Die Miniaturen sind zusammengebaut, die ersten Farben aufgetragen und die Armeen bereit für ihren ersten Einsatz. Zumindest theoretisch. Im dritten Teil unserer Reihe „Road to Warhammer 40k“ geht es endlich an den Spieltisch. Wie gelingt der Einstieg in die Regeln, welche Herausforderungen warten bei der ersten Partie und reichen drei Stunden für ein Spiel im Combat-Patrol-Format?
Security arrangements at the world’s biggest board game fair have come under scrutiny after six thefts were reported during setup and dismantling at this year’s Spiel Essen – including €14,000 of stock and equipment being stolen from a publisher overnight.
Show organiser Merz Verlag told BoardGameWire all six incidents are believed to have occurred when access to the exhibition halls was restricted, despite Messe Essen venue security being in place throughout those periods.
The thefts have prompted complaints from affected businesses about security at Spiel Essen and the assistance they received – while Merz Verlag has stressed that exhibitors are responsible for protecting their own property, even outside public opening hours.
French tabletop games company Tossit was among the worst affected exhibitors this year, claiming that about €14,000 of merchandise, equipment and tools disappeared from its stand in Hall 6 overnight following the convention’s final day.
Company co-founder Gaëtan Ekszterowicz said in a LinkedIn post that his team left the stand at around 10.45pm on Sunday, October 25, intending to finish dismantling the following morning – but returned at 8am to discover more than 500 units of merchandise and other equipment had disappeared.
That included tools stored inside the stand furniture, leaving the company without even the equipment needed to complete dismantling its booth.
Ekszterowicz estimated that removing the stolen goods would have taken at least 35 to 45 minutes, raising questions about how such a large quantity of merchandise could have been removed from an exhibition hall overnight.
Another exhibitor, tabletop accessories seller The Rolling Inn, said €4,000 in cash – representing its entire convention takings – was stolen during dismantling on Sunday evening.
A third theft was reported by Julian Hill of board game media outlet Boxed Meeples, who said on Instagram that his bag was taken from the Paverson Games stand during a team meeting on Wednesday October 21, the day before SPIEL opened to the public.
Hill said the bag contained money, payment cards, camera and sound recording equipment, as well as recordings of interviews he had already conducted at the convention.
The Paverson Games booth, left, in Hall 4 of Spiel Essen 2026
Spiel Essen’s organisers have also been criticised by Tossit’s Ekszterowicz and The Rolling Inn for their response to the thefts.
Ekszterowicz claimed representatives of SPIEL Essen and Messe Essen laughed at its team and failed to take their complaints seriously – as well as alleging that a member of staff attempted to grab a phone from his company’s marketing manager during an exchange about the incident.
“No representative of Merz Verlag laughed at members of Tossit’s team or grabbed a phone,” a Merz Verlag spokesperson told BoardGameWire.
They said, “Tossit wanted to film an exchange between them, Messe Essen and Merz Verlag which members of Messe Essen denied due to them not wanted to be taped, referring to personal rights.”
Asked about allegations from Tossit and The Rolling Inn that they received little or no assistance, the spokesperson said, “The team of SPIEL Essen takes every reported theft seriously and helps in the best of our abilities and in making contact to the police.
“Our team was also on site and talked with exhibitors. At the moment we are collecting information to may be able to help further.”
Merz Verlag said police had been informed of the incidents, and that it was cooperating with investigations.
The spokesperson added, “In total six thefts were reported to us this year, ranging from tablecloths, to some cases of games, to cash and equipment, the examples you mention already included.
“To our knowledge these cases took place during set-up or dismantling. In 2025 fewer incidents have been reported, none in the scale we see with Tossit. “
Merz Verlag said venue operator Messe Essen provided security throughout setup and dismantling, with access restricted to exhibitors, people holding setup and dismantling passes, event staff and security personnel.
It added that exhibitors were regularly reminded that they were responsible for protecting their own property, and could pay for dedicated guards to secure their stands outside public opening hours.
Ekszterowicz said in his LinkedIn post, “I don’t expect organizers to prevent every theft. But at the very least, I expect them to take this kind of situation seriously and have cameras installed inside the entrance halls. The complete absence of surveillance cameras is also shocking.”
The Merz Verlag spokesperson confirmed to BoardGameWire that no CCTV was covering the booths which suffered thefts.
Wargamer also received a response from Tom Kraayvanger, the press leader at Spiel Essen venue operator Messe Essen, who said the venue operator was taking into account “data protection requirements and the privacy rights of the many people present on the exhibition grounds during an event and its set-up and dismantling phases”.
He said: “When large numbers of people are moving goods, material and equipment at the same time, camera footage does not make it possible to distinguish between the legitimate removal of items and their unauthorized removal”, adding that “comprehensive video surveillance could not guarantee complete protection against theft”.
The incidents also follow a series of reported thefts at SPIEL stretching back at least a decade – including more than $20,000 in combined losses reported by six publishers in 2018, when affected companies called for improvements to security.
Asked whether the latest incidents would prompt changes to security arrangements for SPIEL Essen 2027, Merz Verlag said it was still evaluating the situation.
“We are gathering information and evaluate the situation,” the spokesperson said. “At this early stage we cannot say anything regarding future arrangements.”
The world’s largest board game fair once again sold out all four days this year, drawing 10,000 more visitors than in 2025 after expanding into an eighth exhibition hall and taking over the entirety of the Messe Essen exhibition centre – its home for over 40 years – for the first time.
