by Steph Hodge

[imageid=9718883 medium rep]▪️ Cephalofair Games announced a new card game releasing this December called Mercenaries Wanted. From the designer Dennis Vögele (Gloomhaven (Second Edition)), he brings us back into the Gloomhven universe with this 1-6 player card drafting game.

From the Newsletter and BGG:


▪️ Also, be sure to check for the Frosthaven Digital release on October 15, 2026!


▪️ Horrible Guild announced a new game in the Spotlight series called Spotlight: Fantasy. from deisgners Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva (The King's Dilemma, Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition). This is a great series for families, as the game is a search-and-find and is super clever. This game plays 1-5 players and plays real-time and cooperatively.

From the Newsletter:



▪️ The beautiful Kano was just available at Gen Con and will be available later this year. Kano is from Matagot and designers Pablo Jiménez, Angel Pintero. This game plays 2-4 players and takes about 30-40 minutes to play.

From the BGG page:





▪️ Omens from Spiral Éditions is a new team card game from designer Maxime Rambourg (The LOOP, Dracula vs Van Helsing). For 4-6 players and plays in 20-30 minutes.

From BGG:




▪️ Shape it from Randolph is a new cooperative party game from designer Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance (Decrypto). You have to mind-meld with all players to best guess the correct answer with the creations you make using the available shapes. A game for 2-7 players!

From the newsletter:

North America’s biggest tabletop gaming convention, Gen Con, has continued its record-breaking run after more than 74,000 attendees left this year’s sold-out show bursting at the seams.

Gen Con’s latest hefty attendance figure extends its steady post-pandemic growth, following record crowds of 70,000 in 2023, 71,000 in 2024 and almost 72,000 last year – which all broke the 2019 pre-pandemic high.

But the convention, which has sold out before opening for three consecutive years, is operating at a hard capacity ceiling at the Indiana Convention Centre. Gen Con president David Hoppe told the Indianapolis Business Journal last year that the show’s growth had left it “capacity constrained”, saying: “We fill every nook and cranny of this downtown core area.”

He added in that interview that he would love to get 80,000 attendees at the show some day – and Gen Con is set to take a step closer to that goal for its 60th anniversary show next year thanks to a significant floor space expansion and opening of a new Signia by Hilton hotel.

That expansion includes an extra 143,500 sq ft of floor space – roughly the size of 2.5 American football fields – and 800 new hotel rooms.

Indianapolis already claims to have the most hotels and hotel rooms connected by enclosed skywalks into a city centre in the US – and the new expansion will boost that capacity to more than 5,200 rooms.

Gen Con’s organisers did not say how many extra exhibitors or attendees the expansion is expected to accommodate, how much of the new space will be devoted to the exhibition hall.

Exhibitor and vendor numbers reached almost 800 at the packed out four-day event, Gen Con said. The show reported a then-record 575 exhibitors showcasing their wares last year, although the inclusion of “vendors” makes it unclear if the 2026 figure is directly comparable.

BoardGameWire contacted Gen Con’s press office earlier this week for confirmation on how much additional capacity next year’s expansion will create, and for clarity on exhibitor numbers in 2026, but is yet to receive a response.

This year’s convention also faced an unexpected operational test after severe thunderstorms prompted a tornado warning on Saturday evening, and caused water to shower down into parts of the Indiana Convention Center.

The worst affected areas were the convention’s playtest area and part of Exhibit Hall B, with attendees told to relocate to safer parts of the building while the warning was in place.

Exhibitors affected included Tycoon Games, with managing director Ben Rathbone telling the Indy Star, “As we were doing our demos and tournaments, drop of rain started coming through the ceiling up there.

“We immediately started pulling our stuff back, then there was a deluge came down, flooded the whole floor there, and we had to move all our games and store them out of the way.”

He added that the publisher’s games had been damaged “only a little bit”, saying that most of them were out of the way.

Gen Con said staff responded quickly to ensure safety and make repairs, adding that there was “minimal disruption” to the convention due to the leak.

This year’s event was also impacted by heavy amounts of construction work taking place around the convention site, leading to large build-ups of foot and vehicle traffic.

Gen Con president David Hoppe said of this year’s event, “Even through construction and thunderstorms, Gen Con 2026 was bigger and better than ever, with a record-breaking number of attendees gathering in Indianapolis for the best four days in gaming.

“We can’t thank Indy enough for hosting us, and we’re already looking forward to our 60th anniversary convention in an expanded Indiana Convention Center next year.”

Next year’s Gen Con is scheduled for August 5 to 8, with badges set to go on sale in early 2027.

The post Gen Con tops 74,000 attendees as record-breaking show preps for much-needed venue, hotel expansion first appeared on .

Icaion, the impossible to pronounce sequel to the equally slippery Mysthea, has been reviewed by BGQ before. Spencer covered the multiplayer game and came away less-than-impressed. This time, we’re diving into Icaion solo, with some multiplayer thoughts sprinkled in as well. Icaion, from Martino Chiacchiera and Marta Ciaccasassi, with art by Travis Anderson, and published […]

Source

I reviewed Snake Charmers awhile ago, and I found that experience punchy and delightful. Now, I’m feasting my eyes on Bubble and Shadow, a game that is prettier, slightly more complicated, and ultimately, flatter.

The game has lofty ambition, noting as its inspiration W. Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, but I’m not sure if any of that translates. I’ve only read Of Human Bondage, and I ~think~ the aforementioned story is a fictionalized account of Paul Gauguin’s life or something, but I couldn’t for the life of me find how this game was related, other than it having really cool paintings on the cards.

