We’ve been assessing the merits of political leaders in (more or less) democratic countries, illustrated by a single board game each, on this blog for a few years now. Today’s subject is another US president – domestic reformer turned foreign policy prophet Woodrow Wilson. And which game could be more appropriate for him than Versailles 1919 (Geoff Engelstein/Mark Herman, GMT Games)?

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The Rating System

Some caveats ahead: The presidents will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as president, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)presidents).

Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A president can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the president is assessed as follows:

Foreign policy: Did the president increase US influence in the world and the security of Americans at home? Did the president wield US power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of US power being great)?

Domestic policy: Did the president increase the liberty of Americans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the president promote domestic security and shape the framework for fair justice dealing with offenses?

Economic policy: Did the president facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Americans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the president’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?

Vision: Did the president have an idea of what the United States and the world (the latter counting for more in times of US influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the president’s policies steer the United States (and, if applicable, the world) in this direction?

Pragmatism: Did the president succeed in seeing his policy through from inception to completion? How well did the president manage the support from Congress, society, the administration, the media (the latter counting for more in more recent years)?

Integrity: Did the president understand the office as a means to benefit himself, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the president respect the boundaries of the office?

Wilson’s Life

Receiving and Providing Education

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856 as the son of a Presbyterian pastor in Staunton, Virginia. Wilson grew up in several states of the American South before, during, and after the Civil War. He would be the only American president who had been a citizen of the Confederacy.

Wilson became a lawyer, but found it not to his liking. Instead, he pursued graduate studies in political science with a dissertation on Congressional government at Johns Hopkins University. His PhD, awarded in 1886, makes him to this day the only US president with such an academic distinction. Even though Wilson had never bothered to take a trip from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., to see the object of his study in action, his dissertation was well received. Atypically for a southerner, he advocated for a strong federal government. At the end of his graduate studies, Wilson married Ellen Louise Axson, who came from a southern clergy family like himself.

Wilson’s academic career led him to teach at several universities. Eventually, he became president of Princeton University in 1902. He took the university out of the grip of Presbyterian traditionalists, appointed the first Catholic and Jewish professors, but worked vigorously against the enrolment of Black students. Wilson turned Princeton into one of America’s leading teaching and research institutions, fueled by the large contributions of outside donors which he attracted. At the same time, Wilson advocated – in often fiery rhetoric – for the independence of the university; a contradiction he could never resolve. Both his administrative reforms and his powerful oratory aroused interest in him political circles; and Wilson put out feelers to the Democratic Party.

To the Presidency

The Democrats, perennially shut out of national office since the Civil War, were in dire need of fresh candidates. Wilson seemed like an ideal fit to party bosses due to his reputation as a natural conservative with progressive credentials. He ran for governor of New Jersey in 1910 and was the first Democrat to be elected to the office in 18 years.

Anyone who believed Wilson to be a conservative at heart was swiftly disabused of the notion once he took office. He directed his energy to labor, electoral, and education reform. Within his first two years in office, Wilson had gained nationwide fame as a progressive leader.

That made him a contender for the 1912 presidential election. His campaign was ably run by the Texas businessman Edward M. House, and Wilson entered the 1912 Democratic National Convention second only to Speaker of the House James “Champ” Clark. When Clark gained the support of New York’s Tammany Hall political machine, that threw the liberal wing of the party, led by three-time presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan, into Wilson’s arms. Wilson gained his party’s nomination and went on to run against a split Republican Party in the general election: Incumbent president William H. Taft represented the party’s conservative wing, former president Theodore Roosevelt mounted a progressive challenge. As the Republican vote split, Wilson’s 42% of the popular vote were enough to give him a landslide victory in the electoral college.

Reforms and Interventions

Wilson started the presidency where he had left off the governorship – with an ambitious domestic reform program. To clinch the reforms, he broke with the tradition that separated the executive and legislative branches of the American government: Wilson was the first president to appear before Congress since John Adams, a precedent which has since become standard practice. In another momentous move, Wilson focused his efforts to build legislative majorities on mobilizing his own party (which held both the Senate and the House), ignoring the Republican opposition. With these measures, Wilson enacted far-reaching economic reforms:

• He replaced tariffs with a federal income tax as the chief source of federal revenue.
• He established the Federal Reserve system to stabilize the heretofore decentralized, fragile American finance world.
• His Antitrust Act clarified that unions and collective bargaining did not constitute a breach of freedom of contract.

Other Wilsonian reforms were less progressive: Wilson introduced segregation in several federal institutions including the Navy Department and the Post Office.

Wilson’s belief in a racial hierarchy also carried over into his foreign policy. During his presidency, the United States intervened in Mexico (twice), Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti (where a new constitution imposed on the country reintroduced the forced labor of corvée). The most momentous of these interventions took place in Mexico, where a US-backed coup had brought the authoritarian Victoriano Huerta to the presidency shortly before Wilson’s own accession to power. Wilson opposed Huerta and first imposed an arms embargo on Mexico, then landed forces in the Mexican port of Veracruz. The intervention did not shift the political situation in Mexico, and US forces left Veracruz after seven months of occupation in November 1914.

Wilson’s rhetoric accompanying the intervention was based on lofty principles, but he applied them rather flexibly: He argued both for imposing and for lifting the arms embargo with the “standards of neutrality”; and he justified both beginning and ending the intervention on moral grounds – the former with his commitment to constitutional government, the latter with Mexico’s right to national self-determination.

Neutrality, Honor, and Prosperity

While the United States had been busy in Mexico, a much bigger conflict had erupted in Europe – the Great War. Over the next years, Wilson pursued a course which would allow the United States to maintain three competing objectives – neutrality, honor, and prosperity.

