Late last night I returned from an amazing 3-day trip to Montreal, primarily to attend a gaming convention called Ludicon (~1400 attendees). Despite a multi-leg flight both ways and a very social weekend for this introvert, I returned feeling rejuvenated, hopeful, and energized.

How is that possible? I spend most of my days behind a computer or at a table, by choice. Most of my interactions with people (outside my immediate friend group) happen online. On any given day the volume of opinions and the way they’re expressed can be a lot to absorb. It sometimes leads to me wondering if the drive to bring joy to tabletops is too much of an uphill struggle.

But then I spend a few days just playing games and talking about games in person, and I’m reminded: Most people are in this hobby because games bring them a LOT of joy. They’re actively looking for reasons to love games and to share their passion. When they play a game, they are actively seeking joy rather than finding reasons for angst.

So really, this is a note of gratitude: Thank you to everyone at Ludicon who went out of their way to say hi, who brought their box top or rulebook for me to sign, to take a photo with me, to talk about games or play games with me, and to share meal time with me. The magnitude of your kindness, inclusivity, and enthusiasm was truly rejuvenating for me. I hope you had just as much fun at Ludicon as I did.

A few quick takeaways from the experience:

1. With BGG@Sea last year and now Ludicon, I’m trying to attend more open-gaming conventions in new-to-me places. However, I wouldn’t have escalated Ludicon to the top of my list were it not for a personal invitation from Marc at ILO (a game distributor) a few months ago. I didn’t know Marc, and there was no pressure from him, just a genuine endorsement of Ludicon and Montreal. “Here’s something I enjoy, and here’s why I think you might enjoy it too” is sometimes all it takes to invite someone to your table.
2. I was reminded of how helpful it is as a publisher to sell a few distinctive shirts (which we do on our webstore), as it really helps people stand out if they’re connected to your brand. I was able to identify a few people familiar with Stonemaier Games that way, and I went over to say hi to each of them.
3. I continue to love conventions with a focus on open gaming. I understand that conventions are a great place for publishers to showcase and sell their games, but I just want to float around and play published games in a welcoming space with wonderful people. I’m so glad that conventions like Geekway to the West and Ludicon exist. Both of them do have some vendors, many of which are focused on demos and teaching, which is nice when you’re wandering around deciding what to play next.
4. I appreciate seeing people at conventions who are aware of how their choices impact those around them, whether it’s personal hygiene (shower and wear fresh clothes every day), health (wear a mask if you’re coughing a lot), etc. I was largely impressed by the level of personal awareness at Ludicon.

Also, Montreal was a lot of fun. We walked all around the city, ate good food, and drank good coffee. It seemed like everyone there was bilingual in both French and English. Check out today’s Instagram post for some photos.

I loved my experience at Ludicon and hope to return in a few years. If you’re looking for a “play lots of games in a fun place with amazing people”-style convention to attend, I highly recommend it. Do you have another favorite convention in this style?

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

The post Ize Press Expands into Tabletop Gaming appeared first on Graphic Policy.

During the “Yen Press Industry Panel” at Anime NYC, Ize Press had numerous announcements, including its first foray into tabletop gaming.

2026 saw the third iteration of Roll The Dice Cornwall’s South West Cornwall Games Expo, and it was the best yet. The first time was at a small church hall in Helston. The second was in a bigger hall on the outskirts. This time it basically took over the old Cattle Market Building and Coronation Park. and it was brilliant. Hot sunshine, vendors selling anything and everything geek…

Source

Welcome to Gen Con week! In a similar way to Essen Spiel, the games, announcements, and events at Gen Con attract attention well beyond the tens of thousands of attendees (which is both a lot of people and also a very small percentage of people who play games worldwide).

Stonemaier Games and Meeple Source have again joined forces at Gen Con to share a booth (#2909). Wingspan Pocket, Duel of Meloch, Origin Story: Heroes & Villains, Wingspan Americas, Finspan: Sharks & Reefs, Viticulture Bordeaux, Euphoria Essential, and more will be available (see the full list of products here). You can walk up to the booth to buy any of those products, or you can place an order with Meeple Source now for pick up at Gen Con.

I was hoping to make a day trip over to Gen Con like last year, but a few circumstances–including a recent slipped disc in my back–have led me to decide that I won’t make to Indianapolis this year. However, you’re in great hands with the demo team at our booth and the events area, and you can also find designers for some of our games (Wingspan’s Elizabeth Hargrave on Thursday from 3-6pm and Finspan’s David Gordon on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 2-3pm) and even my podcast co-host, Mitchell Whitfield.

In addition to our games, I wanted to highlight two hidden gems that I highly recommend seeking out at Gen Con:

Kano by Matagot: This is one of the best abstract games I’ve ever played, largely because it doesn’t feel abstract thanks to how the theme (Japanese scroll painting) and components (resin painting jars, cloth board, stunning art on the tiles) intertwine with the mechanisms. Kano is the perfect combination of extrinsic motivations (goals presented by the game) and intrinsic motivations (creating a beautiful painted scroll), with each type of motivation feeding into the other. This is the type of gateway plus game that I would play with anyone. It’s brand new and has flown under the radar, but I think this will be a big hit once people see it and start to play it.

