With roughly 2300 plays of over 250 different Reiner Knizia board games, Nick, Scott, and Jared are ready to unleash their Ultimate Reiner Knizia Ranked Tier List! This list is split up into a 7-part YouTube series where we rank and discuss each game in depth. Check out each episode below!

If you scroll down far enough, then BEWARE OF SPOILERS. At the bottom of this post you will find the image and written spread of our tier list. 

Here is a link to the Tiermaker list itself where you can rank and share all of the Knizia games you’ve played!

If you’re a fan of any of Reiner Knizia’s games, then you should join the Reiner Knizia Enthusiasts Discord Server where we chat all things Knizia Games!

Finally, this list was created in celebration of our current Kickstarter for Reiner Knizia’s Gold Country as well as recent 2025 releases featuring SIX new Reiner Knizia games, Iliad, Ichor, SILOS, EGO, ORBIT, and Gazebo. Be sure to check out the pages for these games. Thanks for your support!

Watch the Video Series (Click the image to watch the Youtube video):

SPOILERS: Full Tier List Below….

Disclaimer: Bitewing Games is the publisher of some of these titles (marked with an * below). Biases are certainly present (it’s a subjective list, after all). But in many cases, we published a new version of an old Knizia game because we already regarded it so highly (this includes Zoo Vadis, Cat Blues, SILOS, and EGO).

For comparison, here is our older Tier List from 18 months prior.

The full tier list (in the order pictured):

GOLD-Tier (Greatest of the Only Living Doctor):

• Tigris & Euphrates
• Ra
• The Quest for El Dorado
• Through the Desert
• Zoo Vadis*
• High Society
• Schotten Totten / Battle Line
• Yellow & Yangtze
• EGO*

S-Tier (The Best)

• SILOS*
• Lost Cities
• Babylonia
• Cascadero*
• Samurai
• My City
• Mille Fiori
• The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation
• Orongo / Nyakuza
• The Quest for El Dorado: Dangers and Muisca (expansion)
• Taj Mahal
• MLEM: Space Agency
• CONIC
• Iliad*
• Marabunta
• Einfach Genial 3D
• Huang
• Blue Moon / Blue Moon Legends
• Gazebo

A-Tier (Amazing. Absolutely. Always.)

• Ichor*
• L.A.M.A. Party Edition
• Gold Country*
• Hot Lead*
• Rebirth
• Blue Lagoon
• Botswana / Wildlife Safari
• Heckmeck am Karteneck
• Chartae
• Circus Flohcati
• For One: Galaktix
• For One: Kniffel
• For One: Number Up
• For One: Schwarze Rosen
• Gang of Dice
• Modern Art
• Royal Visit
• Tatari
• Winner’s Circle
• Cat Blues: The Big Gig*
• Winner’s Circle (Japanese Edition)
• Viking See-Saw
• Zamek / Carcassonne: The Castle
• Zamek: dodatek Sokół / Carcassonne: The Castle – Falcon Expansion
• Municipium
• Penguin Party
• Tajuto
• Qin
• Callisto: The Game
• Merchants of Andromeda
• Piñatas
• Mille Fiori: The Masterpieces (expansion)

B-Tier (Super Solid, Hidden Gems, Surprisingly Great)

• Blue Moon City
• Wheedle
• Marshmallow Test
• Voodoo Prince
• Colossal Arena / Equinox
• Whale Riders
• Schotten Totten 2
• Quo Vadis?
• Beowulf: The Legend
• No Mercy / HIT!
• Cat Blues
• Rapido / Excape
• Axio
• Ingenious
• Stephenson’s Rocket
• Karate Tomate
• Art Robbery
• Genesis
• Keltis
• Keltis: Neue Wege, Neue Ziele
• Priests of Ra
• Pan Tu Nie Stal!
• Silver Screen
• Pumafiosi*
• Fantasticks
• Soda Smugglers*
• Kingdoms
• Beowulf: The Movie Board Game
• ORBIT*
• King’s Road
• Medici: The Card Game
• Medici
• Pollen
• Sunrise Lane
• San Francisco
• The Siege of Runedar
• Rheinlander
• Tower of Babel
• Reif fur die Insel
• Amun-Re: 20th Anniversary Edition
• Cascadito*
• My City: Roll & Build
• Nightmare Productions / Hollywood Blockbuster / Dream Factory
• Genial Spezial
• Neighborhood Hide & Seek
• Pixel Party
• SlideAscope
• Trendy
• Whale Riders: The Card Game
• Ape Town
• Butterfly Garden/Indigo
• For One: Mensch ärgere Dich nicht
• Kingdom of Dice
• Meister Makatsu
• Ra & Write
• Palazzo

C-Tier (Reliable Reiner. Good games. We’d rather play these than much of the industry hotness.  Worth a try, at least for Knizia fans)

• Ninja Master
• My Island
• L.A.M.A. Dice / Don’t LLAMA Dice
• Alien Attack USA
• Fruit Fight
• Havalandi
• The Quest for El Dorado: Dragons & Treasures
• Wiener Walzer
• The Quest for El Dorado: Heroes & Hexes
• The Quest for El Dorado: The Golden Temples
• Kariba
• SWAT! / It’s Mine!
• Africa
• LAMA / Don’t LLAMA Card Game
• Foodie Forest
• Odd Socks
• Amun-Re: The Card Game
• Cheeky Monkey
• The Lord of the Rings
• Aristocracy
• Classic Art
• Das Letzte Paradies
• Dice Monsters
• Tower of Babel
• Space Worm
• Forbidden City
• Through the Desert: Bazaar Expansion
• Ra: Traders Expansion (not yet played, this is a prediction)
• Sumatra
• Amazonia Park (not yet played, this is a prediction)
• En Garde / Duell
• Treasures of Nakbe
• Great Wall of China
• Ilium
• Longboard
• Keltis: Der Weg der Steine Mitbringspiel
• Lost Cities: The Board Game
• Medici: The Dice Game
• Ra and Write (not yet played, this is a prediction)
• Lost Cities: Roll & Write
• Merchants
• Medici vs Strozzi
• Merchants of Amsterdam
• Minotaur Lords
• Scarab Lords
• High Score
• Money
• Poison
• Battle of Mekaverse
• Ra: The Dice Game
• Rondo
• Spectaculum
• Strozzi
• Knights of Charlemagne / Tabula Rasa
• Tutankhamun
• At the Office
• Into the Blue
• Heckmeck Deluxe / Pickomino Deluxe
• Prosperity
• Des Souvenirs plein le Ciel
• Marco Polo Expedition
• Axio Rota
• Palmyra
• Spy
• Battle of Mekaverse
• Blooming Sea
• The Hobbit: There and Back Again
• Qwirkle Flex
• Schatz des Phönix

D(cent)-Tier (Sub-par for Knizia… It’s fine… I mean, I’ll still play it if you insist)

• Ratzia
• Gravediggers
• Planet Rush
• Escalation!
• Capybara Cookie Club
• MEOW
• Sakura
• Super Crazy World
• Der Herr der Ringe: Die Zwei Türme – das Kartenspiel
• Pick a Pen: Tuinen
• Pick a Pen: Riffen
• Pick a Pen: Crypten
• Euphrates & Tigris: Contest of Kings
• Age of War
• Criss Cross
• Reiner Knizia’s Decathlon
• Dragon Land
• Family Inc.
• FITS
• Galaxy Cat Extension
• Ivanhoe
• Loot
• Cezar
• Looting London
• Lost Cities: Rivals
• Modern Art: The Card Game
• Arquimedes
• Pitagoras
• Ohio
• Res Publica
• Wurfel Poker
• Star Trek: Expeditions
• Sushizock im Gockelwok / Sushi Bar
• Turtle Mania
• Clash of the Gladiators
• Yangtze
• Ribbit
• Buddy Hop
• Yoku Gamı
• Witchstone
• Desperados
• Ice Tumble
• Feats of Cheese
• Whoowasit?
• City of the Living
• Kartel
• Knights Poker
• LAMA Kadabra
• Rooby’s ABC
• Arctic Riders
• Karakorum
• Shell We?

F-Tier (Nah, I’m good)

• Ramses Pyramid
• Monster Chef
• Pan Tu Nie Stal! Demoludy
• Sudoku Challenge
• Zombie Mania
• Oshiya Tokyo
• Vampire
• Easy Come, Easy Go!
• Cat Ass Trophy / Zero Down
• Cthulhu Rising
• Gold
• Ramses Pyramid
• Hong Kong

What are your favorite Knizia games? How would your tier list be different from ours? Share below!

The post Ultimate Reiner Knizia Tier List — Ranking 261 Knizia Board Games! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

A new year is upon us, and the churn of new board game releases relentlessly tempts hobbyists one and all. You can either flee from it, or you can welcome it with open arms. I’m the open arms type, so come peruse my Most Anticipated Board Games of 2026! This list will be roughly ordered by date of release, for convenience.

Note: This list will also include a few titles published by us here at Bitewing Games (noted below) — because why wouldn’t I be excited about those?

All In: Predictions

Expected Release Date: March 2026

Thanks to The Gang (and Balatro), poker is hotter than ever! With All In: Predictions, designer Phil Walker Harding (Sushi Go) is getting in on the hype train with a more gamery version of The Gang that allows you to manipulate your poker hand, discard cards to utilize powers, and pick up discarded cards.

Purrramid

Expected Release Date: Q2 2026

Knizia’s at it again with another push-your-luck dice game, this time featuring… a pyramid of cats. Don’t question it, just embrace it.

Moytura

Expected Release Date: April 2026

From Bitewing Games

Our third Mythos Collection game (2-player games of strategy and mythology) is our most ambitious yet. It’s so ambitious, that it even has to come in a thicker box than the others in this line. Moytura asks the question: what if an area majority competition could work well in a 2-player only game? It then answers that question with an innovative third faction system that competes with players for points and functions elegantly similar to spreading Pandemic diseases. It’s a semi-cooperative affair where you and the rival clan must keep the monsters of Irish mythology in check while you all compete to rule ancient Ireland. The system here is so smooth that we even included a solo and cooperative variant in the rules. Moytura also features epic artwork across generously large cards and boards thanks to Irish illustrator, Henry Conway.

Azure

Expected Release Date: April 2026

From Bitewing Games

While Moytura is meaty and unexpected, Azure is perhaps the cleanest and sleekest title in our Mythos Collection. Here you’ll be managing a hand of cards while you stake your claim on various spaces across the grid using go stones. What’s interesting here is that your stones offer discounts to all other spaces in their row and column, allowing you to construct a clever strategic route in your journey to 25 points. The only problem is that your opponent is playing on the same grid — stealing your precious spaces, wrestling for favor of the powerful beasts, and racing you to the end of the point track. Between the smooth stones, snowballing decisions, and gorgeous cards brought to life by Kwanchai Moriya, this game just feels good to bust out and play. 

Container 

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

Container is that elusive economic grail game that so many of us have been dying to try over the past several years. The high price point, short supply, and garish presentation of the last version was enough to keep most of us at bay for far too long. Finally, thanks to our friends over at Allplay, Container is getting a proper treatment with a new version that is somehow both astronomically cheaper and comprehensively superior than its predecessor. At last we’ll get to experience what it’s like to produce, sell, and ship containers… and watch the economy frequently fly off the rails.

Triangulation

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

Triangulation takes on the Goliath hit party game Decrypto with its own angle by being easier to teach and quicker to play. I’ve had a chance to try it, and I came away very impressed with the more compact entertainment it delivers. Players take turns giving their team three clues to help them triangulate the secret word. But the opposing team gets a chance to hear the first two clues and steal away the victory if they’re able to guess first. The challenge here is to come up with clues that are complete nonsense, even when presented in pairs, without the full context of hearing all three together.

GRUNTZ

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

Fans of War Chest should keep an eye out for GRUNTZ — an abstract strategy war game that delivers similar thrills. Aside from offering magnetic customizable vehicles that are ridiculously cool, GRUNTZ aims to provide an addicting tactical head-to-head duel between two players.

Gold Country

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

From Bitewing Games

Gold Country was born to be the ultimate California Gold Rush board game. With simple rules and surprising depths, it cuts straight to the heart of what makes commodity speculation and stock manipulation fun. Players are investing in various mining companies and influencing their destinies by expanding those mines to precious prizes and perilous traps. You’ll stumble across glimmering gold veins, suffer devastating mine collapses, scheme with bandit outlaws, rally with fellow investors, sabotage rival companies, and more. Each turn you’ll need to read the board state (and your opponents’ intentions) well to know what you should invest in or sell out of. 

This is our only Knizia big box release of 2026, but it is primed and ready to make a huge splash with gripping gameplay and lush landscape artwork by Beth Sobel. Don’t miss the Kickstarter project (featuring low flat-rate shipping, deluxe upgrades, and a free expansion for backers) launching January 27!

Totally Human 

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

From Bitewing Games

While Gold Country is the headline title of our upcoming Kickstarter, Totally Human is the dark horse game that is sure to cause waves of its own. This one is designed by Kasper Lapp, who I’ve been wanting to work with ever since enjoying the silly antics of his other hits — That’s Not a Hat and Magic Maze. Totally Human is a hilarious game of probing questions and dubious answers that is so fast and addicting I’ve seen groups knock out half a dozen plays in under an hour. Each player is dealt a secret identity — alien or human — but everyone is trying blend in like a human. The group must answer three randomized multiple choice questions as human-like as possible, but the aliens face restrictions on what they are able to answer. With interesting questions like “What is scariest?” “Best name for a band?” or “Worst place to wake up without explanation?” and silly answers like “Spongy Boat” “Squeaky Pirate” or “Prickly Mountain,” you’re in for a lot of laughs here. The second phase is no slouch either, as players argue, beg, petition, negotiate, and bluff over who they trust and whose rocket ship they should join.

Just last Saturday I broke this one out with a group of eight tennis players (non board game hobbyists, mind you) who loved it so much that they played eight times in a row. Same thing happened a few days earlier with a church group of 10 teenagers and 3 adults (who had two tables of the game setup). It is a riot of a game.

Dogs of War

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

Dogs of War has been a longtime favorite hidden gem at my table. My wife even tracked down an elusive copy as a Christmas present for me several years ago. I have many fond memories of digging into its flashy tug-of-war politics with friends. That said, it’s always felt a bit off to me. The faction abilities are seriously imbalanced, the game can drag on a bit too long, the experience was never super consistent from one play to the next, the box is obnoxiously huge. Despite having the world’s greatest selection of hats, the game was in need of a second edition. That’s why I’m very hopeful for this new version coming from Paolo Mori and the team at Shut Up and Sit Down. Dogs of War second edition has the potential to become the greatest multiplayer tug of war game ever conceived.

The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth

Expected Release Date: Q3 2026

The original version of The Crew — the Quest for Planet Nine — was a masterpiece cooperative trick taker that took the industry by storm. Yet somehow, someway, the sequel — Mission Deep Sea — was able to raise the bar to new heights by injecting even more variety into the formula. Can Thomas Sing and Kosmos capture lighting in a bottle once again? I’m rooting for them. While Journey to the Ends of the Earth is prominently displaying its new Indiana Jones style theme, I’m more interested in what new tricks (no pun intended) this system has up its sleeve.

Rheinlander

Expected Release Date: September 2026

This will be the year that we finally get to behold Rheinlander: Evolved. This interesting hand management area control game from Dr Knizia has gotten a massive artwork and development facelift that I’m praying will propel the experience into the highest tiers of Knizia titles. I always felt like this one existed in that awkward space between approachable gateway game and hidden-depth strategy game, and it needed a proper nudge in one direction or the other. With the new expansion modules designed by Knizia, it appears that I just might get my wish. I’m a smidge suspect of the September release date, considering that this Kickstarter project launched with 10 total games that all need to be printed and shipped together. That’s a whole lotta logistics. But 25th Century does have a ton of experience in coordinating many products at once, so we’ll hope this project sees no delays. I crave the Rhine … let me float those waters once more.

Oath: New Foundations 

Expected Release Date: Q3/Q4 2026

Oath is an experience unlike any other. What if the players directed the campaign? What if the legacy was unending? What if the history of past plays lived on in current and future plays? It’s a thrilling prospect that has enthralled and/or flummoxed many a gaming group. Five years on from its release, designer Cole Wehrle has returned with new insights and a fresh perspective on how he wants to refine that experience. The answer is Oath: New Foundations. Word on the street is that this expansion not only adds more variety, but it also streamlines the original game. As one of my favorite gaming experiences of the past decade, I’m keen to see how this expansion shakes things up.

Sail Legacy

Expected Release Date: Q4 2026

Sail Legacy may very well go down as one of the most ambitious legacy games ever crafted. It takes the  popular cooperative 2-player trick taking pirate experience from Sail and blows the hull wide open with branching storylines, fail-forward shenanigans, and outlandish twists. I get the sense that nothing can prepare us for what’s coming here. Let me just leave you with this quote from Allplay COO, Joe Wiggins, “On the spectrum of Sail to Gloomhaven, Sail Legacy is much closer to Gloomhaven than it is to Sail.”

For the Gods 

Crowdfunding Campaign February 2026, Estimated Release Date Q4 2026

The designers of our own Azure and Moytura (and Undaunted, Mandala, War Chest, and more) are joining forces to put out a big box strategy game with Mighty Boards, and I’m all for it. Aside from pulling objects from a bag, building pillars, utilizing god powers, and competing for area majority, I have no idea what’s going on in this game. But it sure as heck looks good, and the pedigree is bullet-proof, so bring it on!

