Welcome to this week’s batch of crowdfunding campaigns. We have a variety of offerings here, so we hope you will find something that catches your eye. Also, if you want to chat with the BGQ team, join our Discord Server where we talk about games, movies, sports, and other fun stuff. Check it out and […]
CMON hat für das Geschäftsjahr 2025 einen Verlust von 19,9 Millionen US-Dollar gemeldet, mehr als das Sechsfache des Vorjahres. Zusammen mit dem Defizit aus 2024 summieren sich die kumulierten Verluste auf rund 23 Millionen Dollar – das 5,5-fache dessen, was der einstige Crowdfunding-Pionier in den neun Jahren davor insgesamt erwirtschaftet hatte. Der Jahresbericht skizziert zugleich die Strategie für 2026: Auslieferung offener Kampagnen, Fokus auf Asien und ein vorsichtiges Crowdfunding-Comeback in der zweiten Jahreshälfte.
Der Konzernumsatz fiel 2025 um 73 Prozent auf 9,9 Millionen US-Dollar, gegenüber 37,3 Millionen im Vorjahr. Besonders drastisch ist der Einbruch in den westlichen Märkten. In Nord- und Südamerika sank der Umsatz um 86 Prozent auf 2,1 Millionen Dollar, in Europa um 81 Prozent auf 2,4 Millionen. Asien verzeichnete mit einem Minus von 33 Prozent auf 5,3 Millionen Dollar einen vergleichsweise moderaten Rückgang.
CMON begründet die Verschiebung mit einer bewussten strategischen Neuausrichtung auf Asien und der anhaltenden Unsicherheit durch US-Importzölle, die 2025 zeitweise bis zu 145 Prozent auf Waren aus China erreichten. Der US-Anteil am Gesamtumsatz halbierte sich dadurch auf 21,4 Prozent, nachdem er 2024 noch bei 42 Prozent gelegen hatte.
Parallel trennte sich der Verlag von mehreren zentralen Marken, um Liquidität zu generieren. Zombicide, das seit dem Kickstarter-Start 2012 über 40 Millionen Dollar eingespielt hatte, wurde an Asmodee verkauft. Blood Rage, Rising Sun und Ankh gingen an Tycoon Games, im Oktober 2025 folgte Cthulhu: Death May Die ebenfalls an Asmodee. Die Verkäufe summierten sich auf rund 5,1 Millionen Dollar, brachten unterm Strich jedoch einen Veräußerungsverlust von 2,4 Millionen.
Auch personell wurde tief eingeschnitten: Die Belegschaft schrumpfte von 81 Mitarbeitenden zu Jahresbeginn 2025 auf 41 zum Start von 2026. Der unabhängige Wirtschaftsprüfer Zhonghui Anda hält im Jahresbericht eine „wesentliche Unsicherheit" fest, die erhebliche Zweifel an der Fortführungsfähigkeit von CMON wecken könnte. Die Geschäftsführung hält dagegen und verweist auf Zusagen einzelner Direktoren, 2,4 Millionen Dollar aus dem Verkauf des Singapur-Büros im Januar 2026 sowie rund 1,25 Millionen Bruttoerlöse aus einer Aktienplatzierung im Februar 2026. Die Bankschulden wurden vollständig zurückgeführt, zum Jahresende 2025 lagen die Barreserven bei etwa 400.000 US-Dollar.
Für 2026 steht bei CMON die Auslieferung bereits zugesagter Kampagnen im Zentrum. Acht Crowdfunding-Projekte und fünf Vorbestell-Aktionen sind laut Verlag noch offen. Dazu zählen DC Super Heroes United mit über 4,4 Millionen Dollar Finanzierungsvolumen, DCeased mit mehr als 2,5 Millionen sowie Dune Desert War und das Assassin's Creed Role Playing Game. Die aktuellen Schätzungen sehen die Auslieferung der beiden DC-Titel für das vierte Quartal 2026 vor, offene Verbindlichkeiten aus finanzierten, aber nicht ausgelieferten Projekten summieren sich auf rund 3,2 Millionen Dollar.
Frühestens im zweiten Halbjahr 2026 will CMON ins Crowdfunding zurückkehren, zunächst mit neuen Titeln aus etablierten Spielreihen. Als verbleibendes Zugpferd gilt die Massive-Darkness-Reihe, deren jüngster Teil Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach Anfang 2025 auf Gamefound 2,85 Millionen Dollar einspielte und mit Late Pledges auf über 3,7 Millionen anwuchs. In der Zwischenzeit setzt der Verlag auf kleinere Retail-Titel wie Collect!, Peanuts Talent Show, Fairy Perfume, Rocket Punch und Yokai Carnival. Der asiatische Markt soll als primärer strategischer Schwerpunkt ausgebaut werden, der US-Fokus bleibt bis zur Stabilisierung der Handelsbedingungen reduziert.
2026 wird damit zum Prüfstein für einen der Mitbegründer des modernen Brettspiel-Crowdfundings. Gelingt die Auslieferung der offenen Kampagnen nicht termingerecht, dürfte eine neue erfolgreiche Finanzierungsrunde kaum realistisch sein. Mit Barreserven von rund 400.000 Dollar bleibt kaum Spielraum für weitere Rückschläge.
Welcome to this week’s batch of crowdfunding campaigns. We have a variety of offerings here, so we hope you will find something that catches your eye. Also, if you want to chat with the BGQ team, join our Discord Server where we talk about games, movies, sports, and other fun stuff. Or, if Facebook is […]
A few years ago, I played and very much enjoyed a cool little solitaire WWII card-driven game called Campaign: Fall Blau from Catastrophe Games and designer Martin Melbardis where the player attempted to breach the Soviet defenses on the East Front in the pivotal German summer campaign of 1942. The game system is very playable and simple, but has some strategic depth to it as the player has to make a lot of choices about what to go after, how to manage their scarce resources (fuel) and what generals to use to take advantage of their special abilities to amass enough VP to claim victory over the Soviet Union. They now have the counter punch of that game in a new entry in the series called Campaign: Operation Bagration and it is currently being offered on Kickstarter.
If you are interested in Campaign: Operation Bagration, you can back the project on the Kickstarter page at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/campaign-fall-blau/campaign-bagration
Grant: Welcome back to the blog Martin. What is your current game Campaign: Operation Bagration?
Martin: Thanks for having me back! Campaign: Operation Bagration is the long-awaited successor to my very first published game, Campaign: Fall Blau and tells the story of the Soviet offensive in 1944 to take back the occupied center of Russia gained by the Germans during Operation Barbarossa and is based on the successful Campaign: Fall Blau game system.
Grant: What was your design goal with the game?
Martin: My design goal for Campaign: Operation Bagration was to switch perspectives to the Soviet side using my tried-and-tested Campaign Game System. I wanted players to take command of the Soviets during one of the most devastating offensives of the war….Operation Bagration, which tore through German Army Group Center in 1944. From a design standpoint, I found it very rewarding to adapt new game mechanics and ideas to fit this pivotal WWII Campaign on the Eastern Front, while keeping the core of the system intact.
Grant: What are the hallmarks of this solitaire Campaign Series?
Martin: I’d say a minimalist approach to wargaming. Very streamlined, using only cards, dice, and cubes, with a 6–7 page rulebook. These are light solitaire wargames designed to be fast and furious with no extra fat or bloat, especially when compared to more traditional hex-and-counter wargames that can take hours to play.
Grant: As a follow up to Campaign: Fall Blau, what do you believe you have improved in the gaming experience?
Martin: While the system as a whole is more or less exactly the same as Fall Blau, I injected some new ideas into the experience to better reflect the historical realities of this campaign. The core game, such as defeating Campaign Cards, the Order system and how Generals work, will remain familiar to players of Fall Blau, but the feel is distinctly different.
Grant: What elements from Operation Bagration did you need to model in the design?
Martin: Operation Bagration was a completely different beast to tackle than Fall Blau. In addition to taking control of the Soviet army this time around, the mountainous regions of the Caucasus region have been replaced with the swamps of Belorussia and Poland. You’re also facing a much weaker and mostly static German Army Group Center, desperately trying to rebuild a frontline and stop the Soviet advance from swarming into their rear echelons. This is represented by the new “Rebuild Frontlines” rule, which replaces the old “Local Counter-Attacks” rule from Fall Blau. In Bagration, counter-attacks are now only triggered by Event Cards representing Panzer Divisions trying to blunt the Soviet offensive. In fact, the entire Event Deck has been changed to reflect the research I did on Operation Bagration with all sorts of cool ideas popping up on how to reflect the history, units and tactics of this Campaign.
Grant: As a solitaire game, what type of experience does the game create?
Martin: The game system prides itself on being fast, easy to learn but hard to master. It creates a very similar experience to Fall Blau such as tough decisions weighing the player down each turn on how to best use your limited Orders and finding the right balance between Attacking, Advancing, or stopping for Logistics to catch up.
Grant: What is the goal of the player?
Martin: The goal is to capture enough Campaign Cards before the game ends and earn enough Victory Points from those Campaign Cards to reach the victory or even the Brilliant Victory threshold.
Grant: How does the player go about choosing and managing their Generals?
Martin: Each game starts with the player choosing three Soviet Generals. All of these generals are historically accurate, with options such as Bagramyan, Konev, Rokossovsky, and a few others. Each General has the generic “Hero of the Soviet Union” special ability plus one unique ability. Additionally, each General leads a certain type of army: either a Tank army or a regular Infantry army. Tank armies have fewer manpower cubes but benefit from added mobility, which helps them bring more Campaign Cards to the frontline when using the Advance Order. Infantry armies, on the other hand, have more “meat” and thus more manpower cubes to absorb losses. Each General also has a set number of cubes representing their starting strength in manpower and available forces. Managing your Generals comes down to picking a balanced mixture and using each general’s individual strengths (number of cubes and abilities) to maximum effect.
Grant: What unique abilities do the different Generals possess?
Martin: As mentioned, each General has the “Hero of the Soviet Union” special ability, which allows you to discard a red cube to re-roll a single die. This represents the Soviet ability to historically take massive casualties and still push on. On top of that, each General also has a unique ability reflecting their historical traits. For example, General Bagramyan is an offensive-minded General, while Rokossovsky was known to always plan two steps ahead and this is represented by his ability to draw extra cards from the Event Deck.
Grant: What type of events does the Event Deck contain?
Martin: In addition to the Campaign Cards, the Event Deck is really where the historical aspects of the Bagration Campaign really come to life. I made sure to only include Soviet and German units and tactics that were instrumental to the Bagration campaign. The Event Deck contains mostly cards that help you during the game, such as attached Soviet units like the 3rd Guards Cavalry Corps, which can help you exploit the flanks of the German frontline by removing adjacent defenses, or the 4th Tank Army, which grants extra attack dice when attacking a Campaign Card. These cards not only add flavor to the game but also a strong sense of historical flavor.
Grant: What are the different type of German effects included in the Event Deck?
Martin: The Event Deck also contains cards that hurt the player, such as German Panzer divisions that trigger a counter-attack when drawn, or German reinforcement cards that add additional German cubes to active Campaign Cards on the frontlines. In addition, things like German bombers or bad weather can and will slow your progress.
Grant: What Actions/Orders are available to the player?
Martin: There are three available Orders each turn, and you may perform one per General. The Advance Order (costs 1 supply) brings unlocked Campaign Cards to the frontline. Once a card is on the frontline, an Attack Order (also costs supplies) can be used to attack and remove any cubes (representing German formations or defenses) on that card in order to capture it and gain the VP listed on the card. Finally, the Logistics Order adds supplies and reinforces a General with a cube to replace losses.
Grant: How do they manage their Supplies? How can they obtain additional fuel?
Martin: As mentioned, each Advance and Attack Order costs supplies, and the Logistics Order replenishes supplies as well as lost manpower cubes from attacking. Finding the right balance and knowing when to rest using a Logistics Order instead of Attacking or Advancing is very important. However, resting too long will slow your progress, as the clock is always counting down. A General who uses the Logistics Order adds two supplies to your shared supply pool and adds a single manpower cube to their card.
Grant: How do they manage to defeat the various Campaign Cards?
Martin: After using the Advance Order to bring an unlocked Campaign Card to the frontline in front of a General’s Card, that Campaign Card then immediately deploys a number of grey cubes (listed on the card) onto itself. The card is now available to be attacked using the Attack Order. When you attack, you pay supplies then calculate the number of cubes on the attacking General’s Card and roll that many dice. You need rolls of 4+ to remove a single white (defense) or grey (German units) cube from the Campaign Card. Some Campaign Cards such as fortress cities (Festerplatz) or swamps reduce the attack dice by -1. Rolls of 1–2 result in your General losing a manpower cube (red cube). Once all German cubes are removed from the Campaign Card, it is considered captured and removed from the frontline, and you gain the Victory Points listed on the card. Capturing Campaign Cards also unlocks additional Campaign Cards.
Grant: How do the German forces fight back?
Martin: This time around, the Germans are much more static than in Fall Blau, which better reflects the historical situation in 1944. While you may still lose manpower cubes through bad rolls on Attack Orders, counter-attacks are now only triggered through Event Cards. A Panzer Division drawn as an event will immediately counter-attack by deploying to the frontline and attacking the General directly in front of it. There’s also the Operation Doppelkopf Event Card, which is placed near the end of the Event Deck during setup and represents a large German offensive action late in Operation Bagration, designed to blunt Soviet momentum.
Grant: What strategy should the player use to do well?
