by W. Eric Martin

On May 30, 2025, CMON announced that Tabletop Tycoon had acquired several lines of games from CMON, specifically Blood Rage, Rising Sun, Ankh: Gods of Egypt, Arcadia Quest, and Starcadia Quest — news that Tabletop Tycoon had itself revealed two days earlier.

What's more, in that post CMON wrote, "We've also found a new home for another original CMON IP, and will share those details in the near future along with an announcement from the new owner."

The future is now as on June 10, 2025, asmodee announced that it has acquired "the iconic Zombicide IP". From its press release:

Mmmmm, value-accretive M&A strategy — words that get every gamer's heart racing.

I mean, I get it. Companies are going to do their thing and acquire product lines and other companies in order to further their growth — but it's amusing to see comments about reinforcing "our presence in key geographies" and speculating on "what's coming next for this fantastic IP" when just one week earlier asmodee — yes, the name is lower case now except when leading a sentence — announced that for its 30th anniversary it was reintroducing itself "as a vibrant and visible consumer-focused brand, inspired by its players".

That June 3, 2025 press release quotes Kœgler as follows: "During our 30-year journey in the tabletop games industry, our brand hasn't always been visible to players themselves. With this brand evolution, we aim to change that — making asmodee a name that's recognized, trusted, loved, and sought out by players around the world." I'm not sure it's possible to square a statement like this one with the June 10 market-driven statement about Zombicide's acquistion, a statement meant to please investors in this now publicly listed company.

In some ways, Zombicide might be the perfect acquisition for asmodee given that some gamers liken asmodee to an all-consuming monster that grows unstoppably by feeding on others, incorporating their brains, and leaving devastation in their wake. Now the imagery to accompany that opinion is in place...

by W. Eric Martin

In Reiner Knizia's card game Money!, you get to play the role of a money-sorting robot that starts with a random assortment of currencies, silver, and gold and tries to shift things around the table until you have as few sets as possible. Beep boop!

Your robotic fantasy will be thwarted by the other money-sorting robots at the table as they have their own ideas of how they want to sort things. They might take what seemed optimal for you to collect, or they'll hold on to a critical bit of currency that would make your logic circuits cascade a splendid light shower in satisfaction. After all, Asimov's Laws don't prevent them from injuring you to their non-existent hearts' desire.

The challenge, however, comes in assessing what to collect, what others are collecting, what they're giving away in bids to make those collections, what hasn't yet been seen from the supply, and how desperate someone is to get item X. No correct answer can be assessed given all these variables and known unknowns, so you'll have to put aside the calculations at some point and take a chance on doing something stupid that might turn out to be the best idea ever — or just something stupid.

You'll only know once it's happened, then you can carry that knowledge into your next money-sorting event, at which time you'll discover that you still don't know what to do to optimize your holdings. Boo-ooo-ooo-oop.

Money! can be played by dictators as well, of course, and to do that you take two more sets of currency cards than the number of players — that is, 5-7 sets — shuffle them with all the silver and gold cards, then deal each player six cards. Each currency has nine cards comprised of values 20(x3), 30(x3), 40, 50, and 60, and if you collect at least 200 out of the total 300 in a currency, then the currency holds its value and is worth that many points. In effect, by fiat you have nationalized this currency to become of value in the country you rule, and therefore because you say it has value, it does.

Anyone who has less than 200 of a currency is on the outs with a monetary unit that they don't fully control, so that currency is worth face value minus 100, with a minimum value of 0. If you don't control it all, then it's rarely worth it to control even a part...except when you collect all of the 20s or 30s in a currency. If you do that, then a currency collector will take a picture of you to honor your ability to monopolize a denomination — currency collectors are strange like that — and that picture is worth 100 points.

Silver, on the other hand, is worth 10 "money" and gold 20 "money". You rarely care about these measly amounts, but unlike currencies, precious metals will always* hold their values at a 1:1 money-to-point ratio, so they're worth something at game's end no matter what.

(Note: This is not financial advice, but precious metals will not always hold their values. Given enough time, everything is worthless thanks to the awesome power of entropy.)

Should you collect three silver or three gold, those currency collectors will snap a pic of that as well: 100 points for you, unexplained internal satisfaction for them.

Non-dictatorial humans can also play Money!, and they'll be more welcome at your table since they're unlikely to have armed thugs on hand to enforce their dictates. Heck, they probably won't dictate at all since few people do that on the daily.

At the start of the game, you're staring at a motley assortment of money in hand, with perhaps only a single silver or gold being of innate* value — but the entirety of your hand is still worth something: potential. Yes, the individual currencies are worthless right now, but everyone at the table is filled with hope and will grant you potential value based on the numbers you hold.

What do you do with this potential value? Ideally transform it into actual value, just as potential energy can (in the right circumstances) live up to its promise and become actual energy.

The means to do this comes from an injection of capital by an abstract force that people know only as...The Market. Four cards are revealed from The Market in two lots, then everyone decides what they want to bid for one of those lots...or for something else, namely another player's as-yet-unrevealed bid.

The Market at work
The value of your bid is the sum of your cards' potential, and whoever reveals the largest bid can swap their bid for one of The Market lots or another player's bid...or they can return their bid to hand, which seems like they wasted everyone's time while revealing the contents of their hand, but this choice can be of use.

Let's look at a complete round of play for an example:

After seeing the lots, everyone has revealed their bids, with the player bidding 60 choosing first, taking the lot on the left and leaving their bid in its place.

In one sense that player spent 60 "money" to get 120 "money", so they doubled their holdings — but more importantly they grabbed two panda bills, which means they probably have one or more panda bills in hand already. Maybe not, though — maybe they just wanted to double their money to have increased bidding power in future rounds. Time will tell.

This player also doubled their money from 40 to 80, and they picked up three currencies and a silver, so who knows what they really wanted from that lot?

You can see similarities in this design to Knizia's Ra, which debuted in 1999, the same year as Money! In both games, you're often bidding on a mixed bag of stuff with part of it being of high interest to you and another part of it of high interest to someone else and little of it of interest to others. Those conflicting desires will often inspire players to bid more than they think a lot is "really" worth in order to ensure an opponent doesn't take it — yet with Money! nothing is permanently yours until the end of the game.

In this case, the player might care only for the yen fish, with the other cards destined to be sloughed off in future bids. You're unsorting the fruit salad to take only the pineapple; everything else will go back in the bowl to end up on someone else's plate.

Another doubling! Is this a pattern or by chance? One interesting element of this design is that player desire will drive the bidding. Sometimes multiple players will bid only 10 or 20, content to increase their bidding power, while at other times a player will throw every extraneous bill into a bid to ensure they get the one card they desperately need to hit that 200 value threshold.

From 20 to 30 is a small upgrade, but what you don't know is that this player has two other pound lions in hand, one of which is a 30, which means they're two-thirds of the way to a triple. Currently that's still worth 0 points, but the potential!

The potential keeps you invested in play, and you never know how that potential might be fulfilled. The other 30 lion is either in a hand or in the deck — and if in a hand, that player might never bid with the card if they know you really want it. Depends on how desperate that player gets to win a lot...

Along those lines, the last player picked up the 40 panda, possibly only because 40 > 20, but they might also be hoping to thwart the first-turn panda picker...or to later bid 40, and if the panda picker placed a giant bid of their own, the p.p. might choose to swap their bid for the 40, which means the 40-panda bidder would go next since they now have the largest bid in front of themselves. Instead of swapping those cards, they could choose to return the bid in their hand, effectively making a swap while taking the seemingly lame "return your bid to hand" option.

The challenge, of course, is that the player who wants the 40 panda never knows exactly when you might bid it, if ever. Do they keep throwing out high bids to hope to time things right? Or do they consider it gone and play on as if it doesn't exist? Additionally, the 40 panda might only appear in a future bid with, say, a 20 jaguar peso — and the peso collector snags that lot with a larger bid.

This tangling of desires is what makes Money! so appealing: Everyone cares (or at least should care) about what everyone else is doing because you're all impacting what's available to others and how currency shifts around the table. You can't win without taking other players into account — and even then you still might not win because humans are messy and our desires don't often line up in a way that satisfies everyone.

Finally, we've filled the market for the next round of bidding. Will the player who took the 30 lion throw a huge bid at those two lions? Who's looking for yen fish? Or perhaps the 60-value bull dollar? Two gold are great for bidding and nearly 100 points, so who's going for that?

The rounds continue until the deck runs out, then you have a final round of bidding, followed by scoring. After you play a few times, you get an instinct for whether you have a chance to win by looking at your hand and recalling what else you've seen change hands. If you end up with all nine bills in a currency, for example, that's 500 points on its own: 300 for the currency itself and 200 for each triple. Miss one 20, and you're down to 380, which is a steep drop for being one bill shy of a monopoly, but them's the breaks.

Speaking of which, knowing that someone is desperate to complete a set gives you a golden opportunity for when to ditch a card. If an opponent wants yen fish and you're sitting on a 20 to play keep away, then the final 20 yen fish hits the market, well, now's the time to bid with that 20 yen fish! The opponent can't take both, which means someone else will pick it up (if they need other cards in your bid) or it will end up in the market and be joined by other cards, which means competition, which means the opponent needs to bid heavily (again) to get that card they desperately need.

After all, whatever you bid, you're giving up cards that someone else most likely wants, so you need to figure out how to give without an opponent actually profiting in the process. Ideally you can bid one card desired by one opponent and another card by another so that either one card stays away from the player who wants it or both cards end up in the market to force higher bidding next round.