Wilson was driven by an honest desire to keep the United States out of the war. That did not mean that he was indifferent to its outcome. His sympathies lay clearly with the Allies. Every few months, his administration launched a peace initiative which would invariably come to nothing as they demanded very different things from the belligerents: The Allies were given the idea that Wilson wanted them to win victories before a peace should be negotiated, the Central Powers presented with unacceptable demands (like the cession of Alsace-Lorraine from Germany to France as a precondition for a peace conference).

Honor was an even trickier business than neutrality. Wilson demanded that the belligerent parties adhered to the London Declaration concerning the Laws of Naval War (which none of them had ratified), but in practice complied with the British violations of the Declaration – the harassment of neutral (including American) trade and the blockade of the German coast – while he denounced the German violations – submarine warfare. When a German submarine sunk the British ocean liner Lusitania shortly before it arrived in Liverpool with its cargo of ammunition for the Western front as well as over a thousand passengers – 128 of them American citizens – Wilson was outraged. He declared in a note to the German government that he would hold Germany responsible for any damages to American citizens and property. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned after the incident, believing Wilson endangered American neutrality with his hardline insistence on German (but not British) respect for trade rights.

That brings us the third leg on which Wilson’s stool rested: While he never mentioned prosperity (much unlike neutrality and honor), it was a major motive for his wartime policies. In August 1914, Wilson had publicly opposed bonds for the Allies to be raised by American banks, but when the banks started issuing them, he did not contest it. Consequently, the American economy was effectively mobilized for the Allied cause: US goods were bought with money from US bonds. Allied victory thus became a national interest for the United States to see the bonds repaid.

In the short term, Wilsons’s hard line was successful. He forced Germany to comply with his notions of naval law while the American economy boomed from the war trade to the Allies. America reaped all the benefits of the war at none of the costs.

That made Wilson a strong contender for re-election in 1916. The Democratic Party touted his foreign policy success with “He Kept Us Out of the War” (a slogan which had been adopted without consulting Wilson). Still, Wilson’s main advantage of 1912 – the split Republican field – had evaporated. To beat his Republican opponent Charles Evans Hughes, he had to make inroads in states where Democrats had not fared well over the last decades. As Wilson feared that the new women voters in many of the western and midwestern states might take objection to his marriage to Edith Bolling Galt – just a year after his first wife Ellen had died – he tried to balance it out with publicly supporting women’s suffrage. While we do not have electoral statistics by gender for 1916, Wilson’s strong showing (for a Democrat) in the West and Midwest indicates that his strategy worked. In the end, Wilson’s victory in California by the hair’s breadth of 3,773 voters decided the presidential contest in his favor.

Into the War

In Wilson’s second term, his three-way balancing act between neutrality, honor, and prosperity became ever more precarious. One of them had to give – and the most likely candidate seemed neutrality, whose meaning Wilson had stretched beyond recognition anyway. Ironically, that happened just as Wilson made his first attempt to put pressure on the Allies (by withholding bonds if they did not agree to a peace conference).

Germany, unaware of any rifts between the US and the Allies, played the elephant in the diplomatic China shop again in January 1917: The German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann secretly instructed the German embassy in Mexico to sound out the Mexicans for an alliance in case the United States entered the war. Two weeks later, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in the British home waters again. Wilson felt he could not honorably back down from his hardline position of American trade and travel rights which he had taken in 1915, and broke off all diplomatic relations to Germany. A few days later, British naval intelligence relayed the contents of the “Zimmermann Telegram” to Wilson. Its release helped inflame American public opinion against Germany, but the essential decision had been made already: America would enter the war as an “associated power” on the Allied side. Congress voted in favor of a declaration of war at Wilson’s request on April 6, 1917.

Militarily, the United States was a dwarf in 1917. Safe itself due to large oceans and weak neighbors, its armed forces had been minuscule since the end of the Civil War. Expanding and training them would take time. And economically, the awesome might of America had been mobilized for the Allied cause anyway. Thus, the American war entry mattered little for the course of the war in the short term.

It did, however, have immediate domestic repercussions: On the one hand, government spending exploded. The expenses which the federal government accrued in the 19 months of war from April 1917 to November 1918 would exceed those of almost 130 years since the founding of the country. And Wilson cracked down on perceived opponents of the war: The Espionage Act made interference with military operations or recruitment illegal, which in practice meant that any kind of anti-war activism could – and often did – send the protester to prison.  “Illoyal” publications were banned from postal transport which made them practically unavailable at any distance from their printing.

Preparing for the Post-War World

In the meantime, the war raged on. Wilson’s initial lofty rhetoric of a “war without victory” by which the world would be “made safe for democracy” had been largely superseded by the gritty requirements of military buildup and diplomatic compromises with the Allies. The day-to-day realpolitik of the Allies suffered a heavy blow when the October Revolution took Russia out of the Allied coalition in late 1917; and Wilson was subsequently also replaced as the leading visionary by a certain Vladimir Lenin whose radical rejection of imperialist war (along with capitalism as a whole) proved popular with the European masses after three years of carnage – and they set Russia to seal a deal with Germany and leave the war for good.

Wilson countered by laying out his vision for the post-war world before Congress on January 8, 1918: The Fourteen Points contained a mix of specific territorial changes and universal principles – the freedom of navigation and trade, disarmament, the rejection of secret diplomacy, and the founding of a “general association of nations”.

By summer 1918, American forces had arrived in Europe in substantial numbers. They contributed to turning the tide on the Western Front, and their ever-growing numbers (which matched the British and neared the French) and excellent supply situation convinced the German High Command that the war could not be won anymore. The German generals abandoned the sinking ship. Their civilian successors applied for a peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points.

Wilson, meanwhile, urged the American voters to consider the 1918 midterm elections as a plebiscite on his policies, especially the post-war order he had formulated. The voters soundly rejected him by giving majorities in both houses to the Republicans for the first time in eight years.

