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!

Pandasaurus Games has heavily downsized its Spiel Essen booth this year, after finding it can still sell similar numbers of its hit games through Asmodee arm EPN while slashing its overheads and logistical workload.

The US publisher has 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 – 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 had run substantial booths at Spiel – the world’s biggest board game fair – for several years following the Covid-19 pandemic, but told BoardGameWire its experience using EPN last year persuaded it to heavily scale back its own footprint for the 2026 show in October.

CEO Nathan McNair said Pandasaurus previously spent more than €50,000 ($57,000) attending Spiel with its larger setup, compared to between $20,000 and $25,000 under its current model.

He said games Pandasaurus expects to be hits still sell similar numbers of copies – typically 300 to 500 – under the new setup – although added that Pandasaurus now receives roughly half as much revenue per sale.

“The revenue is lower because obviously EPN will get a portion of the proceeds, but our cost is so much lower that the overall cost to revenue ratio is very similar,” McNair said.

This year EPN will handle the company’s stock and sales operation and host three Pandasaurus demo tables within its booth, while the publisher’s own, smaller stand will be focused largely on meeting space and additional demos of upcoming games.

Titles being shown off by Pandasaurus this year include Alex Cutler design Sandcastles, Machi Koro: Life from Masao Suganuma and embroidery-focused card game Fadenfroh from Jordy Adan and Alexander Pfister.

McNair said, “The show is very expensive to get to and logistically trying to run a large booth half a world away is a lot. Running a show like GenCon is already a lot – but finding booth staff for the show when we need to staff 20 or more demo tables, stock games, sell games, figure out how to legally import/pay VAT/collect cash/deposit the cash in the US bank or get a correct license to take credit cards in Europe is a logistical nightmare.

“So, what we found is a way to more economically attend the show, get some marketing done, sell games to players, make sure we are demoing games and getting the meetings we need without having to spend €50,000 or more on the show itself.

“Our cost to attend with this model is roughly 1/3rd as much overhead, and while we make less per order when a game is sold our sales are actually just as strong, so players are still getting the games they want – we come close enough to ‘breaking even’ and it’s just a lot less work for us.”

McNair said US publishers “typically have a smaller footprint in continental Europe than we like to think”, and questioned the need for some English-language publishers to operate such large stands at Spiel.

“A lot of us run booths but I find it a bit strange given our limited sales in the region that so many have large booths,” he said.

“Some of course do sell and distribute in German (or other languages) themselves so that makes more sense – but for English only US publishers continental Europe isn’t our core market.

“If you look at US trade shows for the most part the only European companies with booths tend to be those that sell themselves in the US.”

He added, “I don’t want to tell other folks how to run their business and I’m a big believer that the folks with larger booths probably know more about their situation than me – so they may have found that this is really effective for them.

“I would absolutely prefer this model – it’s just a lot less work – besides the money difference I mentioned has taken the workload of prep and running the show to a fraction of what it was to try and run a larger booth in Germany.”

Pandasaurus’ decision to cut back on the size of its booth comes as Spiel itself continues to move in the opposite direction – with an expansion into all eight main halls at the Messe Essen exhibition centre for the first time expected to see the event challenge its record 220,000 attendance set last year.

Spiel said earlier this year that it had reached the reached the limits of its expansion at its long-time home after boosting floor space to 81,200 sq m – larger than 15 American football fields – amid what it called “overwhelming interest” from exhibitors.

Merz Verlag said demand for the additional space was coming both from existing exhibitors wanting significantly larger stands and an unusually high number of first-time exhibitors, with all available stands booked before the April 30 registration deadline.

And Pandasaurus’ smaller presence does not mean it sees less value in attending, according to McNair.

He said, “For me I really like to focus on meetings, seeing friends, trying to check out some games and building awareness of the new titles at the show – and I think the setup we have works really well for just that at a much lower lift,” he said.

“Essen is a much more international show in a lot of ways than most other board game conventions, so we know there are fans there who want to check out our new games really badly and I want to make sure they can – but if I can do it in a way that is less work and less risk for us I prefer that strongly.”

Spiel Essen 2026 takes place at Messe Essen from October 22 to 25.