Martin: Pick a good, balanced mixture of Generals and learn when to attack versus when to build up supplies and manpower through the Logistics Order. Using Generals with Tank Army abilities to bring multiple Campaign Cards to the frontlines helps a lot but too many Tank Generals will lower your overall manpower total. Also, optimize your use of Event Cards to either prioritize Attacks or to regain manpower cubes. Overall, calculated risk management is the single most important factor in the game.
Grant: What different options are built in to make the game more of a challenge?
Martin: The game is already pretty challenging, but we are also currently planning on developing a Hard-Mode for the Kickstarter that adds 4–5 additional very difficult Event Cards to the deck for those players who love challenges or are even simply masochists.
Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?
Martin: I’m pleased with the way I’ve adapted the old Fall Blau Game System to incorporate new game mechanics and Events to reflect the different historical aspects of Bagrations’ unique Campaign. Such things such as the German’s use of blocking detachments to try to stop the Soviet steamroller with whatever they could (represented by the rebuilding the frontline mechanic), and the use of Festerplatze or Fortress cities in Belorussia to hold at all cost. Added to this is the liberal use of Soviet tactics such as mine sweeping tanks, the massive God of War bombardment to signal the start of Bagration, Maskirovka deception techniques and American lend-lease trucks to help the Offensive are all well-represented in the game through the Event Deck.
Grant: What has been the response of playtesters?
Martin: Early on, I got some great and positive responses from playtesters when I initially designed the game. Later, I handed off playtesting and development to Catastrophe Games, who further developed the game and ran additional playtests. I’ve heard good things from them as well.
Grant: What other historical campaigns might the series delve into?
Martin: Next up, I am planning to adapt the series to either the North African or the Pacific Theaters in WWII. I also strangely find that representing the Japanese early-war successes against the Allies in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Singapore a very interesting twist and is a subject rarely touched upon in wargaming. This could also be a good option in the future but who really knows where my creativity can take me?
Grant: What other designs are you currently working on?
Martin: As always, I am continuing to design lighter Print & Play wargames with my own independent company, Solo Wargame. I usually release a new wargame every two months or so on Kickstarter and want to continue that trend with a WWII wargame about commanding a Soviet battalion during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. I also plan to release a new version of my continuing series on WW2 Roll & Write games, this time focusing on the Torch landings in North Africa in 1942–43 with new ideas about convoy interdiction, diplomacy with the Vichy government and eventually pushing the Germans all the way to Tunisia. Like most other creatives, I honestly have way too many ideas and too little time!
Thanks so much once again for having me on!
If you are interested in learning more about the Campaign Series and how it works, you can watch my preview video for the Campaign: Fall Blau Kickstarter from 2022 at the following link:
If you are interested in Campaign: Operation Bagration, you can back the project on the Kickstarter page at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/campaign-fall-blau/campaign-bagration
-Grant
Asmodee arm Fantasy Flight Games is discontinuing the latest iteration of its veteran dungeon crawler Descent, citing rising manufacturing costs, “global economic shifts” and the expense of developing the game’s companion app.
FFG launched Descent: Legends of the Dark five years ago as the successor to its popular 2005 release, Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and a more streamlined second edition from 2012.
All three games featured large amounts of plastic miniatures, cardboard terrain pieces and map tiles, while Legends of the Dark also leaned into an integrated companion app to help manage campaigns and individual scenarios.
A statement from FFG announcing the end of the game said, “Simply put, the game is too expensive to make. Between ever-increasing manufacturing costs, lengthy and pricey app development timelines, and global economic shifts making everything more expensive to produce, it became abundantly clear that continuing to make this game is just not feasible.
“This is far from the outcome we wanted – again, we all love this game and hoped to see it grow for years to come – but even if we were to sell every last copy, we would still ultimately be doing so at a loss.
“In a fiercely-competitive board game industry, that simply isn’t sustainable, and because of circumstances outside of FFG’s control, there are no adjustments we could make that could lower costs enough to continue printing the game.”
That competition for Descent has come in the form of huge crowdfunding successes for titles such as Gloomhaven and Frosthaven – the latter of which sealed one of the biggest Kickstarter campaigns of all time by raising almost $13m in 2020.
Other competitors in the space have included CMON’s Massive Darkness series – based on its huge-selling Zombicide system – which has raised more than $10m across a trio of crowdfunds since 2017.
Using crowdfunding for those large-scale, component-heavy games has helped publishers Cephalofair and CMON reduce the risk of developing expensive titles by being able to accurately gauge demand, as well as receiving financial backing for the projects up front.
Even with that data, however, both publishers have run into problems amid the heavy global economic uncertainty over the last couple of years – especially around volatile US tariff policy aimed at countries such as China, where the vast majority of board games are manufactured.
CMON is currently battling enormous losses from the past two years, while Cephalofair has had to navigate significant delivery delays alongside the frequently shifting import taxes situation, which last year saw US tariffs on China whipsaw as high as 145% before being reduced to a still significant 30%.
Asmodee has almost entirely avoided crowdfunding for its own games to date, with its only launched campaign believed to be Lookout Games’ Kickstarter for the Grand Austria Hotel: Let’s Waltz! Expansion & Deluxe Upgrade, which raised about €383,000 during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Its only other prior exposure to crowdfunding is thought to be via the company Exploding Kittens, in which it made a strategic investment short of a buyout in 2021. That business has since raised more than $977,000 in a Kickstarter campaign for Hand to Hand Wombat the following year.
But the board game giant is currently preparing to dip its toes into crowdfunding proper through a Gamefound campaign for Zombicide: Dead Men Tales, having picked up the IP from financially-troubled CMON last summer.
The campaign follows Asmodee bringing in David Preti, the former COO of CMON, in May last year to head up a newly-launched crowdfunding and miniatures operation.
Both Zombicide and fellow CMON acquisition Cthulhu: Death May Die – a series which has raised almost $10m via crowdfunding – are now part of Fantasy Flight alongside Descent, although Asmodee is yet to reveal if the future of the latter title revolves around crowdfunding campaigns.
Its statement about the end of Descent: Legends of the Dark said, “While we don’t have anything to share at this time, there is always a possibility that we will revisit Descent in the future.
“It would take a different form and would not be Legends of the Dark, but this game universe is near and dear to FFG’s heart.
“The future is always uncertain, and even though we have to close the book on Descent today, we hope that, someday, we’ll be able to dream big with it again.”
FFG’s other major titles currently include collectible card game Star Wars Unlimited, ‘living card games’ Marvel Champions and Arkham Horror: The Card Game, heavyweight space opera board game Twilight Imperium and veteran bluffing and negotiation game Cosmic Encounter.
The company said that although Act III of Descent: Legends of the Dark is no longer in development, the company would continue to support the game’s companion app for the first two acts of the game, albeit without any new content being added.
In February Artefacts Studio unveiled Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent, a video game set in the Descent universe which FFG said “captures the classic dungeon-crawl feeling of the Descent board games in a whole new medium”.
The post Fantasy Flight calls time on Descent: Legends of the Dark, saying rising costs mean it was selling at a loss first appeared on .
Welcome to this week’s batch of crowdfunding campaigns. We have a variety of offerings here, so we hope you will find something that catches your eye. Also, if you want to chat with the BGQ team, join our Discord Server where we talk about games, movies, sports, and other fun stuff. Or, if Facebook is […]
April is one of my favorite months due to Easter and the warming of the weather. And this month we got a good amount of newly baked wargames, still warm some of them because they are so new, for you to choose from. This month for the Wargame Watch I was able to find 28 games (including the 7 games from our sponsor VUCA Simulations). Interestingly though this was a cooler month for crowdfunding as I only found 4 different campaigns, which did contain a total of 6 games as one was a triple feature, featured on Kickstarter or Gamefound.
If you missed the March Wargame Watch, you can read that here at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2026/03/02/wargame-watch-whats-new-upcoming-march-2026/
This month again we have a sponsor for the Wargame Watch in VUCA Simulations. VUCA Simulations is a newer German publisher that is really crushing it with their graphics and production. Their games are also very good and we have really enjoyed several of their titles including Donnerschlag: Escape from Stalingrad, Traces of War and most recently New Cold War.
But I also want to point your attention to their In Development Section of their website to show you all of the great projects that they are currently working on. Here there are 7 different games listed with pictures of the beautiful covers and a description of the game itself. These titles include Thirty Years of Misery designed by Brian Asklev, Pacific Fleet designed Hiroyuki Inose, The Far Seas designed by Martin Anderson, In Fours to Heaven designed by Grzegorz Kuryłowicz, Gateway to Falaise designed by Andrew Glenn, 1916 – Prelude to Blitzkrieg designed by Paul Hederer and Saint-Lô – The Capital of Ruins designed by Clemm.
VUCA is really doing a great job with their games and we recently played one of their newest games in Imperial Elegy: The Road to the Great War 1850-1920 and it was a sublime experience. We only played 1 full hand with a full table of 6 players, but very much enjoyed what it was that we were trying to do and the production is just fantastic. Can’t wait to get this one back to the table soon!
But now onto the games for April!
Glitz. Bits. Content. Miniatures. If these things appeal to you and you like a tactical wargame experience then this is your chance. The well regarded Company of Heroes System has a Gamefound campaign for a new expansion called Company of Heroes – Desert Warfare Expansion and they are also offering the base game 2nd Edition as an add-on as you need it to play.
From the game page, we read the following:
The Company of Heroes – Desert Warfare Expansion + Reprint on Gamefound brings the Deutsches Afrika Corps (DAK) to the 2nd Edition board game, featuring high-mobility, mechanized, and elite units. This expansion enhances solo/co-op play with improved AI, offering a fast-paced, tactical tabletop experience with armored, hit-and-run tactics. The Deutsches Africa Corps adds specialized, agile desert combat forces with a focus on armored vehicles, Italian alliance units, and fast, bold maneuvers. The expansion includes a sophisticated AI for solo or cooperative play, featuring an AI commander, HQ board, action deck, and target selection priority cards. The AI is described as aggressive, frequently seizing objectives. The expansion includes new maps, units, and components to expand the core game experience. The campaign also offers a reprint of the 2nd Edition core box, required to play, featuring streamlined rules and high-quality components.
I am going to be honest here. I played the 2nd Edition. We enjoyed it but it wasn’t necessarily as amazing as I thought it would be. I mean the systems are interesting but it feels more Euro game like than wargame like and it is also extremely expensive. Now it is gorgeous and the miniatures, terrain and maps are very well done but I am not sure that this game lives up to the hype. Just my humble opinion.
If you are interested in Company of Heroes – Desert Warfare Expansion + Reprint, you can back the project on the Gamefound page at the following link: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/companyofheroes/dak
As of April 1st, the Gamefound campaign has funded and raised $948,465 toward its $100,000 funding goal with 1,928 backers. The campaign will conclude on Thursday, April 16, 2026 at 12:00am EST.
A good solitaire game is always very much welcome on my table. I usually start these entries about solitaire gaming by saying I am not a solitaire gamer. Well, after playing the Leader Series from DVG for the first time about 8 years ago, that statement no longer applies. I used to really only play solitaire games when I had no other choice or available opponents. But, when I put these games on the table, my whole opinion has changed. The Leader Series is a solitaire gaming system that recreates modern combat, including ground combat, air warfare and even submarine warfare and sees the player creating, managing and outfitting a group of soldiers/boats/planes over the course of a variable length campaign. Some of the games offer individual combat systems that are included in the overall game and each handles their theater with specific rules and equipment used historically. Originally, all of the games were designed by Dan Verssen but more recently other designers have been taking up the reigns of the series. Such is the case with their newest offering in the series T-34 Leader designed by Vincent Cooper.
From the game page, we read the following:
You are the commander of a Soviet army combat group in World War II. You will take command in the hardest fought campaigns from Operation Barbarossa (1941) to the Battle of Berlin (1945).
Each of your Campaigns involve both operational and tactical decisions. At the start of a Campaign, you select the Units and Commanders to make up your force. During each Week of the Campaign, you decide which Enemy Battalions to attack, which of your forces to allocate, and then resolve each Battle using the Tactical Battlefield. Your Commanders gain Experience with every Battle, but they also suffer Stress. Each Week you must decide how hard to push your men to achieve Victory. T-34 Leader is a great game for both experienced strategy gamers, as well as new players. Each Campaign takes around 30 minutes to set-up, and each Battle can be resolved in 15 to 30 minutes.
T-34 Leader has been designed from the ground up as a Solitaire wargame. It is not an adaptation of a 2-player wargame and the rules have been specifically designed for the solo player. As a Solitaire wargame, you can play whenever you have time, at your own pace. T-34 Leader is the latest Tank Leader game from DVG, following Tiger Leader and Sherman Leader.
With that look, I will let you know that I very much love Sherman Leader and the ground combat for me is where it is at and I would think that T-34 Leader will be more of the same but on the East Front. I have played Sherman Leader the most in the series, using both short and long campaigns, and really enjoy its systems, the structure of the AI and the management of your units and Commanders. Really engaging and enjoyable experience of ground combat in World War II.
Here is a link to my video review for Sherman Leader that you can view at the following link:
If you are interested in T-34 Leader: The World War II Ground Combat Solitaire Strategy Board Game, you can back the project on the Kickstarter page at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danverssengames/dvg-t-34-leader
As of April 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $38,484 toward its $30,000 funding goal with 148 backers. The campaign will conclude on Tuesday, April 7, 2026 at 3:02pm EDT.
We met Akar Bharadvaj while attending SDHistCon in 2023 and played his award winning design Tyranny of Blood: India’s Caste System Under British Colonialism, 1750-1947 and very much enjoyed the experience and talking with him about game design. Since that time, he has been working on another designer called Chalice of Poison: The Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988 from GMT Games, which was recently announced on their P500. Chalice of Poison is the first volume in a new series that models complex conflicts not only as clashes between adversaries in the air, land, and sea, but also as political struggles within the regimes and military forces fighting it.
