With all the “Most Anticipated Games of 2022” lists I’ve seen over the past few weeks, it feels like Bitewing Games is a little late to the party. On the other hand, I’ve been surprised to see very little overlap between my list and the many others out there. So today it is my honor to shine a spotlight on many promising—and possibly overlooked—titles.

From quick, simple card games to sprawling legacy campaigns… from loud, hilarious party romps to tantalizing expansions, my most anticipated board games of 2022 list covers the entire spectrum of exciting upcoming releases. And these are just the ones we know about so far…

Caesar!: Seize Rome in 20 Minutes

Expected Release Date: Now

Well it appears that Caesar being on our 2021 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide was wishful thinking.  But now that this promising war game is finally starting to show up on shelves and doorsteps, it feels like second Christmas!  Don’t be surprised it this one ends up claiming the title of best 2-player game of the year.  Father Paolo Mori and the older sibling to Caesar (Blitzkrieg) are that good.

Why it’s Exciting: Tense, bitey tug-of-war games frequently hit the spot for me.  While this one isn’t as blatant of a tug of war as Blitzkrieg, it still appears to capture a similar essence.  It also gives me faint vibes of another classic tile laying game—Samurai.  Those two bangers are very good company to be in.

Ghosts of Christmas

Expected Release Date: February 2022

Thanks to clogged ports and delayed shipments, some of the games here are spillover from last year’s most anticipated board games list.  Ghosts of Christmas is the first in a trio of games that Board Game Tables launched on Kickstarter last year.  Sadly, this game may have just missed Christmas 2021, but I suppose it’s not a big deal because here you’ll be able to time travel as you play tricks in the past, present, and future.

Why it’s exciting: BGT has developed a new hobby of unearthing bizarre Japanese designs and bringing them to a wider, western audience.  Folks like me who love wonky card games should have this on their radar.

Bear Raid

Expected Release Date: February 2022

Game two from the BGT trio is none other than Ryan Courtney’s Bear Raid.  Fun fact: Ryan told me that he’s not a big fan of games where politics (wheeling and dealing, messing with others’ plans, persuading opponents in directions that help yourself and hurt others, etc.) can influence the outcome, and Bear Raid is in many respects this type of game, so he basically designed a game that he personally isn’t into.  How about that.  The important thing here is that Ryan’s playtesters love this stock investment romp… and it’s whimsically illustrated by Nick Nizzaro.  I was born ready for this one.  Yet for those who are hoping for a more warm and welcoming game from Ryan, we’ve got you covered (more on that later).

Why It’s exciting:  I love a good interactive game where you can bet on or invest in various options.  Whether it’s a horse, a camel, a battalion, or a company, the moment you feel personally invested in a thing’s success is the moment where the excitement begins.

Factory Funner

Expected Release Date: February 2022

I’ve never associated factories with the adjective “fun,” but this final game in the BGT trio is poised to change all that.  I recently shared my top 10 spatial puzzle games, and Factory Funner made that list thanks to questionable combination of gut-feeling and critical acclaim.

Why It’s exciting:  The crunchy spatial game play, the stylish art, the flexibility of tile arrangements, and the quick playtime all speak to me in this updated version from BGT.

Sound Box

Expected Release Date: March 2022

I’m not sure which is more surprising: the implication that Horrible Guild needed to take Sound Box to Kickstarter or the fact that it only raised 12k Euros.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they spent roughly that much just to market the game—what a depressing thought.  Of course, launching a party game during COVID may have had something to do with that… Regardless, I’ve got my money on this game being a hoot (literally—I’m a backer) and gaining a second wind once it hits tables.  The design team behind The King’s Dilemma and Railroad Ink have created a game where players must cooperate to listen to each other’s weird sounds in a quest to pick out the right topic cards.  Imagine Codenames where the clues are a chaotic jumble of simultaneous noises and you’re basically there.

Why it’s exciting: Also imagine your partner, sibling, parent, or friend trying their best but epicly failing to recreate the sound of a printer… or a golf tournament.  Need I say more?

Root: The Marauder Expansion

Expected Release Date: Q2 2022

Few things bring me as much joy as a new box of Root goodies.  Between the exciting faction variety, charismatic art by Kyle Ferrin, and colorful Leder Games production, Root and its several expansions never fail to capture my heart.  The Marauder Expansion is particularly notable in that it apparently offers an enhanced experience a lower player counts thanks to the new hirelings.

Why it’s exciting: “Some critters just want to watch the world burn.” Such a sentiment can be said about about the new faction Lord of the Hundreds—an unhinged rat who incites ‘torch-wielding mobs.’  Meanwhile, the Keepers of Iron are disciplined Badgers on the hunt for ancient relics.  What’s not to love here?

John Company: Second Edition

Expected Release Date: June 2022

Speaking of exciting new games from Root designer Cole Wehrle, John Company: Second Edition is hot on the heels of The Marauder Expansion’s scheduled release.  While this is only the second game to come from the brothers Wehrle and their company Wehrlegig, the first one (Pax Pamir: Second Edition) is one of my favorite games ever.  Thus, a meaty game of negotiation and politics from Cole is exactly the kind of thing that could easily become my favorite game of 2022 (and of all time).  It’s gonna be a good summer of gaming, my friends.

Why it’s exciting: If gorgeous, historical board game productions from a boundary-pushing game designer sound like your kind of thing, then Wehrlegig Games is a publisher you should follow.  They’ve already proven that their games are a labor of love, and John Company: Second Edition is set to please folks who enjoy deep, immersive, and dynamic political experiences.

Soda Smugglers

Expected Release Date: June 2022

I can’t believe we’ve had to stretch all the way to June to find a new Knizia game to be hyped about!  But worry not, because the second half of the year should more than satisfy Knizia fans.  These next three games are ones that I’ve already played a ton of, but that’s because we here at Bitewing Games are their publisher.  Personally, I’m excited to see our vision for Soda Smugglers achieve its final form—bottle cap tokens, hilarious bribing, and all.  For people who want a quick, clever bluffing game that is dead simple to teach, Soda Smugglers should be right up your alley.  You can even still preorder the standard or limited deluxe edition here and be one of the first to own it.

Why it’s exciting:  Harmless, simple, and fast bluffing games are perhaps some of the best gateway and/or filler games out there.  Nothing breaks the ice better than witnessing a seemingly gentle person attempt to cross the border with a couple suitcases jam-packed with illicit soda bottles.  And few things are as funny as watching the border guard fall for a bluff or a wily traveler shoot themself in the foot with a mistimed double-bluff.

Pumafiosi

Expected Release Date: June 2022

Along the same lines, Pumafiosi is another offering from Reiner Knizia and Bitewing Games.  This one features a unique style of trick-taking where the second-highest card wins the trick and slots their winning card into a push-your-luck style hierarchy.  To top it all off, it features zany Puma Mafia characters galore.

Why it’s exciting:  Similar to Ghosts of Christmas, here we have another wonky card game that slowly reveals layered strategies as you peel through the onion.  This is a small game with a big payoff in how it rewards multiple plays.  Plus the Pumafia art and lore spread across the entire collection is simply a joy to explore.

Hot Lead

Expected Release Date: June 2022

Finally, Hot Lead rounds out the Criminal Capers Collection with a new twist on auctioning from the master designer of auction games himself.  With the help of 19 illustrated investigators, you’ll be undercover collecting evidence on criminal organizations.  Just like the other two games, this one is quick, simple, and addicting.  Again, if you’re interested, you can preorder here.  This is currently the best and only way to support Bitewing Games as a publisher and content creator.  We love sharing and making games that bite (it’s in the name), and we appreciate the support!

