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L’oaf is that rarest of gifts: a board game that makes me laugh, and not because it includes any actual jokes. Designed by Bart de Jong, it opens with perhaps the most relatable conceit ever put to cardboard, a dead-end job players are working in order to make ends meet, but one they’re not overly interested in completing beyond the bare minimum. Not quite by accident, it’s about many things — the false enthusiasm of managers, the vast gulf between owners and employees, the oppression of tedium. As if by magic, none of those headier topics break the spell.
Pretty much everything.
In the case of L’oaf, this particular dead-end job is a bakery. Tasked with baking a neighborhood’s daily bread, every round begins with an order. Four loaves per player. Six loaves per player. Eight loaves?! What is this? Are we getting paid any extra for baking twice as many loaves as two days ago? No? Then where is the incentive to knead all this dough? I’m about two loaves away from developing a repetitive strain injury!
The incentive, of course, is the damoclean threat of losing one’s income. If you’re American, add your health insurance to the noxious batter. Either way, it’s all stick, no carrot.
To wit, every round becomes a fraught proposition. You need to bake those loaves. But you also don’t want to put in too much effort to a job that doesn’t award any commensurate value. Everybody at the table holds an identical deck of numbered cards, ranging from zero to eleven, from which they deploy a single digit. This is how much effort they’re putting in for the day. Those cards are flipped and tallied.
But this is where de Jong shows his cleverness. If your bakers managed the order, great. The highest contributor ticks up on the reputation track, earning a pat on the head for all their extra effort. If not, somebody is going to take the fall… but only the worst slacker. There’s plenty of wiggle room in the middle.
This is important, because while you earn a few points for moving up on the reputation track, most of your final score comes from the cards you never played. The cards ranked ten and eleven? Crucial components in any slacker’s toolkit.
I wish these bosses would go undercover.
There are a few wrinkles that prevent players from racing to the bottom.
First, that daily order comes paired with an outcome. Depending on the day — and whether you’re playing with the advanced cards, which I heartily recommend everybody shuffle into the mix right away rather than neutering the game’s range of possibilities — there might be a benefit to putting in that effort. Say, the baker with the highest reputation gets to swap out a card from their hand with one they’ve played before. Or maybe everyone on the negative side of things can improve their standing in the boss’s eyes. That sort of thing.
Second, your boss is tracking all those successes and failures. L’oaf only ends once you’ve tallied five outcomes in the same category. Which is to say, you aren’t quite sure when the game will conclude. More importantly, depending on whether your bakery has a run of good or bad days, the scoring criteria are slightly modified. If the bakery fulfills more orders than it misses, everybody scores the cards in their hands. But if not, everyone with a reputation in the red is fired. No scoring for you.
This transforms L’oaf into quite the mind game. Sure, you want to slack off. But you also need to keep this job. But that means putting in effort tactically, not all the time. But that risks losing face with management if everybody else puts in more effort than you. But if everybody is putting in more effort, that means you probably won’t get fired anyway, so you might as well preserve your strength. But if somebody notices you slacking, they might slack, too.
It’s quite the pickle. In gameplay terms, L’oaf develops a certain tidal motion, players adjusting and compensating for one another, putting in more effort, then pulling back, then failing, then succeeding, and back again. It isn’t uncommon for the game to go the full distance, your boss’s angry-meter and pleased-meter both on the verge of maxing out. Which is to say, it’s surprisingly tight. At least I was surprised. A game about slacking off? Psh. I would never. Until, within a single twenty-minute play, it becomes apparent just how fine-tuned the whole experience is.
Check out these utter kings and queens.
And how familiar, too. L’oaf doesn’t only work because it’s tuned to such a precise degree. Nor does it work only because it produces such cautious predictions about how far you can strain your relationships before they snap. No, it works because it captures the long afternoons of a summer job. You know the one. The one you got up early for, the one that took out more than it gave back. Unless you’re one of those aliens who puts maximum effort into everything. In which case, by all means, return to that diet of point salads. Enjoy your fiber. You can poop a car.
For the rest of us, L’oaf is a lovely little thing. Tense, smart, relatable. Funny, too. More than once, the entire table has burst out into laughter when somebody slacked at exactly the wrong moment, their reputation dropping precipitously. Or burst into a smarmy cackle as they barely fulfilled an order and still came away rosy in the boss’s eyes. This is the good stuff. I hope Bart de Jong was sometimes late in getting a revision back to his publisher.
A complimentary copy of L’oaf was provided by the designer.
(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 about which films I watched in 2025, including some brief thoughts on each. That’s 44 movies! That’s a lot, unless you see, like, 45 or more movies in a year!)
▪️ The Codenames: Fairy Tales Expansion Pack contains 50 new fairy tale-themed word cards, 3 agents, and 4 pictures. You will need the base game from either Codenames, or Codenames: Duet to play.
Once upon a time, Red Riding Hood and Captain Hook wandered into Oz… Find out how the story continues in the Codenames Fairy Tales pack!
▪️ The Codenames: Sci-Fi Expansion Pack contains 50 new sci-fi-themed word cards, 3 agents, and 4 pictures. You will need the base game from either Codenames, or Codenames: Duet to play.
What happens after a mad scientist rides a sandworm into an asteroid belt? Explore the universe of possible outcomes in the Codenames Sci-Fi pack!
Flip through a frog family photo album, tapdance with a tardigrade, or join a bee family dinner—and do all that without leaving your gaming table with the Cute Critters pictures pack.
Codenames: Critical Role Adventures is a unique take on Codenames inspired by the Critical Role universe. It reimagines the classic mechanisms players know and love in a fresh, unexpected way, transforming this game into a whole new Codenames experience.
From a recent newsletter, Hachette Boardgames USA has announced two exciting new expansions, which are planned to arrive in April 2026.