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Spiel Essen has launched a dedicated B2B matchmaking system aimed at helping publishers, designers, retailers and other industry professionals find potential business partners and arrange meetings before arriving at the world’s biggest board game fair.

The new service, which is restricted to exhibitors and people with business visitor tickets, lets users create profiles detailing what they are looking for and what they can offer, send specific business inquiries, connect via chat and schedule appointments at the show using the built-in calendar.

Spiel said today that the system will be integrated directly into its dedicated app, adding that the move is intended to make networking between trade visitors, professionals and publishers “more targeted, simple, and effective”.

Business has long been an important part of Spiel despite its status as a public-facing convention, with major publishers operating their own dedicated B2B areas for meetings with retailers and other industry professionals.

B2B-specific companies such as manufacturers, crowdfunding services and trade organisations were still scattered across various halls in 2019, but that situation began to change after Spiel was taken over in 2022 by Merz Verlag – whose core event, Spielwarenmesse, is one of the world’s biggest B2B toy trade fairs.

Those companies began to be more concentrated in Hall 4 during the 2022 event – a move which intensified the following year amid a major reorganisation of the halls which attempted to more obviously split the fair into themed segments such as children’s games, family and light-to-medium games, expert games, tabletop and miniature games, roleplaying games and TCGs.

Florian Hess, managing director of Merz Verlag, said after last year’s record-breaking Spiel, “For exhibitors at the fair the focus is also on the joy of the games. At the same time, an incredible number of effective business developments emerge here – and this happens naturally alongside everything else.

“I don’t know of any other event that is as strong a springboard for a business’s launch as Spiel. I have met exhibitors who started here a few years ago with a small booth and are now occupying several hundred square meters and selling games internationally.

“Experiencing this kind of B2B rocket launch never ceases to fascinate me.”

The new system arrives as Spiel prepares for its biggest-ever event from October 22 to 25 this year – with an expansion into all eight main halls at the Messe Essen exhibition centre for the first time expected to see the event challenge its record 220,000 attendance set last year.

Spiel said earlier this year that it had reached the reached the limits of its expansion at its long-time home after boosting floor space to 81,200 sq m – larger than 15 American football fields – amid what it called “overwhelming interest” from exhibitors.

But despite the show bumping against its space limits at its long-time home, a Merz Verlag spokesperson told BoardGameWire in March, “We love Essen – as a venue and the city – and have no intention of leaving. For the foreseeable future SPIEL will remain in Essen as it has for more than 40 years now.”

The fair’s expansion into a seventh hall last year helped the four-day show to its record 220,000 attendance, outstripping the 209,000 visitor record it set just before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Spiel might have broken its attendance record in 2024 were it not for a self-imposed visitor cap, which limited the number of attendees each day to about 50,000 – a measure introduced alongside wider aisles post-pandemic to help visitors move around the often crowded halls more easily.

More than 920 exhibitors from 53 countries are expected at this year’s event, with Merz Verlag saying in March that demand had come both from long-term exhibitors keen to “significantly increase” their booth space, as well as an “impressive number” of first-time exhibitors hoping to attend this year.

About half of the available tickets for Thursday, Friday and Saturday have already been sold, seven weeks before the show opens, with Sunday sales currently “lagging slightly behind”, the show announced today.

Access to the matchmaking platform comes as part of Spiel’s €46 business visitor ticket, which compares with €25 for a standard adult day ticket.

Spiel Essen 2026 takes place at Messe Essen from October 22 to 25.

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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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The Tabletop Game Designers Association has begun scoring and comparing the standard contracts board game publishers offer to designers, with the aim of improving how game creators are treated and paid.

TTGDA’s inaugural review of contracts from more than 50 board game publishers found “several critical areas where many standard publishing agreements fall short of fair practices”, such as 75% of publishers retaining rights to a game’s name after publication agreements end, and 40% able to develop expansions without consulting the original designer.

TTGDA – a professional organisation launched in 2024 to advocate for tabletop game creators in North America – has spent the last year creating what it calls its Contract Scoring Rubric, which assesses publisher contracts against 110 criteria covering advances, royalties, intellectual property, expansion rights and financial transparency.