Mountain Goats: Legacy

Crowdfunding Campaign Right Now, Expected Release Date: Q4 2026

Never content to rest on their laurels, Allplay has taken it upon themselves to release not one but TWO legacy games in the SAME YEAR. Admittedly, this second one is a considerably smaller game and will likely release before Sail: Legacy simply because there are far fewer elements to finalize. The original Mountain Goats has been one of Allplay’s evergreen small box titles due to its simple dice allocation and charming king-of-the-mountain goatmanship. Personally, I haven’t played the original game in years, but I remember wishing that it gave me more bang for my buck. Well, now my wish is coming true, because Mountain Goats: Legacy aims to be a family-weight legacy game that adds all kinds of layers to the formula. Notably, the publisher says there are no permanent changes in this “legacy” game, so you can reset and replay to your heart’s content.

Roma XLI

Crowdfunding Campaign in February, Expected Release Date: Q4 2026

I’m always interested to see what my old pals over at Facade Games are up to. Their Dark Cities line (social deduction games packaged in faux-book boxes themed around dark historical events) is meticulously produced. If you’ve played one of these games before, then you know exactly what to expect from another one in the line. Notably, this one is illustrated by another friend of Bitewing, Alisha Giroux (artist of Gazebo, Gingham, and Cat Blues), and the early photos of the game are stunning. After the death of Caesar, players are competing to seize power over Rome through cunning politics.

Flintlock: Global Warfare in 20 Minutes

Kickstarter coming in March, Expected Release Date: 2026 

Fans of Paolo Mori’s Blitzkrieg and Caesar, take note! Flintlock is the next release in this legendary series and it promises to be the biggest one yet. You can enjoy two different 2-player experiences, or you can combine them for a 2v2 partnership mode, or you can even play solo. This time around David Thompson and Roger Tankersley have joined the design team, which makes for a very promising tug of war experience here. 

Regicide: Inferno & Regicide: Crown Duels

Expected Release Date: 2026

Regicide Legacy was one of my top releases of 2025. That game is absolute fire. I’m excited to see that the team is wisely taking some of the ideas from the legacy game and slimming it down into a greatest hits expansion of sorts for standard Regicide. Smart play, Badgers from Mars.

But I’m even more excited to hear about Regicide: Crown Duels — a two-player duel game where the royals of Regicide are pitted against one another. 

Both coming this year? You spoil us, Badgers.

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post Most Anticipated Board Games of 2026 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

What makes a favorite game? Is it the way it consistently entertains or surprises you? Challenges or delights you? Welcomes and invites you? Is it found in the excitement you feel to show it to others? The hunger you possess to return to it once more? The need to climb higher and explore deeper? The memories you smile back on and the people you share them with?

No doubt, it’s all of these things. A game is only as good as the experience it hosts and the emotions it generates for those at the table. Yet, it’s the players who fashion so much of that outcome. The perfect game for me might just be the worst choice for you. Despite our differences, we find ourselves here… Me sharing my strongest recommendations, and you hoping to find at least a spark of opportunity and/or vindication. What could be more human than the desire to find and share common joys?

Board games were alive and well in 2025, despite the year’s best efforts to torch them. Thank goodness they survived. In some ways, you could even say that board games are thriving. Particularly if you’re a fan of 2-player games, party games, or trick takers. It was a very good year for those genres (as you’ll soon see).

It’s worth noting that I’ve intentionally excluded Bitewing Games publications from my Top 15. As a daytime dentist and a nighttime cardboard vigilante, any design that we choose to champion will obviously be one that I love so much that I personally see to its fruition. Rather than bump another game out of the Top 15 spotlight, I’ll simply share afterwords what I love about each 2025 Bitewing release. I’ll also grant some special awards to other games and expansions including my favorite new-to-me game released before 2025, best game I didn’t love, worst game I adored, and more!

Let’s celebrate 2025 gaming, shall we?

15. Torchlit

For my tastes, Allplay had perhaps their best year ever in 2025 in terms of hit releases. It’s not surprising for one or two of their releases to end up on my best of the year list, especially when they release nearly 20 games in a year. Yet it is unprecedented for them to have … well, you’ll see. On top of that, their first game to make my list is a trick taker! I’ve been pretty ambivalent about most trick takers in recent years — the flood of them is starting to wear on me. But that doesn’t mean that one (or multiple) can’t sneak their way onto my list when they really hit the spot. 

Torchlit marries an interesting theme with a stunning presentation (from the legendary Harry Conway) to great effect. Here players are delving into a dungeon to battle monsters and claim loot. At the start of each hand, you’ll place your bet on how deep into the dungeon you’ll travel. Every time you win the trick or play a value that matches the trick-winning card, you’ll get to advance to the next room. The loser of the trick (the lowest value played) gets to decide which played cards get added to dungeon to become points. So you’re aiming to land on your chosen room and in a room with the most monsters. But you’d prefer to be there alone, otherwise you have the split the points with all other occupants! 

That may sound like far too much for a trick taking game to work, but some smart design decisions under the hood give you more flexibility than you’d expect. In our last play, I was able to execute a thrilling comeback and land on the jack-pot dungeon all by myself. 

14. Tic Tac Trek

Tic Tac Trek is one of those sneaky-good games that may be too sneaky for some. This charming little tin box is jam packed with wood tiles and campfires. Two players take turns drawing a square tile from the bag and placing it on their side (X or O) adjacent to a matching colored tile. Whenever you position three of your symbol in a row, you will crown the last tile with one of your campfires. But this is where things get very clever — you don’t score points for the campfire itself, you score points for the empty spaces surrounding your campfire. Sometimes it’s better to cover up your rival’s points (especially if they have multiple campfires clustered together) than try to build out another row of your tiles. Although it is easy enough to play with my 6-year-old, I’ve enjoyed some surprisingly cutthroat competitions with adults as well. 

13. Animal Rescue Team / The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship

Now before I hear any complaints, I just want to say that if Matt Leacock can keep using the core Pandemic system for multiple designs, then I should be allowed to use the same slot for two games. Fair is fair!

One of the more playful productions I’ve encountered this year comes from Shut Up & Sit Down’s debut title: Animal Rescue Team. In this game, you and your friends are driving vehicles around, loading them with animals and equipment, and delivering animals to shelters. Just like real life, each vehicle has different strengths and weaknesses… Some are better at speed while others can fit more stuff or even hitch a trailer behind. Random animal emergencies pop up around the board, and you’ll have to manage your time and resources wisely to keep things from spiraling out of control. If the proximity of problems and the roll of the dice don’t go your way, things can quickly become tricky. Thanks to the vehicle logistics and animal challenges, this one feels like a nice spin on the Pandemic formula (which happens to be from the same designer, Matt Leacock).

While Animal Rescue Team is the more zippy and casual cooperative experience, Fate of the Fellowship is more of a “meat’s back on the menu” kind of Pandemic game. While many board games have come from the Lord of the Rings IP in recent decades, Fate of the Fellowship might just be the most thematic yet. Here you feel the daunting quest of carrying the One Ring to Mount Doom while fighting back the forces of evil. The basic Pandemic system proves to be a great fit, and those looking for something more complex (with more events and abilities and variety) will find it here. It’s an event game that begs to be explored again and again.

As an added note, I don’t want to diminish either title here by having combined them into one spot. Both are great experiences that I would happily revisit again. One does not replace the other (unless you have very limited time and space for cooperative games at your table or on your shelf). I highly recommend you seek out the chance to try both and enjoy what makes them unique.

12. Feya’s Swamp

I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of Feya’s Swamp at Essen… from a random stranger who was walking around with it… days after it sold out at the publisher’s booth. I didn’t even ask him for it, he simply offered. Sometimes fortune just lands in your lap. Thank you kind stranger.

Feya’s Swamp is an economic swamp development game that lets you boat around, throw parties, and cause a bit of mischief along the way. My favorite aspect of the game is how the islands grow outward over time by players adding their tiles to them. This changes the water routes that are available to everyone’s boats and allows players to create bottlenecks, port monopolies, and all kinds of shenanigans. Meanwhile, you’ll be rushing for the best worker placement spots and jumping on the juiciest financial opportunities as you upgrade your actions. The player driven economy reminds me of Brass in some ways, and I consider that a very good thing.

11. Piñatas

As mentioned above, trick takers have strong-armed their way onto my list this year. Coincidentally, this one is also from Allplay. Piñatas is not the most flashy or innovative card game in this genre. But it has proven to be one of my favorite competitive trick takers for having a single brilliant twist. You’re out of the round when you win three tricks, and you immediately score points based on how many tricks other players have won. Crucially, the last player in the round effectively busts for waiting too long to go out and thus ends up with the worst score results. If you’ve ever been at a piñata party, then you may know what it feels like to be the last person in line to take a swing after that thing is already busted open and all the candy has spilled out.

Piñatas is wonderfully punchy while staying squeaky clean in its execution. It’s not even all that new. This game is basically a perfect meld of Reiner Knizia’s wackier Voodoo Prince and tighter Marshmallow Test — two games that were already extremely similar. So hate this pick if you wish, but it’s technically a different game. Plus it features illustrated piñatas that get beaten to a pulp across the increasing card values.

10. Alibis

Alibis shares a lot in common with Codenames — words are displayed across the table and players come up with clues to link them and then guess each other’s words. The key difference here is that Alibis is a cooperative game (instead of team-based) and everyone is doing everything simultaneously. Each player gets dealt two words and must come up with a clue to link them. Then everybody sees all the clues and must figure out each other player’s pair of words. There’s virtually no downtime or boring turns here since you are always doing everything. If that sounds fun to you, then you’re practically guaranteed to enjoy Alibis. It’s a crowdpleaser.

9. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — Trick-Taking Game

Beside boasting the longest board game title of all time, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — Trick-Taking Game presents a mighty fine spin on the cooperative trick taking formula established by The Crew. The major differences are the thematic chapters and the asymmetric characters, along with some novel new ideas sprinkled across the campaign.  While I still consider The Crew (especially Mission Deep Sea) to be the goat in this genre for its stronger approachability and endless variety, we’ve had a blast playing through The Fellowship of the Ring.

8. Zenith

It’s time to blitz through a few more killer 2-player games, starting with Zenith! I’ve been known to champion a great tug-of-war game, and Zenith is the next worthy addition to this esteemed line of legends. In Zenith, you’ll utilize a hand of multi-use cards (drawn from a huge central deck) to drag planet tokens in your direction, advance up the tech track, and tussle for a larger hand advantage. Similar to Splendor, the cards you add to your tableau will grant you discounts on future cards. You’ll be juggling a few different resources including credits and zen while you try to hold your rival back long enough to cross the finish line first. If you don’t mind a huge variety of card icons (and their accompanying player aids that are packed with explanations), or at least have the patience to get the hang of the card language through the first 30 minutes, then you are in a for a cosmic treat here.

7. Tag Team

This 2-player auto-battler is far more captivating than it has any right to be. In Tag Team, each player assembles a duo of characters from a wide variety of options and collects their associated cards. Then all you do is introduce one extra card to your programmed sequence each round and then watch it go over and over until one character is knocked out and the opposing team wins. There aren’t many decisions to be made here, but they are pivotal choices. By selecting where in your sequence to insert each new card, you’ll aim to synergize your powers and neutralize your opponent’s cards. But they are attempting the exact same thing, meaning it’s an experience of mind games where you must predict where your opponent will try to sync or desync their specific cards with your specific cards in the cyclical duel to the death.

6. Toy Battle

Toy Battle is surprisingly simple yet deliciously clever. Where Tag Team and Zenith require the right type of person to enjoy their experience, Toy Battle is effortless to break out and play with anyone. Just play a tile or draw two tiles. Draw two tiles, then play a tile. Play play draw draw play draw draw. Back and forth, back and forth, badabing badaboom, into a gradual crescendo with a swift victory. 

Every choice in this quick-playing game is far more impactful than the playful presentation lets on. Your tiles feature various toys with strong abilities, and you never seem to have the perfect tile at the right time. You can cover opponent tiles with your own tiles if they are stronger, and much of the game is about holding the defensive line while advancing your offensive front. If your line of troops is cut off from your HQ, then your ability to expand shrinks tremendously. This is all paired beautifully with two ways to win — capturing the enemy HQ or surrounding stars to claim enough first. The cherry on top here is that the game comes with a whopping 8 maps. EIGHT. Madness.

5. Merchants of Andromeda

Merchants of Andromeda has proven to be far more polarizing than I expected. It’s nearly as rules heavy as Feya’s Swamp, yet infinitely more silly and chaotic. I suppose if you hand somebody a mango popsicle and don’t warn them it’s spicy, they might be upset when they take a bite.

This one doesn’t even try to hide its wacky flavor. One look at the busy boards and aggressive artwork ought to clue you in to its brazen nature. Merchants is effectively five distinct mini games crammed into a single experience and strapped together with a dutch auction. What’s a dutch auction, you ask? It’s a bid clock that winds down until the first player leaps at the opportunity to claim the prize at the current bid value. This is facilitated by a free app where players start with their finger on a smartphone and the first to pull away wins the auction. It’s all about patiently pacing your spending and precisely bidding before somebody else takes the prize. Patience is a hard thing to come by when everybody wants to play those mini games (especially at 5-players). Timing is everything here — both in winning the auctions and in competing across the boards before their next scoring event triggers.

While some folks have lambasted Andromeda for having too much going on across the gameplay and presentation, this one has been a hit with my gaming groups to the point that they’ve asked to play it again on multiple occasions. It’s a love it or hate it kind of game, I suppose.

4. French Toast

I don’t wanna brag, I don’t wanna boast, I love French Toast. 

This is another pick that will get me thrown in board games prison. French Toast technically released in 2021… but this was likely a 700-ish copy print run for a 500 backer campaign from a very small publisher. Barely a blip in the board game industry that was forgotten as quickly as it came. In reality, the game hasn’t been properly (widely) released until a few weeks ago at PAX Unplugged. So is it old busted or new hotness? YOU DECIDE. I’ve got bigger things to worry about… like what on earth is the secret noun I’m supposed to guess in this game?

French Toast has a bit of a 20 questions vibe — one person draws a secret noun card and everyone else tries to deduce what it is via rapid-fire interrogation. But instead of asking yes or no questions, you’re skipping straight to the last part where you guess exactly what the noun is. All the Toastmaster can do is answer … “French Toast” … OR they can repeat the word you guessed! They’ll latch onto whichever one is closer to the actual noun and continue to echo that word until somebody guesses an even closer one. Sometimes the group can pigeon hole themselves in the wrong direction, but fortunately the Toastmaster gives them a clue at the start of every round (which hopefully gets the group back on track). 

The beauty of French Toast is that it is simple enough to play with anyone, from a group of gamers to a family gathering with kids, and it’s full of electric guesses and enticing go agains. What a great party game.

3. Magical Athlete

Magical Athlete is a party game in disguise, especially because it works well at 4-6 players. Heck, you can even have a riotous time at 3 players if everybody plays two characters each. This racing game turns lemons to lemonade with a taboo mechanism that all hobbyists loathe — roll to move. It should NOT be fun to race around a simple track by taking turns rolling a six-sided die. This is the kind of stuff that makes the general population assume that board games are for children only. But Magical Athlete is built different.

Layered on top of this simple premise is a cornucopia of hilariously broken powers. A banana that trips other racers as they pass by. A huge baby that hogs the space all to itself (and makes my 4-year-old yell “Big Babyyyy” in her deepest masculine voice). A suckerfish that attaches itself to the nearest racer. A lovable loser who gains a point every time they start their turn in last place. A tall bloke aptly named Legs who can just move 5 instead of rolling their die… every single turn. 

This is the kind of game that everyone wishes they had owned growing up (instead of Chutes & Ladders or Sorry). It’s the kind of game that makes you feel like a kid again. It’s the kind of game that can bring grown ups, grandmas, and kids around the table for a riotous occasion. It’s fun boiled down to its purest form.

2. Regicide Legacy

I wasn’t sure the creators at Badgers from Mars could pull off the feat of making a full-blown legacy game. Especially since their only other title was a small card game that merely uses a standard deck of cards. That’s a huge leap in terms of project scope. But to say that Regicide Legacy has been a pleasant surprise would be the understatement of the year.

For those who haven’t played standard Regicide, this is one of my all-time favorite cooperative games. You can play it with a standard deck of cards if you want to try it. Players are going up against jacks, then queens, then kings in this limited communication boss battler. If I play a 10, then I deal 10 damage to the current boss. If the suit played is a spade, then I defend all players against the boss (effectively reducing the boss’s attack by 10). If the suit played is a club, then my attack value is doubled. Hearts and diamonds grant you the ability to replenish your draw pile and hands. These abilities are fun to juggle, but then there are other clever wrinkles like bosses being immune to their own suit, bosses getting added to your deck as you defeat them, players having the ability to play sets of cards together to combine powers, and more. It’s a brilliant system and the best creative use of playing cards I’ve ever seen. My only complaint would be that there isn’t anything new to see after you’ve beaten the game at various player counts. Enter Regicide Legacy…

Regicide Legacy takes what was already a challenging system and cranks up the insanity to eleven. You’ll encounter new bosses, utilize new powers, permanently alter cards, and more. You’re not allowed to progress to the next level until you beat the current one, but the game has a great system that allows you to hire increasingly stronger mercenaries to help you overcome the obstacle. It’ll take a lot of plays to get through the entire campaign, especially at higher player counts where players have smaller hand limits (or in other words, less health). But we’ve had blast battling through this one at 2-players, and I hear it even works great solo.

