You say „board game fair“, I say “SPIEL” at Essen. It’s the Mecca for the tabletop gaming faithful. Four days of playing, trying, and buying. 220,000+ visitors. I’ve been there a few times over the last years for two days each and found it an intensive board game experience. I won’t be able to make it this year (my colleague’s vacation takes precedence because apparently “my sister is getting married” trumps “there’s a large board game fair”).

As always, this is not meant as a „must buy“ list or whatever other consumptionist term some people use. There are no musts in buying. And there are no musts in attending board game fairs or conventions – obviously those can come as pretty big expenses for travel and accommodation. Bottom line: No musts. You do you.

If you want to read more posts on which exciting new games are coming up, especially from the historical gaming sphere, I strongly recommend you subscribe to the blog: All new posts in your inbox right when they go live!

Without further ado, on to the games! They are sorted by location on the fairgrounds.

Hall 2, booth E311: CARTA IMPERIA: Rise of Rome (Mike Ibeji, Guntower Games)

1-6 players, 60-180 minutes, for sale, MSRP: 90.00 €, price at the fair: 65.00 €

I’m a sucker for anything Ancient Roman, and if it is a board game, all the better. CARTA IMPERIA takes a long-view approach to the Republic, which spreads out in front of the players with new provinces being brought into the Roman orbit over the course of generations. Everyone tries to advance the standing of their family and gain as much auctoritas and prestige, as many governorships and legions as possible. Trying to go it alone will probably not get you far – you need the support from others to come out on the victorious side in a struggle, and as the game treats basically everything as a tradeable resource – all the way to prestige, which is a direct measure of victory points – the table talk will be raucous. Consequently, while there are solo and two-player modes, CARTA IMPERIA will be at its best with three and more players.

You can buy the game at the fair at a steep discount – 65.00 € instead of the regular 90.00 €.

Hall 3, booth A400: The Book Women (Daniel Bernal/Eugeni Castaño, Salt & Pepper Games)

1-4 players, 60-120 minutes, demo

Ever heard of the “Book Women”, the Great Depression-era scheme to provide books to rural Eastern Kentucky? Yeah, neither had I. That’s the great thing about historical board games – they can broaden your horizons and help you make new discoveries.

Anyway, the idea of the scheme – formally known as the “Pack Horse Library Project” was that if people couldn’t come to libraries, the libraries needed to come to them. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration hired a few hundred enterprising women who then toured small communities in the Appalachians on horseback, their saddlebags laden with books. In my humble opinion, that’s the coolest job anyone could have.

Almost as cool is to traverse a modular game board with your books, delivering them to their readers, and building local libraries. Try out the game at the Salt & Pepper Games booth!

Hall 3, booth Q200: Twilight Struggle: 20^th Anniversary Edition (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games)

2 players, 90-180 minutes, for sale, MSRP: 99.00 €, price at the fair: 89.00 €

It’d be a bit of a stretch to call Twilight Struggle a new game. This 20^th Anniversary Edition will not invent the wheel anew, but it’s a beautiful rendering of a true modern classic, and compared to previous editions, a few extra goodies have been added. If you don’t have the game yet but have always been curious what the hype is about, now’s a great moment. And even if all your Twilight Struggle needs are met (except for the obsessive need to play the game again and again), I still counsel you to step by at the Sound of Drums booth where it is sold: Designer Jason Matthews, the legend himself, will be available to sign your copy (or another game of his, I guess. Or a t-shirt. Or a napkin. Maybe don’t put contracts in front of him).

Jason will be at the booth at the following times:

• Thursday, Oct 22: 11am – 12pm; 2pm – 3pm
• Friday, Oct 23: 11am – 12pm, 2pm – 3pm, 4pm – 5pm
• Saturday, Oct 24: 11am – 12pm, 2pm – 3pm, 4pm – 5pm
• Sunday, Oct 25: 10:30am – 11:30am

There won’t be a ton of copies of the Twilight Struggle 20^th Anniversary Edition for sale, so if you want one, make sure you make it to the Sound of Drums booth early! You’ll get a great deal – not only will Jason sign it, but you’ll also be able to buy it for 89.00 € instead of the regular 99.00 €.

Hall 8, booth D315: Mission Amazonia (Markus Lehmann, Humming Games)

2-4 players, 40-60 minutes, for sale, MSRP: 55.00 €, price at the fair: 49.00 €

The Amazon rainforest holds ample amounts of both promise and concern: Promise, because of its unrivalled biodiversity and its potential to act as the earth’s largest natural carbon sink; concern, because both are being destroyed by the economic exploitation of the region. This is where players come in for Amazonia: They form a team of scientists, rangers, and activists to protect the animals and plants from poaching, illegal timber felling, and other environmental threats in the three Brazilian states (each with its own game board) of Amazonas, Rondônia, and Pará.The individual missions of this cooperative game can be played as one-shots or linked to form a campaign.

You can buy the game at the fair at a little discount – 49.00 € instead of the regular 55.00 €. There are English and German copies, as the German print run is larger, I advise you get to the Humming Games booth early if you want an English copy!

What are the games you are anticipating most eagerly? Let me know in the comments!

Road to Essen, a competition designed to showcase Vietnam’s burgeoning tabletop design scene at the world’s biggest board game fair, has returned for its second year – with organisers changing things up in the hope of helping turn publisher interest into commercial deals.

The contest was launched last year by Vietnamese board game publisher Everjoy Publishing and its global arm Everjoy Global, in an attempt to help designs from Vietnamese creators break out internationally.

Entrants receive access to workshops and playtesting, while later-stage contestants receive mentoring and jury feedback, with selected games ultimately presented to the international industry at the giant Spiel Essen board game fair in Germany.