Pantheon offers a whole new way to play Akropolis, as it is now possible to play cooperatively. An excerpt from the BGG page:
The time for rivalries is over! At the height of their glory, the once-opposing Cities now join forces to build a grand Capital together and honor the gods. Erect splendid Divine Altars dedicated to the protectors of the Capital, and let its aura shine throughout the ancient world.
Game Overview The Architects’ goal is to work together to construct the Capital and achieve the highest possible score by using the best strategy. You must therefore join forces and play cooperatively.
Typhon, father of monsters, and the Nereids, nymphs with deadly songs, rise from the depths to overthrow the metropolises. Against their wrath stand legendary heroes like the lightning-fast Achilles and the indomitable Heracles.
In your conquests across islands and reefs, every wave may carry you...or drag you under!
US-based tabletop game and card manufacturer AdMagic is shuttering its popular Print and Play arm, with company founder and CEO Shari Spiro telling BoardGameWire the operation had been a “financial burden” to the rest of the business for several years.
Spiro told BoardGameWire it had been a “difficult and sad decision” to close the company, which had provided prototypes, promos and components for a string of big-selling titles, as well as fast turnaround print and play services for budding developers and designers.
Print and Play, which was bought by AdMagic in 2015, will close its doors on March 27, with any existing orders “received, printed and put into our standard turnaround production queue”, according to its website.
Spiro would not say whether any Print and Play employees would be kept on in other areas of the business after next week’s closure. The division had 12 employees on March 6, according to the team page on its website at the time.
Spiro told BoardGameWire, “My team invested a lot to keep Print and Play open as long as we could, but unfortunately, the amount of hand work and the time it takes to do the high quality of work done through a small company like Print and Play, costs more than we could actually sell the jobs for.
“In addition our endeavor to cover employees 100% with full health insurance, a 401(k), a robust paid personal time off program, a move to a state of the art brand new facility a few years ago to get the team out of an office building (which was inappropriate for that type of work), two new laser [printers] in the past two years and the associated lease payments for all of the above, in addition to the rising costs of materials all added up.
“Additionally we are not owned by private equity so we don’t have the kind of big money other companies have supporting us. Keeping Print and Play open was putting the rest of our team at risk.
“The financial strain to Ad Magic became overwhelming and so this is why we reached this difficult and sad decision. Moving forward this will help Ad Magic and Breaking Games as it will remove the financial burden which has been borne by the rest of the team for several years now.
“Although our model for prototype services will shift, we will still be able to accommodate our clients through our Ad Magic/Breaking Games divisions.”
Games in which Print and Play has had a hand in producing prototype materials for over the years || Photo Credit: Print & Play
The company’s services were also well used by designers looking to put together early versions of games to pitch to publishers, as well as for creating review and demo copies for companies to send out to content creators and other partners.
Gil Hova, the designer of games including Wordsy and The Networks: PrimeTime, posted to BlueSky yesterday, “Found out during Unpub that Print & Play, one of the best board game POD companies out there, is closing their doors in a couple of weeks.
“I used them extensively in my Formal Ferret days to make prototypes. Their turnaround time was unrivaled. Sad to see them go.”
AdMagic, which Spiro founded in 1998, has grown to become one of the largest independent tabletop printing companies in the US.
The company scored big successes in the early 2010s thanks to the rising wave of Kickstarter projects, working on huge-selling titles such as Cards Against Humanity and Exploding Kittens.
AdMagic launched its own board game publishing arm, Breaking Games, in 2015 on the back of that success, and has gone on to publish titles including Dwellings of Eldervale, Rise of Tribes and Letter Tycoon.
There is a seemingly endless variety in board games. Different mechanics, different themes, different genres. I love it. It’s one of the things that keeps me engaged in the hobby. There are still some game aspects that I find myself returning to frequently. I am easily swayed by beautiful art, and I like nature or […]
I have more than once mentioned puzzle-maker extraordinaire Blaž Gracar's work in the same breath as releases from Rush Hour purveyor Thinkfun. I have rarely mentioned them together as a matter of direct comparison. These are different products for different audiences. Gracar makes pencil-and-paper puzzle books that are only for the sweatiest adults, while Thinkfun cranks out charming toyetic brain teasers that keep children well-and-truly occupied. The connection comes from Gracar’s gift for imbuing his puzzles with a sense of discovery that brings me back to my childhood, when I had a massive collection of Thinkfun games under my bed. With the release of Herd, Gracar’s publisher Letibus and Thinkfun now warrant direct comparison.
Rather than drawing lines or shading in boxes, Herd has you shifting Shepherds around a grid. These delightful, hollow black cones have wonderful neutral facial expressions and a pronounced indifference to your failures. It’s a good thing, because in trying to get them from a designated Point A to a designated Point B, you will fail often. And fail. And fail again.
Herd is a patient exercise, though I wouldn’t necessarily call it meditative. There is a flow state to be found in moving the pieces about,…
GameHead, which rebranded from GamerMats two years ago as part of a push into board game publishing, has expanded its team with a pair of senior hires.
Ryan Schoon, a veteran presenter at the Man vs Meeple YouTube channel, joins Gamehead as marketing manager, while former Ludo Fact USA account executive Mark Burke comes on board as operations manager.
GameHead said Schoon would help expand GameHead’s presence within the tabletop gaming community using his experience in communications, content creation, brand management, and community and sales growth.
Schoon has spent almost a decade producing reviews and previews as part of Man vs Meeple, which has about 77,000 subscribers. He was also formerly a key account manager at tabletop crowdfunding specialist Gamefound from 2020 to 2022, and later spent almost two years as marketing manager with Japanime Games.
Burke joins Gamehead from the US arm of European board game manufacturing major Ludo Fact, where he worked for two years as an account executive.
He previously spent two years as a wholesale account executive at Unstable Games/TeeTurtle, was store manager at Indiana-based retailer Moonshot Games, and also worked for almost a year managing social media for Western Legends publisher Kolossal Games.
GameHead said Burke will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company while directing the sales team.