1. Hot Streak

Before Hot Streak came along, it seemed like we had seen everything that racing/betting games had to offer. We have the timeless Winner’s Circle with its secret betting (the best way to play) and clever concept of rolling a dice and deciding which horse to assign it to. There’s the classic Camel Up with its layers of betting intermingled with the other action options of rolling dice and affecting spaces. And there’s the new hotness of Ready Set Bet with its tense real-time bet claiming. But while those games are all about manipulating the odds, hatching schemes, and pivoting tactics during the race, Hot Streak is a spectator sport first and foremost. 

Hot Streak understands more than any game that the thrill of betting is all about the emotional investment of the bettors. That’s why no decisions are made during the actual races — players can focus all their energy on cursing or cheering their mascots. That’s why the mascots themselves are some of the most delightfully garish figures you’ll encounter in board games, each with their own name and personality and history. That’s why the race deck is packed with comical disasters and unexpected comebacks. That’s why your final winnings are less about crowning a victor and more about setting the course for your life’s story as a degenerate gambler. Everything here is lovingly crafted all in the name of putting on a show and giving you a gaming experience to remember.

Many of my favorite gaming memories of the year were born from my plays of Hot Streak. Everything from the production to the experience is a home run. That’s why it’s easy to crown this one as my game of the year.

Celebrating Bitewing Games’ 2025 Releases:

Best Cold Pitch — Iliad

Of all the designs I’ve ever been cold pitched, Iliad remains the best. Unlike our other publications that were projects I sought out or that started out as promising pitches and eventually developed into worthy candidates, Iliad landed like a strike of lightning — bright, bold, and perfect. I only had to read the rules to see that this one was special…

• The 2-dimensional tug of war across rows and columns of juicy rewards and perilous disasters.
• The contrasting mixture of a tight hand size with flexible tile abilities.
• The competing victory conditions of exclusive color collection versus point supremacy.

Add in the epic greek mythology artwork from Harry Conway, and it all combines into what feels like another stone-cold classic from Reiner Knizia.

Best Grower — Ichor

As a hobbyist, I’ve rarely been all that attracted to pure abstract games. Between the unforgiving perfect information and the historically muted presentation, it’s hard for me to get excited about moving around pawns or tokens in a battle of wits. So when I first encountered Ichor, I found the premise to be neat, but I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with it. Yet as I began to play, and I kept encountering endlessly new challenges and opportunities from the asymmetric character abilities, I realized that this was quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite 2-player games. There’s so much to dig into here between a larger map, additional characters, and an optional gate module. And it’s all supported by a satisfying core of whisking your figures around like rooks as they leave behind a trail of tokens in a race to put out all your tokens first. No wonder Reiner has been tinkering with this design for decades until he finally perfected it in Ichor.

Proudest Production — SILOS

As a board game publisher, sometimes you hire a talented artist for a project and hope that they can clearly see the end product that you can only somewhat make out in your mind’s eye. It’s a blurry silhouette that you can barely perceive through a thick fog, and you’re relying heavily on the artist to cut through that fog. Other times, inspiration strikes and you can clearly see it all — the pieces, the cards, the table presence, the wow factor. SILOS was the latter for me… I knew it would have chunky figures showing a human on one side and a disguised alien on the other. I knew they’d be wearing dapper hats as they abducted humans and cows beneath a roaming UFO. I understood that the game needed designated discard spaces to help players count the cards and dig into the thrilling probabilities. The vision was ripe for the taking.

Of course, the art team for SILOS (Kwanchai and Brigette) still managed to exceed expectations. And Reiner managed to do even more than I hoped with the gameplay variety. I’ve loved this wacky area majority game ever since I first played it as Municipium, and I’m extremely proud of what our team was able to evolve it into.

Favorite Gaming Experience — EGO

I like to describe EGO as an epic push-your-luck auction adventure. It delivers everything I want in a big box board game. Gorgeous artwork and lovely tactility across the components. A wild rumpus ripe with memorable interactions and dramatic surprises. Rich opportunities for careful strategies and clever tactics. A steady tempo of action and decisions without the baggage of fiddly upkeep or excessive downtime. Unique flavors and mechanisms that aren’t found anywhere else. A vast wealth of variety and depth that rewards repeat plays. And a streamlined system that lets the table get to playing quickly. Simply put, EGO is one of my favorite games of all time.

Best Crowd-Pleaser — ORBIT

ORBIT went through a major development overhaul between the initial pitch and the finalized version. The fascinating core premise of racing to and surfing on various moving targets was always there. But we considered all kinds of wacky paths to take it down. All the credit goes to Reiner, especially for his relentless focus on keeping the game fast-paced and streamlined. Thanks to his simple system of play a card and do everything on it in any order, ORBIT has proven to be one of our most approachable and popular big box games. I also love how Vincent Dutrait brought this space-race to life with vivid planets and stylish ships. There are a lot of ways to play ORBIT thanks to the many modules, but my personal favorite is the 4-player partnership mode with the devious nebula tokens and ridiculous hyper accelerator engine included.

Favorite Domino Game — Gazebo

Gazebo manages to capture the vibe of dominos better than any other domino game I’ve played. It’s all about being light on your feet —  taking advantage of the opportunities in your hand and on the board. Do you start a new nook, grow an old one, block an opponent from a lucrative opportunity, concoct a hostile takeover, pounce on a juicy bonus? It’s a lovely tactical time with a lovely presentation from Alisha Giroux. I enjoy bouncing around between the four different maps — they each provide a distinct flavor of Gazebo that keeps me endlessly hungry for more.

Most Clever Game — Gingham

This year we published our 20th title, which is absolutely bonkers to me. We’ve all encountered the concept of a 5-year plan and a 10-year plan. Where do you imagine yourself in X number of years?… That kind of thing. Well I can assure you that my 5-year plan at the end of 2020 most certainly did not envision me being a full-time board game publisher with 20 titles under my belt. I was fresh out of dental school, for heaven’s sake!

Anyway, out of the 20 titles that we’ve now published, I believe that Gingham is the most clever of the bunch. The design is born from a dichotomy between turn order advantage and strategic opportunity. That dichotomy is represented by a square grid shown across a gingham blanket. Players are positioning their queen in a row and then deploying an ant to that row between their queen and the central stitch. The row that gives you the best turn order advantage gives you the worst strategic opportunities, and vice versa. The objective is to build networks of your ants that connect matching sweets. The challenge is that players are often racing for the same sweets and fighting over the same spaces. So Gingham is all about reading the board state and finding the most lucrative opportunities while you jockey for turn order. It is incredibly rewarding of smart play.

Favorite Travel Game — Bombastic

Bombastic has become my new favorite travel game by a long shot. How so?

• It plays in 5 minutes.
• It’s dead simple to teach anyone.
• I can literally play it at the beach or on an airplane tray table.
• I’ve never had a bad play of this. Either it ends hilariously quickly when somebody accidentally explodes or it evolves into a tense battle where you start to second-guess your memory. 
• It’s delightfully moreish. The different cards and the order they come out continue to deliver unexpected moments. It’s the kind of game that begs to be played again and again.

Amid the dozens of mechanisms, hundreds of plays, thousands of releases, and millions of rules, it can be far too easy for us hobbyists to turn our noses up at dumb, silly games. Especially games that are built on simple commonplace concepts like tic tac toe. But Bombastic is one of those helpful reminders that games should be first and foremost about play. And I love that it lets me play with anyone, anywhere.

Best New-To-Me Game Released Before 2025

Winner: Leviathan Wilds — I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Leviathan Wilds is one of the best big box cooperative games I’ve ever played. It avoids the common pitfall of being an overcomplicated fiddly mess and instead provides its replayability through interesting character combinations and numerous boss challenges. The concept of scaling a gargantuan beast while it tries to squash you is refreshingly unique and expertly executed for a board game. This would easily haven been in my Top 5 of 2024 if I had played it that year. Bravo, Moon Crab Games.

Honorable Mentions

• Mexica
• Magic Maze
• Wheedle
• Linko
• River of Gold

Best Reskin/Reprint

Old classic game brought back to life (sometimes with a new visual style)

Winners: High Society and Calimala — Allplay’s new version of High Society is absolute dynamite — it takes a masterpiece and adds three spicy new cards from Knizia, all in a stunning production. Calimala, newly illustrated by Ian O’Toole, proved to be one of the favorite games of my gaming group thanks to its beautiful components and distinct area majority competition.

Comeback Award

Haven’t played in years… even better than I remember it.

Winner: YINSH — Shoot, I haven’t played YINSH in roughly 8 years. But I got the chance to try it again (this time on Board Game Arena) and was struck by how solid this abstract strategy game is. You’re moving your rings around, flipping tokens as you pass over them, and trying to line up five of your tokens in a row. Despite culling hundreds of games from my collection, I was wise enough to keep this one around. I’m long overdue to dust this one off and dig into it more!

Honorable Mentions:

• The Castles of Burgundy
• Iwari

Fall From Grace Award

Once respected, now rejected

Winner: Skyrise — I’ve had really great plays of Skyrise. But this year I’ve also had some very painful plays of it. This one benefits greatly from a group that shoots from the hip and doesn’t think too hard about bidding. If you’re playing with folks who are prone to analysis paralysis and overthinking every single bid, you are in for an agonizing game. Not only do players have to consider what to bid, but they also have to evaluate where to bid… every single time the auction gets around to them. My last play was so slow that I was happy to purge this one from my collection and never see it again (unless with the right group).

Best Game I Didn’t Love

Winner: The Hobbit: There and Back Again — It’s obvious that this scenario-based roll & write game was made with love, both by the designer (Dr. Knizia) and the publisher (Office Dog). The scenarios are inspired by their source material and creatively diverse, and the production is one of the best I’ve seen for a roll & write. I can understand why this has been such a hot title in 2025. All that said, I was bored to tears by this game. Slowly extending my routes to all the landmarks, collecting a few punchboard tokens here and there, and racing to claim a couple 3-point bonuses first was as thrilling as watching paint dry. Each scenario felt like homework, and the prospect of playing all the scenarios filled me with reluctance and dread. So rather than put myself through such misery, I quickly got rid of the game.

Worst Game I Adored

Winner: Slambo! — I get a kick out of Allplay’s tiny box line. For $9 a pop and a few short minutes of your life, you can explore all kinds of gaming experiences. There are a lot of interesting design concepts out there that perhaps don’t hold up to close scrutiny or a higher price point. But the neat thing about this tiny box line is that it allows the publisher to put out more experimental products and aggressively seek out interesting bite-sized games. Slambo is a simple little card game where two players take turns manipulating the total with plus and minus cards until one player is “forced out of the ring” by pushing the total below zero or above ten. I wouldn’t call myself a Slambo pro, but it feels like a one-trick pony with one optimal strategy (get rid of your largest cards first while trying to keep a healthy balance of positive and negative cards). I suppose you could card count as well if you want to get real serious. But even so, I didn’t dislike my plays of it. My six-year-old loves it as well. So while it’s not one that I’ll recommend to the world, I’ll keep it around and dabble in some sumo card play every now and then.

Best Kids Game

Winner: Magical Athlete – Because of course it is.

Honorable Mentions:

• French Toast
• Diver Go

Biggest Bummer of 2025

Winner: Tariffs. I suppose this might not be so bad if you long for the good old days of mass poverty under a corrupt monarchy.

Best Video Game of 2025

Winner: Donkey Kong Bananza — As much as I love Mario and Zelda, it warms my heart to see Nintendo invest so much money, passion, and creativity into one of their b-side characters like Donkey Kong. I grew up playing and loving the big collectathons — Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazoo, Spyro, Donkey Kong 64, and Super Mario Sunshine. These are some of the most memorable gaming experiences from my childhood, so for Nintendo to throw their best developers and budget at a brand new Donkey Kong collectathon is a dream come true. These people have perfected the 3D platformer, and it was a blast to see them explore that with destructible environments and a lovable hulk-smashing protagonist. If this game doesn’t put a smile on your face, then you should probably check for a pulse.

Honorable Mentions:

• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Kirby Air Riders
• Mario Kart World
• Hades 2 (Probably… when I get around to it)

Best Film of 2025

Winner: The Ballad of Wallis Island — While Hollywood continues to churn out increasingly putrid sludge, there are still some great films being made by passionate artists and competent teams (if you look hard enough). The Ballad of Wallis Island is one such film I can heartily recommend. A quirky superfan wins the lottery and pays his favorite musicians to get back together for a performance on a remote island. That sounds like it could be the premise of a horror film, but it’s actually a heartwarming comedy/drama that hits the spot in all the right ways.

Honorable Mentions:

• Kpop Demon Hunters
• Frankenstein
• F1 The Movie

Launching on Kickstarter Soon

One of our biggest releases of 2026 is launching on Kickstarter soon! We’ve crafted the ultimate gold rush game featuring competing mine companies, crafty stock manipulation, rip-roaring shared incentives, dubious diggings, trepidatious cave-ins, timely canoes, California frontiers, devious bandits, and more! Don’t miss out — follow the Kickstarter here.

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post Top 15 Board Games of 2025 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Welcome to the official Bitewing Games 2025 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide! Few moments are better than gathering friends and family around the table for wholesome gaming — that’s why we started Bitewing Games as a way to create and share classy board games that bite. And there’s no better time for tabletop gaming than the holidays. As is tradition, we like to create and share a Board Game Gift Guide to kick off the holidays.

As always, our selection criteria for this guide include the following:

• The games have been tried, tested, and approved by us and/or trusted critics
• The games are generally available to purchase (links will be provided below to sites where you can purchase them—click the $)
• We won’t recommend anything from our past Holiday Gift Guides, but we still fully endorse those previous guides, so if you need even more recommendations then check out our 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 Guides.

For your information, we receive no financial compensation, sponsorship, or advertisement money for this guide or these recommendations except for 8 of the 24 games which Bitewing Games directly publishes — noted below. At the end of the day, these are simply 24 games we genuinely believe are great Holiday gifts. If you find value in our content, then we’d love to have you join our Bitewing Games newsletter! We use our newsletter to send regular updates regarding our latest content (like this gift guide) and publications (such as our 2025 releases featured below).

This guide is divided into five sections for your convenience (scroll at your leisure or click to jump straight to the section that interests you most):

• Gifts for the Casual Board Gamer
• Gifts for your Significant Other
• Stocking Stuffer Games (small & cheap!)
• Perfect Games for you Holiday Party
• Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer
• Black Friday Deals

Gifts for the Casual Board Gamer

Botswana | 2-5 Players | $25

Botswana is one of the highest ranked card games on our Ultimate Knizia Tier List, and for good reason! This simple box of wildlife and shared incentives is a hoot. All you do is play a card to change an animal’s value and then take an animal token. When all six cards of one animal have been played out, the round is over, and your animal tokens are worth whatever their last card played was. It sounds too basic to be fun, but you’d be surprised how much mileage Dr. Knizia gets out of a tight game of hand management and stock manipulation. Botswana just got a gorgeous new edition illustrated by Weberson Santiago, so there is no better time to pick up a copy.

ORBIT | 2-4 Players | $49

From Bitewing Games

Speaking of approachable hand management games by Reiner Knizia, ORBIT is a brand new design by the good doctor featuring cosmic competitive tourism among orbiting planets! In the vastness of space, your ship moves rather slowly, which is why it helps to jump on a planet and surf its orbit to your next destination. Your turn consists of playing one card from your hand to take its actions (like flying your ship, regaining energy, and advancing a planet along its orbit) and then refilling your hand at the end of your turn. Easy as that. Meanwhile, you’ll want to upgrade your ship to increase your hand size and energy capacity. You’re gonna need it, because your opponents will try everything to slow you down in this tactical space race.

Bohnanza | 3-7 Players | $19

Nothing like a classic bean trading game to get the group going. Bohnanza has been in print for decades and continues to delight both hobbyist gamers and casual gamers. Your hand will become cluttered up with beans you do and don’t want, and the best way to get things in order is by trading with other players so you can all plant what you want and harvest your crops for money.

Gazebo | 2-4 Players | $39

From Bitewing Games

There is something about dominoes that makes them universally appealing. They are fun to handle, easy to understand, and interesting to orient. Gazebo takes that elegant simplicity and fleshes it out into a full blown area control strategy game. You’ll be establishing nooks, connecting to patios, and overtaking opponents, all in the name of putting out your titular gazebos first. It’s abstract yet addicting, and the variety of maps are a joy to explore.

Magical Athlete | 2-6 Players | $30

When you first dive into the hobby of board games, you learn that a lot of the mechanisms and types of games you grew up enjoying are actually taboo among hobbyists. These include things like Monopoly’s roll-to-move (where the dice dictate how far you move instead of your own decisions) or Uno’s take-that (aggressive effects that target another player). It makes sense why these generally are frowned upon — they take away player agency, undermine strategic decisions, and generally aren’t used in particularly interesting ways. Magical Athlete is a game spits in the face of these hobbyist taboos. It’s a game of rolling dice to see who reaches the finish line first and sabotaging your opponents with wacky abilities along the way. The difference here is that Magical Athlete understands that dumb luck is exactly that — silly, dumb fun. By cranking the hijinks up to eleven, it breaks the mold of established gaming and turns the experience into something that everyone can enjoy.

Gifts for your Significant Other

Crisps | 2 Players | $20

Card shedding and ladder climbing games have been around for ages. They’re all about playing a set or run of cards that is stronger than the last one played to empty your hand first. Crisps doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel here, but it does turn this formula into a compelling 2-player-only experience. Much like its name implies, it’s an addicting little snack of a card game. 

