect to see The Queen's Dilemma released by Horrible Guild. Many of you have played or heard of The King's Dilemma, which was the first legacy game set in the Kingdom of Ankist. The Queen's Dilemma is a follow-up sequel set hundreds of years later. It will use an improved card system and tell a whole new story through a legacy campaign.

From the newsletter:


▪️ The Last Spell: The Board Game is a new release based on the Ishtar Games' video game published in English by Ares Games. This game was successfully funded back in 2023 on Kickstarter from Tabula Games and has been fulfilled to backers and is now available for sale.

This is a cooperative tower defense campaign game, but you can play one-off missions as well.

From BGG:



▪️ Mayfair Games joined forces with Alion – by Dr Ø to exlusively release Recall in the United States. Today is the scheduled retail release date, so you should be able to acquire it! This was a very popular title at BGG.CON Fall 2025 after its Spiel release.

Recall is brought to you by the designers of Revive (Helge Meissner, Kristian Amundsen Østby, Kjetil Svendsen, Anna Wermlund). The games have similar mechanics in a few ways, but the overall gameplay and feeling is completely different. For those who love crunchy Euros, you are in luck for this US release.

From BGG:

There was a moment late in my first game of the medium-weight strategy game Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock where I pretty much landed on my final thoughts about the game.

I had just taken a turn that felt pretty dope. That turn began when I took the Construction action, and spent four resources to construct the second-to-last piece of the month dial on the big clock at the center of the board. That netted me eight points, for the gold, two wood, and paint I had spent to build it. Then I placed one of my workers on the clock, and thanks to adjacency rules, scored four more points. Then I got a bonus based on the position of that completed space on an outer wheel that surrounds the clock, a track that lists bonuses on what is known as the Painter track.

That bonus gave me a free apostle. These apostle tiles are earned and placed in one of two storage slots on each player’s personal board. As a free action, I took that new apostle and placed it in a column on my personal, 12-space apostle board. It was the third apostle in one of the columns, which earned me another bonus: an Assistant tile, which went into the newly vacated storage space where that apostle…

The post Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

I love it when game designers give us a unique take on mechanics that have been around for a long time. Fight 5 gave us a new spin on the card game war, Samurai Spirit channeled its inner blackjack, and quite a few games have pulled from the ancient game Mancala, notably Five Tribes. Today, […]

Source

The American arm of high IQ society Mensa has unveiled the latest crop of board games winning its Mensa Select seal, which are voted on by hundreds of organisation members during an annual four-day gaming marathon.

Alex Cutler and Peter C Hayward both saw two of their creations win the seal this year, including their co-design Critter Kitchen, Hayward’s Things in Rings and Cutler’s A Place for All My Books – which he co-created with Michael Mihealsick.

Things in Rings publisher Allplay also saw its title Twinkle Twinkle, designed by Ammon Anderson, pick up a Select seal, while other winners this year included Matthew O’Malley and Ben Rosset’s Fromage, Yoann Levet’s Got Five and Tomáš Holek design Galileo Galilei.

Entries to the annual Mensa Mind Games are judged on aesthetics, instructions, originality, play appeal and play value, Mensa says, with the award aiming to highlight games that are original in concept, challenging and well-designed.

Not all games released during the past year are eligible for the award, however – entries carry a fee of several hundred dollars each, and games up for consideration need to have an average play time of 90 minutes or less.

Barnes & Noble and other major retailers have previously given special consideration to games bearing the Mensa Select seal, while winning games are also featured by American Mensa’s official online retailers and on its website.

Fromage is the most decorated of this year’s seal winners, having previously won the Origins Award for best light strategy game, as well as picking up nominations for medium game of the year, most innovative game and best artwork in the 2024 Golden Geek Awards.

Things in Rings was previously nominated in both the Golden Geeks and Origins Awards in the best party game category.

Last year’s Mensa Select seal winners included Agueda: City of Umbrellas, Diatoms, Hutan, In the Footsteps of Marie Curie and Farms Race: Deluxe Edition.

This year’s Mensa Select seal winners in full:

• A Place for All My Books – designed by Alex Cutler and Michael Mihealsick (published by Smirk & Dagger Games)
• Critter Kitchen – Alex Cutler and Peter C Hayward (Cardboard Alchemy)
• Fromage – Matthew O’Malley and Ben Rosset (R2i Games)
• Galileo Galilei – Tomáš Holek (Capstone Games)
• Got Five – Yoann Levet (Blue Orange Games)
• Things in Rings – Peter C Hayward (Allplay)
• Twinkle Twinkle – Ammon Anderson (Allplay)

The post High-IQ society Mensa reveals its top board games after annual four-day judging marathon first appeared on .