But that ability to squeeze in larger and larger crowds has now reached its limit, Merz Verlag managing director Carol Rapp confirmed to BoardGameWire, with any further growth set to come via new events and experiences rather than increased attendance or exhibition space.
SPIEL Essen 2027 is scheduled to take place from October 21 to 24.
AI giant Anthropic has introduced new restrictions which attempt to stop its Claude coding software from recreating existing games, amid generative AI providing the capability to quickly spin up unauthorised digital clones and reskins.
The changes were spotted in Claude Code’s instructions around October 27, with two new sentences telling the software: “Do build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user’s own designs and assets”, and “Don’t build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original”.
Anthropic technical staff member Addy Osmani confirmed the changes in a post on X, saying the company had introduced the restrictions because using Claude to infringe intellectual property rights was already against its usage policy.
Board games are vulnerable to AI-generated imitations because their underlying gameplay mechanics generally cannot be protected by copyright – while generative AI also makes it easier to reproduce those systems digitally, and create alternative imagery and text without directly copying the original game’s protected material.
Unauthorised online versions of board games are not a new phenomenon, with publishers having faced challenges controlling digital recreations of their titles long before AI coding tools became widely available. But generative AI potentially makes such recreations much easier to produce, lowering the technical expertise, time and cost needed to turn an existing tabletop game into a playable digital version.
Colonist.io, which was launched in 2017 as Katan.io before rebranding in 2019, openly markets itself as a free alternative to Catan, closely reproducing the original game’s rules, gameplay and visual layout while using different artwork. The platform reported 60 million games played and 3.6 million active players across 2025.
Colonist.io states clearly on its website that it has no association with Catan, and argues that its game is legal under US law, citing guidance from the US Copyright Office that gameplay methods cannot be protected by copyright.
A 2022 study published in the Iowa Law Review highlighted the Catan rights holders’ apparent decision not to pursue legal action against Colonist.io, contrasting it with an earlier incident in which an Android imitation called Island Settlers was withdrawn following a cease-and-desist notice from Catan’s lawyers in 2011.
The new restrictions have already affected attempts to recreate published tabletop games, including a Claude Code user who reported being refused help to build a private online version of an unnamed, commercially released co-op board game.
The user wanted to create a password-protected version allowing friends to play remotely, including one unable to attend in-person sessions, and to introduce AI-controlled players to study the game’s strategy.
Claude refused despite the user specifying that the adaptation would not be publicly distributed, instead offering to help develop an original game using similar co-op and limited-information mechanics.
A separate complaint came from wargame publisher Raymond Weiss, whose Conflict Simulations business has released around 30 tabletop titles since 2017- including three nominees for the Charles S Roberts Awards, one of the longest-running awards honouring conflict-focused tabletop games.
He reported on GitHub that Claude Code had begun refusing to continue work on adaptations it previously supported, although he acknowledged that he did not hold licences from the publishers whose games were being adapted.
The restrictions are, of course, limited to Anthropic’s own software. In a November 2 blog post, Weiss said he had already resumed the work interrupted by Claude’s refusals using rival AI coding tools OpenAI Codex and Kimi.
Spiel Essen has broken its visitor record for the fourth consecutive year by hitting a record 230,000 attendance – with publishers reporting bumper sales despite increasingly fierce competition for attention from more than 2,000 new releases.
The world’s largest board game fair once again sold out all four days this year, drawing 10,000 more visitors than in 2025 after expanding into an eighth exhibition hall and taking over the entirety of the Messe Essen exhibition centre – its home for over 40 years – for the first time.
Almost 1,000 exhibitors from 53 countries packed into the 2026 show – up 5% compared to last year – while the event’s floorspace grew to a record 81,200 sq m – larger than 15 American football fields.
But that ability to squeeze in larger and larger crowds has now reached its limit, Merz Verlag managing director Carol Rapp confirmed to BoardGameWire, with any further growth set to come via new events and experiences rather than increased attendance or exhibition space.
She said, “It will stay at 230 [thousand]”, adding that although the show was technically below its “legal maximum” attendance, the current levels allowed for visitors to make their way around the already crowded show floor more easily.
A shortage of exhibition space, however, has already been a recurring problem for Merz Verlag – which has been forced to introduce waiting lists for prospective exhibitors in each of the last three years, despite repeatedly expanding the show.
Organisers had to repeatedly rearrange hall layouts ahead of the 2024 show in order to accommodate as many publishers as possible while keeping safe amounts of aisle space. Expanding out into Hall 7 last year failed to eliminate the problem, and despite another expansion into Hall 8 this year, all available stands were booked up ahead of the April 30 application deadline.
That leaves the organiser facing the prospect of turning away more prospective exhibitors in future years, with no further exhibition halls available to accommodate them.
BoardGameWire reported in March this year that Spiel organiser Merz Verlag had “no intention” of relocating the show away from Essen in order to continue its expansion, saying that the event would remain in its current home “for the foreseeable future”.
Rapp has now doubled down on that sentiment, saying, “We are well aware that we are pushing Messe Essen to its absolute limits. But to immediately dispel any rumors: A relocation is not on the table.
“Our focus now is on continuing to refine and develop Spiel at the Essen location in the coming years.”
Expanded Focus
That development had already been apparent in recent years, with Spiel beginning to break out from its long-time status as a game-buying fair and opportunity for business meetings by adding a series of new events.
They include introducing Games Workshop’s Golden Demon miniature-painting competition in 2024, running a world record-setting game of Catan – Connect with more than 1,100 people in 2025, and adding the TCG Awards and Warhammer 40,000 laser tag this year.