While individual scores are available only to TTGDA members, the organisation has published industry-wide findings and identified its five highest-scoring publishers – adding that the benchmarking exercise had already prompted changes from publishers who scored less well.

TTGDA said several publishers have revised their standard contracts after receiving feedback during the review process, with some improving their scores by more than 20 points prior to the report being published.

The professional organisation identified 25th Century Games, Fireside Games, Lunarpunk Games, Plaid Hat Games and UP Games as the highest-scoring publishers (in alphabetical order) in its review – adding that the benchmark was intended to help designers negotiate stronger agreements rather than discourage them from working with particular companies.

TTGDA’s inaugural Tabletop Market Contract Analysis report stated, “There is still a wide disparity from publishing contract to publishing contract, and key clauses we believe should be standard are not included in many of them.

“Unfortunately, many first-time game designers are so excited to receive an offer they accept terms that may cause them serious creative and financial issues in the future.

“We encourage all designers, even those signing a game publishing agreement for the first time, to negotiate confidently for their contracts to guarantee fair payment, a formal say in the final presentation of their work, solid protection of intellectual property rights, and control of their names and likenesses in publication and marketing.”

TTGDA pointed to five key takeaways in the report, alongside commentary about why the findings are important to designers. They were:

• Only two-thirds of publishers offer a baseline advance above the TTGDA-recommended minimum of $1,000. 20% don’t offer any advance at all
  TTGDA said, “The publisher should have some “skin in the game” at the start of the project. We have seen situations where the publisher doesn’t pay an advance and then doesn’t start on development or artwork on the game for years. An advance incentivizes the publisher to move toward publication. At least part of the advance should be non-returnable and can be considered minimum payment for the agreement, compensating the creator for tying up the work, even if the publisher ends up canceling the project.
  
  ● 40% of publishers can make expansions without consulting the designer
  TTGDA: “The game concept is the designer’s intellectual property. The designer had a vision for the game and should have the opportunity to design any expansions or sequels, both for creative and financial reasons.
  
  ● 10% of publishers have unusual deductions to revenue before calculating revenue, such as manufacturing or marketing expenses.
  TTGDA: “These types of deductions are very difficult for designers to predict, track, and audit. They leave too much room for the publisher to manipulate figures and unfairly reduce royalties paid.
  
  ● One third of publishers do not allow designers to audit their books.
  TTGDA: “Audits are rare, but they’re an important protection. Without the right to an accounting review of the publisher’s records, the designer has little recourse if they believe they are being underpaid, other than resorting to a lawsuit, which can be lengthy and costly.”
  
  ● 75% of publishers hold onto the rights to the game name, even after the licensing
  agreement ends.
  TTGDA: “If the game gains any level of popularity, the designer being able to pitch the work to a new publisher under the same name will make it a much easier sale. Authors do not give up the titles to their books when they publish them, even if the publisher helped them retitle. The same should be true with game designs.”

The analysis also suggests designers often have limited approvals on the final product which bears their name.

None of the publisher contracts reviewed gave designers final approval over artwork or graphic design, while just 38% guaranteed designers the right to review production-ready files before manufacturing.

Only 10% allowed designers to remove their name from a game if they disagreed with creative decisions made during development.

TTGDA’s scoring rubric project was initiated over a year ago by its contract and grievance committee, consisting of industry veterans Geoff Engelstein, Elizabeth Hargrave, Matt Leacock, and James Lowder.

Engelstein, president and co-founder of TTGDA, said, “These results are not a call to avoid specific publishers. Rather they are a tool for designers to negotiate terms that include fair payment, intellectual property protection, and a meaningful role in the final product.”

TTGDA vice president Sen-Foong Lim added, “Our intention is to shine a light on these industry practices and lead to more equitable standards.”

The organisation added that it would be releasing model contracts which adhere to the criteria established in its scoring rubric, to help designers and publishers work towards more equitable deals.

It also plans to release semi-annual updates to the Tabletop Market Contract Analysis as more contracts are reviewed and publishers revise their standard agreements.

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Before the fall fair and convention circuit is coming to an end, I had the opportunity to attend Süddeutsche Spielemesse (Southern German Game Fair) in Stuttgart. As when I went last time, it was a pleasant, laid-back experience.