With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.

#74: Open Borders from 2040: An American Insurgency from Compass Games

2040: An American Insurgency is a card driven game that attempts to simulate a near future US civil war in the 21^st century. In this 2-player game that plays in less than 3 hours, the blue team is the Federals representing agents of the government in Washington. The red team are the Rebels including militia groups trying to seize control of states, highways, and cities. The conflict spreads across the entire continental US, from Miami to Seattle and from Los Angeles to New York.

This game is not perfect and it has some issues and the graphics are not that great frankly. As I played the game, I actually felt like it was a pretty decent game, with some very interesting mechanics covering an interesting topic. I know it isn’t perfect and in some ways the designer was so careful not to offend anyone in the game that he really didn’t get to say anything about the situation and its causes, and the game somewhat suffers from that. But it was interesting and I believe that we are about the only ones who played the game.

In this post, I will be taking a look at a Neutral Card called Open Borders. Remember, that each event is either friendly, enemy, or neutral. Friendly events help you; enemy events help your enemy while Neutral events can help either player. Gray cards such as Open Borders have no identifying side’s markings in the bottom right corner and when you play a Neutral Card, you may choose to do the Ops or the Event. Open Borders is a very good Neutral Card because it is a 3 Ops card and can be used to take various standard operations, such as raising
troops, fundraising and attacking. The card also is identified as a Momentum Card, which means that if played as the event, the effect will persist until a time specified in the text of the Event or, if none, until the end of the game. With Open Borders, the spaces of Mexico and Canada become playable areas on the board. These areas typically become a way for the Rebels to build and develop bases from which they recruit fresh insurgent units and then cross over the Open Borders to attack those States that border these areas eroding their Order and creating chaos and Revolt. The Open Borders Card allows this but also allows the Federal player to respond by crossing over the border and attempting to squash these recruiting centers.

The other effects of the Event provides both sides with a bonus when they take certain actions such as Tax for the Federals and Recruit for the Rebels. When the card has been played and is in effect, the Federal Tax Action will provide an additional $4 worth of income from the action. This is an effect of open borders and the unrestricted use of free trade and cross border commerce creating new jobs, providing additional sources of income and employing workers who ultimately pay income taxes on those improved wages. The Rebel Recruit Action will gain an additional Militia unit per space where taken. This reflects the stoking of anger at home as illegals and other bad actors are able to pour across the borders unfettered. I very much like this card for its game effect but also for the questions and concerns that it raises in this debate. Such an interesting economic spin on this issue through the game and I think is a very well done part of the design.

The concept of open borders highlights a fundamental tension between national security, economic openness, and civil liberties. Post-9/11, critics argue that porous or “open” borders allow terrorists to exploit security gaps, while proponents of open borders emphasize that excessive restrictions hurt economic freedom and that security should be managed through intelligence rather than isolation. The biggest concern regarding open borders is that unvetted, irregular migration through porous borders can be exploited by extremists to enter countries and perform acts of terrorism, sedition or general mayhem. To manage the tension between security and economic openness, many nations have turned to the concept of biometric borders. This involves using risk profiling and digital identity such as fingerprints and facial recognition to separate “civilized” business travelers from “illegitimate” and bad actors. This use of these high tech instruments in surveillance, data tracking and technology to distinguish between legitimate travel and potential threats has raised more concerns with civil liberty and privacy. This debate often pits “secure borders” against “open doors,” with officials grappling with protecting citizens without sacrificing the democratic principles of open societies. In one of the most famous quotes from history about privacy, Benjamin Franklin stated “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety“. Where do you land on this issue of Open Borders?

Here is a link to our unboxing video showing the components:

Here also is a link to our full video review:

I also posted an interview with the designer Edward Castronova on the blog and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2023/04/04/interview-with-edward-castronova-designer-of-2040-an-american-insurgency-from-compass-games-currently-on-kickstarter/

In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at The Second Funnel from The Hunt from Salt & Pepper Games.

