Co-op fantasy adventuring game Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread has scored six nominations in the 20th annual Golden Geek Awards, which are selected and voted on by BoardGameGeek users.
Cody Miller’s “green legacy” design, which can be fully reset after each dozens-of-hours-long campaign, is up for heavy game of the year, most innovative game and best thematic game, as well as for the best artwork, solo game and co-op game categories.
Fellow open-world exploration game Vantage, designed by Scythe and Viticulture creator Jamey Stegmaier, is challenging across five categories this year, as is Pandemic creator Matt Leacock’s spin-off design The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship.
Both those titles will battle it out for the Medium Game of the Year prize, which is also being contested by popular releases including Galactic Cruise, Eternal Decks and fellow Stonemaier Games title Finspan.
Eternal Decks, a limited communication co-op game designed by Hiroken, has picked up four nominations
The Golden Geeks is one of board gaming’s highest profile awards, as well as being among the earliest of the major competitions to unveil its winners each year – with the Dice Tower Awards falling in May, the Spiel des Jahres in July and Deutscher Spiel Priese in October.
Notable awards which have already named their winners this year include France’s highest-profile board game prize, the As d’Or, which picked Paolo Mori and Alessandro Zucchini’s Toy Battle in its main prize for 2026.
Toy Battle is nominated in two categories in the Golden Geeks: best two-player game and best wargame. The latter category will see the title go up against a huge variety of different designs, including Memoir ’44-inspired Star Wars: Battle of Hoth, whist-themed English civil war strategy title A Very Civil Whist, and heavyweight GMT Games releases such as Congress of Vienna and Seljuk: Byzantium Besieged, 1068-1071.
As well as published board games, the Golden Geeks also features categories for best print and play design, best board game app and best podcast.
Voting will be undertaken by BoardGameGeek users who have paid an annual support fee in any year, who pay a one-time 20 GeekGold fee, or who have purchased an avatar on the site. They will rank nominees in individual categories, with voting set to end on April 30.
Last year’s Golden Geeks saw Arcs, the hybrid trick-taking wargame from Root and Oath designer Cole Wehrle, win a trio of awards, while fellow space-themed game SETI notched up a pair of wins.
This year’s Golden Geek Awards nominations in full:
The American Tabletop Awards, an awards scheme launched seven years ago with the aim of being the US equivalent of Germany’s Spiel des Jahres, has unveiled its 2026 winners.
ATTA’s Early Gamers award is focused on titles suitable for younger gamers and players new to modern board gaming, while the Casual Games awards looks at games suitable for all experience levels that can be played in 30 to 60 minutes.
This year’s Strategy Games prize went to Matt Leacock’s pandemic spinoff The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship, while the Complex Games title went to Jo Kelly’s and Cole Wehrle’s design Molly House, which explores the joy and fear experienced by gender-defying Londoners in 18th century society.
CMYK was the standout publisher with two wins out of the four categories. Asmodee studios won one award and picked up three other nominations, while Flatout Games picked up recommendations for both Cascadia Junior and Knitting Circle.
Alex Cutler was the only designer to appear twice among the finalists, scoring a nomination for his co-design Critter Kitchen and a recommendation for co-design A Place For All My Books.
The ATTAs are voted on by members of the US board game media, who each submit up to five games from the previous calendar year, which are then ordered according to ranked-choice vote.
Awards co-founder Eric Yurko, who runs board game review site What’s Eric Playing?, said, “The past few years have been great for games, and 2025 was no exception.
“There were great moments and releases throughout, so we’re very excited to present these awards to the best games we played in 2025.”
Early Gamers Winner: Magical Athlete – designed by Richard Garfield and Takashi Ishida (published by CMYK Games) Nominated: The Sandcastles of Burgundy – Stefan Feld and Susanne Feld (Ravensburger) Nominated: Splendor Kids – Marc André and Catherine André (Space Cowboys / Asmodee) Recommended: Cascadia Junior – Fertessa Allyse and Randy Flynn (Flatout Games) Recommended: Duck and Cover – Oussama Khelifati (Captain Games)
Complex Games Winner: Molly House – Jo Kelly and Cole Wehrle (Wehrlegig Games) Nominated: Tidal Blades 2: Rise of the Unfolders – Tim Eisner and Ben Eisner (Druid City Games) Nominated: Covenant – Germán P Millán (Devir) Recommended: Above and Below: Haunted – Ryan Laukat (Red Raven Games) Recommended: Galactic Cruise – TK King, Dennis Northcott and Koltin Thompson (Kinson Key Games)
I very much enjoy Card Driven Games (CDGs’) and I think that many players also generally like them for many reasons including their strategic depth and replayability, as well as the tough choices players face each turn with the management of their hand of cards. However, this depth can come with some drawbacks and in this edition of The Love/Hate Relationship, I want to share what I love and hate about the CDG mechanic. Some of the first wargames that I experienced were Card Driven Games! Due to this fact, and because I really enjoy the mechanic, CDG’s hold a special place in my heart. So what is a Card Driven Game? It is more than just a game having cards or using cards. The CDG attempts to focus the players’ actions, and what they can ultimately do in the game, on the cards in their hand. Typically, performing some form of an action will use a single card and these cards will often be multi-purpose. This means they can be used for an action or to take the printed event on the card to do an action that typically either is more powerful but somewhat circumstantial. The medium also allows for historical events to be implemented in the game and allows various rules overhead or special instructions to be printed on the cards making the game a bit easier to play. Cards are simply fantastic and I have played many CDG’s. In fact, my first wargame was Twilight Struggle (yes I see it as a wargame!) followed by classics such as Wilderness War, Empire of the Sun, Washington’s War and others.
Love
The main focus of the Card Driven Game mechanic, and probably the aspect that I most love about it, is the constant, agonizing choices about how best to use your hand of cards. Do I use a card for its powerful unique event or for its Operation Points? You simply never have enough resources to do everything you want, forcing you to prioritize the use of your cards and the actions you take but also to force a decision upon you about when or if to take calculated risks. This makes every turn feel like a high-stakes puzzle and each time I draw a new set of cards to start a round, and as I thumb through them, formulating my strategy, I get either a sinking feeling in my stomach or a sudden burst of excitement. CDG’s are generally praised for their strategic depth and replayability, which stems from the tough choices players are faced with each turn and that will change from game to game as the cards come out differently.
Also, unlike generic strategy games, CDG’s use cards to inject real-world flavor and historical events into the gameplay. Typically, in order to add these bits of chrome from history would require additional rules, exceptions or a whole new process being being added to the game. This tends to bog a game down and makes the almost unplayable. But, with CDG’s, each card represents a specific historical event that provides in-game benefits or difficulty for the players based on that history. These cards create a narrative as you play, where the sequence of cards can tell a unique or alternate version of history every time the game hits the table. This variety in outcomes and the way history in the game unfolds is one of my favorite parts!
There also is a real Fog of War aspect to CDG’s that I love as I just don’t know what type of hand my opponent has drawn. As players keep their hands hidden in the game, you and your opponent will be uncertain about the specific events and strategies available to the player based on their card draws. This really fosters a dynamic, back and forth, reactive gameplay that adds to the tense feeling of these games. I very much enjoy this aspect of the unknown and the process of trying to deduce what your opponent is trying to do based upon their card plays. When you are playing these CDG’s, you will have to think quickly and efficiently as a turn usually lasts 5-7 card plays and you will not have time to dawdle or you may find that you are in a real pickle.
But I think that my favorite part of CDG’s is the planning of a turn and how best to use your hand of cards. As you first start to examine your hand of newly drawn cards each round, you should first ask yourself “What do I need to accomplish this turn? and “What would I like to accomplish this turn?”. Then simply peruse your cards identifying those that can help you in both of those identified goals. I like to then look at the opponent Event cards in my hand and determine which ones don’t have their conditions to set off the Event met on the board at the moment. If the condition could possibly change, I prioritize that card to play first as I don’t want that Event to go off for my opponent. I also then make sure I don’t have any of my events that have conditions that could change as well and I will prioritize those to play next, after I have culled the negative opponent events. To hemp with this process, I literally line the cards up in my hand according to an approved play order, from right to left, so that I don’t get distracted or sidetracked. If there is anything that can happen in this game, you will get distracted by what the other player is doing and sometimes quickly react without thinking, ruining your carefully laid plan. This approach has kept me organized, on task and most importantly in a position where I am able to minimize the negative damage from my opponent’s Events while simultaneously maximizing my own benefit.
Hate
Now that you see what I love about these CDG’s, let’s take a look at what I hate. Hate is such a strong word for me but there are many things that I don’t like about the mechanic.
As with any new game or system, there is a learning curve with CDG’s. To play a CDG effectively, players often need to be familiar with and generally know all of the cards in the deck to be able to plan long-term strategies and mitigate potential risks and traps. This can be daunting for new or casual players of a CDG as the true strategy of the game will not be revealed for the first few plays but is something that needs to be developed through experience with the deck over several plays. An example of this is the Fidel Card found in Twilight Struggle. As I have played Twilight Struggle as the USA player, I have had to keep in the back of my mind the fact that this Fidel card is in the deck as it allows the Russian player to remove all US Influenced and directly place Influence into Cuba. Too much commitment in the early part of the game can be a waste of resources as it can all be removed with the play of this card and you must keep that in mind. Any card that allows for the placement of Influence into an area you cannot is worth its weight in gold.
Probably my most hated part with CDG’s is the “luck of the draw”. When you are dealing with a card based game where a deck is shuffled and randomized, you are bound to run into a bad hand now and again. While part of the fun with this mechanic is the concept of trying to do the best you can with the cards you are dealt, a bad opening hand or a streak of poor draws can sometimes feel game-breaking or frustrating, diminishing the sense of strategy and skill that the genre holds important. Nothing worse than looking at your hand and you have 2 – 1 OPs value cards, 2 – 2 Ops value cards and each event is that of your opponent. Just not a good way to start a turn.