The company expanded into board game publishing in 2024 after more than a decade specialising in tabletop game mats and accessories, and rebranded from GamerMats to GameHead as part of that process.
GameHead’s publishing arm is led by creative director Paul Salomon, the designer of Elf Creek Games-published Honey Buzz and Stonemaier Games title Stamp Swap.
The publishing arm was launched to focus on party games for six or more people, casual games suitable for players of all ages, and ‘thinky games’ with strategic elements and replayable decision making.
GameHead’s releases to date include Rocco Privetera’s animal-themed set collection title Trinket Trove and Taiki Shinzawa’s bank heist-themed trick taker No Loose Ends.
Troublebot Designer: Shun Taguchi, Aya Taguchi Publisher: Loosey Goosey Players: 2-4 Age: 10+ Time: 15 minutes Played with review copy provided by publisher Cause trouble – ’cause causing trouble is fun! Troublebot is a lean, mean card game … Continue reading →
Governance and Liberty — in translation, those are the titles of Shasn and Azadi, Zain Memon’s peculiar but timely board games about politics. Today, we’re joined by Memon himself to discuss both titles, plus the function of play as our most ancient form of education, the value of cynicism and evil in games, and what else the auteur has been working on lately.
Listen here or download here. Timestamps can be found after the jump.
TIMESTAMPS
00:50 — introducing Zain Memon, his work in film, and his transition to board games
13:30 — the “party game” of Shasn
21:45 — is there value in portraying cynicism or evil in games?
26:38 — games, one of our most ancient forms of education
31:22 — moving from Shasn to Azadi
42:49 — Macaraccoon
47:30 — representing resistance and revolution in Azadi
52:13 — Zain’s many forthcoming projects
(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 about which films I watched in 2025, including some brief thoughts on each. That’s 44 movies! That’s a lot, unless you see, like, 45 or more movies in a year!)
Expanding on the Spoiler Free thoughts I had a week ago. Putting the rest in an expandable block, (in case you want to not see).
(For reference, I have cleared Ascension 7 with all characters but the NecroMancer, and have now played a half dozen ish games of co-op, including a brutal floor six loss.
Expand to view StS II Thoughts
When I said “I liked what was missing” I was referring to:
A) Cards that double, like Catalyst or Limit Break. Because often those cards provide such massive scaling (being geometric) that they are often auto-selects in in archetype using it (and are sometimes worth taking “blind” in hopes of getting poison/strength). Sadly there is at least one new doubler (Voltaic) and it does indeed solve the endgame by itself (with one upgrade and any support).
B) Huge swing cards/artifacts (like Corruption or Biased Cognition) that have an outsized value. Those particular two are still there, but are no longer “mere” rare card rewards but boss relics, which seems reasonable. Both are also been reduced in value because some of their complements (Dead Branch and artifact charges, respectively) are missing.
It’s an early access game, so the card balance is off in a few points, but overall I still like it. In particular:
Focus being mostly until end of turn (Defragment is still in, but rare) means the defect’s most solid and boring build is gone. The temporary focus cards are interesting, and with more cards that load up orbs (or evoke) make a nice change.
I agree with the complaints that the elites do not feel notably distinct from the hallway fights. One of the the things that Slay the Spire 1 nailed was that different fights attacked different deck archetypes (mostly with Boss/Elite fights, but not always). For example “Time Eater” destroys card spam. “Reptomancer” requires a bunch of fast All out attack. Big Giant Head took out decks that dish out consistent damage but can’t scale, etc. The game lobbed Bombs in the Jonathon Degann game design sense.
You do see that, for example “Entomancer” punishes a bunch of small attacks. But the “Hunter Killer” hallway fight punishes card spam. Too many of the Act I elites are kind of “samey” … the game is missing (for example) having to deal with Gremlin Nob crushing skill decks and needing to hit it for ~80 before the end of T3. It’s just “bigger numbers.” The Bygone Effigy feels like the worst offender on that. You need to do the same by T3, but if you fail it’s just brutal death.
Part of the problem is that the relic pool is a bit “meh.” It’s good that the card pool is such that you can make a build to kill the Act III boss and then just grab a potion for a weakness, and that you then skip a few elites to lower variance. But that could get boring (and Asc 10 is double final boss, so that’s an issue).
But that’s a balance issue. Also, I do like the events that are “here are two choices that may both be bad, and no you can’t skip.”
Co-op: Have played (2p) and I stand by my earlier comment, its well done, considering. Some fights are much easier, some fights are much harder (the Phantasmal Gardners can absolutely tank a run early if you aren’t prepped for them), but I’ve mostly won (granted my co-op ascension is still quite low). The co-op only cards seem wildlly unbalanced, but that’s ok.
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.
#69: Blockade from Twilight Struggle: The Cold War, 1945-1989 from GMT Games
Twilight Struggle is a 2-player game simulating the forty-five year ideological struggle known as the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States which can be played in 2-3 hours. The entire world is the stage on which these two countries “fight” to make the world safe for their own ideologies and way of life. The game starts right after the end of World War II in the midst of the ruins of Europe as the two new “superpowers” of the world squabble over what is left and ends in 1989, when only the United States remained standing.
The map is a world map of the period, where players move units and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for their superpower. The beauty of the CDG system used here is that each decision of whether to use a card for the event or the operations value is a struggle as if it is the other side’s event, it might go off hurting you very badly. There are mechanics to allow for the ignoring or cancelling of some of the best cards for your opponent in a side game within the game called The Space Race as well as nuclear tensions, with the possibility of game-ending global thermonuclear war (Shall we play a game, anyone?). I have played TS about 30 times and love it more and more with each sitting. The game makes me sweat, cringe, jump with joy and bite my fingernails. To me, a game that can do all of that in one sitting is worth the price.