From the game page, we read the following:
In 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Iran, hubristically expecting to achieve a quick victory in a few weeks. Instead, the war became a brutal slog that lasted eight years. During the war, both countries had to choose between political and military objectives, balancing between the power of their military forces and the stability of their regimes. In Chalice of Poison you will play as the heads of two very different authoritarian regimes that have structured their militaries to be excellent at forestalling internal threats…but less effective at fighting foreign adversaries. Can you reform your military so that it’s effective enough to win the war, without accidentally creating a force that threatens your power?
A unique game on the Iran-Iraq War, the longest conventional war of the 20th century, and a historically important conflict underexplored in tabletop gaming.
Designed by Zenobia Award-winning designer Akar Bharadvaj, and inspired by Dr. Caitlin Talmadge’s academic research on the fundamental weakness of so-called “strong-man” authoritarian regimes.
Simple mechanics create a tense, dynamic, and meaningful decision space with an exciting narrative, capturing the dilemmas faced by regimes faced with both internal and external threats.
A two-player game that also plays well with four players on competing teams.
Includes two solitaire modes: A simple-to-operate “Al-Jazari” bot that offers a challenging non-player opponent. A more complex “Kissinger mode”—inspired by Mark Herman’s Peloponnesian War—in which the solitaire player represents both sides in the conflict. This mode abstractly models the international community, which cynically supported both sides in the conflict, ensuring a lengthy war in which neither country could win a decisive victory.
“At its most interesting, Chalice of Poison simulates warfare as a social battle as much as one involving tanks and bullets…This might sound complicated, but Bharadvaj presents these fluctuating power levels with refreshing clarity…Even at this early stage it’s an impressive and ambitious plaything. And its critique is unexpectedly timely, highlighting how strongman governments weaken their nations in the name of strengthening their regimes.” ~ Dan “Space-Biff” Thurot
If you are interested in Chalice of Poison: The Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988, you can pre-order a copy for $69.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1225-chalice-of-poison-the-iran-iraq-war-1980-1988.aspx
We are admitted Mark Herman fanboys! I am not ashamed of that statement as he is a very good designer and such an interesting person. He has designed a series of games called The Great Statesman Series and there are such fantastic mechanics at play that create a very interesting non-traditional wargame feeling such as Churchill. The 2nd game in the series is called Pericles, unlike Churchill, pits 2 sides, the Athenians and the Spartans against one another. The real game-changer is that each side is made up of two factions. As such it plays best with 4 players, each working to not only have their side win, but to have their faction within that side end with the most honor, and thus be victorious overall. The good news for most of us, is that there’s bots for solitaire, or 3 player games and there’s a fascinating 2 player variant, where each player plays a faction on each side. GMT just put a 2nd Printing up on their P500 and I am so very glad that this game will get some more attention as it is a really great game.
From the game page, we read the following:
Pericles is a ‘sandbox’ (unscripted) wargame that covers the ENTIRE period of conflict described in Thucydides classic history on the Peloponnesian wars. Pericles is a 4-player game, where two teams of Athenian and Spartan factions fight for Hegemony in 5th Century Greece. Each team of two represents a faction vying for control of their City States, strategy, and honor. Athens sees the Aristocrats debate issues with their opposing Demagogues, while in Sparta House Agiad and House Eurypontid contend for royal dominance.
Pericles uses elements from the Golden Geek best Wargame of 2015, Churchill, to simulate war as the extension of politics by other means. In the War portion of the game, it is US versus THEM (Athens versus Sparta), where each team implements their collective strategy to dominate Theaters of War, build economic strength, and fight battles to win Honor. In the respective Political assemblies, it is ME versus YOU (faction versus faction), where the battle for government control has to be balanced by your common interests in a series of wars that must be won, or all is lost.
Pericles uses an Issue Queue preplanning mechanic that the play testers have described as ‘insanely fun’. After your Political assembly has debated and won issues, these issues (military, league, diplomatic, oracle) are secretly placed on the military map in one of the twenty Theaters of war. If you or your opponents place a second issue into a Theater, it creates a queue of issues. Once all issues are placed, they are revealed and resolved one at a time. The order of issues in the queues and the order in which they are resolved across all Theaters tells YOUR story of the Peloponnesian wars.
Strategy in Pericles unfolds in how you create combinations of issues to achieve the historical narrative. Do you want to conduct a Periclean raiding strategy? Then you would play two military issues into a Theater to first move forces into position, then raid. Do you want to build a base in the enemy homeland (historically Pylos or Decelea)? Then you would conduct a military expedition, followed by a league issue. Do you want to raise an opponent’s ally in rebellion? Then you would deploy a diplomatic mission, and sow treachery for immediate or future advantage. It is in the placement, order, and resolution of the issues that the game allows you to explore and experience the broad range of historical situations without a script.
What would a game of Hoplites and Triremes be without a battle mechanic? Battle in Pericles is based on armies and fleets being led by the classic generals of yore, represented as Strategos tokens. During the Political assembly, each faction uses historical personalities to acquire Strategos tokens. Use the Spartan general Brasidas and gain four Strategos tokens, while Epitadas only generates one. Strategos tokens can be thought of as military capital that is spent in the war to lead and move forces. If you send forces to a Theater with enemy forces, a land or naval battle will occur. All players then secretly commit Strategos to the battle. Then, the commanding general of the military expedition and their teammate reveal their Strategos commitment and move wooden land and naval units to the battle. Now the defensive commitment of Strategos is revealed, each side then reveals a random battle card value, and the winner is decided. The winner of the battle now has the option to fight a subsequent naval or land battle. The outcome of these tactical decisions determines if any fortified bases are destroyed by assault or siege. Then the next issue is resolved. Winning battles awards and reduces honor.
Here is a link to our video review that was created when we were younger, had more hair and were not very polished in any part of what we were doing:
If you are interested in Pericles: The Peloponnesian Wars 460-400 BC 2nd Printing, you can pre-order a copy for $71.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1223-pericles-the-peloponnesian-wars-460-400-bc-2nd-printing.aspx
We have had a great experience playing Silver Bayonet a few times over the years and I am glad that it is now getting a 2nd Printing of the 25th Anniversary Edition. Silver Bayonet: The First Team in Vietnam, 1965 – 25th Anniversary Edition is a revamping of their first ever game released all the way back in 1990.
From the game page, we read the following:
Silver Bayonet recreates the pivotal November 1965 battle between a full North Vietnamese Army Division and the US 1st Air Cavalry Division in the Ia Drang Valley. NVA expertise in lure and ambush tactics resulted in significant US casualties. US mobility and the ability to bring massive amounts of firepower to bear quickly virtually destroyed the attacking NVA division and forced a change in NVA tactics.
This re-issue of GMT Games’ 1990 CSR Award winning title that started it all keeps the original operational system, but streamlines to it to include innovative combat resolution integrating maneuver combat, close assault, artillery bombardment, and support from gunships and air sorties.
Increased accessibility to primary and secondary source material has made it possible to make changes to more accurately represent both sides’ unique capabilities without significantly altering or breaking the base game system. The major changes involve patrols, ambushes, landing zones, and the 1st Cav Brigade HQ, while minor changes tweak movement, combat, and coordination game mechanics to showcase radically different strengths and weaknesses the FWA and NVA force brought to the battles in the Ia Drang Valley.
If you are interested in Silver Bayonet: The First Team in Vietnam, 1965 – 25th Anniversary Edition 2nd Printing, you can pre-order a copy for $48.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1224-silver-bayonet-25th-anniversary-edition-2nd-printing.aspx
As you probably know, normally Ted Raicer designs hard core hex and counter wargames such as The Dark Valley: East Front Campaign, 1941-45, The Dark Sands: War in North Africa, 1940-42 and The Dark Summer: Normandy, 1944. These games are fantastic experiences that are true wargames. But, he also has an eclectic side to him and has designed one of the classic card driven games on the subject of World War I in Paths of Glory. So when I heard that he had designed an interesting looking card based historical role-playing game the first thought that came to my mind was “How is he going to accomplish this feat?” Last year, I played I, Napoleon and did enjoy what it was doing even though it felt like it fell a bit short of its ultimate claim. But there is more of the game now and they are doing this Update Kit in case those who want to the updated cards don’t wish to order the Limits of Glory Expansion.
From the game page, we read the following:
For our customers who own the 1st Printing of I, Napoleon and want to upgrade to the 2nd Printing without purchasing the Limits of Glory Expansion, we’re providing an Update Kit.
This Kit includes:
- 60 Updated Cards
- 2 Divider Cards (1 New, 1 Adjusted)
- Rulebook
- Playbook
- 8.5″x11″ Player Aid
- Sticker Sheet (4 stickers to update the Game Board)
NOTE: The Limits of Glory Expansion includes the updated Cards, Divider Cards and Sticker Sheet, as well as a Rulebook, Playbook and Player Aid that can be used with both the expansion and base game.
I wrote a fairly in-depth First Impression style post on the game and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2024/10/16/first-impressions-i-napoleon-from-gmt-games/
I also did a review video and you can watch that at the following link:
If you are interested in I, Napoleon 2nd Edition Update Kit, you can pre-order a copy for $21.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1226-i-napoleon-2nd-edition-update-kit.aspx
Wargame magazines can be a bit hit and miss with their games. But, Paper Wars seems to really pick some great topics and systems to highlight in their pack-in games and this month there is a new pre-order for a game called Roma Invicta: The Roman Republic, 400-50 BC designed by Paul Kallia who did Roma Victrix: Campaigns of the Roman World from Compass Games.
From the game page, we read the following:
Roma Invicta: The Roman Republic & the Western Mediterranean by Paul Kallio is a 2-player, scenario-based design depicting several historic conflicts that occurred in and around the Roman Republic between 400 and 50 BC. This is a systemic brother design to Paul Kallio’s Roma Victrix boxed game. Each game turn represents one year. Infantry unit types include legions, heavy infantry, auxiliaries, and barbarians, and represent about 5,000 men each.
BONUS GAME MATERIAL: This issue will include two new scenarios for play with WWII Campaigns: 1940, 1941, and 1942. For 1941, we have Festung Stalingrad. It covers the German counteroffensive to try to save the Sixth Army trapped in Stalingrad in December 1942. For 1940, we have the Operation Matador variant scenario by David Meyler.
Article highlights include previews of Rise to Glory and Iberian Tide, a work-in-progress report on Island Infernos, a Bitter Woods AAR, an alternate start scenario for Desert Tide, and a new optional fuel dump rule for The Last Gamble.
If you are interested in Paper Wars Magazine Issue #116: Roma Invicta, you can pre-order a copy for $41.95 from the Compass Games website at the following link: https://www.compassgames.com/product/issue-116-magazine-game-roma-invicta/
A few years ago, we became acquainted with Andrew Rourke through his Coalitions design from PHALANX that went on to a successful crowdfunding campaign and has recently been delivered. He has since been a busy guy with starting his own publishing company called Form Square Games and also publishing the first 5 designs in a new series called Limits of Glory that will take a look at the campaigns of Napoleon and other contemporary conflicts. In Campaign I, which is called Bonaparte’s Eastern Empire, the game is focused on the campaign of the French in Egypt between 1798 and 1801. Campaigns II, III and IV was Maida 1806 and Santa Maura & Capri. Campaign V was Donning the Sacred Heart which covers the Vendee Civil War and just recently fulfilled as I have my copy sitting on my gaming table awaiting and unboxing video.
And now, recently, he has announced came out about the next entry in the series which is a two-fer with Campaigns VI and VII called Jersey New Jersey and is set during the American Revolutionary War but also a 2nd game called A Strong War set during the French & Indian War. I think that these games are well timed with this year being the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and I look forward to playing and exploring both of these games. I have also reached out to Andrew to see about him as well as the design duo of Mark Kwasny and John Kwasny for A Strong War doing another interview to give us a look inside the design and get more information for you to digest before the campaign kicks off on April 7th. But at this point the games look great and I love the art and the covers are very eye catching for sure!
From the game page, we read the following:
For the 2 games in the Limits of Glory Series:
Two exciting games in one box, Jersey covers the little known 1781 invasion by the French of the Island of Jersey as part of the American Revolutionary War. The game examines the impact of luck on events and challenges the skill of players to use their commanders to influence these events.
New Jersey covers the famous crossing of the Delaware and the battles of Trenton and Princeton using the same Limits of Glory System to test players ability to mitigate what luck throws at them by the skillful use of commanders and troop positioning.
Limits of Glory represents military campaigns at the highest command level, players take the role of theater commander and must manage their resources of men, material and skill to emerge victorious.
And for the other game in the offering called A Strong War: The Conflict for North America 1755-60:
The title, A Strong War, refers to the type of war the Abenaki Nation threatened to unleash on the land-grabbing British in 1753. The sparks of war, ignited in 1754 near Fort Duquesne by an obscure colonel of Virginia militia, George Washington, spread quickly; soon, flames engulfed the entire globe as England and France vied for control of empire. Over the next 5 years, Regular regiments from the French and British armies, American and French-Canadian provincial units, and Native warriors all fought in a chaotic and violent series of campaigns and frontier raids that culminated in the British conquest of French Canada and the defeat of the Native Nations (most of which had sided with the French).
A Strong War brings this war to life in a simple, fast-playing game. The map (covering the region stretching from Louisbourg to Alexandria, and from New York to Lake Erie) uses point-to-point connections to highlight the key locations that were targeted during the war. Using wooden cubes to represent the different types of forces used (French and British Regulars, British Colonials, French-Canadian Marines, French Bush Rangers, and Native American warriors), each player has only a few pieces (maximum 13 for the British and 10 for the French) to use each turn (one turn = one year, so there are 6 turns/years total).