The game fair is part of a conglomerate of hobby and leisure related fairs which are all held over the same long weekend in neighboring fair halls. As the ticket covers all fairs, you are free to explore everything. That’s great if you go as a group or family with differing interests: Your creative-minded daughter can get all inspired at the arts & crafts fair, your animal-loving son will try to make friends with the cats, rabbits, and camels at the animal fair, your gourmet spouse samples their way through the food fair, and then everybody meets at the game fair because you all love board games. Right?

With that setup, Süddeutsche Spielemesse’s target audience is broad, from the hobbyist to the very casual gamer. Consequently, you’ll find a lot of games outside of the hobby board game niche – from classics like chess and go over sports games to role-playing games. The exhibitors are usually either vendors (game test opportunities are rare), clubs looking for new members (like many of the role-playing clubs), or, my favorite, the big gaming island run in the middle where you can just borrow a game and play it free of charge which gives Süddeutsche Spielemesse a certain convention feel.

At this point, it is tradition that the gaming island remains open until 10pm on Friday, allowing for a beautiful evening of gaming. I met with a friend there and we played three different two-player games:

Rival Cities (Andreas Steding, Pegasus)

Northern German cities Hamburg and Altona try to outdo each other – yet while the usual victory point collecting occurs, these only matter if the game runs its full seven rounds. And it is much more likely that one of the cities will decisively outdo the other in one of the four areas of competition (alliances, ships, lawsuits, and prestige) and score an instant victory. With such a plethora of instant victory conditions, you will always feel the thrill of chasing one yourself and being threatened with another by your opponent.

In our game, we both started conservatively, getting a little bit of everything. Then my friend made a play for the alliances and was only one of them short of victory… but I could stave off defeat and counter-punch with ship dominance. I guess more experienced players would be at each other’s throat from the get-go which should make for exciting gaming and high replayability (at a very moderate complexity).

Solstis (Bruno Cathala/Corentin Lebral, Frosted Games)

Two players chart their path up a mountain built from a shared supply of tiles, each of which has a unique combination of a color (indicating its row) and number (indicating its file). Thus, you always know that a tile you took cannot be accessed by your opponent – and vice versa. This kind of very abstract game with almost-perfect information is usually not up my alley, and Solstis proved no different. We were both unenthused by its mix of logical planning and high randomness in the rare case of placing a nature spirit. However, each play only took 10 minutes, so we didn’t spend much time to gain the valuable knowledge of what’s not our jam.

Agent Avenue (Christian Kudahl/Laura Kudahl, Nerdlab Games)

Maybe our highlight of the fair: Agent Avenue pits its two players against each other as retired secret agents trying to catch each other. To unveil the other’s identity, they enlist their suburban neighbors, all of which are anthropomorphic animals, from daredevil wolves over codebreaker owls to double agent vixens. The recruitment comes by “I cut, you choose” – but as one of the two cards the active player offers to their opponent is face-up, the other face-down, there is a spy-appropriate amount of bluffing and deduction. Pair this with a varied, but not overwhelming amount of instant victory/defeat conditions and card effects, and you have a light, but tense contest which resolves in no time at all (we played three times in 40 minutes).

Any games of these that sound like your cup of tea? Have you attended any cool local conventions or fairs recently? Let me know in the comments!

Nine score and seven weeks ago, I have inaugurated a new irregular series on my blog assessing the merits of UK prime ministers (illustrated through the lens of a single board game each). The rating system seemed robust enough to apply it to other countries/leaders (at least if they are more or less democratic). Thus, we branched out to American presidents, German chancellors, and even a German president. Today’s subject is another US president – Abraham Lincoln, our first rated subject from the 19^th century. And which game could be more appropriate for him than the first real political-military game of the American Civil War – For the People (Mark Herman, GMT Games)?

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?

Lincoln’s Life

Beginnings on the Frontier

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, as the son of Kentucky frontier farmers. The family moved around often during his childhood – first to Indiana, then Illinois. Lincoln received little formal education. He worked on his father’s farm and as a hired laborer from his youth on. However, he loved reading and yearned to escape physical labor by self-improvement – thus, he jumped at the chance to work as a store clerk (and later, store owner), postmaster, and, finally, taught himself law from books and passed the bar to practice as a lawyer.

