by Justin Bell

“Daddy, can we play Thunder Road: Vendetta?”

One of the rules we have here at Casa de Bell is absolute: if the kids want to play a game from the adult game closet, I always say yes. (There’s only one game off-limits around here: Voidfall. That’s because I’m not teaching it…yet.)

One of the beauties of having kids who are now 12 and 9 is that many of the games in the adult game closet are drifting into the family game closet. As the kids get older, it’s been such a joy introducing new concepts and mechanics that were a bit dense even two or three years ago.

The nine-year-old was the one asking about Thunder Road: Vendetta. He was interested for two main reasons: first, he wanted to play the base game with the Carnival of Chaos expansion, because he loves the arena-style nature of that expansion map.

The second reason is why he really wanted to play: my boy was hoping to have another chance to beat down his dad.

In our first play of Carnival of Chaos, he acquired a “Super-Weapon” called Li’l Sammy, then used said Super-Weapon to shoot down my chopper—normally, choppers are invulnerable—on his way to a dominant victory where he wiped out all my cars.

(Yes, TR:V superfans, you are correct—there is a different scoring system in Carnival of Chaos, tied to “scrap”, the in-game cash that can be earned for damaging opponents. However, my son and I are simple with our approach to this game—the score is all about car kills. He won that first matchup three eliminations to one.)

After his victory, my son spent the next few days gloating about his victory.

At dinner: “Daddy, can you pass me…the Li’l Sammy?”
Before bed: “Hopefully you can beat other players to make up for your loss to me in Thunder Road.”
Walking to school: “I kinda want to play Thunder Road again to see if I can get the Li’l Sammy card. It was so cool shooting down your chopper.”

And on and on. For better or worse, my kids like variety; over the next few weeks, they kept asking to play other games. Weeks turned into months, and while I had the chance to play Thunder Road: Vendetta with other adults during that timeframe, I didn’t break out the expansion again until last week. That’s when my son walked into the game closet, saw the handsome red all-in Maximum Chrome edition copy of Thunder Road, and remembered Li’l Sammy.

“Daddy, can we play Thunder Road: Vendetta? Hopefully, I can get Li’l Sammy again.”

***

After I finished up the work day, I set up the Thunder Road: Vendetta base game with Carnival of Chaos on our kitchen table.

I insist upon using the Choppe Shoppe expansion content. That’s because I—well, now, both my son and I—love using the crew leaders and the car upgrades. The leaders use alternate “command boards”, the dashboard that accommodates each round’s extra die to trigger powers like nitro or the chopper, with asymmetric powers.

My son selected Bumpo the Clown as his crew leader for this play, a spooky-looking character who reminds me of Sweet Tooth from the Twisted Metal car combat games on PlayStation. Bumpo’s power is fine—he can reroll the direction die when his cars move in a slam—but his command board includes the Bump power, which triggers on 6s and allows Bumpo to move the other car on the first slam that turn, even if Bumpo has the smaller car in that slam.

I went with Machine Gun Joe, Esq. to lead my crew. Joe has a somewhat overpowered ability (at least, in the eyes of the nine-year-old, who has a tendency to call everything “OP” if it is not his own powers) to reroll the shoot die once during every attack action.

While I love the crew leaders, the best part about the Choppe Shoppe expansion is the car upgrades. During setup, each of a player’s three cars get outfitted with their own individual powers. For this game, I had a couple of simple upgrades—the Boost Switch, which gave me a +1 on movement, and the Heavy Frame, which grants the assigned car an extra damage slot (three slots instead of the normal two).

But I also had the Onboard Computer, which allowed me to ignore the effects of damage tokens when I assigned it to my large car (The large car is always the one that takes the most damage). So while I would still take damage during the game, it wouldn’t turn ugly, like things tend to do during a Skid or a Blast-Off.

With setup complete, we got rolling. The way the Terrordome (whoops, “Carnival of Chaos”) works, players drive their cars from three different entry-point track pieces outside the arena directly inside, then spend the game navigating pop-up hazards in the form of traps known as “Killer Pillars” that can eliminate cars through various game effects.

Of course, there are other hazards like those pesky opposing cars bent on using all manner of Super-Weapons and their Choppe Shoppe upgrades to take you out. There are a bunch of ways to get wiped out in the ring, and in my experience, games of Carnival of Chaos are a little quicker than the base game, especially at higher player counts.

Thanks to six Super-Weapon tokens scattered around the board, players are always gunning for the best stuff in the game. And while both my son and I were hoping Li’l Sammy would show up so that we could build on its legend, both of us drew cards that represented a bunch of fun toys that we tried to use to take each other out.

Unfortunately for my son, I got my hands on the Super-Weapon goodies first. Sometimes, love is a beatdown.

***

My first Super-Weapon pickup was the BFG…no, not that one. Here, the Big Friendly Gun (complete with a picture of what looks like a big chain gun with a smiley-face balloon on top) deals an extra face-down damage token each time the gun’s owner shoots and hits. I used that to deal two damage to my boy’s small car (the Doom Buggy) on a single turn, making it inoperable.

The Big Friendly Gun made more friends later in the game, when I used it to shut down my son’s medium car, the Avenger. My boy fought back. He grabbed a Super-Weapon token that became the Laser Kebab, which can shoot from the front arc of its assigned car any number of spaces, not just the one-space range of spaces directly in a car’s front arc. He poked holes in two of my cars the next two times he had the chance during his turns from across the arena. Damage, yes, but no inoperable status plays or eliminations.

Slams of inoperable cars into Killer Pillars and a Blast Off that shot one of his cars into the arena walls got me to a place where I was running a 3-on-1 break for the rest of the game. (Thunder Road: Vendetta vets, be honest: isn’t it a blast to watch what happens during a Stunt Die roll of a Blast Off? Goodness gracious, it’s hard to beat those moments in any game!)

Later, I picked up the Auto-Cannon for one of my cars, which lets a player shoot, move, then shoot again. My final Super-Weapon pick-up was the Torsion Dynamo, which removes a car’s guns but guarantees that the opposing car always moves in a slam. (Putting the Dynamo on my small Doom Buggy made that puppy a force!)