The organiser also launched Essen spielt! in 2026, a partnership with the city which brought gaming events to venues across Essen during the fair – and said it plans to develop the initiative further in 2027.
Other new developments for 2026 included a business matchmaking platform aimed at helping publishers, designers, retailers and other industry professionals find potential business partners and arrange meetings before arriving at the fair.
Rapp told BoardGameWire she was pleased with how this year’s expansion had worked out – particularly the addition of a new northern entrance, which noticeably helped spread visitors more effectively across the exhibition halls, and helped reduce the vast queues which have formed at the start of each day in previous years.
She added that the new Hall 8 had also exceeded expectations, despite initial uncertainty about how exhibitors would make use of the slightly unusually-shaped space.
US publisher Allplay took Spiel up on an offer to move into a central position in the new Hall 8 – and COO Joe Wiggins told BoardGameWire that shift had paid off handsomely, with sales up 40% compared to the previous year’s show, marking the publisher’s most successful Spiel to date.
He picked out Enchanted Ivy as one of its big hits of the show, saying demand for the 450 copies of the title it brought was “non-stop” until the game was sold out at 3pm on opening day.
Wiggins said sales were good across its portfolio, from light titles to heavier strategy games – adding that the new location right at the show’s main entrance meant visitors were far more likely to discover its booth.
That interest was capitalised upon by Allplay through its decision to run a large number of demo tables as part of its booth, with Wiggins saying seeing games in action had helped draw people in, even if they weren’t a “typical” Allplay customer.
German publisher Pegasus Spiele also reported stronger-than-expected sales, despite arriving at Essen with relatively conservative expectations.
Company co-CEO Karsten Esser told BoardGameWire on Friday afternoon that sales were already ahead of the equivalent point in 2025, even without the benefit of a single major award-winning release driving demand.
Pegasus brought more than 40 new releases to the event, and said the breadth of its portfolio had helped compensate for the absence of an obvious blockbuster title.
Other exhibitors BoardGameWire spoke to also reported substantial sales increases, while the consensus generally was that last year’s busy Friday, Saturday and Sunday were added to this year with a Thursday which felt like a return to pre-Covid crowds.
Spiel Squeeze
While most halls saw attendees flowing easily, if slowly, around them during the fair, the long and narrow Hall 3 once again proved the trickiest to get around – especially given the enormous queues which formed at several different booths during the show.
Chief among those were the queues at Spanish publisher Combo Games, which snaked along one whole end of the hall and out of the doors – creating a line Carol Rapp said was among the longest she had ever seen at the show.
Combo had benefitted from its new release Queen Alice, which combines elements of chess with eurogame mechanics and an Alice in Wonderland-inspired setting, being the ‘most-thumbed’ title on BoardGameGeek’s Spiel Essen preview – leading to a sea of attendees trying to reach the booth to get their hands on the game.
The queue for Queen Alice publisher Combo Games at Spiel Essen 2026, snaking out of Hall 3 and into the Galeria food court
Company co-founder Antonio Guillamó told BoardGameWire on the show floor that it had brought about 2,000 copies of the game to Essen, including stock earmarked for fulfilling Gamefound pledges, but had sold out by around lunchtime on Friday.
Demand was so intense that the Combo team was forced to concentrate purely on sales rather than demoing its games – and the huge buzz created other problems for the publisher.
Guillamó told BoardGameWire that Spiel had been “fighting” the publisher over the long queues, which ended up blocking access to other booths such as the nearby Dice Throne.
Rapp told BoardGameWire Spiel had provided advice on how to guide the queue to avoid it blocking other booths, as well as providing extra security from Messe Essen – which Combo had to pay for – to help manage the line.
The Combo Games team demoing and selling some of their other titles after Queen Alice had sold out
She said, “They had one of the hottest titles of the show, and nobody can plan for that. I get that, and the team gets that. But if the crowd waiting to buy is turning into a safety issue, then we have to do something.”
Rapp said her team was always “counting the seconds on the first day” to find out where the biggest queues were emerging, in order to step in quickly and help prevent any blockages.
She added that another blockage at the 2026 event had arisen at Pegasus Spiele, with large groups of people congregating by the booth after buying their games – saying that Pegasus was told to fix the issue or their booth would be closed. That problem was sorted the next morning by introducing a guard rail, she said.
Rapp said in an interview with German board game channel Brettspiel-Kollektiv that one exhibitor had repeatedly ignored instructions intended to keep queues under control, leading organisers to prohibit further sales for the remainder of the day. The publisher involved was not identified.
She stressed to BoardGameWire that managing congestion was essential to keeping the event safe and enjoyable, particularly as the number of visitors and exhibitors continued to grow.
“As long as the people are moving, everything is fine,” she said. “As soon as you have a block, a cluster or whatever, in the aisles, and it’s taking too long, people will go crazy.”
The pressure of accommodating record numbers at Spiel also extended beyond the exhibition halls, with severe crowding on Essen’s public transport system each morning in the run-up to the show opening.
Standing Out
The growing scale of Spiel has also brought fresh challenges for publishers trying to stand out among the thousands of games competing for attention.
This year’s 2,012 new releases represented another increase on the prior record, with the volume of new titles becoming a significant consideration for companies deciding when and how to launch their games.
The head of one large board game publisher who spoke to BoardGameWire at the show suggested that while smaller publishers often needed the exposure provided by major events such as Spiel, the rising competition on site might make it more beneficial for them to spread releases more evenly through the year.