The final thing that I dislike is that the mechanic does sometimes lead to a less realistic simulation and even a totally ahistorical outcome or timeline of events. To some wargamers, abstraction provided by cards lessens the game’s simulation value compared to more detailed and traditional systems, such as hex and counter games. The feeling of being unable to perform basic actions without a specific card can break immersion.
In summary, I personally love the CDG mechanic. It is a great method of design to ensure that you are injecting the history of the situation into the game while also creating a very stimulating and interesting play experience. What do you love and hate about CDG’s?
The January 2026 Monthly Debrief Video, which is the 1st episode in Season 6 of this series, saw us discussing the games of The Lord of Rings. We both love the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings Series including The Hobbit and other books such as The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. As we thought about this topic, we were very surprised by the number of games set in Middle Earth and were quite excited to share them.
Also, as usual, we covered the games we played in January, as well as the games we plan to play in February.
We will remind you here that we are fortunate to be continuing our relationship with Noble Knight Games as the sponsor for our Monthly Debrief Video series. In case you don’t know, Noble Knight Games specializes in hard to find games but also carry all the new releases. But what makes them truly unique is that you can find some of the rarest games, long out of print games, hand made games, imported games from overseas, etc. Thanks to them for their sponsorship and we hope that you will consider them first when looking for the games we cover.
Board game crowdfunding major CMON has continued its battle to recover from heavy losses by selling Sheriff of Nottingham to Asmodee – its third IP sale to the company in the past eight months.
The bluffing and set collection game will become part of the Z-Man Games studio, a spokesperson for Asmodee told BoardGameWire, joining titles including Pandemic, Citadels and Love Letter.
CMON bought Sheriff of Nottingham from Brazilian publisher Galapagos Jogos in 2016 following the success of the English version of the game, published by Arcane Wonders two years earlier as the first game in the Dice Tower Essentials line – games Dice Tower founder Tom Vasel “personally loves and believes should be an essential part of any gamer’s collection”.
CMON announced towards the end of last month that more IP sales could be on the way, alongside making an apology for delays to its outstanding crowdfunds – some of which are now running almost two years beyond initial delivery estimates.
More details on the effectiveness of CMON’s fight to stem its losses should become clear by the end of next month, with the publisher required by Hong Kong stock exchange rules to submit its annual results by that date.
Asmodee’s reignited acquisitions strategy, meanwhile, has so far been limited to the three IP purchases from CMON – a far cry from the explosive growth the company undertook after being bought by private equity firm Eurazeo in 2014.
Its previous buying spree saw it acquire more than 40 companies and IPs, including over 20 game studios such as Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight Games, Lookout Games, Catan Studio and Z-Man Games.
Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler was asked during the company’s quarterly results presentation yesterday whether the company was ready to make “more meaningful” acquisitions rather than small bolt-on deals.
Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler
He said, “Without being specific, the activity in the pipeline is in accordance with our plan. The smaller acquisitions are faster. IP acquisitions and asset deals are faster to execute. I’m satisfied.”
He added in response to a later question about Asmodee’s acquisition plans, “Our M&A engine is nicely running up. I will not comment on specific ongoing projects, but as I did say, I’m satisfied with what we have in the workings.
“What we’re looking for, as you asked, is in priority studios and intellectual properties, because we already have a very strong distribution reach. And then maybe to complement some distribution reach here and there, depending on the strategic advantages this would provide us in specific territories.
“But again, I think the priority is on IPs and creative capabilities, which is what we have been delivering up until now.”
Speaking on the Sheriff of Nottingham acquisitions, an Asmodee spokesperson told BoardGameWire, “Sheriff of Nottingham is a well-established evergreen card game centered on bluffing, negotiation, and high player interaction.
“We believe this game will be complementing and strengthening our existing portfolio within our social playtype, a category that is growing.”
Aufnahme: 19.01.2026 Sendedatum: 15.02.2026 Themen 00:00:00 Intro & Begrüßung 00:00:30 Zur Person & Dissertation 00:05:40 Forschungsmethodik & Ergebnisse 00:24:25 Einsatz von Brettspielen zum Lernen 00:29:06:00 besondere Rolle von Brettspielen in […]
I recently talked to a publisher friend about something they had never encountered before: They were completely caught up at work. In fact, they were well ahead of schedule but their coworkers were not, so they wanted to resist their instinct to simply create another game, at least for a while.
Being completely caught up at work is a luxury that some of us may never experience, but perhaps you can relate to brief times when you’ve completed all time-sensitive tasks. After filling every spare moment with Vantage for nearly 8 years, I had that feeling when it was complete. I suddenly went from feeling perpetually behind to having an ample amount of time.
So today I thought I’d brainstorm a few ways to spend extra hours or even days when you’re caught up on work, particularly in creative roles. I’d love to hear what you do in these rare situations.
Serve customers: When in doubt, I ask myself, “What could I do right now to serve our customers?” This can be private or public. For example, I could email some of our most frequent customers to thank them for their support. I could hang out in any online community for our games, or search for our games on Instagram to comment on the posts instead of just liking them. Or I could make a video (recorded or live) to help people learn one of our games.
Research and learn: There’s more knowledge in the world than I can ever possibly know. I can spend extra time studying game design (from books, podcasts, articles, YouTube, etc) or even playing games (tabletop and digital). In fact, I so rarely play digital games because I always feel like I should be working, but I learn something about game design every time I do.
Support existing products: As fun as it is to release something new, most of the games we sell are reprints. Among many different ways of supporting existing products is to share special challenges or variants (like Vantage’s recent Valentine’s-themed custom cards). I can even revisit older rulebooks with a fresh, unrushed perspective. Also, even if I’m ahead of schedule, it never hurts to playtest a prototype again.
Create content: If there’s a topic on my mind that might add value to people or start a conversation, I can write an article about it, record a podcast, or film a video. It doesn’t need to be a commitment to creating regular content–it’s perfectly fine to create a singular post on a topic.
Attend an event: I rarely travel to conventions or even attend events at local game stores/cafes. Perhaps that’s just my introversion, but part of it is the other work I always feel I should be doing. But if I have extra time, there are plenty of places I could go–near and far–to play games and meet people outside of my social circle.
Make something just for fun: Sometimes I give myself permission to brainstorm a game (and even prototype it) just for fun, and I’m almost always glad I did. The lack of pressure to create something publishable is incredibly freeing.
Help someone else: I’ve heard that one of the best things for our mental health is to help someone else. Whether it’s a coworker, a friend in the industry, or a new creator, there’s always someone out there who might be looking for a little time, feedback, or words of encouragement.
Connect with someone locally: I typically take a 30-minute lunch break at my home office, then it’s back to work! I hardly ever go out to lunch, but there are lots of people–friends and peers–in the area that I could be more intentional about sharing lunch with from time to time.
Be good to yourself: There’s no rule saying that an absence of work needs to instantly be filled by more work. I can go for a walk, take care of a personal task I’ve delayed, treat myself to a movie, etc.
Start the next project: I’m putting this last because despite my inclination to always be creating something new, we don’t always need to make more games. Especially when we already have plenty of games in the pipeline and when adding something new could put a burden on already-busy coworkers. That said, it’s nice to start on a new game without any time pressure.
The Soviet Union was one of the great dictatorships of the 20th century. It applied an immense amount of coercion on its own citizens as well as many of its neighboring countries. Yet the almost seventy years between the Soviet Union’s founding from the ashes of the Russian Civil War in 1922 and its fragmentation into 15 nation-states in 1991 are no monolith of unfreedom. There were two distinct periods of liberalization around a generation apart from each other – one that began under General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, and one that began under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s. Let’s look at them, beginning with Khrushchev’s thaw, in terms of domestic, foreign, and economic policy. The post on Gorbachev’s reforms will follow in two weeks. As always, there will be board games along the way.
Freedom of Thought, Speech, and Political Expression
Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union curtailed its citizens’ expression dramatically. Historiography has recounted Stalin’s reign of terror in detail, yet the best-known expression of the totalitarian control to which the Soviet Union aspired from the 1930s on is George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984: Its one-party state does not only control citizens’ access to information (they are being exposed to constant propaganda and expected to keep up with its frequently changing, often contradictory contents), but demands active participation in the daily reconstruction of the system, ranging from institutionalized “two-minute hate” against political enemies to unlimited devotion to the “Big Brother” at the top of the pyramid.
The Soviet equivalent to the “Big Brother,” of course, was Stalin who was exalted in an official cult of personality as a wise and infallible leader, working tirelessly for the security and well-being of the Soviet Union. Whatever went wrong on the Soviet Union’s inexorable march of progress was the fault of an inept underling or a shadowy enemy.
When Stalin died, his lieutenants fought briefly, but viciously over his succession. Nikita Khrushchev emerged victorious. Khrushchev had been as loyal to Stalin as his chief rivals and immediatly used Stalinist methods to depose Lavrentiy Beria, the powerful Minister of Internal Affairs (and thus chief of the domestic security services). Beria was charged with treason, put through a mock trial, and executed.
Khrushchev’s skillful power politics could also swing the other way, though. He prepared a report on Stalin’s crimes which he delivered to a stunned audience at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956. For four hours, Khrushchev detailed Stalin’s party purges, his deportation of whole peoples deemed unloyal, and, most of all, how Stalin had established a cult of personality in which he was almost worshipped like a god.
Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization drive did not stop at mere proclamations. The late 1950s and early 1960s saw a lessening of censorship: Alexander Solzhenitsyn was allowed to publish his Gulag novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.
There were limits, however: Criticism of Stalin’s Gulags was one thing, criticism of the October Revolution another. Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago was not published in the USSR. When Pasternak won the Nobel Prize in literature for it, he and his family were threatened by agents of the state. Cowed, Pasternak did not travel to Stockholm to accept the prize.