None of that mattered though…because as it turned out, I found an opportunity to take out my son’s last car with flair, using maybe my favorite elimination method in the game.

On my final turn, I was able to slam my son’s final car, the Eliminator, forward one space…right into the same space as his chopper, which he had tried and failed to use on his previous turn to take out my medium-sized Avenger.

Any car that ends its turn in the same space as any chopper is automatically eliminated. My son grew up in that final moment, and took his defeat like a man, ending our run of chaos (ahem, Chaos, with a capital C), with daddy taking home a three-to-nothing victory.

Even though Li’l Sammy never reared its ugly head, my son and I had a blast. Chucking those dice and talking a little smack and kitting out our cars and trying, but failing, to use our choppers, nicknamed “Blue Thunder” and “Airwolf” to wipe each opposing set of cars off the grid…it was all kinds of fun, win or lose.

I love playing games with the kids. I’m loving the chances I have now to get in more plays of the games I prefer, creating more memories along the way. And, I don’t mind handing out the occasional beatdown, especially when I can avenge an earlier loss.

That’s because I know what’s coming. The kids love wiping the floor with daddy from time to time, and giving them more chances just means playing more board games.

by Justin Bell

Yep, I get it—two new interview series across back-to-back weeks! (Don’t worry, I’ll be back to sharing random musings with next week’s column.)

I love the work that our team here at BGG puts into Designer Diaries, much of which is driven by the game designers themselves. I especially love reading Designer Diaries after I have played a game that recently got the Diary treatment, to get a sense of why the designers made certain choices during the journey from concept to final production.

In that spirit, I will conduct interviews with the people involved with every other part of the development cycle. A great deal of work goes into making a board game, well beyond just the game’s design. The business of tabletop is fascinating to me, so much so that I count more people behind the scenes (marketing, art, production) as a part of my network than designers, fellow content creators, and gamers. I still meet fans who give the lion’s share of the credit to a game designer for a product making it to market, without realizing how many people collaborate to make those dreams a reality…even in cases where a designer self-publishes a game. It’s quite rare that a game makes it all the way to your hands when only one or two people were involved. It takes a village!

So, let’s talk marketing. Our inaugural piece on the marketing process of prepping a tabletop game features Eveline Foubert, the Marketing & Events Manager at Mighty Boards. I met Eveline a few years ago at a show and we hit it off right away, mainly because of her willingness to talk smack almost nonstop.

We recently had a back-and-forth online, about Eveline’s background, the core audience for Mighty Boards titles, and the upcoming campaign for Yotei, launching on crowdfunding this week.



—----

Justin Bell (JB): I’m always curious to learn how people even find a marketing job in tabletop. How did you get your start with Mighty Boards?

Eveline Foubert (EF): Well actually, I scored my first marketing and PR job in the video game industry about 12 years ago. I was an avid Borderlands gamer, dressed up as CL4P-TP at a local expo (yes, there are photos), and ran into the marketing director of 2K Games! He loved the cosplay so much that we started chatting and eventually he offered me my first internship. From there, I eventually moved on to Electronic Arts, where I worked for a year or two before taking a short break from games. I travelled a bit, worked in the affiliate marketing and tech industry for a while, and eventually ended up in Malta. Five years ago, a mutual friend let me know Mighty Boards was looking for a marketing manager, and it just felt right to get back into the gaming industry!

***

JB: Mighty Boards has been around for a while now. How do you and the team define your core audience? I know that Mighty Boards makes a range of game types, but for this particular campaign, what kinds of players are you going after?

EF: We’ve come to see our core audience as players who appreciate beautiful illustrations, interesting themes, solid game mechanics and strategy. They might not always play on a weekly basis and aren’t necessarily looking for the heaviest games, but they do want something that feels engaging and memorable every time they play. A collaboration with a famous game designer doesn’t hurt either. With Yotei specifically, we’re aiming to reach an even wider audience, including people who are just getting into the hobby, and people who love Japanese games and experiences. Yotei is a game that works really well for both hobby gamers and those who might be newer to modern board games. It sits right at that intersection between accessibility and depth, which is a space we always aim to claim.



***

JB: I know the team works in a glamorous, floor-to-ceiling glass structure similar to a museum like the Louvre. (I’m kidding.) But I do know you sit with the team in Malta. How does that influence the point at which you learn about upcoming titles and begin to get involved in building ideas for your next campaign?

EF: Our office is even better: this little rock in the Mediterranean offers 300+ days of sun per year, so we get to go swim after work and play games on the beach! That being said, the rock is little (compared to mainland Europe), so we get most of our board game news online, through industry connections or at fairs we attend. We spotted Yotei at SPIEL Essen last year and completely fell in love with it. The team at Kumagera put their heart and soul into turning their local town into a board game and it’s hard not to appreciate the charm of Yotei and its people. In fact, Gordon Calleja and David Chircop (two of the principals at Mighty Boards) are in Japan right now, experiencing Hokkaido first hand!

***

JB: I know that a lot of your games go straight to crowdfunding. What success have you had going direct to retail? Is that an option at this stage?

EF: Retail is definitely an important part of our strategy, and we’ve seen solid success bringing some of our games to retail. Art Society was our first big retail project, which became the Game of the Year at Barnes & Noble! This year, Tenby definitely takes the cake. Deciding whether a game goes to crowdfunding or not depends on various factors, like community demand, funding needs and timeline. Crowdfunding is definitely a very big part of our strategy. It plays a key role in building awareness and creating demand early on. It also allows us to build stronger relationships with our community, as we often invite backers to help create a project by deciding on certain components or graphic design used in the games, and gather feedback. For Yotei, we felt a crowdfunding campaign was the right choice, as we can help the Kumagera team reach a bigger audience, and offer a Deluxe Edition that contains exclusive components made with actual Hokkaido wood, locally sourced and produced!



***

JB: I know the Yotei campaign is going live soon after this article goes up. In advance of the launch, what can you tell us about the campaign? And is this another one of those campaigns where there will be stretch goals every 15 minutes, every day, just once, not at all?