Why it’s exciting: Those who appreciate auctioning games are likely fans of Knizia’s stone-cold classics including Ra, High Society, and Modern Art.  With Hot Lead, we were thrilled to discover that Reiner had funneled his mystical auction design powers into an even faster experience while giving the game its own distinct flavor.  Furthermore, you get the best of a push-your-luck experience where the glorious triumphs feel amazing and the stinging failures are as quick as ripping off a band-aid.  Either way, you’re always hungry for another go.

Beyond the Sun Expansion

Expected Release Date: Q2-Q3 2022

We don’t know much yet, but word on the street is that the upcoming expansion for Beyond the Sun provides more incentives to focus on the planet board (colonization and area control).  But to be honest, anything that gives me more reasons to revisit this excellent tech-tree bonanza of a Euro has my interest.

Why it’s exciting: Beyond the Sun is one of those types of games that feels like it has endless possibilities thanks to the uniquely unraveling tech tree.  Adding more possibilities to those ‘endless’ possibilities is a thrilling prospect that has me wondering what lies beyond Beyond the Sun.

Ahoy

Expected Release Date: Q3 2022

Ahoy is the next direct-to-retail game coming from Leder Games.  This one is described as an asymmetric pirate strategy game for 2-4 players that plays in roughly 1 hour.  Two players will play as oppositional governments (one insurgent, the other established) while the other two players act as smugglers who influence the topology and value of the map that is being contested over.  According to Leder Games, this one is already finished and heading to manufacturing.

Why it’s exciting: Folks who love the idea of Root but dread the baggage that game comes with it (meaty teach, steep cost of admission, etc.) can look forward to Ahoy being the more approachable design that scratches a similar itch.

Trailblazers

Expected Release Date: Q4 2022

Assuming we don’t hit any significant delays, it’s very possible that our next release after the Criminal Capers Collection reaches tables before the end of the year.  We recently unveiled the first details of Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney, and more juicy info will be trickling in over the coming weeks.  Those who enjoy spatial puzzles will find much to love here between the three solo modes, wide player count of 1-8, charming outdoor adventure theme, simple ruleset with a high skill ceiling, and handy travel case.  Be sure to subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter to follow the game all the way to the Q2 Kickstarter launch!

Why it’s exciting: Ever since my first play of the excellent Pipeline, I always thought it would be cool to see a game that really focuses in on and explores the possibilities of a pure spatial puzzle game based solely on Ryan Courtney’s windy pipe domino tiles.  Trailblazers is that game.  Trailblazers is to Pipeline as Patchwork is to A Feast for Odin.  Here you can simply concentrate on constructing ambitious, exciting routes within a charming theme and colorful presentation that will appeal to anyone.  

Horseless Carriage

Expected Release Date: Q4 2022

Publisher Splotter Spellen is known for many strategic classics including Food Chain Magnate, Bus, Indonesia, and The Great Zimbabwe. Fans of their designs have come to love the trademark Splotter traits of pure strategy, punishing decisions, brutal interactions, and deep gameplay. While details on Horseless Carriage are sparse, we do know that this is another economic game about creating and selling automobiles in the dawn of the industry.

Why it’s exciting: Horseless Carriage is the first entirely new game put out by Splotter since 2015’s Food Chain Magnate. With FCM being their highest ranked game and most recent game, that means Horseless Carriage has big shoes to fill. Whether it lives up to those high expectations or not, Splotter fans can finally celebrate the end of a 7-year new game publishing drought.

Sidereal Confluence: Bifurcation

Expected Release Date: 2022

I was recently delighted to discover that one of my favorite high-interaction games is getting an expansion this year.  Thanks to a cross-country move and COVID, it’s been trickier to get Sidereal Confluence to the table lately, especially where the game shines best with 5+ players who enjoy wheeling and dealing.  I’m hoping to dive deeper into this epic game of negotiation before this exciting expansion releases.

Why it’s exciting: Bifurcation is set to effectively double the variety of asymmetric species players can use during the game. It introduces a new variant to each of the 9 alien species in the game—meaning new mechanisms, new strategies, and new trading opportunities.

My City: Roll & Write

Expected Release Date: 2022

Last year, I interviewed Dr. Knizia about his plans for a follow-up to the phenomenal legacy game, My City.  He hinted that there would be a sequel, but it would explore new gameplay rather than retread the same ground.  It turns out, that sequel has been reveal as My City: Roll & Write.  From the box cover, we can gather that many of the core concepts have been carried over: the city sheet shows a very similar layout to the original game’s board including mountains, a river, rocks, and trees.  The art also shows similar polyomino shapes and three different building types.  

Yet this version can play a wider range of 1-6 players and features a smaller (and presumably cheaper) box of 12 episodes rather than 24. The major question is: How will the roll & write aspect of the game change things up?  Will we see new dice introduced across the four chapters?  I’m normally not one to get excited about a roll & write, but I’ll make an exception for the follow-up to My City.

Why it’s exciting:  Those who play Knizia dice games would largely agree that Knizia understands how to make the most of dice.  The man even wrote an entire book on dice games, for crying out loud!  So the introduction of dice to the My City system means that these 12 episodes will likely have all kinds of new tricks up their sleeves.

Crescent Moon

Expected Release Date: 2022

If a meaty expansion to Sidereal Confluence isn’t enough for you, then perhaps you’ll be able to satisfy your negotiation cravings with Osprey Games’ ambitious Crescent Moon.  This mammoth design apparently takes 2.5-3 hours to play and can only be played with 4-5 players.  You’ll take on the role of a wildly asymmetric character who has unique objectives, actions, and powers in an area control competition of alliances, rivalries, and negotiations.  Based on that description, fans of Cole Wehrle designs should take note.

Why it’s exciting: From a publisher standpoint, putting out a game with such a narrow target audience (groups of 4-5 players who enjoy meaty, asymmetric games) is a tricky proposition.  What this tells me is that publisher Osprey Games really believes in this project enough to take such a risk.  Combine that with the fact that they’ve been putting out some excellent games recently (Undaunted, Brian Boru, etc.) and suddenly this one has the potential to be something truly special.

Ra

Expected Released Date: 2022

Reiner Knizia fans won’t have to wait too much longer for one of his most popular classics to make a triumphant return.  We’ve finally seen a magnificent box cover from artist Ian O’Toole, and that’s only the tip of what’s bound to be an iceberg of stunning visuals and clean graphic design.  We also know that 25th Century Games is aiming to make this the best production of Ra ever.  So whether you own and love this fantastic push-your-luck auctioning design or not, the latest version of Ra should be on your radar.

Why it’s exciting:  A new version of Ra illustrated by Ian O’Toole is like the Spider-man: No Way Home of board game team-ups.  They’re bringing back a classic, critically acclaimed, beloved experience (Doc Oc, Green Goblin—Reiner Knizia’s Ra) and pairing it with something popular and exciting (Tom Holland’s Spider-man aka Ian O’Toole).

The Queen’s Dilemma

Expected Release Date: 2022?

If you’ve played the 2020 Kennerspiel des Jahres nominee, The King’s Dilemma, then you understand how much work went into this legacy game of tug-of-war politics.  Thus, it’s understandable why The Queen’s Dilemma has been announced but not given a release date.  The big change here is that the tug-of-war resource tracks from the King’s Dilemma are being replaced with a kingdom map where players control regions, gather resources, and develop their areas.  I can’t wait to see how this game of tense voting and impactful decisions is taken to the next level. 

Why its exciting: For folks who were underwhelmed by the mechanical side of The King’s Dilemma—dragging resource tokens up and down a track—The Queen’s Dilemma seems to be aiming for a more ambitious area control + Euro experience.  Beyond arguing and debating how the kingdom should be run, players will now get to see their decisions take effect on a map and feel even more invested in their slice of domain.