Iliad | 2 Players | $29

From Bitewing Games

Much like the stone-cold Knizia classics of Lost Cities and Schotten Totten, Iliad is a fire-cracker of a 2-player experience. You’ll take turns positioning your tiles on the board as you compete for the surrounding tokens. When a line is filled, the strongest player in that row gets to decide which player gets which token at either end. Your tiles also have special abilities that let you sway the odds in your favor. All the while, you are sweating over whether to compete for a knockout (exclusive favor of the gods) or compete for most points. It’s tense, it’s more-ish, it’s Iliad.

Zenith | 2 Players | $35

2-player-only games tend to come in a small box, but they can still pack a big punch. Zenith swings for the fences by being a multi-use card tableau building tug-of-war game. There is a lot going on, and thankfully some large player aids to explain what the heck all of those different icons mean on the cards. Despite how much content it flexes, Zenith still manages to play smoothly and quickly once you get into a groove with it. You’ll execute a lot of neat powers along your quest to pull the right planet discs to your side of the board.

Ichor | 2 Players | $29

From Bitewing Games

While Iliad is the more popular and immediate of our new Greek Mythology games, Ichor is undoubtedly the deeper of the two. It may take a bit longer to sink its teeth in, but the payoff is certainly rewarding. Here you’ll juggle 12-14 asymmetric character abilities layered on top of a sharp abstract game. Your figures move like rooks (in straight lines) and leave behind a trail of your tokens. The game is not about eliminating your opponent’s figures, rather it is about placing out all of your tokens first. The characters break these rules in all kinds of deific ways. Zeus strikes down tokens around him, Poseidon washes them away in a tidal wave, the Siren calls an opponent to her, Heracles pushes monsters out of the way, Cyclops goes out in a blaze of glory, and much much more.

Tag Team | 2 Players | $25

I grew up playing a lot of war. You know, the card game where you both flip a card from your personal deck and see whose is stronger, winner takes both. I don’t remember the name of it, but I recall having themed decks like animals (killer whales and humans were GOAT) and Lord of the Rings. Tag Team is a bit like war — flip a card and see what happens. In hobbyist terms, this is called an auto-battler. Although you’re not stealing your opponent’s cards when you beat them. Rather, this is a mind game of revealing cards, resolving their effects, and gradually inserting more cards into your sequenced deck. The challenge comes from guessing where your opponent will insert their next card as you try to exploit the chinks in their armor. This auto-battler is made all the more fun by a huge variety of characters you can pair up and pit head-to-head.

Stocking Stuffer Games (small & cheap!)

Rainbow | 2-6 Players | $9

Recently, our friends at Allplay have started a Tiny Box line of games that are perfect for this kind of list. Rainbow is perhaps the best of this line so far. This lightning quick card game is about making bids (runs or sets of cards) to claim point-scoring cards from the middle. The twist here is that the cards you all bid with become the rewards that you fight over for the next round! On top of that, if you spend your cards too quickly then you might miss out on some juicy final rounds.

Bombastic | 2 Players | $19

From Bitewing Games

I see people ask all the time about great games they can play on the airplane or at the beach. Answers are always few and far between — probably because airplane tray tables or wet sandy beaches don’t usually get along with board game components. Bombastic is the perfect answer to this question — we’ve built this game to be something you can truly play with anyone, anywhere. Bombastic takes tic tac toe (something everybody knows) and makes it fun. Nine tiles are placed face-down — four Xs, four Os, and one bomb. You’ll use action cards and your cunning wit to track, rearrange, and align your tiles to reveal three-in-a-row and win. But if you accidentally reveal the bomb? … let’s just say that your opponent will be delighted.

Viking Seesaw | 2-4 Players | $21

Viking Seesaw is a delightful dexterity game that I’ve been praising for a few years now. The only downside is that it is published in Japan and much harder to acquire elsewhere. Fortunately, Allplay has come to the rescue and partnered with publisher Itten to sell their game in the US! In Viking Seesaw, players take turns adding items of various weights, shapes, and materials to an unstable viking ship. While you try to get rid of all your pieces, the ship will threaten to teeter-totter and force you to take more cargo. What a splendid time.

Linko | 2-5 Players | $13

Linko feels like a stone-cold classic that has been around for decades, but it’s actually only 11 years old (which admittedly is still pretty old in board game years). This card game of one-upmanship is all about playing stronger sets to steal opponent sets. Initially it may seem flimsy, but that is merely the outside of the onion. Peel back the layers and you’ll find a brilliant little card game with surprising depth and stimulating discoveries.

Perfect Games for you Holiday Party

Hot Streak | 2-9+ Players | $45

Every now and then, a game comes along that feels like a revelation, an event, a masterpiece. Hot Streak might just be such a game, thanks in large part to its sublime production that complements a truly wacky experience. You’ll unroll a long race track from this vibrant box and place upon it four zany mascots. As a group of degenerate gamblers, you and your friends will place your bets on these unreliable mascots before watching the chaos unfold. It’s silly and raucous in the best possible way.

Alibis | 2-6 Players | $19

Fans of the widely loved Codenames or similar games will find much to enjoy in Alibis. This cooperative challenge has virtually no downtime because players all think of their own clues and then guess each other’s words at the same time. It feels good when another player guesses your two words, and it feels amazing when you guess everything else correctly.

Ito | 2-10 Players | $18

Ito is like a faster, leaner, cooperative version of Wavelength — a party game of relativity along a topic spectrum. Players are dealt a secret card from 1 to 100 and must play their cards facedown in order based on the clues everyone gives within a spectrum. It’s portable and moreish, making it a great game to travel with for the holidays.

Tearable Quest | 1-99 Players | $9

Tearable Quest asks the question that everyone has been dying to answer: Who among you is the best paper tearer? With a timer counting down and a small sheet of paper pinched between your fingers, you must carefully rip out sets of symbols to complete quests and defeat monsters. One slip up could cost you dearly, yet time is of the essence. It’s the kind of novel stress that won’t be for everyone, but it comes with tons of sheets and works with any size group.

Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer

Leviathan Wilds | 1-4 Players | $74

For my tastes, great big box cooperative games are very hard to come by. Either they get bogged down with too many rules and systems, or they lack the allure to keep me coming back for more. Leviathan Wilds finds a perfect balance by marrying smooth, engaging gameplay with thrillingly meaningful variety. You must work together to scale a massive leviathan, survive its attacks, and rescue it from its curse. The game features a large spiral bound book of different scenarios and a cornucopia of character combinations.

SILOS | 2-4 Players | $55

From Bitewing Games

It’s a rare treat to come across an experience as unique as SILOS. Even in Reiner Knizia’s catalogue of over 800 board games, there is really nothing like it. SILOS is a tactical area majority slot machine of abducting humans and cows during an alien invasion. On your turn, position your figures wisely, reveal a card, and resolve the event. There are many incentives and possibilities pulling you in different directions, but it helps to keep your cool and play the odds. If you happen to distinguish your alien-in-disguise with a graduation cap, then they’ll be all the more influential in human society. 

Calimala | 2-5 Players | $50

Calimala just got a lovely new edition thanks to Ian O’Toole and Alley Cat Games. While the core gameplay was always compelling, it now looks prettier than ever. Calimala has an interesting worker placement twist where you’ll stack a tile between two actions to perform those actions, and when later players go to that same spot they’ll activate your worker for you again. You can even bank actions as cards if you can’t or don’t want to do freebie actions. And rather than let the stacks of workers get too high, Calimala solves this problem by kicking out the fourth worker in a space to trigger an area majority scoring event. It’s a super clean and satisfying system that has been a hit with my group.

EGO | 2-5 Players | $49

From Bitewing Games

The more I play EGO, the more I realize it is one of my all-time favorite games. This epic push-your-luck auction competition sees players acting as human ambassadors who traverse the galaxy together in a bumbling quest to befriend alien civilizations. Along the way, you’ll encounter various intelligent species who are quick to take offense, especially as you push-your-luck to gain more cards. Growing and managing your hand is key to success, because you’ll desperately need cards during the game of chicken auction events where ambassadors try to outshine each other. While there are plenty of electric moments and swings of fortune, the game remains highly strategic by letting you see the entire sequence of events and plan your moves carefully.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game | 1-4 Players | $27

The Crew is a cooperative trick taker that has cemented itself as a card game classic thanks to the addicting series of missions. But that doesn’t mean it has to hog all the spotlight. For those who want even more of its card play goodness, or if you prefer a more thematic touch, then The Fellowship of the Ring is a great alternative. You’ll get to play as characters from the beloved fellowship as your progress through Tolkien’s adventurous tale. 

Gingham | 2-4 Players | $39

From Bitewing Games

Gingham might be the most clever strategy game I’ve ever signed. Players are connecting, stockpiling, and claiming sweets as their ants sprawl across the picnic blanket. It’s a game of jockeying for turn order while you chain together your pieces. It has everything: careful long-term planning, spicy tactical pivoting, and powerful ability triggering. After dozens of plays, I still enjoy the tough tradeoffs and tense interaction it presents. I’m excited for more folks to sink their teeth into this sweet new release.

Black Friday Deals

Starting Friday and continuing through Monday, Allplay is hosting a HUGE Black Friday sale featuring 10 Bitewing Games titles and over 100 other games and products from a dozen different publishers. Good luck finding a better place to shop board games this weekend than that. Check it out here (live Friday through Monday).

Here are some deals you can look forward to specifically from Bitewing (for our base games and their add-ons):

• Shuffle & Swing
• Cat Blues: The Big Gig
• Cascadero
• Cascadito
• Spectral
• Gussy Gorillas
• Soda Smugglers
• Pumafiosi
• Hot Lead
• Trailblazers: Sasquatch Expansion

Happy Holidays and Happy Gaming!

The post 2025 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide + Black Friday Deals appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Leviathan Wilds

5 Plays (2-3 Players)

Cooperative games can be pretty hit or miss for me. They take the dynamic experience of competing with another human for strategic supremacy and replace it with a cooperative challenge of solving a puzzle. Sometimes the puzzle is too simple or repetitive that it quickly grows old as you find yourself approaching it with the same strategy every time. Other times the puzzle overcompensates for this problem by layering complex and exhausting systems on top. My sweet spot is somewhere in the middle — not too taxing to feel like work, but challenging and varied enough to keep me on my toes. 

My favorite cooperative games tend to be the ones with smooth gameplay, tough decisions, a sprinkling of surprises, and a heaping of variety. This would include games like The Crew, MicroMacro, Sky Team, and So Clover. Indeed, these are all “light-weight” in complexity. I can’t remember the last time I fell in love with a “medium-weight” cooperative game. So it’s a very pleasant surprise to find myself five plays into Leviathan Wilds and hungry for more of this big box and big boss goodness.

If you’re familiar with Shadow of the Colossus, then you’re not too far off from what Leviathan Wilds is trying to accomplish. The mood of this board game is less… dark… than its video game inspiration. Each session your team of adventurers will encounter a gigantic creature and begin the process of climbing this mammoth and purging it of poisonous gems. Despite your good intentions, these leviathans aren’t having any of it, so they’ll spend the entire game trying to smoosh you like the pesky ants you are. Each turn the active player will reveal a threat card (a telegraphed attack from the leviathan), play a card for its action points, and then spend those action points to do things like climb, jump, glide, dodge, strike a gem, rest, recover, and more — all before the leviathan’s attack lands. 

You’ll have a couple spare cards in hand that you can play at any time for their unique ability that always help you and frequently can help your teammates. I love how much flexibility this cooperative system provides — you can literally play a card at any time, whether it is your turn or not, when it is most suitable. The private hands prevent too much quarterbacking from any players that are inclined to such tendencies. You can also pick up helpful mushrooms on the colossi and toss them to nearby players at any time for a powerful bonus ability.

The use of space and gravity is also quite interesting in Leviathan Wilds. Just like in real life, it’s much easier to go down than go up. Scaling the Goliath from bottom to top generally takes several turns, and it’s even slower if you are doing other actions along the way. Conversely, you can choose to let go at any time and start falling straight down and won’t stop unless you hit a ledge or play a card with an anchor ability. You can also use the glide action to fall with style, meaning you can move laterally as you drop in altitude to help you reach a desired location on the beast. These movement rules allow you to play strategically and often skip the low hanging fruit on a turn where your hand is great for quick upward traversal and not so good for striking nearby gems. But like any good cooperative game, you’ll be forced to juggle a lot of priorities including your grip. If your draw pile ever runs out, then you lose your grip on the leviathan and start falling immediately which can be very punishing if there is no ledge to stop your descent back to square one. It helps to navigate to ledges and rest along the way to make sure your draw pile doesn’t get too low, or you can simply choose not to draw your last card and hope the leviathan doesn’t force you to discard it before your next rest action.

The turns play smoothly and the objective is equally simple. The beast is riddled with dice of various values that you’ll need to strike down to zero in order to come away victorious. Meanwhile, you’ll be taking a battering when you finish your turn and the leviathan takes a swipe at you or your friends. Health is at least easy to recover, you just don’t want to let it drop too far because you’ll also be gaining blight (which is much harder to recover from), and if your health and blight trackers cross then you are cooked… well, nearly cooked. Your teammates will have one last turn to try and complete the objective before you all lose. In one of our plays, we had a teammate sacrifice herself with one last mighty blow — succumbing to blight but taking out the highest gem and giving us one last turn to take out the remaining gem and win the game. It was awesome.

While the game has a solid core ripe with challenging objectives and thrilling decisions, its greatest strength might just be the sheer amount of variety on display. The spiral bound book of leviathans boasts 17 monsters with unique layouts and threat decks. The player decks are further seasoned with a whole slew of characters and classes that allow for all kinds of juicy combinations. If that’s not enough, then there is already an expansion with even more content goodness. Best of all, Leviathan Wilds is approachable enough that I’ve been able to teach it to four different groups all while exploring a different leviathan and player deck every session. This would be a much harder game to dig into if I was locked into the “intro” setup until I found a regular group for it.

I’ve only lost once so far, but we immediately reset that particular game and scraped out a thrilling win on our second attempt thanks to an improved strategy. But all of my plays across several leviathans and decks have been a blast. I’m eager to see what challenges await next.

Prognosis: Excellent

Positano

2 Plays (4 Players, 5 Players with the Expansion)

Positano caught my attention immediately when I heard it was a mean, quick, and pretty auction game. It features an eye-catching production with nice chunky buildings and rooftops that stack together well (similar to Tower Up). It has a bit of The Estates vibe where you are bidding to put out buildings, and your efforts at one tower can be rendered obsolete by the scheming of an opponent. Yet Positano is not nearly as brutal as The Estates — there’s bonus point gelatos to be enjoyed and variable objective cards to be pursued.

The central mechanism of Positano is found in the simultaneous bidding that takes place each round. Players are bidding for first dibs on three different rows of tiles. You’ll commit to a combination of two cards — a three-tiered bid plus a modifier. You’ll be forced to prioritize one row of rewards over another, as most the cards are some combination of high, medium, and low bids. The three rows offer specific lots, a number of blocks to replenish your supply, and a quality of rooftop (plus other benefits). The basic objective is to build tall towers with high quality rooftops which increase your tower multiplier. But only the levels that have a seaside view (that aren’t blocked by the towers of in front of yours) will be worth points. So the challenge is to time your high bids in the most critical rounds for your strategy and hope you claim your desired rewards, all while managing your supply of building blocks.

In both plays, I opted for a strategy of building a couple maximum height and maximum quality towers as my point whales, and then defending the spaces in front of them so they aren’t too blocked in the final scoring. This worked quite well. Even with the unique objective cards between each play and the ability to combine bidding cards and modifiers in different ways, both plays felt pretty similar. Because the bidding cards are restricted to exact values and all player hands are the same, you’ll never see a player go unexpectedly high or low on an auction. It’s very much an auction game with the safety bumpers up, for better or worse.

I do appreciate that Positano plays rather quickly, although it’s hard to think of it as a “filler” game with a box that is so necessarily large to hold the chunky pieces. While I enjoyed both plays of Positano, I’ve tried so many different auction games at this point that the bar is high for me to really love one. I’ve got smaller, faster, and spicier options that can satiate my appetite for a filler auction game (see High Society, Ra, For Sale, Hot Lead, Conic, and Money… to name a few). But I had a pleasant enough time and wouldn’t mind visiting this Italian Village again someday.

Prognosis: Fair

Critter Kitchen

1 Play (5 Players)

Critter Kitchen is the latest release from publisher Cardboard Alchemy (Flamecraft, Andromeda’s Edge) and designers Peter C. Hayward (Things in Rings, That Time You Killed Me)and Alex Cutler. While I’ve only tried a few other games from Peter (nothing from the other creators), his designs are always interesting so I was happy to dig into the kitchen of critters.

Immediately we were surprised to see just how much table space this game took up. You have 7 location boards lined up beneath a long central board sitting beneath a row of cards surrounded by large personal player areas of cards and boards and screens and tiles. A large table is a must. Fortunately, these many components are vibrantly decorated by Sandara Tang’s art (same artist as Flamecraft) and fantastical world. She definitely put the “critter” in Critter Kitchen.

But aside from a lot of end-game scoring objectives, this one is rather easy to get into. The standout moment of Critter Kitchen comes in the mad dash for ingredients which happens every round. Players secretly select three different locations to send their chefs to, and they desperately hope that nobody else picked those same locations. Supplies at each site are limited, and if everybody shows up to the same place then most folks will come away empty-handed (save for a consolation soup).

