I stumbled across Pirate Borg back at Gen Con a few years ago, impressed by publisher Limithron's booth setup and the overall presentation of the swashbuckling RPG book. Fast forward to the present, where the newly minted Down Among the Dead and Cabin Fever supplements are sitting on my desk alongside the Pirate Borg Starter Set and it's high tide time that I provide an in-depth review of everything Pirate Borg.
Pirate Borg: Ashes to Ashes
Built on the 3rd party license for Mörk Borg, Pirate Borg mixes the apocalyptic setting from its namesake with its own spin on pirates and the undead. The game takes place in an alternate history of our world right around 1692 in an analogous region to the Caribbean known as the—wait for it—Dark Caribbean. Catchy, no?
As with any of the Borg games, the focus is on player agency and not so much on the minutiae of maintaining an extensive character sheet. Creating a new character is lightning fast and can be generated completely randomly, if desired, using any of the six core classes. Because of the inclusion of undead and fantastical creatures in this world, there are also options to play as an undead or a tall tale such as a merfolk, aquatic person, or sentient animal. Whether you want to sling…
A group of black-hat hackers known as POSIWID plots to hijack the moon Io and hold the entire Jovian power grid to ransom. Standing in their way are the ultra-corporate LFA, the constructors of the lunar energy facilities. Both sides have engaged a fleet of ROV – advanced remotely-operated robots — to battle across the treacherous landscape.
The machines are activated. Initiate combat sequence. The battle for Io has begun.
Line of Fire: Burnt Moon is a standalone 2-player card game that fuses the lean deck-building of the award-winning UndauntedSeries with fast-paced lane battling. Sharp decision-making and clever positioning combine in a nail-bitingly tense, endlessly replayable, and lightning-fast experience.
In March 2026, Game Market West returned to Guildhouse in San Jose, California. It was very exciting to appear on the local news! It’s not every day that indie tabletop designers get this kind of spotlight (editor's note: video linked at the bottom of this report). Seeing our community highlighted on a mainstream platform really shows that there’s growing interest in small, creative voices and the unique experiences they bring to games.
For the games at this event, several designs embraced cozy or wholesome play. Anti-Anxiety Card Game focused on mindfulness and connection, Barista of the Month captured the joy of serving customers, and Light Up The Night delivered a solo puzzle of chasing fireflies into star patterns. These games highlighted a trend toward emotionally driven and accessible gameplay.
Anti-Anxiety Card Game by Studio Cassava (Jared & Hannah)
It's a relaxing 1-2 player card game that helps reduce anxiety for college students and all ages through fun self-care prompts. Play alone or with a partner, connect with each other through mindfulness connections, and explore silly prompts like sharing your favorite joke, or Lo-fi song--or just forcing each other to go on a walk during the game!
Barista of the Month by Anthony Barbieri
Manage your ingredients to serve the perfect cup of coffee in this quick and competitive tabletop card game! I wanted to highlight this game as it was very much a labor of love. Each card was cut out by the designer one by one.
Light Up The Night by Andrew DiLullo
Run through fields of fireflies and chase them into the sky as a small child that believes that's how stars are formed. Light Up The Night is a single player puzzle game that sees you running through the firefly laden fields to chase as many fireflies as you can, while trying to form specific types of stars that tighten your movement choices. The fields wax and wane as you chase fireflies away, how many will you be able to launch into the sky in only 6 short rounds?
Designers also explored storytelling and RPGs.
Florafiora: The Storytelling Card Game by Emily Hancock
Co-op storytelling card game for 4 players. Each player takes a turn as the lead storyteller / (GM). Collaborate on a group backstory together, then explore the Storywheel (alternating location and encounter cards). Tell a full story with no additional game prep in an hour!
HeartBeasts by Charlie Huggins & Ajda Gokcen
HeartBeasts is a collaborative TTRPG filled with magical creatures and cinematic, episodic, fast-paced gameplay—inspired by video games and anime like Pokémon and Persona. Its flexible, unique system draws from "tabletalk" RPG favorites Ryuutama and Fabula Ultima to weave strategy with storytelling.
Overall, GMW Spring 2026 felt like a celebration of variety. Whether you came for quick party games, collaborative storytelling, or complex strategy, this season reinforced what we do best: showcasing bold ideas and the passionate designers behind them. We'll see you at the next Game Market West on September 13, 2026! You can sign up for updates or apply as a designer.