The heart of the game is the unique combat system where players can deploy forces to a chosen battle and then commit them one by one; or they can call off the battle if it goes badly and save some of those forces for use later in the year. The types of forces committed also play a critical role in combat – the British want to mass their Regulars but the French want to bring in a mixed force to take advantage of the different skill sets each provides. Thus, tension is created in trying to decide if/when (or where) it is best to commit one’s forces: do you avoid combat completely; do you call off a combat that is going badly; or, do you go all in and commit your entire force? But if you lose a battle, initiative then swings to your opponent who may then launch an offensive.
Each player has several paths to victory, leading to a “different” game each time, and forcing players to choose between different strategies each turn. Finally, it is a quick game, taking just a couple of minutes to set up, and usually taking less than an hour to play to completion. The game also plays well solitaire, though there is no dedicated solitaire system.
If you are interested in Jersey New Jersey and A Strong War, you can learn more about the project on the Gamefound preview page at the following link: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/form-square-games/jersey-new-jersey–a-strong-war
A few years ago, I played and very much enjoyed a cool little solitaire WWII card-driven game called Campaign: Fall Blau from Catastrophe Games and designer Martin Melbardis where the player attempted to breach the Soviet defenses on the East Front in the pivotal German summer campaign of 1942. The game system is very playable and simple, but has some strategic depth to it as the player has to make a lot of choices about what to go after, how to manage their scarce resources (fuel) and what generals to use to take advantage of their special abilities to amass enough VP to claim victory over the Soviet Union. They now have the counter punch of that game in a new entry in the series called Campaign: Operation Bagration and it is currently being offered on Kickstarter.
From the game page, we read the following:
Campaign: Operation Bagration is the follow-up to Campaign: Fall Blau, the acclaimed solo experience of trying to seize Stalingrad and the prized oil fields beyond. In this game the shoe is on the other foot, as you will be pushing the Red Army to retake the center of the occupied Soviet Union, setting up the capture of Berlin. Stalin is expecting fast results though, so once again you will be racing against the clock trying to achieve enough objectives before your supplies (and Stalin’s patience) runs out.
Campaign: Operation Bagration is a solitaire wargame that takes place during WWII and puts the player in charge of the Soviet summer offensive of 1944 against Army Group Center, code named operation Bagration. Pick your three generals and use your resources wisely in order to obtain your campaign’s objectives.
One month turns. Decide which card (objective) to go after, each with a unique set of Soviet defenses. Manage supplies required for each offensive, or choose to take an operational pause. Receive random event cards that are mostly beneficial but a few are Soviet counterattacks that can throw a serious monkey-wrench into your plans. Play continues until fall begins, and you must report to Stalin with your success or failure.
In order to meet Stalin’s expectations you need to be relentless, while carefully marshalling your troops and material. Drive too hard, and the Germans will crush one of your wings, and your push will stall out. But if you move too slow you know you will be summoned to a special meeting with Stalin, and that is a grim fate.
If you would like to learn more about how the game plays you can read through the rules document found on Board Game Geek at the following link: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/317786/draft-rules-as-of-feb-26
Also, by way of comparison, you can check out our preview video for the first game in the series called Campaign: Fall Blau:
We also published an interview with the designer Martin Melbardis and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2022/10/24/interview-with-martin-melbardis-designer-of-campaign-fall-blau-from-catastrophe-games-on-kickstarter-october-25th/
If you are interested in Campaign: Operation Bagration, you can back the project on the Kickstarter page at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/campaign-fall-blau/campaign-bagration
As of April 1st, the Kickstarter campaign has funded and raised $1,138 toward its $500 funding goal with 14 backers. The campaign will conclude on Monday, April 20, 2026 at 8:51pm EDT.
VaeVictis is a very fine wargame magazine and they always have very interesting looking pack-in games on various subjects. This month, they have featured a scenario involving the 1944 attack on the Ménez-Hom peak on the Crozon peninsula in a game called Storm on the Ménez Hom 1944. But there is more as the magazine features articles on various wargames including Hubris from GMT Games, La Der des Ders from Hexasim, Thunder on the Mississippi from Multi-Man Publishing, Italia 1917-1918 from Nuts! Publishing, New Cold War from VUCA Simulations, Werwolf from Legion Wargames and many more.
From the game page, we read the following:
During the siege of Brest, the coastal batteries on the Crozon peninsula, on the southern shore of the harbor, were hindering the advance of the US Army. It was therefore crucial to silence them. To achieve this, the barrier closing off the peninsula had to be breached: the Ménez-Hom peak, rising to 330 meters. This mission was entrusted to the FFI-FTP battalions of central Finistère. It took three weeks, from August 12th to September 1st, 1944, and the reinforcement of a US cavalry brigade to finally defeat the German, Russian, and Caucasian defenders.
If you are interested in VaeVictis Magazine Issue #185 Game Edition: Storm on the Ménez Hom 1944, you can order a copy for €16.50 ($19.12 in US Dollars) from the VaeVictic website at the following link: https://www.vaevictismag.fr/en/special-game-issue/287-vaevictis-185-game-issue.html
Large Napoleonic wargames are always interesting. Operational Studies Group does some big games on the subject and their newest offering is called The Coming Storm II: Quadrigames of the Fourth Coalition: October 1806-June 1807 and deals with four different battles including Jena-Auerstadt, Pultusk/Golymin, Eylau and Friedland.
From the game page, we read the following:
These four games explore the major battles of 1806–07, where the French Army encountered two different opponents with different capabilities, from the leadership-challenged Prussians in Saxony to the chaotic battle conditions in winter against the Russians. Based on OSG’s Special Studies, which provide a turn-by-turn narrative of the four battles. Each game shows the approach to the battlefield on the day before battle. The Jena-Auerstadt game has both battlefields on one map and allows both sides to redeploy before battle.
We are offering a new edition, with new maps—not too much different in detail—but rendered in Charles Kibler’s naturalistic style. TCS2 will be updated to use the Universal Deck and latest series rules (deck not included). With few exceptions, the counters will be identical to the first edition.
This is a very popular series of games amongst Grognards and I have heard many people recommend these titles to both of us. We have yet to take the plunge and get one but one day we will…one day!
If you are interested in The Coming Storm II: Quadrigames of the Fourth Coalition: October 1806-June 1807, you can order a copy for $140.00 from the Operational Studies Group website at the following link: https://napoleongames.com/products/the-coming-storm-ii
Paul Rohrbaugh and his company High Flying Dice Games is a designer I love to follow. He is always doing games on smaller or lesser known conflicts and I just find his work to be superb and really draws me in. Recently I saw where he was releasing a game on the Siege of Orleans and I do like siege games! The game is called The Maid Ascendant and really looks pretty interesting and is definitely a unique subject for a game.
From the game page, we read the following:
The Maid Ascendant is an introductory level wargame on the siege of Orleans. The siege marked the debut of Joan of Arc as a military commander, and a campaign that would see the English eventually evicted from France and the end of the Hundred Years War.
“Begone, or I will make you go!” – Jeanne d’Arc’s command to English and Burgundian troops besieging Orleans.
If you are interested in The Maid Ascendant: The Siege of Orleans, October 1428-May 1429, you can order a copy for $16.95 from the High Flying Dice Games website at the following link: https://www.hfdgames.com/maid.html
You can’t have enough good American Civil War games and Compass Games has been working to bring out a new edition of a classic called Mr. Lincoln’s War designed by Mark McLaughlin.
From the game page, we read the following:
Mr. Lincoln’s War is a historical game which captures the epic struggle of the American Civil War. From their first major battle at Bull Run in 1861, through the campaigns of Vicksburg, Gettysburg and Atlanta and until the final days at Appomattox in 1865, the armies of the Union and the Confederacy raged across America wreaking havoc and bloodshed on a scale never before or since witnessed in the New World.
This box set is organized into two sub-games, “Army of the Tennessee,” which deals with the war in the western theater, and “Army of the Potomac,” which deals with the war in Virginia. Each has four short scenarios that recreate the maneuvers and battles of Shiloh, Gettysburg, Atlanta, and other monumental Civil War contests. Campaign games enabling the players to fight the war in the West or East are provided with each sub-game. They may be combined to play the Mr. Lincoln’s War grand campaign that simulates the entire Civil War, on both fronts.
If you are interested in Mr. Lincoln’s War, you can order a copy for $99.00 from the Compass Games website at the following link: https://www.compassgames.com/product/mr-lincolns-war/
Several years ago, Mark Herman designed a very unique and simple American Civil War game called Gettysburg that appeared in C3i Magazine #32. That game became the basis for his Civil War Heritage Series with the first volume being Rebel Fury that focused on five battles from the Chancellorsville and Chickamauga Campaigns. He has long mentioned working on the follow-up to that game and we finally are getting it with Army of the Potomac.
From the game page, we read the following:
Army of the Potomac: Campaigns of 1862 and 1864 is the second volume in the Civil War Heritage Series and the follow-up game to the innovative and acclaimed Rebel Fury. Army of the Potomac uses the same core rules as Rebel Fury, so players familiar with Rebel Fury will be able to jump right into the action. Each battle in Army of the Potomac is quick-set-up, quick-playing, and deeply interactive. The density of counters in each scenario is low, allowing you to see and experience the big picture of the battle.
Army of the Potomac covers the battles of Spotsylvania II, North Anna River, Cold Harbor, and the entire Seven Days battle (McClellan vs. Lee), including the prelude Seven Pines (McClellan vs. Johnson) when Johnson’s wounding brought Lee into the command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Each battle places you, the player, in the role of the Army Commander (Grant, McClellan, Lee, Johnson). You maneuver your army to find the enemy’s flanks, concentrate your forces for an attack, and determine where to commit your artillery assets.
I think that one of the most interesting parts is that this new game can be played with Rebel Fury as also included are two bonus scenarios to allow owners of Rebel Fury to fight Spotsylvania II and begin the Campaign scenario from Wilderness to Cold Harbor using their original Rebel Fury map.
Last summer, while attending WBC in late July, we sat down with Mark Herman and did an interview/overview of Army of the Potomac and you can watch that video at the following link:
If you are interested in Volume II Civil War Heritage Series Army of the Potomac: Campaigns of 1862 and 1864, you an order a copy for $77.00 from the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1108-army-of-the-potomac.aspx
This one is very much anticipated by me and I feel like I have been waiting in it forever since its announcement in 2022. Baltic Empires is a grand looking game that focuses on the conflicts between the states of the Baltic region during the early modern era. The wait is now over as they game is set to ship on April 17th.
From the game page, we read the following:
Baltic Empires is an approachable 2-5 player strategy game about conflicts between the states of the Baltic region during the early modern era, a transformative period of religious conflict, large scale warfare, and constant struggles for power. Players will have to develop their economy, strengthen their administration, secure trade hubs, and finally build armies to become the dominant power of the Baltics. Denmark-Norway, Sweden, Russia, Poland-Lithuania, and Prussia will fight for hegemony, using variable victory conditions that reflect their respective historical objectives.
During the 16th & 17th centuries, religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics swept Europe, vast colonies were established by the maritime powers, and a series of wars were fought against Louis XIV’s Kingdom of France to maintain the balance of power, eventually culminating in the War of Spanish Succession. While this history might be familiar to many, the related conflicts around the Baltic Sea that took place during these centuries are less well-known.
Where did the French, English, and Dutch acquire the materials they needed to build and maintain their vast navies that won them their colonial empires? Where did they acquire the food they needed to feed their sailors and growing populations? Where did the Swedish juggernaut that suddenly emerged and changed the course of the Thirty Years War come from, and why didn’t its great power status last? How did the Russian and Prussian Empires that became so powerful in later periods first emerge on the European stage? The Baltic region was crucial to the history of Europe, and the conflict for influence over the Baltic Sea was closely intertwined with the balance of power in Western Europe. The outcome of the wars and societal transformation in the Baltic region, from the collapse of the Teutonic Order in Livonia in 1558 to the end of the Great Northern War in 1721, shaped European and world history up until the present day.
Baltic Empires presents these less well-known conflicts in a fun and accessible format, while also doing justice to the fascinating history of the Baltic Sea region during this period. The game features 5 asymmetric factions with different strengths, forces, and historical objectives, along with the capacity to develop their states by investing in economic infrastructure and recruiting key historical characters that offer unique game effects. The game also includes several scenarios for variable player counts and durations, offering additional flexibility and replayability.
We published an interview on the blog with the designer Brian Asklev and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2022/03/28/interview-with-brian-asklev-designer-of-baltic-empires-the-northern-wars-of-1558-1721-from-gmt-games/
We also did a series of History Behind the Cards with Brian and you can read those posts at the following links:
#41 Tsar Boris Godunov and #33 Corfitz Ulfeldt
#29 Joachim Frederik Blumenthal and #6 Bohdan Khmelnytsky
#27 King Sigismund III Vasa and #9 Maurice of Nassau
#28 Thomas Roe and #37 Markus Fugger
#10 Janusz & Boguslav Radziwill and #12 Louis de Geer
#17 Georg von Derfflinger and #8 The False Dmitrys
#2 Tsar Peter the Great and #48 Tycho Brahe
If you are interested in Baltic Empires: The Northern Wars of 1558-1721, you can order a copy for $104.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-954-baltic-empires-the-northern-wars-of-1558-1721.aspx
A very popular series featuring one of the most gamed battles of the American Civil War! Quite the combination. And to add to that, a Deluxe Edition treatment with new counters, some new rules, new and updated maps and lots of scenarios. This is a great value for any gamer who wants to game one of the most iconic battles of the American Civil War.