-Grant

BGI 416 The One About 3 Degrees from Kevin Bacon in Board Games 

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Intro Music: Happy Rock – Bensound.com

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Also, explore the use of dice in Native American gaming

Continue reading on Board Game Beat LLC | W. Eric Martin

18-19 Apr 2026 was the Malaysia Boardgame Show. It was held at Jaya One shopping mall in PJ. In the past few years there has been several different boardgame-specific events in Malaysia, like Asian Board Game Festival (in Penang), Boxcon, All Aboard, Dice & Dine, Anigames. Not all are recurring. MBS is organised by Jon, who is currently the most active game designer in Malaysia. He has

Yesterday we looked at Pillars of Fate, a kinda-sorta remake of extended family reunion simulator Veiled Fate, and found it wanting for much the same reason as the original. The gods are capricious, everybody knows that, but their fickleness doesn’t exactly make them the most appealing playmates.

But here’s the thing. At the same time Austin Harrison, Max Anderson, and Zac Dixon were designing Pillars of Fate, another remake was, um, remade. On a superficial level, this one, Scales of Fate, resembles its namesakes. As in those other titles, dueling gods intend to deduce the identity of their rival’s offspring, minimize their impact on the world, and elevate their own bastards over everybody else. Basically, it’s a race to promote your nepo babies over everybody else’s at the family tire shop. And that tire shop happens to be the eternal mountain at the root of the world.

And it’s excellent. Scales of Fate just might be one of the tightest, nastiest deduction games out there. That it was built for two players only makes it the more impressive.

For first-timers, the board presented by Scales of Fate is wonderfully labyrinthine. I say “wonderfully” because just look at it. It’s colorful. The pieces slot together like joined fingers. There’s a topography to the whole thing. You can tell the elevated pieces will be more important than the pieces seated a few millimeters below them. Even when I had no idea what any of these components portended, I wanted to know. Needed to know. Were they gears? Would my demigods traverse them? Veiled Fate presented its map as a wheel. Pillars of Fate offered three lanes. Both are fine. Good, even. But I’ve seen wheels and lanes before. A series of interlocked cogs and risers is something new. That’s a metaphorical depiction of a landscape if ever there was one.

In practice, Scales of Fate is surprisingly easy to get a handle on. Turns consist of three possible actions. One of those, while important, functions more as an exception, an occasional bolt of lightning, than as business as usual.

The main two actions, meanwhile, immediately explain the function of those wonderful cogs and pillars. First, a demigod can be placed atop a pillar to trigger its ability. Whether it’s to smite another demigod down to the underworld to cool their heels, obtain the loyalty of a servant, or… well, that’s it. Rather than offering a wide menu of abilities, there are really only two to keep in mind. Sure, there’s some variety within those categories, but they fall into camps rather than cluttering the decision-space with branching paths.

The second action has to do with those servants. Placed along the edge of the board’s cogs, they trigger the quests that will increase or decrease each demigod’s renown. But to understand what that means, we need to back up a bit.

Okay, so you’ve fathered/mothered/sea-foamed two half-divine offspring. Their identities are determined in secret at the beginning of the game. Put a pin in that. We’ll come back to it.

You want to elevate your children. Doing so openly is a surefire way to attract the wrath of your co-pantheonists. So you work in secret. The problem is that every demigod’s current standing is shown on the renown track, visible to both players. When the game begins, all nine demigods share the middle space. That’s seven renown. Even before they’ve done anything interesting, your offspring are worth something by means of their divine parentage.

What will they accomplish? Rather than doing the obvious thing — say, by asking you to push them up the renown track — Scales of Fate makes a tantalizing offer. Your children score points in one of two ways. If they occupy the same renown space when the game ends, they score its value. If both are seated on their starting space, having neither moved up nor down, that means they’ll be worth seven points. That’s respectable. Polite. Not a bad score. But if they move to different spaces on the track, now they score equal to the distance between them. Ticking one child up a single space means their combined value is one point. On the other hand, if your children should do the twin thing by embracing entirely opposite ends of the spectrum, they’ll be worth a whole lot more.

This introduces a wonderful sense of risk and reward to Scales of Fate, not to mention fixes my hangups with Veiled Fate. In that game, players earned points for ensuring their holy bastard earned the most renown. But that made their identity almost trivial. Once any one demigod got too hot for their britches, everyone would work together to take them down a peg. It was simple. Too simple.

Here, their relative standing makes the family tree more tangled. With nine demigods in the world, they’ll be all over the renown track. But what does that mean? Are those clusters on the track actually siblings working in tandem? Are those gods at the farthest edges secretly growing into a hero-villain rivalry that will shake the foundations of the earth?