The prototype for the upcoming game Schlock!: B-Movie Magnate (designed by Rob van Zyl and Simon Weinberg, and published by Pleasant Company Games) made the rounds on our Slack’s review copy channel without being picked up. I waited until other Meeple Mountain contributors had first-crack at this game before raising my hand. I think I’m the biggest movie nerd on the team, but still, maybe someone else wanted to talk shop and play a game that leaned into something they love more than I do.
But no one bit. I received a copy of Schlock! a few weeks before the game’s crowdfunding campaign, but I couldn’t finish three plays before the campaign launched. That’s because I was only able to initially do a solo play and a two-player game of Schlock!, and the rules are a little different with three or four players.
Now that I’ve finished a third play, with four players, I’m ready to share my story. Schlock! has the look and feel of a word game I can get behind. But the production value of this prototype’s high notes are balanced with a game that simply comes down to matching colors to achieve victory. I wish more of the game’s theme pushed into the game’s win conditions.
Small Wars: Mohicans is the first game of the Small Wars Series and covers the French & Indian War of the mid-18th century, and is based on a popular 1983 Canadian boardgame called Mohawk. Mohicans starts in 1754 and continues to 1760, which historically was the year after the conquest of Quebec by British forces (a founding event in the creation of modern Canada).
In Mohicans, the powerful regular forces of Britain fight for control of north-eastern North America against the mixed regular and irregular forces of the French and their local allies. The forces of both sides are bolstered by local militia units and other irregular forces, such as the famous French Couriers des Bois or British Rangers, and the arrival each year of more regular reinforcements from Europe.
While the British have the edge in firepower and numbers, the French have better mobility and their Indigenous allies can make effective use of terrain, particularly the massive forests that covered eastern North America at the time. The British are also more vulnerable to having their supply lines cut off.
Both sides seek to curry favour with the powerful but neutral Iroquois Confederacy, as an alliance with them is an enormous strategic advantage. With each major victory on the battlefield, one of the six tribes of the Iroquois will offer its support to the winning side. Get the support of all six tribes, and the Iroquois will join the fight.
To win the game, the British must hold three of the French cities and towns of Louisbourg, Frontenac, Duquesne, Montreal and Quebec (and at least one must be Montreal or Quebec). If they don’t do this by 1760, the French win by default.
The French can also win by holding the British cities of Albany and either New York, Boston or Philadelphia. This will be a tall order for the French but they can take comfort in the fact that the British, like NATO 250 years later have the watches, but the French have the time…
Combat occurs at the different locations, after the seasonal movement has been processed. It covers different battles, such as ambushes in woods, landings, raids on enemy villages and towns, field battles or forts assaults.
During the Winter between each of the 7 years of the war, reinforcements are received, militias and Indians are mustered and forts can be built.
La Famiglia is a little unusual. It is a game for exactly four players (like mahjong!), and it is played in teams of two. You are mafia families in Sicily, and you compete to control the most regions. You win immediately when you control 5 regions, or your team controls 6 regions. If no one achieves this after four rounds, the team controlling more regions wins.
Every region on
I’ve now played the En Route gaming system—designed by Daniili Zaitsev, who also uses the pen name Dan Lièvre—nearly a dozen times, between plays of En Route: Special Edition through Innsmouth Travel Guide, the second game in the Travel Guide series. I recently got in a couple plays of Arkham Travel Guide, and although these are different games, they scratch the same itch: elevated roll-and-write (or flip-and-write, using En Route’s base system), higher interaction, high-score affairs, perfect for solo play or exactly three players thanks to the game’s dice choice system that gets all players involved. (En Route was one of my top 10 games from 2025.)
This time around, players have to guide tourists around a 6x6 grid of Arkham, with a final route that scores the most points. There are four choices of “Old Ones”, boss characters which change the scoring rules for a given game, along with in-round bonuses if players hit specific spaces during their turn. All the hallmarks of the series remain: personal objectives, boosting scores by running routes along the appropriately-colored city blocks if players can get matching tourists, 10 rounds, solo challenges, a 30-to-40-minute playtime.
The ending of Arkham Travel Guide might turn some players…
Everyone loves cats, including board gamers and board game designers. Naturally, therefore, there are a plethora of cat-themed board games available. They are as quirky as the feline companions we all love. Many of them are simple (and thus, often overlooked by the heavier board gaming crowd), while others have surprising depth for such a […]
The April 2026 Monthly Debrief Video, which is the 4th episode in Season 6 of this series, saw us discussing Operational Level Wargames to fill out our video trilogy on Tactical (November 2024 Season 4 Episode 11), Operational and Strategic (July 2023 Season 3 Episode 7) games.