He argued that publishers should consider whether launching at a quieter time of year might make it easier for their games to attract attention – particularly given that consumers were increasingly buying board games year round rather than concentrating their purchases around Christmas.
The challenge was echoed by other industry figures at the event, who described an increasingly crowded market in which the quality of new games continued to improve, but with individual releases potentially struggling to establish themselves.
Value Judgement
For publishers, however, Spiel’s value continues to extend well beyond the opportunity to sell games directly to consumers – something especially crucial given the high cost of running even a small booth at the event.
While the base cost of the smallest booth option – 15 sq m – comes in at about €1,500, that figure can easily balloon to several thousand euros after adding mandatory charges for booth partitions, waste disposal, and the cost of transporting, paying for and accommodating even tiny numbers of booth staff.
Pandasaurus Games told BoardGameWire ahead of the event that it had heavily downsized its Spiel Essen booth this year, having previously spent more than €50,000 ($57,000) attending Spiel with its larger setup.
The US publisher shifted to using European Player Network, Asmodee‘s specialist English-language sales and distribution operation in the region, to handle its stock and sales at the giant German show this year – removing the need for Pandasaurus to transport and store hundreds of games, staff its own retail operation and devote much of its booth to selling them.
Pandasaurus CEO Nathan McNair estimated to BoardGameWire that the costs under its current model would fall between $20,000 and $25,000, with the expectation of selling similar numbers of games under the new setup.
Archona Games, the publisher of titles including Small Star Empires and Pest, told BoardGameWire at the event, “Our focus here isn’t the sales so much. It’s always nice to sell, and I mean, I’d love to have the success of some of the other currently hot games out there – I wouldn’t say no!
“But I think for us, the strategic sort of part of it is really what we do with our community as well as our partners.”
They said in-show meetings with potential partners had already created promising opportunities for 2027, and added that demoing games, gathering feedback and building customer relationships were all key reasons for attending the fair.
French publisher IELLO’s large booth and demo area at Spiel Essen 2026
IELLO communications manager Roger Anthony-Gerroldt told BoardGameWire at the show that it had brought six staff dedicated to scouting new games and localisation opportunities, with three project managers seeking new designs for its main catalogue, two looking for titles to bring to the French market, and another representing its children’s games brand Loki.
He told BoardGameWire the team spent much of the event moving between meetings with designers and publishers, hoping to discover games capable of becoming long-term commercial successes.
He said, “They just take meetup after meetup after meetup, and they look at a lot of designs, and they hope that they find the diamond that will take the place in the market and stay here.”
But he acknowledged that identifying those potential hits was increasingly difficult, with IELLO typically finding only one or two games each year that met its ambitions – and some promising projects ultimately failing to make it into the company’s catalogue.
That challenge has become more pronounced as the number of new releases continues to grow, Anthony-Gerroldt said, with even successful titles increasingly struggling to maintain sales beyond their first year or two.
Ukrainian publisher Boardova, meanwhile, described its first experience running a booth at Spiel as a valuable opportunity for promoting its games and building relationships – while stressing that the costs of attending meant the event should be viewed as a wider marketing investment rather than simply a sales opportunity.
Pegasus Spiele co-CEO Karsten Esser
Pegasus Spiele co-CEO Karsten Esser told BoardGameWire that direct sales at Spiel remained an important part of covering the company’s costs of attending, saying, “Well, to be honest, we run the company because we want to earn money. Of course, we love games, but we are also interested in earning money. I have to say, therefore, yes – the number of games that we sell here do matter, and they help us to break even. And maybe we can even reach a surplus. We will see.”
But he added that the longer-term value of the fair came from the market intelligence it provided, particularly the opportunity to gauge consumer demand across the company’s new releases, and identify which titles might become future commercial successes.
AI Divide
The ongoing debate over the use of generative AI in tabletop gaming was also visible at this year’s Spiel, with an anti-AI sign campaign from Neon Hope publisher Hopeful Games taking place, while some publishers and accessories sellers were clearly making use of generative AI for their artwork.
AI-Free signs at the Press Preview event at Spiel Essen 2026
Spiel organiser Merz Verlag has yet to introduce restrictions on exhibitors using AI-generated artwork, in contrast to several other major tabletop conventions which have adopted explicit policies in the past year.
UK Games Expo introduced a strict AI policy several weeks ago, prohibiting exhibitors from displaying or selling products created wholly or substantially using generative AI, while PAX Unplugged bans the sale of products incorporating substantial AI-generated content.
Origins Game Fair also requires products sold or distributed at the event to be created by human artists and creators. Gen Con, meanwhile, prohibits AI-generated imagery in its Art Show, although it has not introduced an equivalent general ban for exhibitors.
Rapp told BoardGameWire at the time that the organiser had reconsidered its approach following the backlash, but did not believe it was Spiel’s place to make decisions about the wider industry’s use of AI.
The absence of a general exhibitor ban three years later leaves Spiel as an outlier among the major tabletop game conventions.
BoardGameWire contacted Merz Verlag in September with a series of questions about whether the show planned to follow suit with its own AI policy, but was told by a spokesperson that the topic was too wide ranging to be able to address while preparations for this year’s event were taking place.
Future Plans
With its exhibition halls full and visitor numbers now capped, Spiel’s organisers face the challenge of finding new ways to develop the event without increasing its physical footprint.
Rapp told BoardGameWire during the show that Merz Verlag was still exploring what that might look like, with the company due to hold its annual planning workshop this month.
“Maybe it’s focusing more on events, like you said, or celebrating the industry. I don’t know yet, but we will have some good stuff coming up next year,” Rapp said.