Your smallest chef has top priority, but it only gets to claim one ingredient, while your largest chef goes last in the picking at a location, but they get to take a whopping three ingredients when it is finally their turn (assuming there are still three or more ingredients left to claim). So the entire crux of the game lies in predicting your opponents’ moves and then outfoxing them for the best ingredients. It’s the kind of competitive interaction that I love to see in a literal recipe-fulfillment game.

As the rounds progress on, more key recipes will be revealed, and your objective is to collect the right ingredients and create the highest valued meals possible to earn those precious stars (points). This objective largely occupied everybody’s attention throughout our first play. But it turns out that our group should have been prioritizing the end game scoring much more, because this proved to be the far more lucrative strategy.

During the game, I accumulated a mere 8 points from preparing 4 modest meals from the 6 recipe cards. While the end game scoring was more out of sight and out of mind for the group, I was banking on this being my big breakthrough. I made sure to look at all the hidden cards (information that you can select to learn instead of taking ingredients) and then build my strategy around those objectives plus others. There are also points to be gained for preparing the best dish of each type (basically claiming and saving the best ingredient of each type for the end of the game) among a handful of other final awards. This all took my score from 8 points to nearly 40 while the rest of the group averaged a final score in the 20s.

I highlight this example not to peacock my prowess in the kitchen, but to merely to illustrate that the game perhaps doesn’t do the best job focusing everyone’s attention on the most important scoring opportunities. But this is by no means a critical flaw. Everybody (myself included) had a great time jockeying for ingredients, despite the end result. Critter Kitchen provides plenty of highs and some frequently funny lows, so that’s a win in my book.

Prognosis: Good

Amazonia Park

1 Play (4 Players)

Review copy provided by the publisher

Korea Boardgames is an obviously foreign publisher that has really jumped onto my radar lately due to their sudden output of family-weight Knizia strategy games. In only the past year they’ve cranked out a new version of Indigo (now Butterfly Garden with a spicy new mini expansion and an English localization from Capstone Games) plus two brand new Knizias — one of those being Amazonia Park. This 30-minute competition of wildlife photography is… you guessed it… a tile placement game on a shared board. 

Like many family-weight Knizia strategy games, this one is highly tactical and provides some clever scoring twists. On your turn, you’ll either take a picture or publish an article. In board game language, that translates to place a tile to earn tokens or cash in your tokens to earn a scoring card. Players are racing to collect all six colors of cards first, and each color of card becomes more expensive to claim as opponents snatch them up. If you’re the first to publish a blue article, it’ll only cost you five blue tokens. The next person will have to pay seven, then nine, then a whopping eleven. And depending on the board state, blue tokens might be extremely hard to come by.

When placing a tile onto the square grid board, you’ll look in all four directions for the first tile in line of sight (if there is one). Those visible tiles will each net you one to three tokens of their respective color. So the good spots are obvious, and the tile you put out might set up your lefthand neighbor for an even better turn.

Thanks to the victory objective of collecting all six card colors and the obvious state of everyone’s progress, you’ll try to block your opponents from getting their desired colors too easily. But you can only do so much when you are forced to place out the only tile in your hand and then draw another one for your next turn (much like Carcassonne).

There is some nice tension between lunging for tempting spots and cashing in your tokens before that card type becomes more expensive. Yet the most expensive cards grant you a welcome bonus like a free token of your choice or a permanent discount on all future cards. And if you can’t catch a break getting the color you need, you can always spend two tokens of one color as if they were one token of any other color.

Overall, it’s solid stuff from the good doctor, as expected — a game that flows nicely and doesn’t overstay its welcome. But as a heavily tactical game with fairly obvious decisions, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Amazonia Park has nothing else to show after only one play. Sure, repeat groups could get a little better at ganging up on the leader, but I’m not seeing much potential for strategic exploration or discovery here. This one is best suited as a light and casual filler, yet it lacks personality.

I wouldn’t be opposed to playing Amazonia Park again, but I’m much more opposed to keeping it on my shelf and hauling it to game night. In terms of the box size to gameplay experience ratio, Amazonia Park is one of the worst offenders I’ve seen in a very long time. Yes, it even puts publisher Piatnik’s Trademark Big Boxes of Air to shame. How bad is it, you ask? Well, let’s put it this way: Amazonia Park is the second largest box in my entire Knizia collection of over 125 games. The only game that edges it out is Siege of Runedar, and that’s because Runedar uses its box as a physical castle complete with walls, towers, and courtyards.

Amazonia Park has no excuse for being so large… or at least not a good excuse.  Most of the space in this box is devoted to two completely unnecessary components: a card stand and a tile rack. Sure, it’s convenient to have a spot to fit these giant punchboard stands so you don’t have to disassemble them after play, but their very existence feels wasteful. The cards could easily lay flat next to the board, and the tiles could be made into a few simple stacks. Remove these two stands and the box could probably be 85% smaller.

If you’re going to be a light gaming snack, it’s much better to hide the empty calories in a smaller package and behind a facade of variability.

Prognosis: Poor

Shell We?

2 Plays (2 and 4 Players)

Review copy provided by the publisher

The other recent Knizia release put out by Korea Boardgames is Shell We. Shell We is itself a reimplementation of an older Knizia game that adds in a few new wrinkles. That older game is 2012’s Start 11! The Board Game which itself is a reimplementation of a now 100-year-old game called Elfer Raus (notably, this original game was NOT designed by Reiner Knizia). Throughout these iterations, the objective has stayed same: your hand consists of number pieces that can be a few possible colors, and you need to empty your hand first by playing out matching colored pieces adjacent to each other (in numerical order).

Shell We introduces a bit more flair to this concept by turning your pieces into shells with printed numbers on them. On your turn you can either play up to two tiles onto their exact spaces on the board or draw two tiles and add them to your rack. The main restriction here is that you can only play tiles adjacent to other tiles, so you have to try and seed and push the board in your favor. Fortunately, players start the game by choosing one tile to seed the board with, and you can earn bonus actions later to put out stranded tiles and start a new growing chain. It’s a simple exercise of playing the right tiles at the right time while milking the bonus actions.

The other major new feature of Shell We comes in the form of bottle actions. Each session, you’ll set up the game with a unique bottle action along each row. Whenever a player puts out two consecutive tiles in the same row (10-11 or 2-1, for example), then they immediately get the bonus action. This is where you’ll find the most flavor in Shell We. One bonus lets you pass a tile to the player in the lead, another forces all your opponents to draw a tile, another gives you a bonus turn, and there are several more. In our four player game, it was amusing to see players popping off the bottle bonuses and nailing each other with negative effects. It certainly invited some light banter than I missed having in my 2-player game of it.

Despite having 100 years to refine the idea, Shell We doesn’t leave much of an impression. The gameplay is about as memorable as a sandcastle built on the wet fringes of the shore. One moment you’re playing it, putting out shells in the only spots they can go, and the next moment it is completely washed from your memory. There is almost nothing to uncover here in terms of strategies or decisions. In that regard, it certainly makes for a pleasant enough game to play with young kids or with your great aunt who simply wants something to do with her hands while she chats the evening away. At least it doesn’t come in an offensively large box.

Prognosis: Poor

Hot Streak

6 Plays (4-8 Players)

Does the world really need another racing and betting game when we already have the excellent Winner’s Circle, the popular Camel Up, and the recent hit Ready Set Bet? Perhaps not. So does the world need the latest challenger in this genre, Hot Streak? I submit to you, dear reader, a resounding YES.

Hot Streak takes all the wacky chaos, thrilling drama, and sinister humor from those other games and cranks things up to eleven. The racers have more personality than ever before — with uncanny eyes peeking through their mascot uniforms. The card effects are crafted to allow for unexpected twists, thrilling comebacks, and shocking defeats. The player decisions are kept to a brisk pace and sharp simplicity where the game gets out of its own way and lets players invest their attention in the race.

When the gun is fired and the racers are off, nobody has to worry about their next turn or fret over a future decision. The game is out of your hands … Lady Luck is at the wheel. Hurley the Hot Dog storms ahead of the pack. Gobbler the Bear is hot on his heels. Mum the Queen is already turned around and headed in the wrong direction. And Dangle the Fish has fallen flat on its face. You went all-in on Dangle, that blasted creature. 

I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. One mascot takes a commanding lead only to turn around and trample a straggler as if it was a personal vendetta. Another character makes an unlikely comeback, barreling to the front of the pack only to tumble right in front of the finish line. A known loser changes their stars and wins against all odds in the final race. This is a game of laughs, groans, and cheers.

Hot Streak doesn’t care so much about putting the smartest player at the table on a victory point pedestal. It’s more about the shared experience of being degenerate gamblers in a contest of chaos. Sure, you’ll get the chance to place your bets and seed the deck before each race, but whether you win it big or gamble away your life’s savings, it’ll be a heck of a good time. With enough people (particularly 5-8 players, in my opinion), this might just be one of the best experiences that party games can provide.

Prognosis: Excellent

Now Available

If you’d like to support Bitewing Games then be sure to check out our new releases! Our Cosmic Silos Trilogy — SILOS, EGO, and ORBIT — is now available and shipping worldwide. These three Knizia sci-fi games span very different experiences… from dramatic area control to epic push-your-luck auctions to wacky racing. Thanks for helping us make and share great games!

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post 1st Impressions of Hot Streak, Leviathan Wilds, Critter Kitchen, Positano, and more! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

It’s been a few months since my last post thanks to the chaos of tariffs, new releases, and the convention season. Plus, I can’t lie, I’ve been playing a lot of Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza during the times when I normally write about board games. Too busy gaming to talk about games, go figure.

But what better way to get the blog flowing again then with my Most Anticipated Board Games of 2025, Part 2 list? If you missed Part 1, you can check it out here (many of these games either just barely released or have yet to be released, so the list is still very relevant).

These hotly anticipated games are roughly ordered by release date or crowdfunding launch date. Note: this list will include a few titles published by us here at Bitewing Games (labeled below) — because why wouldn’t I be excited about those?

Soda Jerk

Expected Release Date: August 2025

I had the pleasure of trying Soda Jerk a year or two ago as a prototype on TTS, which means my memory of it is now fuzzy, but I do recall it being far more amusing than it has any right to be. If you, like me, have enjoyed Chris Yi’s witty humor laced throughout the Dice Tower’s video content, then you’ll likely enjoy his quick, clever, and dramatic game of commodity speculation and soda sabotage.

Tearable Quest

Expected Release Date: August 2025

Tearable Quest is another game that I’ve been able to play before its release … and I love it. As the title implies, here you are racing to carefully tear out the most valuable items from your sheet of paper while avoiding tearing into the perilous traps. Buying a game only to immediately tear it apart sounds like madness. But the good news is that this game is dirt-cheap ($9) and it comes with a bunch of sheets and variety, so I think you’ll get your money’s worth here. Plus I’ve never played anything like this, so I think the game absolutely justifies its price.

Cat and the Tower

Expected Release Date: August 2025

My girls (4 and 6) are big fans of Rhino Hero Super Battle — a kid-friendly dexterity game where you build towers out of folded cards. So when I heard rumblings that Cat and the Tower is like Rhino Hero — but cooperative … and possibly better — that’s all I needed to add it to the list. 

Rheinlander

Q3 Kickstarter Launch

A year or two ago Reiner Knizia teased in an interview that he was working on new content for an updated version of Rheinlander. The long wait (at least until the crowdfunding campaign) is nearly over, and we’ve finally gotten our first look at the new edition illustrated by Ian O’Toole! From my plays of the original version, I always felt like this game had more potential just waiting to be developed. I’m happy to see that this hand management area majority game is under the solid stewardship of 25th Century Games (who also published the newest version of Ra). It’ll be interesting to discover what Reiner has cooked up on the development end.

Qwirkle Flex

Expected Release Date: August 2025

I’ve never played Qwirkle, despite it being an all-time best selling family-weight board game. In Qwirkle, you are simply adding matching colors or shapes to growing rows and columns in the central play area. What better way to motivate me to try it than with a meatier version co-designed by Reiner Knizia? Apparently, Qwirkle Flex adds another layer of complexity to the game by also letting players score diagonally on newly added background colors.

Junk Art Revolution

Expected Release Date: August 2025

Junk Art might just be one of the best stacking games ever created. It features delightful wood blocks that come in all kinds of versatile shapes used across several different game modes. Junk Art Revolution promises to raise the bar with revised rules, an updated scoring system, and new modes of play. Color me intrigued.

Moytura

September 23 Kickstarter Launch

Published by Bitewing Games

Moytura represents our first-ever collaboration with designers David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin (designers of Undaunted and War Chest). It is game three in our critically acclaimed 2-player line, the Mythos Collection, which started with Iliad and Ichor by Reiner Knizia. It is also a very different beast from the other games in this line. Moytura was created specifically for the Mythos Collection with the ambitious goal of being a streamlined area majority war game steeped in Irish mythology. Where most area majority games desperately need 3+ players to thrive, Moytura works beautifully as a 2-player-only game thanks to the non-player enemy faction that competes with both players for control and spreads out across the island a bit like Pandemic diseases. Moytura is also packed with extra content including asymmetric enemy clans and a full blown expansion that will be free during the Kickstarter — making it our largest Mythos game to date.

Azure

September 23 Kickstarter Launch

Published by Bitewing Games

While Moytura could easily be its own Kickstarter, we’re launching it alongside another killer Mythos game from the designers of Mandala, Patterns, and Great Plains (Trevor Benjamin and Brett J. Gilbert). And while Moytura is more dramatic and epic, Azure is perhaps the most universally loved game among our playtesters and team that will give even Iliad a run for its money in a popularity contest. That’s because it is quick, smooth, and oh-so satisfying to play. In Azure, you must manage your hand of cards and spend them to claim valuable spaces in the square grid that grant boons (specific cards and/or points). As your stones begin to occupy the grid, they will grant you discounts on other spaces in their same rows and columns. Meanwhile, you’ll be competing with each other for the favor of the four auspicious beasts (including the titular Azure Dragon). This Splendor-like game just hits the spot, and like Moytura it comes with a free expansion for Kickstarter backers.

The Hobbit: There and Back Again

Expected Release Date: September 26, 2025

I’m not hungry for more roll & write games, but I’m willing to make an exception for a Reiner Knizia roll & write campaign based on The Hobbit. My City: Roll & Build is proof enough that Reiner knows how to make this kind of game. I expect that The Hobbit is will be even more interesting since it doesn’t have retread the My City formula. Plus publisher Office Dog has been nailed their productions lately (I was impressed with both Lord of the Rings: Trick-Taking Game and River of Gold).

Tower Up: Paradise Islands

Expected Release Date: October 2025

Tower Up was one of the best new releases I played last year. Here is what I said about it in my Top 20 Games of 2024 list:

“Tower Up is a beacon of hope in this modern gaming world. Like its titular skyscrapers, it stands tall and boldly displays the glory of light strategy gaming. Tower Up is the kind of design that impresses me far more than a big box Eurogame with complex and layered systems. You won’t find an ounce of fat in this ruleset. It’s a lean, mean evergreen about raising skyscrapers and cruising up the score tracks. You can play it with anyone, yet you’ll uncover plenty of depth underneath its simplicity.” 

I’m thrilled to see a new expansion is releasing soon featuring an island board, red bridges, and new objectives. 

Gingham

Expected Release Date: November 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

While our 2-player Mythos Collection rolls on, we’re also excited to be releasing the first games our Travel Line this year. This line aims to be portable, compact, quick, and approachable. In other words, these games are super easy to take on a trip and get to the table with any kind of group. Gingham is a very unique game of jockeying for turn order while deploying ants to a picnic blanket. The objective is to connect matching sweets to create stockpiles and surround those stockpiles with your growing chains and clusters of ants. Players can even bump each other’s ants out of a space in a Hansa Teutonica style way that benefits both the bumper and the bumpee. There is a lot of strategic depth to uncover in the quick-playing Gingham.

Gazebo

Expected Release Date: November 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

Gazebo is the other big-game-crammed-in-a-small-package, like Gingham. This strategic domino game is designed by Reiner Knizia, and he has called it one of his “Top 10 designs, ever” (which is saying a lot when he’s designed over 800 games). Between the smooth gameplay of placing dominoes on a shared board and the dynamic interactions that emerge from the area majority gameplay, I can see what he means. You are simply racing to put out all of your gazebos first — the competition is fierce and the variety is huge with the four possible maps.

Bombastic

Expected Release Date: November 2025

Published by Bitewing Games

I’m a huge fan of Trio/Nana thanks to its hilarious drama and addicting approachability. This kind of game is exactly what we at Bitewing are aiming to publish more of — small, quick, affordable, memorable, dramatic, and addicting. It’s not so easy to come by these brilliantly simple games, so we feel very fortunate to be releasing Bombastic. Bombastic does to tic tac toe what Trio/Nana does to go fish — it takes a game that everyone is familiar with and makes it a blast to play. Bombastic is a 5-minute 2-player game that features 9 face-down tiles (4 Xs, 4 Os, and 1 Bomb) that players take turns peeking at, rearranging, showing, and more until they decide to “Go For It” and flip three tiles in a row. If the flipped tiles are all yours, then you win. Otherwise, you give your opponent valuable information or even lose if you flip the bomb. This game also comes in a clamshell case letting you take and play it anywhere — on an airplane tray table, at the beach, you name it. Preorders for this game will go live in August, and all preorders come with a free PVC card upgrade (making the game fully water-proof… except for the rulebook which you won’t need after your initial plays).