Germany and the Allies agreed to an armistice on the Western Front on November 11, 1918. While Germany’s new parliamentarian leaders dealt with the turmoil in their new republic, the Allies met on the outskirts of Paris to negotiate the peace treaty, chief of them the “Big Four” France, Britain, Italy, and the United States. Wilson attended the Versailles negotiations in person, which made him the first US president to leave the country on official business. After he had alienated the Republicans by his adversarial rhetoric before the 1918 midterms, he snubbed them even further by not including a single Republican senator in his delegation.

Versailles 1919

All of Wilson’s political goals merged at the Versailles peace negotiations. He wanted a new world order which would provide for long-term peace: “I am playing for a hundred years hence”, he told those who asked him why he would forgo short-term American gains. And the US was indeed different as the country did not angle for territorial enlargement – unlike the other major countries, which sought colonial expansion (especially Britain and France in the Middle East and Africa) or direct annexations of regions bordering their mainland (especially France along the Rhine and Italy in the Alps and on the Dalmatian coast). Wilson held mixed views on the territorial changes in Europe, but supported colonial expansion, especially where it benefitted European imperial powers rather than imperial Japan (another expression of his racial views).

Make no mistake: The US had direct material interests at stake as well. On the one hand, Wilson’s interest in free trade aligned with American business wanting to sell goods in the European markets, on the other, American finance expected the war bonds to be repaid. In the view of the European debtors, that required large reparations from Germany, so that the vanquished would pay for the costs of the war.

Wilson’s most cherished goal, however, was the establishment of that “association of nations” outlined in the Fourteen Points. In an ironic repudiation of the other principles of the Fourteen Points, Wilson engaged in the secret diplomacy horse-trading of Versailles, making large concessions to the wishes of the other Big Four nations for territorial enlargement, to get them to agree to what would become the League of Nations.

In June 1919, the negotiations were concluded and the Treaty of Versailles presented to Germany. The Germans engaged in some naïve protests and then signed anyway, as the only alternative of resuming hostilities was utterly impossible for the country. Wilson’s task now was to convince his own countrymen that America must join the League of Nations.

The Struggle for Ratification

Initially, popular support for the League was high in America. However, the Senate which needed to ratify the Treaty for America to join the League was not on board with Wilson:

• A small part of the senators, the “Irreconcilables”, was adamantly against the Treaty. Some of the Irreconcilables were adherents to America’s traditional isolationist foreign policy, others came from (or were supported by) groups which had been against the United States’s entry into the war (chiefly German-Americans and Irish-Americans), a third subset were Republicans eager to get back at Wilson for the hostility he had shown them at least since 1918.
• A larger, but not sufficiently large group were Wilson’s loyal supporters, who wanted ratification of the Treaty without any changes.
• Lastly, the largest group were not opposed to the Treaty as such, but wanted changes which would confirm Congress’s sovereignty on foreign policy decisions, ensure that no territorial mandates could be forced on the United States, and that the Monroe Doctrine would be confirmed and its interpretation left to the United States alone.

Wilson once more relied on public pressure. He embarked on a speaking tour to advocate for the Treaty. When a bipartisan majority of senators, led by Republican Henry Cabot Lodge, put forward a proposal for a Treaty with amendments in November 1919, Wilson rejected it, and the proposal could not find a two-thirds majority in the senate against Wilson’s allies and the Irreconcilables. By then, Wilson had suffered a stroke and was physically unable to partake in competition for hearts and minds in either the Senate or the public arena. The Treaty of Versailles would never be ratified, and America never joined the League of Nations.

The Final Years

Wilson prepared for another presidential run in 1920 (the Twenty-second Amendment limiting presidents to two terms would only be passed under Harry S. Truman). His party, however, had enough of him and chose Ohio governor James M. Cox as their candidate – a mixture of a turn from Wilson’s policies and the simple truth that his poor health made him barely able to discharge the duties of his office in the present, let alone for another four years. Wilson, undeterred by his defeats in 1918 and 1919, framed the 1920 election once more as a plebiscite on his policies, specifically the League of Nations. The American voters had enough of them and gave the Republican party in the person of Warren G. Harding the presidency and enlarged its majorities in both the House and the Senate. The end of Wilson’s presidency also marked the end of the Progressive Era of sweeping in the United States.

Four years later, Woodrow Wilson considered another presidential run. Yet just a few days after he had laid out his program, he died on February 3, 1924.

The Rating

Foreign policy:

Woodrow Wilson really pushed America on the global stage with the entry into World War I. From then on, no matter of great importance in the world has been decided without the United States, very much in line with Wilson’s programmatic thinking. His practical policies, however, were disjointed. His interventionism in Latin America infringed on the locals’ freedoms (up to the point of practically reintroducing slave labor in Haiti), but did not come at a high cost for the United States. The entry into World War I, on the other hand, prioritized export opportunities and especially the travel rights of the affluent few over the lives of the American soldiers who then had to defend those rights and opportunities. Despite all these costs, it is hard to find a positive foreign policy outcome for the United States besides its increased global stature.

Domestic policy:

By 1920, most Americans were less free than they had been eight years before. Wilson’s expansion of segregation shut down opportunities for African Americans, his wartime policies of censorship and oppression limited the traditional American freedom of expression. Women’s suffrage, the great enfranchisement, was brought about during Wilson’s time, but his support for the cause was minimal.

Economic policy:

Wilson’s early economic reforms (federal income tax replacing tariffs, the Federal Reserve System, and the Antitrust Act) benefitted consumers, workers, and the economy as a whole. Later, Wilson’s interpretation of neutrality meant that the United States enjoyed a long war boom as a supplier of goods to the Allies. This prosperity came with risks, as it relied on the Allies winning the war and eventually being able to repay their loans, which would become a major matter of contentment after the war and endanger both the American and the global economy.

Vision:

Wilson redefined the presidency. He strengthened the executive and established the president as lawmaker-in-chief, a change which has held up until today.

He looked far beyond the day-to-day issues of politics. While his idea of a liberal internationalist global order was discredited when he left office, and remained so for the next twenty years, it was rehabilitated by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. As these later presidents had more political common sense than Wilson, they were able to form them into a bipartisan consensus which only eroded in recent years.

