Restoration Games is no stranger to crowdfunding backers pledging hundreds of dollars for premium versions of its games – but its Kickstarter for The Lord of the Rings: The King’s Gambit has taken that to an entirely new level.

The crowdfund had raised $2.33m from more than 7,300 backers in the early hours of its final day, equivalent to almost $319 per supporter – an average spend well above Restoration’s previous major crowdfunding campaigns, including the roughly $260 from last year’s Battle Monsters: Godzilla x Kong.

Almost three-quarters of backers who have committed to one of the game’s various versions opted to spend at least $379 on one of the Mithril tiers, with more than 2,800 people going all-in on the game’s most expensive $449 option.

Those Mithril pledges together account for about 82% of the total raised at the time of writing – a figure well above that expected by Restoration prior to the campaign’s launch, co-owner Justin Jacobson told BoardGameWire.

He said the company had expected Mithril to be most popular, but had conservatively projected about three Mithril pledges for every two people committing to the base-level Limited tiers of the game

He said, “I’m not entirely surprised. We created the Limited Edition as a sort-of compromise pledge level for folks who wanted some deluxe elements but didn’t want to go all-in for the Mithril Edition.

“Ultimately, though, most Kickstarter backers are there precisely because they do want to go all in, and we try to make that pledge level as appealing as possible and as good a deal as possible.”

Despite the much higher-than-expected proportion of backers opting for Mithril, Jacobson said the campaign’s overall performance was “pretty in-line” with his expectations ahead of the campaign’s final few days – and that “in a vacuum” he would have hoped for slightly higher numbers.

He pointed to the absence of a standard retail edition from the campaign, Free League’s The One Ring RPG crowdfund running at the same time and wider global economic conditions among the factors potentially working against it.

Jacobson said the pattern of backers favouring Restoration’s most expensive option was familiar from what he described as the company’s previous “spectacle” campaigns, with all-in pledges typically outstripping other pledge levels at the close of those crowdfunds.

But King’s Gambit is generating substantially higher spending per backer compared with Restoration’s previous projects offering similarly expensive all-in options.

Last year’s Battle Monsters: Godzilla x Kong offered a $379 Mega Bundle – the same price as the basic Mithril Edition of King’s Gambit – but averaged about $260 across its 2,301 backers.

Return to Dark Tower: Expeditions went even higher with a $499 all-in pledge including the base game, its expansions and upgraded components – although as an expansion-led campaign, existing owners could enter at just $45. Its $1.49m haul from 11,665 backers amounted to an average of $128 per supporter.

King’s Gambit is currently averaging almost $319 across its backers to date – despite almost 1,000 people having committed just $5 for access to the pledge manager.

Jacobson nevertheless cautioned against seeing the campaign as evidence that $379-plus board games were likely to become commonplace.

“This campaign is unusual, and I wouldn’t expect this to become the norm,” he said. “It stems from the unique way in which the original licensing deal and co-publication arrangement came to be in the first place.”

Opening Gambit

Jacobson told BoardGameWire that the publisher decided to pitch licence holder Middle-earth Enterprises in 2023 for a new version of cult 2000 board game Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit, but instead based on The Lord of the Rings.

Bringing Queen’s Gambit back had been an ambition for Restoration since its inception – it was the first game Jacobson suggested reviving when he approached designer Rob Daviau about founding the company in 2016, although they decided at the time that it was too ambitious for their first project. Daviau had worked on the original during his time at Hasbro.

Jacobson told BoardGameWire, “I put together a big proposal and sent it in. Meanwhile, while that proposal was under consideration, Rob was at the Cannes Game Festival and got approached by Asmodee about doing the exact same thing.

“It seemed like serendipity so we just started that conversation about working on it together. It offered a lot of benefits to both parties.

“We brought our design pedigree and Kickstarter experience, and they brought their massive team for art, sales, distribution, and more. It’s always challenging working outside your own team, but [Asmodee studio] Space Cowboys have been absolutely amazing and have helped make this game the best it can be.”

Space Cowboys plans to release a retail edition of the game next year, which while sharing the same gameplay will use smaller boards, omit the large plastic Minas Tirith and Mordor set pieces and use just two colours of plastic for its miniatures.

Jacobson said, “It was important that our offering was a stark contrast to the retail edition. That edition will be what lives on for as long as the game is sold, long after the Kickstarter campaign is fulfilled. So, first things first, we had to align on what that version of the game was going to be.