Still, Khrushchev’s pivot represented an important turn in the state’s relationship with violence. While Soviet citizens were still routinely surveilled and subjected to coercion, it was neither with the overwhelming force of Stalinism nor with its unpredictability. The age of escalating purges, in which the accusers of today would be the accused of tomorrow was over.
Peaceful Coexistence and Khrushchev’s Many Other Schemes
Khrushchev’s 1956 speech was meant to remain secret, known only to its direct recipients and the allied Communist governments in Eastern Europe, but a member of the Polish Communist party smuggled a copy abroad via the Israeli embassy in Warsaw. From there, it soon gained wide circulation, and while Khrushchev had intended it to be a domestic power play only (it delegitimized his rivals Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov), he now also reaped benefits abroad: The post-Stalinist Soviet Union was naturally a more attractive ally and role model for both the socialist movements in Europe and the decolonizing and freshly independent nations in Africa and Asia.
This unintended benefit is the focus of the foreign-policy heavy Twilight Struggle‘s De-Stalinization card: The Soviet player may move up to four points of influence around on the globe. That may seem like a zero-sum game – after all, the influence is not added, but only moved. But the Soviet Union typically has a lot of spare influence in Eastern Europe after the first one or two turns, and De-Stalinization is the earliest and best way to gain access to faraway continents, chiefly South America (and, to a lesser degree, Africa).
Even before Khrushchev’s speech was leaked, his approach to foreign policy markedly differed from Stalin’s last years. When the relationship with the Soviet Union’s erstwhile allies had deteriorated after the end of World War II, Stalin had adopted a confrontational stance based on the assumption that the world was split in two hostile camps. Khrushchev, on the other hand, approached the western powers under the new motto of peaceful coexistence. Socialism and capitalism could both inhabit the same world. Of course, Khrushchev as a convinced Communist believed that his system would eventually triumph. Until then, peaceful coexistence would not only foster peace, but also make socialism more attractive, and free up resources for economic development and consumer goods (more on that below).
The economic (factory icon) and especially ideological (socialist – man with flat cap icon) bonuses are nice, but what sets the Peaceful Coexistence event in Wir sind das Volk! – 2+2 (Richard Sivél/Peer Sylvester, Histogame) apart is the ability to advance peace (dove icon) – indispensable when the world is sliding toward nuclear war!
Khrushchev was always better at initiating things than at seeing them through. Peaceful coexistence gave way to other projects – be that the support of nationalist movements in the global south or a re-newed competition with the West over Central Europe. And while Khrushchev thought that the Soviet Union and the western powers could live next to one another, that tolerance did not extend to heterodox socialist ideas within his own sphere of influence: When the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party announced to withdraw the country from the Warsaw Pact and hold free elections, Khrushchev had the reform movement quashed by Soviet tanks.
The Soviet economy under Stalin had been tuned to increase heavy industrial output to achieve a fast industrialization on the one hand and provide the basis for the country’s military security. This approach was validated by the country’s survival of the Nazi invasion and its eventual military victory in 1945. The proponents of this economic policy which usually went together with ideological mobilization and a confrontational foreign policy were called to adhere to politika. Yet after Stalin’s death, the rival faction of tekhnika gained ground: Its advocates favored a less aggressive foreign policy, less ideological mobilization, and, most of all, more market elements in the economy which would then produce more consumer goods.
Khrushchev positioned himself in the middle: Heavy industry would have priority (the Soviet Union was in a nuclear arms race with the United States whose economy was around three times as large as the Soviet, after all), but more attention would be given to consumer goods than before. Soviet citizens enjoyed a limited amount of prosperity with radios, washing machines, and sometimes even cars. Khrushchev saw this also as an instrument in the systemic competition of the Cold War: Material comfort and personal lifestyles would influence people’s allegiances as much as military strength or ideological treatises.
Khrushchev’s confidence in that regard led him to agree with the United States on mutual national exhibitions which would showcase their respective country to the citizens of the other. The confidence, however, was not quite justified: The Soviet exhibition in New York aroused curiosity, but the American one in Moscow was positively overrun. It also produced one of the iconic pictures of the Cold War with Nikita Khrushchev and US Vice President Richard Nixon debating the merits of their respective systems surrounded by American household appliances – the “Kitchen Debate.”
Some Soviet citizens might have dreamed of living in America, but their personal lifestyles already became more akin to those of Americans under Khrushchev. Even more important than the new consumer goods were their living conditions: Housing in big Soviet cities had been dominated by kommunalkas – large apartments from pre-revolutionary times which had been split to accommodate several families, each living in a single room and sharing the kitchen and bathroom with the others. These crammed living spaces afforded their inhabitants no privacy whatsoever. Only the elites of Stalin’s Soviet Union had apartments to themselves. Khrushchev started an ambitious housing program based on prefabricated, concrete-paneled apartment buildings which allowed millions of Soviet citizens to move into an apartment just for their own family for the first time.
As with foreign policy, Khrushchev started more economic reform projects than he saw through. The ambitious “Virgin Lands” campaign which aimed at alleviating Soviet food shortages by cultivating vast swathes of Siberia and northern Kazakhstan petered out after a few years. His scheme to introduce an Iowa-style corn belt fared even worse, discrediting both corn and Khrushchev in the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev’s Ouster
The economic starts and shifts of Khrushchev’s tenure undermined his position, as did his foreign policy unpredictability ranging from arms control to confronting the United States over Cuba. Most damaging to him, however, were his constant shuffles in the Communist Party. Disaffected cadres who feared they might lose their offices overthrew Khrushchev in October 1964. They installed the less fickle Leonid Brezhnev as new General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The conservative Brezhnev would tone down some of Khrushchev’s domestic reforms, resulting in a more restricted cultural and literary climate, but stuck with Khrushchev’s economic reforms and conducted foreign policy along the lines of détente with the West.
Not everything about Khrushchev was as cuddly as this bear which he received when visiting an East German electronics factory, but his rule made the Soviet Union a better place to live and furthered its international power and prestige. Image from Wir sind das Volk! – 2+2.
In the end, Khrushchev himself was one of the beneficiaries of the liberalization he had pushed: Unlike the victims of the purges of the 1930s (or even Beria), he was not subjected to a mock trial and executed. Instead, he officially resigned for health reasons and was allowed to live out his days at a comfortable dacha in the countryside.
The authoritative biography remains Taubman, William: Khrushchev. The Man and His Era, Norton, New York City, NY 2004.
A magisterial mosaic of Soviet social, economic, and cultural life is Schlögel, Karl: The Soviet Century. Archaeology of a Lost World, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 2023.
On the suppression of the Hungarian revolution and its impact on Soviet and western foreign policy, see Békés, Csaba: The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics, (Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. 16), Washington, D.C. 1996.
On the politika/tekhnika split, see Priestland, David: Cold War Mobilization and Domestic Politics: the Soviet Union, in: Leffler, Melvyn P./Westad, Odd Arne (eds.): The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume I. Origins, 5th edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2013, pp. 442-463.
The Soviet Union was one of the great dictatorships of the 20th century. It applied an immense amount of coercion on its own citizens as well as many of its neighboring countries. Yet the almost seventy years between the Soviet Union’s founding from the ashes of the Russian Civil War in 1922 and its fragmentation into 15 nation-states in 1991 are no monolith of unfreedom. There were two distinct periods of liberalization around a generation apart from each other – one that began under First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, and one that began under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s. Let’s look at them, beginning with Khrushchev’s thaw, in terms of domestic, foreign, and economic policy. The post on Gorbachev’s reforms will follow in two weeks. As always, there will be board games along the way.
Freedom of Thought, Speech, and Political Expression
Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union curtailed its citizens’ expression dramatically. Historiography has recounted Stalin’s reign of terror in detail, yet the best-known expression of the totalitarian control to which the Soviet Union aspired from the 1930s on is George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984: Its one-party state does not only control citizens’ access to information (they are being exposed to constant propaganda and expected to keep up with its frequently changing, often contradictory contents), but demands active participation in the daily reconstruction of the system, ranging from institutionalized “two-minute hate” against political enemies to unlimited devotion to the “Big Brother” at the top of the pyramid.
The Soviet equivalent to the “Big Brother,” of course, was Stalin who was exalted in an official cult of personality as a wise and infallible leader, working tirelessly for the security and well-being of the Soviet Union. Whatever went wrong on the Soviet Union’s inexorable march of progress was the fault of an inept underling or a shadowy enemy.
When Stalin died, his lieutenants fought briefly, but viciously over his succession. Nikita Khrushchev emerged victorious. Khrushchev had been as loyal to Stalin as his chief rivals and immediatly used Stalinist methods to depose Lavrentiy Beria, the powerful Minister of Internal Affairs (and thus chief of the domestic security services). Beria was charged with treason, put through a mock trial, and executed.
Khrushchev’s skillful power politics could also swing the other way, though. He prepared a report on Stalin’s crimes which he delivered to a stunned audience at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956. For four hours, Khrushchev detailed Stalin’s party purges, his deportation of whole peoples deemed unloyal, and, most of all, how Stalin had established a cult of personality in which he was almost worshipped like a god.
Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization drive did not stop at mere proclamations. The late 1950s and early 1960s saw a lessening of censorship: Alexander Solzhenitsyn was allowed to publish his Gulag novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.
There were limits, however: Criticism of Stalin’s Gulags was one thing, criticism of the October Revolution another. Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago was not published in the USSR. When Pasternak won the Nobel Prize in literature for it, he and his family were threatened by agents of the state. Cowed, Pasternak did not travel to Stockholm to accept the prize.
Still, Khrushchev’s pivot represented an important turn in the state’s relationship with violence. While Soviet citizens were still routinely surveilled and subjected to coercion, it was neither with the overwhelming force of Stalinism nor with its unpredictability. The age of escalating purges, in which the accusers of today would be the accused of tomorrow was over.