From the game page, we read the following:
GMT Games and the GBACW design team are proud to announce Three Days of Gettysburg Deluxe Edition, the ultimate edition of the definitive game on the Battle of Gettysburg. First published in 1995, 3DoG has stood the test of time as one of the most popular games of the Great Battles of the American Civil War Series.
This series is one of the hobby’s longest-lived design concepts, springing from the legendary regimental level Gettysburg game—Terrible Swift Sword (SPI)—designed by Richard Berg in 1976. Under GMT, the rules system has remained stable but has shown remarkable flexibility to allow each game to smoothly incorporate additional rules to reflect the historical battles. The series relies on interactive chit-pull mechanics to simulate the often-chaotic nature of the 19th Century battlefield at the regimental level.
Three Days of Gettysburg Deluxe Edition will include ten plus scenarios. They range from small Skirmisher contests on half sized maps to the ultimate Gettysburg experience on four full full-sized maps depicting the entire battle, including the East Cavalry Battlefield! Other scenarios will depict both the first and second day of the struggle. Experienced players will be able to play many of the scenarios in one sitting. The 3DoG Deluxe Edition will include many exclusive rules to represent the special situations at Gettysburg, including new Skirmisher rules. However, many of the rules are optional, allowing players to decide for themselves what level of complexity they want.
New components and exclusive rules include new cavalry counters, CSA dismounted cavalry counters, corrected artillery types, two types of skirmisher units, artillery sections for some scenarios (Calef’s battery on the first day!), and artillery overshoot. The new maps continue to use Mark Simonitch’s beautiful artwork but include stonewalls, the Devil’s Den, and sloping hexes to better represent the unique terrain at Gettysburg. The large rock formations are represented differently from earlier editions, and artillery will find moving up the slopes of Little Round Top as difficult in the game as it was in the battle.
And just take a look at this big beautiful map of the game….by the talented Mark Simonitch!
If you are interested in Three Days of Gettysburg Deluxe Edition, you an order a copy for $108.00 from the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1057-three-days-of-gettysburg-deluxe-edition.aspx
Red Sash Games have a reputation for very large, very long playing games that are focused on interesting historical events. This month, they announced their newest offering with their printing partner Blue Panther and it is an expansion to their Seeds of Empire game focused on the wars in South & Central India during the 1730’s through the 1750’s. The game is called Dreams of Empire Expansion Kit – Seeds of Empire: The Wars of South & Central India, 1730’s-1750’s and really looks to be pretty interesting.
From the game page, we read the following:
Seeds of Empire is the second in a series of operational war games covering conflict in India during the 18th Century, using Red Sash Games’ LaceWars
The expansion includes several new Powers, divides the Marathas into Clans, and adds Factions for the two — not one, but two — major succession crises simultaneously taking place in the Deccan and Carnatic. This is the period when John Company, the British East India Company, finally got involved in the geopolitics of the Subcontinent. It was the highwater mark of the French presence, and a watershed for the Maratha Confederacy, while for the Mughal Empire it was a period of steep decline.
Seeds of Empire offers eight unique scenarios:
- The Second Carnatic War: this scenario uses only the original map set (most of the action took place in a very confined area). Featuring the return of Chanda Sahib and Governor Dupleix, with Bussy-Castelneau, Clive of India, Stringer Lawrence (Father of the Indian Army), and above all, Mohammad Ali Khan.
- “Early Start”: An ‘early start’ variant of the same scenario in which Chanda Sahib has the opportunity to slay Anwar ud-Din (or vice versa). Historically the death of Anwar kicked off the Second Carnatic War.
- “Capture of Devikotta”: An even earlier start that allows the players to simulate the EIC‘s capture of Devikotta from Tanjore under the guise of restoring the Raja.
- “French in the Deccan”: A ‘French in the Deccan’ scenario using only the new maps, focusing on the war for control of the Viceroyalty of the Deccan and the activities of the various Maratha clans.
- “Deccan + Dreams of Empire”: A 1740s Deccan sandbox scenario matching the timeline of the original DOE Campaign Game, showing what the Marathas were getting up to.
- “Full Territory”: A Campaign Game for the Second Carnatic War that combines the maps.
- “Both Carnatic Wars”: A Campaign Game for the 1740s combining the original DOE Campaign with the 1740s Deccan scenario. This scenario can be extended to create a Grand Campaign covering the period of both Carnatic Wars.
- “Malabar War”: A small scenario set in Malabar, showcasing the continued expansion of Travancore against Cochin and its allies.
Like Dreams of Empire, Seeds of Empire assigns the various Powers to the players as and when they Activate. However, the Second Carnatic War also creates semi- permanent Alliances, with the French on one side and the British on the other, though only acting as ‘auxiliaries’ to the great Indian lords.
To help the players cope with the material, the original rules, scenarios, charts, and (some) displays have been duplicated, with the new material from Seeds of Empire inserted into the relevant places. The expansion also includes errata and small fixes to the game system.
This is not a complete game and will requires ownership of Dreams of Empire to play.
If you are interested in Dreams of Empire Expansion Kit – Seeds of Empire: The Wars of South & Central India, 1730’s-1750’s, you can order a copy for $240.00 from the Blue Panther website at the following link: https://www.bluepantherllc.com/products/seeds-of-empire
A classic reborn is how I would classify the next offering on this list. With very unique mechanics trying to provide the experience of dueling it out with an enemy biplane over the fields of World War I, Ace of Aces is now making a comeback with the Powerhouse Series rebirth all the way from 1981.
From the game page, we read the following:
Ace of Aces: Powerhouse is an exciting game of World War 1 aerial dogfighting. Each player is the pilot of a fighter plane in the skies over France trying to shoot down their opponent. The players each have a book that shows the position of their opponent, and what maneuvers they can perform to line up their machine guns on their target. Through an innovative matrix system, the players can fly through the sky and attempt to drive away their enemy. Each game takes 15-20 minutes to complete!
The mechanic used in this series is a very cool little flip book called a Dogfighting Book that has various pictures representing the maneuvers of your plan and the enemies. These flip books are nicely crafted and there is one for both the German Fokker DVII and the British SPAD XIII.
If you are interested in Ace of Aces: Powerhouse Series Deluxe Edition, you can order (but it does still say pre-order) a copy for $99.99 from the Mr. B Games website at the following link: https://www.mrbgames.com/products/pre-order-ace-of-aces-powerhouse-series
Over the past several years, print and play solitaire wargames have gained a lot of traction in our hobby. A solitaire wargame that is very affordable at $10-$15 and can be purchased and downloaded online. What is not to like? And the name of Mike Lambo has been tied to a lot these games as he has designed 20+ of these titles and has built quite the rabid and loyal fanbase. His newest game is called Commander: Romans v Dacians – A Solitaire Wargame and can be downloaded from Wargame Vault.
From the game page, we read the following:
In the rugged hills and forests of ancient Dacia (today located in the European country of Romania) Rome fights a war unlike any it has faced before. The legions advance into a land of ridges, valleys and fierce tribal resistance, where every skirmish can turn the tide of battle. You command a small Roman force consisting of legionaries, praetorian guard, cavalry, archers, and spearmen, tasked with holding the line, breaking the enemy, or seizing vital ground before the Dacian horde overwhelms you. Opposing you are the warriors of King Decebalus – swift, unpredictable, ferocious and deadly. Cavalry smash into formations with startling power, warriors surge forward in wild charges, swordsmen hold the line with grim resolve, and archers and falxmen harass and surprise from the rear. Each battle unfolds differently as both armies are drawn at random, events disrupt your plans, and reinforcements arrive to mix things up.
This is a tense solo wargame of tactical decision making and battlefield chaos. Every turn demands adaptation and every clash counts. No two battles will ever play the same, and victory is never guaranteed until it is achieved.
In the game, the Player will be commanding the units of the Roman Empire as they battle a seemingly endless stream of fierce Dacian fighters.
This game is a solitaire wargame. You play the game, and the enemy is controlled by the game (or ‘AI’). You will need three standard six-sided dice to play. It is recommended that the counters provided on the final page of the game are used to play this game (especially for the units). Simply stick them to card and cut them out. A video demonstrating how generally to do this can be found on the Mike Lambo Games YouTube channel.
If you are interested in Commander: Romans v Dacians – A Solitaire Wargame, you can order a print and play copy for $11.99 from Wargame Vault at the following link: https://www.wargamevault.com/en/product/562242/commander-romans-v-dacians-a-solitaire-wargame
As usual, thanks so much for reading along and sticking with me this month as I navigated through the many websites and game pages looking for new and interesting games to share.
Finally, thanks once again to this month’s sponsor VUCA Simulations!
-Grant
Financially-troubled board game publisher CMON says it plans to relaunch its halted crowdfunding operations later this year, after seeing its annual losses soar to almost $20m in 2025.
CMON pulled the plug on crowdfunding launches and new game development 12 months ago, citing the economic uncertainty created by US tariff hikes – which at the time had reached 145% for China, where the vast majority of hobby board games are manufactured.
But a month later it emerged that CMON’s financial problems had been growing long before the tariffs, with the company announcing it had slumped to a loss of more than $3m in 2024 due to falling sales for its crowdfunding campaigns.
That loss was almost double CMON’s total profits from the prior three years – but the figure is dwarfed by the $19.9m annual loss the company just announced in its 2025 financial results.
CMON’s $23m losses across 2024 and 2025 are now almost 5.5-times larger than its profits from the preceding nine years combined – and have led an independent auditor hired by the company to question whether it has the resources to stay in business for the foreseeable future.
An extract of a report from auditor Zhonghui Anda shared by CMON, which is set to appear in the company’s 2025 annual report next month, considered the publisher’s $19.9m annual loss, its net liabilities of more than $3.5m and contract liabilities of over $7.5m, saying, “These conditions indicate a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt about the Group’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
CMON’s directors have a different view, however, saying in the 2025 financial report that the company “should be able to continue as a going concern” thanks to a trio of factors.
They include financial support from some of the directors “sufficient to finance CMON’s working capital requirements”, the roughly $2.4m proceeds from selling its Singapore office that it received in January, and the roughly $1.25m gross proceeds from a successful share sale last month.
CMON’s hefty liabilities are largely due to its eight undelivered crowdfunding campaigns, which are not recognised as revenue on the company’s books until they are fulfilled to backers.
They include DC Super Heroes United, which raised more than $4.4m, and DCeased, which brought in over $2.5m. Both campaigns were initially due to be delivered last year, but are now expected to be delivered in Q4 of 2026, according to CMON’s latest estimates.
CMON also has five undelivered pre-order campaigns on its books, including Dune Desert War and the Assassin’s Creed Role Playing Game.
The company said that delivering crowdfunding projects in 2024 contributed about $20m in revenue – a figure which had sunk to just $200,000 last year according to its latest financial report.
CMON said the 2025 losses were driven by a “significant decline in revenue”, which fell more than 73% to $9.9m last year, compared to the $37.3m total from 2024.
It also cited impairment losses on property, plant and equipment, right of-use assets and intangible assets, and a loss it made disposing intellectual properties and related assets as part of its “strategic portfolio restructuring”.
Those IP sales included parting with its most famous and profitable title Zombicide – which has raised more than $40m on Kickstarter since its 2012 launch – to Asmodee, as well as Blood Rage, Rising Sun and Ankh to Tycoon Games.
It followed those by selling the IP for former Mythic Games titles Anastyr and Hel: The Last Saga to Don’t Panic Games in September, and parting with the lucrative Cthulhu: Death May Die IP to Asmodee a month later – the latter a series which has raised almost $10m from backers to date.
CMON said all those sales combined amounted to about $5.1m, but added that it actually made an overall $2.4m loss on disposal of intellectual properties and related assets across 2025.
It also made a $5.7m loss due to undertaking an impairment assessment on some of its property, plant and equipment, right-of-use assets and intangible assets “with finite useful lives”.
CMON said in the financial report, “These actions, while negatively impacting short-term results, were undertaken to strengthen the Group’s operational focus and reduce future cost burden.”
The company’s remaining significant IP includes the Massive Darkness series, with the most recent installment, 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 campaign was CMON’s last before it scrapped its future crowdfunding plans two months later. The company has pivoted in the interim to releasing several small-box games direct to retail, including Collect!, Peanuts Talent Show, Fairy Perfume, Rocket Punch and Yokai Carnival.
Discussing its current strategy in the report, the company said, “In light of the continued uncertainty in the global market, particularly the instability arising from US import tariffs on certain products since the first half of 2025, the Group has taken decisive steps to restructure its operations and strengthen its financial position.
“Our current strategy is to:
“We remain committed to becoming a quality developer and publisher of tabletop games and believe the strategic refocus toward Asia and selective game development will position the Group more sustainably for the future.”
CMON said it had reduced its revenue exposure to the US to about 21.4% of its total across 2025, compared to around 42% for the previous year, through what it described as a “deliberate strategic pivot toward Asia”.
The report showed CMON’s combined North and South America revenue fell more than 86% last year to about $2.1m, from around $15.7m in 2024.
European revenue also fell more than 81% year-on-year, from about $12.7m to around $2.4m. Asia revenue fell too, but much less sharply, down about 33% in 2025 from $8m to around $5.3m.
CMON said in the report, “Notwithstanding this reduced exposure, tariff-related uncertainties may continue to affect future export sales, revenue and gross margin performance in the US market.
“The Group intends to maintain its current reduced focus on the US market until the trade environment stabilises and market conditions improve.”
CMON also revealed the scale of its staffing cuts in the latest report, with headcount falling from 81 at the start of 2025 to just 41 at the beginning of this year.