“Then, we basically brainstormed all of the ways we could ‘deluxify’ that. The Limited Edition was a slight bump and the 3D plastic set pieces; the Mithril Edition was the whole list.”

When asked if there had been any concern internally over having such a large gap between the price points of the Limited and Mithril editions, Jacobson said, “Not really. There are so many variables and options in setting up any campaign. You’re never going to be 100% certain that you’ve gone the optimal path.

“That said, we were confident in the overall structure of the campaign, i.e., folks who want the cool 3D set pieces and folks who want everything.

“As I’ve always said, the price is always a function of the cost to produce. So once we determine what a pledge level includes, setting the price is relatively straightforward with some minor adjustments. For example, we actually shaved a bit off the Mithril Edition to try and make it a bit more appealing.”

He added, “It does highlight that all of the economic turmoil folks are feeling are not being felt uniformly.

“It also speaks to hobby gamers in general. When you compare it to other hobbies, it’s still a relatively good deal even at the highest end of things.”

Jacobson told BoardGameWire that Restoration deliberately looked beyond established tabletop audiences when marketing the game, in an attempt to leverage the vast fanbase of The Lord of the Rings.

About half of King’s Gambit backers are supporting a Restoration Games crowdfund for the first time, he said – a slightly higher proportion than the company has seen on some of its more recent campaigns.

“We made a concerted effort to try and reach out to influencers whose audience comprises The Lord of the Rings fans and not specifically gamers,” Jacobson said.

He believes the licence was likely part of the explanation for the campaign’s performance, although added that Restoration titles tend to come with followers even without a large IP, given the nature of the company’s strategy of taking memorable, usually long-out-of-print games and redeveloping them for the modern hobby market.

He said, “Fans of The Lord of the Rings are certainly avid and show up in large numbers, but we’ve seen similar excitement from fans of Return to Dark Tower and the like.”

Aragorn Art

Despite the campaign’s strong performance, the release has attracted a backlash from a small minority of online commenters for depicting Aragorn as Black.

That reaction has spilled into the unreleased title’s BoardGameGeek ratings, where some users have awarded it scores of 10 specifically to counter what they believe are 1 ratings motivated by objections to Aragorn’s skin colour.

Jacobson described the reaction as “disappointing but not entirely unexpected”, while stressing that not everyone who preferred a depiction closer to previous versions of Aragorn was motivated by racism.

He said, “The art team for both Space Cowboys and Restoration Games spent countless hours working on an extensively researched and thoughtful art brief for the look of the entire game along with each individual character. It’s 59 pages long!

“Our first priority is always to do something true to the source material. Within those pages though there are a number of interpretations. Ultimately, for each depiction, not just Aragorn, we were looking to do something interesting and perhaps novel that still stays true to the source material.

“I can point to details in the lore that support this depiction, but this just isn’t something I have any interest in debating.

“Great works, whether that’s a game or an epic fantasy novel or something else, only arise when the people creating them have a strong vision for what they want to make and put their full effort into realizing that vision.

“In every case, some folks won’t share that vision. But, in every case, if you set out to try and please everyone, you cannot make something extraordinary.”

He added, “There are folks who prefer a depiction more in keeping with prior ones; where other folks enjoy seeing broader depictions. Whenever you are working with an IP, the fans will have strong opinions. I want to be clear: not everyone who would prefer the former do so from a place of racism.

“That said, there are certainly racists, who are using these types of situations to espouse their abhorrent beliefs. It’s unfortunate that they muddy what can be an otherwise interesting conversation.

“As for folks on BGG rating a game a 1 before it comes out, this has been going on for a while for a host of reasons. There’s nothing we can do about it, so we press on and just make the best game we can.

“When people actually receive and start playing the game, we are confident that there will be a lot of great ratings for it that will make the current kerfuffle just so much background noise.”

The King’s Gambit’s crowdfunding campaign ends at 8.30am EDT on October 20.

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Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering workers are moving to unionise after alleging rising workloads, unpaid overtime and job insecurity at Wizards of the Coast – despite the business having become the main profit engine of toy and game giant Hasbro.

Workers on Dungeons & Dragons, D&D Beyond and Wizards’ Studio X – which develops tabletop Magic: The Gathering and Duel Masters – plan to unionise with the Communications Workers of America, having secured the backing of a “public supermajority” of employees.

