The German branch of high IQ society Mensa has changed up its long-running board game award to focus entirely on complex, expert-level titles, scrapping its prizes for shorter family games and two-player designs.
Mensa in Deutschland has awarded the MinD Spielepreis since 2009, and has operated a ‘shorter games’ category for more than a decade and lighter two-player games prize since 2019.
But this year’s award will return to just a single category, pitting six expert-level games against each other in order to fill what the organisers see as a gap in the industry.
Jochen Tierbach, who has been organising the MinD Game Award for 16 years, said, “There are already various awards and prizes for family and connoisseur games.
“But for expert games, the really tough ones, there is no such thing in Germany yet. And we feel that the industry wants it.”
The organisers will now take the next ten months to persuade as many Mensans as possible to play the titles and rate them out of 10 for ‘challenge factor’ and ‘replayability’. The winner is set to be announced on November 10.
Last year’s MinD award for complex games saw Tomáš Holek’s space exploration eurogame SETI add to its array of prizes, while Simone Luciani and Dávid Turczi’s Nucleum triumphed in 2024.
Other board game awards focusing specifically on heavier titles include France’s Diamant d’Or, which was launched more than a decade ago to champion complex eurogames the organisers felt were being overlooked by more mainstream board game awards.
Galactic Cruise, by TK King, Dennis Northcott and Koltin Thompson (published in Germany by PD Verlag) MinD committee notes: “In Galactic Cruise, players build a luxurious cruise company for space travel and organise ships, staff and wealthy customers.
“The game impresses with its strong thematic interconnection, a hidden deployment mechanism to determine the order of actions, and challenging resource planning.”
Luthier, by Dave Back and Abe Burson (Funtails) “Luthier puts players in the role of instrument makers who, thanks to generous patrons, equip famous musicians throughout the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods and compete for the chair of various instrument groups in the orchestra.
Shackleton Base, by Fabio Lopiano and Nestore Mangone (Giant Roc) “In Shackleton Base, players build a permanent base at the south pole of the moon, using executives who bring a slight asymmetry to the game.
“Three of seven selectable corporations with special abilities and several interlocking scoring options provide strategic depth and high variety.”
Speakeasy, by Vital Lacerda (Skellig Games) “Speakeasy is set during Prohibition in Manhattan, where players open illegal bars, nightclubs and casinos in different districts and supply them with stolen or moonshine alcohol.
“The appeal of the game lies in the indirect interaction through territory control, competition for lucrative locations and the constant risk of attracting too much attention.”
Thebai, by Dávid Turczi (Pegasus Spiele) “Thebai is a tightly interwoven optimisation game in which population or hoplite cubes are placed on your own estate or on the shared game board to rebuild the Kadmeia of Thebai.
“Resources must be gathered for assignments while trying to promote population to the council or promote hoplites to army commanders in order to successfully repel attacks on the city.”
Thesauros, by Cedric Millet (Elznir Games) “In Thesauros, players first search for and then recover sunken treasures in order to ultimately sell them to a museum at a profit.
“Budget planning several rounds in advance requires strategic foresight and a carefully balanced mix of long-term exploration plans, short-term financing requirements, and disruptive manoeuvres against or by the competition.”
Board game crowdfunding major CMON says it is exploring further IP sales and licensing opportunities in its ongoing push to fulfil over $14m of undelivered campaigns, as it continues its attempt to recover from massive losses racked up over the past two years.
CMON has now announced more IP sales could be on the way alongside making an apology for the delays to its outstanding crowdfunds – some of which are now running almost two years beyond initial delivery estimates.
The company’s remaining significant IP includes the Massive Darkness series, with the most recent instalment, Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach, completing a $2.85m crowdfund on Gamefound early last year – a figure which rose to more than $3.7m including late pledges.
That was CMON’s final crowdfunding campaign before it put all future game development and crowdfunding plans on hold a month later, citing the rising unpredictability of the US tariffs situation.
CMON’s new announcement said its priority remains to deliver all of its unfulfilled crowdfunding campaigns, saying that it is also undertaking ‘batch delivery’ of games to allow retail sales to help fund the manufacturing of remaining products in the line.