I've played Money! more than a dozen times over the years, including twice on a review copy from Allplay, which will release a new edition on the U.S. market in June 2025. As with many Knizia designs, the rules are minimal and unfussy — aside from the 0-value bluff card that I whine about in the video below — but having a clear idea of the actions and the goal doesn't mean you'll be able to carry off a plan to succeed since each round brings new complications, both from the market and from your fellow players. Twenty-six years after its debut, I expect to see new editions of Money! for many decades to come...assuming that my robot parts don't break down in the meantime.

Youtube Video

by Wes Crawford

In this designer diary, I will attempt to answer the WHO, WHERE, WHY, WHAT, and HOW of Engine Thieves.

To understand the mechanisms of the game, it is imperative to understand the history. With that in mind, let's start off with the WHO:

WHO Is the Designer?

I am the designer. My name is Wes Crawford. I have been fortunate enough to have been interviewed by a number of historical board game media such as The Players Aid, Zilla Blitz, Aardwolf, and others, but otherwise you have never heard of me.

Well, a mere month ago my first game was released, a co-design with Ryan Heilman called The Pursuit of John Wilkes Booth, published by Blue Panther, LLC, so there is that. Otherwise, you may have heard me drumming somewhere since I quit an MBA program in 1980 and toured steadily until our daughter was born in 1992. Now I perform throughout the DC and Baltimore areas and beyond and teach about thirty students.

But that's not why I'm writing here. My gaming and design experience really started when I discovered Avalon Hill and SPI at around 11 years old. I designed games to get me through classes in high school and college when I didn't want to write a paper, never realizing that writing the rules alone takes longer than writing a research paper. When I went on the road with a band, I gave up gaming and designing for the most part until about 2018, although you may be one of the few that owns "The Rap-Along" cassette, "A Rhythmic Murder Mystery" DVD, "Rhythm Blox", or my "Drumset Play-Along DVD". I mark 2018 as the year I began designing non-music games. I attended my first gaming conference in 2022, and I presently have four games under contract. I have been fortunate in life to work only in the music and gaming fields for my living, and I am thankful every day.

WHO Is the Developer?

As I began working on Engine Thieves, I heard from a Facebook friend that he knew a gamer related to the Andrews Raid of 1862, a.k.a., "The Great Locomotive Chase". This led me to this man's cousin, Gregg Pittenger, from Ohio. His great-great uncle was raider William Pittenger, who wrote the book The Great Locomotive Chase in the 1880s. In 1956, Disney made it into a film, possibly the most historically accurate film they ever produced, which isn't saying a heck of a lot.

In 2021, I was attending a percussion convention in Indianapolis with 7,000 drummers — they make us promise not to all play at the same time — and Gregg drove over from Ohio to check out my earliest prototype. We played until 3:00 a.m. in a hotel lobby with drummers giving us strange looks. Gregg and I hit it off well, and I asked him to be my developer for the game. We have become friends ever since.

Oh, I should mention that Gregg has been a long-time gamer, was a Civil War re-enactor (appearing in two movies, including Gettysburg), and has lectured about The Great Locomotive Chase extensively. Now, how many other designers do you know who worked with a developer that had family in the event being gamed? I knew there would be no gamey representation of history with Gregg involved!

WHO Were the Raiders?

James Andrews was the very charismatic leader of the raiders. Andrews was a civilian double spy working for the Union who also made a lot of money smuggling for the Confederacy.

When Union General Mitchel suggested advancing on Confederate-held Chattanooga, Andrews proposed that if given 23 more volunteers dressed as civilians, he could lead them in small groups to Marietta, Georgia where they would board a train and act like they didn't know each other. Imagine twenty fighting-age men getting on a train and sitting together with no one talking to anyone... Then, at the first station, their plan was to steal the train when everyone else got off it to eat breakfast — and this is next to 3,500 encamped Confederate troops!

The game has a counter for each of the individual raiders with their picture on it. Some raiders were valuable engineers to drive the stolen train. Historically, two raiders overslept and two raiders were forced to enlist in the Confederacy near Chattanooga, but they can participate in the game under certain circumstances.

Raiders may survive the raid or become wounded, killed, captured, or hanged in the game. Nineteen of the raiders were awarded Medals of Honor after the raid and were the first soldiers to receive this award. In 2024, two more raiders were awarded the Medal of Honor, which necessitated a last-minute change in the rulebook since Medals of Honor may be earned in the game to help mitigate casualties! Andrews and another raider were civilians and were not eligible for a Medal of Honor. One raider was hanged, and no one ever proposed a posthumous Medal of Honor for him for some unknown reason.

WHO Were the Crazy, er, Determined Confederates who Chased the Stolen Train?

When "The General" (that is, the stolen train) pulled out of the station, the train's conductor (Fuller), foreman (Murphy), and Cain (engineer) gave chase on foot as nearby Confederate soldiers laughed! Historically, Fuller, Murphy, and Cain (F/M/C) doggedly pursued the raiders on foot, on a pole car (pump cars like you see in the movies had not yet been invented), and on various trains.

In the game, they feel a little like Terminators because they never give up! Is there a burned bridge ahead? No problem. They swim across it, with a die roll to see whether they drown. In the two-player version, they can commandeer horses on occasion. F/M/C are played by a bot in the solo version and are played by the Confederate player in the two-player version.

Now, on to the WHERE, and as always, for a historical game, the history must come first and the mechanisms must reflect this history.

WHERE Did This Raid Occur?

This Union raid behind Confederate lines took place throughout Northern Georgia. The game begins after 22 raiders, including leader James Andrews, have reached Marietta. Due to excessive rains further north, they are a day late.

Prequel game play may begin in Marietta where the raiders player may gather intelligence regarding train schedules and a few extra raiders, but with some risk involved. The action really begins after this phase in Big Shanty (now Kennesaw) where the raiders steal the train.

On the game board is a single railroad track running in a serpentine fashion from the bottom to the top. If this were a realistic map, that track would be running from roughly SE to NW in a much straighter line. If that layout would have been done for this game, the board would have been approximately 100" X 8" — not exactly practical for most game tables! Compromises must be made between game conception and game production.

In this game, the raiders must drive their stolen train from the first traversable station to the last, Bridgeport, in order to meet Gen. Mitchel and his Union forces. Along the way, bridges must be burned, telegraph lines cut, and track damaged for a Union victory. I want players to supremely FEEL the distance, so each movement space equals one mile.

(Since we're on location, so to speak, I thought I'd include photos from the B&O Railroad Museum's "Games With Trains" event earlier in 2025.)

WHERE Are the Important Features on the Game Board?

There are 23 stations along the single track. With their sidings, stations are the only locations where northbound and southbound trains may pass each other. There are three wood stations where trains may "fill up", but "emergency wood" may be gained by the raiders at any station (with risk of discovery), and the raiders may cannibalize a boxcar or two for meager wood, which they did historically.

The game board has four telegraph stations. If telegraph wires are not cut after each of these, a telegraph message may be sent northward with devastating effects on the raiders! Confederate combat units with unknown strength are found at most stations, making the raiders' presence there even more dangerous.

Finally, hilly and curvy dangerous track is often found along the route. If the raiders ever attempt to travel at "fast" speed over dangerous track, three D6 must be rolled, and if "boxcars" result (two 6s), the raiders' train derails, making short shrift of their perilous mission! It should be noted that the raiders must successfully bluff their way through Chattanooga, Gen. Mitchel's objective, on their way to Union lines, so this risky challenge waits for them even if they have done well so far in the game.

A Perhaps Humorous Story about WHERE This Raid Took Place...

Paul Laane is the fantastic artist for Engine Thieves. It so happens that he lives in Finland. His instructions were to design a board with trains during the American Civil War. His first iteration came back as a near fully tan board with cactus growing on it! It looked like a Western trails game in Nevada or something!

He quickly greened up the board to look like what you see now, and in his defense, if I were tasked with designing a board for a game that took place in Finland, it would probably be all white!

WHY Did I Design Engine Thieves?

It all started around 2012. My wife and I were browsing through Washington, DC's premier independent book store, Politics and Prose, and I happened upon a book on the American Civil War whose title I can't now remember.

I opened the book to a random page and was bewildered by what I read. It spoke of a Confederate raid on St. Albans, VT (VERMONT!!) where Confederate soldiers dressed as civilians crossed the border from Canada, entered St. Albans over the course of a week, sprang into action at a designated time, stole the 2025 equivalent of $4 million from local banks, attempted to set fire to structures (but were unsuccessful due in part to rain), and were chased by railroad workers. (Some of the largest railroad works were located in this town.)

I thought that this would make an exciting film, then I found a 1954 Van Heflin movie called The Raid that is pretty good, but deviates greatly from the actual history. Fast forward about seven years, after I got back into gaming and designing, and I began designing my own board game on this fascinating event, tentatively called "Yankee Scare Party: The 1864 Confederate Raid on St. Albans, VT". (This is an upcoming release by Compass Games.)

In 2020, I started wondering whether there was a similar Union raid that also consisted of about twenty raiders who dressed as civilians, traveled behind enemy lines, stole something of value, and were chased by railroad workers. Nah, that would be fairly impossible to find...then I remembered being about six years old, watching "The Wonderful World of Disney" on a Sunday night, sitting about 18" in front of our fuzzy black-and-white television, and wasn't there some show about a stolen train during the Civil War? I quickly traced that show down as a 1956 Disney movie called The Great Locomotive Chase.