Thinh LeHuu’s co-operative card game July, themed around Vietnam’s seventh lunar month and its Hungry Ghost festival, was named the inaugural champion last year from about 160 entries – winning over a judging panel that included Cascadia designer Randy Flynn with its “clever gameplay, polished design and cultural message”.

The 2026 competition is now under way with a theme of ‘Vietnamese Culture’, encouraging designers to draw on areas including the country’s history, legends, beliefs, festivals, folk arts, cuisine, crafts and architecture.

But there is a significant change to the timetable this time around: rather than taking the winner to Spiel just weeks after the competition concludes, organisers have scheduled their next international showcase for Spiel Essen 2027.

Claire Ton, head of the organising committee for Road to Essen 2026, told BoardGameWire, “It’s a deliberate decision to give the work its best possible shot.

“A winner chosen in late 2026 can’t have a polished, publisher‑ready game on the Essen floor a few weeks later – and a rushed debut serves the designer least of all.

“Aiming this edition at SPIEL 2027 gives the winning team close to a full year to develop the game, act on the judges’ feedback, line up a publishing or distribution partner, and arrive ready to actually do business.

“It also lets us plan the Vietnamese presence at the fair properly. Getting a Vietnamese game to Essen was never really the goal – getting it there ready to sell is.”

The extra development period addresses one of the main barriers Road to Essen was created to tackle: getting games from Vietnam’s rapidly-growing community of local designers into a form that can be presented effectively to publishers and distributors outside the country.

Everjoy Global co-founder and CEO Ionah Nguyen told BoardGameWire in 2025 that Vietnam had experienced a roughly 400% increase in locally-designed games entering its market in just two years – but said designers continued to face a lack of international publishing and distribution connections, language differences, unfamiliarity with global supply chains and the cost of attending overseas shows.

Almost a year later, Ton told BoardGameWire, “The first edition did exactly what a first edition should: it put Vietnamese design in front of the world and proved there’s real appetite for it.

“We brought the games to SPIEL Essen 2025 and the response was genuinely exciting – our winning title, July, drew particular attention.

“That interest is now powering the next stage. Most of our finalists are deep in development, sharpening their games with everything they took from our international judges and from the fair floor.

“We’re building deliberately for lasting outcomes rather than quick headlines – the first publishing deals to come out of Road to Essen should be the right ones, and we’d rather bring a title to market ready to succeed than rush it out early.

“There’s a lot moving beneath the surface, and the next year is where it starts to show.”

Ton added, “We’re in the relationship‑building phase, and it’s an encouraging one. A lot of conversations were sparked at Essen – publishers wanting to understand the scene, see what’s emerging from Vietnam, and stay close to what comes next.

“What’s promising is that this feels less like one‑off interest in a single title and more like the early groundwork of lasting partnerships, which is exactly what a young design ecosystem needs to grow.

“The titles generating the most conversation share a clear profile: culturally distinctive, visually striking, and easy to pick up and play. Our focus this year is turning that momentum into concrete meetings and, ultimately, deals.”

That intermediary role directly addresses one of the problems Nguyen identified when Road to Essen launched: many Vietnamese designers lacked direct connections to international publishers and distributors.

She told BoardGameWire last year, “There’s no shortage of creativity in Vietnam. What we lack are bridges.”

But there are signs outside the competition that Vietnamese designers are beginning to find international publishing routes.

Vietnamese designer Huy Pham’s Yotei has been picked up by Rebirth publisher Mighty Boards, which launched a Kickstarter for the game in April before demoing it at Gen Con this summer.

Meanwhile Bunny 100 – designed by Hoang Vo and originally published by Everjoy Publishing – has secured a European release through Italian publisher DV Games.

Those developments come as designers elsewhere in Asia have had a striking 12 months in achieving recognition in the European market.

Japanese designer Hisashi Hayashi’s Bomb Busters won the Spiel des Jahres in 2025, while Indonesian designer Martin Ang’s JinxO – published as Dito! in Germany by Game Factory – scooped the award this year, becoming the first Southeast Asian-designed game to win the prize.

Ton said Vietnamese games’ biggest sales numbers nevertheless remain overwhelmingly driven by the country’s domestic market rather than exports, telling BoardGameWire research suggested Vietnam’s board game market reached about $100m last year at a roughly 10% growth rate.

She said, “Importantly, more of that is original Vietnamese design rather than imports, supported by a fast‑growing creator community and better retail distribution.”

Several Vietnamese-designed games are now reporting sales in the tens or hundreds of thousands of copies – like Bunny 100, Zodiac Rush and Galactic Super Beasts – thanks to the snowballing domestic market.

Ton told BoardGameWire, “The vast majority of those numbers come from Vietnam itself – and I’d argue that’s the most important part of the story, not a limitation.

“It proves there’s a large, real domestic market here: a home audience big enough to make original Vietnamese design commercially viable on its own. That’s the foundation everything else is built on.

“Export is the newer chapter – Bunny 100 into Europe through DV Games and across several Asian markets – and it’s growing, but the headline sales figures today are a signal of domestic strength first.”

This year’s contest will have an overall prize pool of about 500 million Vietnamese Dong – roughly $20,000 – split between the winner and a set of other award finalists.

They include awards for fan favourite board game, best visual design, most innovative board games, the game with most commercial potential, and best cultural representation – as well as categories for best junior creator (aged six to 15) and outstanding teen designer (ages 15 to 18).

The submission period for this year’s awards end on November 15, with the grand prize winner receiving full sponsorship to attend Spiel Essen 2027, along with an exclusive publishing opportunity with Everjoy Publishing.

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