EF: Yotei is a Machi building game for 2 to 4 players where you use potatoes as a currency to build the most enchanting Hokkaido town. The game truly brings the charm of northern Japan to your table with gorgeous illustrations by Maria Kato based on real life locations, game design by Huy Pham, and locally sourced wooden components by Kumagera. You’ll buy or bid on fields, forest and mountain plots, and harvest potatoes. You then use your resources to serve ramen, host a potato festival, open a ski resort or a serene hot spring! The game offers a perfect blend of tactics and strategy that gives players a satisfying peek into life in Hokkaido.

We always aim to deliver a strong, complete experience from the start. Of course, there will be some surprises along the way, but the goal is to keep the campaign clear and enjoyable rather than overwhelming. We want backers to immediately understand what the game is and why it’s special. A big part of the campaign will highlight the real-world inspiration behind it, especially the connection to Hokkaido and the people involved in its creation. For Yotei, we will be offering some surprises and limited exclusives in the campaign, made of real Hokkaido wood! You’ll find a schedule of the planned drops and surprises on the campaign page, so you know exactly when to check the campaign page for news!

***

JB: I’m sure you’ve defined the profile for the types of gamers who regularly buy Mighty Boards products. But for the “normie”, the “muggle”, the casual gamer who might be new to crowdfunding…how do you draw them in?

EF: For new players, it’s key to make the experience feel inviting rather than intimidating. Of course visuals play a big role, but clear communication and instructions make backing a game more approachable. From explaining the gameplay, to a step-by-step guide on how to back a game, we aim to lower the barrier to entry so everyone can jump on the crowdfunding train.



***

JB: I remember when you were driving the campaign for one of the Vengeance: Roll & Fight titles, tying it in with the release of a John Wick film. I thought the parallels were perfect for the game alongside the flick, and in a world where thousands of games come out each year, you’ve gotta find a way to stand out. With Yotei and other games you have releasing in 2026, what plans do you have to get creative with spreading the word?

EF: Standing out is definitely one of the biggest challenges right now, as so many great games come out every year! I believe the key is always to try to focus on what makes each game genuinely unique. With Yotei, that’s very much the connection to a real place and the people behind it, which gives us a lot of authentic storytelling opportunities. We’re working closely with the team in Japan to capture that through video, photos, and behind-the-scenes content.

***

JB: For the casual fan—heck, even for the hardcore junkie—what do you wish more players understood when it comes to the ways games are marketed and sold?

EF: A thing people don’t always see or know is how much work goes into bringing a game to life beyond just the design itself. The designers start the magic spark, but the whole team—development, art and graphic design, production, logistics, marketing, sales, events, support etc. all play a huge role in shaping the final product and making sure the players get a great gaming experience. From when a game pitch comes in, based on the amount of work the game and graphic design needs, the fastest turnaround time is usually a full year. Bigger projects, like Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan, took more than three years to make!

What some people might not realise is that marketing isn’t just about selling a game—it’s about helping the right people discover something they’ll genuinely enjoy. With so many games releasing each year, even great designs can go completely unnoticed without strong storytelling and visibility. A big part of marketing is testing—different messages, visuals, and audiences—to understand what actually resonates. I believe good marketing helps the right players find what they like in a very crowded industry.


Wait a minute...the Enchantress character from the first Fateforge expansion looks...just...like...

***

JB: Be honest: do you play a lot of games? Not Mighty Boards games, but other titles? Or do you separate church and state by not playing games much at all?

EF: I’m a big fan of competitive two-player games, and will never say no to playing Dune: Imperium. I’ve even been dragged into a full day of Twilight Imperium and actually enjoyed it! Last year’s favorites that hit the table on a regular basis were Compile, Cyclades, and Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth. I try to play on a weekly basis, but I do have to balance my time with other hobbies and outdoor adventures!

***

JB: I have questions about the playlist for this year’s SPIEL Essen booth party…assuming I’m still invited (a major question mark), who do I need to speak with to ensure more hip-hop makes the list in 2026?

EF: ... That being said - we’re bringing some exciting stuff to SPIEL this year! You’ll see For the Gods!, Yotei and the new Art Society expansion, Friends in High Places, on our demo tables, as well as two (!) brand new projects. Trust me, you’re gonna want to keep an eye out 😉

by Justin Bell

The ongoing “is it AI art or not?” conversations in tabletop are important...and, exhausting. It feels like every day, there’s a fresh round of discussion that I have to work through online, as supersleuths real and imagined attempt to navigate whether an upcoming game’s illustrations were drawn by hand, built by a mix of human and artificial means, or generated purely through AI tools. I get why it's a thing...and it's also why I'm excited to focus on a different lane.

I’m a fan of so many incredible artists in this space, so I thought now would be the right time to interview some of the industry contacts I’ve made over the years to learn more about their process, by highlighting some of the images that will be included in an upcoming or recently-released title. I will ask these individuals a series of questions in an offline interview to demonstrate how they create an image or a series of images from scratch.

What are their inspirations? When are they involved in the game’s lifecycle? What changes from the time an artist begins composing an image to the time a game arrives on my doorstep? As a massive fan of the storyboarding process used in the film business, I’m always fascinated by an artist’s original ideas and what changes are implemented during a game’s development process.

In that spirit, welcome to our “Illustrator Avenue” series, focused on an individual's body of work (separate from our Artist Diary series, which focuses on one specific game). My hope is that, at least once a quarter, I’ll bring forward an interview and the associated progression of images from a person whose work I enjoy, a name that you might know but that I think everyone should know eventually. (In that vein, with no disrespect to “household” tabletop artist names such as Ian O’Toole, Beth Sobel, or The Mico, I’ll try my best to shine a light on some lesser-known stars whose work I’ve obsessed over recently.)

For this edition of Illustrator Avenue, I spoke with David Sitbon, the in-house illustrator at Sorry We Are French (SWAF), the publisher of titles such as Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon, IKI, and Kingdom Crossing. David and I recently had an offline back-and-forth. (My broken French and David’s excellent French meant that Google Translate was very much our friend during this exchange!)