One of my favorite type of cards from the game are those that force an action upon your opponent, such as discarding a card, reducing the Ops from card plays or causing them to have to make other plans than what they were working toward. These type of cards are more reactionary but definitely cause issues and mimic the various non-military focused strategies and tactics used during the Cold War. One of the most famous events from the early history of the Cold War is that of the Berlin Blockade. And there is a specific card that pays homage to the event in the game called Blockade. Blockade is an Early War Soviet Card that has an Ops Value of 1, which makes the card more valuable to be used for the printed event versus for the Ops.
When played, the card requires the US Player to immediately discard a 3 Ops or more value card from their hand or the consequence of not doing so will see all US Influence being removed from West Germany. This is a tough choice. Being early in the game, it is possible for the US to rebuild in West Germany and replace the lost influence over time if they do not wish to discard such as high value card. But, herein lies the real key to the Blockade cards use. The Soviet Player, who should be paying attention to not only their hand but also the card plays of the US Player, should try to use this card later in a turn once the US Player has played a majority of their cards in order to ensure that the event text can be realistically be achieved. If played quickly during a turn, the chances of the US Player being able to discard the required 3 Ops or great value card is higher and the card play will not generate any meaningful difference on the board state. I also would recommend a 2 card strategy here as the Soviet Player should be holding in their hand a high Ops card to be able to follow up this action with the placement of Influence into West Germany on their very next play. But, the real value to a card such as Blockade is that it forces the US Player to consider what cards are out there and to play around their negative effects as much as possible. Due to the nature of the game, and the randomness of card draws, having an expendable high Ops card ready and able to be discarded just in case of the play of Blockade is not really feasible. Also, remember that in Twilight Struggle that opponent events on cards that you play will go off and Blockade being drawn by the US Player can be bad as it will require them to play the event as you cannot discard a 1 Ops card to get rid of its negative effect in the Space Race Track due to the minimum requirement being a 2 Ops card. So the moral of the story here is that both players need to consider and plan for the play of or the mitigation of damage from Blockade.
The Berlin Blockade, which lasted from June 1948–May 1949, was a major Cold War crisis where the Soviet Union blocked all land and water access to West Berlin to attempt to force Western Allies out. The Soviet Union was taking this action as a means of retaliation against the introduction of the new Deutschmark currency. The US and Britain responded with the massive Berlin Airlift, flying over 2.3 million tons of food, fuel and supplies to the city. At the peak of the Airlift, a plane landed in West Berlin every 30 seconds. The blockade failed and the Soviets lifted it on May 12, 1949, after realizing the Allied Airlift could sustain the city for an extended period of time, marking a significant victory for the West in the ideological struggle. This event led to the acceleration of the division of Germany into East and West and the deepening of Cold War tensions.
Editor’s note: GAMA is one of the sponsors of the BoardGameWire newsletter
Tabletop game industry trade organisation GAMA‘s board of directors have apologised for some of its elected leaders being “rude and disrespectful” during a “heated” annual general meeting at the recent GAMA Expo trade show.
Multiple members of the organisation expressed their disgust during the AGM that board members had suggested people only attended because free food was provided, while others were upset at the way they were shouted at and talked over during a fiery discussion on changes to the non-profit’s bylaws.
On one of the occasions the free food claim was mentioned by a member during the AGM, board member Matt Loter, also known as Matt Fantastic, said, “That was me, you can just blame me, that’s fine. No one else on this board.”
GAMA’s board had proposed lowering the quorum requirement for membership meetings from 25% to 10%, saying that the high thresholds coupled with the organisation’s heavy growth in recent years had made “adapting our organization to changing circumstances all but impossible”.
It also proposed allowing amendments to pass via a simple majority of voting members at a properly called membership meeting, calling the existing process “too rigid”. The board had said that “even small corrections require cumbersome organizational campaigns, which slow down the organization from becoming more efficient and providing more robust service to our members”.
Those changes had received pushback from some members prior to the AGM, with several raising concerns the move would make it too easy for the larger member groups, such as retailers, to push through changes to GAMA laws.
Other members both ahead of and during the AGM suggested that better communication was needed instead of lowering the quorum, with the onus on GAMA to encourage members to participate.
It also emerged during the meeting that not all of the board members were in favour of the amendments, or the extent of the shift to the new quorum percentage.
Both amendments were set to go to a vote following the March 2 meeting, but the board has since postponed the process, saying it would “re-evaluate, and be more mindful before making further proposals”.
The GAMA board also released a statement a week after the AGM which said, “During the meeting, discussion on changes to the bylaws became heated; and there were members of the board of directors who were rude and disrespectful to the membership who came to the event to voice their concerns.
“This was out of order, unacceptable, and should have been shut down immediately. We, the members of your board of directors, apologize to all our members. We pride ourselves in serving GAMA’s members and advocating for our industry. Unfortunately, on Monday [March 2] that passion manifested in a way that was unbecoming of a board.
“We also recognize this apology could have come sooner, but we wanted to discuss as a board what happened, and the best opportunity for that was during our spring planning session that convened on Friday, March 6, the day after GAMA Expo officially closed.”
The board added that it wanted any official meeting of GAMA members to be “a safe space for discourse”, especially when organisation-wide changes like bylaws amendments are being considered.
GAMA president Nicole Brady
It said, “We expect the person(s) leading such meetings to maintain order and insist upon decorum from anyone who is taking part, and that includes members of the board of directors.” The meeting was chaired by GAMA president Nicole Brady.
GAMA’s board also acknowledged that there had been confusion about the proposed bylaw amendments, saying “We met the letter of the bylaws in regard to publishing the amendments in a timely manner; however, we could have done much better in spirit. We acknowledge that the timetable for the vote on the amendments gave the impression of being rushed, despite it again heeding the letter of the bylaws. This impression, and the passionate feedback on those amendments, are what led us earlier to announce that we were postponing the vote.”
It added, “Finally, we owe an apology to GAMA staff for fueling a discussion that distracted from their spectacular success. GAMA Expo 2026 was our biggest and best to date thanks to their hard work and dedication.