Hibachi: Fired Up!

Expected Release Date: Sometime 2025

I got a kick out of Hibachi back when I tried it a few years ago. It’s hard not to enjoy tossing poker chips onto a large board and aiming to land them on valuable ingredients while knocking away opponent chips. I had a lot of good things to say about the experience here . Yet after writing my first impressions, I soon found myself willing to part with the game because it tended to last longer than I preferred. What I failed to recognize in that impressions post is that the game was overstaying its welcome, and that eventually wore me down to the point where I culled the game from my collection. I must not have been the only person with that feeling, because Grail Games is about to release a new version of Hibachi featuring streamlined rules and a shorter playtime! If this version actually hits the 25 minute mark that the box promises, then Hibachi: Fired Up should have a much longer shelf life in my collection. 

Feya’s Swamp 

Expected Release Date: SPIEL Essen 2025 or Q1 2026 Release

The early buzz is strong with this one. Feya’s Swamp presents itself as a punishing and interactive pick-up-and-deliver game. The landscape of the board is a large swamp that changes over time as players expand islands while navigating around those islands with boats. This can make the game turn into a nightmare of choke points and detours if your opponents are inclined to slow you down. This is the kind of economic nightmare I want to dive into when the game fittingly releases at SPIEL Essen in October (or 2026 in retail).

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post Most Anticipated Board Games of 2025, Part 2 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

As a board game publisher operating in one of the most turbulent situations that this industry has ever seen, I’m noticing a lot of misinformation and assumptions floating around lately. This post is intended to help inform hobbyists (and possibly help some publishers as well) about the state of tariffs and crowdfunding for board games.

How will publishers handle the new tariff of 245%?

This is a brand new rumor running rampant today, yet it is not true for most goods (including board games). 

This rumor started due to a White House Fact Sheet posted late Tuesday which states, “China faces up to a 245% tariff on imports to the United States as a result of its retaliatory actions.”

Many folks (myself included) initially assumed that this was effectively a new executive order that piled an extra 100% on top of existing tariffs. But that is not the case. A few days ago the New York Times shared a helpful summary that describes the range of tariffs for goods coming from China. Notably, syringes and needles have a tariff rate of 245% currently because they already had a pre-existing tariff of 100% before this trade war began. Most goods (including board games) are still at 145% (which is significantly lower but obviously still painful). 

And here is a USA Today article from yesterday talking about the confusion.

Can’t publishers just manufacture board games outside of China to avoid these tariffs?

This has already been covered quite extensively by other sources, so I’ll stick to the short answer here:

Most publishers cannot. The US has bare-bones infrastructure/ability to produce board games as we know them. It would take years of investment to catch up to China’s capabilities, and the result would still be much more expensive than manufacturing in China with these tariffs. China is by far the global leader in board game manufacturing, and that will not change over night.

Even with a 145% tariff, are publishers toast?

That depends on a lot of factors:

Sales model (retail vs direct)

Publishers who rely heavily on retail sales will be hurt the most. With the cost of producing a game more than doubling (in the US), that means that the MSRP should nearly double to maintain the same margins. This is because publishers sell their games wholesale (to retailers and distributors) at a significant percentage discount (roughly 50-65% off) so that it is also profitable for those sellers. But a $30 game suddenly selling for $60 isn’t going to go very far in the market. So do publishers only increase prices a bit and eat the remaining losses? It’s a tough situation to be in.

Conversely, a publisher who sells their games direct to customers is not taking nearly as big of a hit. Where a $6 game may now cost $15 due to tariffs, the publisher would only have to increase their selling price by $9 (instead of $30) to maintain the same margins.

Sources of Income

Publishers with international localization, digital apps, popular merchandise (not made in China), and other sources of income outside of Chinese-made products will be able to fare the tariffs better.

Regional sales (US vs International)

Fortunately the cost to sell games outside of the US has not increased. So publishers who have more international sales avenues will be hurt less. It seems that most publishers who have decent distribution make at least 40% of their sales outside the US. For Bitewing Games, we are only importing 40% of our latest print run (Ichor and Iliad) into the US… the remaining units go to international hubs (Europe, Australia, Asia, UK, etc.).

Split Invoices

Most manufacturers are able to split their invoices into services (a smaller portion of the total fee) and goods (most of the manufacturing fee). Goods are hit with the tariff, services are not. It’s not a huge difference, mind you, but it certainly helps reduce the tariff burden a bit.

Cash Flow

This seems to be the most common thing to get publishers into trouble. When unexpected expenses arise and too much of your cash is tied up in stock, then the debts can pile up quickly and freeze a company’s operations (more on that in a minute).

Overhead Costs

This is somewhat related to cash flow. Overhead costs (especially salaries, rent, insurance, etc.) can quickly suck a company dry if they aren’t careful. This is why we’re already seeing layoffs in the industry such as Underdog Games (publisher of Trekking the World, etc.) cutting their workforce down to the bare minimum…

On Bitewing’s end, we’re lucky to have very low overhead costs. We’re partnered with Allplay who handles our warehousing, customer service, sales, fulfillment, and more. Similar to a distribution partner, they take a cut of our sales and charge for warehouse storage (but they seem to do it much more efficiently than standard distributors). Our main overhead costs come from the salaries that I pay myself and Kyle (the other owner) who are the sole employees of Bitewing. I’ve already planned our payroll for April and it sucks big time. I’m effectively paying myself a wage $4.70/hr (and working 40-hour work weeks) this month just keep extra cash in the business for the expected increase in expenses and decrease in sales. Good thing I love making and playing board games, because that’s just about the only compensation I’m getting for the foreseeable future.

I should note that Bitewing has plenty of cash on hand to cover our upcoming expenses. We’re not worried about going out of business or failing to fulfill our projects. But we’re trying to be as fiscally conservative as possible given the current situation. Also Kyle and I both have second jobs, so we’re still fully able to provide for ourselves and our families. But it does suck to take such a massive hit and not be able to compensate ourselves fully for our work.

There is no one “right” answer for the industry

I’ve seen companies like Allplay and Leder Games announce that they are not charging extra on their unfulfilled Kickstarter projects, they intend to swallow the costs. This is a “business as usual” approach that is possible for these kinds of publishers because they have many different sources of revenue outside of US board game sales. No doubt they are searching for other ways to cut down on expenses and increase sales.

I’ve heard other publishers state that they are holding their US-bound stock back in China (seemingly retail games)… waiting/hoping for the storm to pass. This especially makes sense if most of their US sales are retail-based and they can’t afford the tariff fees or can’t stomach the needed increase in MSRP.

For Bitewing Games, we fit into neither of those categories. Our direct sales (through crowdfunding, Allplay’s webstore, and Amazon) are strong enough that we intend to keep importing our games into the US (the next container being SIlOS, EGO, and ORBIT in roughly June). Yet we don’t have nearly as many sources of revenue as a company like Allplay or Leder Games. So we’ll have make some adjustments to keep things running smoothly (more on that below).

What about the announcement of Final Frontier Games (publisher of Merchants Cove) shutting down? Isn’t this just the first of many dominoes to fall?

Final Frontier shared a lot of details about what led to their demise. From reading their post, it is quite clear that their issue was cashflow, not tariffs. Even if tariffs didn’t exist it seemed like they were heading toward this result. The big problem is when a publisher uses the funds from today’s campaign to help pay off remaining expenses from the previous unfulfilled campaign. This can create a snowball effect of debt unless the publisher is lucky enough to strike it big with a particular project. It is also dishonest to put the money pledged by today’s backers toward a previous project they didn’t pledge for.

There of course will be other publishers who may shut down due to increased costs (tariffs), decreased sales (inflation), and poorly managed cash flow. Tariffs seem like a surefire way to test the stability of small businesses.

Is Crowdfunding for Board Games Dead?

Quite the contrary. As indicated above, the best way for publishers to survive is to increase their direct sales, increase their international sales, and increase their sources of revenue. Crowdfunding supports all of these needs.

That’s not to say that crowdfunding projects won’t need to adapt. With how volatile policies and economics have been in recent weeks, flexibility is the name of the game. The truth is that publishers simply don’t know how much it is going to cost to import their games into the US in several months when it is time to fulfill. Bitewing Games’ plan is to launch our pledge manager as close to fulfillment as possible (we already do this to avoid address changes) and then charge any current tariff fees directly to US backers as part of the shipping fee.

As an example: On April 22 we are launching our next Kickstarter project, Gazebo and Gingham. The pledge price of these games is unchanged from our original plan: $39 each. We are also keeping the same flat-rate regional shipping prices as usual: $4 US, $9 Canada/EU/UK, $14 Australia, etc. But for US backers, there will be an added tariff fee based on current tariff rates (a portion of the tariffs applied to the pledge will be passed on to the backer, the remaining amount will be covered by Bitewing). At the current rate (145%), that equates to roughly $4 per game. $8 shipping for one game and $12 shipping for two games is still much better than what most companies were charging before tariffs, so we’re happy with that.

And if tariffs are still around during fulfillment where we have to pass some of it along to backers, then we’ll also have to increase the US MSRP above $39 (even more than $4 per game) when they release to retail. If it wasn’t the case before, then it appears now that crowdfunding will likely be the cheapest way for US customers to acquire our games.

I wish we had a solution for retailers as simple as our solution for crowdfunding. But the reality is that the current distribution model for board games does not work in a world of tariffs. A higher MSRP to compensate for tariffs will certainly hurt sales for everyone in the distribution chain.

But is it too risky to back projects now?

There have always been risks with crowdfunding, there will continue to be risks. It’s important to know your personal limits. But if you want to see this hobby continue to thrive, then keep supporting it as much as you can. As far as managing your risks, it helps to follow these principles:

Cheaper/simpler games are safer bets. That’s because as the size, cost, and production complexity of a game increase, the risks increase exponentially (just look at container prices during COVID and now tariff rates). Lucky for Bitewing, we decided a year ago to generally move toward cheaper projects/games. A $39 game with mainly punchboard and (and a bit of wood) has far less risks than a mammoth box with tons of custom plastic

Development-complete games are safer bets. Some companies (like Leder Games) have a rock-solid and highly reliable process of launching a project during the game’s development and involving backers in the final part of the journey before delivering a banger. Leder Games is an exception to the rule. When a crowdfunded game has not finished development, both the creator and the backer are taking on a much bigger risk. Development could take longer than expected, all while overhead costs drain the Kickstarter funds, and the final product may not quite hit the mark. There’s a higher risk of the game not reaching expectations or not getting finished at all.

Proven companies are safer bets. Companies that have fulfilled multiple projects, generally fulfill on schedule, and communicate clearly with backers have proven again and again that they are trustworthy. It’s the companies that fail in one or more of these areas that you need to be wary of.

Look at their tariff policies/statements. Bitewing has opted for a flexible tariff policy that keeps us able to fulfill the project yet minimizes the effect on our backers (only US backers possibly pay a few more dollars). Other publishers may come up with other solutions, but acknowledging the problem with some kind of solution is far better than pretending it doesn’t exist.

What about non-US customers?

Publishers are taking different approaches for how to pay for tariffs. Some have announced that the worldwide MSRP of their games is increasing to cover these increased costs. Perhaps that is the best solution, especially if their worldwide orders fulfill from the US.

Bitewing Games has international fulfillment hubs, so it doesn’t make sense for us to charge international customers more. We are opting to charge US customers only for tariff fees (either during the pledge manager or with an increased US retail MSRP) and keeping international prices unchanged. Thanks to Allplay’s efforts, we’ll also now be shipping containers directly from China to Canada (instead of forwarding Canada stock from the US). So Canadians will be unaffected as well.

What can gamers do to help publishers and the hobby survive?

The best thing you can do right now is support creators directly. That means supporting their crowdfunding projects, ordering directly from their webstore, and/or buying directly from them at conventions. Now more than ever, it is your direct support that helps publishers continue to work and invest in amazing new games.

Shameless plug incoming: If you want to support Bitewing Games, the best way is to support our Kickstarter project launching on April 22.

Another thing you can do to support the industry is help spread awareness, especially among US citizens.Better informed citizens will lead to more pressure on the government to change. Let your friends and family know how these tariff policies are crushing small businesses and undermining your hobby. If you don’t know how to best explain it, then this CNN interview with Cephalofair Games (publisher of Gloomhaven) is easy and great to share.

Finally, American citizens can make their voice by calling their representatives. Here’s an easy method for doing that. 

This hobby lives and survives thanks to the support of its hobbyists and the dedication of its creators. Thanks for your support!

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post The State of Tariffs & Crowdfunding for Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

 

The larger my board game collection gets, the more I appreciate a compact game that packs a big punch. These are the games that I most frequently take to public game sessions or on trips with friends or family. There simply isn’t space in my bag for a huge box unless I know that we’re guaranteed to play it. For something much smaller? Well… I can spare the space for a little game that will maybe get played.

Nearly three years ago, I made a list featuring the Best Travel-Friendly Board Games. This was in celebration of our then upcoming launch of Trailblazers featuring a travel-friendly clamshell case and carabiner. I didn’t know it then, but it turns out that this was only the beginning of our quest to make killer portable games.

After putting out far too many different versions of Trailblazers (a whopping FIVE, if you are curious), it turned out that Trailblazers: Travel Edition proved to be the most popular version by hitting that sweet spot between portability and affordability. It makes sense that those of us who enjoy gaming also love to squeeze in a bit of play at the hotel and such amid our travels. And the most convenient games for such occasions are generally compact, approachable, and relatively quick.

While my old list still applies, I realized that I have many more recommendations up my sleeve. It’s also the perfect time to put out a sequel list since we recently revealed our upcoming Travel Line. So in celebration of all gaming-on-the-go, here’s my list of the Best Travel Sized Board Games followed by some details about our upcoming titles in this genre…

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DroPolter

DroPolter is a delightful little game of jingling bells and sticky palms. Each round players are racing to dispose of the reveal items on a flipped card — these items reside in each player’s fist and can only be removed using that hand. But the most brilliant rule of all is that the winner of the round earns the point in the form of a tiny bell that gets added to the player’s fistful of knickknacks. And if a bell is dropped, then it is lost forever. DroPolter is the kind of hilariously unique game that is made all the more excellent by its tiny box.

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Viking See-Saw

On the topic of portable dexterity games, Viking See-Saw is another winner. It’s basically tiny Jenga on a teeter-totter with a variety of objects including rolling balls, weighty metal cubes, and light wood pieces. The  objective is to get rid of all of your objects first, but you have to decide when and where to add each piece to the high end of the seesaw. If you cause the ship to tilt the opposite way, then you must take a cargo piece from the center. And if you knock over a growing tower of precariously stacked items, then you’ll suffer the sadistic laughter of your friends.

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Rainbow

This next batch of games comes from our friends over at Allplay who just so happened to start a new line of $9 “Tiny Box” games perfect for travel. Of the four titles released thus far, Rainbow has become one of the clear favorites. In this game you make ladder climbing style bids (solo cards, sets, or runs) to try to earn scoring cards from the center. The catch is that the bids of this round become the scoring cards of next round, and you’ll have to manage your hand wisely to not run out of cards too early.

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Panda Panda & Fairy

If you’re looking for even more of that tiny box goodness, then I also recommend Panda Panda and Fairy. Panda Panda is basically Phase 10 (gradually fashioning your hand into a specific set) but funnier and in only 15 minutes (instead of an agonizing stretch of hours). Fairy is party-style gambling on what card comes out of the deck next — you can play it in 5 minutes with up to 10 players (and it’s a blast if you have the right group who will fully invest in mindless gambling). Neither of these games are earth-shattering experiences, but at this size and price they are absolutely charming.

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Ito

If you’re looking for a travel sized party game that is more social than Fairy, then I recommend Ito (which plays 2-8 players). And for those groups who enjoy The Mind or Wavelength, meet your next game night hit. Ito is a cooperative game of ranking your secret cards in numerical order (each player can have a card ranging from 1 to 100). The only way to communicate the value of your card is to give a clue based on a topic spectrum. So if the topic is “Things You Want to Take a Picture Of” then a player with a 12 might say, “A blank white wall,” while a player with an 87 might say, “The Grand Canyon.” It’s funny, it’s addictive, it’s Ito.

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Hive

A common question I see online is “What board games can I play at the beach?” To be honest, I don’t think there are very many good options, but the perhaps the best answer is Hive. Hive is nothing more than a drawstring bag of weighty plastic tiles that can be played on the sand or by water without a care in the world (unless a big wave manages to reach your tiles and carry them back out to sea). This Chess-like abstract strategy game sees two players using their various insect abilities to try and surround their opponent’s queen bee. Hive is one of the highest rated abstract games of all time, so if you’re into such battles of wit then you can’t go wrong here.

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Chartae

If you’re looking for something a little less heavy than Hive, then Chartae makes for a nice little 2-player snack. This game does a whole lot with only 9 square tiles. As cartographers, you and your opponent are competing to build the largest mass of land or water (depending on which state of matter is your favorite sorry, no gas fans allowed here). Chartae definitely falls into the category of “micro-game” or game so small and simple that it will underwhelm some and mightily impress others.

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Marabunta

For those hobbyist gamers who want more meat on their 2-player travel-sized game, Marabunta has my strongest recommendation (as long as you don’t mind painful decisions and cutthroat competition). Marabunta is all about cutting off your opponent on the map while giving them horrible options with the I-split-you-choose dice rolls. You’ll bask in glee as your rival groans over the evil options you’ve devised, only for them to give you some of your own medicine in the next round. While Marabunta functions like a full-blown tile placement strategy game, it brilliantly condenses its size down through the use of dry erase markers and boards instead of piles of tokens. 