I discovered William Pittengers' first-hand account book of the same name upon which the film was based, and Amazon suggested I should read Stealing the General by Russell Bonds, which seemed to collate information from several books on this subject quite well, while providing useful information like how many miles apart stations were from each other. (Time and space must be addressed in some manner in historical games.)

After reading these books, I still had questions about how trains behaved, train stations, and the like, and The Southern Museum in Kennesaw, GA was quite helpful — then I met Gregg Pittenger, who became the game's developer and of whom I spoke previously. For me, this is how life works. One can do something as normal as walk into a book store and, years later, two new games exist that did not before!

Actually, there did exist a spin-and-move game in 1959 that called itself Great Locomotive Race, but that seems to be predominantly a marketing tool for Lionel train sets. In my game, I promise that "The General" does not travel to "Lionelville"!

WHY Did the Union Raiders Attempt This Daring Raid?

General Mitchel's forces were stationed in mid-Tennessee while the focus of operations was further West. In fact, the battle at Shiloh had just recently occurred.

Agonizing over the pace of operations, Mitchel decided to stretch the mandate of his orders and advance towards Chattanooga. His main concern was that reinforcements and supplies could be obtained from Atlanta for Chattanooga's defense. When Andrews proposed his idea of a covert raid to destroy bridges, telegraph lines, and track connecting Atlanta with Chattanooga, then Mitchel decided the risks were minimized enough to move forward with his plan.

Unfortunately for all, the raiders failed in their mission, and Mitchel aborted his attack. Why was this all so significant? If Andrews' raiders had succeeded in their mission and if Mitchel had known this, Chattanooga would likely have fallen since it was not as strongly defended as Mitchel feared, and many of the Confederate soldiers there were inexperienced recruits. If Chattanooga had fallen, the South would have been cut in two, and Union forces could have advanced on Lee from a new direction via the railway to Lynchburg, VA, and beyond. Historians agree that the war may have ended as soon as a year later!

WHAT Happened during the Raid?

The first part of the raid went off without a hitch. When everyone left the train in Big Shanty to eat breakfast, no one seemed to notice or care that twenty military-aged men who had barely spoken a word on the trip so far stayed on the train.

With about 3,500 Confederate troops camped just next to the single track connecting Chattanooga and beyond, Andrews and the two engineers headed for the engine and the rest of the raiders detached the passenger cars and gathered inside one of the three boxcars. They pulled out of Big Shanty. Conductor Fuller, Foreman Murphy, and Engineer Cain (F/M/C) were eating breakfast when they saw "The General" leaving the station without them. They immediately gave chase on foot, while Confederate troops laughed at them!

The raiders pulled into Moon's Station, chatted with some railroad workers there, and were given a crowbar. The raiders were woefully unprepared; they had only revolvers on them, they had no combustibles besides what was on their train, and they did not carry any tools with which to tear up track. The crowbar would have to do, but did not accomplish an effective job later on. The raiders cut the telegraph line. Continuing, the raiders traveled through Etowah and noticed a small company engine on a siding that Andrews was not aware of. They decided no one could possibly use that small engine to chase them and it would be risky to stop and destroy it.

They were wrong.

Meanwhile, F/M/C reached Moon's Station on foot and commandeered a pole car to speed up their pursuit.

The raiders filled up with wood at Cass Station, where a talkative station master gave them an updated train schedule. The large station at Kingston was next. Several trains there were in their way, including "The William R. Smith", with more heading south to the station carrying red flags signifying more trains or danger ahead.

Andrews announced his usual cover story that theirs was a special train filled with emergency gunpowder headed to meet Gen. Beauregard. That story kept most workers away from the train, but barely sped up their progress. They were told they must wait for several other trains to reach the station before they could leave. After 75 fateful minutes, they sped away.

Meanwhile, F/M/C commandeered "The Yonah" in Etowah and gave chase, stopping in Cass Station to see what the talkative station master knew about the raiders on "The General". "The Yonah" sped on and reached Kingston as the raiders had just left. "The Yonah" was not fit for further pursuit, so F/M/C commandeered "The William R. Smith" and gathered troops for the chase.

The clock kept ticking as the raiders continued to cut telegraph wire and damage track. They attempted to burn bridges, but the rainy day made this difficult, and they were unsuccessful. They continued on through Adairsville, Calhoun...

"The William R. Smith" gave chase and came upon the damaged track, stopping them cold. F/M/C started running again. Before long, they flagged down "The Texas" heading south and explained the situation. They pursued the raiders driving backwards on the "The Texas".

The raiders reached the next wood station at Tilton. They hurriedly piled wood on to the tender but did not "fill up" because they heard the whistle of "The Texas" approaching in the distance. They sped off and raced through the large Dalton Station. F/M/C were on their heels.

Then two things happened simultaneously. Since Dalton was a telegraph station, the raiders stopped and cut the telegraph line. "The Texas" slowed down but did not stop in Dalton and a 17-year-old telegraph operator named Edward Henderson jumped off the train and sent a message to Chattanooga warning of the Union raiders and the stolen train. But which happened first? As the telegraph operator in Chattanooga was receiving the message, the line went dead when the raiders cut it. Enough of the message was received and understood, though, that a train was loaded with Confederate infantry in Chattanooga and headed south.

The raiders continued onward and passed through Tunnel Hill, a 1,477-foot tunnel that may have been a perfect ambush spot to attack the pursuers, but this opportunity was passed on. The pursuers moved cautiously through the tunnel and came out unscathed.

The raiders passed through Ringgold where Confederate cavalry were training. At this point, they were using anything flammable for fuel, having already cannibalized two boxcars for their wood. They had thrown rails and ties from the track they had damaged to try to slow down F/M/C, but to no avail.

About two miles past Ringgold, "The General" could go no farther. Andrews yelled, "Abandon train! Every man for himself!" because, again, there was no plan for abandoning the train. The raiders scattered. Their cover line had always been that they were from Flemingsburg, KY and that they were so upset about the "damn yankees" there that they were heading to Atlanta to enlist in the CSA. Once one raider used this line during capture, every other raider who used this story was recognized and captured. Indeed, all twenty raiders were captured within two weeks. Eight were hung. The rest eventually escaped or were traded during prisoner swaps. Nineteen Medals of Honor were subsequently awarded, and these soldiers were the first to receive this commendation. Two more Medals of Honor were awarded in 2024.

WHAT Does a Player Do during the Game?

Everything that happened during the story above is possible in the game, plus a lot more! What would happen if the raiders had stopped in Etowah, battled the Confederates there, and destroyed "The Yonah?" Try it and see.

The raiders moved rather slowly so as not to draw attention to themselves. (The average speed of trains on low quality Southern rails was about 15 mph!) What happens if they moved fast through stations and over dangerous track? Try it and see. What happens if Andrews uses up his persuasion (cubes) early in the game to assure there are no unsuccessful station challenges? Try it and see. What happens if the raiders move into small stations with guns blazing? Again, try it and see.

One thing is certain. If the raiders push their luck too far, it will catch up to them.

In the Two-Player Game, WHAT Can the CSA Player Do to Stop the Raiders?

At first, very little...unless the raiders blow some risky challenges. F/M/C will stop in each station and gain an event card, most of which are helpful for them. Don't use them too quickly, but rather wait for those opportune "gotcha" moments. In the meanwhile — and until F/M/C finally commandeer a train — play strategically with the southbound train schedule stacks and their trains in order to create the riskiest and most time-consuming environment for the raiders until F/M/C can catch up. Remember, you don't need a ticket to ride if you steal the train!

(Full disclosure: The raiders DID buy tickets to different destinations so as to not draw undue attention.)

Last, but certainly not least:

HOW Do You Play the Game?

In the solo and two-player modes, the raiders player must burn bridges, cut telegraph lines, damage track, eliminate CSA units (as possible and necessary), and reach Union forces in Bridgeport with the stolen train in order to win. That's a tall task! The Confederates, either as a bot or as an active player, will try to spoil these plans.

For solo play, the sequence of play is:
1. Play the desired reusable action cards (up to three) totaling no more than 15 minutes. Execute these actions in the order played.
2. Move Fuller, Murphy, and Cain (F/M/C) at their fastest possible pursuit.
3. If in combat, flip over one more CSA unit and fire again.
4. Roll to move southbound face-up activated trains, southernmost first.
5. Roll to move southbound face-down train schedule stacks (TSSs) in alphabetical order.
6. Advance the time track and note any designated events.

The action cards are the nucleus of gameplay. They must be chosen wisely and in their most productive order. The only modification allowed during card play is that the five-minute "Combat Attack" card may be substituted for any other card in the sequence. You can choose from 19 raider action cards. This game is very much a sandbox!

Combat utilizes a 6x6 matrix system. During a raiders round of combat, the raiders player throws two d6 (black and yellow) times the number of raiders divided by 5, rounding down. (One dice throw is still allowed when fewer than five raiders are left.) Cross reference the black d6 and the yellow d6 for the resulting "hits", if any. Rolling doubles signifies a tactical advantage and allows an extra roll. Since Confederates are in their own territory and lots of people may be near the station and flowing into the battle, a CSA unit is eliminated only if the hits incurred in a combat round equal or exceed the strength of the unit.