Lincoln ran for the Illinois state legislature in 1832 and was narrowly defeated – as he proudly noted later, it was his only defeat in a popular election. Two years later, he was successful. During his eight years in the state house, Lincoln focused on supporting the infrastructural development of the state – railroads, canals, and the state bank to finance these projects.

The dominance of the Democratic Party in Illinois left little room for Whigs like Lincoln to be elected to national office. Lincoln thus waited until it was his turn in the Whig party candidate rotation to try for the US House of Representatives in 1846. Lincoln went to Washington where he attacked Democratic president James K. Polk’s war against Mexico. The Whig rotation meant that he could not run for re-election. Lincoln resumed his law practice and gloomily assumed his political career was over.

Lincoln vs. the Expansion of Slavery

The Mexican-American War ended in a resounding success for the United States – and in an expansion of slave-holding territory in the south which upended the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Instead of being bottled up in the south, slavery now seemed on the advance. The proponents of the “peculiar institution” saw their chance to export it to the territories, new states, and enforce their customs in the free states of the north as well. The possible expansion of slavery electrified its opponents as well, and the territories in the west – especially Kansas – soon became embroiled in a violent struggle over their status as slave-holding or free.

Lincoln was elected to the Illinois state legislature again in 1854, but declined to take his seat to stand for election to the US Senate (then elected by state legislatures). As he failed to obtain a majority, he struck a pact with anti-slavery Democrat Lyman Trumbull and had him elected on a cross-party coalition of Whigs and Trumbull’s small faction of anti-slavery Democrats. A political re-alignment was near.

When the new Republican Party formed, united in its opposition to slavery, Lincoln abandoned the sinking ship of the Whig Party. He stood again for election to the US Senate in 1858, this time against Democratic heavyweight Stephen A. Douglas who had made his fame as the evangelist of “popular sovereignty” – the position that the federal government should neither allow the expansion of slavery to the new states and territories nor ban it, and instead leave the decision to be decided in local referenda. Lincoln followed the immensely popular Douglas on his campaign trail and got him to stand in a series of debates against Lincoln. While Lincoln lost the Senate election once more, the debates elevated him to national standing as a moderate opponent of slavery with great intellectual and rhetorical capabilities.

Elected by the People

Lincoln’s moderate stance – he opposed the expansion of slavery, but did not call for its abolition in the slave states of the American South – was a liability in the new Republican Party if they just wanted to make a statement for their supporters. Yet when the dominant Democratic Party which had won six of the last eight presidential elections fractured over the question of slavery (Douglas’s platform of Popular Sovereignty gained a majority, but not the required two thirds of the delegates; the southern proponents of federal enforcement of slavery outside of the South bolted from the Democratic convention and nominated John C. Breckinridge as their own candidate), it became an asset – for the Republicans now played for victory. Lincoln was nominated as the Republican candidate, beating the party’s more radical heavyweights such as Governor Salmon P. Chase (Ohio) or Senator William H. Seward (New York). As the pro-slavery field fractured even further (John Bell ran as the candidate as the Constitutional Union Party which had the same views on slavery as the southern Democrats, but opposed their flirt with secession), the Republicans were suddenly the frontrunners. While Lincoln only won 40% of the popular vote in the election of November 6, 1860, he was ahead in all the populous free states of the north which gave him an easy victory in the electoral college (180 of 303 votes). John Bell had carried three states for 39 electoral votes with only 13% of the popular vote; Stephen Douglas only 12 electoral votes even though his 29% of the popular vote placed him second behind Lincoln. Yet he had been crushed in the north by Lincoln, and in the south by John Breckinridge who had only received 18% of the popular vote, but carried eleven slave-holding states in the south for 72 electoral votes.

Lincoln was only a moderate opponent of slavery, but that was still likely to mean that he would end the federal practice to enforce slavery in the new states and territories as well as the free states (as when fugitive slaves were returned from the free states to their erstwhile masters). That thought put southern slaveholders in a frenzy. South Carolina declared its secession from the United States on December 20, 1860. Six other states followed suit in the next weeks. The seven proclaimed a new country, the Confederate States of America, on February 4, 1861 – one month before Lincoln had even taken office.