Masters of the Universe: The Board Game – Clash for Eternia
$719,664
4,182
January 2024
November 2024
Q3 2026
DCeased
$2,564,789
12,787
December 2023
April 2025
Q4 2026
DC Super Heroes United
$4,478,989
14,040
August 2024
August 2025
Q4 2026
God of War
$832,945
4,388
May 2024
June 2025
Q4 2026
Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach
$2,854,553
9,842
February 2025
March 2026
Q2 2027
A Song of Ice & Fire: Tactics
$1,886,509
6,406
February 2024
February 2025
Q3 2027
Degenesis: Clan Wars
$339,742
1,232
June 2024
July 2025
n/a
Total Dollars
$14,347,167
CMON said, “We want to be absolutely clear: we are not asking backers for additional money for manufacturing. The responsibility to fulfill these campaigns rests entirely with us.”
The status of one outstanding crowdfunding campaign – Degenesis: Clan Wars – remains in limbo after CMON cancelled the project last July, claiming German design studio SixMoreVodka had terminated its contract with the publisher.
SMV founder Marko Djurdjevic told BoardGameWire at the time that his company disagreed with CMON’s account “in the strongest possible terms”, adding that it was not informed about the publisher’s announcement in advance and “certainly did not expect this attempt to shift the blame for the project’s failure onto our plate”.
The latest CMON announcement does not mention whether the publisher will ask any of its campaign backers for extra contributions to cover shipping costs or further volatility in US tariffs.
Last October the publisher added extra charges for backers of its Marvel United: Witching Hour and Cthulhu: Dark Providence pre-orders, asking them to pay an extra $0.69 and $2.30 respectively to cover tariff costs it said it “cannot absorb given our current financial position”.
The company’s new announcement its first significant update for its campaign backers since the start of October last year, and only its third since summer 2025 – a situation which has drawn ire from many backers frustrated with what they see as poor communication from the publisher.
CMON acknowledged in its October 2025 update that “rumors and panic” had been spreading given its lack of communication to crowdfunding backers, which it said had “resulted in us experiencing the highest number of refund requests in CMON’s history”.
It said, “This has created a vicious cycle: The slower fulfillment is, the more refund requests we receive. The more refunds we process, the fewer resources we have to accelerate fulfillment.
“With more resources funnelled into refunds over fulfillment, fulfillment slows down even further. This cycle has snowballed and grown into one of the toughest challenges we have ever faced.”
CMON added last October that the staffing cuts it made earlier in the year had pushed its remaining team “to its limits”.
It said, “With a fraction of employees remaining, every day has been a balancing act between managing production, logistics, customer service, and financial obligations. We have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of day-to-day tasks.”
The company has also suffered two failed attempts to bring in new shareholders to provide much-needed working capital.
It began 2025 with two new shareholders due to invest about $1.39m into the business by picking up a combined 16.66% stake in the company – but those shareholders ultimately failed to hand over the money for their stakes, and the arrangement was scrapped.
The Hong Kong-listed company had hoped to sell more than 360 million newly-created shares in a process which would have valued the company at just over $5m, with the money raised going towards developing new games, marketing and events, and general working capital.
CMON said at the time that it believed the lapsed agreement would have “no material adverse impact on the business” and added that it would continue to seek fundraising opportunities, although it did not provide specific details.
More details about CMON’s current financial situation are set to be unveiled by the end of March, with the publisher required by Hong Kong stock exchange rules to submit its annual results by that date.
The company announced last July that rather than focusing on large scale, miniatures heavy crowdfunding campaigns, it had pivoted to releasing several small-box games direct to retail, which it showed off at the Spiel Essen game fair last October.
Upper Deck, the publisher of the Legendary series of deck-building board games, has been urged not to create a Harry Potter-based tabletop title amid ongoing anti-trans campaigning from the character’s creator, JK Rowling.
Professional organisation The Tabletop Game Designers Association made the plea in the wake of Upper Deck announcing a deal for the “coveted” Harry Potter licence earlier this month, calling on the publisher to “help keep gaming a welcoming environment”.
Upper Deck said on January 7 that it would begin creating collectibles for the Harry Potter franchise, starting with two sets of trading cards due for release later this year, adding that it was “excited to bring its iconic brands and flagship products to the world of Harry Potter”.
The company’s previous collaboration with Warner Bros Discovery Global Consumer Products saw it launch a DC trading card set in March last year, which was followed in October with the announcement of Legendary: A DC Deckbuilding Game.
Following the TTGDA plea and rising numbers of comments across Upper Deck’s social media calling out the decision, the publisher yesterday made a single-sentence response on BlueSky and a BGG thread saying “Upper Deck has no plans to produce Harry Potter games at this time”.
But that response has not allayed the fears of board game designer Marceline Leiman, a TTGDA board member and founder of the Block collective – a group of board gamers she says “share the goal of sharing resources and information, disrupting bigoted spaces, and engaging in serious conversations on the topic of trans rights”.