Pragmatism:

Wilson parlayed his electoral triumph in 1912 into a sweeping reform agenda, which he got through Congress by mobilizing his own party and cowing the opposition with the force of his public oratory. He later found out that there were limits to speaking from the bully pulpit. His electoral success ran out in 1918, and his stubborn intransigence made it impossible for him to reach compromise in Congress. Wilson would rather be right and achieve none of his goals than concede a little and receive a lot – a distinctly unpolitical trait for a politician.

Integrity:

Wilson was driven by an honest commitment to better his country, and through the means of it, the world. His practical politics were not always this clean. His appointments were often based on loyalty rather than merit, he treated his political opponents as enemies and traitors, and he clung to power even when his health limited his ability to discharge the duties of his office to the point that even his cabinet pondered if to declare him unfit.

Overall:

Woodrow Wilson was one of the greatest visionaries in the White House. The completion of his visions was left to others due to his own lack of political skills. The great principles for which he strove – prosperity for all, free trade, eternal peace – were mixed with his authoritarian tendencies and his hostility to his political opponents as well as non-whites. His presidency contains the sublime and the ignoble, and calling it middling is charitable.

1. Abraham Lincoln 28/30
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt 25/30
3. Friedrich Ebert 25/30
4. Winston Churchill 25/30
5. Robert Walpole 24/30
6. Willy Brandt 23/30
7. Konrad Adenauer 22/30
8. Harry S. Truman 21/30
9. John F. Kennedy 17/30
10. Hermann Müller 17/30
11. Wilhelm Marx 17/30
12. Woodrow Wilson 15/30
13. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
14. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

How would you rate Wilson? Let me know in the comments!

Further Reading

The most recent full-length biography of Wilson is O’Toole, Patricia: The Moralist. Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made, Simon & Schuster, New York City, NY 2018.

For a snappy, but nuanced biography, see Berg, Manfred: Woodrow Wilson. Amerika und die Neuordnung der Welt. Eine Biographie [Woodrow Wilson. America and the Reshaping of the World. A Biography], C.H. Beck, Munich 2017 (in German).

As always when it comes to American presidents of the 20^th century, see the respective chapter in Leuchtenburg, William E.: The American President. From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015, pp. 70-116.

Vom 22. bis 25. Oktober 2026 steht Essen wieder im Zeichen der SPIEL, und an Stand 6B300 in Halle 6 zeigt Huch! gleich sechs Neuheiten auf einmal, flankiert von einer ganzen Reihe befreundeter Marken aus dem Hutter-Trade-Vertrieb. Genau das steckt hinter dem „& friends“ im Titel dieses Artikels: Nicht jedes Spiel, das am Huch!-Stand liegt, trägt am Ende auch das Huch!-Logo auf der Schachtel. Wir haben uns die sechs Hauptneuheiten genauer angesehen, dazu eine Handvoll weiterer Titel aus dem Umfeld, und sagen dir, wer welches Spiel tatsächlich verlegt.

Peak Team

Peak Team schickt 1 bis 5 Spielende als Ranger-Team auf einen Berg, und zwar kooperativ: Reihum verteilt ihr eure Aktionskarten verdeckt an die Mitspielenden, und zwar ohne zu sprechen, quasi Kartenverteilen in umgekehrter Richtung („Reverse Drafting“). Mit diesen Karten bewegt ihr eure Ranger-Figuren über den Berg und erfüllt Missionen wie Tiere beobachten oder bestimmte Orte erreichen. Das Spiel ist in fünf Level gestaffelt, die zunehmend höhere Hürden einbauen: Wetterumschwünge, blockierte Wege, nötige Erholungspausen. Gewonnen habt ihr, wenn alle Missionen erfüllt sind, bevor euch die Aktionen ausgehen, verloren, wenn die Aktionen zuerst zur Neige gehen. Lead Designer ist Scott Almes, bekannt vor allem durch seine kompakten Tiny-Epic-Spiele, Illustration kommt von Crocotame und Samual Bouvant. Designt und erstveröffentlicht wurde Peak Team 2025 bei Matagot zur SPIEL Essen 2025, Huch! bringt 2026 die deutsche Ausgabe als Neuheit, mitverlegt unter anderem von Hobby Japan. Wie der Solo-Modus bei einer Spielerzahl ab 1 im Detail funktioniert, ob etwa eine zweite Ranger-Figur gesteuert wird, nennt die Produktseite nicht. Eine eigene UVP listet Huch! auf der Produktseite nicht, der Handel (spieletaxi.de) führt den Titel aktuell, Stand 20. Oktober 2026, für rund 32,99 Euro. Wer mit Kindern spielt, sollte die veranschlagten 60 Minuten eher als Minimum einplanen: Fünf Level mit wachsendem Planungsaufwand und eine Kartenverteilung, über die am Familientisch gern diskutiert wird, ziehen sich in unserer Einschätzung schnell länger.

Eckdaten zu Peak Team

• Spielerzahl: 1 bis 5
• Spielzeit: 60 Minuten (Verlagsangabe, mit Kindern eher länger)
• Alter: ab 10 Jahren
• Designer: Scott Almes
• Verlag: Huch! (deutsche Ausgabe, Erstveröffentlichung 2025 bei Matagot, mitverlegt von Hobby Japan)
• Preis: von Huch! nicht genannt, Handel rund 32,99 Euro (Stand 20. Oktober 2026)

Flaming Facts

Flaming Facts ist ein Quiz der anderen Art: Statt selbst zu antworten, bekommt ihr zu 200 Fragen je fünf vorgegebene Antworten vorgelegt und müsst auf eurem Scoreboard einstellen, welche davon richtig ist und welche nicht, macht zusammen 1.000 Antwortoptionen. Manche Antworten gelten als besonders riskant: Liegt ihr daneben, verliert ihr einen Spielstein und könnt in der Folge weniger punkten, liegt ihr richtig, gibt es Zusatzpunkte. Wie genau das Spiel endet und die Punkte final ausgewertet werden, nennt weder die Produktseite noch die bislang verfügbaren Händlerbeschreibungen im Detail. Designer ist Arno Steinwender, Illustration stammt von Daniel Müller, Verlag ist Huch!. Einen Solo-Modus gibt es bei einer Spielerzahl von 2 bis 6 nicht. Eine UVP nennt die Produktseite nicht, ein Händler (spieletastisch.de) zeigt aktuell, Stand 20. Oktober 2026, einen Streichpreis von 26,99 Euro neben einem reduzierten Preis von 23,95 Euro.