“We believe GAMA, as a whole, should also be the best possible industry association it can be. We take your feedback seriously and will work to address our shortcomings as a board in order to ensure you, as members, get what you need out of GAMA. We look forward to working with you on that.”
More than 3,820 attendees showed up to this year’s event in Louisville, Kentucky, up almost 12% on last year’s previous record of 3,425 – which had already left the show pressed for space across the exhibition hall and its extensive programme of seminars.
Nature Wind farms in Uruguay incorporate mandatory environmental conservation policies, including impact prevention, ecological compensation, habitat restoration, and continuous monitoring, generating additional environmental benefits beyond clean energy production.
The installation of wind farms in Uruguay is coordinated with DINACEA (National Directorate for Quality and Environmental Assessment), the objectives of SNAP (National System of Protected Areas), and national climate policies, integrating renewable energy generation with biodiversity conservation, ecological restoration, and compliance with the country's environmental commitments.
The State: creates fiscal and contractual conditions to attract private investment that provides clean energy, reduces energy costs, meets climate targets, and finances environmental conservation measures.
Nature was a part of the base game. A shorter track and the usual rules.
I thought the theme alone should be enough to attract players to follow this strategy. I was wrong, nobody liked that. Actually, someone did, Vital Lacerda. I tried to make it work cause if Vital likes it, it's a keeper. Despite all my efforts the Nature Reserve was being ignored so I decided to leave it on pause for the time being.
While I was researching Remote locations, i.e. small settlements not connected to the electrical network, I discovered that those areas have the best winds for installing wind farms. Also, they are inhabited by a lot of wildlife, which in turn affects many flora and fauna.
The focus wasn't to have a system that punished players but to show how wildlife is affected and how companies are incentivized by the government to protect it. In the process of doing it, I wanted to keep it simple - not adding many steps and components to an already busy game.
Since the Nature reserve strategy wasn't working on its own, the most thematic approach seemed to be to unite it with the Remote. So, instead of adding another income track I decided to put them together.
The joint track system with both income markers jumping each other worked out great and Nature was included in the final version of the game.
As you may have noticed I wasn't willing to let the Nature reserve go. The message is important to me. Every bit of Pampero is important to me.
Cardal Uruguay has already completed the transition in power generation — with a very high share of renewables. The current bottleneck is something else: the grid that moves that energy. The challenge is not generating energy, but delivering it when and where it is needed. That’s where Cardal comes in.
The Punta del Tigre–Cardal 500 kV transmission line
The transmission line reduces curtailment — clean energy that would otherwise be wasted due to lack of transmission capacity. Without this kind of infrastructure, the transition remains incomplete.
The energy transition does not stop at electricity generation. It requires electrifying sectors that still depend on fossil fuels: electric transport, energy-intensive industry, replacing gas and fuel oil for heat. This demands firm capacity, a strong grid, and system resilience.
The Cardal substation: Increases overall system capacity, adds redundancy (“a second transmission path”) and allows demand growth without increasing blackout risk. It reduces fossil fuel dependence during critical periods: low wind conditions, droughts and peak demand events A stronger, more interconnected grid: improves energy redistribution, optimizes the use of renewable generation and reduces the need to dispatch thermal plants
I started researching this just by chance, as I was biking as usual and noticed that the old wooden poles were being replaced by newer ones.
“A second transmission path” One of my goal when designing a game is to keep players involved when is not their turn. One of these situations in Pampero happens when a player takes a contract that is connected through a "red line". That gives the following player the opportunity to gain a connection tile. I wanted to push this even further, to keep more players interested.
Electric Poles
Now, the following players have the chance to place Electric Poles and earn money based on the previously placed Transformers. This was one of the few elements of the game that was an instant success.
Creating Lands of Galzyr was a huge effort. Designing the engine was one thing, but making the game’s open world work took years of effort crafting the necessary stories. Despite the game being a complete, intricate package, we still made sure it could be expanded later if such a time ever came. And that time is now!
We couldn’t jump into making the expansion right away, even if we wanted to. We needed a break to work on other things for a bit, but more importantly we wanted to give the players a chance to experience the game and the stories. Only then could we have a better idea of what we and the players want from the expansion. Let’s see where we ended up.
Lands of Galzyr the base game ready to be explored!
[heading]Determining the scope[/heading] One of the very first questions was the scope the expansion should have in terms of content and components. During the base game’s development, we had rough plans to make a single expansion of 240 cards (compared to 480 in the base game) and 2 new adventurers (compared to four in the base game). Those plans changed quickly when we started actually working on the expansion, however.
Adding exactly two new adventurers in total was a figure pretty much set in stone. Those two were already featured in the base game’s artwork, it would round out the game’s skill system nicely (each adventurer representing one of the 6 skills), and it’s the number the box and certain game mechanics can accommodate. However, we found out that the necessary content to add both of them would take up roughly 120 cards, half of the planned budget. That wouldn’t have left enough room for other content we wanted to include.
The upcoming adventurers, Noko & Umi and Yamej
So we decided to go bigger, which left us with another choice to make: make one huge expansion or make two smaller ones. We settled on the latter option and a plan of creating two, 240-card expansions, both with one new adventurer and a ton of other content. The base game’s box has just enough room for all of this, even sleeved. The upsides are clear. We can develop the first expansion faster, the players get to play it faster, and we can keep the monetary barrier to entry lower. It just takes some more effort on our part to make sure all combinations of the base game and expansions integrate nicely and provide a good experience. But that was an effort we were glad to spend for the other benefits in this approach.
[heading]Seeking and Receiving Feedback[/heading] Dreams and Mysteries being a straight-up expansion, we wanted to make sure it would serve its audience, the fans of Lands of Galzyr. So, we sought out a lot of feedback, from our own Discord server, comments here on BGG, reviews, etcetera. Even more importantly, we created a survey where we asked direct feedback from players.