The combat system is similar to this, but not identical when the CSA unit fires. Roll one black d6, one yellow d6, and one red d6 times the combined CSA unit(s) strength divided by 5, with a minimum of one roll. This time, use the red d6 and look at the "hit effects" table to find out if the affected raiders were captured, wounded, or killed. All hits must be accounted for using the individual raider counters. Flip a wounded raider over to his "wounded" side. Victory points are not lost for wounded raiders, but they do not count for calculating the number of combat rolls.

If the raiders' train runs out of wood or if their situation looks hopeless, the raiders must abandon their train and roll two d6 on the escape table for individual raider outcomes.

There are two alternate scenarios from which to choose:

1. An "APR 11" scenario simulates what would have happened if the raid had been executed a day earlier, as originally planned. There would have been fewer raiders participating, but bridges would have been easier to burn on this sunny day.

2. In the "Historical" scenario, only the Marietta, Big Shanty, and Moon's Station cards that reflect actual history are used and the raiders may not stop in Etowah.

For two-player mode, the CSA has more control over the contents of their train schedule stacks and for placement of some CSA units.

For two-player mode, the sequence of play changes a bit:
1. Each player chooses exactly three of their desired reusable action cards totaling up to 15 minutes and plays them face down for their action sequence. A 15-minute card may be only in the third card position and a 10-minute card may be only in the second or third card position. Each player flips their first card face up. The card with the fewest minutes is played first. If tied, look at the small letter on the card and go in alphabetical order. If still tied, look at the alert level and if 1-5, the raiders player's card is played first; otherwise the CSA player's card is. Repeat for the second and third action cards.
2. Move Fuller, Murphy, and Cain (F/M/C) at their fastest possible pursuit. (This is actually part of Step 1 now using CSA action cards.)
3. If in combat, flip over one more CSA unit and fire again.
4. The CSA player moves ALL activated southbound trains.
5. The CSA player chooses up to two train schedule stacks and rolls to move them, or (in place of one or both moves) they may activate a train or two within a TSS.
5. Advance the time track and note any designated events.

In the two-player game, the CSA player draws an event card every time F/M/C end movement in a station. These are played as instructed. Some cards may help the raiders. Event cards add to the narrative of the game and include many historical anecdotes from the raid. They also help the CSA player stay in the game if the raiders get too far ahead.

When the raiders player damages track, cuts a telegraph wire, burns a bridge, or eliminates a CSA unit, they earn a number of Medal of Honor (MOH) tokens. These may be spent during combat, but only one per combat roll. For each spent MOH, the raiders player may change the pips on one combat die by one pip to change the hit results or hit effects. I feel this is a thematic and functional way to earn and spend Medals of Honor that were so significant as a consequence of this raid.

I can't think of many U.S. military actions as daring and interesting as the Andrews Railroad Raid. That it has only now been turned into a detailed game of strategy and cunning is honestly a mystery to me. Let us never forget that these were actual people involved, and some met sad and untimely deaths.

Still, I hope you have found this designer diary interesting, and I wish you doubles on your combat rolls and high numbers on your bridge burning attempts! Enjoy Engine Thieves!

by W. Eric Martin

Get ready for another round of "If you like game A, check out expansion A:#" and weigh in on whether you really want more for A — or just more A, if you get what I mean:

▪️ In a May 2025 newsletter, designer Elizabeth Hargrave notes that she's "finished the design work for the next Wingspan expansion, adding "It's going to be beautiful, and the latest round of playtesters all loved the twist it adds...but that's all I'll say for now."

In an early June 2025 newsletter, Stonemaier Games states that both a Wingspan and Finspan expansion are due out in early 2026, with a Wyrmspan expansion coming before the end of 2025.

▪️ Capstone Games has released the Age of Innovation: Faction Enhancement Pack, which Feuerland Spiele first released at SPIEL Essen 24 and which leans more toward being an accessory than an expansion.

This item tweaks three of the factions in Helge Ostertag's Age of Innovation, with the Moles, for example, now gaining 2 points, plus 1 point per player in the game instead of 4 points no matter the player count. As Capstone Games notes: "Casual players will not benefit from this Enhancement Pack." Yes, I can imagine needing many plays to feel the difference between these effects, which is similar to how cards in Innovation have been tweaked over the past fifteen years.

▪️ Paul Dennen and Dire Wolf are inviting players to dive deeper into Clank! Catacombs to discover Clank! Catacombs: Underworld, with the description not giving you much to go on aside from "this is more":

▪️ Rose Gauntlet Entertainment is crowdfunding a second printing of co-owner Isaac Vega's 2024 title Wild Gardens, with the new Foraging Club expansion adding four new playable characters, eight unique game-changing player abilities, and a new game mode.

▪️ Another company crowdfunding new expansions is Bézier Games, which has Maglev Maps: Volume 2, a six-pack of expansion packs for Ted Alspach's 2021 title Maglev Metro, on Kickstarter until mid-June 2025 for release in mid-2026.

These maps will be sold in pairs on the retail market, with Maglev Metro: Barcelona & Chicago challenging you to upgrade two aging rail systems; Maglev Metro: Nanobots, Inc. & Nanotech University either giving you special powers as the game progresses or taking them away as you construct the university; and Maglev Metro: Ghost Train & The Outback, which has you delivering souls to the afterlife and building a map as you all explore central Australia.

▪️ Following other titles announced in late May 2025, Avalon Hill has revealed one other new item to look for in Q3 2025: HeroQuest: The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness, which is technically called HeroQuest: Joe Manganiello's The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness to take advantage of the celebrity status of actor/designer Joe Manganiello.

This expansion features ten quests designed by Manganiello, which are summarized in the following:

by W. Eric Martin

Spirits, new and old▪️ Spirits of the Wild: Awakening is a new edition of Nick Hayes' 2018 game Spirits of the Wild, which was part of a two-player strategy game line that Mattel released in the mid-2010s.

Here's a brief on this design:

What's new in this edition is that instead of both players having the same five animals on their game board, the box includes a variety of individual animal boards, allowing players to choose any five from one game to the next, although each player will use the same five animals. Also, the number of spirit power cards is triple what it was in the original game.

Nick Hayes wrote a designer diary about the updating and re-release of this design, and that will be published on June 20, 2025 to kick off Gen Con 2025 previews.

▪️ Queen Games has revealed details about the next two titles in its "Stefan Feld City Collection", with game #11 being Manila, which is based on 2013's Amerigo, which originally appeared from Queen Games.

Here's the briefest of overviews of this 2-4 player Stefan Feld design:

▪️ Game #12 in the "Stefan Feld City Collection" will be Beijing, with this being a reimplementation of In the Year of the Dragon, which was first released in 2007 by alea. Here's an overview of this 2-5 player game:

by W. Eric Martin

▪️ U.S. publisher Happy Camper will debut two games at Gen Con 2025, one being a new co-operative game from Matt Leacock, Matt Riddle, and Ben Pinchback.

Here's an overview of the 1-5 player game The Four Doors:

All the classic Leacock co-op elements are in place: unique player powers, multiple actions on a turn, shared knowledge between players, rising threats as the game progresses, bad things when you get the fourth of something, and three ways to lose.

▪️ The other Happy Camper release is one I covered in July 2024 when talking about two iterations of Toshiki Arao's 2021 card game Hachi Train.

One of those iterations is Jungo from Cocktail Games, which previously brought Kaya Miyano's nana onto the world market as Trio. Happy Camper was Cocktail's English-language partner on Trio, and now it will release Jungo in the U.S. in July 2025. Here's how to play:

by Jeff Grisenthwaite

Positano is a light strategy game about building resorts on the scenic Amalfi coast, so it seems appropriate to take the scenic route in how I created the game and teamed up with SlugFest Games to make it.

Inspiration

I keep a running log of game ideas that pop into my head when I'm driving or in the shower or waking up. Most are only a couple of words, like "magmapunk" or "city pigeons", but for several months, I had this idea sitting in there: "Buildings with ocean views".

I didn't start working on turning this idea into a game until I stumbled on this photo of Positano, Italy:

Positano, Italy (Image: Yoosun Won)
The pastel buildings are captivating as they rise up the hillside to overlook the Mediterranean Sea, and I could instantly imagine a finished game product that captured that vista.

Just as importantly, though, setting the game in Positano could solve one of the issues that was gnawing at me with the initial "buildings with ocean views" inspiration. On a flat gameboard, having beachside property would be way overpowered, but by building in rows on a steep hill, players would be able to snag views of the sea even if they were constructing a building in the back.

Design Goals

I like to define design goals that I can revisit when I'm feeling stuck or struggling to determine a direction when creating a game. These were the original design goals for Positano:

• Dramatic question: "Which player's buildings will have the best views of the sea?"
• Striking table presence and enjoyable tactile building experience
• Crunchy enough for gamers, but easy enough for families and not-yet-gamers
• Duration: 30-60 minutes

Initial Prototype

I raided my kids' old toy box for LEGO DUPLO bricks to assemble my first prototype for Positano, then I grabbed copper, silver, and gold cubes from Terraforming Mars to serve as the rooftops denoting different building qualities from cheap to luxury.

The mechanisms of the buildings, roofs, and sea views barely changed from this initial prototype. From the beginning, the core concept of constructing buildings of three different qualities that scored points only for rooms with sea views was intuitive, compelling, and a novel experience for most playtesters. Players thoroughly enjoyed constructing tall, luxury buildings for their own gain, as well as blocking the views of opponents' buildings to rob them of victory.