The report said total staff costs had fallen in that time from about $4m to around $2.8m, including pay for its directors and their pension fund contributions, but it did not provide a breakdown of those numbers.
The post CMON eyes crowdfunding return after annual losses spiral to almost $20m first appeared on .
Heute gibt es eine Folge in der wir ein wenig von Hölzchen auf Stöckchen kommen und dennoch über viele interessante Dinge reden! Hört rein und lasst Euch diesmal ein wenig überraschen, was so auf Euch zukommt.
The post SWAMS #82: Von Hölzchen auf Stöckchen first appeared on Blogspiele.
Welcome to this week’s batch of crowdfunding campaigns. We have a variety of offerings here, so we hope you will find something that catches your eye. Also, if you want to chat with the BGQ team, join our Discord Server where we talk about games, movies, sports, and other fun stuff. Or, if Facebook is […]
Ursprünglich ein Kickstarter-Projekt von Paverson Games, das Ende 2025 mit etwas Verzögerung ausgeliefert wurde. Ich hatte die Chance, dieses optisch schöne Eurogame in der Deluxe-Version mit Glockenspiel-Würfelturm mitspielen zu können. Meine anfängliche Begeisterung schlug allerdings im Laufe meiner Erstpartie in Langeweile um und das hatte ganz speziell eigen verursachte Gründe.
Auf der Brettspielfreizeit in Bad Holzhausen wurde Luthier begeistert gespielt. Von vielen, oft und häufig. Zunächst dachte ich, dass es hier um ein religiöses Thema geht, das nur ein wenig merkwürdig ausgesprochen wird. Mit dem Kirchenreformer und seinen Thesen hat das alles aber mal so gar nichts zu tun. Habe ich dann auch schnell gemerkt. Zumal dieser klimpernde Glockenspiel-Würfelturm mir die richtige Richtung hätte weisen können.
Es geht um die Handwerkskunst des Instrumentenbaus. Als Luthier, was französisch für Lautenmacher ist, wurden diejenigen im 18. Jahrhundert bezeichnet, die handgefertigte Instrumente bauten und reparierten. So eine Handarbeit war schließlich kostbar und nicht jeder konnte sich so ein Instrument leisten. Genau an dem Punkt kommen die Mäzene ins Spiel, die mit ihrem Ruhm und Reichtum uns als Luthier unterstützen, damit die größten Musiker der damaligen Zeitgeschichte die edelsten Instrumente nach den Symphonien der herausragendsten Komponisten erklingen lassen konnten – zum eigenen Ansehen als eben solche Komponisten und als Liebhaber der schönen Künste.
Bei dem Werk der Autoren Dave Beck und Abe Burson dreht sich also doch mal wieder alles nur ums schnöde Geld. Denn ohne ausreichende finanzielle Unterstützung kommen wir als Instrumentenbauer nicht weit. Deshalb werben wir um die Gunst diverser Mäzenen, die allerdings recht fordernd sind und bei Laune gehalten werden wollen. Ohne zeitige Gegenleistung, wie ein fertiges oder repariertes Instrument oder eine Konzertaufführung, war es das mit der Unterstützung und unseren Siegpunkten. Hinter dem schönen Thema steckt ein knallhartes Wirtschaftsspiel mit viel Optimierungspotential. Auf seinen spielerischen Kern heruntergebrochen, sammeln wir Rohstoffe, erwerben Baupläne für Instrumente und bauen daraus in zwei Bearbeitungsschritten ein entsprechendes Instrument. Die Mäzene sind dabei unsere Auftraggeber, die befriedigt werden wollen.
Um das alles bewerkstelligen zu können, haben wir unterschiedlich gestufte Arbeiter, die wir durch Lehrlinge ergänzen können. Damit bieten wir verdeckt auf einzelne Einsetzbereiche. Unsere lieben Mitspieler sehen zwar, dass wir dort aktiv werden wollen, allerdings nicht, wie viel Arbeitereinsatz wir dafür veranschlagt haben. Ein mit Lehrlingen aufgestockter Turm an Holzscheiben könnte allerdings eine Ahnung geben, dass es uns dort wirklich ernst ist.
Nach dem Einsetzen kommt das Aufdecken und wo wir agieren wollen, bestimmen wir in Spielerreihenfolge reihum. Blöd, wenn wir uns erst Baupläne besorgen sollen, bevor wir wissen, ob wir überhaupt den dazu passenden neuen Mäzen anwerben können. Mit dem Dilemma müssen wir leben und so ergibt sich ein Spannungsbogen, was möglich sein wird und wo wir situativ umplanen müssen. Spätestens bei der Konzertaufführung ordnen wir uns aber dem Zufall von einem Würfelpaar unter. Kunst lässt sich eben nicht perfekt vorausbestimmen, aber fehlendes Können im Moment durch Inspiration ausgleichen. Noch so eine Ressource, die wir uns besorgen sollten.
So ergab sich für mich zunächst ein thematisch schön eingekleidetes Eurogame. Zudem flott gespielt, weil wir gemeinsam vorplanen und dann reihum unsere Arbeiter einsetzen. Da auch unsere Mitspieler bestimmen, wo agiert, weil ausgewertet wird, war ich ständig an dem Geschehen auf dem zentralen Spielbrett interessiert. Alles fügte sich harmonisch zusammen. Eventuell zu harmonisch? Zumindest in der ersten Spielhälfte. Da wäre mein Fazit noch euphorisch ausgefallen und ich sah mich schon auf der Suche nach dem Spiel, das erst wieder im Sommer 2026 als lokalisierte Deluxe-Version fernab des überteuerten Zweitmarktes erhältlich sein wird. Soweit so gut – bis dahin.
Zwei Spielfehler, die wir leider erst nach der Partie enttarnten, sorgten bei mir in Folge für Beliebigkeit bis Langeweile. Zu Spielbeginn hatte ich die Auswahl, wer ich als Instrumentenbauer sein wollte. Meine Wahl fiel auf einen tüchtigen Geschäftsmann, der mit viel Anfangskapital ausgestattet war. Das sollte mir den nötigen Freiraum geben, so dachte ich mir. Als ersten Mäzen kam mir zudem jemand gerade recht, der mich zusätzlich mit Geld entlohnte. So schwamm ich anfangs im Geld, konnte viele Bauprojekte verwirklichen und nutzte sogar den Markt, um dort mit den Warenpreisen zu spekulieren. Das machte mir Spaß.
Ich kaufte mir Inspiration ein, was so gar nicht möglich gewesen wäre, da nur als Zahlungsmittel bei Marktgeschäften wie Geld nutzbar und konnte damit falsch gespielt jedem Zufall bei den Konzertaufführungen trotzen. So kletterte ich die Fortschrittsleisten im Spiel empor, die ihre thematischen Bezeichnungen wie auch sonst alles im Spiel haben, die mir allerdings entfallen sind, und konnte meine Konzertwürfel aufwerten. Und dabei entstand der zweite Spielfehler, weil wir nahmen weitere Würfel dazu, anstatt diese Weißen gegen besserer schwarze Würfel auszutauschen. Damit fiel das Spiel für mich in sich zusammen, denn in der Folge gab es keinerlei Herausforderungen mehr. Im wiederholten und nun völlig spannungsfreien Ablauf machte sich bei mir Langeweile breit.
Deshalb muss ich bei meinem Fazit die zweite Spielhälfte ignorieren, in der sich die Auswirkungen der Spielfehler potenzierten. Unter dieser Sichtweise, auf die schönen Spielstunden beschränkt, bleibt Luthier ein wirklich gutes bis sehr gutes Eurogame mit einem stimmigen und gefälligen Thema in meiner Erinnerung. Allerdings auch ein Spiel, bei dem das Thema viele schon längst bekannte Mechanismen verdeckt und überlackiert. Denn unter der Hülle bleibt es doch ein Spiel, bei dem wir Ressourcen sammeln, Aufträge erfüllen und Leisten hochklettern, um möglichst viele Siegpunkte durch optimierte Züge zu erspielen. Wenn Ihr Euch daran noch nicht satt gespielt habt und zudem dem Thema Musikinstrumentenbau zugeneigt seid, dann spielt Luthier unbedingt mal mit und dann hoffentlich auch regelgerecht.
Unabhängig von unseren zwei Spielfehlern fand ich den Markt in Luthier besonders und erwähnenswert. Dort können wir beliebig Rohstoffe verkaufen und von dem Geld kaufen, sodass ich niemals das Problem hatte, unpassende Ressourcen für den Instrumentenbau zu haben. Ausreichend Geld und Lagerplatz vorausgesetzt. Somit war der Markt für mich ein sanftes Kissen, das viele langfristige Planungen unnötig machte. Einfach ab auf den Markt, bevor ich meine Instrumente baue oder feinschleife und alle Probleme lösen sich schon. Das war mir dann doch zu verzeihend und ich hätte den Markt gerne eingeschränkter gesehen. Aber da werde ich ebenso mal in der Online-Anleitung nachblättern, ob sich das alles wirklich so darstellt wie mitgespielt.
Kurze Regel-Recherche, die mit einem „leider ja“ endet. Der Markt kann vieles kompensieren, hilft allerdings auch, dass man seine Planungen nicht übertreiben muss. In Folge ist mir damit Luthier dann doch eine Spur zu gefällig und rundgeschliffen. Denn zwischen Erfolg, der mich durchaus zufrieden stellt und wirklich gutem Spiel, bei dem ich begeisternd jubeln möchte, da lagen mir zu wenige Nuancen.
Ist die Reihenfolge bei den Aktionen wirklich so wichtig, wie uns der Bietmechanismus vorgibt? Oder gibt es trotzdem immer noch ausreichend viele Alternativen, die sich ebenso lohnen? Oder sollte Luthier bevorzugt in Vollbesetzung statt nur mit drei Spielern erlebt werden, damit es mehr Konkurrenz auf dem Spielplan gibt? Mit Blick auf die Mäzene der Mitspieler konnte ich stets gut erkennen, ob die mit mir in direkter Konkurrenz standen oder ganz eigene und andere Pläne verfolgten. Zu selten war die Aktionsreihenfolge wirklich entscheidend.
Mal sehen, was die Zukunft und eine Folgepartie so bringen, denn eine zweite Chance werde ich Luthier trotzdem geben, weil es mir anfangs eine schöne Spielzeit beschert hat. Etwas, das ein Spiel auch erst einmal schaffen muss. Deshalb längst noch nicht abgeschrieben, sofern sich die Gelegenheit einer Revanche in neuer Spielrunde ergibt.
Mindclash Games bringt mit Voidfall: Resurgence die erste große Erweiterung für das 4X-Strategiespiel Voidfall auf Kickstarter. Die Kampagne startete am 17. März 2026 und läuft noch bis zum 2. April. Neben der Erweiterung umfasst das Projekt auch einen Reprint der begehrten Galactic Box des Grundspiels. Das Finanzierungsziel von 100.000 Euro war innerhalb kürzester Zeit erreicht.
Im Zentrum von Voidfall: Resurgence steht eine neue Psionik-Mechanik, die das bestehende Spielsystem um eine zusätzliche strategische Ebene ergänzt. Jedes Haus erhält Zugang zu einem Psionic Agenda-Deck mit wiederverwendbaren Fähigkeiten, die neue Spezialisierungen und Spielstile ermöglichen. Hinzu kommen einmalig einsetzbare Psionic Combat Tokens, mit denen sich vernichtende psionische Angriffe starten oder Barrieren in entscheidenden Gefechten errichten lassen. Sogenannte Psionic Vanguards können in Schlüsselsektoren eingesetzt werden und bieten riskante, aber lohnende Manöver.
Die Erweiterung fügt dem Spiel sechs neue asymmetrische Häuser hinzu, von denen drei speziell auf die neuen Psionik-Mechaniken zugeschnitten sind. Zwölf neue Technologien bringen zusätzliche Flottentypen, Installationen und Gilden ins Spiel. Neue Szenarien und Sektoren sorgen für Abwechslung, während der kooperative Modus und der Solo-Modus ebenfalls überarbeitet wurden. Unter anderem wurde eine von der Community entwickelte Kampagne für ein bis zwei Spielende integriert.
Voidfall: Resurgence richtet sich an 1 bis 4 Spielende ab 14 Jahren. Die Spielzeit variiert je nach Szenario zwischen 90 und 240 Minuten. Designer Nigel Buckle, Dávid Turczi und Marcel Dragomir zeichnen erneut verantwortlich. Die Illustrationen stammen wieder von Ian O'Toole, dessen markanter Stil bereits das Grundspiel prägte.
Die Kampagne bietet mehrere Pledge-Stufen für unterschiedliche Einstiegspunkte. Die Resurgence Expansion in der Deluxe Edition kostet 75 Euro und ist auf Englisch sowie als „Wiederauferstehung Erweiterung" auf Deutsch verfügbar. Wer neu bei Voidfall einsteigt, greift zum Gameplay All-In Pledge für 270 Euro, der die Galactic Box, die Resurgence Expansion in der Deluxe Edition und die Last Novarch Campaign Expansion enthält. Auch dieses Paket gibt es in englischer und deutscher Fassung. Für Unentschlossene steht ein Pledge Manager Access für 10 Euro bereit, über den sich der Betrag später im Pledge Manager auf Gamefound einlösen lässt.
Zusätzliche Add-ons wie ein Metal Structure Set, ein Playmat und ein Plastic Double-Layered Ship Pack ergänzen das Angebot. Besitzer der Retail-Version können über ein Galactic Upgrade Pack auf die Premium-Komponenten aufrüsten. Die Auslieferung aller Pledges ist für Juni 2027 geplant.