Peaceful Coexistence and Khrushchev’s Many Other Schemes
Khrushchev’s 1956 speech was meant to remain secret, known only to its direct recipients and the allied Communist governments in Eastern Europe, but a member of the Polish Communist party smuggled a copy abroad via the Israeli embassy in Warsaw. From there, it soon gained wide circulation, and while Khrushchev had intended it to be a domestic power play only (it delegitimized his rivals Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov), he now also reaped benefits abroad: The post-Stalinist Soviet Union was naturally a more attractive ally and role model for both the socialist movements in Europe and the decolonizing and freshly independent nations in Africa and Asia.
This unintended benefit is the focus of the foreign-policy heavy Twilight Struggle‘s De-Stalinization card: The Soviet player may move up to four points of influence around on the globe. That may seem like a zero-sum game – after all, the influence is not added, but only moved. But the Soviet Union typically has a lot of spare influence in Eastern Europe after the first one or two turns, and De-Stalinization is the earliest and best way to gain access to faraway continents, chiefly South America (and, to a lesser degree, Africa).
Even before Khrushchev’s speech was leaked, his approach to foreign policy markedly differed from Stalin’s last years. When the relationship with the Soviet Union’s erstwhile allies had deteriorated after the end of World War II, Stalin had adopted a confrontational stance based on the assumption that the world was split in two hostile camps. Khrushchev, on the other hand, approached the western powers under the new motto of peaceful coexistence. Socialism and capitalism could both inhabit the same world. Of course, Khrushchev as a convinced Communist believed that his system would eventually triumph. Until then, peaceful coexistence would not only foster peace, but also make socialism more attractive, and free up resources for economic development and consumer goods (more on that below).
The economic (factory icon) and especially ideological (socialist – man with flat cap icon) bonuses are nice, but what sets the Peaceful Coexistence event in Wir sind das Volk! – 2+2 (Richard Sivél/Peer Sylvester, Histogame) apart is the ability to advance peace (dove icon) – indispensable when the world is sliding toward nuclear war!
Khrushchev was always better at initiating things than at seeing them through. Peaceful coexistence gave way to other projects – be that the support of nationalist movements in the global south or a re-newed competition with the West over Central Europe. And while Khrushchev thought that the Soviet Union and the western powers could live next to one another, that tolerance did not extend to heterodox socialist ideas within his own sphere of influence: When the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party announced to withdraw the country from the Warsaw Pact and hold free elections, Khrushchev had the reform movement quashed by Soviet tanks.
The Soviet economy under Stalin had been tuned to increase heavy industrial output to achieve a fast industrialization on the one hand and provide the basis for the country’s military security. This approach was validated by the country’s survival of the Nazi invasion and its eventual military victory in 1945. The proponents of this economic policy which usually went together with ideological mobilization and a confrontational foreign policy were called to adhere to politika. Yet after Stalin’s death, the rival faction of tekhnika gained ground: Its advocates favored a less aggressive foreign policy, less ideological mobilization, and, most of all, more market elements in the economy which would then produce more consumer goods.
Khrushchev positioned himself in the middle: Heavy industry would have priority (the Soviet Union was in a nuclear arms race with the United States whose economy was around three times as large as the Soviet, after all), but more attention would be given to consumer goods than before. Soviet citizens enjoyed a limited amount of prosperity with radios, washing machines, and sometimes even cars. Khrushchev saw this also as an instrument in the systemic competition of the Cold War: Material comfort and personal lifestyles would influence people’s allegiances as much as military strength or ideological treatises.
Khrushchev’s confidence in that regard led him to agree with the United States on mutual national exhibitions which would showcase their respective country to the citizens of the other. The confidence, however, was not quite justified: The Soviet exhibition in New York aroused curiosity, but the American one in Moscow was positively overrun. It also produced one of the iconic pictures of the Cold War with Nikita Khrushchev and US Vice President Richard Nixon debating the merits of their respective systems surrounded by American household appliances – the “Kitchen Debate.”
Some Soviet citizens might have dreamed of living in America, but their personal lifestyles already became more akin to those of Americans under Khrushchev. Even more important than the new consumer goods were their living conditions: Housing in big Soviet cities had been dominated by kommunalkas – large apartments from pre-revolutionary times which had been split to accommodate several families, each living in a single room and sharing the kitchen and bathroom with the others. These crammed living spaces afforded their inhabitants no privacy whatsoever. Only the elites of Stalin’s Soviet Union had apartments to themselves. Khrushchev started an ambitious housing program based on prefabricated, concrete-paneled apartment buildings which allowed millions of Soviet citizens to move into an apartment just for their own family for the first time.
As with foreign policy, Khrushchev started more economic reform projects than he saw through. The ambitious “Virgin Lands” campaign which aimed at alleviating Soviet food shortages by cultivating vast swathes of Siberia and northern Kazakhstan petered out after a few years. His scheme to introduce an Iowa-style corn belt fared even worse, discrediting both corn and Khrushchev in the Soviet Union.
Khrushchev’s Ouster
The economic starts and shifts of Khrushchev’s tenure undermined his position, as did his foreign policy unpredictability ranging from arms control to confronting the United States over Cuba. Most damaging to him, however, were his constant shuffles in the Communist Party. Disaffected cadres who feared they might lose their offices overthrew Khrushchev in October 1964. They installed the less fickle Leonid Brezhnev as new First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (an office soon to be re-named to General Secretary, like under Stalin). The conservative Brezhnev would tone down some of Khrushchev’s domestic reforms, resulting in a more restricted cultural and literary climate, but stuck with Khrushchev’s economic reforms and conducted foreign policy along the lines of détente with the West.
Not everything about Khrushchev was as cuddly as this bear which he received when visiting an East German electronics factory, but his rule made the Soviet Union a better place to live and furthered its international power and prestige. Image from Wir sind das Volk! – 2+2.
In the end, Khrushchev himself was one of the beneficiaries of the liberalization he had pushed: Unlike the victims of the purges of the 1930s (or even Beria), he was not subjected to a mock trial and executed. Instead, he officially resigned for health reasons and was allowed to live out his days at a comfortable dacha in the countryside.
The authoritative biography remains Taubman, William: Khrushchev. The Man and His Era, Norton, New York City, NY 2004.
A magisterial mosaic of Soviet social, economic, and cultural life is Schlögel, Karl: The Soviet Century. Archaeology of a Lost World, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 2023.
On the suppression of the Hungarian revolution and its impact on Soviet and western foreign policy, see Békés, Csaba: The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics, (Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. 16), Washington, D.C. 1996.
On the politika/tekhnika split, see Priestland, David: Cold War Mobilization and Domestic Politics: the Soviet Union, in: Leffler, Melvyn P./Westad, Odd Arne (eds.): The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume I. Origins, 5th edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2013, pp. 442-463.
After being catapulted into the board game industry limelight following the success of Pandemic in 2008, Matt Leacock has scored ongoing success through titles such as the Forbidden series, Ticket to Ride and Pandemic legacy titles and his Kennerspiel-winning climate-change co-design Daybreak. In this in-depth interview he spoke with BoardGameWire about how the industry has changed for designers over the last quarter of a century, how working with developers can best help a design to sing, and why fighting for designer rights is among his most important jobs in 2026.
BoardGameWire: It’s almost 20 years since Pandemic was first published. What do you think have been the biggest changes for board game designers, specifically, within that time?
Matt Leacock: Oh, let’s see. So a few things. There’s just so much more competition out there, so much more product. I think when I started it was a lot easier to get noticed. I mean, when I think back to 2000 when I really got started, and went to Spiel [Essen] and sold my little racing game, I didn’t need to have a whole lot, and the production value didn’t have to be that great. And it was just easier to get noticed, people would stop by.
And now, if I were to do the same thing, I’d get laughed out of the hall because, you know, I’d be competing with thousands of other products. But on the flip side I think there’s a lot more support for new designers, up and coming designers. I look at all the cons that have Protospiel events, and Unpub, and see a network of a lot of people who are helping each other out and kind of helping to pull each other up and share best practices and so on. So yeah, I guess I see some easier things and some harder things at the same time.
Do you think you were fortunate in terms of when you happened to start pitching designs, and began going to places like Spiel and shopping designs around?
Well, I do think it was easier to get noticed – but that said, the product still needed to be really good. So it took a long time: many, many years, before I had something that was, I think, worthy of being published. Like, I don’t even know how many years. I started working on my first design in college, and I spent, like ten years on it, and then it came out in 2000 and it was fine. And then it took another eight years before Pandemic came out. So yeah, it was perhaps easier to get noticed, but you still needed to have a something worth being played, and I think that’s still true.
How do you think Pandemic’s success changed your career path and choices – and is there anything you think didn’t change about how you were approaching being a game designer?
I mean, it changed everything. I was a hobbyist, and then I was somebody kind of doing it as a side gig a bit. And then Pandemic took off, and it just allowed me to step away from my day job and change careers completely – and that was not something I had planned on doing. It was just this wonderful opportunity. It did take a while, though. The game came out in 2008 and I started working full time 2014, so it took about six years before I was comfortable enough to switch.
And is that a factor of having to wait until it’s financially viable? What was it that persuaded you it was okay to take the jump?
Yeah. So I’m living in the San Francisco Bay area, like, in the heart of Silicon Valley, so the cost of living here is not low – and I’ve got two kids to put through college. And you’re basically getting paid a paycheck four times a year, and you don’t know what it’s going to be. So it took many quarters, years of seeing that this title was an evergreen and was going to be able to help meet the bills and so on. And once we saw that, then we were able to kind of shift.
How much of your design work in recent years is you going out and pitching to publishers, and how much is publishers coming to you?
Oh, yeah, the last few years, it’s been much more… I’m just really lucky in that I’m able to kind of pick and choose projects, and most of them are publishers coming to me and saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea for something’. A lot of the work that I’m doing is expanding existing worlds that I’ve already built, whether it’s the Forbidden stuff or the Pandemic stuff.