Marceline Leiman
Leiman said on BlueSky, “Precisely the problem. You can and likely will in the future. WE DON’T WANT THIS. And this isn’t just about concerns of a game coming out from you. Please cancel any and all products that use JKR’s blood money.
“Please respond directly to the issues your community are flagging for you all across your social media that you keep erasing and blocking. It’s undeniable that every company that supports this IP plays an economic function connected to this transphobic death cult machine.
“Making this decision isn’t just a business decision. It’s a value based decision. This could all be connected to ignorance or misunderstanding – and if it is, PLEASE COMMUNICATE AND WORK WITH US. We actively want to work with you and help you learn and grow based on your failure to support us.
“You’re saying you’re transphobic without saying you’re transphobic. You’re telling us to get bent. You’re telling us you don’t care. If you want to be better than your actions have been so far, speak up. Because so far… this non-response has been unacceptable.
“I insist any and all readers following this story continue with the boycott of Upper Deck products. No purchase, promotional video, post, or ANYTHING that can trade them attention for the algorithms. Don’t give them an inch. Not until they give us a proper response and a plan to move forward.”
BoardGameWire contacted Upper Deck several days ago with questions about its plans for the Harry Potter licence and the pushback it had received so far, but no one at the company has responded.
TTGDA was among the critical voices of CGE’s decision, saying at the time, “Author JK Rowling’s extreme anti-trans rhetoric has caused physical and emotional harm to a particularly vulnerable group, and the licensing fees she receives from the game will be used to support these attacks.
“CGE released a statement about the controversy around their decision, but it fell far short of anything meaningful.
“TTGDA is dedicated to fostering diversity in designers and diversity in viewpoints. However we do not accept intolerance and demonization of a specific group as an acceptable viewpoint. This is particularly true as anti-trans rhetoric and action has been increasing in many countries around the world, including the United Kingdom and United States.”
In a follow-up response two weeks later CGE apologised “unreservedly” for failing to take into account how “the harmful views of the story’s creator have escalated into harmful actions”.
The publisher committed to donating 100% of the game’s profits to appropriate charities, and said an amount equal to or greater than the fee paid to license the product would go directly to organisations that provide support for the trans community.
It said at the time, “Many of you have expressed your understandable anger, pain, and disappointment through a variety of platforms. Frankly, we were not prepared for the volume of the response. As a result, multiple accounts and comments were blocked or muted that should not have been.
“We would never want anyone experiencing the pain this situation has caused to then feel like they are being silenced. So for that, too, we want to sincerely apologize.
“Like the world we live in, CGE is made up of individuals with various backgrounds, gender identities, sexual orientations, and belief systems. None of us would ever want to take actions that would hurt or restrict the rights of another human being.
“We commit to remaining supportive of an inclusive and welcoming community of gamers. We believe in the rights of all people to have their own identity, and we reject hate and bigotry in all their forms. Trans rights are human rights.”
Last year Upper Deck lost a long-running legal battle with Ravensburger, which it had accused of stealing the design of its trading card game Rush of Ikorr in order to create the hugely successful Disney Lorcana TCG.
When news broke three months ago that board game giant Asmodee had been named manager of the hugely lucrative Middle-earth licence for tabletop games and accessories, questions naturally abounded within the industry about what that would mean for other publishers hoping to create The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings-based titles. Luke Peterschmidt, the tabletop veteran tasked with running the Middle-earth operation at Asmodee, sat down with BoardGameWire at Spiel Essen following the announcement to outline his vision for the IP, what they want from publishers in terms of pitches, and how they hope to prove naysayers of the deal wrong.
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BoardGameWire:Hi Luke! So a good place to start would be: what were you doing prior to becoming Head of Active Category Management at Asmodee?
Luke Peterschmidt: Before this I was the senior vice president of all the tabletop games for Asmodee, which meant that I ran all of the studios in what we call the tabletop vertical. We have lifestyle – that’s our hardcore games. We have our social games, which are like our lighter party games, and then all the stuff most people think of as tabletop games – so that would be Space Cowboys, Rebel, Office Dog, Z-Man, there’s seven or eight others. So my job was to run all those studios.
I guess the major question about this is how will it work, specifically in terms of third parties coming to you guys saying: “I’ve got a lot of the Rings game. How do we progress?”