Of course, this is a deduction game, which means there are tools for producing those deductions. Some of these tools are subtle. With experience, I’ve made a habit of watching my opponent like a hawk and marking whenever they idly touch a piece or linger too long over a move. More often than not, some correlation can be drawn over time, hinting at favoritism or resolute neglect. (Similarly, I’ve developed the habit of studiously avoiding my own offspring. This, I’m sure, is a tell in its own right. If I reach out to tentatively brush the pink demigod, Isabel, before pulling back like my fingers were singed by her presence, you can reliably infer that I have nothing to do with her.)

But the game’s more explicit tool is provided each age. Scales of Fate takes place over three rounds, each of which provides a different criterion that will be checked at the round’s end. Early on, for example, you might be required to inform your opponent whether you have any demigods out of play. That means they weren’t sent to the board, whether to trigger actions or because someone blasted them down to the underworld. Later, your suspicions might be confirmed by evidence of divine parentage for any demigod placed on a highlighted action pillar.

Crucially, these cards ask yes/no questions rather than demanding specifics. If you’re clever enough to ensure that only one of your two children meets the current age’s criterion, you can simply say “yes” to their presence without giving too much away. For example, one first-age card asks whether one of your children is still seated at four to six renown on the track. Saying yes is almost worse than saying no, especially if nearly all of the demigods have yet to make a name for themselves.

In the meantime, nearly everything adjusts their standing on the renown track. When servants trigger quests — the cogs that surround the action pillars — the surrounding demigods shift up or down. When sent to the underworld, another action will determine the place’s magma forecast, thus providing feats or humiliations that also adjust their standing. Every little detail matters.

And we still haven’t talked about the game’s cleverest touch. Remember when I mentioned we would return to the question of your children’s parentage? Turns out this pantheon is rocking one big orgy, with all the problems it poses for any paternity/maternity/sea-foam tests.

In most deduction games, including the basic rules for Veiled Fate, holding a card means nobody else is holding it. In Scales of Fate, both sides have their own duplicate deck. Just because your children are Agamar and Saghari doesn’t mean your rival won’t have some personal interest in one of them as well. Maybe even both of them, although that’s unlikely. This adds no small amount of static to the ongoing deductions. When one of your demigods gets bumped off their current space, is that because your rival has figured out that they’re your kid and is trying to mess with you, or are they chasing an ambition of their own? Some of my favorite matches have featured duplicate offspring, and while this calls into question what’s so demi- about these so-called demigods, it’s a brilliant addition to a shared-control deduction game.

That goes for the entire package. To some degree, I wish I could play a version of this game that featured more than two players. The idea behind Veiled Fate was always one that appealed to me, and while it finds its best expression here, there’s a slightness to Scales of Fate that I wish would be transposed into a more robust framework. Of course, it’s entirely possible that this game only functions because its manipulations are so laser-focused. It’s generally possible to figure out your rival’s progeny. At least one of them. I’m not sure that would be the case if we had to keep an eye on three other players rather than staring down only one person.

Along the way, there are other little touches that elevate the experience. Like the game-breaking powers that let you smite anyone or swap two demigods, but subtract points from your final tally. Or the way the end-game deduction rewards a correct genealogical discovery but only penalizes you for not uncovering at least one of your rival’s kids. Like the board’s cogs and pillars, everything locks together into one elegant whole, resulting in a crystallized experience where nothing is out of place.

Honestly, it’s such a breath of fresh air. Not only that Scales of Fate is this good, but that it takes such a novel approach to almost every corner of its design. From the non-literal map to the way it uses relative proportions to signify importance, both on the board and between renown trackers. From the clever approach to shared control to the way players might find themselves accidentally co-parenting a demigod. It’s achingly smart.

More than smart, it feels great to handle, to push around, to study a rival and mark down a clue. When I first saw Scales of Fate, I knew I had to figure out how those pieces fit together. The beautiful thing is, their inner workings proved even better than they seemed from afar.

 

A complimentary copy of Scales of Fate was provided by the publisher.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read my first-quarter update of 2026: the best board games, movies, books, and more!)

Lucky Duck Games, the board game publisher behind European localisations of major hits such as Dune Imperium and Cascadia, is scaling back that side of its operations to prioritise development of its own designs.

Scott Morris, the company’s global brand director, told BoardGameWire that while localisation had been an important part of the business over the years it was “resource intensive” and dependent on external factors – adding that developing in-house titles provided “more opportunity for long-term value”.