One additional, unique avenue for data was the game’s digital storybook. Normally, you don’t get to know how many times a game has been played or what decisions players made while playing. However, with the game storybook being digital, we’ve been receiving some gameplay information from those who have not disabled sharing their gameplay data. With this data, we can identify which scenes have been played the most and the least, which decisions players have made during the stories, and more. For example, we could introduce more variety to the most commonly played scenes to lessen repetition.
Player feedback: what players would like to see in the expansion
The survey received over 400 responses. We asked players to rank different kinds of content based on how much they wanted more of it. We also asked for general feedback on what they wanted or didn’t want to see in the expansion. Overall, it gave us a good idea of what people wanted from the expansion.
The main takeaway for us was that players wanted more long-form content. More specifically, a lot of people asked for a bigger hook or reason to continue playing, a greater sense of purpose you could say. Some players also wished to gain more power through mechanical character progression, but that would go against the game’s core design. Still, we sought to address that feedback in other ways.
On the other hand, players generally did not hunger for new game mechanisms, as the level of mechanical depth seemed to have hit its mark for a story-driven game for many. The responders generally loved the game and just wanted more story content.
Player feedback: general feedback organised based on type
[heading]Dreams and Mysteries[/heading] After thoroughly going through the feedback, we were ready to start designing and creating the expansion content. There are four aspects I’ll highlight in this design diary, and how I think they improve the experience without compromising the game’s identity.
As mentioned earlier, the expansion includes a new adventurer. While it technically makes it possible to play with five players at once, it more importantly gives one more character and save slot to allow more players to jump in and out between sessions. Smaller groups likely also enjoy an alternative character and storyline to experience, perhaps when the mood for mischief strikes.
The expansion box is stuffed full of content
Perhaps the biggest new addition is the extended personal stories for all adventurers. We wanted to keep them short in the base game so they would serve as an introduction, not railroad the player and dominate the experience for a long time. That would have taken away from the open-world feel of the game. Still, a lot of people wanted more from them, so we’ll now serve longer stories that are broken up into multiple games. It’s a personal goal to work towards, for both the player and the adventurer they’re playing.
Tied to the extended stories are the new adventurer special abilities. These are alternatives to the existing special abilities, since significant power increases are off the table, but they do still spice up the experience and feel like rewarding character growth during the personal stories.
Noko & Umi are ready to join the adventures
The last thing is a new grand storyline. While the base game already has one large over-arching story, players clearly wanted more. This one also unravels slowly, and the players can influence it a lot. We hope these things together makes it even more fulfilling to come back to Galzyr time and time again.
[heading]Conclusion[/heading] Those were our plans for the first expansion and how we arrived there. I believe we have been able to address the feedback and make the game even better for those who already enjoyed it. In the end, the total amount of stories in the storybook grew from the base game's roughly 700,000 words to well over one million words. That's pretty crazy!
Presentation is half the battle when it comes to tabletop gaming; I never follow the adage of 'don't judge a book by its cover' because it goes against the grain of any marketing textbook. Through the Hedgerow immediately draws attention thanks to its evocative, pseudo-woodcut artstyle, imparting its promise of rustic fantasy upon prospective readers. Will it stand the test of time like it requires of its characters? Let's find out.
Through the Hedgerow Overview
Information comes flying at you right from the jump when you open up Through the Hedgerow. Flavorful vignettes separate the mechanical rules so that you are constantly reminded of the setting. The game takes place over four Ages, starting with the Dark Ages and ending during WWII. Much of the game is centered around a singular location during one (or more) of these epochs, setting the table for your characters to watch how history and the magical world of Fay shape it.
Players have an array of Gentries to choose from when building their character: the headless, turnip-wearing Buggeber Fay, scarecrow-adjacent Flayboglin Fay, Light-driven Heathen Clerks, champions of the Light known as Hodkins, the Mortal Motley entertainers, bird-faced Ouzels, humanoid spiders called Tomnoddins, Mortal children protected through innocence known as Waifs, or Warlockes, Mortal wizards who internally struggle with their magic.
Through the Hedgerow Roleplaying Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.
Endeavor: Deep Sea puts you in charge of a research vessel exploring the ocean both on the surface and at increasing depths. Recruit specialists, publish your research, and perform conservation activities while you are at it. This game has been on my wish list since it hit the Hotness. It checked a lot of boxes. […]
MingYang Lu’s puzzle fighter-style board game Re;MATCH has had a storming start to its Kickstarter campaign, picking up almost $250,000 from over 1,250 backers with half of the month-long crowdfund still to go. In this sponsored interview, Lu talks about why his design looks to derive fun from game mastery rather than discovery, the importance of conventions for small publishers, and why AI art “cheapens creativity”.
Hi Ming!A big part of your design philosophy for Re;MATCH is centred around the difference between ‘mastery’ and ‘discovery’. Can you give an overview of what you mean by those terms?
Yeah! So I’ve developed this personal philosophy about the different types of fun designers can incorporate into hobby board games, and I currently feel there are two main types.
First is Discovery, which is the fun you get from being presented with new information to respond to. This could mean seeing new cards revealed in a shop for an engine or deck builder game, or encountering a new enemy or event card in a miniatures game.
Second is Mastery, which is instead the fun derived from realizing new combos or optimizations with the options you already have. This could involve learning the optimal strategies in a roll-and-write game, or realizing the political intricacies between the factions in Root.
I don’t think these two types of fun are mutually exclusive. In video games, particularly single player ones, both are almost mandatory for a great experience.
Can you give us an overview of Re;MATCH, its design and mechanisms, and how that sets it towards either mastery or discovery?
Happily! Re;MATCH a 1 vs 1 competitive fighting game inspired by Puzzle Fighting games. Players take turns pulling connected and matching marbles from a tray of marbles, and the color and number of marbles you pull will resolve a corresponding attack on your character’s move list.
In the same vein as my first game, Re;ACT, it is a skill expression game that focuses primarily on mastery type fun. All of your abilities are shown upfront, and you must figure out how to use these options to win. There are no event decks to shake things up mid game, and no new options to consider as you play. The fun in Re;MATCH is more about seeing the floor of possibilities open up as you start to understand the system and the characters.