Trick to the Future by Gamehead: I love time travel fiction, and I love trick-taking games. Trick to the Future combines those two genres by structuring the card numbers in the format of a digital clock and giving players “fuel rods” to modify those numbers (e.g., with one rod, a 3 could become a 9). It’s such a clever system to increase player agency and immersion, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes time travel fiction and/or trick-taking games.

If you’re attending Gen Con, I hope you stop by the Stonemaier booth, even if it’s just to say hi to the amazing demo team. If you’re not attending Gen Con, all Stonemaier products there are already on our webstore, and I hope you play some great games this week.

Do you have a recommendation for anyone who is attending a big convention for the first time?

Also read:

• How to Survive and Thrive at Gen Con (or Any Big Convention)
• 10 Things You Should Know About Gen Con

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

A little after 9am on Thursday, I boarded my first train of a journey that has become increasingly familiar over the years. It was my sixth visit to the convention, having first attended in 2019 before COVID forced a break, but I returned in 2022. It was also my fourth time making the journey by train. The first leg carried me from the South Coast to London Victoria, followed by a tube trip to London Euston and a welcome lunch break before the faster train north. By around 4pm, I was walking through the NEC halls once again, ready for another weekend at UK Games Expo 2026.

The post UK Games Expo 2026 (Saturday Review) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

My favorite way to market our products is to facilitate and encourage them to get to the table more often. Your table, my table, the tables of reviewers, ambassadors, etc–any table will do. The more our products get to the table, the more they’re exposed to people, and hopefully the more fun people can have with them.

One of my favorite ways to accomplish this goal is through play-and-win donations for game conventions and 100+ person gaming events.

Play-and-win is a convention concept where people can check out a game, play it, and then enter their name in a lottery to win that specific game at the end of the convention. If I donate a play-and-win game to a convention, it can be experienced by dozens and dozens of people in a short amount of time. Only one of those people will win it, so if other people liked the game, they’re now informed in their decision to purchase it later.

The play-and-win room at the recent Geekway to the West convention was a bustle of activity right until the end of the convention. Geekway solicited and invested in over 140 different play-and-win titles, each with multiple copies. In total, these games had nearly 15,000 reported plays over the course of 4 days.

Geekway does play-and-win exceptionally well, but they aren’t alone. There are over 250 conventions listed on the 2026 tab of the play-and-win Google Sheet I maintain, so publishers have lots of options when choosing events to target. But which games should you send to these conventions?

Geekway play-and-win coordinator Jeff Hiatt was very kind to send me the data from the Geekway 2026 play-and-win, and he gave me permission to share and analyze it. The sheet is here. I’ll focus on the first four columns, but you’re welcome to contribute your thoughts to any data in the comments.

I’ve highlighted the most-played games in blue (1-30), the highest “desire to win ratio” in yellow, and the crossovers in green.

Number of Plays

The top 5 games that were played the most were Hot Streak, Magical Athlete, Bomb Busters, Moon Colony Bloodbath, and Hummingbirds. All of the games in the top 10 were released in the last year.

For this and the other categories I’ll discuss, I’m hesitant to draw blanket conclusions or stretch to find commonalities among the top 5. For example, there are 2 racing games here, but not every racing game will garner 250+ plays at a convention.

Average Player Count

Around half of the games with the highest average player count are among those that reported high numbers of plays: Hot Streak, Magical Athlete, French Toast, Bomb Busters, Trinket Trove, and Spooktacular.

However, sorting the data this way doesn’t seem to indicate that higher player counts equate to more convention plays. I think player count flexibility is more indicative of a game’s popularity at an event like Geekway–if you grab a game off the shelf, it’s nice if you can just play it with one other person or if you can invite a few others to join too.

Desire to Win

I calculated this by dividing the number of player who wanted to win a game by the total number of plays, indicating that people had a great time with the game. The top 5 were Hot Streak, Magical Athlete, Pinched, 12 Rivers, and Spooktacular. Some games with fewer plays but a high level of desirability were Sprocketforge, Mission: Red Planet, Rebirth, and Pergola.

The main pattern I see here is great table presence, whether it’s component hooks like in 12 Rivers or Sprocketforge or eye-catching art.

Rating Delta

This is perhaps my favorite data point. Which games rate significantly higher at a convention than their BoardGameGeek rating suggests? I think this is so important to pay attention to, as the top-rated games BGG would lead us to believe that people value heavy, complex, long games over everything else. But a vast variety of games bring joy to tabletops, including lighter games.

The top 5 rating delta games were French Toast, Purrramid, Tembo, Australis, and Catan.

Granted, the boisterous environment of a convention is atypical for gaming. Some games shine at events and may not have the same luster when it’s just you and a few friends at home. Also, you might take a look at the games that actually left a worse impression at Geekway than their BGG rating would indicate. Those are the types of games a publisher might avoid contributing to play-and-win (I mostly see longer, heavier games here).