Yeah, that’s a great question. Can I back up and answer a different question first? Existing Lord of the Rings games – because there’s a lot of Lord of the Rings games that are not Asmodee that are out right now – nothing changes for them. They still work through [former Embracer Group arm Middle-earth Enterprises]. The thing that will change for them is that we, as Asmodee, in this new role are going to start doing activations, marketing activations, where we will include everybody, whether they’re part of the ‘new regime’ after the deal or the regime before. We have no interest in making anybody’s life worse, or cancelling anybody else’s game.
So that’s the past, backwards. Looking, forward – anybody who wants to pitch us a game, who’s a publisher, can come to us and pitch us a game. My team is publisher agnostic. Asmodee gets no points for an Asmodee studio pitching us a game – and on the distribution side, because Asmodee does a lot of distribution as well, if you use Asmodee distribution, you get no extra points. Our job is to make the right number of Middle-earth games at the right pace, so that every game has space to breathe, and there is a Middle-earth game or gaming accessory for every type of game.
Asmodee games set in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings universe from the last 25 years
That’s the mission, and no part of that mission says, “and Asmodee makes all the games”. So at this show at [Spiel Essen], in fact, the meeting right before this was a game designer pitching us a game which was not an Asmodee pitch. It was a great pitch. That was a designer pitching us. So we told that designer, that was a good idea, we think, but you need to go find a publisher, because we’re going to work with publishers, not individual designers, right? So if you’re a game designer out there: go find a publisher first, and then have the publisher come and pitch to us.
In the case where a good game designer comes to us, we will introduce them to publishers, we will introduce them to our own studios – who may or may not have time or competency for that type of game. Because our studios right now, if they were to add something to their list, they’d have to pull something sort of ‘off the wall’. Our bandwidth isn’t infinite, and they have their own strategies that have been in place a long time.
So a publisher pitches to us, they would show us the games, they’d show us maybe the art style they’re going with – which we can talk about more later – they would show us their ideal release date. The ideal release date will probably never be the date they actually release on. Not because of their schedule, because of our schedule. That thing I said about not having things stack on top of each other, we can’t let everyone say “and I’m releasing at Essen”, or there’ll be four Lord of the Rings games in Essen, right? That’s not fair to any of them. We need every game to have a chance to succeed.
So we will then take our calendar and we’ll start mapping releases on that calendar that we think is the right pace: not too much, nothing’s too close to each other thematically, nothing’s too close to each other visually. You know, we’re never gonna let people run two crowdfunding campaigns at the same time, from two publishers. That would be bad.
So do you anticipate it being, say: one big euro a year, one trick taker, etc?
That’s a great question that I don’t have a good answer for right now. We are in the process of building our calendar, and then we’re going to sit down with [Middle-earth Enterprises], because although we represent Middle-earth as sort of the first group of people to organize what pitches get through, they’re still going to make the final decision, right? But we need a confidence level of like 95% that if something gets past us, and Middle-earth doesn’t say, yes, we’ve failed – or there’s something we didn’t know, like just an old, pre-existing deal that we didn’t know about. That’s our hope.
So the right number of games, we’re still working on, right number of gaming accessories we’re still working on. Some games will be region specific, probably, I don’t know for sure, but someone might come to us with a publisher who says, like, you know, we’re really, really big in Armenia. Great: you can have Armenian rights, this Armenian game, but you have no distribution outside of there. So they would be sort of on their own timeline – they’re not gonna compete with much.
We have some experience recently with the studio internally for releasing a series of Lord of the Rings games. We started with the trick taking game, and then we did the Pandemic game, and then the hobbit game, and those games are very similar to the concept we’re going with now, pacing wise: all those games are different. All those games have been successful, by the way: like, they’ve all had a chance to be successful, which is great. So we’re going to be rational. And one of the reasons Middle-earth picked us for this deal is they trust our experience in the space. My team is not that large, but if I need an opinion about how to do press, I can talk to this guy. If I needed an opinion about some lifestyle game that maybe I’m not an expert in, I can just call someone and go, ‘hey, roleplaying team, help me out here. Is this great? It feels great to me’.
Game pieces from Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship
This does give Asmodee a lot of power, obviously. And there is the potential for conflicts, if, for example, a third-party publisher brings a Lord of the Rings trick taking game to you next year, and it’s very, very good.
Well, we wouldn’t say yes to it because we have a successful one – not our successful one – but we have a successful one in the marketplace. If someone brought us a game that was a direct competitor for War of the Ring, and War of the Ring is still doing well, we’d probably say no to that too. I think people are right to… it’s reasonable for them to not trust the things I’m saying. And I hope that in the next couple of months we will prove to the world that we mean what we say, because we’ll be announcing our first group of licensees. And, we have a lot of work on the back end, just ticky tack stuff like getting our contracts ready and making sure all that works, and ironing out some smooth processes that are boring to everybody but required by everybody, that might slow that down [Note: this interview was conducted at the end of October 2025, and those announcements are still yet to be revealed].