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Azul Mini

Azul Mini is an easy pick for this list, but that doesn’t make it bad pick. The mega-hit Azul is now more affordable and accessible than ever thanks to this smaller production. There are even some quality of life improvements such as bumps and grooves to help hold your tiles and score markers in place. It also comes with a drawstring travel bag, but you’ll want to be careful because loose tiles can still sneak out.

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So What is the Travel Line?

It is games like those listed above and others that inspired Bitewing Games’ new Travel Line. The Travel Line is debuting with Gazebo and Gingham plus Bombastic in the pledge manager (although Trailblazers is an honorary member as well). This line of games is laser-focused on one thing above all else: being supremely easy to get to the table. That means our Travel Line games are super portable, easy to learn, quick to play, and addicting to revisit. These are the kind of games that you can simply toss in your bag, bring to a gathering, take on a trip, and break out with friends or family. Thanks to the sturdy clamshell case and carabiner (a free gift to Kickstarter backers), your game pieces will be well protected and effortless to transport. The Travel Line lets you enjoy a game that you can truly play with anyone, anywhere.

Gazebo

Dominoes are such a satisfying game piece — the way they feel in your hand and nestle together on the board — but few games do them justice. We set out to publish the greatest domino game ever created… and boy howdy is Gazebo a worthy contender. The game is dead simple — play a domino from your hand next to any other on the board — but the strategic depth is oh so satisfying to uncover.

Gazebo is our most approachable strategy game yet. It can easily be played with your partner, your parents, your co-workers, or your friends whether they are casual or hobbyist gamers. Thanks to the compact size and travel case, you can take Gazebo on the go and play on any nearly flat surface in roughly 30 minutes. It lives up to our Travel Line’s “play with anyone, anywhere” mantra.

While Reiner Knizia has made a whole lot of games, he rates Gazebo as one of his “Top 10 designs ever” thanks to its elegance and depth.

Follow the Kickstarter for Gazebo

Gingham

Gingham is a game where you are deploying real ants on a real picnic blanket as you compete to stockpile and claim sweets… Ok, maybe that is only partially true. The game does come with an actual gingham fabric game board, but the ants may only be replicas… Either way, this game is freaking brilliant. 

While Gingham is NOT a trick taking game, its creation was inspired by trick taking card games, and this has resulted in a wonderfully unique strategy game. The lead player determines which side of the board that all players must play on each round. In other words, all players must follow the led “suit.” Who ever places their queen closest to the star (in the most valuable position of the led side) becomes the leader of the next round. You will deploy an ant into whatever row that you positioned your queen. The catch is that you cannot deploy your ant beyond the stitch, and the rows that are closer to the star offer less options. Do you opt for a better turn order position for next round, or more flexibility for this round?

Players are racing to connect matching sweets to score big points. Can your ant colony snatch up that valuable cupcake before your rivals assemble their chain? By fully surrounding a sweet token or stack, you can claim it as your own stockpile for major scoring. But it’s possible for another player to steal your stash if they can surround your stockpile, and that’s even easier to accomplish if they can carry your stockpile away with a clever connection of ants. Jockeying for turn order can become painfully crucial when it means the difference between triumph and defeat. You can even bump rival ants from their spaces, but be careful, a bumped ant can be placed on any open space on the board!

Folks who enjoy highly interactive games on a shared board are likely going to love Gingham.

Follow the Kickstarter for Gingham

Bombastic

Note: Our recently revealed Tic Tac BOOM has now been renamed to Bombastic… although BoardGameGeek has yet to update the name. The images shown here are with a prototype that also has not been updated yet.

I mentioned earlier how Hive is one of the only good options for playing a game at the beach. Well that list is going to grow a little larger with the release of Bombastic. This is a 2-player, 5-minute game that you can play in the sand, on an airplane tray table, or in a damp cave by the light of glowing mushrooms.

Those who enjoy Trio/Nana are especially going to love this. Bombastic takes the widespread familiarity of tic tac toe and makes it a tense, addicting, and frequently funny game that you can play with anyone. One player is Xs, and the other is Os — pretty standard so far. But what you don’t know can hurt you. Nine chunky tiles are shuffled face down into a 3×3 grid — 4 of them Xs, 4 of them Os, and the last? A ticking, delicate bomb. Can you find your tiles without blowing up?

On your turn, either:

• Go for It — Show three tiles in a row. If they are yours, you win! If you show the bomb — BOOM! You lose! If you show any of your opponent’s tiles, then you give them helpful information (whoops), but the tiles are placed back face down, and the game keeps going.
• Use one of two available action cards to help you peek at and rearrange tiles, staying one step ahead of your rival.

Only the cleverest player who uses the action cards wisely (and isn’t afraid to take a chance here and there) will be able to win.

Bombastic will be our first ever direct-to-retail release, but folks can also add it to their pledge during the Travel Line pledge manager or preorder it from us directly for a bonus PVC (waterproof) card upgrade.

Posts like this are made possible thanks to the support of our Kickstarter backers. Backers will further be rewarded with free travel cases and discounted bundles — all for low flat-rate shipping in most regions. You can follow the Travel Line Kickstarter project here. I wouldn’t have the privilege of making or highlighting all these awesome games without your help, so thanks for your support!

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Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post Best Travel Size Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Agent Avenue

8 Plays (2, 3, 4 Players)

Any time I try a pure bluffing game, it faces the unfair hurdle of being compared to Skull and my standout memories of playing Skull with friends. Over the years I’ve sampled other acclaimed titles including Cockroach Poker, Spicy, and more… yet none of them hold a candle to Skull and its perfect bidding/bluffing hilarity. But finally, I think I’ve found a worthy contender in Agent Avenue.

Like Skull, Agent Avenue is a dead-simple, fast-playing game. While it is primarily presented as a 2-player game, it actually includes partnership rules for 3-4 players that also work incredibly well. The premise is that one neighborhood spy is trying to catch the other on a simple circular track. You’ll each be collecting cards that cause your figure to advance forward or move backward, and whoever catches their opponent first wins.

On your turn, you’ll select one card from your hand to play face-up and one card to play face-down. Then, your opponent decides which of these cards to claim into their collection, you’ll take the other one, and you’ll both move your pawns as the cards indicate. There are a handful of different card types in the deck, but they are easy to learn and track (even for beginners).

The shared trait among all of these card types is that their movement value will change between the first one you collect, the second one you collect, and any additional cards you collect beyond the third. Your first Enforcer will advance you 1 space. Your second Enforcer will advance you 2 spaces. Your third (and any more beyond that) will advance you 3 spaces. So it’s obviously great to keep earning Enforcers, but those are one of the more vanilla cards in the deck.

The Double Agent moves you backward 1 space each time you earn it, except for the second card which advances you forward a whopping 6 spaces! It’s great to earn two of these cards and then dodge them the rest of the game.

Speaking of dodging cards, the Daredevil will help you move forward a total of 5 spaces with the first two cards, but playing a third Daredevil means instant defeat! On the flip side, the Codebreaker gives you an instant victory if you collect three of them. There are other cards that escalate up (or down) in movement that you’ll want to seek out or avoid. There are also a couple single cards sprinkled into the deck the straight up move you forward or backward 4 spaces, so you’ll always be wondering when those rare cards might come out of the deck.

This perfect mix of card types, and the way in which you offer a face-up and face-down option to your opponent, makes for a brilliantly engaging contest of mind games.

“You’ve already collected one Codebreaker, so obviously you are going to want this face-up Codebreaker I’ve presented to you, but if you take it then I get this face-down Double Agent which will advance me SIX SPACES (that is nearly half of the circular track).”

“Hold on, why you are presenting to me a face-up Saboteur which is obviously bad (it would move me backward)? Does this mean that the face-down card is even worse? Obviously I should take the Saboteur, unless that is exactly what you want me to think!!!” 

You’ll quickly feel like Vizzini from the Princess Bride — overthinking the mind games as you try to figure out which glass of wine contains the poison.

With three or four players, the change is simple but effective. Each player in a partnership has their own hand of cards — one of them plays a card face up and then the other plays a card face down. The other team discusses which one to take. At any player count, the game is lightning quick and completely gripping. When one spy suddenly catches the other, you’ll be eager to run it back again. 

While the standard game is basically perfect, it also includes an advance mode where you flip the board to a track that features four special spaces. These spaces (if landed on) grant special card abilities from the face-up display. Suddenly it’s not so bad to move backward one or more spaces if it gains you a special card.

Where many other bluffing games have failed to clear the bar, I think the key difference with Agent Avenue is that it allows for much more flexibility and creativity with your decisions. You’ll feel genuinely clever when your schemes unfold as planned, or you’ll all explode with laughter when they blow up in your face. Overall, Agent Avenue is easily one of the best surprises and best hidden gems of 2024. I had to order my copy directly from publisher Nerdlab Games to acquire it, but it was worth every penny.

Prognosis: Excellent

Altay: Dawn of Civilization

2 Plays (3 Players)

Picture this with me:  Imagine a game of area control on a shared map. Players each start out in their own corner of the land with an asymmetric faction. Over time, they slowly spread out — closer to each other and closer to the center — as they build a growing engine that generates increasingly more resources and points. They’ll stake their claims on different territories, and they might even clash from time to time, but the game mostly incentivizes them to build a robust engine and seek points through non-interactive means. If a player thinks they are in the lead, then they are further incentivized to rush the end-game before others can catch up.

Did I just describe Altay, or did I describe Scythe? The answer is yes.

To be fair, these are not at all the same game. One look at their components will make that obvious. But they absolutely feel quite similar in the itch they are trying to scratch. Both games feature smooth and generally fast turns. Generate some resources, spend them on upgrades and infrastructure, bolster your regions against nearby foes but mostly chart your own path through the individual engine building. While Scythe does this in the form of upgrading your personal action selection board, Altay does it through classic deck building and tech development.

The main source of variety you’ll encounter in your plays of Altay will be dictated by what cards enter your hand each turn and what technologies are currently available to develop. Perhaps you’ll increase your hand size or resource flexibility. Maybe you’ll gain the ability to thin your deck or simply cycle through it faster. Players are strongly incentivized to spend whatever resources they have, because only a few rare cards let you store any goods beyond your current turn.

Combat is just as clean as the rest of the game. Simply play one or more combat cards to attack an adjacent region and add the strength on your cards to the strength of your attacking territory (the number of settlements you have built there). The defender can likewise combine their territory strength with any combat cards they have. The winner claims a single settlement from the loser (worth a whopping 1 point, which is a lot in this game).

The main ways you’ll get points are through developing technologies, acquiring unique and expensive card types first, and spreading out across the map into as many regions as possible. But none of these really push players to interact with each other that much. Sure you can tussle over a territory or two, but the risk of failing an attack is often worse than the benefit of pursuing another strategy.

I suppose a player could opt for an extra-aggressive strategy of bullying everyone else around. You can certainly weaken your opponents’ engines by shrinking their control of the map. Or you can theoretically win the game outright by eliminating a player from the map and triggering the end game that way (instead of by building out your last settlement). But that seems like it would merely spoil the engine building part of the game, which is where Altay’s heart truly lies.

No doubt, Altay will find a fanbase who enjoys that Scythe-esque flavor of Cold War, engine building area control. But I got rid of my copy of Scythe, and I plan to do the same with Altay. This style of game just doesn’t excite me as much as it used to. For a game that combines deck building with area control, I strongly prefer another release from 2024 — Galactic Renaissance, which focuses more on the dynamic, tactical pivoting and cares less about the solitaire engine building.

Prognosis: Fair

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

13 Plays (3 Players)

One of my favorite card games of the past decade is undoubtedly The Crew (both the Quest for Planet Nine and Mission Deep Sea, although the latter kind of replaced the former). That seems to be the case for many folks, as this has also become one of the most popular card games of this century. It’s hard to dislike such a smooth, tense, and addicting cooperative trick taker as The Crew. But if you’ve always wished that The Crew had a better narrative arc, then you are in luck.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game takes the core concept of The Crew and applies it beautifully to first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Each of its 18 chapters progresses through the major events of the novel while introducing new characters, challenges, and objectives along the way. The components are vibrantly illustrated with a stained glass art style that fits the classic nature of this story. Even the compact box is carefully sectioned off with a thoughtful insert and bookmarks to help save your mission progress as you journey beyond the Shire.

The core gameplay doesn’t stray too far from your classic trick taker. There are four and a half suits with only a single card (the One Ring) serving as a trump card. Players must follow suit unless they cannot, and only then may they play off suit and even throw down the ring suit (thus unlocking the ability for anyone to lead with a ring card). Frodo has a consistent obligation to win a certain number of ring cards (bring them in and bind them, I suppose), while all other characters have their own unique mission and sometimes a unique setup.

After seeing the first two thirds of the campaign, it really seems like the characters are the beating heart of this trick taker. You’ll constantly be meeting new personalities that bring their own thematic flavor to the card play. Pippin the Fool must win the fewest tricks. Gildor the High Elf must play a forest suit card in the final trick. Farmer Maggot the Brave stands up to the threat of the Black Riders and must win cards matching their rank.

It’s exciting to successfully complete one chapter and discover what surprises await you in the next. Although the initial chapters are not particularly difficult for experienced gamers (we only lost once during the first twelve chapters), we still found ourselves drawn in to the world. 

I do wish that the game felt more challenging at this point. Maybe it’s because everybody that I’ve played with has had plenty of experience with trick takers. More likely, it’s because we haven’t played with four players (which would give us smaller hands and one extra character challenge to overcome). I’m sure that playing the “long game” would be more difficult as well (where you have to play each chapter at least two or three times to complete all the character objectives rather than once to complete only the mandatory ones). But I haven’t had the patience to stick with a chapter for more than one victory.

It’s rare for a trick taker to earn seven or even three plays in a row at my table, and we easily could have gone further each night. Hopefully the difficulty will ramp in the third act as the gameplay surprises get weirder. At least it appears that The Fellowship of the Ring isn’t afraid to shake things up dramatically. One early chapter removes an entire suit from the deck and turns it into a neutral player of sorts that competes for each trick. We appreciated the variety that was often subtly inspired by story beats.

Combine these intriguing gameplay twists with a classic tale and you end up with a rock solid card game. True, it’s not as novel or innovative or challenging as The Crew was, but The Fellowship of the Ring is still satisfying somehow. Despite my lack of a consistent group (which hasn’t been a problem for the first 12 chapters), I’m eager to see this one through to the end.

Prognosis: Good

Nova Era

1 Play (3 Players)

Nova Era is one of a trio of $35 games releasing from CMON in 2025. This particular title boasts of being a full-blown civilization game that plays in roughly 60-90 minutes. While that sounds like a great value for only $35, I unfortunately found my experience with the game to be more agitating than anything else. 

To start off, it took us nearly half the game to figure out how many rounds we were supposed to be playing each age. The setup image tells you to place the round tracker in the wrong spot. The setup description is too vague to correct this mistake. So we ended up playing four rounds (instead of three) in the first age. After that felt a little bit off, we finally found the correct answer by digging deeper into the rulebook to see where the fine print clarified “three rounds per era.” 

I wish that was my only grievance. But seeing how we recently celebrated a Festivus for the Rest of Us, it still feels like the season to air any grievances… One particular issue I found with Nova Era is that it wants to be a three and four player game, but in so doing it gives the third and fourth player a subpar seat. Due to the unavoidable nature of mass and the geometry of tables, either these players have to somehow read roughly 30 small font cards upside down, or they have to sit on the sides, crane their necks the entire game, and still not be able to read the cards on the opposite end of the table. We’re talking about fitting 6 or 7 columns of cards plus a rectangular board onto the table (to say nothing of the personal player tableaus of cards and boards). With so many unique text-filled cards sprawling across the table, Nova Era is seemingly best for 2-players.

That sounds like too many cards to take in each era, but luckily the game only lets you acquire the cards at the bottom of each column… usually. We encountered a couple cards that let you take any card in the display. It’s a powerful ability, so that’s neat, but it means that your opponents will be waiting for you while you read through 20 or more cards and then decide which one to claim. Suddenly that card’s ability doesn’t feel so great anymore.

The fiddliness continues with the concept of Obsolescence. As you enter the second and third era, you’ll be acquiring technology cards that make other older cards with specific names obsolete. That’s great when you make your own cards obsolete (because you’ll score a point for each one, and points aren’t easy to come by). But it’s a pain to deal with when it forces every player to comb over 10 or 15 of their cards in their tableau (several of which are facedown and tucked partway under other cards) and several cards in their hand to see if they need to trash a specific card that is now obsolete. It’s such an awkward and derailing step to the flow of the game that happens far too frequently. It baffles me that nobody at CMON thought to put the names of the cards on their backs as well, as this would make checking for obsolescence a whole lot easer (and there is no hidden information in the game anyway).

Another frustrating problem we found with Nova Era is that it doesn’t bother to make player turns a smooth experience. The rulebook doesn’t clarify anything about the dozens upon dozens of unique card abilities that are frequently vague enough to interpret in multiple ways. Players are not given any aid or reminder about the seven possible actions they can take on their turn (or their unique costs and side-effects). There are two player aid cards to share among the four players, but these only cover the steps of each round and the meaning of the card icons. Better than nothing, I suppose.