Fit to Print

Expected Release Date: 2023

While Fit to Print is not scheduled to release until 2023, it’s worth noting here because the game is coming to Kickstarter this year.  Beyond coming from the increasingly popular creators of Calico, Cascadia, and Tiny Towns, Fit to Print caught my eye with the whimsical artwork by Ian O’Toole.  One of my favorite movies of all time is Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox., and this game box gives me very fantastic vibes of the fox variety.  Mr. Fox himself even works for a newspaper, so the game’s theme is obviously a warm (and welcome) nod to that delightful stop-motion animation movie.  Players will be racing to arrange the best front page of their newspaper in this real-time spatial puzzle game.

Why its exciting:  For many gamers, Flatout Games have been on a hot streak of attractively approachable yet engaging publications, and Fit to Print is set to continue that streak.  Bringing in a design from the creator of Tiny Towns seems like a perfect match here, as Tiny Towns shares much in common with Calico and Cascadia.  If you love any of these games, then Fit to Print should certainly be on your watchlist.

Amun-Re: 20th Anniversary Edition

Expected Release Date: 2023

Amun-Re: 20th Anniversary Edition is another new reprint of a Knizia auctioning classic, and it’s likewise an upcoming 2022 Kickstarter that won’t hit tables until 2023.  But even 20 years on from its initial publication, it remains strongly ranked in the top 500 games of all time on BGG.  This new version will see the classic team up of Vincent Dutrait art with Reiner Knizia gameplay plus 3 entirely new expansions.

Why its exciting: I recently acquired an older copy of Amun-Re and it has proven to be a solid design that has been worth keeping around.  It’s a mark of a good Euro when I’d often rather play it over other Euros that are up to 20 years newer.  That said, Amun-Re has widely been regarded as a game that is good for primarily 4-5 players.  It sounds like publisher Alley Cat Games is aiming to improve the experience at lower counts with the help of an expansion, and that is certainly something to be excited about.

Arcs

Expected Release Date: 2023

While Cole Wehrle was designing his latest ambitious strategy game, Oath, he had many wildly intriguing design ideas that ultimately didn’t end up in Oath.  Arcs is the space-themed exploration of those leftover ideas set to come to Kickstarter in 2022.  It’s described as a short campaign game played over a few punchy episodes (or one long session of 3-5 hours) with branching narratives that can be enjoyed across many campaign sessions.  It’s also easier to teach than both Oath and Root.

Why it’s exciting: Arcs approaches the same question that was posed by 2021’s excellent Brian Boru: How do you combine trick taking with a strategy board game?  According to Cole, Arcs answers this question in a very different (and meaner) way from Brian Boru.  Any game that sounds like the love child of Oath and Brian Boru immediately has my attention.

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 upcoming Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post 22 Most Anticipated Board Games of 2022 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Nick is joined by internationally acclaimed designer Reiner Knizia for an epic interview exploring an entire spectrum of board game topics!  This is one episode you don’t want to miss…

Link to the Kickstarter campaign for Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection

• Intro to Dr. Reiner Knizia – 1:49
• Inspiration behind Soda Smugglers, Pumafiosi, & Hot Lead – 2:50
• Reiner’s favorite animal – 10:08
• Designing different genres of games – 12:08
• Deck-builders & The Quest for El Dorado – 15:47
• The Siege of Runedar – 19:33
• Reiner’s future with legacy games; a sequel to My City? – 28:13
• Personal & career goals moving forward – 31:47
• Observations on international publishing – 36:10
• Reiner’s mysterious 2000+ game library – 40:13
• Current design projects that Reiner is excited about – 46:05
• How the pandemic has affected Reiner’s work – 48:58
• Reiner’s take on remixing his classic games (Tigris & Euphrates -> Yellow & Yangtze) – 50:10
• Advice to game designers – 53:33

The post Reiner Knizia Interview—Podcast Exclusive appeared first on Bitewing Games.

What does it take to publish a board game?  A LOT.  A whole, stinking lot.  The kind of lot that will eat up hours upon hours, months upon months of your free time like the eery No-Face of Spirited Away.  The kind of lot that will quickly and efficiently drain your bank account of tax returns and COVID relief funds and more before your game is even produced.  The kind of lot that you’re better off running away and hiding from… unless you are really passionate about that particular game.

And that game can’t just be any old design.  If you want it to spread far and wide—to earn it’s way into cozy mom-and-pop game shops or onto coveted Target store shelves—or if you want it to be loved and lauded—praised by critics and recommended by fans—then it needs to be something special.

So that’s a good place to start.  Find a game design or concoct a prototype that really sings.  Uncover an experience that people want to have again and again.  Craft a challenge that is novel, engaging, and dynamic.  That’s easier said than done, and there’s a whole universe of useful information out there about how to design a game that people love. But that’s not where we’ll swim in this particular post. 

We here at Bitewing Games did not have to cook up a mechanical meal of play for our debut publications.  Nor did we have to worry about another typical task of publishing—specifically the development and polishing of a design. That’s because we were provided a menu of fresh and fully developed entrees from a master chef, namely Reiner Knizia.  Our only dietary restrictions for menu options were to stay within the parameters of “a small-box game that is quick to teach, easy to get anybody into, fast to play, and addictively replayable.”  And the culinary card-game artist certainly provided on that front.

Dr. Knizia and his team presented us with seven card game prototypes that were a mixture of entirely new concepts and reimagined designs.  The presentation of each game was nothing fancy… simply a game title, a list of components, a paragraph or two describing the gameplay, and a handful of prototype images.  Yet this luxury buffet didn’t need any fancy dressings… the games speak for themselves.

That doesn’t mean we salivated at all of the proposals.   From the get-go, some designs felt like they were targeting the wrong audience for our brand.  Others had us skeptical of their potential.  Yet a few shined with a spark of promise within their descriptions.  We decided to try five of the seven prototypes, and away we went… printing off paper cards and tokens to test on willing guinea pigs including nearby family members and gaming friends.

From the depths of this intensive testing emerged three card games—loved by both casual and hobbyist gamer alike.  These prototypes were specifically:

Hot Goods: A newer bluffing and bribing game of alcohol smuggling only ever published in Germany and Japan in 2019

Mafiosi: a sharper, more strategic reimplementation of an older family game known as Rooster Booster

Hot Lead: a brand-new push-your-luck auctioning game from the designer of some of the best auctioning games in the world

Yet we couldn’t just love to play these designs…. We had to have a passionate vision for what they could become.  With my educational background in Business Administration, I’ve naturally found myself applying business tools and fundamentals to more abstract and creative processes including game design and development.  So of course, I couldn’t help but run a SWOT Analysis on Reiner’s most promising designs to see if we could chart a clear path to publishing these games through Kickstarter.  This analysis wasn’t just a right of passage… it became our publishing blueprint.

I’ve already delved deep into an explanation of the SWOT Analysis and how it applies to the board game industry on a recent episode of the Board Game Design Lab Podcast.  But to put it simply: SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, and these four categories can be applied to even a Reiner Knizia prototype to evaluate internal and external factors that can determine its value and potential.  This tool is a great way to take a step back and get both a broad perspective and a laser focus on everything that matters most about the subject.

So to offer an example of how that all actually works, here is my SWOT analysis for the prototype called “Hot Goods:”

The strengths of this prototype included its wide player count (3-8 players), no downtime (everyone is always participating as either traveler or border guard), simple and engaging gameplay, and a solid smuggling and bribing theme that shines through the experience.

The weaknesses of this prototype included confusion from how the rules were explained (at least in the English translation of the German version), a muted look to the overall presentation, and a game length that had the potential of going up to 60 minutes which is way too far beyond our target of 20 minutes.

One major opportunity for this prototype was something that I had already stored in the back of my mind from my own game design brainstorming sessions: specifically a game featuring soda and bottle caps.  Despite the colorful inspiration and flavorful experiences that soda provides, despite the collectable clackitiness that comes with bottle caps, I had never encountered a soda-themed game that really stuck within the industry.  Another opportunity was certainly the stylish artist we had in mind, Paul Halkyon, who would obviously thrive best off of a theme with wide artistic potential.