Spiel Essen 2027 is scheduled to take place from October 21 to 24.
Am 10. November 2026 startet die Gamefound-Kampagne für Eldfall Chronicles: Apocrypha. Der neue Dungeon Crawler führt die Geschichte von Northern Wind fort und schickt eine Gruppe von Abenteurer*innen auf die Suche nach verbotenem Wissen. Dabei ist längst nicht alles, was zwischen den Bücherregalen lauert, aus Papier.
Was machen ein Elfenprinz und ein Haufen Red Caps zusammen in einer Gruppe bei Warcrow? Die neue narrative Kampagne will diese Frage beantworten. Im brandneuen Action Pack: Quest for Elfleen stellen sich General Nuada und seine Truppe aus goblinähnlichen Kreaturen, den Red Caps, jeder Konfrontation, um Nuadas Ziele zu erreichen.
Kurz vor der SPIEL Essen hat der Uhrwerk Verlag ein Crowdfunding gestartet, das ein gut gehütetes Geheimnis beinhaltet. Denn in Katzen! Die Verschnurrung sind die beliebten Vierbeiner nicht nur Haustiere, sondern eine intelligente und erwachte Spezies, die die Menschen erschaffen hat und seitdem einen Schleier der Unwissenheit aufrechterhält.
Die SPIEL Essen 2026 war an allen vier Tagen ausverkauft, belegte erstmals alle acht Hallen und knackte mit 230.000 Besuchenden den nächsten Rekord. Zwischen 2.012 Neuheiten, Lasertag und Spieleabenden in der ganzen Stadt stellt sich die Frage, wie lange das Wachstum noch gutgeht. Das Teilzeithelden-Team berichtet von Eindrücken und Highlights.
Weder genetische Verbesserungen noch chemische Hilfsmittel: Bei Haus Orlock sind es Muskelkraft und Loyalität, die über die Jahrhunderte aus einer kleinen Gang von Schrottsammler*innen eines der mächtigsten Clanhäuser Necromundas gemacht haben. Mit dem neuen Underhive Journal: Orlock – The House of Iron erhält das Haus weitere Verstärkung und überarbeitete Regeln.
The crowdfund had raised $2.33m from more than 7,300 backers in the early hours of its final day, equivalent to almost $319 per supporter – an average spend well above Restoration’s previous major crowdfunding campaigns, including the roughly $260 from last year’s Battle Monsters: Godzilla x Kong.
Almost three-quarters of backers who have committed to one of the game’s various versions opted to spend at least $379 on one of the Mithril tiers, with more than 2,800 people going all-in on the game’s most expensive $449 option.
Those Mithril pledges together account for about 82% of the total raised at the time of writing – a figure well above that expected by Restoration prior to the campaign’s launch, co-owner Justin Jacobson told BoardGameWire.
Restoration Games co-founder Justin Jacobson
He said the company had expected Mithril to be most popular, but had conservatively projected about three Mithril pledges for every two people committing to the base-level Limited tiers of the game
He said, “I’m not entirely surprised. We created the Limited Edition as a sort-of compromise pledge level for folks who wanted some deluxe elements but didn’t want to go all-in for the Mithril Edition.
“Ultimately, though, most Kickstarter backers are there precisely because they do want to go all in, and we try to make that pledge level as appealing as possible and as good a deal as possible.”
Despite the much higher-than-expected proportion of backers opting for Mithril, Jacobson said the campaign’s overall performance was “pretty in-line” with his expectations ahead of the campaign’s final few days – and that “in a vacuum” he would have hoped for slightly higher numbers.
He pointed to the absence of a standard retail edition from the campaign, Free League’s The One Ring RPG crowdfund running at the same time and wider global economic conditions among the factors potentially working against it.
Jacobson said the pattern of backers favouring Restoration’s most expensive option was familiar from what he described as the company’s previous “spectacle” campaigns, with all-in pledges typically outstripping other pledge levels at the close of those crowdfunds.
But King’s Gambit is generating substantially higher spending per backer compared with Restoration’s previous projects offering similarly expensive all-in options.
Last year’s Battle Monsters: Godzilla x Kong offered a $379 Mega Bundle – the same price as the basic Mithril Edition of King’s Gambit – but averaged about $260 across its 2,301 backers.
Return to Dark Tower: Expeditions went even higher with a $499 all-in pledge including the base game, its expansions and upgraded components – although as an expansion-led campaign, existing owners could enter at just $45. Its $1.49m haul from 11,665 backers amounted to an average of $128 per supporter.
King’s Gambit is currently averaging almost $319 across its backers to date – despite almost 1,000 people having committed just $5 for access to the pledge manager.
Jacobson nevertheless cautioned against seeing the campaign as evidence that $379-plus board games were likely to become commonplace.
“This campaign is unusual, and I wouldn’t expect this to become the norm,” he said. “It stems from the unique way in which the original licensing deal and co-publication arrangement came to be in the first place.”
Opening Gambit
Jacobson told BoardGameWire that the publisher decided to pitch licence holder Middle-earth Enterprises in 2023 for a new version of cult 2000 board game Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit, but instead based on The Lord of the Rings.
Bringing Queen’s Gambit back had been an ambition for Restoration since its inception – it was the first game Jacobson suggested reviving when he approached designer Rob Daviau about founding the company in 2016, although they decided at the time that it was too ambitious for their first project. Daviau had worked on the original during his time at Hasbro.
Jacobson told BoardGameWire, “I put together a big proposal and sent it in. Meanwhile, while that proposal was under consideration, Rob was at the Cannes Game Festival and got approached by Asmodee about doing the exact same thing.
