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BGI 397 The One About
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
Corey Thompson / Above Board TV: website | Youtube
Stephen Buonocore / “The Podfather Of Gaming”: website | FB | Twitter | Youtube
Intro Music: Happy Rock – Bensound.com
In version 6.6 we introduce Publisher avatars!
You can now also choose an avatar from 100+ avatars based on art from more than 15 games.
The art for these avatars is provided by the publishers, big thanks goes out to:
When selecting an Illustration, tap on “Board Game Stats” to see the original avatars, tap on “Publishers” to see these new avatars!
Tap on “About” to learn more about a publisher and to see from which games the art for the avatars came from.
More on Avatars can be found here: Avatars.
Balance in board games is one of those much-talked-about topics that keeps cropping up. Some people want games to be perfectly balanced, so that players' only advantage comes from their skill and hours of practice and graft. Others relish highly unbalanced games, where it's nigh-impossible to win, but when you do win, it feels amazing. Yet, balance in board games is much more complex and subtle than that. In this article, I want to look at the role that balance plays in board game design.
The post Losing Balance – the role of balance in board games (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.
Peter unboxes the tower defence game with big pixels – The Last Spell by Tabula Games.
Tabula Games make some very interesting games, as I’ve said many times before, and their latest is something a bit different – the board game incarnation of a popular tower defence video game. It’s called The Last Spell and leans heavily into the retro gaming aesthetic, with big pixel art and lovely little miniatures. The game is broken into two distinct phases (that even have separate rulebooks): the day, when you build your defences, get your resources, and buy equipment, and the night, when hordes of undead greeblies pour out of the purple mist and try to ruin your evening in a very permanent way. I’m looking forward to trying this one out, but in the meantime, check out my unboxing of the base game and expansions, freshly delivered after the Kickstarter campaign!
The post Resurrection Games Opens Pre-Orders for the Iyanu Tabletop Game Collection appeared first on Graphic Policy.
Resurrection Games has partnered with Lion Forge Entertainment to bring the epic world of Iyanu to life
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:
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).
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.
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!
The post Gift Guide: Restoration Games’ Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles appeared first on Graphic Policy.
Looking for a gift for comic fans that's not just another comic book? Check out Restoration Games' Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!
Under the glow of the moon, the forest stalls sizzled and steamed. Ramen bowls, takoyaki, and miso soup filled the air with rich, savoury aromas. Woodland chefs scurried between stoves, each eager to cook the most delicious dishes, only to be outdone by competitors who stole their patrons right from under their noses. The question is whether you have what it takes to serve up the best culinary creations that burst with Umami by Don Eskridge from Heidelbär Games with art by Ikuko Nakai.
The post Umami (Saturday Review) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.
Gravity Three is three weight-based games in one. How well can you judge a weight by feel alone?
BGI 396 The One About The Size Of Your Deck
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
Corey Thompson / Above Board TV: website | Youtube
Stephen Buonocore / “The Podfather Of Gaming”: website | FB | Twitter | Youtube
Intro Music: Happy Rock – Bensound.com
Board games are often seen as a way to bring people together. They're a social activity, even for solo gamers. When we sit down to play, we fall into familiar rhythms of turns, actions and mechanisms. We don't even need to share the same language. Playing board games is a time when gestures, shared goals, and the actions within the magic circle of the game itself act as a way for us to communicate. Board games themselves are like a shared language, where friendly rivalry, cooperative play and everything else sometimes conveys more than words ever can.
The post Games as Lingua Franca – how board games can overcome language barriers (Topic Discussion) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.
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.
The post Modiphius Announces New Terry Pratchett Discworld Games Coming in 2026 appeared first on Graphic Policy.
Modiphius Entertainment Ltd. has announced that it is developing new games for Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, set to be launched in 2026.
What rhymes with ‘wish’? Have you thought of the same word as the other players? Or maybe you got really lucky and thought of the same word as only one other player.
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!
Anmelden