Eckdaten zu Flaming Facts

• Spielerzahl: 2 bis 6
• Spielzeit: 20 Minuten
• Alter: ab 14 Jahren
• Designer: Arno Steinwender
• Verlag: Huch!
• Preis: von Huch! nicht genannt, Handel um 23,95 bis 26,99 Euro (Stand 20. Oktober 2026)

Whacktown

Whacktown ist das einzige der sechs Hauptspiele, das gar nicht unter der Marke Huch! läuft, sondern unter Funtails, einer Schwestermarke im selben Hutter-Trade-Vertrieb. Wir hatten den Titel bereits zur Vorbestellung vorgestellt: 2 bis 4 Spielende übernehmen Gangsterbanden in einer Stadt, die jede Runde neu aus einem Raster von 76 möglichen Orten zusammengewürfelt wird. Jede Runde läuft in drei Schritten: Zuerst bewegt ihr eure Bande über das Stadtraster und löst den Effekt des Zielorts aus, dann spielt ihr beliebig viele Hustle-Karten aus, wobei das Ausspielen den Abwurf anderer Karten kostet, zuletzt zieht ihr Karten nach und gebt an die nächste Person weiter. Viele Orte sind nur mit genug Geld, Informationen, Reputation oder Gesundheit zugänglich, und Schadenseffekte treffen alle Rivalen gleichzeitig. Die Charaktere spielen sich dabei laut unserer eigenen Recherche asymmetrisch über ihre Profilkarten, keine zwei Banden starten also identisch, ob das über viele Partien hinweg trägt, war schon bei der Vorbestellung offen und lässt sich auch jetzt noch nicht abschließend beurteilen. Gewonnen hat, wer entweder alle anderen Banden eliminiert oder als Erstes 10 Reputationspunkte erreicht. Lead Designer ist Daniel Piechnick (auf der Hutter-Trade-Produktseite als „Daniel Plecknick“ geführt, BGG schreibt „Piechnick“), Illustration stammt von Hendrik Noack. Einen Solo-Modus gibt es bei 2 bis 4 Spielenden nicht. Die UVP nennt Funtails auf der eigenen Produktseite mit 34,99 Euro, Stand 20. Oktober 2026.

Eckdaten zu Whacktown

• Spielerzahl: 2 bis 4
• Spielzeit: 30 bis 45 Minuten
• Alter: ab 14 Jahren
• Designer: Daniel Piechnick (Hutter Trade: „Plecknick“)
• Verlag: Funtails (Schwestermarke von Huch!, Vertrieb Hutter Trade)
• Preis: 34,99 Euro, UVP laut Verlag (Stand 20. Oktober 2026)

Ikebana

Ikebana bringt die japanische Kunst des Blumensteckens als Kartenspiel auf den Tisch, passend dazu steht es laut einer unabhängigen Vorschau auf den Essener Messestand von Huch! in Halle 6, Stand 6B300. Im Zug tauscht ihr optional eine Handkarte gegen eine aus der offenen Auslage und legt dann ein bis zwei Blumenkarten entweder als neues Arrangement oder an ein bestehendes an, wobei die Karten in aufsteigender Nummerierung liegen müssen, Lücken und Wiederholungen sind erlaubt. Hat ein Arrangement mindestens vier Karten und erfüllt mindestens eine der aktuell gültigen Wertungsbedingungen, könnt ihr es werten: Der Wert ergibt sich aus Kartenzahl mal Anzahl erfüllter Bedingungen. Das Spiel endet, nachdem die Schlusskarte gezogen wurde, plus eine letzte Runde, die meisten Punkte gewinnen, bei Gleichstand entscheiden die meisten Wertungsmarker. Designer ist Francesco Testini, Illustration Stefan Sonnberger, Verlag ist Huch! selbst. Diese Wertungslogik mit mehreren gleichzeitig gültigen Bedingungen wirkt auf uns anspruchsvoller, als eine reine Ab-8-Empfehlung vermuten lässt, ob das am Familientisch mit Siebenjährigen oder Achtjährigen trägt, muss jede Runde selbst herausfinden. Einen Solo-Modus gibt es bei 2 bis 5 Spielenden nicht. Eine UVP nennt Huch! auf der Produktseite nicht, ein Händler (bertine.de) zeigt aktuell, Stand 20. Oktober 2026, 17,99 Euro.