Lucky Duck has become a varied operator in the modern hobby games industry since it was founded in 2016, growing from a small design studio running Kickstarter campaigns into a global publisher, localiser and distributor with offices across Poland, the US, France, Italy and the UK.

That localisation activity has been centred most heavily around Lucky Duck’s home of Poland and early expansion country France, with the company becoming known for local language version of strategy titles and big-selling games such as Too Many Bones, Flamecraft and The Isle of Cats.

But Lucky Duck has a big hitter of its own in the Chronicles of Crime series of games, which have sold more than one million copies worldwide, and Morris told BoardGameWire the company was also “very confident” in its other recent releases Borealis: Arctic Expeditions, Purrramid and Oakspire.

He said, “We also have several games in development we have not announced yet, but we are very excited about. The team knows how to make fun and engaging games, which, at the end of the day, focus on our goal: bringing smiles to gamers everywhere.”

Lucky Duck was bought by Rummikub manufacturer Goliath two years ago – and Morris said the global distribution opportunity offered by such a high-profile mass market player was part of the reason behind the strategy shift.

He said, “Since the acquisition, there has been a focus on leveraging Goliath’s global distribution network and operational scale. This includes expanding access to new retail channels and improving production and logistics capabilities.

“These changes are ongoing, but they are already opening new opportunities for our titles to reach wider audiences. We have seen significant growth in these new channels and are excited to continue to introduce our games to new retailers and customers.”

Morris was at pains to clarify that Lucky Duck is not ceasing all localisation activities, which was the impression given to some readers of a recent announcement about the changes on its French Facebook page.

He said, “I can understand how the announcement was received that way and we will work to make our announcements clearer in the future.

“We have decided to not localize some items we originally planned to, and we’re working with those partners to find the best solutions for everyone, in those situations. The decision is part of a broader strategic evolution, rather, and is not a France-specific decision.

“We are refining how we approach the different markets, with a greater emphasis on publishing and developing our own titles globally, while continuing to work with partners where the right opportunities exist.”

Some of those planned localisations which will now not go ahead include the French localisation of Cascadia Alpine Lakes, published by Flatout Games, which was only announced by Lucky Duck a few weeks ago.

Morris said the strategic shift did not affect the company’s Global Publishing Network operation, which is a separate business unit that acts as a localisation agency, connecting publishers and distribution buyers who localize in their regions.

He said, “Matt Goldrick leads this initiative for us and it has continued to be a stable, growing, and exciting part of the industry.”

It might appear that developing and publishing home-grown designs is a much riskier proposition than localising already popular titles which gamers are keen to get hold of in their language – but Morris said both approaches carry different types of risk.

He told BoardGameWire, “With the support of Goliath’s global infrastructure, we are in a stronger position to manage risks effectively. While localization benefits from existing demand, original publishing allows us to build long-term value, strengthen our own brand identity, and deeper our engagement with the players.

“We have a very talented design and development team in Poland, led by Michal Szewczyk, that has produced award winning games.

“Toriki: Castaway Island has won several European gaming awards, [the recently-released] Purrramid was just names as a finalist for ASTRA’s best family game in their Play Awards, and of course, the highly successful and touted Chronicles of Crime series is continuing with our recent successful Kickstarter for the Beyond Doubt series of new games.”

He added, “By prioritizing internally developed titles, we have greater control over product development, timelines, and long-term brand building.”

Goliath CEO Jochanan Golad said at the time of the Lucky Duck takeover that it saw two major growth areas in games: adult party games and strategy games – but some publishers have begun to move away from larger box, complex titles and towards lighter, smaller games recently amid the fallout from last year’s US tariffs chaos.

Morris confirmed to BoardGameWire that strategy games “remain a key area of growth”, saying, “Our strategy reflects confidence in that segment, alongside opportunities in other categories.

“The Lucky Duck brand is focused primarily on strategy games… we’re both very happy with our recent releases, the reception they have seen, and our upcoming titles to announce soon!”

He added, “Tariffs have added significant pressure across the entire industry, affecting production costs and pricing strategies. It has been extremely hard to see our industry hit so negatively, and see so many people’s livelihoods, and in some cases, life’s work, stretched to, and beyond their breaking points.

“Like many publishers, we’ve had to adapt by optimizing supply chains and planning more carefully around manufacturing and distribution decisions.