The move comes after several years of soaring sales and profits at Wizards, which has increasingly become the financial powerhouse of Hasbro amid struggles at the company’s traditional toys business – which includes Nerf guns, Transformers and Peppa Pig toys.

Wizards provided almost half of Hasbro’s $4.7bn revenue last year, with booming Magic: The Gathering sales pushing Wizards to a record operating profit of more than $1bn in 2025.

That performance was driven by hugely successful Universes Beyond releases including Final Fantasy, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Marvel’s Spider-Man, alongside strong backlist and Secret Lair sales.

Studio X workers specifically highlighted that financial success in announcing their unionisation effort, saying their team had been responsible for “back-to-back billion dollar years and a vast majority of Hasbro’s profit”.

D&D workers, meanwhile, said growing workloads without corresponding increases in headcount had left some teams regularly “crunching” simply to complete planned releases – describing crunch as “intense and mandatory unpaid overtime”.

They are also seeking contractual protections around job security, pay and career progression, saying, “Many of us are bringing home less money every month, adjusted for inflation, than we did when we were hired years ago. That needs to change.”

An open letter from those workers added that employees “live in fear of suddenly losing their jobs, with no warning and through no fault of their own”, and that Wizards prioritising in-office work had left workers “unsure of whether their current living situation is tenable for their role”.

Hasbro cut about 1,900 jobs across two rounds in 2023, including at Wizards, after a sharp downturn in its core consumer products business. That segment saw revenue fall 19% in 2023, swinging to a $64.7m operating loss, while Wizards revenue rose 10%.

Further cuts have followed since, including four Wizards employees during Hasbro-wide redundancies in October 2024, and about 30 developers – roughly 90% of the team working on Wizards’ now scrapped Sigil D&D virtual tabletop – in March 2025.

Hasbro cut roughly 150 more jobs three months later, including D&D staff, and last month D&D community manager LaTia Jacquise and Magic social media manager Jordan Hopkins publicly confirmed their layoffs – with Hopkins describing his departure as part of a “greater restructure”. Wizards has not disclosed the total number of jobs affected.

Magic rules manager Eric Levine said of the union effort, “Everyone I work with makes our company, our game, and our community stronger by bringing their talent, expertise, and effort to making Magic.

“Those incredible people deserve fair compensation, remote protections, clear career progression, and more. Supporting the people who make the game will ensure that Magic keeps getting better for years to come.”

The unionisation push also called for protections for work employees create in their free time, with the D&D workers’ announcement saying, “Currently, if an employee makes anything creative in their free time, with their own resources, Hasbro can claim ownership. What we do in our free time should not be dictated by the company, and what we make in our free time should belong to us.”

The D&D team also used its unionisation letter to reveal tension between Hasbro and Wizards over the use of generative AI, saying, “As pressure has ramped up from Hasbro to adopt LLMs and Gen AI tools in various aspects of our work, WOTC has resisted these efforts and kept AI out of our games.

“That’s good! We want to preserve this commendable stance through a union contract that ensures our games will always be made by people for people.”

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks was openly enthusiastic about bringing AI into the D&D ecosystem in September 2024, saying at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia conference that Hasbro was already using AI “significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid” – but was more excited about its potential in play.

He added, “I play with probably 30 or 40 people regularly. There’s not a single person who doesn’t use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas. That’s a clear signal that we need to be embracing it.”

In an interview with The Verge in March this year, however, Cocks said that while Hasbro was deploying AI widely across the company, he acknowledged there was resistance to its use in Wizards’ games.

He said, “There are some brands that the audience, the creators, just don’t want it, so we don’t even have it in our pipelines for our video games or for Magic: The Gathering, or D&D.”

Cocks added that he personally used huge amounts of AI-generated animation, images, text, sound effects and voice cloning in his personal D&D games, telling interviewer Nilay Patel there was so much on his home PC that it would “floor” him.

He added that AI was being used extensively elsewhere at Hasbro, including in toy design and as a general productivity tool across the company, and estimated it could save more than one million hours of work this year.

Cocks also told Verge that he did not believe the technology would cost creative workers their jobs, saying, “I see it only making the quality of the creative we have better.”

Other demands from the unionisers include better support for working parents, changes to healthcare provision and greater financial transparency, to aid the unions in collective bargaining.