Finally, some threats for this prototype included the need to differentiate it—or communicate the differences from other popular bluffing games including Sheriff of Nottingham and Skull.  Another threat unique to Bitewing Games is that many of our theoretical day-one backers would be friends and family who culturally don’t drink alcohol, thus making it harder to sell them on an alcohol smuggling game.

So, Hot Goods went into this furnace of analysis, and from it emerged Soda Smugglers, a 20 minute card game of fizzy contraband. The star of the production would be the soda brands, the table presence would be an explosion of colorful bottles and bottle caps, and the maximum possible number of rounds would be trimmed down from 16 to 8. I shared the results of our analysis with Reiner Knizia, and he didn’t just approve our vision for the design… he preferred it.  Dr Knizia agreed that our proposed production presented both the best artistic potential and the broadest appeal to the game’s target audience.

Likewise, the prototype Mafiosi evolved into a more potent Pumafiosi while Hot Lead ended up requiring minimal resculpting.  And it was once we had settled upon publishing these three games due to their individual merits and promising possibilities that they became more than just a convenient bundle.  Suddenly, we weren’t just publishing three 20-minute card games… we were publishing three games designed by the illustrious Reiner Knizia that were all related to criminal activities.  We were publishing Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection.  In other words, we were publishing something special.

To make things even better, Reiner and his design chops weren’t the only ace up our sleeve.  We also had the dark horse illustrator, Paul Halkyon, who just so happens to have enough imagination, passion, and talent to craft an entire anthropomorphic Criminal Capers universe where these three games can intermingle and coexist.  As project managers, our task was simply to maximize both the functionality of Reiner’s mechanisms and the aesthetics of Paul’s art.  We had to plan a production that makes these card games pop in every possible way.  Now, how the heck do you make a game designed by Reiner Knizia and illustrated by Paul Halkyon pop even more?  I’m glad you asked…

Soda Smugglers:

• Step 1: Charge Paul with the duty of creating several soda brands that straddle the fence between nostalgic familiarity and mesmerizing peculiarity.
• Step 2: Make these fantastical soda brands the star of the production.  I’m talking large, loud, and in-your-face bottles on the cards.  Don’t forget to supplement them with matching life-size bottle caps as well.
• Step 3: Select components and materials that enhance the theme and supplement the fun.
• Etc.

Pumafiosi:

• Step 1:  Give players their own personal family tiles and tokens that have character and lore.  Make them feel an invested tie to their Pumafia family to strengthen the emotional range and potency of the game.
• Step 2:  Give the push-your-luck gameplay a physical form.  Rather than recording gained or lost points or simply earning and returning point tokens for successes and losses, give each player a wealth point card and penalty point card where their glorious triumphs and hilarious failures can be piled high and on full display for all to bask in or envy.
• Step 3:  When your artist displays an unexpected passion or shows intriguing promise within their concept art, fuel that fire with everything you’ve got.  They just might come up with some of their finest work ever.
• Etc.

Hot Lead:

• Step 1: Just step back and let Paul do his thing because he is on a freaking roll now.
• Step 2:  Once the initial designs are in, look at every card and component from a readability perspective.  If anything has the potential to be unclear, make tweaks to the components as needed.  (Good example here: the font of the numbers in Hot Lead has been changed since our latest prototypes.  So the final cards will be even easier to read than what the cards on our Kickstarter campaign page show).
• Step 3: Don’t be afraid to make late improvements to the production.  Our initial deluxe version plans for this game featured metallic foil cards, but with enough time to mull it over we decided that there was too much of a risk of this card material being problematic.  That’s when we came up with an even better idea to turn the promotion tiles into sheriff stars and have the deluxe version feature thick wooden stars that you can proudly stand up on the table and display when earned.
• Etc.

Of course, planning the art direction and components is merely one task covered by a publisher.  We’ve also had to track down a manufacturer who is capable of making these games at top quality and a reasonable price.  Likewise, we’ve scouted out reliable fulfillment and shipping partners amid these hectic COVID shortages.  And crafting the Kickstarter campaign page with a strong marketing message have been monumental efforts unto themselves.  It helps to possess or acquire secondary skills such as graphic design, photography, videography, writing, podcasting, communication, branding, scheduling, budgeting, and more.

If you have the time and drive for the Herculean task of publishing, great!  There are plenty of helpful tools and resources out there to get you the skills you need.  But one aspect that may prove even more difficult is the money.  Years ago, it used to be that you could slap a rough concept on a crowdfunding site and wait until you’ve funded to invest significant money into the project.  Nowadays, there is simply too much competition to thrive with low-effort or low-investment campaigns. Of course, you can skip the crowdfunding route all-together and try your hand at online or direct-to-retail sales, but the minimized risks and maximized marketability of crowdfunding is usually too good to ignore.

From the beginning, we knew we wanted to make a big splash with our first campaign.  Time is too precious for us to simply inch-worm our way through the early publishing years before we can ramp up to more ambitious publications.  We’ve already got 7 total games lined up to publish with a hunger to add even more to our plans!  From game 1, we want our backers and customers to understand that we mean business when it comes to publishing gorgeous, fantastic games.  

Thus, we’ve invested nearly the cost of our funding goal to get this business and this first project up and running.  If you intend to assemble a team of experts to design and develop exceptional games, bring them to life with stunning art, engineer custom plastic components, find interested gamers across the World Wide Web, produce the games with premium precision, and deliver them to doorsteps around the world, then you better be ready to invest the finances required to enlist this team plus the time required to direct them.

It’s a rollercoaster, to say the least.  And tomorrow, we finally reach the starting line.

The Kickstarter Campaign for Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection runs from August 10th through September 2nd! We need your help to make these games a reality. Please consider pledging your support so we can 1) send you these excellent games once they are manufactured, 2) continue to provide you with juicy board game content through our blog/podcast/Youtube/etc., and 3) publish even more exciting games in the future!

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. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post How to Publish a Board Game — A Criminal Capers Collection Publishing Diary appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Filler games are like the mashed potatoes or the sticky rice of the tabletop games industry.  Perhaps most people don’t get hyped out of their minds for a single filler game, but everybody notices when they’re missing from the gaming meal.  If you’re trying to get infant gamers to consume new-to-them games and enjoy this hobby, your odds of success are much better if you place a simple filler in front of them rather than a complicated entree.  When you don’t have the time or stomach space for an entire gaming feast, a filler can make for the perfect satisfying snack.

These games are essential to filling in the cracks and crevices of one’s board game collection, and so I’ve set out to determine my top 10 recommendations for filler games.  While there are far more than 10 fantastic options to choose from, this list will serve as my most reliable team of fillers for anyone and everyone.  As the term “filler game” has the potential the cover a wide range of possibilities, I’ve narrowed down my selection criteria to the following…

To make this particular Top 10 Filler Game list, the game must be:

• Compact in size and scope
• Consistently playable in under 30 minutes
• Fast and easy to teach
• Playable with a range of player counts 

This criteria means that loads of 2-player only games that are otherwise solid filler games are out of the runnings.  This means that killer compact classics that tend to go longer than 30 minutes such as Arboretum, Condottiere, and Stick ‘Em are out.  And tragically, this also means that the non-compact Crokinole won’t be sneaking its way onto another one of my top 10 lists.  But worry not, this criteria still leaves us with plenty of good stuff to explore, and explore we shall!  In no particular order, my top 10 filler games are the following…

Archaeology: The New Expedition

A great filler is most commonly a card game, and Archaeology: The New Expedition is the first of many such titles on this list.  While Sushi Go and Barenpark are designer Phil Walker-Harding’s most popular creations, I personally prefer the quick turns and push your luck collecting that Archaeology provides.  