“I strongly believe that our acquisition by Goliath could not have been timed better with regards to the tariff situation. Their global supply chain and logistics management helped us navigate the waters better than we could have prior to the acquisition.”

Lucky Duck continues to run Kickstarter campaigns for its own designs – most recently with Oakspire, which has raised just over €133,000 with about seven days of the campaign left to run, and Chronicles of Crime: Beyond Doubt, which pulled in about €373,500 last November.

The company has hit choppy water with some of its unfulfilled Kickstarter campaigns, however, with heavy delays for €1m-raising The Dark Quarter – which was initially expected to deliver to backers in October 2023 – and Into the Godsgrave, which was slated for fulfillment in December 2024.

Morris said of Into The Godsgrave, “As with many large-scale projects, with unique designs, timelines can shift due to the complexity of production, logistics, and ensuring the final product meets expectations.

“The team has prioritized quality and delivery experience, which has contributed to the revised timeline. Our team, specifically Ben Poole our community manager, has worked hard to keep everyone updated through our project updates as to the status and milestones.

“We’re excited to get that game into players hands and on their tables. It’s a very fun and unique experience that I believe will impress.”

Regarding The Dark Quarter, he added, “Similar factors applied here, particularly around production and app development, plus global logistics challenges. Goliath’s strengths here will help us mitigate those risks in the future.

“We’ve worked hard to ensure the final product met the standard expected by backers, even if that required additional time and we have seen many positive responses as fulfillment progressed.

“I’m paraphrasing a famous quote, but as a wise man once said, a delayed game can be eventually good but a rushed game can be forever bad.”

The post Lucky Duck cuts back on “resource intensive” localisation strategy, shifts focus to developing own titles first appeared on .

The Canadian publisher has lost much of its inventory in that country

Continue reading on Board Game Beat LLC | W. Eric Martin

A round-up of five games coming to the North American market

Continue reading on Board Game Beat LLC | W. Eric Martin

by Ellie Dix

The Theme
My granny made a medallion patter green and pink bargello cushion in the 1980s. She had it in her granny flat, where I often escaped to during my childhood. A few years ago, I realised I was spending too much time on my computer. Double-screening in the evenings. Working too much. So, I decided to take myself in hand and find a hobby that would pull me away from the screen. I came across a bargello-style craft kit to make a cushion, and the moment I saw it, I felt immediately drawn. It was like my granny guiding me towards it.

What started as one cushion has become something of an obsession. It was only a matter of time before this world crept into my game design.

Me, with a bargello cushion I made...
Mechanical Inspiration
But Threadeddidn’t start to take shape until I came across one particular component. I played Shogun and fell completely in love with the cube tower. It's a remarkable piece of kit - tactile, unpredictable, genuinely exciting - and yet it feels like a component that doesn't appear in nearly enough games. I knew I wanted to scratch that itch. The question was: what would the cube tower be doing?

The answer came quite naturally once I had the theme in mind. The tower would be a thread factory. Whatever comes out of the tower on any given turn represents the over-production - the threads that spill off the factory floor and become available. You can't predict exactly what you'll get. You just load it up and see what emerges.

The second idea arrived alongside it: an ordered worker placement system. Each worker carries a number, and those numbers change from round to round. When a location is resolved, the worker with the lowest number goes first. The interesting tension comes from decision-making at placement. You might choose to assign a higher number to the Workshop, if you're willing to gamble on going later in order to take a tapestry card further down the display row. High risk, potentially high reward.

The workers, who’s numbered days were numbered.
When Good Ideas Don't Survive
In honesty, the original version of the ordered worker placement system was a bit of a mess.

The drafting process had three nested rules about which numbers you were allowed to take and in what order. It was involved, fiddly, and crucially it didn't generate enough interesting decisions to justify all that overhead. The system as a whole was too clunky for the weight of game I was making and for the experience I was trying to craft. Playtesters were confused and simultaneously overwhelmed and underwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the amount of business and rules related to the numbered workers and underwhelmed by the decision space it afforded.

So, I cut it. In its place came a much simpler worker placement system: you queue at each location, and earlier arrivals have the benefit when the location resolves. The interesting decisions about timing are still there, just hopefully presented without the administrative burden.

Can you spot what made it and what didn’t?
I'll confess there's a version of that numbered system rattling around in my head where the timing of when your worker activates is the central puzzle. It just wasn't right for this game.