On the other hand, the mechanisms of how you acquire the building blocks and select building locations wasn't so easy! Each iteration of the game changed these mechanisms dramatically. Early on, I had players collecting rent from their buildings and using that money over several rounds with different types of auctions to bid on building qualities and locations. This proved to be a very bad idea!

Playtesting & Challenges

I playtested Positano with four different groups, both in-person and online (using Tabletop Playground):

• Friends and family
• Protospiel Online
• Break My Game
• Chicagoland Boardgame Designers and Playtesters Meetup

It was readily apparent in early playtests that Positano's initial system of money-based auctions wasn't working. Playtesters helped me uncover multiple problems:

• Runaway leader: If a player managed to build one or two great buildings in the initial rounds, they could collect more rent than their opponents and use those earnings to extend their lead.
• Going broke: If a player made early blunders, the game was rather punishing as the player ran short on funds and fell further and further behind.
• Ill-fitting mechanisms: The early Positano auction mechanisms had strong echoes of Reiner Knizia's Modern Art — and while that's a fantastic game and the auctions work great in it, they were poorly suited to Positano.
• Uninspiring role: Some playtesters chafed at the theme of being a landlord and collecting rent from tenants. It had not occurred to me that this could be a turnoff to some gamers. That's why it’s crucial to playtest with diverse groups of people!

After trying several experiments with the money-based auction system and not seeing the improvements I was looking for, I decided to do something drastic: Eliminate money entirely!

New Mechanism: Two-Card Bid/Triple-Draft

To eliminate a core component from a game, you need to dissect all the functions that the component serves. In Positano, money was used to:

• Bid on locations to build.
• Purchase blocks of varying quality (from cheap to luxury) fro use in construction.
• Score points at the end of the game.

After playing with a few different ideas, I landed on a new mechanism: the two-card bid / triple-draft.

Players have identical hands of two sets of cards: base bids and bid boosters. The base bid cards each feature three numbers that represent the bid strength for drafting order of three different types of cards:

• Lots: the location on the hillside that you'll build
• Blocks: the number of building blocks that you'll obtain
• Build: the quality of construction and any special building powers

Players need to choose their priorities each round: Do you want to use your card that has a high number for lots this round, or save it until later? And if you do use it this round, are you comfortable getting only a small number of blocks or a lower quality building?

The bid booster cards augment all three base bids, and players can use these cards to represent how important overall this round of drafting is to them. I found many benefits of the two-card bid / triple-draft:

• Simultaneous decision-making: All players plan their bids simultaneously, which nearly eliminates downtime and cuts down on the duration of the game substantially.
• Conjoined decisions: You're making a single bid, but the results of it will yield three different types of cards with different drafting orders for each.
• Yomi (reading opponents' minds): The best Positano players can read their opponents, guess what they might be playing, and know when they'll want to go big vs. saving some of their high cards for later.
• The big reveal: I love it when games feature a dramatic moment when multiple players reveal hidden information simultaneously to cheers or groans around the table.

Cardboard Edison contest

I entered Positano in the annual Cardboard Edison game design contest, and I was thrilled when Positano reached the finals, making it one of the top 15 games out of over 250 submitted. Here's the video that I submitted for the contest:

Youtube Video
I stuck with the DUPLO blocks and Terraforming Mars cube roofs for the contest because they felt "good enough" for a prototype. They didn't get in the way of the gameplay, and they painted a sufficient picture for players to imagine what a production quality game could look like.

The Cardboard Edison judges loved the table presence of the game and the ocean view building and bidding mechanisms. Crucially, they also provided helpful feedback to focus on improving the way that tied bids were handled. Originally, players with tied bids would need to submit a second pair of cards to break the tie, which interrupted the flow of the game and led to some unhandled rare exceptions. I implemented and tested a new tie-breaking approach that provides star ratings on the base bid cards. These star ratings are evenly balanced across players, so that drafting order is fair whenever a tie occurs.

I set to work on improving those mechanisms before contacting publishers.

Working with SlugFest Games

I submitted Positano to SlugFest Games because I thought that players of The Red Dragon Inn series would also thoroughly enjoy Positano. Both games sit on the spectrum between light and medium-weight and can be played in 30-45 minutes with have high player interaction.

They loved it! SlugFest and I had a good idea of what the finished product might look like, and the team has brought their know-how regarding manufacturing and production design for the game's various unique components. They also had a long history of successful Kickstarter campaigns to (hopefully) ensure Positano's would be a success. They got cracking on sculpting unique building blocks for each player, commissioned fantastic artwork, and generally gave the game the table presence it deserved. Additionally, the SlugFest crew has refined and enhanced the game in some key ways:

• Adding a 5-6 player expansion with a bigger cliffside.
• Adding a clever solo mode that asks you to partner with an automa-player rather than competing.
• Adding new goals and refining goals and scoring to make decisions even more interesting and increase replayability.

SlugFest streamlined set up by eliminating the four different categories of goals that I had been using, instead providing cards that have goals on both sides, which prevents conflicting goals from being in the same game. The new goals provide juicier decisions for maximizing points each round. I think my favorite new goal is "Altezza", which awards points for having buildings of different heights.

We playtested these updates together, and there was a strong sense of collaboration as we worked to make the finished product as good as it could be.

It was thrilling to see the in-progress updates from the SlugFest team as they evolved my DUPLO prototype into a real-looking game, and I can't wait for all of you to try it out!

Jeff Grisenthwaite

•••
• Positano is available for purchase in retail stores starting in Q2 2025.
• Jonathan Cox's "Learn While Playing" video provides an in-depth look at the gameplay.
• If you'd like to give Positano a try, you can play it on Tabletop Simulator.

One of the game's many prototypes

by W. Eric Martin

UK Games Expo 2025 ended June 1 — that is, yesterday from when I'm writing this note — and Origins Game Fair 2025 runs June 18-22...which means Gen Con 2025 is poking its head over the horizon, so BGG's Gen Con 2025 Preview has now been launched.

We already have more than 150 titles on the preview, about a quarter of what ended up being on the Gen Con 2024 Preview. My thanks to Stephen Cordell, who has processed most of the information that publishers have submitted, with me adding a few titles based on press releases and what's been spotted in the BGG database.

Publishers, if your games aren't listed, please head here to learn how to submit information for both the Origins Game Fair 2025 Preview and Gen Con 2025 Preview — and how to be added to BGG's publisher mailing list so that you receive such surveys automatically in the future. (The SPIEL Essen 25 survey will be going out soon, with that preview going live on Monday, July 7.)

Also, publishers, if your listing shows the image at left, then the linked version listing lacks a representative image. For a convention preview, we must link to a specific version listing so that the preview shows your company name, the release date of this edition, the cover of this edition, etc., with the info shared across all editions being pulled from the game page itself.

To see how to upload images, please head to this image submission guidance page, and to propose an image in the game's gallery as the primary image for a version listing, please refer to this section lower on that same page.

To check out all convention previews, click BROWSE in the dark blue browsing bar, then PREVIEWS.

As in years past, BGG will host a Hot Games Room at Gen Con 2025, and you can purchase tickets in advance on the Gen Con website. These games will then be transported to Dallas, Texas for use at BGG.CON 2025 in November.

Finally, note that prices on the listed games might change between now and when Gen Con 2025 opens. Some publishers have not submitted prices because they're still trying to figure out what makes sense based on unexpected U.S. tariff costs on goods produced in China, tariffs that have been reduced for now but threaten to bear trap anyone at any moment.

Some of the titles on BGG's Gen Con 2025 Preview

by W. Eric Martin

In a late May 2025 post, I suggested an article called "Hot Take: Reviewers Aren't Representative", and this review is an example of just that, with German publisher AMIGO offering me the chance to play a game before it's released on the general market, an experience few people have.

That said, my job is to write about new and upcoming games, so yes, I'm going to get opportunities like this — and since I wrote and recorded a glowing review of Reiner Knizia's LAMA in 2019 and this new game is another quick-playing title from Knizia and AMIGO, I'm not surprised that the publisher reached out to me. Keep that bias in account when you read the following.

Like LAMA, Meister Makatsu is a card game for 2-6 players in which you want to score as little as possible. (Side note: I dislike when a game gives players negative points and tells you to avoid taking these negative points, which means that you actually want the highest score as in a game that scores "normally". Keep things simple: Tell us that we score points and want the lowest score — or keep things complicated by telling us that the player with the absolute value closest to zero wins. Your call.)

Another way to think about the game is that Meister Makatsu presents players with a "run faster than your friends" scenario, with one or more players being bitten by the bear each round and with you trying to avoid that.

Each player has a deck of 24 cards, with cards in three colors numbered 1-8. To start a round, each player draws four cards, then clockwise from the round's starting player each player lays down a card face up, then another card face up. Whoever played the highest card in each color takes a penalty chip worth as many points as the current level, that is, 1, 2, or 3 points for the first, second, or third time through your deck. Whoever played the highest yellow card takes two chips instead of one, and whoever played the highest purple becomes the start player for the next round. Ties are lost by whoever played last, by which I mean the bear bites them.

As for the two cards remaining in your hand, place them aside for use in the second level. Draw a new hand of four cards, and play it out, doing this six times in total, after which you'll have played (and discarded) twelve cards and placed twelve cards aside. Shuffle those twelve unplayed cards, then draw a hand of four cards to start level 2.

Play out hands three times, taking 2-point chips when you're the highest in a color, then shuffle the six unplayed cards to set up for level 3, which works a tad differently: Draw four cards and play two, then draw your remaining two cards, then play two and discard the final two. Whoever has the fewest points wins.