Justin Bell (JB): David! Thanks for taking the time to “speak” with me. I’ve got to know: how did you hook up with the team at Sorry We Are French to become their lead in-house illustrator? What were you doing prior to your time in the tabletop industry?

David Sitbon (DS): To answer that, I need to start with the second question—which means going back more than nine years! Before joining the SWAF team, I had studied with the goal of working in the video game industry. Unfortunately, breaking into that field was much more difficult—even back then. I eventually bounced between various creative jobs for two years, none of which held much personal interest for me. During that time, I discovered board games; I would visit a local shop every now and then and strike up friendships with the people I met there. Then, in the course of a casual conversation, a friend from the shop showed me a job posting for a studio looking to hire an in-house illustrator for board games (spoiler alert: it was SWAF).

I laid my cards on the table and poured everything I had—every skill I’d acquired—into my application, telling myself that this was my one and only chance to work in an environment where I could finally find artistic fulfillment. After several days of intense effort, I landed the permanent position—and here I am, still with them to this day. No matter what difficulties life throws our way, we must keep fighting for the things we hold dear.




JB: My first experience with your work came during plays of the medium-weight Euro title Galileo Project. I loved your style from the jump, be it the distinct nature of the humans drawn on the game’s box cover to the illustrations on the tech and robot cards. What was the first game you worked on for SWAF?

DS: When I arrived, the studio was truly in its foundational stages. There were two projects underway: Ganymede and Immortal 8. Ganymede was entrusted to the talented Oliver Mootoo—a project for which I created the HUD elements for the cards and game boards.

It was on Immortal 8 that I produced my very first illustrations, as well as the game's graphic design. In fact, one of the characters (EZ) had served as one of my job application tests for SWAF.




JB: One of my favorite ironies of the board game industry is that many of my contacts don’t play board games at all. How about you? Do you consider yourself a player?

DS: Yes! In fact, it was even a prerequisite for working at SWAF—especially since working in-house allows me to go beyond just illustration and graphic design to participate in development, playtesting, brainstorming, and so on. This has greatly enriched my knowledge of board games. And I still play constantly, whether internally or in my spare time. This background proves invaluable whenever I have to illustrate or design game components.




JB: Working in-house probably makes it easier to have visibility on SWAF’s upcoming pipeline; you already work together with the same teams, but each title is designed by a different set of authors. When do you typically get involved? And how many projects are you juggling at any one time?

DS: As I mentioned earlier, I am fortunate enough to be able to observe—and even participate in—the game development process. It is usually around this stage that I begin to visualize the project. Being able to play the game and witness the prototype’s evolution allows me to anticipate and fully grasp the ins and outs of the game before I start illustrating it. Generally, I work on one or two projects simultaneously (very rarely three). It all depends on the complexity of the game I’m working on. An expert-level game is far more demanding than a family game—haha!




JB: I’m a huge fan of Shackleton Base, so I’m really curious about the art that is featured in the new expansion, Shackleton Base: Below. Within. Above. Can you tell us about one of the images (the cover, the project cards, etc.) that will be included in the game, and give us more detail on the journey of that image?

DS: As a brief aside regarding the game’s cover art: it serves as a mirror image of the original game’s cover. Through the visor, one can observe just how much the development of the lunar base has evolved since the core game. It also features various visual nods to the different corporations introduced in this expansion.




As for the cards, co-designer Fabio Lopiano provided a wealth of ideas—drawing upon existing concepts as well as projections of realistic hardware within this futuristic setting. From there, I would begin researching appropriate visual references.
The Shackleton Base expansion introduces three new corporations; Undermoon, in particular, specializes in drilling the lunar surface to facilitate resource extraction. For the illustration of one of the Undermoon cards, I needed to depict a machine excavating a crater. My mind immediately went to a drill—specifically, its tapered, streamlined shape. I wanted to combine this with a piece of heavy construction machinery capable of effectively "breaking through" the lunar surface. The caterpillar tracks—clearly visible in the initial sketch (and subtly suggested in the final version by the tracks left on the ground)—reinforce this dynamic of a powerful, heavy-duty vehicle. The figures surrounding the drill serve to emphasize its colossal scale.




My creative process always follows the same routine: research and reference gathering, sketching, inking (using a light table), and finally, coloring. From the very outset of the process, I make sure to account for the fact that the illustration will ultimately be integrated into a HUD (complete with various banners and information panels); this ensures that all visual elements are positioned optimally within the final artwork.




***

A big thanks to David for spending some time answering my questions for this interview. Also, a big thanks to Pauline Lebel and the team at Sorry We Are French for collaborating on our inaugural Illustrator Avenue article. You can check out the complete SWAF catalog at https://sorryweare.fr/en/.

***

Are you an illustrator and/or graphic designer involved in the creation of images and iconography for the tabletop space? Please reach out! I’m building up a repository of people interested in contributing to this series. Just message me here on BGG and we’ll get to work. Thanks for reading!

by Justin Bell

Some friends recently hosted an all-day gaming session; sadly, a work trip forced me to miss out. The theme for the session was loosely inspired by dice drafting games, but it then stretched to include dice chuckers, roll-and-writes, worker placement with dice workers, and games that I am going to include even though I can’t quite place the specific way they use dice. I just know that dice were factored into the equation.

On the flight home, I spent some time dreaming up a perfect day of games based on a variety of dice mechanics. (This is one of my favorite things to explore in BGG’s database: looking up games by family or mechanic.) For my Dream Dice Day, all the games had to prominently feature dice, ideally with the use of dice drafting and/or dice placement mechanics. As long as dice were involved, I made the case to include the game for Dream Dice Day. My dream, my rules!

I used the timeframe that my friends used for their dice game day, about eight hours, give or take. With that as our frame, let’s check out my perfect day!

Pre-Game Appetizers: Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition and En Route

I’m not a big roll-and-write guy. I don’t love playing games alone, but nothing is stranger to me than playing games with friends while also…well, playing the game alone. More often than not, I watch as someone rolls a pool of dice, then regret my decision to play a game where we are sitting together, trying to figure out who can optimize the results of the shared dice in front of us. Usually, the only time someone speaks is when the next dice chucker says something like “everybody good?” before chucking those dice again.