Anyway, the objective of the game is to collect the right distribution of three types of wooden token: If you have the most purple tokens (bubbles), you’ll be eliminated from the scoring consideration at the end of the round. Then, if you have the fewest gray (coins) you score a point and are removed from the scoring. Finally, the player with the most yellow (moons) gets three points, and second most gets two points. You play three rounds, and if someone gets to five-plus points before that at the end of a round, the game ends and the player with the most points wins.

But how do you acquire these tokens?

At the…

The post Bubble and Shadow Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.

Card #88: National American Woman Suffrage Association from Votes for Women from Fort Circle Games

Votes for Women is a very interesting card-driven game that covers the American Women’s Suffrage Movement from 1848-1920, culminating in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment which granted women the right to vote. The game is a 2-player game, that has a fully developed solitaire mode with an “Oppobot” and offers a cooperative mode for those who don’t wish to play as they Opposition. The Suffragist player will have to push Congress to propose the Nineteenth Amendment, and then focus on campaigning to have a minimum of 36 states to ratify the Amendment. The Opposition side will try to prevent Congress from proposing the amendment and failing that to have 13 states reject the amendment.

The game uses cards in a fairly traditional CDG way as there are events that can be be taken or the cards can be played to do things like Campaign, Organize or Lobby Congress. Each card has a specific Card Era that is used to create of the each players’ Draw Decks. Late cards will be on the bottom of the deck, Middle cards will be in the middle of the deck and Early cards will be on the top of the deck. The Suffragist and Opposition decks each have one Start card that will be placed in the player’s hand at the start of the game. Some Event Cards have a prerequisite and some of the cards require a player to roll a 6-sided die and only take the the action on a roll of 3-6. Otherwise, the Event Card is discarded with no effect. The cards in this game are also steeped in historical details, from the name of the events that tie back to specific individuals or happenings, to major moments in the struggle. This game is about the history of the struggle for the right to vote and it is very good!

One of the more interesting aspects about the mechanics of the game is the use of Campaigners to go about trying to influence the attitude of the people and legislators regarding the Nineteenth Amendment through the Campaign Action. When a card is played for a Campaign Action, the player rolls a die, either a 6-sided or 8-sided die depending on what cards have been activated, for each Campaigner they have in play. The player then gets to take the dice and their results, which range from 1-8, and assign a specific die to each of their Campaigners. Each Campaigner may then place the corresponding number of cubes, matching the Campaigner’s color, in the States within the region that the Campaigner is located in. The player may spend a Button to move the Campaigner to a different region, but all of the corresponding cubes must be put into the same region. This is a great way to get a lot of influence out on the board to begin taking control of various States for the final vote in the game. This also is a very efficient way of doing this as you will be rolling 2-3 dice for your Campaigners and then spamming the States. With that in mind, today’s card is the National American Woman Suffrage Association and it provides the Suffragist player with a new Campaigner (purple) to place out specifically into the Atlantic & Appalachia Region that includes the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and Delaware. The card also grants the Suffragist player with 3 Buttons that can be used as described above to relocate a Campaigner from one state to another. This card is very helpful and should be played for the Event 9 times out of 10 and will make a huge difference in the outcome of the game. Once a 2nd or 3rd Campaigner is deployed, I tend to take Campaign Actions rather than some of the less intensive placement options or Events.

The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women’s suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Its membership, which was about 7,000 at the time it was formed, eventually increased to 2 million, making it the largest voluntary organization in the nation. It played a pivotal role in the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which in 1920 guaranteed women’s right to vote.

Susan B. Anthony, a long-time leader in the suffrage movement, was the dominant figure in the newly formed NAWSA. Carrie Chapman Catt, who became president after Anthony retired in 1900, implemented a strategy of recruiting wealthy members of the rapidly growing women’s club movement, whose time, money and experience could help build the suffrage movement. Anna Howard Shaw’s term in office, which began in 1904, saw strong growth in the organization’s membership and public approval.

After the Senate decisively rejected the proposed women’s suffrage amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1887, the suffrage movement had concentrated most of its efforts on state suffrage campaigns. In 1910 Alice Paul joined the NAWSA and played a major role in reviving interest in the national amendment. After continuing conflicts with the NAWSA leadership over tactics, Paul created a rival organization, the National Woman’s Party.

Here is a link to our full video review of the game:

We also published an interview on the blog with the designer Tory Brown and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2020/09/07/interview-with-tory-brown-designer-of-votes-for-women-from-fort-circle-games-currently-on-kickstarter/

In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at Frederick Douglas from For the People 25th Anniversary Edition from GMT Games.

-Grant

    Ticket to Ride: London Designer: Alan R. Moon Publisher: Days of Wonder Players: 2-4 Age: 10+ Time: 10-15 minutes Played with review copy provided by Asmodee Ticket to Ride: London features the familiar gameplay from the Ticket to … Continue reading →

So I didn’t attend TGM but I did manage to acquire a few games. TGM designers continue to astound me with clever designs for trick takers and shedders as well as capturing unusual themes. Here are some of the stand … Continue reading →

Let’s play poker but in a different way. There has been several modern hobby games which make use of poker hands, e.g. The Gang. The good thing about these games is they use an aspect which most people are already familiar with. It will be easier for us gamers to convince our non gamer friends to try modern boardgames with us.  Half of All-In: Predictions is