So I’m lucky in that I’ve kind of got those two different playgrounds to play in already, but there’s very little of me, like, inventing from a totally blank sheet of paper. It’s generally someone pitching an idea – occasionally, like with Daybreak, I did have an idea, but then I also ran into another colleague, or someone who would become a colleague, and we worked on it together. And we had a publisher lined up maybe halfway through the process – much earlier than typical.
So I do like to have a relationship with a publisher fairly early on, and often it’s through a pitch. So I’m not doing a whole lot of cold calls or cold pitches.
Matt Leacock stands on a copy of Pandemic Legacy || Photo Credit: Douglas Morse
You’ve worked with quite a few major and smaller publishers over the years. How consistent is what publishers ask of you, in terms of initial design and development and final production, and do you think any of those approaches work better than others?
Yeah, I would say that it is all over the board. So a case in point: I worked with Studio Big Games, Z-Man – part of Asmodee – on Fate of the Fellowship. And that was just a really tight collaboration, with in-house development, creative direction, art direction, sculpting, you name it, down the line – a really great, expanded professional team. I worked with Kevin Ellenburg on development there, and he devoted almost a year to internal development, really working with me to refine the systems in that game, so it was really polished by the time we were done.
Other companies, it’s like one person, and they’re going to hire out and build a virtual team for any given project, and so you’ve got a collection of people that are kind of thrown together. And that’s not to say that people aren’t excellent, it’s just that it’s a very different experience and much more hands on. Although I would say that whether it’s a really big publisher with an internal team, or a smaller one with a virtual team that’s kind of brought together in real time, I’m pretty involved all the way down – like specifying when, you know, an apostrophe isn’t curly [laughs] – I’m looking at all the details there.
But it is a very different experience working with the bigger ones, the more established ones, and the smaller ones, which are scrappy – you have a little bit more control, I would say, in the smaller ones sometimes, because there’s just nobody else: someone’s got to step up and do the work. But I do really love working with teams of people who are far, far better than me. And sometimes that’s not always the case.
Are there ever any challenges where you’ve got your vision for how the game should be, but a developer comes in and says, ‘Well, that’s fine, but maybe we should tweak this and that’. Are there ever any hard lines from you: ‘no, this must stay the same’?
I can only point to one where I was frustrated, and it was probably my least successful game, where my vision for the way the components would work was very different from the way the publisher approached things. They were coming at it from a pure cost perspective, and I was looking at it and going: ‘This is going to go nowhere with this kind of level of quality’. I think they were just trying to market it based on the idea that it was inexpensive. And I’m like, ‘Well, this is just not gonna work’.
That was the only time really – I think I’ve been really happy across the board, very lucky across the board that the teams I’ve worked with have been really professional and brought a lot of value to it.
Well flipping that around then, I guess, what makes a developer especially effective to work with? When you sit down with a developer, when do you find yourself going: ‘Oh, yeah, that’s great. That’s really helpful’.
Yeah, I respond really well when things are data driven, like when they can point to playtests and say, ‘hey, you know what – these people are having these experiences’. It’s not just solutions. So I like to see data, sort of in context of play, from real humans. And then I like to see a tremendous amount of attention to detail tracking things down. I love it when people are brutally honest, but I also like things when they’re packaged up with, you know, soft communication – so it’s a little easier to swallow the pill [laughs].
That kind of package: really great insights, really good attention to detail, all founded on facts from real world play tests that are communicated well and tracked down – that’s what I’m looking for.
Can you think of anything specific in terms of, say, Fate of the Fellowship, that got changed through development that you hadn’t considered? Where you were suddenly like, ‘No, this is, this is a really good idea, actually, this does make sense’?
Yeah, I would say that there’s just thousands of micro decisions. When you’re looking at 13 characters, and 14 events, and 24 different objective cards, there’s just a tremendous amount of interactions. And you don’t want to be dealt the character and go like, ‘Oh, darn, I got that character’. You know? That they’re either less interesting, or perceived to be less powerful. So around the edges a lot of the characters got minor tweaks, or they might get a third, tertiary ability that doesn’t even get played sometimes in the game, but is a nice thing to have, and it has a little thematic twist. Some of the things Kevin cooked up really added a little roundness to characters and made them more interesting.
Components from the Fate of the Fellowship board game
What does your own design slate look like in 2026? I think flickering stars is on BGG, but I haven’t seen anything else. Are we just getting the one this year?
[Laughs] I mean, like, knock [on] wood! That product’s been delayed a lot, so I needed to check with the publisher and find out what’s going on. My greatest hope is that it comes out this year. There are – let’s see, I’m looking over the whiteboard right now – at least one other product coming out in the Fall. I’ll set expectations for maybe two, and then I’ve got others in the pipeline.
I’m slowing down a little bit. The kids are out of the house, I’m enjoying travel more. So the whiteboard was full of games the past few years, and I’m just kind of letting that shrink a bit. But I will say I’m working on at least one legacy game with Rob Daviau. That’s been a lot of fun.
Flickering Stars looks to me like a bit of a departure from a lot of the stuff you’ve designed elsewise – and I do apologise, I don’t know much about it. So is this one that’s been bubbling around for a while now?
Oh, like eight to ten years. I’m not kidding! And [co-designer Josh Cappel] worked on this before I did for like, a couple of years. So it is, I think, easily the longest development time of any product I’ve ever worked on. This is also my kids’ favorite game. It’s a dexterity game where you’re flicking little spaceships across the table, and it plays a little bit like a miniatures game without the fiddly bits. Where you put your tokens on the table: position really matters, there’s a lot of strategy, but it comes off and looks like a pretty lightweight, easy to learn thing.
The challenge with these things is that it requires a lot of specification around the plastic components. There’s actually spaceships in here that will launch a projectile, another one that rolls a large steel ball across the table – really fun stuff. And you look at it, and you’re like, ‘I know how to play that’! [laughs] And it plays pretty fast, so it’s a really great package. It’s all done, as far as I can tell, they just need to print it and get it into distribution.
Why has it taken so long, do you think? Was this something that you showed to multiple different publishers over time?
It’s been a combination of all sorts of factors. I mean, I don’t know where to begin. It did see different publishers, and sort of went on a journey there. It found a home with Friendly Skeleton, formerly Deep Water, where they just adored the game – really saw the vision, were all in, and were great partners to do the product design etc. But then we had Covid in there, we had the tariffs, there was some restructuring with that company – it’s just a whole string of things. So we’ll see how it plays out.
You’re currently secretary of the Tabletop Game Designers Association – why is an organisation like that important within the modern board game profession?
Oh my gosh, it’s so important! If it did nothing other than contract review, it would still be very important. Game designers are vulnerable folks, right? We work with much larger publishers who have a lot more power in the relationship in many cases, a lot more leverage. I think, like for book authors or any creatives, musicians, etc, it helps if we can band together and look out for each other.
And so this organization provides all sorts of services for its members. I think one of the most important is contract review, where you can you can send in contracts, get them reviewed and make sure that you’re agreeing to terms that are fair and the industry standards: you’re not stepping on landmines and so on. But we also have a really active Discord community where you can talk with each other, you can share playtesting tips, network. It’s just a great place to connect with other people in the field.
So I was a member of SAZ – I’m not even going to pretend to say I know how to pronounce it – the German equivalent of the TTGDA, for probably about 10 years now, and joined them just for very similar reasons. But TTGDA is here in the States. It’s very present. We’re trying to meet up with people in various conferences and to provide lesson services for people within the field. I think it’s a really good bargain too! I mean, you’re paying about 100 bucks for a year, and legal fees just alone would be much higher than that.
So I jumped on it – when Geoff [Engelstein] announced that he was putting it together, I’m like, ‘That’s such a great idea’. And then he invited me to serve on the board, so I leapt on that.
The home page of the Tabletop Game Designers Association
Geoff is obviously a heavyweight within the board games industry. [TTGDA co-founder] Elizabeth Hargrave too, as well yourself. How important is having that kind of heft in the association, in terms of being able to talk to publishers on behalf of new designers, perhaps who don’t have that track record within the industry?
Yeah, I think it does matter to have some bigger names on there. I know that SAZ in Germany was actually headed by Alan Moon for a while, which is odd, him living in the States, but his name caught my attention for that. And similarly, I know Geoff has done just great work in the industry here, and I really wanted to help support him.
If you could change one standard practice in, for example, designer/publisher contracts or workflows, what do you think itwould be?
Honestly? I kind of wish they were just a little bit more Lego-like, so you could just run through a checklist and go: ‘covered, covered, covered’. You can do it right now. It’s just the language across all the different contracts is presented differently. One of the contracts I had was a modified comic book contract that had been modified and modified, modified and modified over years and years, to suit the requirements for game designers. But it was just so weird – it was this weird Frankenstein’s monster that I had to go through and really kind of try to suss out the language in. And it’s difficult to know what’s missing, so you really do have to run through a checklist. So this is something we’re working on at TTGDA, just having a more standardized contract.
I have seen some that actually pull the terms out to the front so you get, like, a summary sheet, and then you see the boilerplate in the back, and it’s a lot easier to understand.
Here’s a very personal annoyance that I have: it’s really hard for me to get designer copies a lot of the time. I don’t know why this is with companies, but, like, I would like to get the product at least as soon as the public does. And sometimes it’s months before I get my stuff [laughs] It’s really rough. I would like to see it and play it and have it!
Matt, what you need to do is become an influencer, start a YouTube channel, and you can get those games immediately.
[Laughs] I guess so, maybe I could talk about it more that way: I’d like to support the game, but I need a copy first.
That is crazy, isn’t it? You’d think they’d be all about giving you a copy, because you’re in a prime position to promote the game and be excited about it, right?
And it’s not due to any kind of ill will or anything like that. It’s just, like, internal processes are sometimes screwy. And yeah, it’s not always the case. It’s just it’s especially jarring when it happens.
The sort of contract work you’re doing with TTGDA must be useful to some publishers as well, right, for similar reasons? I’m sure some publishers come to the contract side of things and they’re like, ‘man, we don’t know what we’re doing – I guess we just repurpose this comics contract?’, or try and come up with something that has a lot of legalese in, which feels like it covers them?