Also, as usual, we covered the games we played in April as well as the games we plan to play in May.
We will remind you here that we are fortunate to be continuing our relationship with Noble Knight Games as the sponsor for our Monthly Debrief Video series. In case you don’t know, Noble Knight Games specializes in hard to find games but also carry all the new releases. But what makes them truly unique is that you can find some of the rarest games, long out of print games, hand made games, imported games from overseas, etc. Thanks to them for their sponsorship and we hope that you will consider them first when looking for the games we cover.
Twisted Trumpets Designer: Matthew Rodela Publisher: Play to Z Players: 2-4 Age: 8+ Time: 30-45 minutes Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4uGuAAp Played with review copy provided by publisher Twisted Trumpets is a lively, competitive tile-laying game where you vie … Continue reading →
Despite being the creation of John Rudolph Drexler, Colossi reminds me of an early John Clowdus design. At really every point, come to think of it. There’s the shape of the thing: a lane-battler packed with powerful abilities that constantly reform its contests into new shapes. Or its illustrations, here produced by Sean Thurlow, but not all that distant from the brushstrokes that fill Omen: A Reign of War. The form factor is also approximate; the box isn’t tiny, but it isn’t much larger than Omen’s second edition. Even the game’s willingness to surprise feels redolent of one of our hobby’s under-celebrated innovators.
If I wasn’t sufficiently clear, this should be taken as an enormous compliment. Colossi has a few shortcomings — another parallel with certain Clowdus titles — but it’s such a gust of fresh air that I dearly hope Drexler has a few more in the chamber.
Three lanes.
As mentioned, Colossi is a lane-battler. Through blurred eyes, it might even seem overly familiar. Players are presented with three lanes at any given time, each host to an existential battle. Yawn, am I right?
Except it takes all of five seconds before Colossi drops its own beat. The first riff is that it handles up to four players, and every count is as smooth as the others. The second is that each lane is strikingly different from those to its right or left. This is thanks to the way Drexler builds out each one via a combination of an environment and up to three items.
The former, environments, are the game’s main objective. Win three of them and you’re declared the victor. In addition to that, each one is entirely unique. Some are simple enough, like the Desert, which prohibits water cards from being played into its lane. Others are more transformative, like the Impulse Isle, which turns the usual phased play — one card per player at a time, around and around until everybody passes — into massive plays that have each player deploy every card and ability at once before passing to their neighbor. Or the Chaos Fissure, where everybody is required to prepare an equal number of cards, shuffle them together, and then deal them at random to all participants. Or the Magnetic Maar, a zone where preparing cards is strictly forbidden, forcing players to get creative in order to secure it.
Those last two environments won’t make sense without some explanation. Cardplay in Colossi is broken into two separate but interconnected phases. First, players prepare cards by seeding them face-down into those three lanes. Once an environment meets a threshold of cards, somebody is allowed to trigger a battle there. The game then shifts into its second phase. Everybody adds the cards they’ve prepped in that lane to their hand and then duke it out for control of that single environment. Once that battle is dusted, a new environment is added to the gap and the game returns to the preparation phase.
Back and forth it goes. Preparation, preparation, preparation, preparation, HUGE BATTLE, preparation, preparation, HUGE BATTLE, preparation, preparation…
Each lane features both an environment and one to three items.
Along the way, Drexler shows off a number of small touches that elevate Colossi from a good idea to an impressive execution. I mentioned items. Each environment hosts one to three of the things, depending on how far the game has progressed. Rather than deploying a card into a battle, you’re allowed to discard something from your hand to claim these babies. Like the larger environments, they’re transformative in their own right, adding perks or adjusting the parameters of the current fight.
Of course, none of this would spark to life without the right selection of powers. Here Colossi flexes a more familiar muscle to fans of the genre, starting everyone off with an identical deck of twenty-four cards that deforms as the session progresses. First-timers may find the selection intimidating at first, especially since the myriad types cancel or boost one another like a seven-pronged Roshambo. Divine Gifts add more cards to your hand. Electricity makes Divine Gifts more expensive to play and is empowered by Water. Fire is powerful and blocks Beasts, but gets nerfed by Water. Beasts mess with rival hands, while Colossi do… all sorts of things. Acolytes grow stronger in bulk.