Eckdaten zu Ikebana

• Spielerzahl: 2 bis 5
• Spielzeit: 30 Minuten
• Alter: ab 8 Jahren
• Designer: Francesco Testini
• Verlag: Huch!
• Preis: von Huch! nicht genannt, Handel rund 17,99 Euro (Stand 20. Oktober 2026)

Wild Tiled West

Auch Wild Tiled West trägt am Stand kein Huch!-Logo: Verlag der deutschen Ausgabe ist SPIEL DAS!, Hutter Trade übernimmt hier nur den Vertrieb. Das Original von Paul Dennen, dem Designer hinter Clank! und Dune: Imperium, erschien 2023 bei Dire Wolf in den USA. 1 bis 5 Spielende erschließen über 16 Runden ein Western-Siedlungstableau: Ein Würfelwurf bestimmt, welche Landschafts-Plättchen verfügbar sind, die ihr dann in euer Tableau draftet und einpasst, um Boni abzudecken, Viehherden zu erweitern, Gebäude zu bauen oder Banditen aus der Stadt zu vertreiben. Acht verschiedene Siedlungstableaus mit eigenen Wertungsbedingungen sollen laut Verlag für Varianz sorgen, eine unabhängige Rezension bestätigt nur, dass sich die Tableaus optisch und in der Aufteilung unterscheiden, ob daraus auch wirklich unterschiedliche Strategien entstehen, lässt sich aus den verfügbaren Quellen nicht abschließend belegen. Konkreter belegt ist die Varianz bei den rund 20 Partnerkarten: Der Preacher etwa belohnt Grabsteine, der Prospector den Bergbau, unterschiedliche Partner lenken eine Partie also spürbar in unterschiedliche Richtungen. Am Ende gewinnt, wer die meisten Punkte aus Gebäuden, Boni und Siedlungswert gesammelt hat. Wie die Solo-Variante bei 1 Spielendem konkret abläuft, nennt die Verlagsseite nicht näher. Die UVP der deutschen Ausgabe liegt laut spiel-das.de bei 59,90 Euro zuzüglich Versand, Stand 20. Oktober 2026.

Eckdaten zu Wild Tiled West

• Spielerzahl: 1 bis 5
• Spielzeit: 45 bis 90 Minuten
• Alter: ab 13 Jahren
• Designer: Paul Dennen
• Verlag: SPIEL DAS! (deutsche Ausgabe, Vertrieb Hutter Trade)
• Preis: 59,90 Euro zzgl. Versand, UVP laut Verlag (Stand 20. Oktober 2026)

MicroMacro Kids

Der Name weckt sofort Assoziationen zur Spiel-des-Jahres-Reihe MicroMacro: Crime City, und die Verbindung lässt sich auch belegen: MicroMacro Kids, im Original „Wild Wild Weekend“, stammt vom selben Verlag, Edition Spielwiese, und von Johannes Sich, der laut BGG durchgehend als Designer der gesamten Reihe geführt wird, von den Crime-City-Hauptspielen bis zum ersten Kids-Teil „Der verrückte Stadtpark“, den er ebenfalls gestaltet hat. Pegasus Spiele, bei Crime City einst Vertriebspartner, ist nicht beteiligt, Edition Spielwiese vertreibt seit 2024 über Hutter Trade. Spielerisch bleibt das Prinzip: 1 bis 4 Spielende suchen gemeinsam auf einer großen illustrierten Stadtplan-Karte nach Hinweisen, verfolgen Figuren über die Karte und lösen so 22 unterschiedlich schwere, gewaltfreie Fälle, teils können Kinder laut Verlag tiefer in Szenen hineinzoomen. Ein Verlierer-Prinzip gibt es nicht, dadurch lässt sich jede Partie dank der vollständig kooperativen Anlage auch allein mit einer Figur spielen. Weder Verlag noch Pressemitteilung erwähnen ein Hilfesystem für festgefahrene Gruppen, wer mit jüngeren Kindern spielt, sollte darauf vorbereitet sein, bei einem schwer zu findenden Hinweis selbst nachzuhelfen, damit aus Grübeln kein Frust wird. Eine eigene UVP nennt Edition Spielwiese in der Pressemitteilung zur Reihe mit 24,99 Euro, der Handel (spieletaxi.de) bestätigt diesen Preis, Stand 20. Oktober 2026.

Eckdaten zu MicroMacro Kids

• Spielerzahl: 1 bis 4
• Spielzeit: 15 bis 45 Minuten
• Alter: ab 6 Jahren
• Designer: Johannes Sich
• Verlag: Edition Spielwiese (Vertrieb Hutter Trade, keine Pegasus-Beteiligung)
• Preis: 24,99 Euro, UVP laut Verlags-Pressemitteilung (Stand 20. Oktober 2026)

Weitere Neuheiten im Umfeld von Huch!

Neben den sechs Hauptneuheiten bringt Hutter Trade zur SPIEL Essen 2026 noch mehr mit, auch hier längst nicht alles unter dem Huch!-Logo: Spooky Bar (Edition Spielwiese, 2 bis 4 Spielende, ab 8 Jahren, Kartenspiel ums Geisterfangen in der eigenen Taverne) nennt auf der Produktseite keinen Erscheinungstermin. TOTAL 10 (Hutter Trade Selection, 2 bis 8 Spielende, ab 8 Jahren, als Rommé-Neuerfindung mit Zehner-Farbkombinationen beworben) nennt ebenfalls noch keinen Erscheinungstermin. Hire or Fire? (Huch!, 3 bis 6 Spielende, ab 14 Jahren, Partyspiel von Andreas Hallerbach ums Bewerbungschaos) ist als Huch!-Neuheit 2026 gelistet. Carnival of Sins (MM-Spiele, 2 bis 5 Spielende, ab 10 Jahren, Würfel- und Bluffspiel um Sünden-Karten beim Mardi Gras in New Orleans) erscheint als deutsche Ausgabe 2026. Machu Pichu (Huch!, 2 bis 10 Spielende, ab 8 Jahren, schnelles Reaktionsspiel mit Lama-Thema, bei dem ihr bei „Ma-chu-pi“ draufklopft und „Chu!“ ruft) gehört ebenfalls zum Huch!-Programm. Und Castel Boom (Kiwizou, 2 bis 4 Spielende, ab 6 Jahren laut BGG, Geschicklichkeitsspiel: Königin Lola belohnt, wer ihr beim Wiederaufbau der Türme ihres Schlosses hilft) bringt mit Kiwizou eine neue französische Partnermarke ins Hutter-Trade-Programm.