That changes with two games that now serve as my “It’s halftime of an NBA playoff game and need something to play solo” titles, Railroad Ink and En Route. Both offer a fun, compact, quick challenge for the brain as I try to optimize my scores. I have two versions of Railroad Ink—the Deep Blue Edition and the Archipelago boards—so I can mix and match expansions. En Route’s solo challenge system and wide variety of maps work wonders, and while the base game uses a flip-and-write system, the dice variant from my copy of En Route: Special Edition is my preferred move. And the dice featured in En Route have that nice, hefty chunk to them.

If someone shows up late, I can squeeze one or both of these titles in with ease. That person in your playgroup who texts with the inevitable “Justin, you won’t believe this, but I’ll be 20 minutes late” problem? No problem at all, since I’ll keep the appetizers warm with these games until everyone arrives.

Noon: The Red Cathedral

2020’s The Red Cathedral, designed by the duo known as "Llama Dice" (Shei S. and Isra C.) and published by Devir, features a main mechanic that I adore. One of a player’s three options on a turn is to select a die from a central rondel by moving the die in a clockwise direction the number of spaces equal to the pips showing on the die. Then, the active player receives the reward on the space where the die ended up, and the die is re-rolled, giving the next player a fresh set of die selections to choose from.

Moving the die to just the right spot is a crunchy choice I love. The color choice of the die will often trigger a wave of bonuses on the player’s personal board, depending on upgrades made earlier in the game. Finding ways to move a die onto a space with as many as two other dice might triple the bonuses a player can receive. And each quadrant of the rondel offers the active player a different bonus, so figuring out which die to move and to which quadrant is a juicy choice, but one that doesn’t bog down the game with deliberations.

1:30 PM: Tiletum

The same two imaginary players who join me for The Red Cathedral would then take part in a play of Tiletum, a 2022 release from the team at Board&Dice designed by Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini. The dice drafting here is genius. The color of the die and the visible pips represent the number of resources a player receives. The pips on the die’s opposite face (i.e., NOT showing on the die) grant the player a number of actions equal to the D6 inversion of the resource choice.

Every turn, you are choosing how many resources and how many action points you have from a pool of seven, since the total of every D6’s opposite faces always equals seven. If I want to take a merchant action worth three action points, that means I’m getting four resources of the chosen die color.

Dice are limited, and randomly drawn from a cloth bag to start each of the game’s four rounds…with some colors potentially left out of that round. While one of the game’s resources (gold) allows a player to change a die’s pip value, you might not have enough gold to make changes. That might leave you in a sizable hole with very limited choices. Each round’s scoring goal gives players three turns to maximize their chances at points in a round, giving the dice drafting a very nice blend of tactical and strategic choices.

With three players who play as fast as I typically do, Tiletum plays in about 30 minutes per player. That gives us time to play and grab a quick snack between games.

3:30 PM: The White Castle

The Devir dice double dip wraps with The White Castle, another Llama Dice masterpiece featuring dice drafting on an epic scale but in a very tidy package. In fact, The White Castle might be my favorite dice drafting game of them all, and even at four players, the game wraps in about 75 minutes.

The die drafting choices here are a blast, but they are even more interesting when there are a wide range of die values to begin each of the game’s three rounds. Triggering the lantern bonuses by taking the lowest-value die is one thing, but it’s a whole other thing when the “lowest” value die is a five or a six, almost guaranteeing a player extra coins to go along with the lantern goodies.

I prefer The White Castle at two or four players, so let’s assume another imaginary friend came over to join the first three players for the middle of the day, giving us a four-player playthrough.

4:45: Grand Austria Hotel

I think most regulars who visit BGG know that Grand Austria Hotel is glorious. Most players in my network prefer Grand Austria Hotel with some of the extras from the Let’s Waltz! expansion, but for the purposes of Dream Dice Day, I’m going with the following modules from that expansion: Start Player (so that players go in a clockwise order every turn, not the “snake” order where the first player also goes eighth in a four-player game), Would You Like Some More? (simply, more cards), and Unique Hotels, so that each player has their own asymmetric player power.

That means the game can wrap in about 90 minutes. The module with the dancers, Vienna Ballrooms, is fantastic, but it usually means adding 30-60 minutes of playtime. On Dream Dice Day, I’m focused!!

6:30 PM: Kingsburg

I’m finishing the day with the Dream Dice Day Daddy of ‘Em All: Kingsburg, ideally the first edition board with the expansion To Forge a Realm, specifically Module 5. That’s the module which replaces the die roll during the eighth phase of each round with the reinforcement tokens. These tokens give players a chance to plan around the potential baddie (zombies, goblins, etc.) lurking at the end of the round. Once players have seen Module 5 even once, they never go back to playing the game the old-fashioned way.

If forced, I will play Kingsburg at four players…but, we all know that the best way to play Kingsburg is with five players. In that way, Dream Dice Day has to have a fifth player show up only for the nightcap, but I’m sure I could find someone willing and able to stop by to fill that final seat. That’s because you want Kingsburg to be as tight as possible, and five players is solid gold. Scores are always close, and one wrong move (or one destroyed building) is usually the difference between winning and losing.

The dice placement in Kingsburg is brilliant. It’s full of drama. Cursing at the table is a guarantee, especially when two or three players have not rolled well during a season and are all fighting for scraps at the bottom of the pyramid. The +2 tokens are huge, almost as huge as the Market power that lets a player manipulate a die value +/-1 to snipe a space that you thought you had control of.

Kingsburg is a rich way to wrap things up, but I’d love to hear the lineup you would table instead! Maybe I’ll use your advice to plan my next Dream Dice Day…

by Justin Bell

60,000 gamers (including me) have been intently following the crowdfunding updates for the Brass: Pittsburgh campaign launching on March 24th. I’m a massive fan of the Brass system, as an owner of Brass (aka Brass: Lancashire) and Age of Industry (along with its first set of expansion maps, Japan and Minnesota). I’m also very happy to play your copy of Brass: Birmingham any time you want, for reasons I described in my Meeple Mountain review a few years ago.