Your cards, meanwhile, aren’t necessarily going to stay your cards for very long. One of the Colossi, the Curse, wanders over to the opposing side of battle to decrease their strength. Then, like a kid deciding it prefers its neighbor’s house, it sticks around afterward, filling up their deck with a card they probably don’t want. One of the Beasts abducts a rival card into your deck, potentially stealing their best cards outright.
Over the course of a half-dozen or so battles, this gives each deck its own topography. One player becomes weak with Fire, and therefore vulnerable to Beasts, but finds a way to use their multiple Colossi to swing fights their way. Another gains so many Acolytes that their hand becomes a cultist’s paradise, winning through sheer manpower. A third starts lighting everything on Fire and hoping nobody has the necessary bulk of Water cards to douse the flames.
The result is as subtle as it is brash, especially once the table remembers that the battles are just, well, battles. The bigger picture, the war, is what matters here. It’s easy to lose sight of that, especially in the midst of a drawn-out fight. Often, it’s smarter to bait an opponent into using too many cards, then withdraw to other environments for a jump start on the fight that will soon engulf them as well. But why play it smart when you have a one-in-ten chance to draw exactly the card you need in order to swing this thing?
Battles can turn into real pile-ups.
Sure, I have quibbles. Some battles get too summy for their own good, especially once Water starts fudging the value of Fire and Electricity. Certain environments have obnoxious or burdensome effects. Similarly, some of the powers are touch-and-go, especially those that allow someone to draw extra cards in the middle of a fight. Then again, the little imbalances between suits are also what make the game formidable. When somebody drops their Inferno card, everybody notices.
On the whole, Colossi is a superb debut. It’s hard-hitting, vicious, subtle, and so much cleverer than it seems at first glance. More than that, it produces a heretofore unseen take on the lane-battler, one that goes beyond the usual trappings to prove itself a new creature indeed. No — a new colossus.
A complimentary copy of Colossi was provided by the designer/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!)
“Stonemaier Games does not, has not, and will not use any form of AI to replace or augment creative work. If we’re creating something, we want it built from the ground up by talented people from different backgrounds, perspectives, and cultures, not an algorithm.”
I wrote this in April 2024, and after 2 more years of the generative AI onslaught, I thought I’d revisit the topic to see what, if anything, has changed between now and then.
Thanks to most of the science fiction I’ve read and watched over my life, leading up to the modern era I actually had an optimistic view of AI as something that could solve the problems that humans are unable to solve (or would otherwise take hundreds of years). Cure cancer, invent teleportation, end world hunger, and so on.
Maybe that’s where it’ll eventually lead–I’ll hold onto that optimism. In the meantime, instead of achieving the impossible, generative AI seems has become an output device to replace creative endeavors that are already quite possible. Enter a prompt, and the machine spits out an article or image.
Now, if you’re passionate about AI, I’m truly not here to shame you. I try to keep an open mind as the world changes, which is why I’m revisiting this topic today.
There are even elements of AI that aren’t as bad as I thought: For example, check out this episode of Science Vs about the water consumption from data centers. I’ve personally found AI summaries to be unavoidable when searching on Google, though I always try to look at the sources. Also, as much as I loathe the idea of AI replacing humans in any capacity, that’s somewhat inherent to technological advances (e.g., the excellent movie Hidden Figures shows how humans literally were computers until machine computational capacity improved).
In fact, I’ll admit that I accidentally used a logo for our podcast that was generated by AI (not by me). I didn’t realize it at first, then I realized it and wasn’t comfortable saying something, and finally I just decided to pay a graphic designer to create a new logo. I feel much better about it now.
Here’s my truth: I continue to not be interested in generative AI. The process of creativity is key to me as a person. I want to write these articles and film my videos from scratch. I want to come up with my own game ideas and put in the work to bring them to life. I want to read, research, think critically, and seek out sources, not rely on AI summaries. I want to embrace the process. I want to learn from my mistakes and share those lessons with you.
Likewise, I’m more passionate than ever about working with creative people and paying for their time and talent. The only difference now is that it’s in our contracts for artists, designers, third-party accessory creators, and digital developers that we don’t permit the use of generative AI. Similarly, we’ve added “human made: no generative AI” to the back of our game boxes, as we seem to have reached a tipping point when people are unabashedly quick to assume you are using AI unless you specifically indicate otherwise.