The latest unionisation push at Wizards comes just a few months after developers of its online platform Magic: The Gathering Arena revealed their own plans to unionise.

More than 100 Arena workers announced their unionisation drive in April, with Wizards declining their request for voluntary recognition. The group subsequently won a National Labor Relations Board election in June, formally establishing the first union at Wizards.

D&D and Studio X workers – who are also organising under the United Wizards of the Coast-CWA – have asked Wizards and Hasbro to voluntarily recognise their respective units by an October 13 deadline, and have filed an election petition with the NLRB to allow the certification process to proceed if that does not happen.

They are also calling for Hasbro and Wizards to adopt a labour neutrality agreement allowing other workers at the company to organise without fear of retaliation.

D&D senior game designer Joey Haeck said they were organising “because scared workers are neither happy nor productive”.

Haeck said, “By organizing to negotiate a fair contract on issues of layoff protections, forced relocation protections, equitable pay and career advancement, mandatory AI use protections, parental support, and more, we make our game better by investing in our human creators and resisting the churn and brain drain caused by roller-coaster layoffs.”

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MyMiniFactory marketing and brand head Anjuli Smith has left the 3D-printing marketplace to launch her own tabletop agency, whose work will include helping smaller board game publishers find distributors and expand internationally.

Smith left MyMiniFactory at the end of September to focus full-time on her newly-launched Tabletop Growth Partners, which will primarily target the TTRPG and wargaming sectors with marketing, digital growth and business development services.

But she is also looking to offer international business development support for smaller board game publishers, using contacts built up over 13 years in the industry to introduce them to distributors and support them through sales and negotiation meetings.

Smith told BoardGameWire she is currently in talks with three board game publishers about working with them at the Spielwarenmesse trade fair in Nuremberg next February – including new Canadian publisher Acolyte, which focuses on co-op and semi co-op games and is looking for UK and European distribution.

She said, “An available network is a huge blocker for many smaller and newly launched publishers. Getting your games in front of the right people who know how to market them (and will in fact market them) is key to expansion.

“With over 5,000 new board games releasing annually I think it can be pretty daunting for smaller publishers who lack the massive budget of The Op’s Flip 7. Being able to use someone who people already know and trust to open a door for you is a huge win.”

Smith said her work with those publishers would include introducing them to distributors she already has relationships with, approaching potential new distribution partners and organising their meeting schedules ahead of the show.

She will also sit in on meetings for publishers that request additional support, including helping with negotiations and expansion plans.

Smith said, “I have a huge network of industry colleagues I have grown over the last 13 years and I think it’s important to give back and not gatekeep that.

“I like being able to introduce folks to each other and watch them both grow and succeed because of it.”

Tabletop Growth Partners will also offer marketing strategy, digital storefront optimisation, crowdfunding and subscription support, and representation at international events including SPIEL Essen, PAX Unplugged, GAMA Expo and UK Games Expo.

Smith told BoardGameWire she believes the cost of attending international shows could make that kind of support particularly valuable to smaller publishers.

Smith said, “For a small publisher the costs of flights, hotels, and a booth are huge. Asking them to then take time away from sales to talk to others simply isn’t an option.”

She added that many board game studios and publishers had opportunities to expand their communities, but lacked the time, knowledge or money to pursue them themselves.

“At the end of the day they are creatives, they should be creating their next bestseller, not getting bogged down with admin and endless meetings. Let me do that.”

Smith joined MyMiniFactory after previously working as a purchasing assistant at Asmodee UK and at Asmodee Entertainment’s fiction imprint Aconyte Books, and most recently served as the 3D-printing platform’s head of marketing and brand.

Her work there included business development around bringing established tabletop properties into 3D printing, including Steamforged Games‘ Warmachine and Modiphius Entertainment‘s The Elder Scrolls.

Smith said that while she is based in the UK, she has set her working schedule to cover US mornings because she expects “a vast majority” of the agency’s clients to be based there.

The agency has also signed up as an ambassador for MyMiniFactory’s Soulcrafted initiative, which was launched to champion human-made creative work amid the rapid growth of generative AI.

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After 20 years growing the UK Games Expo into one of the largest tabletop gaming conventions in the world, founders Richard Denning and Tony Hyams are preparing for their eventual exit by bringing in AireCon co-founder Mark Cooke as operations director.

Cooke joins following another record year for UKGE, which has seen its annual unique attendance surge almost 65% since 2023 to reach more than 51,000.