This is pretty standard for fighting video games though. In those games, after selecting your character, you can immediately pause to see the massive list of your abilities and combos, and it’s up to you to learn how to use them to win.
Re;MATCH being demonstrated at PAX Unplugged in December 2025
How do you think mastery relates to complexity? And what are the design challenges for a game like Re;MATCH, in terms of getting that balance right?
Mastery and complexity are not directly related in my mind. Most abstract games provide fun exclusively through mastery. From Chess to Hive, the complexity might be low, but the potential for skill expression is high, leading to repeated plays being the source of joy in the game.
How do you see mastery vs discovery-style titles doing in the current board game hobby landscape, especially when it comes to crowdfunding campaigns and online marketing?
I’ve noticed that in recent years, hobby game releases – games that aren’t party games and generally cost $30 or more – tend to focus on discovery rather than mastery. With so many games being sold on vibes and people posting their opinions or reviews after just a few or even only one playthrough, it’s more important than ever to make sure that first game experience is as smooth and perfect as possible.
Games that front load too much information typically don’t have a smooth first game experience, so you want to slowly drip out the options a player can take. Giving a player a deck of cards with a ton of variety and telling them not to worry about what’s inside that deck upfront is a great way to do this, as you’ll discover new and cool options every single time you draw a different card. However, such randomness can make one group’s first game wildly different from another’s. So this wide variety of cards that feel different actually needs to produce very consistently similar outputs, ensuring that most first games deliver as optimal of an experience as possible.
I think this meta has produced a lot of games that feel incredibly satisfying on your first playthrough, constantly offering new options to explore or challenges to overcome, but don’t really hold that spark after repeated playthroughs.
Of course there are games that successfully offer lots of both types of fun, and I think those are the games that we remember. All of the most replayable deck building games are great examples of games that offer both!
I’ve already seen this game shared on social media, especially from people spotting it at Pax Unplugged last year – and I think part of that is its use of bright colours, those attention-grabbing marbles and that it generally doesn’t look like most of the other board games out there. Was that an intentional decision, in terms of potential marketing, or is this just how you wanted the game to be?
The artstyle was certainly intentional. The hardest part of selling games, or anything really, is getting people to even notice it in the first place. For Re;ACT, featuring very large acrylic standees with bases that can hold tokens was driven by what would make people stop and look when passing by the game at a convention.
Re;MATCH, however, is a really old design. When I first came up with the very first iteration of Re;MATCH, I was inspired by my favorite game at the time, Battlecon, with its very asymmetric characters and fully open information, brain-burning game play, and the idea of using marbles as a component due to the popularity of Potion Explosion and Gizmos at the time.
But after learning many lessons with Re;ACT, I realized that Re;MATCH needed a much more colorful and eye catching art style to match the energy of the marble tower.
The game board for Re;MATCH character The DJ
How did you find artists PsyOptima and machimile, and what was your process in terms of getting to the final artwork? Did you have strong ideas early on, and how much were you guided by those artists / were they guided by you as the process progressed?
Both of them were actually artists on my previous fan projects! Just between Anna’s Roundtable, Genshin Tarot, and Star Rail Tarot, I’ve commissioned over 400 artists. My vision for Re;MATCH was a much bolder and funkier aesthetic compared to Re;ACT, and both of these artists were perfect for that.
Having worked with so many artists over the years, I’ve also grown pretty comfortable acting as an art director for my teams. I’m certainly no drawer, but I’ve learned how to communicate effectively to guide my team towards my visions.
You’ve been very frank online in your opinions about AI generated imagery being used within the board game industry. Why do you think some publishers are leaning into it, despite the well-publicised concerns around copyright, ethics and the environmental impact?
I’ve become increasingly frustrated about the use of genAI to replace or supplement artists in games. To me, the issue is very existential. I am not surprised that already massively successful publishers are leaning into using AI art. There have always been companies trying to squeeze profit out of any artistic medium, from movies to books and beyond. But AI slop feels different from just disingenuous cash grabs. Environmental impacts and stolen work is one part of it, but the idea of letting AI produce the art we consume really cheapens creativity as a whole.
The joy of creativity is so fundamental to life, and the spark of inspiration passed from one person to the next is so vital for human progress. If people continue to consume these things, be it AI art in games, AI written screenplays, or AI generated music, I fear that the very light of human existence will dim.
What would you say to smaller publishers and solo operators who believe they can only bring their projects to completion by leaning on AI generators?
I can see the argument from new designers who want to make games but feel like AI is the most effective way to make their games ready for sale, either because they can’t find a publisher or they can’t afford to pay for art. To these people I would ask: Why do you want to make games? Why do you play games yourself?
I think games can be art, just like novels, music, and movies can be art. The reason I enjoy any of these things is intrinsically tied to the shared human experience I feel when consuming them. A board game’s only component other than rules are its visuals, so I believe the human intentionality behind how the game looks is just as important as how it plays. The artists who want to paint are just as passionate as the designers who want to make good games, so don’t cut them out of the process! There are tons of affordable artists on VGen, and you can always just pick up a pen and make simple drawings yourself! “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations,” so let the limitations of your budget or your art skills be part of your creative process. Just look at how Stardew Valley or Undertale were made!
In aiming for the mastery experience, does that mean you’re not too concerned about expanding this game? Because it looks to me to be ripe for expansions, especially in terms of new fighter characters. How does that fit into your mastery and discoverability theory?
I definitely want to keep adding more characters to both Re;ACT and Re;MATCH! In fact, receiving new characters and discovering their interactions with existing ones is the main source of discovery type fun in these games. This is similar to TCGs, where every new set front loads you with a ton of new options to tinker with.
But the cost of a new character for these games is much higher than just adding more variance to a deck of cards or more enemies in a miniatures game. Not only does each character require a ton of assets, but every new character is exponentially more difficult to balance and integrate successfully into the game. This is why I’ve made additional characters our primary stretch goal targets back during Re;ACT and now Re;MATCH!