But when those announcements come out, I think people are going to be happy to understand that it’s not just that we will work with external people, but we will also work with smaller companies. Middle-earth has a long tradition of working with microscopic licensees – like, they have a licensee that makes honey only from the flowers grown on The Hobbit set. They have a licensee in Minneapolis that makes guitar effects pedals. They make two different effects pedals, and they probably sell a handful – I don’t know what their sales are, I have no idea. And they’re amazing, and they’re handcrafted and built, right? We don’t want to lose that magic. This is a handcrafted brand – a lot of people feel this brand in their bones. I will never not be impressed by the love for this brand. The level of knowledge super fans have is out of this world. It’s just impressive.
It’s good to hear you say that. And obviously there has to be a lot of trust and goodwill on your side if it’s going to work.
We got to build it up! We got to build it up, yeah, we got to – we’ve got to walk the walk.
But the initial reaction from some people within the industry I spoke to was ‘Well, that just means Asmodee are going to call all the shots, we’re not going to get a look in now’. Like, on paper, fine, yeah, there’s a process, but in reality, you’re going to win out if there’s ever any conflict.
It is absolutely fair to have that thought in your head, and it’s our job to prove that thought wrong. And I mean literally nothing I say, I think, could convince anybody other than action. So yeah, it’s got to be the action, we’ve got to follow it up. And look, we’re an industry of tremendous companies. Like, I love Asmodee, it makes amazing games. I spent many, many, years here working on amazing Lord of the Rings games for people. But there’s amazing games in this hall from everybody. Like, they’re amazing.
What does your ideal slate look like then, at the end of 2026?
Oh, games take so many years to make that the first deals we will be announcing, those games won’t come out for two and a half years, like: games take two and a half years to make. So we will be announcing a slate of who we’re signing and maybe what those games are if the publisher chooses to say, you know, in a reasonable number of months, if you didn’t include the holiday months. Because this interview is in October – we’ve got Thanksgiving in the United States, and we’ve got Christmas coming up, and everyone takes vacations in those months, so the back and forth slows down to a crawl. But yeah, I’m hoping to have something fairly soon that we can talk about: but please write off most of November and December, because everyone’s taking all their vacation days that they haven’t taken yet. American companies aren’t like European companies, where you all take a month off in August. We all don’t take any vacation, and at the end of the year, we go, if we don’t take it right now, we’re never getting it [laughs]. And they slam it all into November and December. And I’m talking about myself [laughs].
You’ve touched upon this already, but I get the sense it’s gonna be a real balancing act. To some extent, if you print more Lord of the Rings games, you make more money because they’re very popular, and people want them, and they want different types. But that’s a tough tightrope to walk, in not accidentally making too many, right?
Yes. And I frame this as: Lord of the Rings is the grandfather of all fantasy IPs. We had this term when I used to work decades ago at Wizards of the Coast, called the JOTWA, which was just another Tolkein world, right? And there’s so many. We don’t think, when we look at the games in the hall here and we see medieval fantasy themed games: we’ll never say there’s too many of those, right? There’s a game about a tavern, there’s a game about building a castle, there’s a game about… whatever. In my mind, if all of those medieval games that we don’t see as competing now… they’re all using Middle Earth elements now, they’re all using elves, they’re all using dwarves. They might call their hobbits halflings, but they’re all there.
So I’m not too worried about too many Lord of the Rings games. I’m worried about too many Lord of the Rings games that are too similar. So when you said trick-taking game pitching, that would be such a quick no for me, and it’d be such a quick no because there’s already one of those, and it’s doing well, and that game deserves time to breathe. I come from a game design background and I would be furious if I had a successful game, and then another game got launched that was mechanically close, appeals to the same person. And there are a lot of types of games that don’t exist for Lord of the Rings. Is there a big, heavy, euro Lord of the Rings game somewhere out there? I don’t know of one, right? There’s just space. Is there a kids game? Has anyone taken a funny shot at Lord of the Rings? Like, I don’t know – Hobbit breakfast! I want someone to bring these pitches.
Cards from The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game
This raises an interesting point, though. So obviously you’re accepting pitches, but when you have ideas such as this, is there license for you to reach out to publishers and say ‘look, we’d actually like this type of Lord of the Rings game made’?