The show has already well surpassed Gen Con in terms of trade hall size, with the British event now spanning about 44,000 sq m – about 40% larger than Gen Con’s trade hall area – and hosting around 900 exhibitors in 2026.

That soaring growth has put increasing pressure on the small organising team at UKGE, with Denning telling BoardGameWire last year that the show had strained a full-time workforce which stood at just six people – although UKGE also relies on more than 200 volunteers, GMs, umpires and other helpers to deliver the convention each year.

Cooke is no stranger to growing a UK board game convention, having co-founded and built AireCon with Ben Clarkson from a 28-person gaming weekend in his flat a decade ago into England’s second-largest board game con, with about 5,000 attendees this year.

His hire by UKGE comes just three weeks after AireCon revealed that despite its own soaring growth, its 2027 show in Harrogate would be its last – saying a combination of factors had “made it increasingly challenging to run AireCon in a way that preserves the character and spirit that made it so special in the first place”.

More than 5,500 people are expected at the final AireCon – which has been nicknamed Airemageddon – with Cooke set to continue working on that final show before moving to UKGE full time.

A statement from UKGE emphasised the hire was part of a phased transition for UKGE’s organisers, and was “not a sudden change of leadership or direction”.

It said Cooke would work alongside Denning and Hyams “over the next few UK Games Expo events”, ensuring that knowledge, experience and responsibilities the pair have built up over the last 20 years are handed over “gradually and thoughtfully”.

Denning said, “As UKGE has expanded to now one of the world’s largest shows we have gradually grown our team, adding event managers, administrators and logistics support.

“Bringing in Mark as operations director is the next logical step as we put in place plans to ensure UKGE can run far into the future.

“We have known Mark through AireCon and other industry roles for many years now and he is an ideal choice bringing both event management experience, energy and fresh ideas to the team as well as a safe pair of hands as and when Tony and I eventually step away from the show we have built together with others.”

Cooke added, “I’m incredibly excited to be joining the UK Games Expo team and to have the opportunity to play a part in the next chapter of such an important event for the tabletop gaming community.

“I have huge respect for what Richard and Tony have built over the years, and I’m looking forward to working alongside them over the coming events.

“This will be a gradual transition, giving us plenty of time to share knowledge, ideas and experience. My aim is to build on the fantastic foundations already in place while helping UKGE continue to grow and thrive for many years to come.”

Denning and Hyams launched UK Games Expo at Birmingham’s Clarendon Suites in 2007, when the convention attracted about 1,000 visitors.

It moved to Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre in 2013, and had grown to more than 25,000 unique attendees by 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted its run of physical events.

Its growth has accelerated since returning, with unique attendance passing 31,000 in 2023, 39,000 in 2024 and 42,000 last year, before jumping beyond 51,000 at its 20th anniversary event this summer.

Denning told BoardGameWire last year that building a world-class trade hall in the UK had been a personal ambition stretching back almost two decades, adding at the time that UKGE was “now fully on the world stage of ‘mega-cons'”.

Despite this year’s record attendance, Denning told BoardGameWire after the show that there was still room for further expansion, particularly around the roughly 500 events taking place during the convention.

The next UK Games Expo is scheduled to take place at Birmingham NEC from June 4 to June 6, 2027.

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Spiel Essen has launched a dedicated B2B matchmaking system aimed at helping publishers, designers, retailers and other industry professionals find potential business partners and arrange meetings before arriving at the world’s biggest board game fair.

The new service, which is restricted to exhibitors and people with business visitor tickets, lets users create profiles detailing what they are looking for and what they can offer, send specific business inquiries, connect via chat and schedule appointments at the show using the built-in calendar.

Spiel said today that the system will be integrated directly into its dedicated app, adding that the move is intended to make networking between trade visitors, professionals and publishers “more targeted, simple, and effective”.

Business has long been an important part of Spiel despite its status as a public-facing convention, with major publishers operating their own dedicated B2B areas for meetings with retailers and other industry professionals.

B2B-specific companies such as manufacturers, crowdfunding services and trade organisations were still scattered across various halls in 2019, but that situation began to change after Spiel was taken over in 2022 by Merz Verlag – whose core event, Spielwarenmesse, is one of the world’s biggest B2B toy trade fairs.