Any attempts to save the Union before Lincoln’s accession failed. Lincoln himself made a conscious effort not to provoke the southerners, he was also fiercely aware that their position was that of a political minority, having just been soundly defeated by the electorate, and that he could not act “as if I repented for the crime of having been elected, and was anxious to apologize and beg forgiveness.” Constitutional Unionist Senator John C. Crittenden proposed to enshrine slavery in the US constitution to allay the fears of the slavers. These constitutional amendments could not gain a majority in Congress, as the Republicans were unwilling to use their electoral victory to enact their defeated opponent’s platform, and the southern Democrats were bent on secession.

Entering the White House, Lincoln found a mess. His predecessor James Buchanan, a pro-slavery Democrat, had done nothing to prevent secession or reign in the secessionists. Parts of his administration had even helped the secessionists before their terms in office ended. Lincoln himself dared not act to boldly to quash the secession as he (falsely) believed that the majority of southern whites supported the Union and would rise up against the secession. As that did not happen, the only committed Unionists in the South were representatives of federal institutions – most notably, the army. The secessionists seized army installations, where they could, and sieged them, where they couldn’t: The shots fired at Fort Sumter, a fort in the harbor of Charleston (South Carolina) which its commander refused to hand over to the secessionists, marked the beginning of armed insurrection to the United States – the American Civil War. Encouraged by the brazen action further south, four more states (including the all-important Virginia) joined the Confederacy.

Limited War to Save the Union

Lincoln now walked a dangerous tightrope. The secession could only be put down by military force, but he needed to apply it in a way which would not make the Union look the aggressor lest the slave states which were still in the Union (Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland) seceded as well. Lincoln managed these border states with a deft hand. In Missouri, the local unionists and the US forces overcame the secessionists. Lincoln left Kentucky deliberately alone until a Confederate invasion swayed the state in favor of the Union (and US forces defended it against the Confederacy). Maryland, the most crucial of the three for its position (it provided the only connection of Washington, D.C., to the rest of the Union), was put under tight control by the US military. Lincoln dispensed with the writ of Habeas Corpus to allow for a more effective control of secessionists there.

With the border states secured, the Union needed to put down the Confederacy. That proved to be a daunting task: While the Confederacy was far inferior in terms of manpower and industrial production, it only needed to hold out long enough for the war to become so unpopular in the North that the Union would seek a negotiated end to it. The Union, on the other hand, had to force the Confederacy into surrender by destroying its armies and taking its territory. This asymmetry is reflected in the victory conditions of For the People: The Union player can only win (the campaign game) by dragging Confederate Strategic Will all the way down from 100 to 0. The Confederate player, on the other hand, has other avenues of victory: Having more than twice the Strategic Will of the Union player will do, as will lowering Union Strategic Will under 50 in fall of 1864 – when Lincoln would be up for re-election.

Lincoln was thus on a timer. The Union needed to win decisively, and soon. Yet the first offensive toward the Confederate capital Richmond (Virginia) was repelled. Lincoln consequently approved a massive expansion of the army, the naval blockade of the south, and a multi-pronged approach into the Confederacy (not only in the east, but also through Kentucky and along the Mississippi River) – preparations for a long war.

Lincoln studiously avoided any infractions against slavery in the early phase of the war (and when his generals, such as 1856 Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont, overstepped their authority in that regard, sacked them). Yet as no southern Unionist movement arose to challenge the Confederacy, Lincoln’s belief in the unionist leanings of the white Southerners dwindled. By 1862, he had grown convinced that the still undecided war had broken out to serve a larger purpose – the end of slavery. Thus, he slowly racked up anti-slavery measures. Slaves taken from Confederate owners were treated as contraband of war, not to be returned. Slavery was abolished in D.C. (with the former slaveowners compensated), and banned in the territories. And by late 1862, Lincoln had changed his views on the relationship between slavery and the Union altogether: He no longer thought that respecting slavery would convince the South to re-join the Union, but that attacking slavery would weaken the Confederacy internally and sap its external sources of support and would thus help to end the war and restore the Union.