Last, I support creators and companies that pay my fellow humans for creative work. I’m only interested in games (and other media) that were designed by people, written by people, and illustrated by people. At the same time, I’m not going to spend my time, energy, or social currency shaming or bashing people who use generative AI. I choose to elevate, not denigrate.
I know that this is a sensitive topic, so while I genuinely want to hear your thoughts in the comments, I ask that you approach the conversation with an open mind and respect for your fellow humans. Let’s be good to each other. If you have hot take, please support it with a specific example or evidence. Thank you!
UPDATE: I realized after writing this article that even though I talked about being open-minded, I didn’t actually revisit the 2024 quote to see if it has changed in mid-2026. While I’m not interested in generative AI, it is possible that there will be uses of ethical AI in the future as related to Stonemaier Games that do interest me–we’ll see!
Stonemaier Games does not use, has not used, and does not plan to knowingly use generative AI for creative work (text, art, videos, etc). If we’re creating something, we want it built from the ground up by talented people from different backgrounds, perspectives, and cultures. We believe that the process is integral to our output, and it allows human creativity to shine. We do not actively use other forms of AI in our workflow either, but it is becoming so engrained in common technology that we acknowledge its passive use may become unavoidable.
In the Mythic Vale, witches, wizards, and dragons live side by side. Their magic is strengthened by proximity, so plan carefully to make the Vale as strong as possible. Koven is a card game playable in 15 minutes or less. But, how strong can you make the Vale in only 15 minutes? Well, that’s the […]
When Ticket to Ride was released in 2004, it became popular the world over. That year, it was nominated for numerous international awards, even winning the prestigious Spiel de Jahres award. Capitalizing on the exposure, the following year designer Alan R. Moon released Ticket to Ride: Europe. By changing the map from the US to that of Europe—and introducing small but meaningful changes—Moon showed how he could expand the game in challenging and entertaining ways while still being familiar to anyone who had played the original. He’s been going strong with new versions of his game ever since.
Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails (shortened to TTR:R&S from here) comes with a two-sided game board that lets you choose to either play across The World, or in a section of the USA and Canada surrounding The Great Lakes. To do so, you’ll use familiar train cars to move across the land to port cities where your new ships will continue your path across waterways and oceans.
As with my reviews of other Ticket to Ride editions, I’m going to skip the How to Play section of this review. If you haven’t played Ticket to Ride before, check out my colleague Kevin Brantley’s great review ofTicket to…
The company has been one of tabletop crowdfunding’s biggest success stories over the past decade, raising tens of millions of pounds across campaigns based on major video game licences such as Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, Horizon Zero Dawn and Elden Ring.
About a third of the company’s employees are estimated to have been affected by this year’s restructure according to multiple sources who spoke to BoardGameWire on condition of anonymity – mirroring the scale of a previous round of redundancies Steamforged embarked on in 2023.
They said the staff cuts affected a range of departments across the business, including the creative, game design, production, project management, QA, marketing and commercial teams – adding that they feared the cutbacks would lead to problems delivering long-term projects.
Steamforged would not confirm the scale of the latest redundancies to BoardGameWire, but a spokesperson described the staff reduction as “carefully considered”, adding that the company “retain[s] both the internal resource and the external capabilities needed to deliver on our commitments”.
When asked for reassurance that those campaigns would be fulfilled despite the redundancies and strategic shift, a spokesperson for Steamforged told BoardGameWire, “Steamforged has never failed to fulfil a crowdfunding campaign, even during difficult times, or to make tough choices to deliver on commitments.
“Right now, 6: Siege – The Board Game is entering the final stages of production and will start shipping to supporters in July.”
Steamforged confirmed to BoardGameWire that the redundancies were part of a decision to “reduce new board game crowdfunding activity for the moment” amid the surging growth of Warmachine, the miniatures wargame line it bought from Privateer Press two years ago alongside P3 Paints and the Iron Kingdoms roleplaying series.
Warmachine miniatures || Photo credit: Steamforged Games
The spokesperson said Steamforged had tripled Warmachine and P3 Paints revenue in the last 21 months, despite facing significant stock constraints in the first year due to heavy demand.
They told BoardGameWire, “Demand has been high and we’ve scaled production to meet it. Our US production capacity for Warmachine has increased by 70% since last March, with a 25% increase in Europe since August and new production facilities introduced in the UK in February 2026.”