I would think it would be very, very useful. I think awareness needs to be higher, though – I’m not sure enough publishers are doing that. Because it’s there, you can take an off-the-shelf contract that we’ve got and then modify and suit your needs. And the way it’s set up is, like I said, very Lego-like – you can put together the different sections together and assemble one if you want to.
But, yeah, I think too many are just very green and just take a shot in the dark and hope for the best, and we see some really, really incredibly bad contracts. I can’t speak to this nearly as well as, say, Geoff and Elizabeth, who head up that side of the house. I’m sure they could tell you some really, really great stories.
I’ve been trying to get something lined up with both of them for a while now – I will absolutely try and make that happen this year. I wanted to ask: what’s something publishers should stop expecting designers to do, or to do for free?
I think you see this more with smaller ones, where I’m just asked to wear lots and lots of hats, whether it’s doing the final edit on the rule books or… I think we see this less now, but I was aghast in the past, when my prototype art was used, actually in the final product. Like, I’m responsible for the game design!
I would like there to be some sort of development support. Like, with Pandemic I had zero development support – it was published basically as I handed it over. [Z-Man Games founder Zev Shlasinger] was a one-person shop, and he did give one request, which was to have a few more roles in the box. But it was basically just like, you had to wear a lot of hats: creative director, art director, final proofer, all these different things. And I think it’s important for publishers to realize that we have a certain limited amount of time, and our role is game design. We still want the product to be as good as it can be. We’re probably the strongest advocates for that, and so we’ll step up and fill in gaps, because we want the final product to be really, really good, and it’s our name on the front of the box. So we need to do that, but there’s a certain limit.
So I guess one of my pet peeves is when I’m essentially asked to be the creative director, and I would like there to be someone else, even if it’s just a graphic designer who’s keeping an eye out and taking on that role. Maybe they have that formal role of creative director, but someone who’s, like, really responsible for the product at the publisher and not expecting the game designer to take on that role.
Do you think that’s improved, generally? Or do you think it’s improved for Pandemic designer Matt Leacock, more perhaps than for other people?
[Laughs] I don’t know, I really don’t know. I’ve got my own limited, narrow, viewpoint of the relationships I’ve got with the publishers I have, and I gotta say for the most part it’s been really, really good. And so I think it just stands out sometimes when you’re like, ‘oh, wow, it’s not always like that’, right? And I think the reality of it is, it’s a tough business, and if you’re a small company it’s difficult to hire a creative director, and you’ve got this game designer here who can take on that role. And I care about this stuff, so I’m gonna step up! I don’t want to blow this out of proportion, but it’s an annoyance sometimes. I think the products are so much better when you get someone looking within the company, ensuring that you know this thing’s gonna be really, really great.
So: if you were starting out as a first time designer today, what pieces of advice would you give yourself in order to sort of stand out and, like, build it up to a professional career?
I think a lot of it is the stuff that I’ve I had to learn on my own, and I’m not sure hearing it would really help. I would just have to do it. I fall into a lot of traps where I spend too much time trying to make the prototypes look good rather than play well, and I continue to do that [laughs]. So again, I could tell myself not to do that, but it’s something I just have to continually work at, because just many, many iterations with lots and lots of people are where you kind of get to quality.
And really, the play is the thing, that’s what matters in the long run. You can have a big hit that does well once and then goes out of print, but if you want that longevity, the play has really got to be in the game, and you’re only going to get that if you’re really iterating and working really hard and showing it to lots of people.
So I would probably just reinforce those lessons that I’ve learned myself, and I would hear them and agree with them, and then I wouldn’t do them [laughs].
You’re not the first person that I’ve talked to about this, and I’ve heard that before. You have people saying, ‘It doesn’t matter what it looks like. You just got to get it on the table…’
I mean that’s not true – it does matter what looks like! [laughs] But there is a limit. I have a tendency to pull out the laser cutter – because it’s fun to make stuff look really good! And it’s also a great way to procrastinate on the hard work of making difficult decisions and trade offs and, like, killing your darlings and all that kind of stuff, which is just not fun a lot of times. Or killing the project, you know! I’d rather make it look better and see if it plays again [laughs].
There must be some positive element beyond procrastinating to it as well, though, because otherwise you wouldn’t keep doing it! There must be some element of: it’s time with the game, crafting it and thinking about the vision. And perhaps by sitting with it and crafting it in this way, maybe that gives you the brain space to put it in different directions?
That is 100% true. And so I’m understating: investing too much time in making it look good is obviously a problem, but it does mean that you’re spending a lot of time with the components and the game on the table. It’s just you’re not, like, running the engine: you’re waxing the car. You’re not in it test driving it, you know, and banging it into other things to see if the roll bars are going to hold up, right? But that’s painful work sometimes. And it’s, you know – it’s more fun to polish the car [laughs].
2025 was obviously really volatile for many publishers, and presumably for designers too, given tariff changes and general worries about the economy, and how much money people have to spend on things like games. How much of that filtered through to you as a designer, or to other designers that you were speaking to last year?
Yeah, from what I hear it’s been pretty rough. You hear about the different companies going out of business, sometimes you hear about designers not being paid on time. Delays, and just the length of time seems to just be longer in general – so development times have kind of stretched out on my end. Games that have been promised to release in a certain year, that year slips more often than not now. So that’s a thing.
It was difficult to keep, specifically, Fate of the Fellowship, in stock. It’s been nice that there’s been so much demand, but it would be better if we could have them on the store shelves. I think more than anything it’s been the delays. And I would think that – and this is speculating on my part – I would think that publishers are gonna be less likely to want to take certain risks given how volatile things are, so maybe relying on lines that are more well established, rather than swinging for the fences with something really risky.
Presumably you’ve been speaking to publishers towards the end of the last year and already this year – do you get a sense of how are they approaching things for 2026? Like, are there different strategies at play and desires for particular types of game, or ‘size of box’ game – are you seeing those sort of discussions happening?
Most of what I could share would be second-hand, just reading online how people are more open to card games and so on that have a lower cost of goods, just because of the tariffs and so on. But I haven’t really had those conversations myself so much, with the projects I’m working on.
You talk about riskier games, and publishers maybe battening down the hatches and sticking to their knitting in terms of what’s been successful previously. Where would something like Daybreak sit? Because I think if you if you’d asked a couple of years ago ‘will this game be hugely successful?’, I think there’d be plenty of people who would have said, ‘well, possibly not’ – it’s a strong issues-focused, cooperative game, and perhaps doesn’t fit in the traditional mould of a modern eurogame. Obviously it was very good, and hugely successful! Do you think it would be more difficult to “pitch a Daybreak”, something a bit left-field, today?
Yeah, hard to say. I mean, [co-designer Matteo Menapace] and I were thinking it would be a tough thing to find a publisher, to some extent from the beginning, just given that it’s, you know, ‘let’s play a fun game about climate change’. It’s not necessarily something people are gonna want to sign up for, but at the same time there are a lot of eco-focused games, games about nature and ecology and so on. Wingspan really showed everyone that there’s a market for this kind of thing.
I think of [Daybreak] as a kind of a special case. We had the game, and they were looking for that game, and we just met up, and everything was great. So it’s difficult to know how that would have done back then, if we hadn’t found that relationship. And that’s as it was, much less with what we’re seeing now. Hard to say.
Daybreak / e-Mission designers Matt Leacock (left) and Matteo Menapace (right), flanking Schmidt Spiele editors Bastian Herfurth and Anatol Dündar
What design trends do you think are being overused right now, and which areas do you think are perhaps a little under explored?
Well, I don’t like to chase trends, so I think if your hot new idea is maybe a trick taker, you might be a little late to the party [laughs] There are so many of those. That said, there’s a huge built-in audience for those, and they’re really inexpensive to make. So, you know – I don’t want to dissuade anybody from chasing their dream, but I also don’t think you want to be chasing a trend that we’re actually seeing in the marketplace, given that it takes one to three years to get something out on the on the market.
Under-explored? Oh, God, I don’t know. That’s always the question, right?
Is it space-based flicking games?
[Laughs] 100% yeah, you really need to fill in your portfolio there. So many publishers don’t have a dexterity game. Here’s this wonderful game! Yeah. I’m not really sure. I’ll pretend that I know exactly what it is, and I’m not going to share it with you. [laughs]
Very wise, very sage! I do think more publishers should do dexterity games. I know perhaps it’s a difficult fit for their existing portfolio or style, but I play loads of dexterity games, they’re great, and it’s always fun, even if you’re bad at it.
Exactly, you can always blame your skill at flicking, not your strategy.
Are there any games in the past year or so that you’ve been particularly impressed with from a design point of view, where you’ve played it and thought, ‘oh yeah, that’s really craftily done’?
I’m perennially impressed and just blown away by [Reiner] Knizia’s work. The reworking of Beowulf that he did – and didn’t seem to go over well in the market – into Ego has been really amazing. He’s got three games with… I think it’s Bitewing: Ego, Silos and Orbit, and they’re all good, but I think Ego’s really something special. It’s got this great exploration into risk, and pushing your luck, and sunk cost and all this kind of thing – with really fun bits. Plays pretty snappily, and I think it’s just stellar design work.
And then I shelled out for the version of Quest for El Dorado, the international version with that art, and still adore that game. So those two just stand out in my mind. And a lot of the work by John D Clair, I think has been really fantastic. Those are the standouts for me.
Are there any mechanics you now actively avoid because of lessons learned from earlier titles?
[Laughs] No, I think mechanics are just, like, the tools you have in the shop. For me, it’s just all about: what is the game trying to do? And those are just the nuts and bolts that that you use to create those exciting changes in the game, to light up people’s brains. So I can’t think of anything specifically.
Well let me rephrase it then: is there any game you made previously where you thought: ‘I will never do that again’, for whatever reason?