I am so happy you asked that question. So my team is called the active category management team, and the difference is that we are active. When we get to a place – we’re not there yet, because we’re still getting our processes in place – we will actively reach out to partners and say, ‘We need a game like this, and we think you have particular skills in games like that’. Now we might make that reach out, and it’ll take three years before you’ll see a product. And we might take that reach out, and they might just say no. But absolutely: we are actively looking for people for both games and game accessories. Actively is the key word – that’s why we’re here. We’re not waiting. You know, most people that do licensing wouldn’t be at this show accepting pitches. They’d be at home waiting for a phone call from someone who’s interested. My name was on that press release so that people could reach out and contact me and say, I want a meeting. And they did, because turns out, gamers and Lord of rings, that Venn diagram is a bullseye.
And how’s that turned out during this Spiel Essen so far?
We’ve had a lot of pitches – and I can’t talk about the pitches themselves, but there are trends. And it’s so interesting that the trends in games… if you look at games as culture, the culture of today, the stresses of today, are absolutely affecting the styles of game pitches we saw, it’s super interesting. And in a year, I’m gonna write a blog post, and we’ll do another interview, and I’ll explain what I’m talking about. I can’t ruin the confidentiality of the game pitches, but it’s really interesting.
Maybe you can’t talk about this, but I’ll try. So you mentioned heavy euro, which, you know, God yes, that’d be awesome – is there a market for that? I’ve spoken to other publishers in this show who’ve specifically said heavy euros – big, expensive, heavy euros – that the market’s just not really there at the moment. Some will sell, but the market isn’t there. And actually smaller family-plus games, smaller box games, that’s the economic climate we’re in, and that’s really what budgets people have. Is that a concern for you? Or do you just see what turns up?
I think I may be ‘tinted’ by Asmodee’s thought process, which I agree with. I would like to have games at all price points all the time, because at some point the pendulum is going to swing, and we’re never going to guess that right. The odds of us guessing it right are low, and because it takes three years for every euro – probably even longer, right? – I’m not going to say no to that idea, as long as there’s not one in the market. Because in three years, that market may have moved. And look, everyone says low price games sell – until it’s something that people are passionate about. Our recent launch of Fate of the Fellowship, the Pandemic game, sold out almost everywhere – and it’s really expensive. So there’s a market for games. It might not be big, but it’s bigger than honey and guitar pedals [laughs]. Which I love – and I will be buying those guitar pedals.
So what element of this deal just hasn’t been talked about yet?
Oh, great, yes, thank you. Okay, this is a literary license. So if you’re out there and you want to make something that looks like the movie, then we would not be the right people to come people to. But more importantly, that means we are open to alternative art styles, and artists, and we are even okay with people taking little elements of the book – well, Middle-earth is okay with taking little elements of the book – and developing them out further. Like, we don’t want to make five ‘throw the ring in the volcano’ games every year, right?
I would love to see – I’m just going to tell you the kinds of games I’d want to be pitched to me. I would like to have pitched to me games that take small elements of the IP and develop them with focus. A Prancing Pony game. A game about, you know, some spot on the map that if you’re a huge Lord of the Rings fan, you know, but if you’re not, you don’t. Let’s talk about it, let’s get deep into it. Some stuff out of the appendices of the third book – those rights get a little bit weird, but they’re available and we can do really fun stuff. There’s a game that is currently in the works that has done some amazing things with the IP, that real fans will be like, ‘Oh, this is different, this is a thing’. So yeah, I think there’s lots of room for different takes on the IP, and don’t expect visual similarity. I want these studios or these external publishers to be able to create a visual look that… you might walk down an aisle and see six Lord of the Rings games, but you’re going to point at one and go, that’s the one from Kosmos, right? That’s the one from whatever, or that’s my favorite art style, you know? Like, I love the art on Flamecraft. I’d love to see, I don’t know what that looks like for The Lord of the Rings, but that’d be pretty cool!
I think the trick taking game is probably a really good example there, because the art on that is incredible and really makes the game sing. It’s a great game, but I was playing a looking at the cards yesterday and thinking ‘this is fantastic’ – the armour on Gimli the dwarf, for example, where it’s chain mail, but it’s just like swishing circles in that stained glass style?