The spokesperson added, “Steamforged has always had two strong sides, both retail and crowdfunding, and was originally founded as a miniatures game company. Warmachine’s growth has shown clear demand over and above expectations and has become a core focus to support that growth.
“Our board game crowdfunding projects are currently in various stages of production with the vast majority of creative work complete.
“Our intention to reduce new board game crowdfunding activity for the moment while we focus on supporting Warmachine’s growth meant we needed to restructure accordingly, which included a confidential redundancy process in Q1 of 2026 that’s now complete.”
When asked how the strategic shift towards Warmachine would affect previously announced future crowdfunds such as Tyrant, the spokesperson said, “Steamforged has always looked several years into the future and our internal roadmaps reflect that.
“As with any company, particularly one that works with other studios the way we have, that means many potential projects have been put on ice over the years as opportunities change and emerge. Some of those came to fruition later, and others didn’t.
“Tyrant was an early announcement and was always intended to be a slow build. Given our strategic focus, it’s not something we intend to move forward with in the foreseeable future.”
Asked what they expected Steamforged Games to look like as a business over the next couple of years, the spokesperson concluded, “Over the next two years, we expect Warmachine will continue its strong growth supported by our dedicated team and launch plans in the miniatures and hobby categories.”
An Impossible War: The First Carlist War in the North, 1834-1838 from Bellica Third Generation is a block wargame that recreates the First Carlist War in the North of Spain which was a civil war between the Carlists who supported the succession of the late king’s brother Carlos de Borbón and the progressive and centralist supporters of the regent Maria Christina acting for Isabella II of Spain who were referred to as the Liberals. The game uses blocks representing units but also includes counters and uses cards. I was able to play the game about a month or so ago with Francisco Ronco who owns the publishing company Bellica Third Generation and very much enjoyed the game and how it represented this interesting struggle.
In Action Point 1, we took a look at the Game Map, discussing the point-to-point movement configuration, the various spaces and the delineation of the Carlist versus the Liberal Zones, as well as explained the use of the Rest of Spain smaller map. In Action Point 2, we examined the units available to both sides and covered the importance of Supply. In this Action Point, we will take a look at the Carlist Uprising Phase and what it means for the game.
Carlist Uprising Phase
The map of the Regions of Spain, or Rest of Spain Map as it is referred to in the rules, is smaller and simpler than the Game Map itself and is a separate board that plays along side the main board. It consists of 9 large regions that cover large territories of Spain. This map’s purpose is to record the spread of the Carlist Uprisings, to enable Carlist expeditions to operate and for the Liberal player to chase and hunt these expeditions down. The Rest of Spain Map is divided into regions and each region has a Carlist Uprising Level of between 0-3. Also, there are 2 regions, including Valencia-Murcia and Catalonia, where the Carlist Uprising Level cannot fall below 1, reflecting the intensity of Carlism in these regions. The Carlist Uprising Level cannot ever be less than 0 (or less than 1 in Valencia-Murcia and Catalonia which is the printed value on the Rest of Spain Map) or more than 3. Any effects that change the Carlist Uprising Level below or above these numbers is simply ignored.
The Carlist Uprising Phase begins with a roll on the Carlist Uprising Table to determine any effects that will be carried out this turn. Then, if there is an existing active Carlist Expedition on the Rest of Spain Map, the Carlist player may attempt to increase the Carlist Uprising level in its region. This increasing of the Uprising Level is like a wave. A wave that starts out small with presence of unrest being only in a few spaces on the Rest of Spain Map, but it will soon get out of control and turn into a tidal wave that can crush the Liberal player if they have not being paying attention to the situation on the board.
The Carlist player will roll 2D6, sum the result of both of the dice, and then will consult the Carlist Uprising Table found on the Rest of Spain Map to find and then apply the result. If you know anything about the probability of the outcome of this 2D6 roll, the most likely outcome is 7. There are 36 total possible combinations when rolling 2D6 and there are 6 different ways to get to a result of 7 including 1+6, 2+5, 3+4, 4+3, 5+2, and 6+1. So generally your spread will be around that 5-8 range, which according to the Carlist Uprising Table means that you will see the Uprising Level increase in places like Castile-León (result of 5), no increase (result of 6), Valencia-Murcia (result of 7) and Catalonia (result of 8). But it is also important to remember that the highest a region can attain is 3 and if it is rolled then the Carlist player will choose to increase the Carlist Uprising Level in 1 adjacent region.