Players spend turns digging at sites and trading with the marketplace for the finest of items in hopes of selling lucrative sets to the museum.  The problem is that sets take time to build into something massively profitable, and the longer you wait to sell your artifacts, the more likely you are to lose them to a thief or a sandstorm.  Archaeology: The New Expedition hits the spot at any player count from 2-5, with any player type from grandma to gamer, and doesn’t overstay its welcome, making it an easy addition to this list.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

We here at Bitewing Games have covered The Crew from front to back and head to toe, which ought to hint at how much we love it.  For those of you who already know and love this game, my substitute recommendation is simply the upcoming The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.  For those of you who are not familiar with this widely acclaimed cooperative, trick-taking card game, here are two great places to start:

ARTICLE: Double Review – Tournament at Avalon & The Quest for Planet Nine

YouTube Review: Is The Crew Fun?

Skull

It’s a coaster!  It’s a frisbee!  No…. It’s Skull!  Skull is a pure bluffing game composed entirely of what looks like drink coasters.  Each player receives 4 round cardboard coasters and 1 square cardboard coaster.  The round coasters act as your hand of cards that are played one at a time facedown onto your square coaster.  Three of these round coasters display roses, but the fourth displays a skull.

As players take turns adding one coaster facedown to their own stack, during their turn a player can instead declare a challenge.  This challenge takes the form of a bid where the highest bidder must flip that many round coasters (starting with all of their own) in hopes of not revealing a skull.  If they manage to avoid catastrophe, then they flip their square coaster to display and flaunt the fact that they are one more victory away from winning the game.  Yet the other way to win is to be the lone survivor, as players will lose one of their round coasters each time they flip a skull (their own or someone else’s), and once you’ve lost your final coaster you are out of the game!

Skull is both tense and hilarious as players try to outwit each other.  The moment I secretly add my own skull to my facedown stack, I’ve now set up a trap for my opponents.  But the best way to spring the trap on them is to make them believe that my stack is safely stocked with only roses.  Yet if I raise the challenge bid in an attempt to give off that impression, and nobody else raises my bid, then I’ll very quickly have egg on my face when I flip my skull and writhe in my own mess.

For Sale

Speaking of tense auctioning games, Skull won’t be the first on this list and For Sale won’t be the last.  For Sale somehow sneaks its way onto nearly every list that I make.  So while I apologize to those who have heard me endlessly rant about it, I couldn’t leave it off the top 10 filler games list!  Seriously, I tried to block it out of this list just to get a little more variety into my recommendations, but I’m not a barbaric criminal, so here it is, back on my list.

If you’re hungry for more details and thoughts about this reliable filler game, I suggest you check out any of the following options that strike your fancy:

• #14 of my Top 25 Games of All Time
• Our Top 10 Family Games podcast episode 
• 10 Games to Enjoy Amid a Quarantine
• Episode #4 of my Tabletop Tastes Series: Crunchy Meaningful Decisions

Whale Riders

It’s time to get spicy with a brand new release which will be near impossible to find once the current stock runs out.  Good thing we have the icy coast to curb the heat of this recommendation.  If you’re reading this post, then it’s likely that you already got an eye-full of my first impressions of Whale Riders last week.  While Whale Riders is the largest game to make its way onto my top 10 fillers list, the box is still deliciously slim and the gameplay is unbelievably quick.  Dr. Knizia and Grail Games have crammed a beautiful big box board game experience into a simple, rapid, tight race of efficient mercantilism.  When I can setup, teach, and play this game in under 30 minutes, and have a blast from start to finish, you better believe it’s gonna end up on this list.

The Mind

The Mind is the second and final cooperative game to end up on this list.  While it’s not much of a looker, what it lacks in aesthetics it makes up for in price and novelty.  Yet even after many plays, the novelty of this game of gut-feelings hasn’t worn off for me.   Perhaps because it emphasizes the interaction and unison between myself and my teammates over anything else, and the emotional rollercoaster it takes us on is always refreshing.  Check out Kyle’s recent 3-minute review to learn why it might be a hit for your group as well:

Startups

While Oink’s other top-tier publications feel closer to party games, Startups stands apart as a tight card game of investing in startup companies.  The catch is that your investments will only pay off if you have the most cards of that company, otherwise you’ll be forking over points to that majority owner at the end of the game.  It’s a refreshingly simple game, yet it has elements of bluffing, risk-taking, and climactic reveals.  The fact that it’s a big pile of tokens crammed into a tiny box somehow adds to its charm.

Biblios

Biblios is thematically about building a library, but the the star feature here is the two-act play of donations and auctions.  During the donation act, players take turns drawing a few cards: selecting one to keep, one to set aside for the auction, and the others to donate to opponents.  Once the deck runs out, players use their formed hands to bid on each card in the auction pile.

This jockeying for cards is all part of a quest to have the highest sum of cards in a particular category, thereby earning the points (shown on the dice) of that category at the end of the game.  But if one person is pummeling everyone else by spending big on blue and red points, then crafty opponents can seek to decrease the value of those colors by bidding on cards that reduce any dice of their choice.

By allowing players to be sneaky, clever, and conniving, Biblios remains a solid option even 14 years since its release. 

Love Letter

Lave Letter has been in our collection longer than any other game on this list, and it remains one of the best of its class.  Like For Sale, it has received countless mentions across our blog posts and podcast episodes.  If you’re looking for a strategic competition, then you’re likely to be disappointed by the amount of luck within Love Letter.  But if you’re coming for some bite-sized, light-hearted fun, then you are in the right place.

YouTube Review: Is Love Letter Fun?

Parade

I always appreciate a solid, simple card game with a bit of luck and nice fistful of strategy, and Parade hits that sweet spot for me.  The gameplay here feels closest to Arboretum but is less cutthroat and agonizing, more light and breezy.  Yet there’s enough decision space lurking underneath to keep me engaged.

This pretty little game features Alice in Wonderland artwork with the characters forming a parade of cards behind the draw pile.  The rules are a little wonky to explain, but basically players are trying to avoid taking cards from the parade by adding the right card from their hand to the end of the line.  The problem is that you frequently have to take a hit and end up with some point scoring cards in this game where points are bad.  

Selecting which cards to play when is a unique and engaging challenge.  Yet another twist comes in the end-game scoring, where the player with the most cards of a single color gets to convert those cards to 1 point each (instead of their printed values).  So you end up with something like a game of chicken that quickly unfolds into a desperate struggle to erase one’s own points.  And because any card from zero through ten can be the best card to play, depending on the situation, Parade manages to keep itself fresh and interesting throughout.

3 Bonus Filler Games

Well if you’ve made it this far, then I think it’s safe to assume that these kinds of “filler” games are up your alley!  And if that’s the case, then this segment is an extra special bonus just for you.  We here at Bitewing Games need your help to bring a bundle of three killer filler games to the world.  This bundle is known as Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection, and it features Soda Smugglers, Pumafiosi, and Hot Lead.

Each of these 20-minute games was hand-picked from Dr. Knizia’s fresh batch of brilliance and is being brought to life by our wildly capable friend and illustration partner, Paul K. Halkyon.  We’ve been having a blast playing and testing these as we prepare to publish them for you.  But none of these games will reach any tables without the support of Kickstarter backers who share our passion for clever Reiner Knizia designs, refreshing filler games, and affordably classy productions.

We’re scheduled to launch this Kickstarter campaign later this summer.  But if you want to follow or support this project now, then subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter and spread the word to any friends or family who may share your interest.  We intend to make a big splash with Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection, but joining our newsletter will ensure that you don’t miss out; plus we have even more exciting things in store beyond this collection.  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. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post Top 10 Filler Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Note: This post will be particularly engaging for those who are interested or involved in the creation of board games (publishing, designing, etc.), so if you’d rather just skip to the big Reiner Knizia news then feel free to jump down below!