I love the art on that game. I was working on that game early on when I ran that studio, and we picked that style not just for, like, the style, but we picked it because we knew stained glass was the thing that survives in temples for a long time. And we feel like Lord of the Rings survives like a temple for a long time. So we went deep into it with that one. But it was different: no one confused it with a Fantasy Flight product, right? And that’s the goal, and we want to see that. The original drawings – most people don’t know this – the original drawings of Gandalf, he was like, kind of a pudgy dude. Legolas, you know, he’s, he’s a mix of two types of elves, which means there’s a 50/50 chance he has straight white hair or curly brown hair – it’s just that the movie showed him a straight white hair. Somebody wants to do a Legolas with curly hair, bring it. That’s literally, that’s your interpretation.
I haven’t had anything pitched from roleplaying games, and there’s a roleplaying game that exists now from Free League that’s really good. [Crowdfunding and miniatures] pitched us an idea, there’s an idea there. We’ve got a couple of pitches for miniatures and crowdfunding from a couple different places. But, everyone has to earn their spot. And I gotta be fair to that team, that team is pretty new here. Not new in experience level – I mean, it’s David Preti, he’s done tremendous things in crowdfunding – but they’re pretty new in the Asmodee world. And we are a big company, and it usually takes a little while to find your place.
Any publishers interested in pitching a Middle-earth game to Asmodee can do so by emailing METTGlicensing@asmodee.com.
A trio of comings and goings from the board game industry for the year so far – if you have news of a new role, hire or job change within the industry that you’d like mentioned on BoardGameWire, please send an email with the details to the editor, Mike Didymus-True, on:
Ross Thompson, Director of Marketing, Atomic Mass Games (Asmodee)
Ross Thompson, the director of marketing for Asmodee miniatures games studio Atomic Mass Games, has announced he is leaving the company after more than two years in the role.
Photo Credit: Ross Thompson
Thompson joined Atomic Mass as senior marketing manager in November 2023, following almost a year as crowdfunding and marketing manager at Gloomhaven publisher Cephalofair Games. He was promoted to director of marketing in March 2024.
The move comes three months after Thompson won a special election to be named a media and events director on the board of directors at tabletop gaming trade organisation GAMA.
Thompson has also spent the past nine years running the Tabletop Game Jobs Facebook group he launched alongside Jessica Fisher, which has grown in that time to almost 26,000 members.
Writing on BlueSky about his decision to move on from Atomic Mass, Thompson said, “With a new year, comes new changes. I’ve enjoyed my time with Atomic Mass Games over the past two years, but I’ve made the decision to start on the next chapter.
“We have accomplished so much, with the relaunch of Star Wars: Legion and all the releases for Marvel: Crisis Protocol and Star Wars: Shatterpoint. The team here at Atomic Mass Games is filled with incredibly passionate people working to bring the power of play & hobby to tabletop miniatures wargaming.
“Getting to work with all of our partners across the Asmodee space, from group, distribution and studio has been an incredible experience. I am very thankful to have been able to work with so many fantastic people around the world and grateful for those relationships.
“Looking forward to seeing where this takes me. Thank you to everyone at Atomic Mass Games and Asmodee and Ill see you around!”
Thompson kicked off his career in the tabletop industry 17 years ago as the founder and organiser of San Diego-based gaming convention Kingdom Con, which operated for a decade before its last event in 2019.
He began working in retail support and development at Privateer Press in 2010, before becoming a marketing manager at CMON in 2011 and switching to a community manager role at Soda Pop Miniatures in 2012.
Thomson’s other previous jobs in the industry have included head of trade marketing at UK-based Steamforged Games and marketing manager at The Op.
Ilya Ushakov, Director Of Marketing, Druid City Games
Former Incredible Dream marketing director Ilya Ushakov has been named director of marketing at Wonderland’s War publisher Druid City Games.
Photo Credit: Ilya Ushakov
The hire comes five months after Ushakov left Kinfire Chronicles publisher Incredible Dream amid heavy downsizing at the venture capital-backed studio due to volatile US tariff changes.
Ushakov also runs the board games-focused Kovray YouTube channel, Instagram account and Twitter feed with partner Tylor Murray.
A statement from Druid City confirming Ushakov’s hire said, “We’re incredibly excited to welcome Ilya Ushakov as our new director of marketing.
“From the moment we started talking, it was clear that Ilya brings not only a strong strategic vision, but also a genuine enthusiasm for board gaming and connecting with people in meaningful ways.
“We’re already grateful for his insight, energy, and collaborative spirit!”
Ushakov joined Incredible Dream in 2023 as social media and community manager, before being promoted to marketing manager in early 2024 and marketing director in the summer of that year.
The role was his first in the tabletop gaming industry, following a career which included project management at the Canadian Mental Health Association and project and co-ordination work at the Edmonton Chamber of Voluntary Organizations.