Re;MATCH designer MingYang Lu
Can you give us a little background about your time in the board game industry – where did you start out, and how did you get to here?
Sure! I guess I first started experimenting with making card games like many other kids: my friend (Eric Zeringue, who still helps me with game design today) and I designed our very own very bad TCG. In college, I took things a bit more seriously by designing my own pretty bad deck builder based on isekai anime, and then I designed a not so bad fan game based on the indie video game Crawl (one of my favorite indie games of all time).
I then just kept making fan games, and eventually, I made one for Fire Emblem and posted it on Reddit. This one kind of blew up, and Kotaku even wrote an article covering it. I then just kept making print and play fan games and posting them online. I did one for Code Geass, Darling in the FranXX, and Persona 5, among several others that never saw the light of day.
Right around the time I designed the Darling in the FranXX game, I also designed the very first version of Re;MATCH. I brought it to a prototyping convention, posted it to YouTube, entered it into a design competition, and eventually signed it to the publisher Penguin and Panda, who renamed it Sento. After that, I met Chris Lin, who had his very own design for TCG that I enjoyed the core of. While Sento progressed with Penguin and Panda, I started working with Chris to completely redesign his TCG into a board game instead of a TCG, which eventually became Re;ACT.
After Covid hit, it became clear that Penguin and Panda wouldn’t be able to publish Sento, so I focused entirely on Re;ACT, brought it to several conventions, obtained my US citizenship, funded it on Kickstarter, and then quit my job to pursue board games full time.
You’ve run several Kickstarter campaigns before, for Re;ACT – The Arts of War in 2024 as well as several for dice and standee collections and other accessories. What were your big lessons learned through those campaigns, and how are they applicable to running the campaign for Re;MATCH?
Honestly, I’m still figuring things out myself [laughs]. But I will say that the most important thing for me is to always be authentic and only make things I would want to buy myself. Doing something purely to make money is a slippery slope, and I constantly remind myself that if I wanted to just make money, I would’ve stayed at my comfortable 9 to 5 desk job.
But if someone asked me for some more practical advice, specific to running a board game Kickstarter, I would say to just get your game in front of as many eyes as possible beforehand. Bring it to conventions, post playthroughs, and do whatever you can to make it eye-catching. Obviously the game needs to be good for people to stick around, but no one will know if it’s a good game if they don’t sit down to try it first! For Re;ACT, I brought it to Pax Unplugged, Gen Con, and ProtoATL two years in a row before we launched. Re;MATCH moved a bit faster, with me taking it to Pax East, Origins, Gen Con, and Pax Unplugged all in the same year.
An early version of Re;MATCH being demonstrated at the ProtoATL convention in 2018
That’s a lot of conventions! I think there’s a feeling among smaller publishers that it’s a big financial hit to attend multiple cons a year, and it can be hard to stand out against the competition on show floors. What advice would you give for attending conventions as a small publisher yourself?
Definitely agreed that cons are expensive, and I started small as well! In 2023, I attended Gen Con by myself and just offered ticketed event demos. Two of the people who played my games loved them so much that they ended up helping me teach demos at Gen Con in 2024 and 2025! Hosting events at Gen Con is free (outside the cost of travel), and in 2023 I stayed together with over 20 other indie designers and publishers in a big Airbnb to save on cost.
Another cheap option is prototyping and protospiel conventions. I attend ProtoATL nearly every single year, and its by far one of my favorite weekends every year. Many of the early prototype photos of Re;MATCH come from ProtoATL! The badges are very cheap, and you get your prototype ripped apart and rebuilt so many times that you make more progress in three days than you would have in three months. You also make so many meaningful connections with other designers and publishers, who are often avid supporters of games themselves!
I recommend exhibiting at a consumer convention only after gaining experience pitching games to strangers. Prototyping cons and hosting events lets you practice with a captive audience, but working at the booths of established publishers is a great way to practice pitching to passing customers. (I’m always hiring as well!) Another great opportunity is the Indie Games Night Market, which New Mill Industries has hosted at Pax Unplugged for the last two years. This event gives indie designers a single table to sell a small print run (think five to 50 copies) of their game, often with homemade elements.
Once you are ready, Pax Unplugged is by far the best choice as an indie publisher to exhibit at. Unlike Gen Con, Pax really cares about indies (see Indie Games Night Market), has a strong culture of inclusivity, and doesn’t allow AI grifters into their show! Standing out at a convention is definitely very hard though, and I’m still figuring that step out for myself. My booths are pretty basic looking still, but working with really great artists has worked out very well for me, so I’d recommend that as well!
I saw that you’re providing access to the full game on Tabletop Simulator for free. How important do you think that will be for discoverability, and how do you think that balances against the chance some people will just use the digital version and not back the physical campaign?
Super important. Personally speaking for board game Kickstarters, if I don’t see a playable demo, I am very unlikely to pledge. Even if I don’t have the time to personally try it, not allowing backers to try the game before they buy signals to me that the publisher lacks confidence in the game. A good game should make players want to buy it after playing it, end of story.
Not to mention the benefit of getting so many more eyes on your game to tell you what is bad about your game before you hit the irreversible button to start printing! For me, there are absolutely no downsides to having the game fully playable for free digitally during a Kickstarter, and I try really hard to ensure it’s available long before that as well.
What are your ideal goals for this campaign – what does a success look like for you, and how do you ideally see the rest of the year panning out?
For me, I’d like to surpass the number of backers I had on Re;ACT and POND as a minimum. Re;ACT had 1,730 backers, and POND had 1,900 backers. If Re;MATCH hits at least 2,200 backers, that will indicate a consistent growth trajectory for me as a publisher, so that is my real goal.
After Re;MATCH, I’ll be working on Season 2 of Re;ACT, along with several unannounced secret projects I’ve been working on for quite some time now, so please look forward to them!
Anmelden
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