There are some neat moments to the game… between all these headaches. My favorite aspect is how the dice are drawn from the bag, rolled, and split into groups of three across different dice tiles. Players then take turns claiming a bundle of dice, and if the total value is too high then their civilization’s unrest will increase. But you want the high dice because they will make it easier to afford the tech cards. Whatever trio of dice is not claimed will then increase the disaster tracks for the colors that match the dice. So there are some fun decisions to be made between making greedy grabs for the high dice, inching closer to crippling civil war on your unrest track, denying other players certain colors, and leaving certain dice out in the cold to cause a catastrophe.

I also dig the focused nature of the scoring. At the end of each era, you’ll get one point for each unique color of tech you have and one point for each color of tech that you have majority in. There are also a few tech cards and many personality cards that provide more objectives for minor scoring. It’s a tight race on the score track, which feels refreshing compared to many modern Eurogames that see players racing deep into triple digits.

At the end of the game, my friend made an observation that wasn’t meant to be a criticism, but it felt like an accidental dagger to Nova Era’s heart: “It’s like 7 Wonders with more steps.” And you know what? It really was. Sure, Nova Era has far more unique cards and card abilities, but at what cost? It all ended up being far more messy and cumbersome in practice than you would ever get out of 7 Wonders. On top of the grating physicality, there’s a whole lot of take-that going on in this game (which to be fair, is quite thematic for a civilization game). Players are constantly causing each other’s tech cards to be damaged (flipped face down), and some rounds you’ll feel like you are wasting all your dice just to repair them. I love an interactive game, but this typically isn’t the type of interaction I’m looking for.

Between a tiresome gameplay experience and an unclear rulebook that left far too many questions unanswered, I can’t say I’m eager to revisit the Era of Novas.

Prognosis: Poor

SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

1 Play (3 Players)

I had the chance to try SETI recently, and I’m glad I did! This piping hot 2024 release has gotten a lot of attention due to the impressive blending of interesting mechanisms into a huge gaming stew. It was definitely an enjoyable experience, but it’s not one I’m keen to revisit anytime soon.

Like most of these hot and heavy modern Eurogames, SETI takes a couple solid hours of preparation just to get into your first game. The rulebook kinda throws you in the deep end and doesn’t try to define much of what it’s talking about, so hopefully you’ve had some good practice swimming in other gaming pools… otherwise you’ll probably just drown. If you’re reading for full understanding, then it’ll be a much slower read than what you are used to. SETI’s rulebook makes a lot of assumptions… What are the boundaries of a sector? Which spaces are comet spaces? What is the name of each of these icons? Ehh, you’ll figure it out. Or maybe you’ll resort to watching the 25 minute rules explanation video just to be sure.

I can’t fault SETI much for being such a strenuous learning experience. It is trying to accomplish a crap ton of stuff, after all. You’ll be managing your tight budget of resources and small hand of multi-use cards to navigate the eight action options and three-pronged primary objective. The goal is to find traces of alien life and eventually discover two alien races. Once discovered, these randomly selected aliens will introduce exciting new objectives and opportunities during the second act of the game.

Players will spend their turns launching probes into the spinning solar system, navigating to various planets, converting their probes into orbiters or landers, scanning nearby stars for information majority and data tokens, and analyzing data to make thrilling discoveries. The options are overwhelming initially, but you eventually get into a good groove thanks to the essential and thorough player aids. Kudos to whoever made those excellent player aids, those made it significantly easier to teach and play the game.

SETI reminds me a lot of titles like Ark Nova and Terraforming Mars, where the huge deck of cards are the star feature of the gameplay. A game like this will live or die by how good its deck is, and SETI offers plenty of flexibility, variety, and excitement within its huge deck. Honestly, I had nothing to complain about when I was playing the game. It was when I wasn’t playing the game that my problems with SETI arose.

I don’t love spending hours learning, prepping, and teaching a new game. And I’ll always prefer that a game be shorter than the four hours we spent with it during our initial play. But it kind of feels like a dealbreaker for players to be waiting 10 or 20 minutes at a time for a round to end after they have already passed. The problem with SETI is that when a player passes out of one of its five rounds, they have nothing to do but shoot the breeze until everyone else has stopped stretching their resources as far as possible. That’s not a big deal if somebody is waiting a couple extra minutes for their next turn. In the case of SETI, each player probably spent an average time of 30 or 40 minutes total just waiting around after they passed earlier than others. There are times where one player might spend all of their resources quickly on a few big actions, but if their opponents are on the opposite end of the action spectrum (taking frugal actions that grant even more resources), then it can end up being a loooong wait for that sorry soul who passed early.

SETI is also the type of game that encourages serious analysis paralysis. Each card has four possible uses, many of the eight possible actions are relatively expensive, resources are tight, objectives are many, and careful calculation is a must. If steam isn’t regularly coming out of your ears, then you should probably go see a doctor.

If nothing about what I said above is a dealbreaker for you, then you’re probably gonna love SETI. It’s a hulking mammoth of a modern Eurogame with a lot of satisfying decisions and interesting turns to be had. But proceed with caution — SETI does not necessarily value your time. If that much game time is too precious for you to place at the altar of SETI, then you are better off searching elsewhere for life.

Prognosis: Fair

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

The post 1st Impressions of The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game, SETI, Altay, Nova Era, and Agent Avenue appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Preview copy provided by the publisher. Note that this is a prototype — artwork is near final, components are not final, final production quality will be even better!

2025 is here, and Reiner Knizia is back at it! …This time with publisher Allplay. Yet those who are familiar with Knizia know that we here at Bitewing Games also get along with him quite well. Take one glance at our 2025 release schedule and that’s all the information you need, haha. But why is that? 

Why does Knizia seem to have so many new and updated games releasing each year? Is it simply name recognition? Are publishers drawn to the name “Knizia” like moths to a flame? It’s is just because they need to fill their project schedule, and classic out-of-print Knizia Games are easy shoe-ins? Or is there something truly magical about Knizia’s dusty old games compared to other options? The answer is probably a mixture of all those reasons, and the ratio of reasons definitely varies by publisher. 

Personally, I love to find those fixer-uppers in Knizia’s catalogue. When one of the most experienced and brilliant game designers has been cranking out hundreds of ideas for decades, there are bound to be hidden gems that fall by the wayside. Some concepts have an intriguing premise, but don’t quite hit the spot with their initial version. Others only get an obscure version sold in a distant corner of the world. Many more have stumbled out of the gates with a poor production or unappealing artwork. There’s a reason I’ve now played over 200 of Reiner’s best designs — I’m hunting for untapped potential. 

Reprinting a stone-cold classic like Tigris & Euphrates is easy (well… it should be easy). Just don’t mess up the artwork and production, and it’ll sell itself. While I love such games, I’m less enthused about printing a new version of them. I got into publishing because of the creative and adventurous challenge of bringing a game to life and making it a success. Games like Tigris & Euphrates are already a major success, they just need somebody to keep them in print. On the other hand, injecting new life into 2000’s Merchants of Amsterdam and making that a success in the modern board game industry? Now there’s a proper challenge. But Bitewing wasn’t the publisher who chose to take a crack at it… instead it was Allplay.

Yet, the masses were not exactly clamoring for a new version of Merchants of Amsterdam. This game neither looked remarkable nor provided a notable experience outside of the Dutch auction clock. As the developer himself (Robert Hovakimyan) noted in his publisher diary: “Everything [surrounding the core mechanism] felt a bit dated. The game consisted of 3 flavors of area-majority: Vanilla, French Vanilla, and Vanilla Bean.” So why even bother trying to resurrect this design? The answer lies within the central idea of the game. On their turn, the player decides which card to discard, which to keep, and which to put up for a Dutch auction.

While there are thousands of auction games in existence, there are very few that utilize a Dutch auction. Out of the 125,600 games in its database, BoardGameGeek only lists 46 games that feature a Dutch auction. And most of those aren’t even true Dutch auctions. Here is the definition of Dutch auction provided by BGG:

“A simultaneous single-bid system in which the lot starts at a very high price, and then is gradually decreased by the auctioneer or other controlling mechanism, until someone agrees to claim the item at its current price, ending the auction. The first bidder to accept the current price is the winner, such that there are no ties. A Dutch Auction is sometimes also called a one-bid auction because of this feature that the first bid made is also the only bid in the auction.

“The purest implementation of this is Merchants of Amsterdam, which features a spring-load mechanism that gradually reduces the price until someone hits it, winning the bid.

“This category also includes the mechanism where items slide down a track, with the cost decreasing as it does so.”

Most of the 46 on the list fall into that latter category of a sliding market (Concordia, Pax Pamir, etc.). While this is a perfectly fine system for a card market, the thing that it misses out on is the real-time thrill of a countdown price. This is far and away the highlight of Merchants of Amsterdam for most fans — the rush of deciding when to smack the diminishing clock to secure the lot. It’s that temptation to bid early to secure the juicy reward for yourself clashing against your willpower to let the price drop down to a more reasonable level. Which kind of pain do you prefer: The regret of spending far too much on a measly action, or the regret of being too stingy with your money and not bidding just one dollar earlier so you could claim victory from your rivals? This is the beauty of Merchants of Amsterdam. This is why a crusty old Knizia game that is now 25 years old (80 years old, in board game years) deserves a second chance.

The only problem is that Merchants of Amsterdam hasn’t aged well. The physical clock is prone to breaking for many owners of the game. The game still tastes like three shades of vanilla, which is only more bland in contrast to the many wild and wacky area majority games and auction games that have been released in the ensuing decades. In order to be a modern success, this design clearly needed a full makeover. Enter Robert Hovakimyan. 

Merchants of Andromeda passed through three different development teams over the course of many months before it finally found its sweet spot. It’s a fascinating story that I was fortunate enough to hear about during a development discussion with Joe from Allplay and designer Robert Hovakimyan. Lucky for you, we recorded the conversation if you’re interested in the thoughts and processes that go into board game development (especially for this title). I’ll spare you the details here, but suffice to say that Merchants of Andromeda has had an absolute roller coaster of a development journey. Fortunately, the result was absolutely worth the trouble. After two plays with a preview copy, Merchants of Andromeda is a strong candidate for one of my favorite releases of 2025. Of course there are many more releases that I’m excited to play this year, but this game has set the bar very high. This is a design that, finally, lives up to its full potential.

While Andromeda has of course kept the Dutch auction mechanism, the card committing concept, the basic idea of events, and a couple of the most interesting area majority ideas (the resource tracks and the Andromeda board), everything else has been fully redesigned by Robert Hovakimyan. The vanilla area majorities of Amsterdam have been wildly diversified into thrilling mini games of voting and space defense and planet exploration. The deck of cards has been honed to produce tough decisions and exciting opportunities. The events are now spicier and invite political table talk. Even Allplay has fixed the problem of an expensive and breakable auction clock… 

We’ve been using a simple smartphone timer to countdown the current bid value where players can call out the current number to claim the lot (and if that is your preference, it’ll certainly work in the final version). But Allplay is developing an app where players hold their fingers on a central phone and the first person to remove their finger wins the auction at the current value. This also removes the unintended effect of the original clock where the game favored the player with the fastest limbs and everyone was at risk of getting smacked or scratched.

While the Dutch auctions of Andromeda are plenty thrilling, the entire game surrounding those auctions is now packed with drama as well. Take the defense board, for example. Here you grab the five dice, chuck ‘em, and decide how to split them up. The group of three dice will determine which enemy ships advance down their tracks — potentially gobbling up player tokens or entering within reach of your own counter attack (both are great options for you, as long as your opponents are taking the hit from the invaders). The group of two dice will determine where you add your tokens — this can often earn you resources or trophies or a lead on that column… all of which improve your standing. The invaders always move before you add your tokens, so this timing can matter a lot too. It’s common to hear players praying to the cosmic gods that a certain number does or does not get rolled any time a defense action is taken.

You’ll also get a lot of laughs and groans from the exploration board which has a very push-your-luck vibe. There are three planets plastered with hidden tiles that you can choose to explore. Pick any one tile and start flipping them face up one-by-one until you decide to stop or you find a curse (which forces you to stop). If you manage to conclude your exploration without stumbling upon a disastrous curse, then you may claim any two of the tiles that you revealed. Hitting a curse means that you get only one tile instead of two. Then all the unclaimed tiles are flipped face down again and players have to hope they remember where the seen traps and treasures are. Even if you are supremely unlucky and the first tile you flip is a curse, it’s not soul crushing (despite your neighbors’ cackling), because you get to keep flipping tiles until you find a non-curse to take.

Even the most “vanilla” of the boards have some compelling nuances to them. The Andromeda board consists of four sectors where players compete to have the largest cluster of tiles. The twist is that the sector with the most tiles will become the most valuable sector (I.e. score out the most points for first and second place players there). So while you want to pile more tiles in your best sector, you’ll also find yourself tempted to spread out into new sectors when your tile is next to a bridge. If you place your tile on both sides of the bridge, then you immediately earn three bonus dollars (and money is your score, baby!). 

Meanwhile, the production board looks like your standard bundle of generic Eurogame resource tracks. But this one is far more interactive than what modern Eurogames tend to do with tracks. Each time you earn a resource, you advance up the matching track. If you are in first or second place on those tracks, then you’ll score points each time this board scores out. But here’s the real kicker: The track with the furthest player token will score the most points, the second furthest track will score less, and so on. Not only do you want to be ahead of your opponents on the same track, but you also want to be ahead of the leading players on other tracks.

Merchants of Andromeda isn’t just content to let you pick and choose your battles among all these interesting mini-game boards. It also asks you to manipulate the way these boards score out when their scoring does trigger (which happens three times per board per game). This manipulation of course comes from the Galactic Senate — those oily political snakes who keep meddling in your merchant business. On the senate board, you’ll see three charming vote boxes, each with a candidate card in front of it that randomly came out of the deck. During the game, you will resolve three elections. Each time a candidate wins, their policy enters play and affects players’ standings or scores. Usually, these candidates will boost the next scoring of a specific board. If Major Bang-Bang wins, then he’ll heavily incentivize attacking invaders. If Search McGee takes office, then you’ll score even more points for finding those precious relics on the exploration board. Other candidates support communism or socialism by tearing down the richest players or boosting up the resource-poor, respectively. 

If these candidates randomly forced themselves upon you Merchants of Andromeda, then it would make the game feel too unfair and random. But this is a democracy, dang it, and thus you players will vote to influence government policies. By the time an election has closed, each player will have inserted three or more votes into one or more of the boxes. Certain action cards grant you bonus votes which can swing the election in your favor.

But we haven’t even talked about the action cards yet! What a treat these are. On your turn, you’ll draw one action card at a time and decide where to assign it: Discard, Keep, or Auction (in the final version of this game, these options will likely be retitled to the more intuitive “Resource, Action, Auction”). Once you commit a card to an option it is locked in… no changing your mind after you see the next card from the deck (this is much like Biblios, which is one of my favorite aspects of that classic game). Each card has two elements: an action on top and a resource on bottom. Whatever card you “discard” will grant you its resource. Whatever card you “keep” will grant you its action. And whatever card you “auction” will grant both the action and the resource to the winner of the auction (which could even be you, the active player). It’s always a thrill to take your turn and decide which resource to claim, which action to take, and which card to auction off. While you don’t earn the money from the auction (it goes back to the bank), it is vital to not give your opponents the chance at a card that is supremely helpful for them. Even when it’s not your turn, you’ll be very involved in the regular cadence of auctions and events.

As you work your way through the action card deck, you’ll reveal event cards which move the marker along the event track. These events usually trigger the scoring of a specific board. As I alluded to, each mini-game scores out twice during the game and once more at the end. Each of the mini games I described has some kind of area majority underlying it — even the vote board scores out majority points for the players who best supported the losing candidates! Because the order of the event scoring is visible and unchanging, it is wise to time your actions accordingly. It’s obviously much better to get in on space exploration right before it scores versus right after. That kind of timing will influence how high players are willing to bid on an action card, which allows for a nice fluctuation of bid values during the game. But even the event board has variability in the form of hidden special events. These face-down tiles will eventually be revealed as they are reached, and they force players to make tough but interesting decisions.

With so much going on across these boards, it’s hard to believe that this game comes from Allplay who is famously known for their simple and compact games. It’s a minor miracle that they fit such a big experience into their standard $39 box. Some folks might even worry whether this one is too complex for their group. But I’ve had the chance to teach this game to six different people so far, and after roughly a 10-minute rules teach they have all caught on right away and loved it. A newcomer even won my last play of it by claiming the most important auctions for his strategy while letting us bid our fortunes away on everything else.

But that’s what I love most about Merchants of Andromeda. It’s a far cry from the exacting calculations of auction games like Modern Art or Medici. You can’t math your way to victory. For one thing, you don’t always know how good a defense or exploration or election will turn out for you. Andromeda is a wacky game full of surprising and dramatic moments, and you have to roll with the punches. For another thing, you simply don’t have time to math out the best single bid value because that timer is ticking down and if you don’t bid now then somebody else might claim it! Andromeda is about shooting from the hip, playing from the gut, and embracing the crazy chaos.

Combine the refreshingly unique Dutch auction system cooked up by Reiner Knizia, the wonderfully flavorful ideas injected by Robert Hovakimyan, the hilariously charming sci-fi artwork by Torben Bökemeyer, and the blessedly compact production by Allplay, and you have an absolute winner in Merchants of Andromeda. I’ve played and ranked hundreds of Knizia games at this point, and already it appears that Andromeda ranks among the absolute best.

Merchants of Andromeda is available on Kickstarter until February 13. Check it out here.

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

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