Was wir von der Auswahl halten

Die eigentliche Neuigkeit dieses Messestands ist für uns gar nicht ein einzelnes Spiel, sondern wie viele Marken mittlerweile unter dem Hutter-Trade-Dach zusammenlaufen. Wer nur auf das Huch!-Logo schaut, übersieht mit Whacktown, Wild Tiled West und MicroMacro Kids drei von sechs Hauptneuheiten, dazu mehrere der kleineren Titel. Spielerisch sprechen uns am ehesten Peak Team wegen seines ungewöhnlichen Kartenverteil-Mechanismus und Whacktown wegen seines deutlich schärferen Settings an, für Familien mit kleineren Kindern lohnt sich ein Blick auf MicroMacro Kids. Wer schon auf unsere Vorstellungen von Gaudí sowie Panda Gang und Jiangnan gestoßen ist, kennt den Huch!-Stand in Essen also nur zum Teil, die Markenfamilie ist größer, als das Logo vermuten lässt.

Weiterlesen

• HUCH! nimmt Panda Gang und Jiangnan ins Sortiment auf

HUCH! hat zwei sehr unterschiedliche Neuheiten mit eigenen Produktseiten ins Sortiment aufgenommen: das leichte Vergleichsspiel „Panda Gang“ und das China-Kennerspiel „Jiangnan“, das der Verlag erstmals auf Deutsch bringt. Beide Angaben stammen von den offiziellen Produktseiten bei Hutter Trade, dem Unternehmen hinter der Marke HUCH!.

Panda Gang: Schnelles Vergleichsspiel für die ganze Familie

Panda Gang stammt von Designer Przemek Wojtkowiak, die Illustration von Magdalena Kania. Zu Beginn jeder Runde bestimmt ein Würfelwurf ein Kriterium, etwa den größten, leichtesten oder kürzesten Panda samt Bambusstab. Alle Spielenden wählen dann gleichzeitig die Karte aus der Auslage, die ihrer Einschätzung nach am besten passt. Wer richtig lag, behält die Karte als Punkt.

Das Spiel ist für 2 bis 6 Spielende ab 5 Jahren ausgelegt. Eine Partie dauert laut Verlag 10 bis 15 Minuten. Die Schachtel misst laut Produktseite 13 mal 13 mal 4 Zentimeter. Zu Karten- und Würfelanzahl macht der Verlag keine Angabe.

Jiangnan: Kennerspiel erstmals auf Deutsch

Jiangnan erschien ursprünglich 2022 bei Moaideas Game Design unter dem Titel „Jiangnan: Life of Gentry“. HUCH! bringt nun die deutsche Ausgabe heraus: Auf der Produktseite läuft das Spiel schlicht als „Jiangnan“. Auf der Schachtel steht zusätzlich der Untertitel „The Art of Influence“.

Eine deutsche Spielanleitung ist auf der Produktseite bereits hinterlegt. Designer ist DuGuWei. Als Illustration nennt die Produktseite „Su, NowNow“.

Die Spielenden schlüpfen in die Rolle von Gelehrten der chinesischen Gentry-Klasse zur Zeit der Ming-Dynastie und kombinieren Worker Placement mit einem Beutel-Bau-System, um literarisches Ansehen aufzubauen. Was konkret in den Beutel wandert und woraus gezogen wird, führt die Produktseite nicht näher aus. Einen Solo-Modus verzeichnet BGG für die Originalausgabe als Mechanik-Tag. Die deutsche Verlagsseite macht dazu keine eigene Angabe.

Der Verlag nennt 1 bis 4 Spielende ab 14 Jahren und eine Spielzeit von 30 bis 120 Minuten. BGG führt für die Originalausgabe abweichend ein Mindestalter von 13 Jahren und eine engere Spielzeitspanne von 90 bis 120 Minuten. Für den Artikel maßgeblich ist die Angabe der deutschen Verlagsseite.

Beide Produktseiten verlinken für den Kauf auf denselben externen Händler, der beide Titel zum Zeitpunkt des Abrufs noch als nicht lieferbar führte. Trotz eigener Produktseiten mit Artikelnummer und EAN waren Panda Gang und Jiangnan bei diesem Händler zum Zeitpunkt des Abrufs damit noch nicht bestellbar.

Das Kartenspiel „Oh my Socks!“ von Helvetiq ist für den Bistrospill 2026 nominiert, teilte Vertriebspartner Hutter Trade mit. Der luxemburgische Preis zeichnet jährlich Spiele aus, die sich besonders für die gesellige Runde im Bistro oder Café eignen, vergeben von Spillfabrik gemeinsam mit dem Gastronomieverband HORESCA.

Von 76 eingereichten Titeln schafften es fünf auf die Nominierungsliste: neben Oh my Socks! sind das Auf die Eier (Game Factory), dnup (Asmodee), Pili Pili (ATM Gaming) und Sneaky (KENDi).

Design stammt von Antoine Bauza und Théo Rivière, Illustrationen von Camille Chaussy. Gespielt wird zu zweit bis zu fünft, ab 6 Jahren: Reihum ziehen und geben Spielende Karten weiter, um passende Sockenpaare zu sammeln. Am Ende zählt jedes Sockenmuster nur bei einer geraden Anzahl, eine ungerade Zahl bringt für dieses Muster keine Punkte. BGG bestätigt Mechanik und Regel deckungsgleich zur Pressemitteilung, nennt für die Spieldauer aber 15 bis 20 Minuten, während der Verlag rund 15 Minuten angibt.

Das Spiel ist laut Pressemitteilung bereits im Hutter Trade-Vertrieb im Handel, die unverbindliche Preisempfehlung liegt bei 13 Euro. Wann das Komitee den Gewinner bekanntgibt, ist noch offen.

Everything seems to get ever bigger. Cars. Phones. Board game boxes. And the cities whose history and board games we explore are no exception: We started with Venice, moved on to Amsterdam, and today, we’re starting with New York. I say starting, because unlike the previous two cities, there is no way to do the vast number of board games set in New York’s history justice in a single post. Thus, this will be a mini-series with (tentatively) three instalments.