It’s hard to resist the allure of a good bundle.  Whether it’s a $5 box from Taco Bell, Super Mario 3D All-Stars for Nintendo Switch, or an all-inclusive vacation on a cruise ship, the concept of getting everything you want or need all in one convenient, discounted place is a classic, universal marketing tool.  It can also be the world’s most annoying spam message when companies like Spectrum or AT&T can’t take a hint that I DON’T WANT YOUR OVERPRICED CABLE TV SERVICES WITH MY INTERNET, NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOU SEND ME A FLIPPING LETTER ABOUT IT.  NOW GET OFF MY BACK!

Bundles also have their place in the board game industry, whether it’s the Big Box version of a game such as Hansa Teutonica with its expansions or a collection of packs that are part of game system like the Dice Throne Battle Chest featuring every fighter within a single container.  When done right, these types of bundles typically appeal to me thanks to the convenience and savings in cost and space that they provide.  Yet there is one type of bundle that I’ve been thinking about lately far more than any other.  This is the multi-product Kickstarter campaign.

Some notable examples of these types of bundles include campaigns such as BoardGameTables’ GPS, Sequoia, and Mountain Goats, or their more recent Factory Funner, Bear Raid, and Ghosts of Christmas.  Final Frontier Games recently wrapped up a pretty campaign of their own with games Solani + The Girl Who Made the Stars.  Grail Games just concluded their Reiner Knizia & Vincent Dutrait collaboration with Whale Riders the board game and Whale Riders the card game (stay tuned for my thoughts on those two next week).  Meanwhile, micro-game publishers including Oink Games and Button Shy have also run such campaigns featuring multiple of their small, charming productions in one place.

But the mere existence and seeming increase of these bundled campaigns hasn’t been the reason they’ve been on my mind.  Not even the fact that I’ve backed multiple of these very bundles is why we’re chatting about this today.  Rather, they’ve served as excellent case studies for my own publishing plans.  And while viewing these bundles through the lens of a customer, designer, and publisher, I’ve formed some strong opinions in the process that will serve to guide my own journey down this publishing path.  For those interested, we’ll be diving deeper into those opinions here and now.  Following that, I have some big and exciting changes to announce regarding our own upcoming bundle of three 20-minute games.

But first, let’s jump back to where this bundle all started for Bitewing Games, specifically with my design Social Grooming.  This title was born out of a fleeting thought: “What if there was a negotiation game where everybody but you knew what was on the card you were trying to trade away?”  The mechanism of negotiation typically features trading of fully known goods with somewhat opaque values.  For example, a single cube is only worth trading for in Sidereal Confluence if you can acquire all of the other cubes required to run a converter, and there’s no guarantee this can all be accomplished.  The value of a specific lot in Chinatown depends on who, if anyone, has ownership of adjacent lots and what businesses are established on them and how quickly those businesses can be developed.  Yet these cubes or lots or businesses are out in the open for all to see and consider, and the act of simultaneous negotiation is always a lively and engaging affair.  But we found through its development that Social Grooming offered a compelling twist to this formula by introducing trust, bluffing, and gut-valuations to the proceedings.

Over time, we had ourselves a consistently satisfying and widely crowd-pleasing game perfect for a quick entertainment snack in both small and large group settings.  Our next step was clear: Let’s get this gem published!  Yet that is much easier said than done, especially when games of this scale make a much smaller splash in the industry compared to sprawling, miniature-packed productions.

We found ourselves in a bit of a new publisher’s paradox: The smart thing to do is start with a small, low-risk project such as Social Grooming and ramp up the complexity of our campaigns from there, yet the value prospect and marketing noise of a single, small card game from an unknown publishing company is like a fart in the wind of the board game industry.  How’d you like to pay a stranger for a small game that you won’t receive for months and you can’t be sure you’ll enjoy until you actually receive it?  Oh, and by the way, we’ll need you to also pay nearly the cost of the game itself in shipping.  Sounds like a smart investment, right?

Well amid my marketing research, I noticed that small games and party games typically don’t perform as well as eye-catching plastic productions or complicated mechanical creations.  Our design is both small and party-ish, so not your typical great fit for Kickstarter.  A large gorgeous box brimming with challenging campaigns and chunky creatures is always going to make the biggest splash in crowdfunding.  So how to you provide value, attract attention, and establish credibility within a first-time creator’s campaign that features none of those things?

And here we circle back to the prospect of a bundle.  Shipping fees are much more palatable when the box contains two or three games instead of just one.  Party games and filler games make a bigger splash when combined into a harmonic chorus of discounted delight.  Unknown publishers are much more trustworthy when they collaborate with trusted brands.  This ultimately brought us to Three 20-Minute Games featuring two designs from Reiner Knizia and the illustrations of Paul K. Halkyon.  Yet there’s been much behind-the-scenes work involved to get us to this point…. Testing and evaluating many unpublished designs from Dr. Knizia, forming a production and marketing plan for each game, investing in licensing, marketing, illustration, and graphic design, building a pre-campaign crowd, finding the right manufacturer, and much more. 

I’ve seen some multi-product Kickstarter campaigns attempt to cobble completely unrelated titles together.  I’ve noticed some publishers attempt to spread a single marketing budget across multiple productions or shine a single spotlight on multiple games at once.  Overall, these campaigns and bundles have usually performed just fine based on the brand strength and fanbase of the company itself or the merits of each individual game, but one can’t help but wonder if these games didn’t reach their full personal potential.

We at Bitewing Games feel that each game in a bundle deserves its own spotlight and marketing plan.  Gamers have come to rely on previews, playthroughs, and more to learn about and get excited for each game they decide to add to their collection.  Nobody wants to clutter their shelves with more stuff simply because it was a good deal.  The challenge of running a bundled campaign is that a publisher must sell a single backer on two or three games rather than one.  The means twice or three times the campaign page content without losing attention or breeding impatience.  Just like in game design, the key is to cut the fluff, maintain the focal point, and streamline the encounter.

This becomes a much easier hurdle to clear if the bundled games share much in common.  Same price, same game length, similar complexity, similar player counts, similar themes, similar art styles, similar box sizes, similar design philoshophies, etc., etc.  Suddenly, I don’t have to firehose you with three versions of the same necessary information.  Rather, I can lay it all out at once and hit three birds with a single stone.  Yet, on the flip side, if the games are too similar, then what’s the point in owning all of them?  That’s where the big, bright spotlights come in: highlighting the unique and interesting features of each carefully selected game. 

The brand and messaging of our bundle up to this point has focused in on the commonalities of my own Social Grooming and Reiner Knizia’s Soda Smugglers and Pumafiosi.  We’ve emphasized that they are all 20-minute games with simple rules, clever depth, and gorgeous art from Paul Halkyon.  Things have gone great with this plan, but we recently received a news bombshell from the team over at Knizia Games.  To give you some context, back when we were evaluating all of the unpublished games that Reiner had pitched to us, there was a third design that we had also fallen in love with and wanted to publish alongside Social Grooming, Soda Smugglers, and Pumafiosi.  Before we had the chance to lock in to the licensing rights, we suddenly heard back that it was no longer up for grabs (another publisher had belatedly decided they wanted to make the game).  While we were disappointed with that news, we were thrilled to have these other three games to bring to life and share with the world.  Fast forward several months, and that’s when the bombshell arrived: Reiner’s third awesome game was dropped by the other publisher and is now back on the market.