The next step of this phase is the Expedition portion. If there is any active Expedition on the Rest of Spain Map then the Carlist player can attempt to increase the Uprising Level in each region where there is an Expedition, as long as there are more Carlist units than Liberal units there. The number of Liberal Infantry and Cavalry units in the region is subtracted from the number of Carlist Infantry and Cavalry units forming the Expedition. The Carlist player then rolls a die, and if the result is equal to or less than this number, the Uprising Level increases by +1. An Expedition cannot increase the Uprising Level in a region where the level is already 3 and there is no adjacent spill over of this furor.
The units of the Liberal player can move on this map at all times. The units of the Carlist player cannot enter the Rest of Spain Map before 1835. It is important to keep in mind the Carlist player can only have a single active Carlist Expedition on the Rest of Spain Map in 1835, and a maximum of 2 Expeditions from 1836 onwards.
So why is this part of the game important? Uprisings can provide Victory Points to the Carlist player. In addition to VP’s, Uprisings provide replacements for Carlist Expeditions and feeds the spread of rebellion on the Rest of Spain Map. There is a track on the map where the Carlist player keeps an accounting of the the Carlist Prestige marker to gain VP’s. If the amount of regions with an Uprising Level of 3 is at 3 or 4 regions, the Carlist player will gain 1 VP. If there are 5 or more, the Carlist player will receive +2 VP’s.
But there are other benefits to the players that come as a result of the Uprising Level on the Rest of Spain Map. For the Liberal player, at the end of each year for each region that is empty of Carlist Expeditions and has an Uprising Level of 0 or 1 (no 2’s or 3’s), they gain 1 Replacement Point in 1834-1835 and 2 Replacement Points in 1836-1837. Think of it this way. If there are no Carlist troops threatening the local Liberal supporting public, they are more willing to provide their sons to the military to fight the rebellion. But, if the Carlist fire of uprising has spread and there are active Carlist troops in the streets there will be less support for the Liberal cause.
Also for the Carlist player, if at the start of their turn there is an Expedition on the Rest of Spain Map and there are 5 or more regions with an Uprising Level of 2 or 3, they will gain +1 Action Point that can only be used to move or recruit Expeditions. Once again, if the groundswell of support is leaning toward the Carlist, the local populace are more in favor or supporting these Expeditions and expelling the Liberal from the region.
As you can see, there are a great deal of benefits for both players from the Uprising Level but there seem to be more impactful benefits for the Carlist player. If they can control the Rest of Spain Map, and dot the landscape with support and uprisings, they can win the game handily. But don’t worry, the Liberal player has an action available to them for combating and reducing the Carlist Uprising level in a region. This action is called Suppress Uprising.
Suppress Uprising is where the Liberal player can attempt to reduce the Carlist Uprising Level in a region by spending 1 Action Point and rolling 1D6. If there are no Liberal Infantry or Cavalry unit in the region, or if no unit takes part in the action, if the result is equal to or less than the Carlist Uprising level, then the attempt has no effect. If the result if higher than the Carlist Uprising Level, then the level is reduced by -1. If there is at least 1 Liberal Infantry or Cavalry unit in the region that takes part in the action, for each Liberal Infantry or Cavalry unit after the first that participates in the action, the Liberal player adds +1 to the roll. But there are possible losses that come with using your troops in this manner.
If the result is less than the Carlist Uprising Level, then the attempt has no effect. If the result is equal to the Carlist Uprising Level, then the level is reduced by -1, and one Liberal Infantry or Cavalry unit loses 1 strength point. If the result is 6 or more, then the Uprising Level is reduced by -2. So there is incentive to make sure you use your troops in this action. A bit risky but useful and definitely worth the risk.