Anecdotal Analysis and Conclusions

Here I’ll look at the games with the both the most plays AND the highest desire to win ratio:

1. Hot Streak
2. Magical Athlete
3. Bomb Busters
4. Moon Colony Bloodbath
5. Trinket Trove
6. Formaggio
7. Fate of the Fellowship
8. 12 Rivers
9. Spooktacular
10. French Toast
11. Sanctuary

• ease of learning: Most of these games skew towards easy to learn and teach.
• game length: Most of these games are played in under an hour.
• game weight: Most of these games are on the lighter side.
• price: Most of these games are less than $50.

Overall, the types of games I see exceling in play-and-win are those released in the last year, have player count flexibility, feature great table presence, and are on the lighter side.

Despite those patterns, I still think it’s completely fine to send a variety of games to play-and-win conventions. Take a look at the Google Sheet and you’ll see games of all shapes, sizes, weights, prices, player counts, etc. I think this speaks to the diversity of gamers at events like Geekway.

What did you learn from this data? Are there certain types of games you seek out at conventions?

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If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

I spent the last 4 days at Geekway to the West, an absolutely incredible game convention in St. Louis. Today I’ll share some of my highlights and observations through three lenses: Jamey as a publisher, designer, and gamer.

Publisher Jamey

Stonemaier Games participates in a few ways at Geekway: We donate a lot of games to their play-and-win section, which has proven year after year to be a great way to share our games with people who haven’t tried them.

We also have a booth in their vendor hall (Geekway primarily focuses on casual gaming, but they do have vendor space too) run by my coworker Dave and staffed by an amazingly generous demo team. Our main intent at the booth is simply for people to have fun and learn about our games, and it’s a nice bonus if we sell some games too (this year it looks like our booth revenue was around $16k, and people could also place orders on our webstore and pick up their order at Geekway since our warehouse is located in St. Louis).

I like that Geekway provides publishers a lot of different options. You can have a booth if you want, but you could also have a demo table through Double Exposure, you could just put games in play-and-win, or you can just wander around and connect with people (or scout games to potentially publish).

I’ll also add that having several years of t-shirt and hoodie sales provides a really nice way for me to look around any room at Geekway and identify people who know Stonemaier Games. The warm hoodies were particularly helpful, as the main hall at Geekway was quite cold this year.

Designer Jamey

There are two sides to Designer Jamey at conventions: past and future. For games I’ve already designed, it’s immensely gratifying to see people playing them. I don’t think I’m alone, as I saw other designers checking in on people playing their games (this happened to me while playing the card game Oopsy Poopsy). I taught and played Euphoria Essential and Origin Story, and I had a great time learning the game Dark Heists from the designer, Moe Poplar.

Then there are the games I have yet to to design. I love playing a variety of published games at Geekway to learn from them. This year I played 14 new-to-me games and 6 games I already knew (it’s nice to revisit games to look at them from a fresh perspective).

Geekway provides several opportunities for designers to get feedback about unpublished games, including the clever Playtest to Win area.

Last, I’m so grateful for everyone who either played a game with me or just came up to me to say hi. Those moments and that time means the world to me. As someone who has social anxiety about approaching people, seeing others do it to me gives me the courage to do the same for others. Thank you for the inspiration!

Gamer Jamey

While Geekway is part work for me, it’s also part play. I love playing games with delightful people, and Geekway is full of them. In total I played 20 different games at Geekway (plus a round of disc golf) with around 60 people. I spent most of my time in a smaller ballroom in the first floor of the connected hotel–it was a much quieter in there (and warmer) than the main convention hall. Thanks to everyone who took the time to play with me!

I appreciate play-and-win as a gamer too, as it helps me narrow down which games to play out of so many options (though I did also check out both Blood Rage and The King Is Dead from the main library to revisit them). Without play-and-win, I wouldn’t have discovered the delightful game 3 Chapters, experienced the whimsy of the cat game Oopsy Poopsy, or delved into the strategic cleverness of Galileo Galilei.

While Geekway does have a few events people can sign up for, the vast majority of the convention is casual gaming. This, I’ve found, is my preferred structure for a convention, as I like the fluid nature of going from game to game at my own pace, remaining flexible as to what I play and how long I play. I’m grateful to Geekway for embracing this format, and I’m always open to suggestions for other similar conventions!

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If you were at Geekway to the West this weekend (or you’ve attended a gaming event in 2026), I’d love to hear a few of your highlights!

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If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

Yes, it's that time of year again when everyone starts to panic, because the biggest UK board game event is just around the corner. There is a scramble for train tickets, hotel rooms (mind you, you're probably too late, if you haven't booked one yet), on-site parking, visitor passes, water bottles, comfortable shoes and lots of other bits and pieces that you need to attend UK Games Expo 2026.

The post UK Games Expo 2026 (Preview) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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