Meister Makatsu has the same appeal as LAMA: minimal rules that allow you to speedwalk through multiple rounds, with each round featuring a new puzzle of a hand that asks what you want to play and what you want to sit on. The goal is straightforward — don't play the highest card(s) — but everyone has the same cards at random times, so...then what?

Should you play an 8 to get it out of the way in level 1 for only 1 point? That seems obvious, but maybe you're playing after someone else's 8, so you'll save them from a bite — or maybe everyone else plays 7s and 6s of that color after you, which means you might get bit when playing those cards later. You can discard two 8s at game's end, but that means you'll be forced to play other cards in the meantime...and they might still net you points.

Do you want to ditch a color so that you have less chance of being the only one with that color in level 3 and thereby scoring for your 1 and 2? Well, what is everyone else doing? Are they concentrating on ditching high cards or a color?

The more players you have in a game, the more likely someone else is to end up in the bear's mouth instead of you, so scores are generally lower — but that means one error in level 3 (or even level 2) might be enough to knock you out of competition. With only two or three players, you'll score more often, but you can probably better track what's been played so that you know what's coming in level 2 and 3. Will that help you? Maybe...

Mock-up components, with a frog scooting back into my deck for the next level
I've played Meister Makatsu five times on that mock-up copy from AMIGO with two, three, five, and six players, and like LAMA the game feels vastly different depending on the player count, which makes sense given that you're far more likely to be the high card when fewer people (and therefore fewer cards) are on the table. With a lower player count, you can more easily track who's played what, which lets you play the odds as to what someone might have in hand...although that someone always has a choice of which cards to play, so a player's personality also affects how a round plays out.

With more players, the points tend to be spread out, which means everyone's score tends to be lower, which means if you goof in the second or third level and score a few times — or even once with a yellow card — you could blow your chance, and it's harder to track who's played what with more players, so once again you're playing the odds.

One fun aspect of that "odds playing" is that you get to engage in it multiple ways when playing a card, both in what others will play on you and on what you'll get in the future. For this latter aspect, since you have a choice of what to play, if you play late in the round, you often can decide who scores. If the leader is going to catch a point token or two, you might decide to hold off on playing a high number now at the risk of being forced to play it later.

None of the decisions in Meister Makatsu are that tough, but you have them in almost every hand, and you get little victories and setbacks along the way, so you feel invested constantly, with the points escalating over the game's short timeline to bring everything quickly crashing to an end.

For more demonstrations of gameplay, complete rules, a short take on the game's setting, and even more LAMA comparisons, watch this video:

Youtube Video

by W. Eric Martin

▪️ I've already covered two Norwegian releases for SPIEL Essen 25, so let's move on to a third, this time from Vegard Eliassen Stillerud, Eilif Svensson, and Åsmund Svensson, with the latter two being owners of publisher Chilifox Games.

Movie Tricks is being pitched as a trick-taking game (even in its title), but gameplay is more akin to Kalle Malmioja's 2016 card game Honshū. Each player plays a card to the table each round — following suit, if possible, or possibly trumping the lead card — then players draft a card from the market based on the strength of the card they played, placing that market card on their tableau. The market is initially seeded with as many cards as players, then the played cards in a trick become the market for the next round.

Whoever plays the lowest-valued card (or the two such cards in a five-player game) draft one of two bonus cards, allowing them to change the trump suit, with the drafted card typically going in their hand or in their tableau.

Cards come in four types — CGI, props, roles, and soundtrack — and you place a card in your tableau in the matching category, with all placed cards being visible and with a row of four cards effectively creating a movie title, such as "The Cursed Mission: Unseen City", thanks to the card's name. Whenever you take a props card, you can decide to lock in a props scoring card based on the number of different props you have in your tableau.

At game's end, you score for your most high-valued movie, your lowest-valued card type, and for the four card types, each of which scores a different way.

▪️ A somewhat more traditional trick-taking game is Alebrijes, a 3-5 player game from Joel Escalante, Rafael Escalante, and Fractal Juegos.

Your goal each round is to ditch your hand first. Cards come in four suits numbered 1-5, with a fifth wild suit in those values.

The lead player of a trick plays one or more cards, with a multi-card play needing to share both number and color. Each other player in turn has one chance to beat the highest play currently on the table — but to beat a play, you need to play either the same number of cards of the same color with a higher number or the same number of cards of the next higher color value. (The colors go from blue (low), to green, pink, and orange, with blue beating orange if you have one more blue card than the number of orange cards played, e.g., three blue 2s beat two orange 5s.)

After receiving your starting hand, you can discard up to two cards, then draw to refill your hand — and whenever you pass in a trick instead of playing, you have the same option to discard up to two cards, then draw that many.

Some cards feature an Ollin symbol, and whenever you play a single card with this symbol, each other player must draw a card and add it to their hand. If you play a pair with at least one Ollin, you can do this same effect or you can discard a card from your hand.
When a player empties their hand, each other player scores points equal to the highest number of each color they hold (with wild being a fifth color here). After three rounds, whoever has the lowest score wins.

▪️ Daniel Newman from New Mill Industries debuted a new trick-taking game at Game Market in mid-May 2025, and now the 3-4 player game Woodlanders is also available from the New Mill website.

Your goal in each of three rounds is to score more points than others. The card deck has fifty cards in five suits, with cards numbered 1-4 in each suit, with four 1s, three 2s, two 3s, and a lone 4. After looking at your hand, in counterclockwise order each player chooses a pain suit from those unclaimed; collect cards in this suit, and you lose points. The dealer in a four-player game chooses pain from the final two suits, with the remaining suit being trump.

In a trick, a player leads with 1-2 cards of the same suit (although a 4 must be played alone), then each player follows suit if possible. The highest sum played in the trump suit wins the trick, with the highest sum in the led suit winning otherwise. Ties are broken in favor of the latter player. If the trick contains no cards of the winner's pain suit, then they collect all of the cards, scoring +1 for each. However, if the winner's pain suit is present, they collect only these cards, scoring -1 per card.

When two players have emptied their hand, the round ends, and whoever has the highest sum earns 3 points for the round, with the second- and third-highest sums winning 2 and 1 points. Whoever has the most points after three rounds wins. (For the three-player game, a robot player controls the fourth hand, playing based on an algorithm to take as many tricks as possible.)

by W. Eric Martin

▪️ In mid-April 2025, Office Dog announced a new Reiner Knizia design set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth — The Hobbit: There and Back Again. Here's an overview of this late September 2025 release:

▪️ Each year since 2021, German publisher AMIGO has made a game available for sale exclusively at "AMIGO Freunde" retail outlets for several months before it has a general retail release.

Companies create these types of programs to encourage players to visit physical stores, but also for selfish reasons: If a store has an exclusive item, it has an incentive to market that item to customers since they can't find the game for sale at an online discounter. (Asmodee does something similar with its "Hobby Next" program, with those who pre-order The Hobbit: There & Back Again at a partner store getting "a custom d12 with Cirth numerals".)

In 2024, for example, the AMIGO Freunde game was 3 Chapters (my review), and in 2025 that game is Meister Makatsu, a 2-6 player game from Reiner Knizia. Here's an overview of gameplay:

I'll have a detailed look at the game on Monday, June 2 on a prototype from AMIGO.

▪️ Paws Up is a Knizia design that Pegasus Spiele will release in German and in English in July 2025. In the game, 2-5 players are pet influencers who try to collect the most "paws" with their photos and stories. In detail:

▪️ In May 2025, U.S. publisher Allplay ran a Kickstarter campaign for a nine-game bundle(!), with one of those titles being Piñatas, a new edition of Knizia's card game Voodoo Prince, which debuted in 2017 from Schmidt Spiele. (Voodoo Prince was previously released in the U.S. by Gamewright in 2020 as Marshmallow Test.)

The gist of all three games is the same: The design is a standard trick-taking game, with players following suit, if possible, and with the highest card in the led color winning the trick — unless a trump card has been played, in which case the highest trump wins the trick. The twist comes that when you take your third trick, you're out of the round, discarding all cards in hand and scoring points equal to the number of tricks taken by all other players at that time. Thus, you want to take your third trick as late as possible — but if you're the last player with cards in hand, you score minimally (or not at all, depending on which edition you play).

Piñatas keeps the same rules as Voodoo Prince, which had a few special cards and gave players the chance (or risk) of scoring two tricks at the same time. The only change is that Piñatas ends the same way as Marshmallow Test: As soon as a player hits a point threshold (25 points in this case), the game ends and they win.

Should you have an interest in this last Knizia design, perhaps you could weigh in on this poll:

[poll=2091936]

by W. Eric Martin

▪️ In September 2024, publisher Sorry We Are French released 365 Adventures: The Dungeon – 2025, a combination calendar/adventure game from Juhwa Lee in which a solo player fights one monster a day.

U.S. publisher Pandasaurus Games has picked up the next two releases from Lee and SWAF, with both 365 Adventures: Cthulhu 1926 and 365 Adventures: The Dungeon 2026 due out in August 2025. Here's an overview of the former title:

Sorry We Are French donated several hundred copies of 365 Adventures: The Dungeon – 2025 to be given away at BGG.Spring 2025 in late May, and I took one home as (despite me not being a dungeon-crawler guy) I'm curious to see what this feels like to play.