“It seemed like serendipity so we just started that conversation about working on it together. It offered a lot of benefits to both parties.
“We brought our design pedigree and Kickstarter experience, and they brought their massive team for art, sales, distribution, and more. It’s always challenging working outside your own team, but [Asmodee studio] Space Cowboys have been absolutely amazing and have helped make this game the best it can be.”
Space Cowboys plans to release a retail edition of the game next year, which while sharing the same gameplay will use smaller boards, omit the large plastic Minas Tirith and Mordor set pieces and use just two colours of plastic for its miniatures.
Kickstarter image of components planned for the game
Jacobson said, “It was important that our offering was a stark contrast to the retail edition. That edition will be what lives on for as long as the game is sold, long after the Kickstarter campaign is fulfilled. So, first things first, we had to align on what that version of the game was going to be.
“Then, we basically brainstormed all of the ways we could ‘deluxify’ that. The Limited Edition was a slight bump and the 3D plastic set pieces; the Mithril Edition was the whole list.”
When asked if there had been any concern internally over having such a large gap between the price points of the Limited and Mithril editions, Jacobson said, “Not really. There are so many variables and options in setting up any campaign. You’re never going to be 100% certain that you’ve gone the optimal path.
“That said, we were confident in the overall structure of the campaign, i.e., folks who want the cool 3D set pieces and folks who want everything.
“As I’ve always said, the price is always a function of the cost to produce. So once we determine what a pledge level includes, setting the price is relatively straightforward with some minor adjustments. For example, we actually shaved a bit off the Mithril Edition to try and make it a bit more appealing.”
He added, “It does highlight that all of the economic turmoil folks are feeling are not being felt uniformly.
“It also speaks to hobby gamers in general. When you compare it to other hobbies, it’s still a relatively good deal even at the highest end of things.”
Jacobson told BoardGameWire that Restoration deliberately looked beyond established tabletop audiences when marketing the game, in an attempt to leverage the vast fanbase of The Lord of the Rings.
About half of King’s Gambit backers are supporting a Restoration Games crowdfund for the first time, he said – a slightly higher proportion than the company has seen on some of its more recent campaigns.
“We made a concerted effort to try and reach out to influencers whose audience comprises The Lord of the Rings fans and not specifically gamers,” Jacobson said.
He believes the licence was likely part of the explanation for the campaign’s performance, although added that Restoration titles tend to come with followers even without a large IP, given the nature of the company’s strategy of taking memorable, usually long-out-of-print games and redeveloping them for the modern hobby market.
He said, “Fans of The Lord of the Rings are certainly avid and show up in large numbers, but we’ve seen similar excitement from fans of Return to Dark Tower and the like.”
Aragorn Art
Despite the campaign’s strong performance, the release has attracted a backlash from a small minority of online commenters for depicting Aragorn as Black.
That reaction has spilled into the unreleased title’s BoardGameGeek ratings, where some users have awarded it scores of 10 specifically to counter what they believe are 1 ratings motivated by objections to Aragorn’s skin colour.
Jacobson described the reaction as “disappointing but not entirely unexpected”, while stressing that not everyone who preferred a depiction closer to previous versions of Aragorn was motivated by racism.
Aragorn from Lord of the Rings: King’s Gambit || Kickstarter Image
He said, “The art team for both Space Cowboys and Restoration Games spent countless hours working on an extensively researched and thoughtful art brief for the look of the entire game along with each individual character. It’s 59 pages long!
“Our first priority is always to do something true to the source material. Within those pages though there are a number of interpretations. Ultimately, for each depiction, not just Aragorn, we were looking to do something interesting and perhaps novel that still stays true to the source material.
“I can point to details in the lore that support this depiction, but this just isn’t something I have any interest in debating.
“Great works, whether that’s a game or an epic fantasy novel or something else, only arise when the people creating them have a strong vision for what they want to make and put their full effort into realizing that vision.
“In every case, some folks won’t share that vision. But, in every case, if you set out to try and please everyone, you cannot make something extraordinary.”
He added, “There are folks who prefer a depiction more in keeping with prior ones; where other folks enjoy seeing broader depictions. Whenever you are working with an IP, the fans will have strong opinions. I want to be clear: not everyone who would prefer the former do so from a place of racism.
“That said, there are certainly racists, who are using these types of situations to espouse their abhorrent beliefs. It’s unfortunate that they muddy what can be an otherwise interesting conversation.
“As for folks on BGG rating a game a 1 before it comes out, this has been going on for a while for a host of reasons. There’s nothing we can do about it, so we press on and just make the best game we can.
“When people actually receive and start playing the game, we are confident that there will be a lot of great ratings for it that will make the current kerfuffle just so much background noise.”
Während die SPIEL in Essen vor allem Dreh- und Angelpunkt für Brettspielfans aus ganz Europa ist, tummeln sich auch zunehmend mehr Tabletopherstellende unter den Aussteller:innen. Das zieht neben zahllosen anderen Tabletop-Begeisterten natürlich auch unseren Redakteur Geoffrey an, der hier zusammenfasst, worauf er sich am meisten freut.
Sie sind zurück! Schwer gerüstet, mit langen Bärten und einem Groll, der getilgt werden muss. Die einst verschwundenen Duardin erheben sich erneut und fordern ihre Gebirge zurück. Jede verlorene Festung wartet auf ihre Rückeroberung. Fürchte dich, wenn ein Groll deinen Namen trägt, denn die Khazalite Holds kennen keine Gnade.