If somebody asked you what New York is, you’d probably start by saying it’s a city in the United States. Today, we’re looking at it before it was that – first, when the area which is today New York was settled by Native Americans, then, when the first Europeans founded an outpost there, and finally, when this little settlement received the name it bears until today.

The First Settlers

Names are given by people. “New York” was what the English called the settlement they took over in 1664, but the place had been inhabited by thousands of years before. While that is thus technically not the history of New York, we’ll take a short look at it.

We don’t know very much about the first humans to live in what would become New York: The indigenous people did not keep written records. Archaeology is hard to do in a place which is almost entirely covered in buildings and streets today. And the oral tradition of the Indians was largely destroyed when the westward expansion of the European colonists pushed them out of their native homes, broke up their communities, and finally confined them to reservations.

Five hundred years ago, several thousand Lenape Indians inhabited an island they called Mannahatta (“island of many hills”). They lived off slash-and-burn agriculture, hunting, and fishing. I am not aware of any board game which depicts their lives before the arrival of the first Europeans, but I think it would be a nice change of perspective while still retaining the familiar geography which draws many board gamers (of course, especially those from New York and its surroundings) to games about the city.

In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer employed by the king of France, sailed into what would be called New York Bay. There, he met a group of Lenape in their canoes. He called the area New Angoulême to honor the French royal house of Valois-Angoulême. For the next century, European fur traders would occasionally visit the Lenape, but not attempt to build a permanent presence.

Nieuw Amsterdam

Only in the 1620s did the Dutch, by then the premier commercial and maritime country of Europe, decide to colonize parts of North America. They resolved that this colony should include Mannahatta to take advantage of the rich beaver population whose pelts were much sought after in Europe, and put the merchant Peter Minuit in charge of the operation.

Minuit arrived on May 4, 1626. He met with some of the Lenape, and, according to his written report to Europe, purchased the southern tip of Mannahatta from them for trade goods worth 60 guilders. Even though nobody knows any details beyond Minuit’s own account, the deal is the founding story of New York. One thing that stands out about it is that it was a business transaction. Unlike other cities in North America, New York was not founded by a royal agent or religious refugees, but in the spirit and through the means of commerce (which has since remained the supreme political order and religious faith of New York). In that sense, Minuit’s purchase is either a very smart business move – after all, a large tract of land in such a prime position was surely worth more than the trade goods he handed over – or the hostile act of an unscrupulous merchant taking advantage of the less business-savvy (both actions hallmarks of New York’s commercial culture until today). Beyond the foundational myth, the transaction mostly shows different ways of thinking about land – the Lenape only accepted the right to temporarily co-use it, whereas the Europeans subscribed to the tenet of permanent, exclusive ownership.

While the Dutch colonized the whole mid-Atlantic coast of what is today the US, their settlement on Mannahatta was meant to be its center – as evidenced by its name of Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam), after the Dutch capital. Nieuw Amsterdam grew into a trading hub based on its deep natural harbor, the best on the Atlantic coast. The fur trade was soon complemented by Dutch farms which extended ever further north on Mannahatta, which triggered conflicts with the Lenape. This period is represented in New Amsterdam (Jeffrey D. Allers, White Goblin Games), which casts its players in the shoes of Dutch traders who will gather resources and expand New Amsterdam (at the expense of the Lenape).

Nieuw Amsterdam already contained the seeds of some characteristic New York traits: Its demographics diversified (Africans lived in Nieuw Amsterdam in 1626 already, an Italian followed a few years after); and the municipal council established in 1653, the first of its kind in America, was the start of the great democratic tradition of the city.

The English Colony

The Dutch colony did not last long. When the commercial and maritime rivalry with England flared up again, an English fleet seized Manhattan in 1664. To honor the heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, they renamed the city New York. The Dutch briefly recaptured the city in the next Anglo-Dutch war, but had to cede it permanently in 1674.

New York’s fine deep-water harbor was as valuable to English as it had been to Dutch traders, and the city continued to grow larger and more prosperous. When the British parliament imposed taxes on the American colonies from the 1760s on, the merchants of New York found themselves in a bind: On the one hand, like all entrepreneurs, they resented being parted from money. On the other, a rupture between Britain and its American colonies would cut off trade entirely – much worse than having to pay a moderate due. New York became thus both a hotbed of anti-British activism and one of the places in the American colonies which least wanted a war with the British motherland.

Fierier heads than those of the New Yorkers prevailed. War between Britain and the colonies erupted in 1775. Once George Washington had expelled the British from Boston in the first major action of the war, he moved his headquarters to New York. The city was thus the biggest possible prize for the British smarting from their first defeat. If they could beat the colonials there soundly, force Washington to surrender with his army, they could still quash the rebellion quickly… or so they thought. The amphibious campaign against New York would become the biggest operation of the entire War of Independence. While the British defeated Washington’s army and took the city, the wily colonial commander extricated most of his forces and lived to fight another day. The city of New York, however, would remain under British occupation for the rest of the war.

The British occupation cut New York off from its sister colonies. Many New Yorkers fled to towns which were under control of the American rebels. The loyalists left the town when Britain recognized American independence. In 1783, New York’s population had fallen by 60% compared to the pre-war number of 30,000. From then on, however, the city would know nothing but spectacular growth for over a century… but that’s a story for next time.

Games Referenced

New Amsterdam (Jeffrey D. Allers, White Goblin Games)

Liberty or Death (Harold Buchanan, GMT Games)

Further Reading

For a concise introduction, especially focused on local politics, see Lankevich, George J.: New York City. A Short History, New York University Press, New York City, NY/London 1998.

If you want a treatment which is both more in-depth and more journalistic (and lavishly illustrated) and don’t mind its history practically ending around 1970, see the book version of the 17-hour PBS documentary from 1999: Burns, Ric/Sanders, James/Ades, Lisa: New York. An Illustrated History, Knopf, New York City, NY 2001.