▪️ UK Games Expo 2025 opens on May 30, and one of the many titles available for demo at that show is Interstellar Adventures: The Sincerest Form of Flattery, the debut title from designers Harriet Cody and Cole Jefferies of Minty Noodles Ltd.

Here's an overview of this 2-4 player game that the designers plan to crowdfund in late 2025:

▪️ For a v. different take on "space adventure with a crew", we can turn to Star Trek: Tribble Match, a June 2025 release from WizKids that intends to be "My First Star Trek Game" for all the children of today's trekkies.

To play, place all the tiles face down on the table. On a turn, reveal two tiles. If the characters on the two tiles match, collect them and take another turn; if not, turn them face down again. Whoever collects the most tiles wins.

That's right — this is a memory game with cartoonish Star Trek characters for players aged 4 and up.

For slightly more of a challenge, play the tribble variant, making use of the 0-3 tribbles on the left edge of each tile. The only additional rule: Whoever collects the most tribbles is removed from the game before determining a winner.

by W. Eric Martin

▪️ Ravensburger has released details on two standalone Villainous titles that will join its catalog in Q3 2025.

Disney Villainous: Treacherous Tides features the first live-action villain in the series — Davy Jones from The Pirates of the Caribbean — as well as Moana's Tamatoa, which is pretty much the opposite of a live-action human. This game can be played on its own with two people, or you can have one or both of these villains face off against others in the Disney Villainous line.

Disney Villainous: Treacherous Tides debuts July 21, 2025 at the Target retail chain with a now customary limited edition box sleeve and slightly different villain figure. The game will appear at other retail outlets on August 1, 2025.

▪️ The other Villainous title also features an icy blue cover — maybe that's on trend for 2025? — with Star Wars Villainous: Cold Tactics also due out in stores on August 1, 2025. Here's what awaits in this expandalone game:

▪️ Switching to the villains of another IP universe, DC Deck-Building Game: Arkham Asylum is an August 2025 release from Nathaniel Yamaguchi and Cryptozoic Entertainment, with players taking on the role of The Joker, Harley Quinn, The Riddler, or Two-Face, while trying to defeat Batman, take hostages, and bribe your way to victory.

At the same time, Cryptozoic will release DC Deck-Building Game: Arkham Asylum – Shadows Expansion, an actual expansion — not a standalone title! — that introduces yet more Bat-Family members to this deck-building game line, as well as the League of Shadows. This expansion works for any DCDBG title, but is ideal for Arkham Asylum given the Bat-heavy focus of that Bat-release.

Other August 2025 releases from Cryptozoic include the second edition of DC Deck-Building Game: Teen Titans Go!, which debuted in 2017 and which features good guys (ew!), and DC Deck-Building Game: Crisis Expansion Pack 5 – Dark Nights: Death Metal, in which the title occupies one-third of the cover. Here's the pitch:

by W. Eric Martin

On May 28, 2025, U.S. publisher Tabletop Tycoon — which releases games under the brands Starling Games, Victory Point Games, Sparkworks, and Flying Meeple — announced that it has purchased several lines of games from CMON, specifically Blood Rage, Rising Sun, Ankh: Gods of Egypt, Arcadia Quest, and Starcadia Quest.

In a press release, Tabletop Tycoon CEO and founder Dan Yarrington said, "We look forward to reissuing, remastering, and extending these lines into the future. We are very excited to have these amazing brands come under our roof."

Additionally, in mid-April 2025 Tabletop Tycoon acquired Dan R Rice III's Trailblazer game line from Mariposa Games (as covered at the time), and at the end of April 2025 it purchased the Canvas game line from Jeff Chin, Andrew Nerger, and Road To Infamy Games.

by W. Eric Martin

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Vlaada Chvátil's Codenames, publisher Czech Games Edition has revamped the three main titles in the Codenames line: the original game that won the 2016 Spiel des Jahres (among many other awards) and is currently available in 45 languages with more than 16 million copies sold, the two-player-only co-operative spinoff Codenames: Duet (co-designed with Scot Eaton), and the image-based version Codenames: Pictures.

Nothing has changed with the gameplay of Codenames. Rather everything that supports that gameplay has been updated, with new cover art and word card graphics, individual agent art, an eco-friendly game insert, a card stand made of RE-Wood (which is created from 80% shredded wood residue and 20% recycled binding materials), and a shorter, easier-to-learn rulebook.

What's more, CGE has used data from Codenames Online to tweak the word list included with the game, resulting in roughly 35 new word cards.

The second edition of Codenames will be released in July 2025, followed by Codenames: Duet in Q3 2025 and Codenames: Pictures at SPIEL Essen 25 in Essen, Germany.

by W. Eric Martin

▪️ Deckers is a new edition of Richard Wilkins' 2018 game Renegade from Victory Point Games, a game that somehow passed me by completely. Ah, well, thanks to today's reprint-and-revision market, everyone will get a second or third bite at the apple.

Here's an overview of the setting in this 1-4 player game that Deep Print Games will release in 2025.

▪️ In March 2025, I wrote about Sweet Takes, Hasbro's 2025 edition of Hisashi Hayashi's card game Gummi Trick, then in early May 2025, I wrote about Beat the Heat, a Hasbro version of Wolfgang Kramer's 6 nimmt!.

As it turns out, Hasbro has even more new editions of older games in the works, with these editions scheduled to debut at Gen Con 2025. Priorities, a 2020 party game from Clarendon Games, is one such title, with players in this party game trying to guess how someone will rank random actions and objects such as "sharing feelings" and "Hawaiian pizza".

Snailed It! is a new edition of Michael Modler's 2023 Cabanga!, a card game in which you try to play out your hand of cards without being penalized by others who could play in the gaps you create. (For more details, watch my April 2024 overview.)

From the cards, tokens, and "avoid this" vibe, I'm guessing that Dump the Skunk! is a new edition of Reiner Knizia's LAMA, for which I did both a written and video overview in 2019. (Also, Beat the Heat and Snailed It! are both currently available on the U.S. market from AMIGO, as is LAMA, so I can imagine this title completed a trio of deals. AMIGO has said "No comment" in response to my questions about how Hasbro can do Beat the Heat, and Hasbro hasn't responded.)

▪️ Kevin McPartland's Conquest of Paradise debuted in 2007 from GMT Games, saw a second edition in 2016, and is getting overhauled for a third edition from PHALANX in 2027 — yes, two years out from a crowdfunding campaign launched in late May 2025. Here's the basic pitch:

The publisher notes that this release will be part of its "PHALANX Limited" line, which means the game will be available only through crowdfunding, late pledges, and (possibly) its website should it have stock on hand after fulfilling the campaign — whereas many commenters on its Gamefound campaign point out that they're waiting on crowdfunded PHALANX projects years overdue.

As always, don't back a crowdfunding project unless you're okay with not getting anything because who knows what might happen in the next two years...

by Marceline Leiman

Oftentimes, the more personal a design is, the harder it is to turn it into a product.

In most cases I imagine a brilliant and earnest designer, working for years in isolation on a game idea that has become dense and thorny with their own niche tastes. In that kind of process, it's rare that an individual person's taste as a player matches what the majority market is looking for in a product. It's a tough lesson I've had to learn for myself, that the creation of games must be minded towards the people who play them.

I was lucky. High Tide was a personal design to me.

It was never intended to be a game for more than one specific moment, for one specific group of people: attendees of Indie Games Night Market at PAX Unplugged 2024. Knowing that I was delivering a game for such a specific demographic, my decisions were informed by my own experiences at craft book and zine fairs. I wanted to make whatever I brought special for that one specific moment.

Me (eighth from right) and the other creators at Indie Games Night Market 2024
Once I knew what niche I was signing up for, I went to my studio and jumped right into design mode.

My standard practice for some of my personal favorite ideas for games come from play. I knew I wanted to commit to a specific material limitation — but what would it be?

If you had walked in at any moment during this period, you'd see me in my workspace, scribbling and scrawling on bits of paper, grabbing bits of gems and dice. I turned back to materials from older prototypes that never quite made into proper games: a bunch of painted hexagon tiles.

I find this energy is the best way to come to a pure, fun, intuitive idea: to literally play with the pieces. Yes, like a child in a sandbox.

I enter the space with an unfocused mind, moving pieces around the table, picking them up, placing them, rotating them—all with the goal of finding some inherent meaning to it all.

The first iteration of High Tide had no theme and fewer pieces
This practice led to the rule that became the principal idea of High Tide:

The rest of the game cascaded outward from that rule, as if out of air.

Such a simple but fundamental idea. This couldn't possibly be original, right?

Well, after a ton of research, I found the answer was "kind of". There were games that had adjacency to the rules I discovered, but never one that was exactly as elegant as I wanted High Tide to be.

Abstract games have a lot of downsides as products. They're usually limited to a low player count. They aren't flashy with their themes. Because of their simple mechanisms and components, they're easy to proxy. They're skill-oriented, making them unstable if not played between even opponents.

At the same time, they have a bounty of positives. They're simple to learn and get playing. Their focus on functionality often means they're made with gorgeous components with high-contrast colors that make it easy to parse during play. You can grow a relationship with someone over an abstract game as you both grow and gain skill.

High Tide is inherently an abstract game, but something about my chosen theme does seem to resonate with others.

I have memories of walking along the beach as a kid, collecting shells, staring into little pools that appeared along the shore. Summers were spent with my family, playing games like Mancala, Backgammon, and UNO in any place we could — at restaurants, in the car, and (of course) on the beach.