Those companies began to be more concentrated in Hall 4 during the 2022 event – a move which intensified the following year amid a major reorganisation of the halls which attempted to more obviously split the fair into themed segments such as children’s games, family and light-to-medium games, expert games, tabletop and miniature games, roleplaying games and TCGs.

Florian Hess, managing director of Merz Verlag, said after last year’s record-breaking Spiel, “For exhibitors at the fair the focus is also on the joy of the games. At the same time, an incredible number of effective business developments emerge here – and this happens naturally alongside everything else.

“I don’t know of any other event that is as strong a springboard for a business’s launch as Spiel. I have met exhibitors who started here a few years ago with a small booth and are now occupying several hundred square meters and selling games internationally.

“Experiencing this kind of B2B rocket launch never ceases to fascinate me.”

The new system arrives as Spiel prepares for its biggest-ever event from October 22 to 25 this year – with an expansion into all eight main halls at the Messe Essen exhibition centre for the first time expected to see the event challenge its record 220,000 attendance set last year.

Spiel said earlier this year that it had reached the reached the limits of its expansion at its long-time home after boosting floor space to 81,200 sq m – larger than 15 American football fields – amid what it called “overwhelming interest” from exhibitors.

But despite the show bumping against its space limits at its long-time home, a Merz Verlag spokesperson told BoardGameWire in March, “We love Essen – as a venue and the city – and have no intention of leaving. For the foreseeable future SPIEL will remain in Essen as it has for more than 40 years now.”

The fair’s expansion into a seventh hall last year helped the four-day show to its record 220,000 attendance, outstripping the 209,000 visitor record it set just before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Spiel might have broken its attendance record in 2024 were it not for a self-imposed visitor cap, which limited the number of attendees each day to about 50,000 – a measure introduced alongside wider aisles post-pandemic to help visitors move around the often crowded halls more easily.

More than 920 exhibitors from 53 countries are expected at this year’s event, with Merz Verlag saying in March that demand had come both from long-term exhibitors keen to “significantly increase” their booth space, as well as an “impressive number” of first-time exhibitors hoping to attend this year.

About half of the available tickets for Thursday, Friday and Saturday have already been sold, seven weeks before the show opens, with Sunday sales currently “lagging slightly behind”, the show announced today.

Access to the matchmaking platform comes as part of Spiel’s €46 business visitor ticket, which compares with €25 for a standard adult day ticket.

Spiel Essen 2026 takes place at Messe Essen from October 22 to 25.

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Australia’s biggest gaming convention is growing its tabletop exhibition space yet again amid the ongoing global boom in TCGs.

Pax Aus has featured tabletop games since the Melbourne-based con was launched in 2013, with the segment having grown over the years to take up a significant share of the show’s floor space.

The convention’s event director Lauren Luciani told BoardGameWire Pax Aus is expanding its dedicated tabletop hall by 7% for this year’s show, which takes place from October 9 to 11 – adding that even with that extended footprint, a waiting list had emerged for tabletop exhibitors.

Luciani said about 70% of exhibitors from last year’s show were returning for 2026 – although she would not reveal overall exhibitor numbers, or even an overall attendance for last year’s event, describing both figures as “confidential”.

Pax Aus’ announcement of this year’s show was once again dominated by major TCG publishers, underscoring the huge and growing popularity of a swell of different collectible card games over the past few years.

Magic: The Gathering‘s new Reality Fracture set, Disney Lorcana, Riftbound: League of Legends TCG, Star Wars: Unlimited, One Piece Card Game, Dragon Ball Super Card Game, Flesh and Blood and the Cyberpunk TCG were all namechecked in a recent announcement from Pax Aus showcasing this year’s event.

On the board game side highlighted games were thinner on the ground, however, with Asmodee studio titles including The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game, Citadels Duel, Schadenfreude and party games from its Exploding Kittens studio the only non-TCGs namechecked in the announcement.

Asmodee ran a large booth at last year’s show, while other stands included board game distributors Let’s Play Games and Asmodee-owned VR Distribution (which rebranded to Asmodee in Australia last September), as well as a first-ever appearance from Warhammer publisher Games Workshop.

Other board game publishers with dedicated booths were few and far between in 2025, however, with much of the remaining tabletop section made up of retailers and a handful of stands for media outlets.

Update August 12, 2026: Pax Aus contacted BoardGameWire to add that TTRPG veteran Chaosium has just announced it will be attending, hosting free game sessions and showing off its co-op board game Horror on the Orient Express.