Ross Connell, Head of Crowdfunding at Mantic Games
Board game marketing and communications specialist Ross Connell has left North Star Games after almost five years to become head of crowdfunding at UK fantasy and sci-fi board game and miniatures maker Mantic Games.
Photo Credit: Ross Thompson
Connell joined North Star as marketing manager in 2021, and worked on projects including Nature, the redesign of the publisher’s 2014 hit Evolution, which raised about $850,000 through a Kickstarter campaign in late 2024.
Last year’s Kinderspiel des Jahres-winning publisher Schmidt Spiele saw its sales rise nearly 8% to €61.5m in 2025, citing children’s and family games as a key driver of its growth.
The veteran board game maker, which has a history stretching back to 1907, said its “core area” of children’s and family games grew 6% last year, with Wolfgang Warsch-designed 2025 Kinderspiel winner Topp Die Torte highlighted for achieving “encouraging sales figures”.
Schmidt Spiele said its classic board game brands Mensch ärgere Dich nicht and Yahtzee – known as Kniffel in Germany – were key contributors to that result, as were popular titles from its Klein & Fein series of small-box dice games, which includes the Warsch-designed Ganz Schön Clever! (That’s Pretty Clever!) range.
The publisher, which also makes puzzles, plushies and toys, is best known in hobby board games for critical and commercial successes Quacks of Quedlinburg and Daybreak – winners of the Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel respectively – and Ganz Schön Clever, a Kennerspiel des Jahres nominee in 2018.
The company said during the unveiling of its 2023 results that sales for its family and children-focused division had remained flat, albeit at a level it said has been on a high since 2020.
Schmidt Spiele managing director Axel Kaldenhoven said of the 2025 results, “The growth across all product ranges confirms both our strategic direction and the strength of our brands and products.
“Classic games, strong licensed themes, and innovative new products complement each other perfectly and form the basis of our success.”
Schmidt added that a key component of its ongoing success was its commitment to attending trade fairs including Spielwarenmesse, Spiel Essen, SPIEL DOCH! Dortmund, Brettspiel Con Berlin, Hobbymesse Leipzig and SPIELidee Rostock, which allowed it to cultivated exchanges with partners and game designers and continuously expanded its network, in addition to making sales to consumers.
The company’s 2026 releases are set to include Reiner Knizia-designed Kniffel: Das Duell, a tenth-anniversary re-design of Inka and Markus Brand’s Encore! (Noch Mal!), titled Noch X-Mal!, and magical ingredients tile placement game Morty Sorty Magic Shop from Challengers co-designer Markus Slawitscheck.
Hachette has signed an exclusive UK and Ireland distribution deal with Captain Flip publisher PlayPunk, the board game studio launched three years ago by 7 Wonders and Hanabi designer Antoine Bauza and Repos Productions co-founder Thomas Provoost.
A statement from PlayPunk said, “We are more than delighted to be working with the Hachette UK team. They are true enthusiasts who have shown nothing but genuine passion for our two games.
“We are confident that Captain Flip, Zenith, and our future titles are in good hands!”
Hachette Boardgames UK CEO Flavien Loisier added, “We are humbled to work with PlayPunk. They have immense industry experience and knowledge, and have set out to produce high-quality, long-lasting games developed with passion and attention to every single detail.
“We can see that passion in the two brilliant titles they have already published. It is their goal to create ageless, evergreen games that make them and their titles a perfect fit for our portfolio. We are beyond excited about this partnership!”
Hachette began a heavy push into board games in 2019 by picking up French tabletop publisher and distributor Gigamic, French distributor Blackrock Games, and by founding in-house publishers Studio H and Funnyfox.
It has since gone on to buy publishers including Le Scorpion Masqué, Sorry We Are French, Catch Up Games, La Boîte de jeu and Hiboutatillus, Canadian board game distributor Randolph, and now runs Hachette branded board game operations in the US, UK and the Benelux region.
Hachette Boardgames UK, which was launched in 2021, currently localises and distributes more than 200 games in the UK and Ireland.
Bauza made a name for himself with Ghost Stories in 2008, before going on to design the widely lauded 7 Wonders in 2011 and Spiel des Jahres winner Hanabi in 2013. His other games include 7 Wonders Duel, Draftosaurus, Conan and Terror in Meeple City.
Provoost previously co-founded 7 Wonders and Ghost Stories publisher Repos Productions in 2004, before selling the business to board game giant Asmodee six years ago.
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