Der Zweite Weltkrieg hat sich festgefahren und die Atombombe soll die Wende für die United States bringen. Risse in der Realität waren dabei nicht eingeplant. Welche Macht aus diesen Rissen entweicht, ist zunächst nicht klar. Doch was sich dann ereignet, kann nur göttliche Fügung sein.
Para Bellum Games veröffentlicht für Conquest eine neue Möglichkeit, ins Spiel einzusteigen. Mit vorgefertigten Armeelisten und -boxen soll der Einstieg besonders leicht gemacht werden. Jede dieser Boxen enthält einen exklusiven Kommandanten. Im Laufe der Zeit soll jede Fraktion eine solche Clash!-Box bekommen.
Die neuen Battlehosts für das Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game sind da – und mit ihnen ein aktualisierter Quickstart Rules Guide. Doch wie viel vom Original steckt in den vereinfachten Regeln? Wir schauen uns die neuen Battlehosts und ihre Regeln genauer an und prüfen, ob der Einstieg damit wirklich gelingt.
Eine Seite Regeln. Mehr sollte es ursprünglich nicht sein. 2014 veröffentlichte Gaetano Ferrara kurze Alternativregeln, mit denen vorhandene Miniaturen unkompliziert auf den Spieltisch kommen sollten. Zwölf Jahre später hat OnePageRules eigene Spielwelten, Miniaturen, Armeebücher, Comicstrips, 3D-Druckdateien und inzwischen sogar Startersets mit Kunststoffminiaturen für den Fachhandel geschaffen.
Derzeitig fühlen sich die Space Marines fast schon stärker an als die Beschützer Terras. Dies kann natürlich nicht richtig sein für die in größter Mühe geschaffenen Krieger des Imperators. Nun erscheint der nächste Codex, und die Custodes versuchen Abstand zu schaffen, doch ge-lingt dies Ihnen?
Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering workers are moving to unionise after alleging rising workloads, unpaid overtime and job insecurity at Wizards of the Coast – despite the business having become the main profit engine of toy and game giant Hasbro.
Workers on Dungeons & Dragons, D&D Beyond and Wizards’ Studio X – which develops tabletop Magic: The Gathering and Duel Masters – plan to unionise with the Communications Workers of America, having secured the backing of a “public supermajority” of employees.
The move comes after several years of soaring sales and profits at Wizards, which has increasingly become the financial powerhouse of Hasbro amid struggles at the company’s traditional toys business – which includes Nerf guns, Transformers and Peppa Pig toys.
That performance was driven by hugely successful Universes Beyond releases including Final Fantasy, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Marvel’s Spider-Man, alongside strong backlist and Secret Lair sales.
D&D workers, meanwhile, said growing workloads without corresponding increases in headcount had left some teams regularly “crunching” simply to complete planned releases – describing crunch as “intense and mandatory unpaid overtime”.
They are also seeking contractual protections around job security, pay and career progression, saying, “Many of us are bringing home less money every month, adjusted for inflation, than we did when we were hired years ago. That needs to change.”
An open letter from those workers added that employees “live in fear of suddenly losing their jobs, with no warning and through no fault of their own”, and that Wizards prioritising in-office work had left workers “unsure of whether their current living situation is tenable for their role”.
Hasbro cut about 1,900 jobs across two rounds in 2023, including at Wizards, after a sharp downturn in its core consumer products business. That segment saw revenue fall 19% in 2023, swinging to a $64.7m operating loss, while Wizards revenue rose 10%.
Further cuts have followed since, including four Wizards employees during Hasbro-wide redundancies in October 2024, and about 30 developers – roughly 90% of the team working on Wizards’ now scrapped Sigil D&D virtual tabletop – in March 2025.
Hasbro cut roughly 150 more jobs three months later, including D&D staff, and last month D&D community manager LaTia Jacquise and Magic social media manager Jordan Hopkins publicly confirmed their layoffs – with Hopkins describing his departure as part of a “greater restructure”. Wizards has not disclosed the total number of jobs affected.
Magic rules manager Eric Levine said of the union effort, “Everyone I work with makes our company, our game, and our community stronger by bringing their talent, expertise, and effort to making Magic.
“Those incredible people deserve fair compensation, remote protections, clear career progression, and more. Supporting the people who make the game will ensure that Magic keeps getting better for years to come.”
The unionisation push also called for protections for work employees create in their free time, with the D&D workers’ announcement saying, “Currently, if an employee makes anything creative in their free time, with their own resources, Hasbro can claim ownership. What we do in our free time should not be dictated by the company, and what we make in our free time should belong to us.”
The D&D team also used its unionisation letter to reveal tension between Hasbro and Wizards over the use of generative AI, saying, “As pressure has ramped up from Hasbro to adopt LLMs and Gen AI tools in various aspects of our work, WOTC has resisted these efforts and kept AI out of our games.
“That’s good! We want to preserve this commendable stance through a union contract that ensures our games will always be made by people for people.”
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks was openly enthusiastic about bringing AI into the D&D ecosystem in September 2024, saying at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia conference that Hasbro was already using AI “significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid” – but was more excited about its potential in play.
He added, “I play with probably 30 or 40 people regularly. There’s not a single person who doesn’t use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas. That’s a clear signal that we need to be embracing it.”
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks
In an interview with The Verge in March this year, however, Cocks said that while Hasbro was deploying AI widely across the company, he acknowledged there was resistance to its use in Wizards’ games.