An Impossible War is a fantastic design that attempts to capture the historical aspects of this titanic struggle for the throne of Spain in the mid 19th century. Historically, the Carlist forces who were defenders of traditional monarchy, regional privileges, and the Catholic Church, were a minority faction fighting an overwhelmingly larger, richer liberal government. The uprising phase reflects how the Carlists compensated for this disparity by forcing the Liberal government to fight on multiple fronts and suffer from logistical nightmares across hostile terrain. The Carlist Uprising Phase, and the use of its auxiliary Rest of Spain regional map, forces some really tough dilemmas on the Liberal player. They must attempt to divide their forces between the main Game Map and the Rest of Spain Map to prevent the opposition Carlist forces from overwhelming the home territory in the north. It serves as a vital strategic balancing act for the Liberal player that cannot be ignored and must be dealt with systematically and somewhat evenly. Too much focus on the Rest of Spain Map and the situation on the Game Map will quickly snowball and they will lose control. Focus on the situation on the Game Map and the protection of Cities and Towns and the Carlist Expeditions will gain momentum and turn the countryside red. While the primary war centers on the rugged terrain of northern Spain (Navarre and the Basque Provinces), the uprising mechanic abstractly models scattered insurgencies across the rest of the country. And as you know, insurgencies can be very unpredictable and difficult to contain. You stamp out one area only to see a fire start in another. The Liberal player must divert troops and supply resources to the secondary map to quell these localized rebellions and hunt down Carlist expeditions originating from the north. And, the important thing for the Carlist player and the expansion of the uprisings and the success of their expeditions is the possible generation of generation of Prestige and Victory Points, which is really crucial to their path to victory.
In Action Point 4, we will take a look at the activation system and the use of Action Point Markers.
The Diana Jones Award committee has picked a trio of TTRPG creators as the latest winners of its emerging designer program, who will each receive a $6,500 prize package that includes an all-expenses trip to Gen Con.
Glaiza Champion
Glaiza Champion, J Strautman and Kodi Gonzaga will also receive one-year memberships to trade bodies GAMA and the Tabletop Game Designers Association through the award, as well as prizes including prototyping credit at The Game Crafter, an online badge to Protospiel and a game demo spot on Gen Con TV.
The emerging designer program, now in its sixth year, seeks to amplify the voices of up-and-coming tabletop creators, with a particular focus on designers from marginalized communities.
Filipino-American designer Glaiza Champion describes themself as a ‘third-culture’ kid whose experiences span Brunei, Cambodia, the Philippines and Korea.
Champion is a game designer, writer, performer, podcaster and variety streamer, whose work is rooted in tabletop roleplaying games and storytelling – with designs to date including Beef, Missing Month and Meet Your GelCub.
J Strautman
Toronto-based RPG designer J Strautman, who also works under the name Yes No Goodbye, combines game design with a career as a professional musician.
Strautman has released the GM-less zine-sized RPGs Contact and Insatiable Cravings, and in 2025 co-released A Fool’s Errand through Planet Arcana Games.
Alongside their design work, Strautman tours internationally as a professional bass player, and co-hosted, and scored and edited the tarot-infused science fantasy actual play podcast Planet Arcana.
Los Angeles-based designer Kodi Gonzaga began designing games in 2018, and has since created a growing catalogue of tabletop RPGs including Extra Ordinary, Misfits & Mayhem SRD, Down the Road Through the End of the World, Voxinn: A Firebrands Hack and In This Echoing World.
Kodi Gonzaga
Gonzaga is also a creative writer, actual play performer, Big Bad Con POC Scholar and former IGDN convention coordinator.
Other finalists in this year’s competition included Wyrmspan and Apiary designer Connie Vogelmann, Cretaceous Rails designer Ann Journey, and Elijah Djan – the co-creator of FinMaster, a game designed to help teach families about investing and enable positive discussions about money.
Also making the list of finalists this year was board game designer Gene Koo, who works to promote tabletop game designers based in the Washington DC metropolitan area.
Speaking to BoardGameWire after being selected last year, Leiman said the award had enabled her to attend Gen Con at a time when financial pressures and industry uncertainty would otherwise have made the trip impossible.
“Gen Con is an incredibly important convention for freelance designers to get their work noticed and signed,” Leiman said. “This amazing opportunity for underrepresented and underprivileged folks represents a great step in equalizing this dream of a creative field for all.”
The Diana Jones emerging designer award program was launched in 2021, with Jeeyon Shim picking up the inaugural award.
That award is presented to the person, product, company, event, movement, concept or any other thing that has, in the opinion of its committee, best demonstrated the quality of “excellence” in the world of hobby-gaming in the previous year – and is traditionally hugely wide-ranging in its choice of candidates.
Previous winners across the award’s 22-year run have included Blood Rage designer Eric Lang, Nigerian games industry publisher and evangelist NIBCARD, and the entire ‘actual play’ movement of people livestreaming and podcasting roleplaying games.
Last year’s Excellence in Gaming award was deemed a tie between author Rose Estes and the climate action-themed board game Daybreak, designed by Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace.
Anmelden
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