Total War: Emancipation and Union

A more sweeping statement on slavery was thus necessary. With one military disappointment after another (excepting Ulysses S. Grant’s victories in the west), it would look like an act of desperation, though. Lincoln needed a success. The marginal Union victory in the battle of Antietam (which repelled a Confederate offensive on Union territory) on September 17, 1862, was as good as it would get – and so Lincoln proclaimed that the insurgent states had until January 1, 1863, to re-join the Union. Otherwise, all slaves living in states in rebellion would be freed. Of course, that had no immediate effects – after all, the thus emancipated slaves were in territories under Confederate control – but it forced the Confederacy to increase the effort to keep their slaves from running, and it effectively precluded the European powers Britain and France (pro-Confederate from the point of view of their economies and power politics, but strictly anti-slavery) to recognize the Confederacy.

The Emancipation Proclamation is a crucial event in For the People as well (which sets the game apart from earlier Civil War games, which focused almost exclusively on the movement of armies and made at best cursory references to slavery). It is one of the very few mandatory events – if the conditions are met (a Union battle victory), it must be played for the event. While it lowers the Strategic Will of the Union (reflecting the unwillingness of many northerners to fight a war for the Black people of the South), it hurts the Confederacy much more – not only in terms of Strategic Will (a further penalty will be applied henceforth every round), but also by removing some military forces (which, presumably, either are kept back to guard plantations, or cannot be supplied anymore as the fleeing slaves shrink the southern economy).

Lincoln was also done with his earlier attempt at limited war in another respect: US forces in the crucial eastern theater had been commanded by General George B. McClellan since July 1861. McClellan had mishandled them at almost every opportunity, and even when he succeeded (such as Antietam), he squandered his advantage by failing to pursue. Even his political value to Lincoln – McClellan was a high-profile Democrat – could not save him now. Lincoln sacked him, continuing his search for a general who would act aggressively, deliver battle to the Confederacy, and victory to the Union – going in succession through Ambrose Burnside, Joe Hooker, and George G. Meade.

Sacking McClellan is something that a Union player at For the People might also want to do – while McClellan’s battle rating of 0-2 (offense/defense) is not too bad, his strategy rating of 3 means his forces can only be moved when spending a powerful 3-value card – bad for any US president who means to go on the offensive! Yet McClellan’s high political value (10) makes it painful for the player to relieve him of his command, as it will incur a steep Strategic Will penalty.

1863 would mark the turning point of the war. The Confederacy meant to undermine Union morale by another large-scale incursion into Union territory. On July 1, 1863, the Confederate and Union main armies clashed at Gettysburg. After three days of bloody battle, the Confederacy retreated. One day later, Grant took Vicksburg (Mississippi) and thus put the entire Mississippi River under Union control, cutting the Confederacy in half.

Yet the war remained unpopular in the North. Only two weeks after the victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, riots against the draft broke out in New York. Lincoln had the draft momentarily suspended and quietly resumed a month later.

With only one more year until the presidential election, time was running out for Lincoln. The Democratic Party of the North, always split between the supporters of the war to re-establish the Union and its opponents, adopted a pro-peace platform… and selected George McClellan, whose incompetence had done so much to prolong the war, as their candidate. Lincoln had no problem securing his nomination (his control of the Republican Party was by now complete) and left it to the convention to select his running mate. They opted for Andrew Johnson, a Democrat who supported the war.

Political and Military Victory

If the Union did not win great victories in 1864, Lincoln’s chances for re-election were slim. Yet there were reasons to be optimistic: Lincoln had placed Grant in command of the eastern theater, whereas Grant’s former subordinate William T. Sherman now headed the forces in Tennessee, ready to invade Georgia. Grant slowly wore down the Confederate forces in Virginia which could not bear the attrition. In the meantime, Sherman had taken Atlanta – a psychologically invaluable success which shifted the electorate’s mood in Lincoln’s favor – and marched on Savannah. Lincoln was re-elected with 55% of the popular vote and 212 of 233 electoral votes.