Guided by these memories, I knew High Tide had to be playable on-the-go. I wanted it to fit easily into someone's life, so they can carry it and take it out for a quick game with ease. It should be a game that begs to be played anywhere.

Knowing this game was going to be niche, I was excited at the possibility of diving into this as a pure abstract game. If you're familiar with the games industry, you might have the impression (as I did) that a two-player abstract of any kind is pretty much unpublishable. Normally, that alone would discourage me from moving forward with a design — but with the opportunity of Indie Games Night Market ahead, I was able to lean into making an unpublishable game.

The production process included painting, stamping, and lacquering each of the 380+ pieces on both sides, then bagging, folding rules, boxing, and stickering them all into a neat package
Indie Games Night Market is an independent game designer's market that took place for the first time in 2024 at PAX Unplugged. With my sights on making High Tide, I decided I would need to make a fast prototype with final-ish materials to show Daniel Newman, the runner of the event.

So I quickly got into ideating how best to represent this game.

If I was going to be making these games all by hand, I had to imagine a pipeline around how I would assemble them. I noted the number of components and how each of those components would need to be painted (with how many colors), stamped, and boxed along with printed rules. Looking at that pipeline and the meager budget I had, I knew at least some people could be interested in the game, so I agreed with myself to make twenty copies and no more.

The naturalistic feeling of the game deserved a naturalistic theme, so I did research into different symbiotic relationships in the wild that would remind me of the way the game pieces moved: covering, but not destroying one another. This led me to coral and algae, which have a fascinating mutualistic relationship.

I chose colors that reminded me of coral and algae, with the neutral tiles being representative of the sand — but color on its own would make the game feel too abstract. I thought hard about how I could add a feeling of life into the objects, leaning into the handcrafted feel I think is so important to this game.

Stamping was a cheap, accessible option for me to replicate on multiple pieces. This revealed that I would need to change the theme to a tide pool as I couldn't find distinct enough shapes for coral and algae. The shell stamps I found pressed on a nostalgic button for me, so I was happy to move forward with that decision. The imperfections of the stamping process brought out what made this game a lovely object to hold and helped inform my attitude towards my work as an artist making bespoke games.

From there, I made a single copy, shared it with Daniel, then shared on social media.

And the response to it was far more explosive than I could have ever imagined.

The most popular image I posted. (Fun fact: It was taken on a trip to Rehoboth beach in Delaware.)
For months in advance of Indie Games Night Market, I saw an outpouring of interest and support for me and High Tide, garnering the most attention to my social media that I'd ever seen. Something about the art direction, the pieces, or the theme really attracted people to the game.

At the event, people told me they planned to be at PAX Unplugged because of High Tide — a huge level of hype for what I thought would be a small and unpublishable little game of mine. I had people scan my Venmo code and pay for the game before it was their turn in line. I had people try to cut the line and make extravagant offers.

I sold out of the game in less than seven minutes. From there, I received offers from publishers to sign for the game, but wound up going with my friends at Underdog Games who I trusted to make the game right, with access to the audience who I think will connect with the game.

Side-by-side comparison of Underdog's edition of High Tide with my handmade edition sold at IGNM
In conclusion, don't be afraid to make a game that's "unpublishable" or small — because you can never be certain what is going to catch people's interest.

I recommend that other designers try the "playful practice" I described for game creation. It has led me time and time again to simple and intuitive ideas for games. Think of it as a conversation with yourself as a child, as distant from your present as you can remember being.

Returning to this child-like, playful mind in my creation process has helped unlock an artistic joy that I haven't experienced before in life.

If you have a willingness to give it a try, I recommend approaching your work with the following:

1. Don't plan to make a specific game before starting this practice.
2. Surround yourself with your prototyping materials, ones that make you happy.
3. Grant yourself a span of 1-3 hours to play with your materials. Let their purpose come to you through this play.
4. If something isn't clicking, work at a different table, work with different materials, sit or stand up. Repeat as needed.

Good luck, trust your gut, and follow your playful heart!

If you got this far, thank you so much for reading — and High Tide is now available for pre-order!

Marceline Leiman

by W. Eric Martin

▪️ Designer Bernd Eisenstein of Irongames releases a new game only every year or two, and 2025 is an "on" year, with his new design being Papyria, a 1-4 player game that plays in 90-120 minutes. Here's an overview:

▪️ Designer Jeffrey CCH of ICE Makes also has a new title coming for SPIEL Essen 25: Zoology, a 2-6 player game that can be played either competitively or co-operatively:

▪️ Chilean publisher Fractal Juegos has a new title coming from designers Trevor Benjamin and Brett J. Gilbert for release at SPIEL Essen 25: Under the Leaves, which is for 2-4 players and presents you with the following situation:

Sample components
▪️ Polish publisher Board&Dice has teased a SPIEL Essen 25 release from designer Dávid Turczi in the most BGG-centric way possible:

Getcher heaping bowl of mechanisms here!

by W. Eric Martin

How many new and upcoming party games can be described in at most two sentences? That's my challenge today.

▪️ In Jasper Beatrix's Thing Thing from DVC Games, you can ditch two or more object cards from your hand by naming a category that links them all, but others get the chance to ditch appropriate cards of their own, which will cause you to draw more cards that you don't want.

▪️ In Mime Battle from Rémi Mathieu and IELLO, 4-12 players compete in two teams to guess a mimed word or phrase, with both teams miming at the same time using words that are related or perhaps identical.

▪️ Where is That?: Europe and Where is That?: South America is a pair of party games from Magnus Karlsson and Erik Andersson Sundén that Fractal Juegos will have SPIEL Essen 25 in which players try to build maps on the table using cards that show part of the region in question.

▪️ Big Potato's Add to Playlist splits players into two teams, each of which builds their own playlist on their phone's music app, with a particular player choosing a song for one of five revealed categories. Score by guessing who chose a song, which category that song fits in, and (ideally) both at the same time.

▪️ Another Big Potato release is What's the Best Thing? from Ed Naujokas and James A. Vaughan, in which each round 2-10 players get a different category and a number from 1-10, after which they name something from that category that they would rank in that slot, with 10 out of 10 being best. Everyone then tries to line up all the answers from low to high to avoid losing lives.

▪️ And in November 2024, Big Potato released Don't Press That Mine Turtle, in which you present someone with a truth-or-dare card from hand and either they wuss out and have to press the mine turtle as many times as the card states or they say or do the thing asked after you which you press the turtle. Whoever explodes loses.

▪️ Apparently this is now just a Big Potato round-up, with Phil Walker-Harding's Don't Fall for It! being a team game in which you must pull a plank from a tower(!) if you incorrectly identify something as being a member of a category. Pull the wrong plank, and cubes might fall from inside the tower, with your team losing if you collect eleven or more.

▪️ Each round in Ghosts Can't Draw, also from Naujokas, Vaughan, and Big Potato, players place a hand on a Ouija-style plastic ghost with a marker in it, then they move it on a white board with one player having secretly received a word to draw. Players try to guess who the ghost was, then try to identify the word from an array of choices.

by W. Eric Martin

▪️ Designer Elizabeth Hargrave is Gen Con's 2025 Guest of Honor and will give a presentation on Saturday, August 2 from 1-2:30 titled "Nature Systems Game Design". The pitch for this presentation:

Hargrave's just announced game Sanibel will be on display at Gen Con 2025 courtesy of publisher Avalon Hill.

▪️ Jonathan Schindler has a fun blog post on BGG titled "Hot Take: Reviewers Aren't Representative", which on the one hand — duh — and on the other hand is a statement readers and viewers should always keep in mind.

I rarely watch game review videos because if I have the time available, I'd rather do something productive, but when I do watch them, I groan whenever someone says they can't wait to get the game back to the table again and again. I know from personal experience that once I do a video on a game, it rarely comes out again because I have to move on to something else. In some cases I hold off on doing a video by claiming I need to play the game more often to get a better handle on it, but really I don't want to put it aside just yet.

Recently I find myself focusing on new editions of older games — as with Alex Randolph's Big Shot from Playte (review coming soon) — so that I have an excuse to put them on the table again.

▪️ Cardboard Edison runs a contest each year to honor "great unpublished board games", and the 2025 winner is Sammy Salkind's Dot Com, which is described as follows:

My wife and I were freelancer writers in the Dot Com era, and for a couple of years companies kept sprouting up with mad money to throw at new projects that seemed ludicrous, but had deep funding pockets behind them. Such a strange time...

You can check out the top five games, as well as sixteen other finalists (out of 348(!) submissions) on Cardboard Edison's award page.

▪️ The 2025 Euchre World Championship took place in New Glarus, Wisconsin on May 17-18. You can read profiles of the singles and doubles winners on the World Euchre Federation website, and you can watch the tournament on its YouTube channel.

▪️ In April 2025, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) suggested that CATAN players set aside the sheep cards and use hemp cards instead to avoid the game's "sheep exploitation", with an unofficial sticker pack being available for those who want to make the switch.

▪️ German publisher HCM Kinzel filed insolvency proceedings in February 2025, and in May 2025 the Heilbronn District Court assigned an insolvency administrator to monitor and secure the company's assets. From a May 19, 2025 article on Verbraucherschutzforum.Berlin, as translated via Google and edited by me, "HCM Kinzel GmbH is prohibited from disposing of its assets without the consent of the provisional insolvency administrator. This applies in particular to all bank accounts and receivables of the company." (H/T to BrettspielBox)

What's more: