Repos Production has released a new dice-based game, the nominees for this year's Spiel des Jahres have been announced, and Space Cowboys has released First Giants.
My favorite way to market our products is to facilitate and encourage them to get to the table more often. Your table, my table, the tables of reviewers, ambassadors, etc–any table will do. The more our products get to the table, the more they’re exposed to people, and hopefully the more fun people can have with them.
One of my favorite ways to accomplish this goal is through play-and-win donations for game conventions and 100+ person gaming events.
Play-and-win is a convention concept where people can check out a game, play it, and then enter their name in a lottery to win that specific game at the end of the convention. If I donate a play-and-win game to a convention, it can be experienced by dozens and dozens of people in a short amount of time. Only one of those people will win it, so if other people liked the game, they’re now informed in their decision to purchase it later.
The play-and-win room at the recent Geekway to the West convention was a bustle of activity right until the end of the convention. Geekway solicited and invested in over 140 different play-and-win titles, each with multiple copies. In total, these games had nearly 15,000 reported plays over the course of 4 days.
Geekway does play-and-win exceptionally well, but they aren’t alone. There are over 250 conventions listed on the 2026 tab of the play-and-win Google Sheet I maintain, so publishers have lots of options when choosing events to target. But which games should you send to these conventions?
Geekway play-and-win coordinator Jeff Hiatt was very kind to send me the data from the Geekway 2026 play-and-win, and he gave me permission to share and analyze it. The sheet is here. I’ll focus on the first four columns, but you’re welcome to contribute your thoughts to any data in the comments.
I’ve highlighted the most-played games in blue (1-30), the highest “desire to win ratio” in yellow, and the crossovers in green.
Number of Plays
The top 5 games that were played the most were Hot Streak, Magical Athlete, Bomb Busters, Moon Colony Bloodbath, and Hummingbirds. All of the games in the top 10 were released in the last year.
For this and the other categories I’ll discuss, I’m hesitant to draw blanket conclusions or stretch to find commonalities among the top 5. For example, there are 2 racing games here, but not every racing game will garner 250+ plays at a convention.
Average Player Count
Around half of the games with the highest average player count are among those that reported high numbers of plays: Hot Streak, Magical Athlete, French Toast, Bomb Busters, Trinket Trove, and Spooktacular.
However, sorting the data this way doesn’t seem to indicate that higher player counts equate to more convention plays. I think player count flexibility is more indicative of a game’s popularity at an event like Geekway–if you grab a game off the shelf, it’s nice if you can just play it with one other person or if you can invite a few others to join too.
Desire to Win
I calculated this by dividing the number of player who wanted to win a game by the total number of plays, indicating that people had a great time with the game. The top 5 were Hot Streak, Magical Athlete, Pinched, 12 Rivers, and Spooktacular. Some games with fewer plays but a high level of desirability were Sprocketforge, Mission: Red Planet, Rebirth, and Pergola.
The main pattern I see here is great table presence, whether it’s component hooks like in 12 Rivers or Sprocketforge or eye-catching art.
Rating Delta
This is perhaps my favorite data point. Which games rate significantly higher at a convention than their BoardGameGeek rating suggests? I think this is so important to pay attention to, as the top-rated games BGG would lead us to believe that people value heavy, complex, long games over everything else. But a vast variety of games bring joy to tabletops, including lighter games.
The top 5 rating delta games were French Toast, Purrramid, Tembo, Australis, and Catan.
Granted, the boisterous environment of a convention is atypical for gaming. Some games shine at events and may not have the same luster when it’s just you and a few friends at home. Also, you might take a look at the games that actually left a worse impression at Geekway than their BGG rating would indicate. Those are the types of games a publisher might avoid contributing to play-and-win (I mostly see longer, heavier games here).
Anecdotal Analysis and Conclusions
Here I’ll look at the games with the both the most plays AND the highest desire to win ratio:
Overall, the types of games I see exceling in play-and-win are those released in the last year, have player count flexibility, feature great table presence, and are on the lighter side.
Despite those patterns, I still think it’s completely fine to send a variety of games to play-and-win conventions. Take a look at the Google Sheet and you’ll see games of all shapes, sizes, weights, prices, player counts, etc. I think this speaks to the diversity of gamers at events like Geekway.
What did you learn from this data? Are there certain types of games you seek out at conventions?
***
If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.
Welcome to this week’s batch of crowdfunding campaigns. We have a variety of offerings here, so we hope you will find something that catches your eye. Also, if you want to chat with the BGQ team, join our Discord Server where we talk about games, movies, sports, and other fun stuff. Check it out and […]
Geekway has been on my bucket list for years and years. A well-regarded board game convention only a handful of hours from my home in Nashville, and the birthplace of the “play and win” library? It seems like a no-brainer. I was finally able to attend, and now I’m adding my thoughts to those of Kevin Brantley, who attended Geekway in 2025.
Full disclosure: in addition to being a gamer, I’m also a convention organizer with ten years of running Nashville Tabletop Day under my belt. While I did want to do some gaming, my main reason for attending this event was to observe the Geekway team and processes to find ways to improve my own event. So be aware my thoughts about the event are going to be colored by “event organizer glasses”.
Geekway runs from Thursday morning to Sunday evening, although I could only attend Friday afternoon to Sunday. After arriving in St. Louis, checking into my hotel, and driving over to the St. Charles Convention Center, I arrived at the gaming hall around 1pm.
Registration was smooth, with pre-printed badges displaying a barcode (more on that later). The badges were full-color, double-sided, pre-printed, laminated, and came with a high quality lanyard. By the time I arrived on Friday, they were already…
The post Andy Goes to Geekway 2026 appeared first on Meeple Mountain.
Hermann Luttmann is a great designer and I just love his solitaire takes on historical battles. His newest design is a solitaire game called A Hell So Terrible: Verdun 1916 from GMT Games that focuses on the German assault on the city of Verdun in 1916 during World War I. Keep in mind that Hermann is a very creative designer and uses lots of very interesting and chaotic design elements to create a very interesting and satisfying gaming experience. Also, most of his games are just that, with very engaging gameplay and a lot of the unknown that will hit you in the face from time to time! I just love his games. We reached out to Hermann and as always he was more than willing to share more about the design.
*Keep in mind that the design is still undergoing playtesting and development and that any details or component pictures shared in this interview are for prototype purposes and will definitely change prior to final publication as they enter the art department.
Grant: Hermann welcome back to the blog. What is your upcoming game A Hell So Terrible about?
Hermann: Thanks so much for having me back again! This is getting to be a bad habit. A Hell So Terrible is currently on the GMT P500 list and covers the German assault on Verdun during World War I. The offensive was launched on Feb. 21, 1916, and its ultimate goal was, as Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn infamously stated, to “bleed France white”. This design sets up the solitaire player commanding the German army at Verdun. The player must push the various German Corps forward along nine different tracks across three main sectors, all of which converge on the city of Verdun and its last ring of fortresses. But the player only has a limited amount of time to close the noose around Verdun, as at the start of July, the Allies will be launching their huge offensive along the Somme River and vital German resources will need to be diverted to defend that front. So, this game design combines a little bit of push-your-luck with a little bit of tower-offense (reverse States of Siege, if you will), and a dab of historically-weighted chaos, to give you a nice flavorful stew of military simulation and game play fun.
Grant: What is the meaning of the title? What did you hope to convey about the game to the players?
Hermann: We actually went through a number of different titles, and I had this one neat quote I found:
“Humanity is mad! It must be mad to do what it is doing. What a massacre! What scenes of horror and carnage! I cannot find words to translate my impressions. Hell cannot be so terrible. Men are mad!”— Second Lieutenant Alfred Joubaire in his diary during the Battle of Verdun (May 23, 1916).
The BBC also used a version of this quote for the Verdun chapter of their special Great War TV series – “Hell Cannot Be So Terrible”. Gene Billingsley came up with the final, truncated version for the game’s title. I take great pride in my game’s titles, and this is no exception. I want the titles to be poetic, artistic, and memorable and thus are usually portions of famous quotes, book chapter titles, etc. By doing so, the title has a meaning and conveys to the player a hint of what the game is about. In this case, as you may surmise, it is supposed to be a bit depressing and gloomy, preparing the player for a difficult Great War grind. The player will experience, in abstract and harmless form of course, the tough slog and frustrating pace of a WWI offensive against an entrenched enemy.
Grant: I see that you described it as a “tower offense” game. What does this mean?
Hermann: This clever twist on the “tower defense” label was created by the game’s developer, Marco Poutre, and I just love it. A tower defense game traditionally means that a player is located in the relative center of the game board, and they are required to defend that center from a foe advancing from multiple directions. Lose the center and lose the game. A Hell So Terrible flips that dynamic around 180 degrees. You are the approaching German attacker moving along multiple axes of advance and the French enemy “bot” is the central defender, trying desperately to keep you away from Verdun.
Grant: Furthermore, the player takes on the role of the attacker. How did this change your design focus?
Hermann: Primarily, the game design must provide the player with strategies of offense and exploitation, rather than that of defense and blocking. The game’s mechanics are structured to offer ways and means for the Germans to conduct actions against the enemy, rather than offer just reactions to enemy moves. You are the instigator and thus drive the action with your play. But that’s not to say that the French “bot” sits idly by…it will counterattack and it will generally do that in the spot which least suits you and your plans.
Grant: Why was this a subject that drew your interest?
Hermann: Well, as you may or may not know, World War I has always been a primary interest of mine. It is just so rich with gaming opportunities because there are so many interesting fighting fronts featuring many different armies. The war is loaded with fairly obscure yet fascinating battles and campaigns and making them each “gameable” is a real challenge. Designing a playable game out of trench warfare was one of my earliest self-inflicted gaming challenges and that all lead directly to the In Magnificent Style push-your-luck style system, which has now come full circle to A Forlorn Hope from Wharf Rat Games (which actually does cover trench warfare). In the A Hell So Terrible game design, that aspect of pushing your troops ”against the wind” of enemy fire (but at an operational scale now) seemed to fit really well with what a game about Verdun should simulate.
Grant: What is your ultimate design goal with the game?
Hermann: Simply, to provide the player with as much angst and anxiety as possible! This operation is perfect for the push-your-luck and tower offense approach. The player is placed under a severe time constraint, so the requirement to not only keep moving forward (even when it seems unwise to do so) but also the need to harbor the few resources you have available in the game (more on that later) is a perfect combination of game play juggling. The player must pick the best spots to attack, when to attack, and with what expenditure of assets. And to keep all these moving parts in a playable, accessible format that doesn’t overstay its welcome is the design goal.
Grant: What from trench warfare during WWI and the numerous attacks on Verdun was most important to model?
Hermann: Well, there are quite a few factors that I really wanted to get into the design to make it feel right. Obviously, the French defensive positions are deep, layered, and unpredictable. There are multiple chains of trenches, forts, and terrain features that must be overcome. How do you, as the attacking Germans, go about penetrating these defenses and inflicting as many casualties as you can on the defending French? Well….planning, logistics, bombardment, flanking, reconnaissance, and determination are the tools to overcome those traditional WWI obstacles. Using a design-for-effect principle, there are simple mechanics built into the game that allow the player access to each of those tools, but at the same time, they are not always available and certainly aren’t limitless.
The player must assess each phase of the game and play it to their best ability, utilizing these historic tools to pry loose the French defenses. So, all these factors are important to model to get the best full experience of attacking in WWI.
One other critical thing I wanted to model is the unknown. What I mean is, the French defenses were mostly hidden and they were deep. Though the player can see the French units on the game board, their strengths are unknown until engaged and even the effect of your artillery bombardments is unknown until you actually have units enter those spaces. This is a huge aspect to WWI trench warfare – you are just never sure what the enemy is doing nor what kind of shape they are in. This fog of war really creates a high level of tension and requires the player to try their luck sometimes, even when it might not seem advisable. And the game will constantly be changing the state and makeup of the French defenses, including allowing them to hit back at unexpected times with counterattacks. All these aspects of WWI warfare are critical to include to give the proper experience, and they are all found in this game.
Grant: What sources did you consult about the details of the history? What one must read source would you recommend?
Hermann: The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne is my “must read” source.
Verdun 1916: They Shall Not Pass from Osprey Publishing.
Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War from Oxford University Press by Paul Jankowski.
And in addition to published books, I reviewed various online articles and video documentaries.
Grant: What other games did you draw inspiration from?
Hermann: Honestly, none. I know you guys have covered a number of the other Verdun games and I know that there are some really good ones. But A Hell So Terrible is, I feel, a unique wargame approach to this campaign and as such, I don’t like to be influenced by other games when I begin a design. That goes for most of my other designs as well, by the way. Again, that’s not to say that other game designs aren’t great games – most are. But I don’t want to allow myself to be subconsciously swayed one way or the other by another designer’s approach, unless I’m actually using an operating system as my core engine (like States of Siege, for example). That’s not to say that I won’t read the background and historical information that is contained in other games or read the associated historical articles in a game magazine. But for the most part, I do not consult other games to get design ideas.
Grant: What are the Activation dice and how do they work?
Hermann: One of the driving inspirations for this game’s design approach was the idea of using an activation dice mechanic in a wargame. This is a relatively new game mechanic, at least in my experience, and I first encountered it in the Claustrophobia game series. I’ve come to appreciate the fact that it is an almost perfect blend of randomization and player decision making, all in one simple mechanic. You roll a bunch of dice – the random part – and you must then assign those dice to particular tasks – the decision part. My twist on that concept is that I marry that idea with the ability to change the kind of dice you roll and then apply the entire push-your-luck concept on top of that. There are two types of dice – Movement and Casualty – and after all dice are rolled, one of each is assigned to an activated unit. This will tell you how far a unit can move and how many casualties it will suffer just from moving (i.e., representing the constant enemy “wall of fire”).
Grant: How has the dice activation streamlined the game? Why does this work so well?
Hermann: The dice activation system not only tells you how you can move your units but also resolves the persistent enemy fire without needing the player to resolve a dozen separate combats. There are two categories of activation dice – Movement and Casualty. The Movement dice come in two types – Advance (green dice) and Infiltration (black dice) while the Casualty dice also come in two types – Friction (orange dice) and Suppression (red dice).
The Advance die allows normal movement results and is the default movement die unless the player opts to spend Command Points to upgrade one or more of these dice to Infiltration dice. The Infiltration dice represent the deployment of Stosstruppen, highly skilled and specially equipped assault troops, and as such these dice allow more movement. Because Command Points are a limited resource, the player must make that critical decision whether to spend those points to get the more efficient Infiltration dice.
The Friction die is assigned to a unit to represent the amount of enemy fire it is receiving and it is the default die unless the assigned unit has its Support marker (representing the supply trains and supporting local artillery) nearby. If the marker is with or adjacent to the activated unit, the player may automatically substitute the Suppression die for the Friction die. The Suppression die represents the tactical artillery (present with the Support marker) bombarding the enemy and thus suppressing the enemy troops and their defensive fire. The problem is that Support markers are hard to move and rarely are able to keep pace with their associated German unit.
Thus, the player is left with some interesting command decisions, even though a unit’s movement and vulnerability is randomly determined by a simple die roll.
Grant: What time pressure is felt by the player?
Hermann: Like all game designs that have any kind of push-your-luck aspect to them, time has to be of the essence. If there is no time pressure, there is no reason to push and take chances. In this game, each turn is half-a-month and the player must accomplish the German goals by the end of the 10th Game Turn, which is the end of June, 1916. The Somme offensive starts at the beginning of July and this marks the point where the Germans must have achieved a victory at Verdun in order to compromise that offensive. The player will find that it is a long slog to capture the ring of French fortresses and get to the outskirts of Verdun in time. So, they will be compelled to push hard and take risks to get to the inner sanctum before the end of the game.
Grant: What type of experience does this create? What are the toughest decisions forced on the players?
Hermann: The experience will hopefully be, as I said before, one of anxiety and fun all mixed into one package! And despite the random events and numerous dice rolls, there is a parade of tactical and strategic decision-making the player must navigate each and every turn. Just to list the toughest and most critical…
Grant: How does the solitaire bot for the French function? How does the AI prioritize its decisions?
Hermann: The French bot works mostly through the Event Cards, though as stated before the French firepower is also inherent in the Casualty dice effect. The events are almost all based on things that actually happened or could have happened during the Battle of Verdun and though they won’t occur in exactly the same order chronologically, many are weighted to have different effects depending on the month in which the card is drawn. The French are always tenaciously defending, but the cards dictate when reinforcements arrive, the deployment of fighter aces, the bombarding of German units, the appearance of random patrols, and the launching of counterattacks. And the location of many of those counterattacks is often influenced by how much progress German units are making on their tracks… r in other words, how close they are to Verdun itself.
Grant: What is the flow of the game?
Hermann: Each Game Turn begins with the draw of an Event Card and this card can affect any position or area across the game board. The player determines if they receive any additional Command Points and then resolve a dogfight procedure to determine which side has Air Superiority this turn. Then the player conducts any desired Artillery Bombardment, placing such markers face down on French units. The player selects which of three sectors to activate – left, center, or right. Before activating units in each sector, another Event Card is drawn and often, its effects apply just to the chosen sector (but not always). Units of the chosen sector move and fight until all are Spent for the turn. Then another eligible sector is chosen, another Event Card is drawn, and its units move and fight until Spent. Once all units on the map are Spent, the player calculates any Victory Points earned, and resets for the next turn.
Grant: What are the Events that start a turn? What are some examples of these events?
Hermann: The Event Card that is drawn to start the turn (during the Initial Event Phase) is the same as the others – they all come from the same deck. But this first card may affect the game differently. If it does, it will say so right at the top of the card. So, for example, the “Shell Shock & Attrition” card is especially devastating if drawn as the Initial Event. If drawn at the start of a Sector activation, it requires the German units of that Sector (only) to each take an immediate Morale Test (which could result in their becoming Spent before they even get to activate). If this card is drawn during the Initial Event Phase, it affects all the German units on the game map and every unit must take an immediate Morale Test!
Grant: How are Command Points used? How are they earned?
Hermann: Command Points (CP) are the currency with which the player can do some really cool bonus actions or get gameplay benefits. Using CP to the best of your ability is a key to winning the game. The player gets 15 CP to start the game and then earns some more each turn, but fewer and fewer as the game progresses. This is an abstract way to simulate the breakdown of communications between German headquarters and the troops, as well as reflecting the degrading of confidence in the operation, especially by Crown Prince Wilhelm himself. Certain Event Cards also grant additional CP. Command Points are used throughout the game to do a number of special actions, including purchasing Infiltration dice, re-rolling combat dice, replacing losses, using Attack Momentum (see below), redeploying units, etc. All powerful tools when used at the right moment in the game.
Grant: What is the need for the dogfighting step? How does this play out?
Hermann: The Dogfight Step is a part of the Air Campaign Phase, which just generally reflects what is happening in the skies above the Verdun battlefield.
The Dogfight is a simple competitive dice roll, with the side who has Dogfight Advantage at the time (as listed on the Turn Record Track) getting to roll two dice and use the higher roll. The winner gets to bump the Air Superiority marker one box in their direction. Who has Air Superiority at any point in the game can affect some events, but most importantly for the player, if the Germans have Air Superiority, they have more Bombardment and Big Bertha markers available to use in the turn (simulating that the German Drachen – balloons – are free to fly to observe and guide artillery fire). Again, a simple thematic mechanic that reflects a complex issue.
Grant: How does heavy bombardment work?
Hermann: During the Heavy Artillery Bombardment Phase, the player deploys a certain number of Bombardment and/or Big Bertha markers onto the game map. At the very start of the game, there is a special step called the Trommelfeuer Step which allows the player to place 20 Bombardment and 5 Big Bertha markers around the map. This is to simulate the massive preliminary barrage the Germans conducted before the assault. During all the other game turns, the player gains a certain number of Bombardment Points, based on where the Air Superiority marker is located. Bombardment Points are spent to purchase Bombardment and Big Bertha markers to place face down on French units or into the special Voie Sacree (Sacred Way) area, which was the logistical lifeline for the French forces. The markers each have variable effects on their back sides, ranging from no effect to utter destruction. But these markers are randomized and the player does not know what effect applies to the targeted French units until a German unit enters their space for combat or the player takes the time to conduct a Reconnaissance action to reveal and apply the marker immediately. A Big Bertha marker placed in the Voie Sacree area can interdict that area and delay French supplies and reinforcements, which is enacted by nerfing certain Event Cards.
Grant: What is the layout of the board?
Hermann: The boards shows the entire area around the Verdun fortress complex. There are nine movement tracks and each track has a dedicated German unit and Support marker. Each of these tracks are made up of a series of eight spaces. Most spaces have a terrain feature associated with them – clear, forest, hills, fortress, or trench. There are also a number of landmark spaces that have special game effects (ex: Fort Douaumont). The tracks are also divided into three Sectors, each representing a major segment of the German army attack zone. The left Sector has only two tracks, the center Sector is the main attack zone with four tracks, and the right Sector has three tracks and is the left bank of the Meuse River, which was manned by the Bavarian Corps. Every German unit starts in its own trench area and must move up the track toward Verdun, encountering and hoping to defeat French units along the way.
Grant: What dangers are present for the advancing Germans?
Hermann: My goodness…there’s a myriad of dangers for the German player. The French can not only offer a stubborn defense of their trenches and forts, causing you casualties and loss of time, but they can also bombard your units and whittle them down from afar. Logistical considerations are numerous, as the player needs to carefully use the Command Points in the right spots and must have the Support markers keep a steady pace to support their associated German fighting units. The air war has to be won consistently to maximize artillery bombardment. The player is going to be severely curtailed by Event Cards and coping with those while also taking advantage of the few good Event Cards is essential. Finally, the most dangerous factor of all is the passing of time. The player only has ten turns to accomplish a lot and every minute lost during those ten turns can make all the difference between victory and defeat.
Grant: How does Fog of War work? Why was this important to include?
Hermann: Well, as with most of my games, I love dabbling with the three F’s of War…the Fog of War, the Friction of War, and the Fortunes of War. And this design has all those elements in it. The player of course has to deal with the uncertainty of the Activation dice rolls and the unknown of the combat dice rolls (see below). Along with that, the Event Cards are always throwing a new, unexpected wrench into the works. In fact, the player does not even know definitively how effective their artillery bombardment has been! On top of all that, French units are deployed face down and their exact strengths are not revealed until contact is made or until the player spends time to scout out the units with the Reconnaissance action. These are all important elements to include in the game because these are exactly the same challenges the German army and its commanders had to face at Verdun. And as with all games that lean on the historically-weighted chaos theory of design, having this level of Fog of War in a game design not only makes it more realistic, but it makes it a more fun game as well.
Grant: How does combat and losses work?
Hermann: Combat in this game is pretty straightforward. Each side in a combat totals up their SP and rolls a D10 which is added to their SP to get a Combat Score. The French get an extra die to roll (using the higher result) and/or additions to their Combat Score if located in certain terrain. The German units can get re-rolls and/or an extra die if they are using an Infiltration die for their activation, or spend a Command Point, or have a flanking unit. Some Event Cards can affect combat as well. Each side gets a total Combat Score and inflicts Hits on the opponent based on that score…the higher the score, the more casualties are inflicted. This yields interesting combat results as both units scoring high means huge casualties for both sides, regardless of who wins. Then the side with the higher score wins the combat, and the opponent must retreat. The actual difference in scores can affect units differently. For example, if a German unit wins a combat by only one point, it will hold the position as the winner but it will become Spent, meaning it is done for the turn! Too many of these kinds of wins can spell doom for the German player. A large margin win will allow the German unit to choose pursuing the enemy and continuing forward or consolidating and bringing its Support marker up one space. Tough choices!
Grant: What is the concept of Attack Momentum?
Hermann: Ah, that’s my sly little “gamey” mechanic for this design. I wanted to add another twist to the Activation dice assignment mechanic that also acts as a mitigation against bad luck – or in this case, technically a mitigation for good luck. So, the idea is that if the player assigns two good Activation dice to a unit, instead of having to re-roll those dice the next Game Turn, the player can instead spend a Command Point and keep those dice with that unit but must count down each die by one number. So, for example, if you assign a “6” Movement die and a “5” Casualty die for a unit, you could spend a CP and activate that unit again with a “5” Movement die and a “4” Casualty die (assuming the unit was not Spent during its first activation). So, good dice stay with the unit, but lose their potency over time. Historically, this simulates a commander seeing a unit performing well and then directing assets and leadership to that unit to exploit their superior performance.
Grant: How do you model German Command Efficiency?
Hermann: Well, in games where there is significant dice rolling, I do like to use the “doubles = something special” mechanic, because you know that the odds will produce a certain number of doubles rolls during the course of the game. As such, I like to make something special happen when they are rolled that the player can exploit, and in this game the use of a doubles Activation dice roll is actually more in the control of the player because the doubles can be “created”. What do I mean? For example, if you are rolling Activation dice for the right Sector (three tracks, so three German units), you’ll roll a total of six dice – three Movement dice (Advance and/or Infiltration) and three Casualty dice (Friction and/or Suppression). This creates a pool of dice results from which you will assign two dice per German unit – one Movement and one Casualty die for each. Thus, if you have two matching dice, you can grab those two and create a doubles result for that unit. An assigned doubles result triggers German Command Efficiency and it allows you some options for activating that unit. You have one of three options you can apply – increase the Movement result by one type (ex: change the result from Move 1 to Move 2); reduce the strength point loss from the Casualty die by one; or move the unit’s Support marker up one space. The chosen benefit is applied, along with the normal dice roll results, when the unit is activated. Again, a simple bonus to reflect the superior abilities of the German officer corps.
Grant: What type of an experience does the game create?
Hermann: I’m hoping that the game creates an intense gaming experience. One in which the player can exercise tactical and strategic options in an effort to carry out a particular plan, but coupled with the excitement of the unexpected challenges by – and sometimes, assistance from – the Gods of War. This should be a gaming experience of tough decisions and of taking calculated risks. And ultimately, I think this will inevitably come down to a nail biting ending.
Grant: What are you most pleased about with the design?
Hermann: I’m really proud of the fact that I think I got almost every crucial element of simulating the early stages of the Battle of Verdun down to workable and accessible mechanics. The game’s core mechanics and use of historically-based Event Cards drives a narrative that draws the player directly into this era and into the drama of this particular battle. To be able to do that and still keep the game accessible and easily playable is, for me, the ultimate goal and I think A Hell So Terrible achieves that goal.
Grant: What other designs are you working on?
Hermann: My, my… t’s a busy year for sure! Here we go:
Thanks so much to Grant and Alex for allowing me to write about A Hell So Terrible! I hope gamers enjoy it. All the best! Hermann
As always it was a pleasure speaking with you Hermann. I am very excited about this one as it sounds very interesting and is a gaming subject that I have a great interest in as you mentioned. I am looking forward to our next opportunity to meet up and play some games!
If you are interested in A Hell So Terrible: Verdun 1916, you can pre-order a copy for $75.00 from the GMT Games website at the following link: https://www.gmtgames.com/p-1192-a-hell-so-terrible-verdun-1916.aspx
-Grant
by Justin Bell
Some of you are familiar with The Dusty Euro Series that I craft over at Meeple Mountain: one-off reviews of Euros that are at least 10 years old at the time the article goes up. It's always exciting watching a game execute what it sets out to do almost... It's always exciting watching a game execute what it sets out to do almost... It's always exciting watching a game execute what it sets out to do almost...
Nothing other than teases about future game releases.
Several years ago, my friend Nathan introduced our group to Tyrants of the Underdark, a deck-building game that used Dungeons & Dragons lore for its setting. My initial response was dubious, as often happens with licensed product. The art, which Nathan had warned us about in advance, didn’t help. Dozens of artists are credited on the game, and many of their illustrations are not…good. The hodgepodge of styles did not promise a robust play experience.
Fortunately, first impressions can be wrong. Tyrants of the Underdark is an excellent, taut marriage of deck-building and area-control. It is wonderfully interactive, encouraging players to step on one another’s toes at every turn. The modular deck system, which changes the cards in play from game to game, ensures a good amount of variety. The game is both immediate in its pleasures and rewards deeper exploration.
Tyrants of the Underdark is exactly the kind of game that I would expect to be a cornerstone of The Hobby™. And yet. Despite the quality of its reputation amongst those who’ve played, Tyrants remains somewhat obscure. I can’t even tell if it’s currently in print or not. It is often hard to find. It begs for expansions, but it only has one, which is both long out of print and heinously expensive. For a game that threatens…
The post Solarion: Foundation of Empires Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.
Roma Victrix is a grand strategic, moderate complexity wargame covering a time period ranging from 218 BC to 533 AD in twenty separate historical and hypothetical scenarios.
Roma Victrix is a game which endeavors to re-create the conflicts between Rome and her neighbors to achieve and maintain that dominance. A simple interactive sequence of play guides each player through the process of revenue collection, recruiting and maintaining military forces, conducting land and naval operations, diplomacy, field battles and sieges. Special rules are included to emphasize the importance and effects of leadership, cavalry superiority, mobility and attrition. Random events are also represented, adding an element of unpredictability to even the best laid plans and the likelihood that no scenario will ever play the same.
We posted an interview on the blog with the designer Paul Kallio and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2022/05/23/interview-with-paul-kallio-designer-of-roma-victrix-campaigns-of-the-roman-world-from-compass-games/
-Grant
I have never before given much thought to the ways in which music composition and game design are similar. Like all creative arts, both share the goal of trying to communicate and share an experience with their audience. As disciplines, music has notes and rhythms while game design has rules and mechanisms, but both are about taking those disparate ingredients and making them cohere into something whole, something that vibrates with inevitability.
Ted Mann Schaller’s Counterpoint is a must-follow cooperative trick-taker with bidding and a trump-suit. A blessing, to live to see such times as those in which I can write that sentence and assume much of the audience will understand. Each player is a member of an animal chamber trio–to-quintet, be they an iguana violinist or an armadillo pianist. Such is the quality of Brandon Campbell's illustration work here that fights will break out over who gets to be what. The cooperative nature of the game follows the template laid out by blockbuster predecessors The Crew and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game: over a series of performances, scenarios named after pieces in the chamber music canon, players attempt to complete certain challenges while also ensuring that everyone makes or exceeds their bid.
There are a few twists on the formula,…
The post Counterpoint Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.
“In Signo Hoc Vinces”. Dive into history and heroism with Crusaders: The Siege of Acre 1291, a Tactical level Solitaire-Only board-wargame that immerses you and lets you experience the last stand of the Knights Templar and the Crusaders in the Holy Land. Relive the courageous stand of some 15,000 Crusader soldiers, Knights Templars, Teutonic Knights, and Hospitallers as they defend Acre, the critical port city in the Holy Land, against a massive Mamluk army of some 80,000 soldiers armed with siege engines and catapults during the Ninth Crusade.
Crusaders is a dice rolling, tower defense, solitaire game. Players take the role of Crusaders and try to defend Acre from the Mamluk attackers. Players win or lose depending on if the walls are breached and enough defenders survive.
-Grant
The pub was quiet after the lunchtime rush. It was a chilly autumn afternoon, so the hearty lunch just hit the spot. Now we were sitting there, playing a card game, with a pint each by our sides. While the meal had filled us up, we still fancied something savoury. We just needed a small snack that the two of us could share. Nothing fancy. Something simple would do. Of course, it had to be Crisps! by Shreesh Bhat from Little Dog Games with art by Sai Beppu.
The post Crisps! (Saturday Review) appeared first on Tabletop Games Blog.
By Kaysee and Max
For the German review please visit Der Herr der Ringe: Die zwei Türme – Das Stichspiel (2-Spieler-Rezension).
Disclosure: completed all the chapters
We had fun playing The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game despite it not being optimized for two players, so we were excited to play The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game to see if there were any interesting mechanical changes (also we‘re LotR fans so there’s that).
The art style is very similar to the first one, but the cards are much more vivid. We also like that they used paper instead of plastic wrapper for the packaging of the tokens and the decks which makes it easier to open and better for the environment (we have a copy from the 1st printing).
The initial setup for two players is still very similar; each of us plays one character, but one of us should play an additional character whose cards are open but in a pyramid form where five of the cards are faceup and the rest are facedown. The One Ring token and the ring cards are not yet part of the setup. Instead, two new tokens and five cards are added: the titular Two Towers, as both tokens and cards and the three Orc cards. All of theses cards don’t belong to any particular suit. As such they can only be played if a player doesn’t have follow the leading suit. The towers are similar to the One Ring, they win any trick that they are played into. Unlike the One Ring the player cannot choose to lose the trick, instead if both towers are played into the same trick, they both lose. The Orc cards are the opposite of the towers and always lose. We like these new cards as they add challenge to the game since they cannot be used to lead a trick. If a player is forced to lead a trick with an Orc (e.g. because it’s their only card left), the group loses the whole chapter. If a trick contains both tower cards and an Orc card, no one wins the trick and it is set aside.
As with the first game, each chapter features a different set of characters with their own goals and rules. These tend to be slightly more complex and interesting this time around. Likewise, many chapters still feature event cards that further change the rules. Unlike the first game, there is a big change after the first ten chapters, which correspond to book three of LotR. Without spoiling too much, the deck changes to become more similar to the deck in the first game, with some significant changes. This of course makes perfect sense thematically, as the later chapters are the ones featuring Frodo, Sam and the One Ring.
We were hoping that Two Towers would be much better for two players. We found the first few chapters to be both fun and mechanically challenging even though the 2-player friendliness is just the same as the previous game, and we were ok with it (we got used to it and we accepted it) but as we stepped in to Chapter 25, that’s when we realized that the game just became worse for two players. We could imagine this chapter being a bit easier for three or four players, but with two, it wasn’t. How the pyramid works in that chapter made us feel very frustrated. We’re still trying to figure out why they made the decision for the set up of the pyramid for this chapter to be the way that it is. With many challenging games, we get that feeling of great satisfaction after beating them, but not with this one. Even though we were able to finish the chapter after a few tries, it didn’t feel satisfying or rewarding. The relief that we felt is more of us not having to be in a very frustrating situation anymore (we could’ve just stopped playing it, but it’s the completionist in us that deterred us from just moving on) than being able to succeed. While it is not as frustrating and has a regular pyramid setup, Chapter 30 also proved difficult for us, due to the specific combination of character goals and the limitations introduced by the event card for that chapter.
We still decided to finish all the chapters. Some of the mechanical changes in part 2 were a noticable improvement and made the game more fun. We also liked how the theme and the mechanisms in part 2 felt very familiar, but were still different and interesting. We also liked the last chapter a lot and how the mechanism matches the theme. It was a good ending.
Our Final Thoughts:
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – Trick-Taking Game was still enjoyable for us in most parts, but there were times where we thought that we could’ve enjoyed it more if there were more of us playing it, something that also crossed our minds while playing FotR, but it did occur more frequently and strongly while playing this game. It’s unfortunate because the interactions between the mechanisms and the theme here are much more interesting than in FotR. We were hoping for it to be at least as good for two players as the previous one if not better, but it wasn’t. Still, we’re looking forward to playing The Return of the King if it comes out in the future and hoping that it will have better mechanics for two players.
What we like:
What we do not like:
Kaysee’s rating: 3.5/5
Max’s rating: 3.5/5
Combined rating: 3.5/5
Reference:
Tolkien, J. R. R.(1999). The Two Towers. HarperCollins.
Title: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – Trick-Taking Game
Game Design: Bryan Bornmueller
Illustration: Elain Ryan, Samuel R. Shimota
Publisher: Office Dog
The post The Two Towers – Trick-Taking Game (2-player review) appeared first on Schmeeples.
This update contains lots of bigger and smaller improvements!
The most important of these are described below.
When you log a play in BG Stats you now can add names to one or more Anonymous Players. In a play, just tap the anonymous player to add a name.
A so-called Named Anonymous Player only appears in that Play, not in any other lists of players, and does not have player stats.
You can find all information about named Anonymous Players here: Naming an Anonymous Player, and about Anonymous Players in general here: Anonymous Players.
When searching for a game in the List of Games the following is now also possible:
As before, you can also find a game by its BGG ID.
When selecting players for a play, there are two extra options to sort the players available. Next to Alphabetical, Recent play and Most plays, you can now also sort players on Recent play of this game and Most plays of this game.
The extra sorting options are added to the list of sorting options.
Once you select Recent play or Most plays, an extra option will become available, “of this game“. Once enabled the Player List filters will only take into account the plays for the game that is being played.
You can now set a Default tag that will always be added to plays when they are logged on that location.
A default play tag can be added for every location:
When you search for a game and the game already exists in your app, with the extra option you can go to that Game entry directly.
When you tap on the + button on the list of Games, you can search for a game on BoardGameGeek. Type the name of the game (or BGG ID) and tap Search BGG.
If you tap on one of the search results, but that game is already in your app, you’ll now have three options:
You can now tap the Heat map legend to switch the heat map display from colors to grayscale. For each value, the number will be displayed as well.
The Heat map is available with the Power expansion. You can access it from the Insights screen, when you are viewing a Year or All time period.
BG Stats now adjusts its behavior based on the Accessibility Settings Reduced Motion and Differentiate without color. Larger Text, Dark Interface and Reduce Transparency were already supported.
BG Stats will soon list “Accessibility Nutrition Labels” in the App Store with all supported accessibility features.
Lots of other small bug fixes and improvements:
Anmelden
/pic9599857.jpg)