Die Galactic Box wird im Rahmen der Kampagne ebenfalls neu aufgelegt und bietet Nachzüglern die Gelegenheit, die Premium-Version des Grundspiels mit Miniaturen und optimierter Aufbewahrung zu erwerben. Zur Kickstarter-Kampagne von Voidfall: Resurgence geht es hier.
Welcome to this week’s batch of crowdfunding campaigns. We have a variety of offerings here, so we hope you will find something that catches your eye. Also, if you want to chat with the BGQ team, join our Discord Server where we talk about games, movies, sports, and other fun stuff. Or, if Facebook is […]
Ungefähr ein Jahrhundert, bevor Konrad Zuse die erste programmierbare Rechenmaschine konstruierte, entwickelte Ada Lovelace das erste Computerprogramm der Welt. Für die Umsetzung fehlte ihr in der viktorianischen Ära jedoch ein entscheidender Teil: ein Penis.In einer Zeit, in der das Y-Chromosom die Grundvoraussetzung für wissenschaftliche Anerkennung war, ignorierte ihr Freund Charles Babbage…
Altered, the trading card game which broke Kickstarter records with its €6.2m debut crowdfund three years ago, is ending after its latest crowdfunding campaign fell far short of its goals.
Publisher Equinox scrapped the crowdfund for Altered’s Roots of Corruption expansion yesterday after raising more than €420,000, having launched the campaign last week with a €50,000 target – a figure it described on the project page as a “technical necessity” in order to use Gamefound’s stretch goal system.
Equinox said in an update yesterday that it had also collected €680,000 through retailer pre-orders for the expansion – but added that the €1.1m total was “far too far” from the €2m the company required “to guarantee the future of the game”.
The statement said, “It would be dishonest to tell you that we can still turn the tide by Friday evening. We must face reality: the numbers simply aren’t there.
“It is with a heavy heart that we have decided to cancel the Roots of Corruption campaign. As we committed to doing, all backers – both players and retailers – will be reimbursed in full. This is the cornerstone of our responsibility toward you, and it is the most obvious decision to make.
“This campaign does not only mark the end of a crowdfunding project; unfortunately, it also marks the end of the Altered adventure.”
Altered shattered the crowdfunding record for a TCG on Kickstarter through its debut campaign in 2023, pulling in more than €6.2m (about $7.1m) from about 15,000 backers.
The announcement of the game’s demise coincides with that record being taken from it by the Cyberpunk TCG, which had already raised almost $10m from 12,000 backers just a couple of days after the campaign was launched.
Altered aimed to stand out from high-profile competitors such as Magic: The Gathering through its focus on exploration and bringing heroes together, rather than battles between characters and monsters, as well as innovations such as a print-on-demand and a digital marketplace for cards.
Those innovations were beset by heavy delays, however, and only went live in an open-beta form in April last year – putting the game at a disadvantage as it tried to compete in a crowded TCG space with alternatives such as Star Wars: Unlimited, Lorcana, One Piece and Flesh and Blood.
That digital marketplace also made it difficult for retailers to offer the TCG staple of being able to buy, sell and trade single cards, and the game’s powerful early momentum waned as the title struggled to go toe-to-toe with offerings based on hugely popular IPs.
Equinox returned to crowdfunding for Altered’s fifth expansion, Seeds of Unity, in October last year – but faced similar problems to the most recent crowdfund in reaching its necessary totals.
That campaign hit the €50,000 goal set by Equinox in less than nine minutes, but an update from the publisher two weeks later revealed that the actual amount needed to create the game was €2.5m – a figure which if it did not reach, “the adventure will come to an end, and both backers and retailers will of course be refunded”.
Noting the €50,000 crowdfunding goal for that project, and the message on the Gamefound page describing it as more than 1,000% funded, Equinox made no mention of it being a technical necessity for the stretch goal system.
It said at the time, “The funding goal displayed on Gamefound is symbolic, as it usually is in crowdfunding campaigns.
“It’s chosen to help build early momentum but doesn’t reflect our actual needs. Setting the bar too high sometimes makes a project feel out of reach, while a more accessible goal helps get the collective energy moving right from the start.”
That campaign ultimately collected almost €900,000 after being extended for several days, with another €1.4m coming through retailer pre-orders.
Equinox said at the conclusion of that campaign, “While we haven’t reached the objective of €2.5m mentioned initially, we’re not that far off our goal, and with some adjustments on our part (which includes reviewing some budgets and determining new production processes) we believe we can cover that difference.”
Equinox had come under fire from some Altered players for launching its Roots of Corruption campaign before Seeds of Unity had been fully delivered to backers.
The company said in an update to Seeds of Unity backers that while it aimed for a four-month cycle per set, production delays meant that it “no longer [had] the flexibility to push dates back”.
Uncertain Future
Equinox founder Régis Bonnessée acknowledged in the latest update announcing the end of Altered that players would inevitably have questions about the future of their digital collections, the game’s availability on Board Game Arena and “the legacy of this universe”.
He said, “We are not going to leave you in a vacuum. We simply need some time to digest this moment, to properly close this chapter, and to provide you with clear and respectful answers. Thank you for every card played, for every smile exchanged, and for everything you put of yourselves into this adventure. It was an honor to imagine it with you.”
Bonnessée added, “I have experienced the end of projects before – cycles that come to a close. But today feels different. Tonight, we feel a profound sadness as we reflect on what Altered has become for all of us.
“Tonight, we are thinking of you – our players, our community, our ambassadors. To everyone who accompanied us, supported us, and sometimes challenged us. Altered managed to create something rare: a sincere, kind, and committed community.
“We say this because we met you time and again. You often surprised us. We are sad tonight because we realize what this game represented for many of you. And because we also realize all that we failed to achieve.
“We are thinking of the game stores. To those who believed in the game before it was a certainty, who championed it to their customers, and who ordered stock on a gamble. Running a game store is an act of faith in itself; betting on an independent French TCG with an original universe and no established license to lean on… that deserves to be acknowledged. Thank you to them.
“We are thinking of our artists. Altered is a universe, a visual identity—something recognizable at a single glance. This world did not exist until they drew it. Thank you to them for giving substance to all of this.
“We are thinking of our partners—those we call such for lack of a better word, because “partner” describes a contract but not the relationship. For their advice, for what they taught us by their side, for the moments they believed in the project even more than we perhaps deserved. We grew together, and that cannot be erased.
“And of course, on a personal level, my thoughts are with the team. To the women and men who continued to believe, even when the headwind became exhausting. To their resilience in the face of invisible obstacles, to their total dedication. They have been extraordinary. I know that word can feel worn out, but here, it takes on its full meaning. Thank you to them for allowing this universe to exist, if only for a time.”
The post “The numbers simply aren’t there”: Equinox to end record-breaking Altered TCG after new crowdfund falls well short of goals first appeared on .
MingYang Lu’s puzzle fighter-style board game Re;MATCH has had a storming start to its Kickstarter campaign, picking up almost $250,000 from over 1,250 backers with half of the month-long crowdfund still to go. In this sponsored interview, Lu talks about why his design looks to derive fun from game mastery rather than discovery, the importance of conventions for small publishers, and why AI art “cheapens creativity”.
Hi Ming! A big part of your design philosophy for Re;MATCH is centred around the difference between ‘mastery’ and ‘discovery’. Can you give an overview of what you mean by those terms?
Yeah! So I’ve developed this personal philosophy about the different types of fun designers can incorporate into hobby board games, and I currently feel there are two main types.
First is Discovery, which is the fun you get from being presented with new information to respond to. This could mean seeing new cards revealed in a shop for an engine or deck builder game, or encountering a new enemy or event card in a miniatures game.
Second is Mastery, which is instead the fun derived from realizing new combos or optimizations with the options you already have. This could involve learning the optimal strategies in a roll-and-write game, or realizing the political intricacies between the factions in Root.
I don’t think these two types of fun are mutually exclusive. In video games, particularly single player ones, both are almost mandatory for a great experience.
Can you give us an overview of Re;MATCH, its design and mechanisms, and how that sets it towards either mastery or discovery?
Happily! Re;MATCH a 1 vs 1 competitive fighting game inspired by Puzzle Fighting games. Players take turns pulling connected and matching marbles from a tray of marbles, and the color and number of marbles you pull will resolve a corresponding attack on your character’s move list.
In the same vein as my first game, Re;ACT, it is a skill expression game that focuses primarily on mastery type fun. All of your abilities are shown upfront, and you must figure out how to use these options to win. There are no event decks to shake things up mid game, and no new options to consider as you play. The fun in Re;MATCH is more about seeing the floor of possibilities open up as you start to understand the system and the characters.
This is pretty standard for fighting video games though. In those games, after selecting your character, you can immediately pause to see the massive list of your abilities and combos, and it’s up to you to learn how to use them to win.
How do you think mastery relates to complexity? And what are the design challenges for a game like Re;MATCH, in terms of getting that balance right?
Mastery and complexity are not directly related in my mind. Most abstract games provide fun exclusively through mastery. From Chess to Hive, the complexity might be low, but the potential for skill expression is high, leading to repeated plays being the source of joy in the game.
How do you see mastery vs discovery-style titles doing in the current board game hobby landscape, especially when it comes to crowdfunding campaigns and online marketing?
I’ve noticed that in recent years, hobby game releases – games that aren’t party games and generally cost $30 or more – tend to focus on discovery rather than mastery. With so many games being sold on vibes and people posting their opinions or reviews after just a few or even only one playthrough, it’s more important than ever to make sure that first game experience is as smooth and perfect as possible.
Games that front load too much information typically don’t have a smooth first game experience, so you want to slowly drip out the options a player can take. Giving a player a deck of cards with a ton of variety and telling them not to worry about what’s inside that deck upfront is a great way to do this, as you’ll discover new and cool options every single time you draw a different card. However, such randomness can make one group’s first game wildly different from another’s. So this wide variety of cards that feel different actually needs to produce very consistently similar outputs, ensuring that most first games deliver as optimal of an experience as possible.
I think this meta has produced a lot of games that feel incredibly satisfying on your first playthrough, constantly offering new options to explore or challenges to overcome, but don’t really hold that spark after repeated playthroughs.
Of course there are games that successfully offer lots of both types of fun, and I think those are the games that we remember. All of the most replayable deck building games are great examples of games that offer both!
I’ve already seen this game shared on social media, especially from people spotting it at Pax Unplugged last year – and I think part of that is its use of bright colours, those attention-grabbing marbles and that it generally doesn’t look like most of the other board games out there. Was that an intentional decision, in terms of potential marketing, or is this just how you wanted the game to be?
The artstyle was certainly intentional. The hardest part of selling games, or anything really, is getting people to even notice it in the first place. For Re;ACT, featuring very large acrylic standees with bases that can hold tokens was driven by what would make people stop and look when passing by the game at a convention.
Re;MATCH, however, is a really old design. When I first came up with the very first iteration of Re;MATCH, I was inspired by my favorite game at the time, Battlecon, with its very asymmetric characters and fully open information, brain-burning game play, and the idea of using marbles as a component due to the popularity of Potion Explosion and Gizmos at the time.
But after learning many lessons with Re;ACT, I realized that Re;MATCH needed a much more colorful and eye catching art style to match the energy of the marble tower.
How did you find artists PsyOptima and machimile, and what was your process in terms of getting to the final artwork? Did you have strong ideas early on, and how much were you guided by those artists / were they guided by you as the process progressed?
Both of them were actually artists on my previous fan projects! Just between Anna’s Roundtable, Genshin Tarot, and Star Rail Tarot, I’ve commissioned over 400 artists. My vision for Re;MATCH was a much bolder and funkier aesthetic compared to Re;ACT, and both of these artists were perfect for that.
Having worked with so many artists over the years, I’ve also grown pretty comfortable acting as an art director for my teams. I’m certainly no drawer, but I’ve learned how to communicate effectively to guide my team towards my visions.
You’ve been very frank online in your opinions about AI generated imagery being used within the board game industry. Why do you think some publishers are leaning into it, despite the well-publicised concerns around copyright, ethics and the environmental impact?
I’ve become increasingly frustrated about the use of genAI to replace or supplement artists in games. To me, the issue is very existential. I am not surprised that already massively successful publishers are leaning into using AI art. There have always been companies trying to squeeze profit out of any artistic medium, from movies to books and beyond. But AI slop feels different from just disingenuous cash grabs. Environmental impacts and stolen work is one part of it, but the idea of letting AI produce the art we consume really cheapens creativity as a whole.
The joy of creativity is so fundamental to life, and the spark of inspiration passed from one person to the next is so vital for human progress. If people continue to consume these things, be it AI art in games, AI written screenplays, or AI generated music, I fear that the very light of human existence will dim.
What would you say to smaller publishers and solo operators who believe they can only bring their projects to completion by leaning on AI generators?
I can see the argument from new designers who want to make games but feel like AI is the most effective way to make their games ready for sale, either because they can’t find a publisher or they can’t afford to pay for art. To these people I would ask: Why do you want to make games? Why do you play games yourself?
I think games can be art, just like novels, music, and movies can be art. The reason I enjoy any of these things is intrinsically tied to the shared human experience I feel when consuming them. A board game’s only component other than rules are its visuals, so I believe the human intentionality behind how the game looks is just as important as how it plays. The artists who want to paint are just as passionate as the designers who want to make good games, so don’t cut them out of the process! There are tons of affordable artists on VGen, and you can always just pick up a pen and make simple drawings yourself! “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations,” so let the limitations of your budget or your art skills be part of your creative process. Just look at how Stardew Valley or Undertale were made!