He said, “There are some brands that the audience, the creators, just don’t want it, so we don’t even have it in our pipelines for our video games or for Magic: The Gathering, or D&D.”
Cocks added that he personally used huge amounts of AI-generated animation, images, text, sound effects and voice cloning in his personal D&D games, telling interviewer Nilay Patel there was so much on his home PC that it would “floor” him.
He added that AI was being used extensively elsewhere at Hasbro, including in toy design and as a general productivity tool across the company, and estimated it could save more than one million hours of work this year.
Cocks also told Verge that he did not believe the technology would cost creative workers their jobs, saying, “I see it only making the quality of the creative we have better.”
Other demands from the unionisers include better support for working parents, changes to healthcare provision and greater financial transparency, to aid the unions in collective bargaining.
More than 100 Arena workers announced their unionisation drive in April, with Wizards declining their request for voluntary recognition. The group subsequently won a National Labor Relations Board election in June, formally establishing the first union at Wizards.
D&D and Studio X workers – who are also organising under the United Wizards of the Coast-CWA – have asked Wizards and Hasbro to voluntarily recognise their respective units by an October 13 deadline, and have filed an election petition with the NLRB to allow the certification process to proceed if that does not happen.
They are also calling for Hasbro and Wizards to adopt a labour neutrality agreement allowing other workers at the company to organise without fear of retaliation.
D&D senior game designer Joey Haeck said they were organising “because scared workers are neither happy nor productive”.
Haeck said, “By organizing to negotiate a fair contract on issues of layoff protections, forced relocation protections, equitable pay and career advancement, mandatory AI use protections, parental support, and more, we make our game better by investing in our human creators and resisting the churn and brain drain caused by roller-coaster layoffs.”
Unerwarteterweise haben die Orks als Erste ihr Armeebuch erhalten. Doch nun holen die Space Marines zum Gegenschlag aus. Auch erscheinen hier neue Modelle zeitgleich und stellen sich der grünen Flut der Xenos entgegen. Doch reicht dies aus oder stehen die Space Marines nun am Rande der Vernichtung?
MyMiniFactory marketing and brand head Anjuli Smith has left the 3D-printing marketplace to launch her own tabletop agency, whose work will include helping smaller board game publishers find distributors and expand internationally.
Smith left MyMiniFactory at the end of September to focus full-time on her newly-launched Tabletop Growth Partners, which will primarily target the TTRPG and wargaming sectors with marketing, digital growth and business development services.
But she is also looking to offer international business development support for smaller board game publishers, using contacts built up over 13 years in the industry to introduce them to distributors and support them through sales and negotiation meetings.
Smith told BoardGameWire she is currently in talks with three board game publishers about working with them at the Spielwarenmesse trade fair in Nuremberg next February – including new Canadian publisher Acolyte, which focuses on co-op and semi co-op games and is looking for UK and European distribution.
She said, “An available network is a huge blocker for many smaller and newly launched publishers. Getting your games in front of the right people who know how to market them (and will in fact market them) is key to expansion.
“With over 5,000 new board games releasing annually I think it can be pretty daunting for smaller publishers who lack the massive budget of The Op’s Flip 7. Being able to use someone who people already know and trust to open a door for you is a huge win.”
Smith said her work with those publishers would include introducing them to distributors she already has relationships with, approaching potential new distribution partners and organising their meeting schedules ahead of the show.
She will also sit in on meetings for publishers that request additional support, including helping with negotiations and expansion plans.
Smith said, “I have a huge network of industry colleagues I have grown over the last 13 years and I think it’s important to give back and not gatekeep that.
“I like being able to introduce folks to each other and watch them both grow and succeed because of it.”
Tabletop Growth Partners will also offer marketing strategy, digital storefront optimisation, crowdfunding and subscription support, and representation at international events including SPIEL Essen, PAX Unplugged, GAMA Expo and UK Games Expo.
Spiel Essen in 2025 || Photo Credit: SPIEL Essen/Lars Heidrich
Smith told BoardGameWire she believes the cost of attending international shows could make that kind of support particularly valuable to smaller publishers.
Smith said, “For a small publisher the costs of flights, hotels, and a booth are huge. Asking them to then take time away from sales to talk to others simply isn’t an option.”
She added that many board game studios and publishers had opportunities to expand their communities, but lacked the time, knowledge or money to pursue them themselves.
“At the end of the day they are creatives, they should be creating their next bestseller, not getting bogged down with admin and endless meetings. Let me do that.”
Smith joined MyMiniFactory after previously working as a purchasing assistant at Asmodee UK and at Asmodee Entertainment’s fiction imprint Aconyte Books, and most recently served as the 3D-printing platform’s head of marketing and brand.
Her work there included business development around bringing established tabletop properties into 3D printing, including Steamforged Games‘ Warmachine and Modiphius Entertainment‘s The Elder Scrolls.
Smith said that while she is based in the UK, she has set her working schedule to cover US mornings because she expects “a vast majority” of the agency’s clients to be based there.
The agency has also signed up as an ambassador for MyMiniFactory’s Soulcrafted initiative, which was launched to champion human-made creative work amid the rapid growth of generative AI.
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Die Miniaturen sind zusammengebaut, die ersten Farben aufgetragen und die Armeen bereit für ihren ersten Einsatz. Zumindest theoretisch. Im dritten Teil unserer Reihe „Road to Warhammer 40k“ geht es endlich an den Spieltisch. Wie gelingt der Einstieg in die Regeln, welche Herausforderungen warten bei der ersten Partie und reichen drei Stunden für ein Spiel im Combat-Patrol-Format?
