Before the fall fair and convention circuit is coming to an end, I had the opportunity to attend Süddeutsche Spielemesse (Southern German Game Fair) in Stuttgart. As when I went last time, it was a pleasant, laid-back experience.

The game fair is part of a conglomerate of hobby and leisure related fairs which are all held over the same long weekend in neighboring fair halls. As the ticket covers all fairs, you are free to explore everything. That’s great if you go as a group or family with differing interests: Your creative-minded daughter can get all inspired at the arts & crafts fair, your animal-loving son will try to make friends with the cats, rabbits, and camels at the animal fair, your gourmet spouse samples their way through the food fair, and then everybody meets at the game fair because you all love board games. Right?

With that setup, Süddeutsche Spielemesse’s target audience is broad, from the hobbyist to the very casual gamer. Consequently, you’ll find a lot of games outside of the hobby board game niche – from classics like chess and go over sports games to role-playing games. The exhibitors are usually either vendors (game test opportunities are rare), clubs looking for new members (like many of the role-playing clubs), or, my favorite, the big gaming island run in the middle where you can just borrow a game and play it free of charge which gives Süddeutsche Spielemesse a certain convention feel.

At this point, it is tradition that the gaming island remains open until 10pm on Friday, allowing for a beautiful evening of gaming. I met with a friend there and we played three different two-player games:

Rival Cities (Andreas Steding, Pegasus)

Northern German cities Hamburg and Altona try to outdo each other – yet while the usual victory point collecting occurs, these only matter if the game runs its full seven rounds. And it is much more likely that one of the cities will decisively outdo the other in one of the four areas of competition (alliances, ships, lawsuits, and prestige) and score an instant victory. With such a plethora of instant victory conditions, you will always feel the thrill of chasing one yourself and being threatened with another by your opponent.

In our game, we both started conservatively, getting a little bit of everything. Then my friend made a play for the alliances and was only one of them short of victory… but I could stave off defeat and counter-punch with ship dominance. I guess more experienced players would be at each other’s throat from the get-go which should make for exciting gaming and high replayability (at a very moderate complexity).

Solstis (Bruno Cathala/Corentin Lebral, Frosted Games)

Two players chart their path up a mountain built from a shared supply of tiles, each of which has a unique combination of a color (indicating its row) and number (indicating its file). Thus, you always know that a tile you took cannot be accessed by your opponent – and vice versa. This kind of very abstract game with almost-perfect information is usually not up my alley, and Solstis proved no different. We were both unenthused by its mix of logical planning and high randomness in the rare case of placing a nature spirit. However, each play only took 10 minutes, so we didn’t spend much time to gain the valuable knowledge of what’s not our jam.

Agent Avenue (Christian Kudahl/Laura Kudahl, Nerdlab Games)

Maybe our highlight of the fair: Agent Avenue pits its two players against each other as retired secret agents trying to catch each other. To unveil the other’s identity, they enlist their suburban neighbors, all of which are anthropomorphic animals, from daredevil wolves over codebreaker owls to double agent vixens. The recruitment comes by “I cut, you choose” – but as one of the two cards the active player offers to their opponent is face-up, the other face-down, there is a spy-appropriate amount of bluffing and deduction. Pair this with a varied, but not overwhelming amount of instant victory/defeat conditions and card effects, and you have a light, but tense contest which resolves in no time at all (we played three times in 40 minutes).

Any games of these that sound like your cup of tea? Have you attended any cool local conventions or fairs recently? Let me know in the comments!

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Looking for a gift for comic fans that's not just another comic book? Check out Restoration Games' Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

BGI 396 The One About The Size Of Your Deck

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Caylus was one of those games that burrowed into my head and held on for years, although it doesn’t seem like it when you search my archives. That’s because Caylus shares a problem with full information, zero luck games — the best player wins.

And I played perhaps 100 games on BrettSpeilWelt¹,². So in my FTF games I would often take a handicap of 25% (or more, with fewer players) and win. PLUS the no-luck aspect meant that games became somewhat samey.

So I switched to Caylus Magna Carta, which constrains players by their card draws. This comes close to violating my rule stating that “For any original game X,’X: the card/dice game’ is always worse.”

Caylus Magna Carta is certainly much more approachable than Caylus³. I recently acquired Caylus 1303, a re-implementation of the original. It does a number of things well:

• Instead of having 4-6 workers and paying $$ for each placement, you have up to 15 workers but pay one worker if nobody has passed and two workers otherwise.
• The provost resets to almost the end of the track each round, and there are only nine rounds.
• In addition to setup buildings, a random wood and stone building start built.
• Each player starts with a special power (drafted in reverse order on the first turn)
• One of each building type⁴ is not available; but can be accessed via the favor system.
• You do not need a building to build a monument, they are built in a special phase each turn.
• A favor lets you a) steal a special power or b) use a building and take an unclaimed special power if one is available (three start unclaimed each game).

So Caylus 1303 is still a full information, zero luck game … but with a variable setup. I have high hopes that this will help bring it to the table. So far my first game was well received (although I forgot the initial draft of special powers).

The one issue (for some people) is that the favor system has been simplified and one of the favors is “Steal a special power.” This is a direct take-that; it’s not like Caylus had a care bear style, but the attack was more about moving the provost, which is something you can plan for. There are some powers that are much more likely to get stolen, but it would undoubtedly chafe a bit if you lost a power when they “should have” taken a different power. Still, in my first game there was no whining.