Matt Leacock’s design Era: Medieval Age
Yeah, I would say that some of the dice games that I did, like Roll Through the Ages and Chariot Race, I think were fine for the time – but the downtime in those is just too high. I don’t think people have the patience for that sort of thing. So that would be something I would avoid. I think I would avoid games that just have a tremendous amount of plastic in them, for environmental reasons. So like, I’m looking at Era going, ‘Wow, that is a lot of plastic’. I have a follow up for that game that’s unpublished right now, and I don’t know what I’d ever do with it, because it just requires a metric ton of plastic. So I’m like ‘I don’t want to do that’ [laughs]. So those are considerations, not really mechanisms, so much.
Is there a structural issue in the board game industry now that you think needs fixing, but just isn’t getting discussed, or rarely gets discussed?
Oh, you’ve given me such a great platform for this, and I don’t really have a specific bone to pick right now [laughs]. There probably is. I mean, I’m concerned about the way that creatives are compensated, whether they’re illustrators in the wake of AI, or game designers just not knowing better and signing up for really bad contracts with exploitative publishers – or publishers that are just trying to make ends meet, and finding ways to whittle around the edges.
Has that been a big thing with within TTGDA? Members bringing you concerns about AI, especially on the art side of things?
I think there have been some discussions. I try not to get too heavily involved in them, because they tend to devolve into… it’s hard to change people’s minds online. I would say that the consensus is pretty much that it’s okay to use AI stuff for prototyping, but never in a final product, – at least our collective seems to have that mindset, I think? And even if you’re doing it in a prototype, there… I think I would just say some embarrassment about it. I’ve used AI in prototype art, and I don’t feel great about it, because I know it’s operating on the work of other people that’s been uncompensated. So I will probably think pretty heavily about whether it’s worth the squeeze there. If I can find other ways to do it, I think [it] would be do better.
It does seem to be creeping into more and more games. I don’t think many of the really big publishers have committed to using it yet, but we’re seeing it creeping in with some of the smaller publishers and individual creators. Is there some sort of inevitability about this?
I don’t think anything is inevitable here. I think as consumers we can say, ‘hey, we don’t stand for that sort of thing’. I’ve been kind of disappointed looking at the Terraforming Mars product line, and that publisher Fryx Games has just kind of embraced it unapologetically. And I’m like – I’m not gonna work with that publisher.
I feel like maybe there’s a certain justice element there that just really rubs me the wrong way. And if, as consumers and designers and media, we try to stand up for creators rights, then we can steer things a certain way. I still hold out a lot of hope for that, and I don’t think anything about it is inevitable.
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.
Another year in the books and I am in awe of what we were able to get accomplished in 2025! In this post, I want to take a look back at some of what we did, played and experienced in 2025! But, I also want to share my thoughts and create some discussion here about some very interesting trends and changes that I am seeing. So welcome to my musings as I take a retrospective look back at the year that was 2025.
The Numbers
To start this post off, let’s take a quick look at the numbers associated with our gaming and the content that we created in 2025. This is not a full deep dive into the statistics (like we normally do in our annual State of the Union posts in April) but a quick look at the number of games and then some simple info about the content.
In 2025, I am pleased to announce that we played a total of 26 new wargame titles but we will still get in a few more over the next several months as we don’t put together our “Best of” lists until around March in order to give some time to play at least some of the games released in December. That number is quite a bit less than it was last year. We had a weird 2025 in the gaming time availability department as we were busy with work, family vacations and commitments and some minor health issues. We just didn’t meet each and every week to play, which was a bit disappointing.
I also was able to play a total of 12 solitaire games but am still fiddling around with 4 or 5 titles (Black Skin Black Shirt from White Dog Games, Trench Raid from Compass Games, The Twelfth Battle from Hexasim, SPQR: The Battle of Alesia from Art of Wargames and Iwo Jima: Hell on Earth from Neva Wargames) that I hope to finish out before March.
I had quite the streak going over the past 2 years plus as I had a post on the blog for 876 consecutive days! By my calculations, that represented 2.4 years straight that something had appeared here! I gave up the streak over the holidays as I was just more interested in spending time with family and friends and enjoying myself. That was a bit mind blowing and I was just in a groove and had the ability to write quickly, sometimes repurposing previous posts, and still had the drive to do it. I am saddened that my streak came to an end but as they say all good things must come to an end! I am now actively trying to get myself back into a good streak but have had a bit of trouble with motivation at this time of year. In 2025, I posted a total of 395 blog posts! That is a bit behind the records for posts we had in 2024 (410) but still a really good number and represents 1.08 blog posts per day. Thanks for reading and consuming what I put up and for the great feedback.
A bit more of the numbers, for 10 out of 12 months we exceeded 50,000 views with 5 of those months far exceeding that number (May 65,344, August 72,868, October 68,081, November 130,612 and December 202,847). I am not sure what happened in those months but the views were really, really good. Maybe I was hacked or spam bots were sharing my content but it was nice to see. So, in 2025, the blog did just fine and keeps chugging along, mainly due to your consumption and I thank you.
Our YouTube Channel has also grown to 21.2K subscribers (we were at 19.5K subscribers in January 2025) and we have posted 184 new videos in 2025! We have a pattern of 1 new video (including unboxings, reviews, interviews, debriefs and other videos) every other day and some times we had 2 or 3 in a row due to timelines for Kickstarter/Gamefound projects, new games we simply wanted to share quickly or mistakes in scheduling. We hope that you find our videso genuine, insightful, helpful and fun because we really enjoy doing them and have plans to continue our torrid pace. Enough with the numbers! Now onto some of the trends we saw or things we did in 2025.
How do you prefer to consume our content? What do you like best about our stuff? What would you like to see?
Proliferation of Solo Wargames
A trend that I have seen expanding is the number of high quality solitaire wargame offerings on the market. I know that there have always been solo wargames, and those 2-player games that are more easily solo able such as Chit-Pull Activation, but the number of dedicated solitaire wargame options has just exploded. In 2025, I acquired 29 new dedicated solitaire wargames. I was only able to play a handful but there are just so many options out there that it is really amazing.
Here is a list of those games that I acquired (with those played bolded):
Okinawa: The Last Battle of WWII
The Fall of Röhm 3rd Edition
Iwo Jima 1945
The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth
Battles of the American Civil War
Operation Dragoon Travel Game
Solitaire D-Day
Crusaders: The Siege of Acre 1291
Nightfighter Command
SPQR: The Battle of Alesia
Siege Works: A Napoleonic Siege Roll & Write
War In The Pacific: A WW2 Roll & Write
Lonely Cairn
World War II Solitaire: Echoes of War: (Right Handed Allied Edition)
The Twelfth Battle
Pocket Air War
Combat Volume 3 Arnhem
Fields of Fire Deluxe 2nd Edition
Bloody Lane
French & Indian War Solitaire
Lone Wolf: U-Boat Command
Europe at War 1940 Solitaire
Shogun Solitaire
Black Skin Black Shirt
Trench Raid
Empire of Grass
British Tank Ace
Onoda
I have always been a believer in the market and I think that this proliferation is due to more games being purchased and played than ever before. I hope this trend continues and that I am able to get to more of these games in the future.
What are your thoughts on dedicated solitaire wargames? How many did you acquire in 2025?
Shelf of Shame Dustoff! Event Part II – 12 Games from Our Shelves of Shame
One of the new things that we tried in 2024 and now have continued into 2026 was our Shelf of Shame Dustoff! where we identified 12 older games that have been sitting on our shelves for far too long and need to see the light of day and our gaming tables. We initially chose one game per month to play but due to time and other constraints ended up simply choosing a few games to play this year. We didn’t get around to 12, but still were able to play quite a few that we had owned for a while. The Shelf of Shame! games we were able to play in 2025 were as follows:
Medieval Conspiracy from UGG – not a wargame per se but a hybrid euro style area control game with bidding and combat along with event and action cards that are used to build up your economy and influence and control fiefdoms to gain prestige and power. The game is set during the Holy Roman Empire of Germany. The HRE is divided into many small earldoms, principalities, and bishoprics. The Ruler of the Empire is the Holy Roman Emperor who is elected by the 7 electoral princes and the players vie for control of these areas to build up trade, wealth and armies to fight wars of conquest.
Here is a link to our video review of Medieval Conspiracy:
Border Reivers: Anglo-Scottish Border Raids, 1513-1603 from GMT Games – In Border Reivers, each player rules over one of the Marches on the border of England and Scotland and has the goal to increase the wealth and fame of their clan by gaining VP’s from successful combats, amassing large herds of livestock consisting of sheep and cattle, and by elevating their notoriety above the other players on the regions of the map. The game is unique and in essence is a limited action selection game where players use cards to target the various marches and perform various atrocities such as raiding and stealing livestock, feuding with rivals and participating in ongoing battles. But the most unique part is the it is made for 2-6 players and is best with 4 or 6 players, though 2 and 3-player versions are also supported where each player leads both an English and a Scottish family.
Here is a link to our video review of Border Reivers:
The Napoleonic Wars 2nd Edition from GMT Games – The Napoleonic Wars is a Card Driven Game where the cards have Command Points that can be used to build units, move armies, lay siege, negotiate with neutral countries and other such actions. The game is a strategic level look at the entire Napoleonic Wars from 1805-1815. We had a very good time with the game and are very glad that we had a chance to play it with seasoned and experienced players.
Here is a link to our video review of The Napoleonic Wars:
Time of Wars: Eastern Europe 1590 – 1660 from Strategemata – Time of Wars is a multi-player card driven game similar to games like Here I Stand and Virgin Queen designed by Krzysztof Dytczak that focuses on the 16th and 17th centuries in Eastern Europe. The game focuses on the five superpowers of the time in Eastern Europe including the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Tsardom of Russia, the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire.
Here is a link to our first impressions video of Time of Wars:
Black Orchestra from Starling Games – Black Orchestra is a lighter cooperative but seriously thematic game focused on the various coup and assassination attempts on Hitler near the end of World War II. We did a full 5-player game and had a blast with it.