So the answer was simple:  Just lump this fourth game into our upcoming bundle because “the more the merrier,” right?  Not so fast…  the leap from a 3-game bundle to a 4-game bundle is a much wider gap than it initially sounds.  That means increasing the bundle price by a whopping 33%.  That means juggling each potential backer’s attention with four games rather than three.  At some point you have to draw the line, and four games felt like we were crossing that line.  Yes, we had considered lumping all four of them together initially (back when Reiner first pitched his games to us), but a few months of thorough planning made it immediately clear that a 4-game bundle would do more harm than good.  But that didn’t mean we had to let the golden opportunity of Reiner’s third game pass us by…

There was another option we could consider… one of shifting things around a bit in the old publishing pipeline.  You see, our second Kickstarter campaign was always planned to feature a unique party game.  Despite the track record of party games on Kickstarter, we’ve always felt that this one had a little extra something special to stand out from the crowd.  But as I theorized earlier, party games can make a bigger splash when combined into a harmonic chorus of discounted delight.  And it just so happens that Social Grooming is a party-style game as well.  Plus it shares the same designer (myself), the same design philosophy, a wide player count, a similar complexity, similar light-hearted fun, and highly social interactions.  Most importantly, these games target the same audience, making them highly compatible for a Kickstarter bundle.  We must apologize to any who have been eagerly awaiting the chance to play Social Grooming, but please stay tuned for its debut in the Bitewing Games Party Pack Kickstarter campaign coming in 2022.

Perhaps the even bigger benefit to this change would be the strengthened branding and focus of our first Kickstarter campaign.  Not only do we get to publish another fantastic game, but now these titles would share the same designer and a similar theme.  No longer is this bundle simply “Three 20-Minute Games,” it is now Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection.

Big News: Introducing Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection

The post Lessons Learned About Kickstarter Bundles + Big Reiner Knizia News! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

10 Games, 2 Saturdays, 1 Mission: Play until our brains are fried. Nick shares his experiences and impressions of these 10 games hand-picked for maximum entertainment and played over the course of two gaming marathons.

These past two Saturdays consisted of birthday celebrations of the best kind, where I and another friend chose to forgo physical birthday presents in favor of something even better…. TIME.  Time to step away from the responsibilities of life and do nothing but play tabletop games all day long.  Fortunately for us, our small gaming group had time as well, and thus we dove headfirst into two meaty Saturdays of seemingly endless fun.

The first Saturday started with one of my top 15 games of 2020, Beyond the Sun.  Despite me sitting at the table with the board facing the opposite direction, something that is usually relentlessly annoying for a very wordy game board, I was able to manage just fine.  

Beyond the Sun was perhaps the favorite game of most players that entire day.  The area control board of planets was hotly contested, more so than I’ve ever seen.  Some planets with a colonization requirement of only 3 ships were seeing massive armadas (multiple ships tallying up to 7 or 8 or even more) occupying their territory with a fierce death grip.

It was difficult to ignore the allure of that half of the game and focus heavily on the tech tree because most of the public objectives and many great bonuses incentivized colonization and control.  It made for a thrilling and intense game where all came away fully satisfied with the start of the day.

The next game on the menu was Reiner Knizia’s train game, Stephenson’s Rocket, featuring the Eastern US expansion map.  I’m usually a train station kind of guy, throwing them down generously and early to get a leg up on scoring points when locomotives connect to rail towns.  But with this map, there is an even higher scoring potential for industry investments, so I decided to mix up my primary strategy.

The center of the board quickly became crowded with my opponents moving locomotives, gaining stocks, and throwing down train stations.  I opted to stick to the perimeter of the board, but with less help from others to get things rolling, and my best rail company quickly getting rammed into an inescapable corner by a devious rival, I found myself falling behind in the early game.

I had to pivot my strategy if I wanted to salvage the slow start.  So I did what all the best train games let you do: I leeched the prized stocks from players who were in too deep to let me tank their rail companies.  The interesting thing about having a heavy station strategy—where you want to connect to your stations and towns for maximum scoring—is that opponents can take advantage of your obvious intentions.  

If I start steering a locomotive away from somebody else’s next big payday, they must begin burning off stock to veto my chosen direction and keep their plans from… derailing.  With only a few turns, I can overtake the lead for a company’s stock and then let my opponents handle the rest of my dirty work, because now every city and town they connect to will serve to score me massive points as well.  This strategy worked very well for me to the point where I made a huge point rush in the second half.  Though I didn’t win, I was satisfied with my diabolical takeover.

Speaking of hostile takeovers, our next game was old reliable Lords of Vegas.  This is a game that requires a higher luck tolerance than most plus a generous appreciation of the thematic intricacies of the design.  When I first realized that a game titled Lords of Vegas has inherent risk and gambling integrated into every action available to players, I discovered my undying love for this box of bombastic fun.  It had been seven months since my previous play, and this long-awaited reunion made our play all the sweeter.

Of course, I refuse to play this game with the provided Monopoly-like paper money, opting instead for Roxley’s Iron Clays.  While it looks and sounds like Monopoly, Lord of Vegas deserves to be held to higher standard thanks to its clever, cutthroat strategic space.  Our play was riddled with the usual casino dynasties and huge momentum swings, and it was an enjoyable ride to take with friends.  Despite our best efforts, we weren’t able to bring down the 7-tile mammoth controlled by the black color.

Next, we leaped from one end of the luck spectrum to the other by digging into Hansa Teutonica Big Box.  I can’t get enough of this classic, German-style Euro design.  It never ceases to amaze us how each play has an extremely different feel from the last.  This time, the most popular upgrade (gaining more actions per turn) was left wide open for me to exploit in the early game.  I quickly threw down a trading post at this site and milked it for all I could while leaping to the maximum 5 action upgrade surprisingly early in the game.

We also saw another player make a great run for the coast-to-coast connection that scored them 7 points in the late game.  I caught onto their intentions and did my best to be a thorn in their side by throwing down trading posts and merchants along their path.  It turned out to be a wise play on my part, as I ended up stealing away first place from that player by only one point.

We followed up this cube placing extravaganza with a game that is fresh out of the oven: Bristol 1350.  This is a plague-themed social deduction race from my friends over at Facade Games.  I previously playtested and wrote a preview for this game, and it’s great to see the final form that Bristol 1350 has taken.  A noteworthy change that I immediately noticed in the final rules is that nobody starts out with the plague during setup, as I remember that certain players could and did start with the plague in previous versions.

Yet with what felt like a rare stroke of chance, the very first cart mingle of the game resulted in myself and my cart-mates all contracting the plague, though we didn’t know at that time that all three of us had succumbed to the same fate .  From there, we fanned out and did our best to sabotage the innocent victims of the other two carts.  

Despite our best efforts, another cart of seemingly healthy passengers raced ahead of the rest and escaped town to our sadistic disappointment.  They each revealed their secrets… one was healthy, as was the second, as was the—NOPE!  The third passenger in the cart had contracted the plague during a seemingly harmless mingle long before the finish line, and he strung his teammates along the rest of the way before brutally stabbing them in the back!  It was quite the sight to behold.

At this point, the board game marathon was winding down, so we found it fitting to play one last quick, simple game…. and that game was Social Grooming.  Social Grooming is one of the three designs in our upcoming Kickstarter bundle launching later this year.  While the other two games were cooked up by master chef, Reiner Knizia, this one is our own in-house design.  

To play Social Grooming, I dealt out eleven cards to each player to form their own face-down deck.  Then, much like the popular card game, Hanabi, we each drew one card off the top of our decks and held them facing away from ourselves so we could see everybody’s cards except our own.  This is where the madness begins, as we immediately proceeded to offer the cards in our hands—something we knew absolutely nothing about—to others at the table.  

Similar to one of our family favorites, Chinatown, players participate in a simultaneous negotiation phase.  Yet negotiation becomes all the more tricky when you don’t know how valuable your own goods are.  The key is to pick up on subtle cues and reactions while downplaying other people’s cards.  When you see somebody’s eyes go as wide as flying saucers at the sight of your own card, you start to get a hunch for what you could be holding.  And the good news is that you are allowed to keep your card instead of trading it if you feel it is valuable.