Now the great tasks of restoring the Union and abolishing slavery had to be brought to conclusion. While Grant and Sherman kept advancing, Lincoln worked to turn emancipation from a wartime measure to a constitutional right: The 13^th Amendment would end slavery in the United States. The amendment showed not only Lincoln’s acumen in dealing with Congress, but also how much the country had changed – Lincoln had lost the 1858 Senate election on a much more moderate position than what was now to become part of the US Constitution. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln interpreted the war as a punishment for the nation’s original sin of slavery, but expressed hope for the nation to move forward together.

The Confederacy collapsed under Grant’s and Sherman’s campaigns. Confederate General in Chief of the Armies, Robert E. Lee, surrendered on April 9, 1865, with other commanders following suit. The Reconstruction of the South with the eventual goal of its re-admission to the Union and the integration of the former slaves into American society were now Lincoln’s chief tasks. Yet before he could begin to deal with the requirements of peace, he was murdered by the Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865.

The Rating

Foreign policy

Lincoln left foreign policy largely to Secretary of State William H. Seward, yet intervened where necessary (for example, when the seizure of British mail ship Trent which carried Confederate envoys threatened to spark a crisis or even British intervention, Lincoln calmed the storm by releasing the envoys). He successfully forestalled foreign recognitions of the Confederacy (except by fellow slave-state Brazil), let alone military intervention on behalf of the Confederacy.

Domestic policy:

Lincoln recognized slavery as the chief obstacle to liberty in the United States. First tentatively, then boldly did he abolish the practice, resulting in the freedom of four million people. While he has been attacked for his alleged infractions on individual freedoms (most notably the suspension of Habeas Corpus), Lincoln used these measures in moderation. That Lincoln never even considered postponing the 1864 election (which he full well knew could end both his presidency and his policies) because of the war is the strongest testament to Lincoln’s deep respect for the rule of law.

Economic policy

Lincoln regarded economic policy as the prerogative of Congress and did not interfere with it. His own economic policy was concerned with the organization and financing of the war effort, in which he was largely successful (even though it must be said that the economic basis of the Union was much stronger than that of the Confederacy).

Vision

Lincoln’s vision of the United States was that of a country which was no longer “a house divided against itself.” While his own preference would have been to contain slavery and let it extinguish by itself in the South, the secession both enabled and required him to take firmer measures. Besides ending slavery, Lincoln laid the foundations during the Civil War for the United States to be a unified country, largely centrally administered, rather than a collection of individual states, and thus prepared the country’s 20^th century predominance. Not least of all, Lincoln’s unmatched rhetorical prowess allowed him to interpret political events in memorable language which shapes American thinking until today.

Pragmatism

Lincoln was a Washington outsider. Before his presidency, he had only spent two years in federal politics. Still, he quickly developed a productive working relationship with Congress and his cabinet – all the more remarkable as Lincoln’s Secretaries were not selected for their loyalty and subservience, but came from the heavyweights which had competed for the 1860 presidential nomination (including Secretary of the Treasure Chase and Secretary of State Seward). Lincoln’s legacy is remarkable as well: He established the nascent Republican Party as the dominant political force which would win twelve of the next 16 presidential elections.

Integrity

Lincoln respected the boundaries of his office and did not attempt to extend his influence into areas which were thought to be Congress’s province. The goodwill he extended to people of the most diverse backgrounds and convictions is legendary. Lincoln placed himself at the service of the Union – a nation he came to understand as larger than before, including four million heretofore disenfranchised slaves.

Overall

Abraham Lincoln faced challenges like no other American president. The secession and Civil War were both a struggle for survival of the United States against those who would not accept the democratic process and a moral crucible which would resolve the awkward question of slavery after 80 years of failed attempts to skirt it. Lincoln met these challenges head on and with resounding success. He jumps to the top of the ranking – and it’s not even close.

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. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
13. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

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

Further Reading

For an accessible biography of Lincoln, see Gienapp, William E.: Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America. A Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002.

For a “biography of the mind” of Lincoln, situating him in the intellectual currents of his time, see Guelzo, Allen C.: Lincoln. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009.

For an overview of how Civil War games treat the causes of the war, slavery, and emancipation, see Wallace, Alfred: The War in Cardboard and Ink. Fifty Years of Civil War Board Games, in: Kreiser Jr., Lawrence A./Allred, Randal: The Civil War in Popular Culture. Memory and Meaning, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 2014, pp. 175—89.