As many designers often find – a core part of the original design for a game often doesn't survive the development process. The cube tower made it. The ordered workers mechanism didn't. It’s sometimes hard to abandon core ideas from the original design, but I’m constantly reminded that it’s important to do so.

The Puzzle
What has never changed, from the very first prototype to the published version, is the core puzzle. It has two interlocking layers.
The first is the needle puzzle. How do I arrange the threads on my needle so the right colours become available at exactly the right moment? You add threads only to the ends of your needle. You can only remove from the ends. Everything in the middle is locked in by what's around it. Getting your threads into the wrong order is punishing, and planning ahead is deeply satisfying when it comes off.

The needle (grey foam object, with cubes), tested here in two-part form!
In the early versions, there was no basket, which give players additional storage and some flexibility to manage threads in the final version. Instead, your needle might hold twenty threads at once, and having one thread in the wrong position could be genuinely crippling. Some playtesters had a pretty bad experience of the game because they couldn’t manage the necessary advance planning with the timing of taking perfect tapestry cards. I experimented with various ways to ease the problem: allowing free discards so you could jettison a rogue thread from the middle of a promising sequence; shortening and splitting the needle into two parts that you could build on either side of; and a personal scraps pile that you could store things in, but that other players could raid. Eventually the needle shrunk and the personal basket found its shape.

A purse is a sort of like a small personal basket? Though this is more helpful for shops than thread.
The second layer is the scoring puzzle. Commission cards reward you for completing tapestries that meet their criteria. You can approach this either way: find commissions that complement each other and then hunt for tapestries to satisfy them, or take tapestry cards that appeal and work backwards to find commissions that reward your collection. Or of course, you can do a bit of both. The tapestry cards and commission cards themselves haven't changed since the first prototype.

Tapestry and commission cards, in prototype and final form.
Shops and Destinations
The ordering of the shops (destinations for workers) shifted several times during development.

In earlier versions, the Bargain Box appeared before the Thread Shop. The logic was transparent: everything left in the thread shop at the end of a round would be added to the cube tower, so players knew exactly what they'd be competing over. It felt fair. But it removed the mystery, and with it, some of the tension and excitement. Now the Bargain Box comes after, you don't quite know what the tower will produce, and that uncertainty makes every trip to it feel like an event.

One destination was added relatively late in development: a space that lets players pay to jump the queue at any of the other shops. It arrived because playtesting revealed that players sometimes felt their final workers had no good home. Once that space existed, that feeling disappeared. A small addition, but it made the whole system breathe better.

Working with Osprey
I pitched Threaded to Osprey three times. They passed twice.

Both times, they passed with real generosity - clear, specific feedback about what wasn't working, and an open door to resubmit if I could address it. Some of the mechanical changes in the game exist because of those conversations. It's normal to feel the sting of a rejection, but if a publisher has taken the time to play your game and tell you precisely what's not landing, the only sensible response is to take that seriously and ask if they'd be willing to look again.

The third time, they signed the game. And since signing, they've been wonderful to work with. The development and production process has felt collaborative and considered. They've helped my original design to shine through rather than reshape it into something else.

Full Circle
My latest Bargello project was footstool I made for my mum - a thatched design that echoes the colours of her William Morris curtains. It takes patience and planning and you have to think about what goes where before you commit the needle.

That's Threaded, really. The threads on your needle, the tapestries on the table, the commissions in your hand - all of it asking you to think three moves ahead, to hold your plan loosely enough to adapt, and to feel the particular satisfaction of a sequence coming together just as you intended.

My granny would have enjoyed it, I think.

D.V.C., as wonderful and consistent and quirky a publisher as you’ll find, largely does its own design work. With the exception of 2020’s Rosetta: The Forgotten Language, all of D.V.C.’s games up till now have been credited to house designer Jasper Beatrix. In a just world, Jasper would be unable to walk down the street without being mobbed by fans, but there are two barriers to that: we certainly don’t live in a just world, and Jasper Beatrix doesn’t exist.

Not corporeally, anyway. Good ol’ J.B. is a pseudonym for a loose collective, a merry anarchic band of creatives who work together to make these wonderful games. They’re so prolific, and release games of such high quality, that the announcement of Pacts and the realization that it was not designed by Jasper Beatrix, was quite the surprise. This area-control game for two is the work of Ben Brin, a single corporeal designer.

Well. I assume.

I Pick I Pick You Choose

Pacts is an exemplar of I Split, You Choose, a mechanism whose promise is often let down by…

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