While Santa’s elves spend the next few months working on the Brass: Pittsburgh production–sexy metal coins aren’t going to make themselves, after all–I’ve still got plenty to do to pass the time. That’s because campaigns for expansions, second editions, reprints, deluxe copies and additional games in the same universe always do the thing I love most–they fire up the base of players who love earlier games in these series, making these titles much easier to get to the table while riding the hype wave.

***

For about eight months in 2024, whenever I went to a game night, I placed my copy of Brass: Lancashire in my gaming “go bag.”

I tried to have Lancashire ready just in case my ideal scenario popped if we didn’t already have another game lined up. Every week, in every part of Chicagoland, no matter what else had been planned for that game night, I popped Lancashire into the bag. And every week, without fail, I would socialize my bag’s contents, then end with something like “...I’ve also got Brass: Lancashire in the bag, you know, just in case anyone wants to get that to the table.”

As you have guessed, Lancashire never hit during that window of time. There were always reasons, or excuses, why it never hit—”oh, you’ve got that hot review copy of _____”, “nah, let’s do a bunch of fillers instead”; “we only have about two hours left, and I thought Brass takes longer”—but the reality is that I never structured an entire night around getting Lancashire to the table. (I did play Birmingham twice in that time, ironic because I prefer Lancashire over Birmingham if I had to pick just one of those two titles.)

One of the other reasons why Lancashire never hit: I insist on playing it with exactly four players. The game is brutal regardless of player count, but it is perfect AND perfectly brutal with four players. A couple of times, Lancashire didn’t come out because we had three players, or a player count higher than four and needed another title to accommodate the group.

So, I went oh-for-eight-months back in ‘24. But now that we have a new Brass game on the horizon? It’s never been easier to get a game of Brass rolling. Just accidentally cough the word “Brass” while standing in a crowd of gamers right now, and you can probably get it to the table.

“Sorry, did you say Brass? Funny, I was just thinking we should get a game going.”

***

It’s happening at game nights in my circles and at get-togethers across the Chicagoland area…which tells me this phenomenon is probably happening everywhere.

I’m seeing Brass titles on the dance card a little more often right now. One of the heavyweight strategy nights in my area has had Lancashire or Birmingham pop up a couple times in the last month. Another friend had the chance to play the Pittsburgh prototype recently, thanks to copies hitting the hands of local influencers who are completing review plays in time for the wide range of coverage hitting the interwebs this week.

This might be the easiest time to ever get a Brass game to the table. But firing up the base doesn’t stop there, with a number of other titles suddenly getting hot thanks to the news of more expansion goodies hitting shelves soon.

My love affair with Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon means that the game hits my table from time to time. But with the release of the new expansion, Shackleton Base: Below. Within. Above., suddenly everyone else I know is interested in getting games of Shackleton Base rolling, too. It seems like The Old King’s Crown is everywhere right now…and there’s a new campaign active now for the game’s second printing that includes not only an expansion, but another game in the same universe, Annulet.

Now we’re even getting “games in the same universe” spinoffs! Maybe next year, we’ll get Chicago Annulet, helping NBC/Peacock maintain its stranglehold on Wednesday nights after episodes of Chicago Med, Fire, and PD.

Regicide’s new campaign is pushing not just one, but two new titles. The new Pirates of Maracaibo expansion Bermuda Triangle has given me yet another excuse to get plays of the base game in, both in person and on Board Game Arena. And Voidfall has an expansion AND a campaign game coming…which drove me to pull my Galactic Box off the shelf to get more solo plays in. (OK, OK, you got me: I only opened the box to slip faction mats into the triple-layer player boards. Don’t lie, Voidfall players–you’ve done the same thing!)

***

I know a number of people who avoid all these expansions, reprints, and deluxifications (it’s a word, trust me); to each their own. I use these opportunities to remember what I loved about the base game in the first place. Will these new goodies make me feel differently about why I fell in love with the initial titles? We’ll see. But any excuse to get some of my favorites to the table is an excuse that is good enough for me.

Fire it up!

by Justin Bell

My latest obsession on Board Game Arena is Nucleum, the Board&Dice production currently in alpha. I thought Nucleum was pretty good as a board game, but playing it twenty more times on BGA—in addition to plays and reviews I’ve now done of two expansions, Nucleum: Australia and Nucleum: Energy Research Institute—has made it become one of my favorite games. After chatting with Nucleum co-designer Dávid Turczi at SPIEL Essen last fall, I have it on good authority that we are going to get more Nucleum games for years to come, so I’m just as invested as the designers are.

I wish I had more time for two-hour live plays of Nucleum, but such is the way with work travel, family life, and “IRL” game nights. So, I do my Nucleum plays async on BGA, meaning I take a turn, then the next player has a window of time—a day, maybe two—to take their turn.

On paper, I always think that means I’ll take at least one turn of my current game of Nucleum every day. The reality is quite different. That’s because right now, while reading this article, there’s someone in Reykjavik, Dhaka, Tuscaloosa or Le Mans waiting for you to log onto BGA and take care of your business.

Yeah, it’s your turn.

***

I am not normally obsessed with my phone; often, I leave my Pixel phone flipped over (Google calls this “Flip to Shhh”) because I don’t want to be bothered. This changes when I’m doing async plays on BGA, stressing my next move. That makes me a phone obsessive, as I stare at my phone between meetings waiting to see if it’s my turn on table #811104232.

I always start async plays with the best of intentions, setting up games with other people who have 100% positive reputations on Board Game Arena. I try to remember asking opponents upfront to join only if they are willing to take at least one, ideally two turns a day…let’s try to keep this thing moving.

How hard can that be?, I ask myself. We’re talking about relatively simple decisions in a game of, say, The White Castle. Pick a die, pick a spot, take the action. Bing, bang, boom!

And usually, everything starts off well enough. Depending on the game, players select their faction, pick a personal milestone card, select their starting hex, and make other pre-game choices to set up whatever game we’ve chosen. They take their first couple of turns within a few hours of getting the e-mail notification, that simple reminder that it is, in fact, your turn.