Rating — Enthusiastic

1. Still around! Who knew! ︎
2. If you don’t know what it is, a) think of BGA and b) get off my lawn. ︎
3. Probably they are the same in terms of rules, but by constraining options with cards you simplify the decision space for a new player. ︎
4. Setup, Wood, Stone ︎

The post Gift Guide: Off the Page Games’ Corps of Discovery, a board game based on the Image Comics series! appeared first on Graphic Policy.

Looking for something comic related for that fan in your life for the holidays? Then consider the board game, Corps. of Discovery from Off the Page Games.

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Modiphius Entertainment Ltd. has announced that it is developing new games for Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, set to be launched in 2026.

The post PAX Unplugged 2025: Board Game Veterans Reveal Song of the Wildkin, a Co-Op Dungeon Crawler for All Ages appeared first on Graphic Policy.

Bōken Games has revealed Song of the Wildkin, an upcoming co-op dungeon-crawling adventure board game set in a rich fantasy world of anthropomorphic animals and nature-based channeling

The post PAX Unplugged 2025: Raybox Games is Bringing Escape from Projekt Riese appeared first on Graphic Policy.

Raybox Games is heading to PAX Unplugged 2025 from November 21–23 in Philadelphia, and attendees won’t want to miss Booth 3039.

The post PAX Unplugged 2025: Asmadi Games brings Mystic Curling Club, Chess Joker, Good Puppers Too, and more! appeared first on Graphic Policy.

You can find Asmadi Games at Booth #3233 at PAX Unplugged this weekend and they're bring lots of games to demo at their booth!

BGI 395

Board Games Insider – Join our Guild on Board Game Geek Guild | Like us on FB

Social media:

Ignacy Trzewiczek / Portal Games: website | FB | Twitter | Youtube

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Intro Music: Happy Rock – Bensound.com

Version 6.5 of the app introduces Play Tagging!

With Play tagging you can create groups of plays based on any criteria you want.

Use these play tags to filter the list of plays, the Game page, Insights and use them in Challenges!

The combined Play Stats will give an overview of stats of filtered plays, a perfect recap for a gaming weekend or series of plays.

If you have imported plays from BoardGameArena or Yucata previously, using the already created “Digital” play tag helps to view your stats just the way you want.

Use Play Tagging to:

• Add any number of tags to your plays
• Filter on Play tags throughout the app
• View combined Play Stats
• Use a “Digital” tag to filter online plays
• Use Play tags in Challenges
• Optionally post Play tags to BGG as comment

You can read all about Play tagging on our Tagging page. Tagging is part of the Power expansion.

Tip: “Digital” tag

You can add the “Digital” tag to any play you want, but you can also add the tag to previous plays with Multiple Select.
As an example, if you logged some plays on the location “Watergate app“:

• Go to the “Watergate app” Location
• Tap ‘Select‘ at the top of the screen (this is the word ‘Select’ on iOS and lines with a checkmark on Android)
• Tap ‘All‘ at the bottom of the screen (or only select the plays you want to tag)
• Tap ‘Edit… ‘
• Tap ‘Edit Tags…‘

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Back to the strategy posts – this time in the tried-and-true fashion of giving three basic tips which new and intermediate players can easily remember. Today, we’re going for one of the most anticipated historical games of the last few years: Imperial Struggle (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games). Its pedigree recommended it to many gamers, but it plays very differently from its spiritual predecessor Twilight Struggle – so, mastery of the one will not help you much with the other.

Here’s how to play Imperial Struggle successfully: Get advantages, initially prioritize board position over victory points, and use initiative wisely. Let’s go!

Get Advantages

Now this may sound a bit basic. Of course you want advantages! Yet when you’re planning what to do with your investment tile, you might often be tempted by other things – shiny prestige spaces, or simply spaces with a lower cost which help you gain the majority in the region. Advantages, however, are often the better choice: A well-chosen advantage can gain you another space (or deny it to your opponent) not only once, but several times over the course of a game. If your opponent is smart, they will often try to counteract your gaining of an advantage by unflagging the space which gave you the advantage, or at least gaining a similar advantage, which means you are acting and they are reacting.

Some of my favorite advantages: The Indian alliances with Mysore, Nizam, or the Marathas which allow you to drown your opponent in a sea of conflict markers, the Asiento advantage whose discount on fleets gains you a cheap military edge – and spaces – which can be flexibly moved around, and, best of all, Baltic Trade whose debt reduction amounts to two free wild points every turn. Get it or at least deny it to your opponent!

Board Position First, VPs Second

Advantages are long-term benefits. In the same spirit, I advise you to prioritize the long-term benefits of a sound board position over the short-term gains of winning this regional or that global demand scoring. If your board position is good – if you have the right alliances, military outposts, and advantages – you will put pressure on your opponent, win wars, gain spoils, and the VPs will come rolling in anyway.

A key investment in that sense is a turn 1 fort in North America. That’s the only theater which is active in all four wars, so the fort will give you a military benefit four times (a strength point and the conquest line) in addition to controlling its surroundings (which makes unflagging harder and removing enemy conflict markers easier), and, of course, it’s a space which counts for regional scoring.

Use Initiative Wisely

If your opponent scores a few more VPs than you early on, that is not only bearable, but might even be to your advantage, as the player behind in VPs has the initiative and decides who goes first in a turn. That’s a weighty decision, as going first gives you a better choice of the investment tiles, but going last allows you to mess with your opponent’s plans and they have no chance to repair the damage before scoring.

My rule of thumb is: I go last, unless there’s an odd number of investment tiles with a major action in the dimension that will be crucial (early on, that’s often diplomatic), or an odd-and-low number of investment tiles that allow you to play an event.

Which strategies and tricks do you use to win at Imperial Struggle? Let me know in the comments!

BGI 394 The One About Talent, Tariffs, and Timberwolves

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