Yet value is partially contextual in Social Grooming.  Everybody wants a 10 value card, as it is the highest point card in the game, but nobody wants two 10 value cards, because pairs will cancel each other out during scoring.  The same card can be both very good for one player and very bad for another.  And when you are able to keep tabs on what cards are currently bad for other players, there’s a whole nother layer to this tricky trading where you can bluff your reactions to an opponent’s card in an attempt to convince them to keep a bad one.

I’ll save further details for a future designer diary, but our session crowned two joint victors after three rounds of play.  I found it quite funny that one special card type plagued my collection at the end of one round yet it was the only card I so desperately wanted and could not attain in the next round.

The following Saturday’s marathon was kicked off with a game I received for Christmas and finally got around to playing for the first time: Galaxy Trucker.  In board game years, Galaxy Trucker is getting to be quite the old-timer, yet my first play of it proved that it still provides a highly unique and enjoyable experience.

The simultaneous, chaotic, real-time spatial puzzle of the first phase paired with a bombastic push-your-luck second phase makes for a perfect blend of entertainment.  I dig how the game ramps up in craziness over the course of three rounds and you’re not completely out of the game after a rough beginning or middle act.  I had always heard that this was a game about clinging on for dear life as your hodgepodge space ship gets blasted to smithereens, yet I got cocky after an easy two rounds where my ships suffered hardly a scratch.

Round three was where this wacky space game humbled me.  I quickly built out a flawless left half of my ship before realizing that I had nearly walled off the entire right half of my board.  The final minutes of building consisted of me scrambling to find the only piece that can fit into the one spot that I can even connect anything to, just so I could keep my hopes alive of filling in the many empty spaces still on my board. 

This messy right side of the building phase was merely a foreshadowing of the flight phase, where very early on some nasty pirates arrived and blew off the right side of my ship that I had clumsily cobbled together last-minute.  It’s as if they could see my weak point from a mile away and took a single pot shot to bring the whole thing down.  Needless to say, I had to give up before round three was over so I could recede into a black hole of shame and lick my many wounds.

Brass: Birmingham

Fortunately, I came storming back in our next play of none other than Brass Birmingham.  Brass is a game that never gets old for me, despite my many plays of it.  I’m typically the player who can’t resist the big point pottery tiles, and sure enough, I got two of them out on the board before game end.  In this particular game, the demand for coal far outweighed the supply, so players were frequently forking over five or ten pounds just to get a couple of those precious cubes.  Meanwhile, the beer was bounteous and plentiful until the very last round of the game, where it dried up in an instant, forcing a couple players to pivot on their final plans.  

The thing that gives Brass so much mileage play after play is just how interactive and dynamic the economy is.  My plan to feed the hungry iron market can be completely obliterated when the person right before me cranks out an iron producing tile or builds on the space I was planning to use or spends the coal that I so desperately needed for my turn. 

Designer Martin Wallace understands the importance of turn order, and he wields it with unapologetic brutality in Brass.  Yet a lost opportunity in one area of the market simply means an open door in another area.  Players must be as fluidly adaptive as they are cutthroat in order to thrive in Brass Birmingham.  My many previous experiences with Brass helped me to come out on top in this particular session, and I was able to score the most network and building points in the rail era.

Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

Yet our group hadn’t quite had enough of that economic savagery, because we next decided to break out the grizzly bear of a box containing Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy.  My faction of choice for this session was the Descendants of Draco, who are buddy-buddy with the imposing ancients.  Ancients are gray ships that show up on the board and take on any player who trespasses on their property.  Yet the Descendants faction has the exclusive privilege of peacefully cohabitating with Ancients and even claiming control of their tiles.  

In the early stages of the game, it can be quite difficult to take out an Ancient, and I used that to my advantage by exploring and churning out as many ancients around me as possible.  I formed an early peace treaty with the Terran Alliance who were immediately to my left (left is a direction in space… right?); yet my insurance policy was the pile of Ancients he would have to bulldoze through if he wanted to reach my precious sectors with a later betrayal.

Meanwhile, I knew the Eridani Empire and the player who controlled them to my immediate right to be an overly aggressive bunch, so I constructed my explored tiles in a way that they didn’t have a single wormhole that would let them through into my territory.  Between a peaceful neighbor and an impenetrable wall, these cleverly constructed defenses quickly lost their coziness when I realized that I now had very few options for scoring points in this space-faring war game.

So I did what any reasonable person would do and bided my time as I piled my biggest and best ships onto the sector that was right next-door to the central GDCS (Galactic Defense Center System) that looks suspiciously similar to the Death Star.  This GDCS is known to Eclipse veterans as a lucrative opportunity for scoring big points and skyrocketing one’s economy.  One must spend several of the game’s 8 rounds preparing to take this centerpiece down.  Yet once a faction does all the hard work of taking out the GDCS and becoming the new occupant of the valuable central tile, they are now at their weakest, making themselves an easy target in the following round for anyone else to pile onto and perform cleanup crew. 

So while I was amassing my glorious space fleet on one side of the GDCS, two other factions—the Planta and the Eridani Empire—were doing the very same thing on other sides the central tile.  Judging by the gnarly blueprints on their ships, I knew I likely wouldn’t survive a showdown against either of them.  My best bet was to take the coward’s way out and backstab the Terran Alliance who had spent all game building 3-point Monoliths on SIX DIFFERENT TILES in their region!  Do not think less of me, for none can resist the allure of such an opportunity.

So with two rounds left to play out, I sent my fleet sprawling deep into Terran Alliance territory, squashing one starbase after another like ants under my space shoes.  And inn the final round, the Eridani Empire sniped both the Planta ships and the GDCS before the fight could even begin with some of the best missile rolls this side of the Lylat System.  They didn’t even break a sweat obliterating the central space and had earned three rare 4-point Reputation tokens by game end.  Yet it was my own Descendants who ultimately reigned supreme after being branded a traitor and stealing away over twenty points worth of tiles and Monoliths from the poor, gullible humans of the Terran Alliance.

Soda Smugglers

Despite Eclipse only being our third game of the day, we had nearly reached our limit for gaming that evening.  Yet the group was gracious enough to play one last 20-minute game that was in need of some playtesting as requested by the one and only Reiner Knizia. 

Like us, Reiner is quite excited to see his games, Soda Smugglers and Pumafiosi, be published with the help of Kickstarter backers, so he’s spent these past few weeks cooking up some stretch goal content for both games.  Due to COVID restrictions, Reiner’s legion of play testers are a bit more limited lately, so he suggested that some further testing on our end wouldn’t hurt.

For a Soda Smugglers stretch goal, Dr. Knizia has crafted an 8-card event deck that is most comparable to the event deck in Quacks of Quedlinburg.  At the start of each round, the Border Police Officer flips one event card and reveals the unique conditions of that turn.  These clever events range from the Police Officer being more lenient toward travelers because it’s their birthday and they are in a good mood, to having a sniffer dog who aids in the search for illegal suitcases because he’s a good boy.  In classic Knizian fashion, these event cards contain minor tweaks to the core gameplay that make for drastically different feeling rounds.  After playing and enjoying the base game many times now, this optional content was a welcome addition to mix up the core formula.  

I made a good run at smuggling my own suitcases of soda over our five rounds, but another crafty opponent adapted well to the different events.  She knew just when it was the right time to either pull the trigger and smuggle piles of soda or resist the temptation and cross with legal luggage, and thus she emerged the Soda Kingpin of the night.  As intended, Dr. Knizia’s upcoming game was a great way to wind our marathon down with some light, simple fun.

So there you have it… Two full Saturdays of board gaming bliss!  Should you find your own small group to safely gather with soon, I highly recommend a similar session of entertainment therapy.  And if you couldn’t tell from my experiences, I highly recommend all of the games mentioned above.  Hopefully you enjoyed these musings as much as I enjoyed sharing them.

Article written by Nick Murray. To follow the above mentioned Social Grooming and Soda Smugglers as they come to Kickstarter, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

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