But sometimes, players don’t take their turn. Sometimes, they agree to start a new game, and only after joining a game do they chase down a rules video or a full read-through of the game’s manual, helpfully linked right on the game’s main page. That takes a day. They open an e-mail notification, then delete it instead of using the link to take them directly into the game. They fiddle over whether or not to take a certain action, then head off to dinner and drinks before coming back to the game the next morning…late the next morning, at that.

Given my obsession, I go back to the virtual game table from time to time, to monitor the game’s progress. I tell myself I’m doing that to see what other players have done on their turn, to help narrow my own choices when it gets back to being my turn again. I use the notes function (gosh, I love the notes function!) to gauge my thoughts, so that I can quickly take my turn when it comes around again.

But mostly, I sit. I think to myself, Next time, just carve out 90 minutes and play the freakin’ game live. Then you don’t have to obsess over all this, and you can sleep better, because you won’t hit the sack dreaming about “what ifs” tied to your most recent turn.

I think about doing these live plays…then, I don’t. I wallow in my own misery, as I wait for other players to stop enjoying their real life and focus on taking their Board Game Arena turns. Because, that’s all that really matters: my obsession, not your social life. Right? RIGHT??

***

It’s finally my turn again on table #811104232.

I wonder if, this time, I should make everyone else suffer for making me wait so long to take my turn. I click here, I hover the mouse pointer there, I double check that I’ve done everything I wanted to do on my turn before I click the “Confirm” button. (Thankfully, most of the new titles on BGA have both the Confirm action and the Undo Turn action, so that I don’t have to curse the sky because I clicked too many buttons too quickly.)

But then, the cycle repeats itself. My favorite is when I see that the next player in turn order has their “green light” on, indicating that they are online at this very moment. Even though they might be playing any of the platform’s other 1400+ games (nah, they MUST be sitting in this game, just itching to take their turn, right?), I sit there after finishing my async turn, hoping I get to watch them execute their own magic right in front of me.

Until they don’t. Or they do, and after their turn wraps up, the next player is offline. Or the next player lurks in the room for a few minutes, then logs off as if they just wanted to start planning their next turn before going to bed.

Luckily, there are dozens of solo games on BGA, so I can keep myself warm at night by jumping into a quick play of anything from Railroad Ink to Ark Nova. But the thrill of human vs. human competition is the beauty of the platform, challenging players from around the world.

So, I’ll wait around…anxiously.

by Justin Bell

Most people in The Hobby are familiar with the term “the shelf of shame”, a funny name for the games on your shelf that you bought weeks, months, maybe even years ago and still haven’t bothered to play. (Maybe you bought the game because the box’s color scheme paired so well with the other titles on the shelf second from the bottom…maybe.)

I don’t want to discount what the shelf of shame represents. The people in my strategy group know that I’m always pushing people to only buy the games that they know they will play…and usually, they laugh at this advice and go hog-wild, buying everything in sight, whether they think they will ever really table those games or not.

To each their own. For many, simply buying a game and having a sweet new toy on their shelves feels good.

I don’t maintain a shelf of shame. Also, I don’t really have any shame. I do, however, have three games (from a collection of about 200) that haven’t been played yet, and in all three cases, the shrink has been ripped off, the games are punched, stickered, and ready to go, and I just haven’t been able to force them to a table yet. Give me another month or two, and those will hit a table sooner than later.

I’m a bit weird in that way: as soon as I buy a game, I get anxious; my new toy deserves to see the light of day, so I like to push those games to the table whenever possible. Otherwise, why buy the thing in the first place? I am also an enabler; friends know that I usually start game nights by asking if anyone has anything hot they want to bust out, especially if they just bought something they’re excited about.

Lately, though, I have been obsessed—truly obsessed—with tabling the games from a different part of my game closet. These games are known as The Maybe Pile…and I often wonder if everyone has a pile just like it.

***

My Maybe Pile began to form a couple years ago.

It’s such a tricky beast. That’s because The Maybe Pile includes games that have proven to be a challenge for one simple reason: “tablebility”, my made-up term for any game’s likelihood to regularly make it to my game table, given my personal gaming network.

Games that I did not enjoy typically go to one of three places: the sale pile, which usually amounts to the games I will sell or trade with friends or another player in my immediate network to ensure that I can still revisit the game later; my “review crew”, who get the lion’s share of my review copies; non-profit organizations which get my game donations, such as The Gaming Hoopla. The house is only so big, and I typically keep only the games I love.

Honestly, I am thankful each time I play a game that is either a banger or a dud…that makes the decision on what to do with it next very easy.

The Maybe Pile, however, is a problem, and it’s a problem that grows in scope each year. One game on the top of my Maybe Pile is Raising Robots, an excellent engine-building game designed by Brett Sobol and Seth Van Orden, the same people who created my favorite auction game of them all, Stockpile. Each time I break out Raising Robots, everyone loves it. It’s the rare game that plays up to six players. It’s relatively easy to teach and doesn’t devour the entire table. I gave it a glowing review on Meeple Mountain.

Raising Robots is strong work. So, what makes it a Maybe Pile title?
-->Everyone enjoys playing it, but I can’t always get people to play it a second time.
-->Raising Robots is fantastic as a solo game…but I usually do not play tabletop games by myself.
-->I would happily give my copy away…but no one else in my immediate network has it, and I just KNOW the second I move my copy out of the collection that someone will show up at my house and ask, completely randomly, to play Raising Robots. (Yes, I do give games from the Maybe Pile to friends with the not-so-subtle request that they never sell it, so that I can continue to access the game occasionally while having it live in someone else’s home. Shortly after I do this, time and time again, they sell it anyway; it was their game at that point, after all. This is why I have trust issues!)

***

Other titles in my Maybe Pile have their own set of issues. Often, I think the game is a 9 or a 10 out of 10…but the people I game with disagree. A few of the medium-weight Euros in the Pile are good, but they’re an expansion away from being great, so I hold on, hoping the game has sold enough units to warrant additional content. In one case, there’s an 18xx title in the Maybe Pile that I love but it takes a solid eight hours to play. In a world where I have other great 18xx titles that can wrap up in 3-4 hours on a weeknight, I lean towards getting those to the table first.