In aiming for the mastery experience, does that mean you’re not too concerned about expanding this game? Because it looks to me to be ripe for expansions, especially in terms of new fighter characters. How does that fit into your mastery and discoverability theory?
I definitely want to keep adding more characters to both Re;ACT and Re;MATCH! In fact, receiving new characters and discovering their interactions with existing ones is the main source of discovery type fun in these games. This is similar to TCGs, where every new set front loads you with a ton of new options to tinker with.
But the cost of a new character for these games is much higher than just adding more variance to a deck of cards or more enemies in a miniatures game. Not only does each character require a ton of assets, but every new character is exponentially more difficult to balance and integrate successfully into the game. This is why I’ve made additional characters our primary stretch goal targets back during Re;ACT and now Re;MATCH!
Can you give us a little background about your time in the board game industry – where did you start out, and how did you get to here?
Sure! I guess I first started experimenting with making card games like many other kids: my friend (Eric Zeringue, who still helps me with game design today) and I designed our very own very bad TCG. In college, I took things a bit more seriously by designing my own pretty bad deck builder based on isekai anime, and then I designed a not so bad fan game based on the indie video game Crawl (one of my favorite indie games of all time).
I then just kept making fan games, and eventually, I made one for Fire Emblem and posted it on Reddit. This one kind of blew up, and Kotaku even wrote an article covering it. I then just kept making print and play fan games and posting them online. I did one for Code Geass, Darling in the FranXX, and Persona 5, among several others that never saw the light of day.
Right around the time I designed the Darling in the FranXX game, I also designed the very first version of Re;MATCH. I brought it to a prototyping convention, posted it to YouTube, entered it into a design competition, and eventually signed it to the publisher Penguin and Panda, who renamed it Sento. After that, I met Chris Lin, who had his very own design for TCG that I enjoyed the core of. While Sento progressed with Penguin and Panda, I started working with Chris to completely redesign his TCG into a board game instead of a TCG, which eventually became Re;ACT.
After Covid hit, it became clear that Penguin and Panda wouldn’t be able to publish Sento, so I focused entirely on Re;ACT, brought it to several conventions, obtained my US citizenship, funded it on Kickstarter, and then quit my job to pursue board games full time.
You’ve run several Kickstarter campaigns before, for Re;ACT – The Arts of War in 2024 as well as several for dice and standee collections and other accessories. What were your big lessons learned through those campaigns, and how are they applicable to running the campaign for Re;MATCH?
Honestly, I’m still figuring things out myself [laughs]. But I will say that the most important thing for me is to always be authentic and only make things I would want to buy myself. Doing something purely to make money is a slippery slope, and I constantly remind myself that if I wanted to just make money, I would’ve stayed at my comfortable 9 to 5 desk job.
But if someone asked me for some more practical advice, specific to running a board game Kickstarter, I would say to just get your game in front of as many eyes as possible beforehand. Bring it to conventions, post playthroughs, and do whatever you can to make it eye-catching. Obviously the game needs to be good for people to stick around, but no one will know if it’s a good game if they don’t sit down to try it first! For Re;ACT, I brought it to Pax Unplugged, Gen Con, and ProtoATL two years in a row before we launched. Re;MATCH moved a bit faster, with me taking it to Pax East, Origins, Gen Con, and Pax Unplugged all in the same year.
That’s a lot of conventions! I think there’s a feeling among smaller publishers that it’s a big financial hit to attend multiple cons a year, and it can be hard to stand out against the competition on show floors. What advice would you give for attending conventions as a small publisher yourself?
Definitely agreed that cons are expensive, and I started small as well! In 2023, I attended Gen Con by myself and just offered ticketed event demos. Two of the people who played my games loved them so much that they ended up helping me teach demos at Gen Con in 2024 and 2025! Hosting events at Gen Con is free (outside the cost of travel), and in 2023 I stayed together with over 20 other indie designers and publishers in a big Airbnb to save on cost.
Another cheap option is prototyping and protospiel conventions. I attend ProtoATL nearly every single year, and its by far one of my favorite weekends every year. Many of the early prototype photos of Re;MATCH come from ProtoATL! The badges are very cheap, and you get your prototype ripped apart and rebuilt so many times that you make more progress in three days than you would have in three months. You also make so many meaningful connections with other designers and publishers, who are often avid supporters of games themselves!
I recommend exhibiting at a consumer convention only after gaining experience pitching games to strangers. Prototyping cons and hosting events lets you practice with a captive audience, but working at the booths of established publishers is a great way to practice pitching to passing customers. (I’m always hiring as well!) Another great opportunity is the Indie Games Night Market, which New Mill Industries has hosted at Pax Unplugged for the last two years. This event gives indie designers a single table to sell a small print run (think five to 50 copies) of their game, often with homemade elements.
Once you are ready, Pax Unplugged is by far the best choice as an indie publisher to exhibit at. Unlike Gen Con, Pax really cares about indies (see Indie Games Night Market), has a strong culture of inclusivity, and doesn’t allow AI grifters into their show! Standing out at a convention is definitely very hard though, and I’m still figuring that step out for myself. My booths are pretty basic looking still, but working with really great artists has worked out very well for me, so I’d recommend that as well!
I saw that you’re providing access to the full game on Tabletop Simulator for free. How important do you think that will be for discoverability, and how do you think that balances against the chance some people will just use the digital version and not back the physical campaign?
Super important. Personally speaking for board game Kickstarters, if I don’t see a playable demo, I am very unlikely to pledge. Even if I don’t have the time to personally try it, not allowing backers to try the game before they buy signals to me that the publisher lacks confidence in the game. A good game should make players want to buy it after playing it, end of story.
Not to mention the benefit of getting so many more eyes on your game to tell you what is bad about your game before you hit the irreversible button to start printing! For me, there are absolutely no downsides to having the game fully playable for free digitally during a Kickstarter, and I try really hard to ensure it’s available long before that as well.
What are your ideal goals for this campaign – what does a success look like for you, and how do you ideally see the rest of the year panning out?
For me, I’d like to surpass the number of backers I had on Re;ACT and POND as a minimum. Re;ACT had 1,730 backers, and POND had 1,900 backers. If Re;MATCH hits at least 2,200 backers, that will indicate a consistent growth trajectory for me as a publisher, so that is my real goal.
After Re;MATCH, I’ll be working on Season 2 of Re;ACT, along with several unannounced secret projects I’ve been working on for quite some time now, so please look forward to them!
The Re’MATCH Kickstarter campaign runs until March 31.
The post Why Kickstarter success Re;MATCH’s designer is focused on player mastery rather than the dopamine hit of discovery [sponsored] first appeared on .
Welcome to this week’s batch of crowdfunding campaigns. We have a variety of offerings here, so we hope you will find something that catches your eye. Also, if you want to chat with the BGQ team, join our Discord Server where we talk about games, movies, sports, and other fun stuff. Or, if Facebook is […]
The post Popular Japanese Board Game En-nichi Gets Localization by Mugen Gaming appeared first on Graphic Policy.
Mugen Gaming has announced that En-nichi, a cozy Japanese festival board game, will soon debut on Kickstarter in an all-new English edition!
OffDutyNinja, the tabletop marketing specialist which has worked on $25m of crowdfunding campaigns since its 2018 launch, has been acquired by industry peer Game Brands.
The combined company will operate under the OffDutyNinja name, with Game Brands adding its web design, search engine and answer engine optimisation, and blog content creation offerings to ODN’s marketing and crowdfunding services.
ODN’s work over the years has included crowdfunding and marketing support for companies such as Roxley Games, Indie Boards & Cards and Stronghold Games, Devir North America and Allplay, while the more than 100 campaigns it has worked with include the $2.2m More Terraforming Mars! Kickstarter and Marvel Dice Throne X-Men, which raised over $4.2m.
The acquisition follows a period of ODN quietly closing down its operations, Game Brands founder Ryan Eichenwald told BoardGameWire, with company founder Kira Peavley having shifted to a full-time director of operations role at Brass: Birmingham publisher Roxley Games over the past couple of years.
Eichenwald becomes CEO of Off Duty Ninja, with former CEO Peavley staying on in an advisory capacity for the next year to help ease the transition.
Peavley told BoardGameWire, “It came down to timing, and the timing was right. I had reached a point where I was ready for my next chapter, and when the opportunity with Ryan and Game Brands came together, it just made sense.
“The clients, the team, the work they have all built deserve to keep going and growing, and this deal makes that possible. It felt like the right ending to my chapter and the right beginning for theirs. It has been quite emotional but also quite positive.”
Speaking of ODN’s growth and the changes in board game crowdfunding and marketing over the years, Peavley said, “OffDutyNinja launched October 31, 2018, originally as a media management consultancy. That lasted about five minutes, honestly, because clients needed more and I was able to offer it.
“Very quickly it evolved into a full digital marketing agency for tabletop games, helping publishers with their everyday marketing needs as well as crowdfunding. The scope grew, and then ebbed, and then grew again.
“Covid hit hard and when publishers/creators are having to make difficult decisions about whether they can afford to keep their doors open and keep making games, marketing support understandably moves down the priority list.
“Tariffs have brought that same energy back in a different way. Through all of it we just tried to stay flexible and meet clients where they were.
“The other challenge has been the shift in how Kickstarter works. Ten years ago you could launch with no budget and no existing audience and still find success because the platform itself was driving discovery.
“That window has been closing for tabletop for a while now, and it has fundamentally changed what creators need to consider before launching a crowdfunding project.”
She continued, “That discovery shift really gets to the heart of the biggest challenge we see now. The audience has to exist before you launch. Full stop.
“The campaigns that succeed are the ones where the publisher has spent months, sometimes a full year, building a community that is genuinely excited to back on day one. The first 24 to 48 hours drive the algorithm, and the algorithm doesn’t care about your campaign if you don’t come in with momentum already built.
“The biggest obstacle to that? Time. Creators sometimes wait way too long to get started. We’d sometimes hear from people who reached out only a month or two before their planned launch date, or in some cases after they had already gone live.
“At that point every job gets harder: the audience building is rushed, the creative is rushed, and the campaign pays for it. The earlier you start, the better every single piece of it gets.
“The other big thing is expectation calibration. There are a lot of headline funding numbers out there from mega-campaigns that skew what success looks like.
“For most publishers, especially indie and first-time creators, a realistic and fully funded campaign that delivers well is worth so much more than swinging for a number you can’t hit.”
When asked about her take on ODN’s biggest successes in the crowdfunding space, Peavley said, “Honestly, it’s hard to point to a single success.
“People probably want to hear about the big IP projects, and those are genuinely exciting. Getting to work on something like Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid across multiple campaigns, or Marvel Dice Throne, or Lord of the Rings, or Terraforming Mars is a thrill for obvious reasons.
“But the truth is every project we worked on was a big success to us, from a first-time creator finding their footing to a major publisher launching their next big title. The scale is completely different but the care that goes into it is exactly the same.
“And that’s really the point. A tremendous amount of love, heart, and work goes into every campaign, and that’s not just from our side. It’s from the client, the designers, the artists, the playtesters, the partners, the backers, the community.
“Tabletop is a real group effort, and when all of those pieces come together the way they’re supposed to, that’s the success. Every single time. That never got old.”
Crowdfunding Future
Game Brands launched three years ago as Board Burst, before renaming itself to Digital Wizard. That company consisted of Game Brands, which focused on digital marketing and web support for the board, tabletop, and video game industries, and Opmasis, which provided the same services for realtors, personal injury lawyers and contractors.
Eichenwald told BoardGameWire that Opmasis would be closing its doors following the ODN acquisition. He said the new company would also cease reaching out to potential video game clients “for at least the time being” – although added that it would still accept video game clients if they request its services.
Game Brands’ previous experience in the tabletop industry includes working with Steve Jackson Games “to help them wrangle their website”, backend work for Restoration Games which Eichenwald said doubled the company’s website traffic, and providing website design assistance for Gamelyn Games prior to its acquisition by Tabletop Tycoon (now Tycoon Games).
Eichenwald said, “ODN’s number of clients is currently at 11, including the combined client bases of both companies. ODN has started moving in a very crowdfunding-heavy direction over the last few months, and I’m very excited to continue that work.
“ODN’s crowdfunding team is second-to-none, and I’m looking forward to being able to help new games reach audiences in much more concrete, measurable ways than ever before.
“ODN has also had a very board and card game-focused history, but the addition of the Game Brands team – and Brad Bound especially – gives us deep roots in the TTRPG space as well that we’re eager to bring to ODN’s experienced team.”
The ODN team will also include CFO Chris Ortega and backer experience manager Carissa Yaffe, in addition to lead graphic designer Kevin Haemmerle. Editorial manager Anais Torres was already in the process of leaving ODN prior to the sale, but is currently helping with the company’s transition, Peavley added.
Asked to give her predictions for how tabletop crowdfunding might change over the next year or so, Peavley said, “I think we’re going to continue seeing Gamefound grow, and I’m genuinely hopeful that the increased competition will push Kickstarter to make some positive changes. A little pressure never hurts.
“I personally love what the BackerKit crowdfunding platform is doing and I hope to see it pick up more momentum in our space. The platform landscape is more interesting right now than it’s been in a long time, which is good for creators and backers both.”
Eichenwald, who attended the GAMA Expo trade show as part of ODN at the end of last month, said, “One of the big things that came up was just how many people were looking for crowdfunding support, especially after the economic shocks from last year.
“A lot of the newer games seemed to be small-box or app-enabled, and I got a sense of excitement this year that hadn’t been there the year previous – which makes sense, given that GAMA 2025 was overshadowed by the first round of tariffs.”
The post Scoop: Tabletop game marketing specialist OffDutyNinja acquired by Game Brands first appeared on .
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