The event does include a large area for indie game developers on both the video and tabletop sides, however, called Pax Rising – expected to host more than 80 independent creators this year.

That segment also includes an Indie Showcase competition to highlight games from Australia’s independent design scene.

Last year’s winners in the tabletop category were Conquest For The Capital by MountainSoul Gaming, Coffee Up! by ToToTam, Cartograph – Atlas Edition by The Ravensridge Emporium, Panda Party by Cheerfolk, Spacewreck Salvage by Aethermon Studios and Potion Society by The Murmuring Mystic.

When asked by BoardGameWire whether Pax Aus now sees TCGs as the primary growth area for the convention, Luciani said, “The trading card game category continues to experience significant growth globally, and PAX Aus is committed to reflecting the interests and passions of our community in the content and experiences we deliver.

“While TCG will have a strong presence at this year’s event, there are still a number of tabletop announcements to come, and attendees can expect a diverse range of tabletop gaming experiences on offer.”

This year’s event will include a segment where fans can meet Australian game designers Jay Bendixen, Ryan Boucher, Natalie Delaney-John and Cam Jasson during special sessions for Gretchen’s Garden and That Dicey Word Game.

Pax Aus also appears to be attempting to broaden its appeal to the collectibles market. eBay Australia returns as presenting sponsor of the Tabletop Hall for a second consecutive year, expanding its presence with the debut of eBay Live, live-streamed collector content and a dedicated Collectors Club programme.

Australia remains a long, expensive trip for European and North American attendees, of course. But for international publishers weighing whether the expense of exhibiting in Australia can be justified, Luciani argued that the value extends beyond direct sales.

“PAX Aus provides tabletop exhibitors with access to one of the largest and most engaged gaming communities in Australia,” she said. “Beyond direct sales opportunities, exhibitors benefit from brand exposure, community building, hands-on product experiences and the ability to engage with both existing fans and new players.

“As tabletop gaming continues to grow, PAX Aus remains a unique platform for publishers, retailers and creators to showcase their products alongside the broader gaming culture that brings tens of thousands of fans together each year.”

PAX Aus now forms part of Melbourne International Games Week, Australia’s largest annual games festival.

This year’s event takes place at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from October 9 to 11.

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Tabletop gaming trade organisation GAMA has opened nominations for its 2027 Power Retail Awards, inviting gamers and industry professionals from around the world to spotlight stores and cafés they believe represent the industry’s best.

The annual awards, which have now been running for 17 years, aim to act as a showcase and celebration of business practices, community-building and operational innovations that other hobby retailers can learn from.

More than 750 retailers were submitted for inclusion in last year’s awards, with nominations coming from Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) customers before being voted on by a GAMA committee of retailers and emeritus ‘team retail’ members.

The awards cover four categories: Retailer of the Year, Innovation in Games (Retail), Outstanding Contribution to Games Industry (Retail) and Outstanding Store Design, with winners of each receiving a one year GAMA membership, recognition in its online database and in the Spring issue of its Around the Table magazine.

That prize was reduced by GAMA last year, with retailer of the year having also previously receiving $1,000 and the other category winners $500 each.

Any tabletop retail business can be nominated regardless of country or GAMA membership status, although US-based businesses have heavily dominated the awards since they were launched in 2010, picking up 50 out of the 63 wins to date.

That total does not include the 2021 Retailer of the Year award, which was presented to every GAMA retailer member at the time to recognise and celebrate them having survived the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Arizona-based Silver Dragon Games scooped Retailer of the Year in the 2026 awards, adding to the Innovation In Games (Retail) and Outstanding Store Design titles it won at the same awards in 2024.

They were joined this year by Illinois-based Fantasy Books and Games, which won the Innovation in Games (Retail) award, Minnesota’s The Gamers Den, which sealed Outstanding Contribution to the Games Industry (Retail), and Wisconsin-based Oddwillow’s Game Haven, which won Outstanding Store Design.

UK retailer Eclectic Games remains the only non-US winner in the past two award cycles, having scooped Outstanding Contribution to the Games Industry in 2025, while Mexico City-based La Piramide is the only store from outside of the US, Canada or the UK to win an award, which it claimed during the inaugural contest in 2010.

Nominations are open to stores that have been operating for at least one full year, while previous winners cannot win the same category twice.

Anyone interested in nominating an outstanding hobby retailer can do so here.

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