Two Maybe Pile games are card games I enjoy, but their base mechanics are replicated in other titles more popular with the folks in my groups. Another game I really enjoyed, Zhanguo: The First Empire, is a blast and features a solid main action mechanic…but the teach is just enough of a lift to force some hesitation every time I want to get it back to the table. Arcadia Quest is such a joy, but getting even a short campaign game rolling is becoming a task with my play groups.

In a good year, I get 30-40 of the games in my personal collection to the table with my game groups, and another 20-30 games are popular enough with my kids that they come out all the time at home. But, that’s it. I’m a game reviewer, so I spend most of the year working through review copies provided by publishers. My first priority is playing those review titles first, and I’m often quite satisfied with that responsibility.

That SHOULD mean that every title on the Maybe Pile should move out of my personal collection. But just staring at the games in the Pile gives me pause. Those are games I love…can I really walk away?

by Justin Bell

Hey hey folks! I’m excited to be a part of the team here at BoardGameGeek as a contributor on the BoardGameGeek News blog. You’ll see me here every week and I’ll pop up with extra content from time to time, between articles and via some of our other internal productions, such as episode 88 of The BoardGameGeek Podcast which posted a couple weeks ago.

A little bit about me: like everyone else who works here, I love games. It’s probably fair to say that I love what games mean to my life a little more than the games themselves—getting friends and family together to chuck dice, talk a little smack, and laugh a whole bunch. Certainly, those nights are more interesting when the games themselves are good, but any chance to sit at a table to experience something together is really hard to beat.

I have been—and will continue to be—a contributor at Meeple Mountain, a gang of gaming fanatics who contribute written content (and a smidge of video content) to the tune of more than 500 articles, reviews, interviews, convention roundups, and more every year. I’ve had the distinct pleasure of delivering material on Meeple Mountain for the last five years, and I’ve been playing hobby games of all shades for the last 40. In addition to appearances on The BoardGameGeek Podcast, I have also appeared on 30+ episodes of The Five By and individual episodes of Five Games for Doomsday, Tabletop Submarine, The Tabletop Merchant Podcast, and Board Game Times.

When I’m not thinking about games, I’m usually doing one of the following three things. I might be working my full-time gig, as a global program manager in the training, learning & development space where I travel a whole heck of a lot. I am possibly eating...and, while I love to cook, the job and the travel mean I get lots of chances to fulfill my personal life motto: “when in doubt, eat out.” I am hopefully spending time at home with my wife and two kids, ages 12 and 9, who seem surprised when I’m not hosting yet another game night.

Speaking of home, I’m based in the Chicagoland area, where I’ve been for most of the last 15 years. Before that, I’ve gotten around a bit: Rochester, NY; San Francisco, CA; Charlottesville, VA; plus, all the parts of the “DMV” (DC, Maryland, Virginia), from Mount Vernon Square to Rockville to Falls Church to Gaithersburg to Crystal City, even a little old place known as Buzzard Point, the area just west of the baseball stadium that the Washington Nationals call home.

And then, there are the games. Mertwig’s Maze holds a special place in my gaming heart, being one of those formative experiences from a billion years ago thanks to friends who were all about games in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons series. I played a lot of the titles in the “Gamemaster” series from Milton Bradley: Shogun, Axis & Allies, and my favorite from that batch of titles, Fortress America. But I was also playing a lot of the games my parents bought for me, from Monopoly, UNO, and Yahtzee to more specialized titles like Go For It!, Hotels (a Milton Bradley title previously known as "Hotel"), and Fireball Island.

Any chance I could get to play games—board games, card games, video games, baseball, basketball, football—I did it. In college, it feels like I was playing either Spades or Hearts every night before heading out for the evening. As I got older, I got caught up in the magic of Catan thanks to a friend in Chicago who showed me Settlers of Catan: Cities & Knights, which led me down a path of so many modern classics, such as Race for the Galaxy, Puerto Rico, San Juan, 7 Wonders, and a number of other titles that I was thrilled to discover.

That love affair continues today. I put in the work to build up a few different gaming groups—I do games every Monday with a “review crew” at my house, Tuesdays once a month with BGG’s very own [user=LindyBurger]Lindyburger[/user], most Wednesdays with a group of folks I’ve known since I first moved to Chicago, every Friday at home with my wife and kids, some Saturdays with a mix of the deep strategy gamers who I met during COVID, and Sundays once a month with my buddy [user=imaginaryforce]ImaginaryForce[/user] and some of his friends in the Chicago suburbs.

Thanks to this wide range of gaming networks and my industry relationships, I get the chance to play a lot of different types of games. While I would categorize myself as an “omnigamer”, I usually gravitate towards the kinds of games I know I can get to the table consistently. That might range from family-weight games, trick takers, light dexterity games, and straightforward “roll and move” games to your run-of-the-mill medium-weight Euro game (tracks, baby!) to heavier fare, such as strategy titles, 18xx games, and “rules for rules’ sake” games that land in that 4.0+ weight class here on the Geek.

My all-time top five? Man…that’s a moving target. Let’s go with these for now:
1. Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders
2. The White Castle
3. Kingsburg
4. UNO
5. Tiletum

My top five of the last five years? Much easier:
2021: Beyond the Sun (the Geek says it was a 2020 release, but I didn’t play it until 2021)
2022: Tiletum
2023: Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory
2024: Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game
2025: Vantage

Here’s my goal for the BGG community: write engaging articles and share interesting industry discussions, aimed at both our core audience as well as folks just dropping by to say hello. I’ve got a bunch of ideas, but I’d still ask for your input: what kinds of discussions really get you excited? What parts of the tabletop business intrigue you? Which personalities in this space are you most interested in meeting? What mechanics are you most excited to explore?

I’ve got thoughts, but I have a feeling you do, too…let’s keep the dialogue open. I’m excited to engage with the members of this community!


(it's always brunch time...right?)