Here is a link to our video review of Black Orchestra:
1714: The Case of the Catalans from Devir Games – This is a game that I purchased off Amazon for $18 a few years back and have been wanting to play called 1714: The Case of the Catalans from Devir Games. The game tells the story of the death of king Charles II of Habsburg, which left the throne vacant and started a war all over Europe to settle the matter of the Spanish Succession.
The players in the game represent the powers of the Grand Alliance and will fight the Bourbon forces composed of French, Castilian and Bavarian troops. The overall goal of the game is to obtain the best commercial and territorial concessions, and conquer the Bourbon territories gaining VP from control. But this is not a true cooperative game as only 1 player will win.
Here is a link to our video review for 1714: The Case of the Catalans:
Crusade and Revolution: The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 from Compass Games – Crusade and Revolution is a fairly traditional card-driven game system that mimics Paths of Glory but adapts it to the specific circumstances of the Spanish Civil War. Each player, the Republicans and Nationalists, has their own unique deck of strategic cards, which are the heart of the game, and must make difficult choices on their use through-out the game. Each card has four possible uses, but only one of them can be chosen each time the card is played! The possibilities included using it for Ops points to move and attack, the printed Event, Replacement Points to be able to rebuild damaged and eliminated units and Strategic Redeployment to place these units out onto the board.
Here is a link to our video review of Crusade and Revolution:
So we only ended up getting 7 games played but that is better than zero!
Another Busy Convention Year
Again 2025 was very busy on the convention front as we attended Basement CON, Buckeye Game Fest, the World Boardgaming Championships and the big one in ESSEN Spiele in Germany. We always have such a great time at conventions and love to see our friends and play lots of great games.
Here are some summaries of those events as well as video debriefs to get you caught up on our experiences.
Basement CON – At the end of March, Alexander and I traveled to St. Louis, Missouri to meet up with friends to play wargames all weekend during what we affectionately call “Basement CON”. We do this annually, usually in the spring, and play large multiplayer wargames with max players. In the past, we have played games like War Room, Virgin Queen, Here I Stand and Tank Duel just to name a few. This year at Basement CON, which was our fourth such gathering, we played multiple games over 3 days including Red Dragon / Green Crescent Deluxe Edition from Decision Games, War Room (again) from Nightingale Games, Dune from Gale Force Nine, Virgin Queen from GMT Games and a few others.
Here is a link to our debrief video for Basement CON:
Buckeye Game Fest 2025 was a fantastic time and we got to play a lot of games including Crusade and Revolution: The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 from Compass Games, Black Orchestra from Starling Games, 1714: The Case of the Catalans from Devir Games, Congress of Vienna from GMT Games, Tattered Flags No. 1: Into the Whirlpool from Blue Panther, Rebels Against Rebellion from Flying Pig Games coming soon to Crowdfunding, Divine Right from Pungo Games, True Command from Catastrophe Games, Crisis: 1914 from Worthington Publishing, Successors 4th Edition from PHALANX, Nations & Cannons RPG from Flagbearer Games, Time of Crisis from GMT Games, New Cold War from VUCA Simulations and finally The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick Taking Game from Office Dog. That’s a total of 13 games. Amazing!
Also, I wrote a Daily Debrief Series of posts on the blog while attending and you can read those at the following links:
Here is a link to our debrief video for Buckeye Game Fest 2025:
The World Boardgaming Championships 2025 held at the beautiful Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania was a great time and we played a lot of games including B-52D Linebacker II from Compass Games, Medieval Conspiracy from UGG, Congress of Vienna from GMT Games, The Napoleonic Wars from GMT Games, Time of Wars from Strategemata, Triumvir from GMT Games, Here I Stand from GMT Games, Operation Valkyrie: A Black Orchestra Game from Starling Games, Battlestar Galactica from Fantasy Flight Games, Border Reivers: Anglo-Scottish Border Raids, 1513-1603 from GMT Games, Eschaton from Archon Games and Great Battles of the American Revolution Germantown from the new American Revolution Tri-Pack from GMT Games.
Here is a link to our WBC 2025 debrief video:
Also, I wrote a Daily Debrief Series of posts on the blog while attending and you can read those at the following links:
And finally, we attended ESSEN Spiel in Essen, Germany in October. SPIEL Essen, often referred to as Essen Spiel, is the world’s largest public fair for board games. The convention is held annually in Essen, Germany, typically in late October, and attracts a massive crowd of visitors and exhibitors. The fair is intended for board gamers to be able to discover new games, play demos, meet with game designers, and purchase new products. The convention is more about board games than wargames but we went over due to the generosity of Sound of Drums and Uwe Wallentin. While there, we also spent time driving through Germany, France, Belgium and Holland to take in various historical sites.
Here is a link to our ESSEN Spiel 2025 debrief video:
While there, I posted a daily summary of our activities on the blog and you can read those at the following links:
What a year it was for us on the convention circuit. We had a lot of fun, played a ton of games and saw many friends and made even more. I look forward to they future of our conventions.
What was your best convention experience in 2025?
2025 Gaming Convention Attendance Plans
We next will take a look at our big plans for 2026 and attendance at several gaming conventions. We are planning to attend our traditional gaming conventions this year with nothing really new.
BasementCON – March 27-29th – St. Louis, Missouri – Attending our friends BasementCON again in St. Louis in March and hope to play several big games including Here I Stand for the umpteenth time and possibly the new Napoleonic wargame Imperial Borders from Nightingale Games as well as some other large games.
Buckeye Game Fest – May 10-15th – Columbus, Ohio – This is a staple in our convention schedule and we look forward to playing some games, running some events, including sessions of Nations & Cannons RPG from Flagbearer Games, the COIN Series and some other larger multi-player wargames.
World Boardgaming Championships (WBC) – July 25–August 2nd – Seven Springs, Pennsylvania – I will be planning to attend again this year but Alexander will once again be out of the country with family and I will be solo. Have no concrete plans as of yet but it will probably involve 8-10 videos, several games (probably including a rematch with Mark Miklos of one of the BoAR Series titles) and meet ups with publishers to discuss upcoming games.
SDHistCon – November 6-9th – San Diego, California – Back to sunny California for another small and intimate convention where we will play lots of prototype games, shoot designer interview videos and have a great time.
There might end up being others that we add but our slate is pretty full with these conventions and we hope to see many of you there! I have considered trying to attend Circle DC in late March but am afraid it will conflict with my family’s spring break trip to Florida. I also keep threatening to make the 2 1/2 hour drive over to Columbus, Ohio in June to got to a few days of Origins but June is always so busy for me at work.
What conventions are you planning on attending in 2026?
Thank you for following along and please let me know what you loved about 2025 and what you are looking forward to for 2026.
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.
The Pandemic system has spawned quite a few games now, and while I’m not a big fan of co-operative games, I hoped that The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship would be different enough to offer a new and, for me, better, experience. And all the elements are here to make a more compelling game – it just seems that co-ops still aren’t for me.
The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship boils the books down to a series of objectives you must complete before the final push to drop the Ring into the Crack of Doom. These can be mixed and matched to create scenarios that concentrate on various parts of the tale – for example, the taking of Isengard and the battles in Rohan – or you can just choose a random set of them. Each player controls two characters and must complete 4 actions with one, and 1 action with the other, on each of their turns. Your hand of region cards has icons on them that allow you to pay for some of those actions or get dice re-rolls. At the end of each player’s turn, a number of shadow cards are drawn according to the threat level, and these cards dictate the movement of troops along battle lines on the board as they head inexorably towards the strongholds of the good guys, or move the Eye of Sauron and the Nazgûl around the map. Occasionally, Skies Darken cards will pop up that, among other things, instruct you to shuffle the shadow card discards and put them back on top of the deck, in true Pandemic fashion.
I appreciate that this game is an interesting and very thematic evolution of the Pandemic system, but unfortunately I find the constant maintenance required by that system – moving the troops around the map in little conga lines, shuffling the cards back on top of the deck – pulls me out of the game’s theme. I sometimes found myself in situations where I had nothing I could do with my characters (probably my poor playing, but still…) Crucially, I simply can’t seem to get excited about winning or losing against a game system rather than real-life opponents. And finally, while the included dice tower is a solid, attractive bit of gimmickry, I found the game’s graphic design lacking a unified direction and a little bit amateurish. So in the end, while I can definitely see why this game has been reviewed so well and why so many people will love it, after a couple of plays, I realised it just wasn’t for me and I decided to sell it on to someone who would enjoy it more.
For more detail, check out my video review! And of course, you can find this summary in my amazing rules app, Tabletop Codex.
There’s any number of subtle innuendoes we could’ve gone with, but this is what we’re doing I guess. If you haven’t got there yet, we’re talking about games that aren’t just slow rides, but instead leave you gasping for more right as they climax. Before we finish, we talk about No Loose Ends, Eselsbrücke, and The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship.
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Timecodes:
01:24 – No Loose Ends 09:08 – Eselsbrücke 19:33 – The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship 33:52 – Comings and Goings 37:44 – Games that finish strong 40:17 – Agricola 40:44 – Splendor 41:14 – The Voyages of Marco Polo 44:03 – Terraforming Mars 45:28 – Blood on the Clocktower 46:57 – Innovation 47:49 – Rumble Nation 49:50 – Moon Colony Bloodbath 52:12 – Dominion
Thank you to Heart Society for generously letting us use What’s On Your Mind, Kid? from their album Wake the Queens.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us
Peter unboxes The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship by Z-Man Realms!
Pandemic is a game that doesn’t really excite me much anymore, and I’ve played the spin-off Clone Wars and been underwhelmed. But this new evolution of the system by Matt Leacock has received great reviews and I’m very much looking forward to trying it out. In the meantime, here’s an unboxing, partial graphic design critique, and at the end, a tip to make the spectacular dice tower look even better!
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Anmelden
