Frankfurter Buchmesse und BuCon 2026: Zwei Veranstaltungen, jede Menge Phantastik und einige Veränderungen. Während in Frankfurt ein neues Hallenkonzept und KI-Debatten für Gesprächsstoff sorgten, feierte der Buchmesse Convent sein 40-jähriges Bestehen. Wir berichten von unseren Eindrücken, spannenden Begegnungen und kleinen Enttäuschungen.

Dieser Beitrag wurde von Marie Mönkemeyer geschrieben

Dokkoi is a family business from Japan which makes boardgame accessories. They were at TOBE 2026 in Taipei, and I got this set of component trays from Kotaro-san as a gift. He's an amazing guy. He speaks both English and Chinese, and he learned to speak Chinese by himself when in Japan.  This is a set of six trays The material is a soft rubber, so the

General Orders: Sengoku Jidai pits two competing daimyo against one another in a fight for control over crucial battlefields in 16th-century Japan. Deploy your commanders to seize powerful advantages, secure valuable supply lines, and capture well-defended forts — all while protecting your vulnerable HQ. This standalone game introduces new strategic waterways, ships, and devastating siege weaponry across two battle maps.

From award-winning design duo David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin, this compact two-player game combines the dynamism of a wargame with the cut-throat decision-making of worker-placement games.

-Grant

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We’re not going to Essen, and frankly, may never, but that won’t stop us from wishing we were going. From the mountain of games we won’t get to play in person, we’ve mined for the diamonds that we think you should keep your eyes on. Before we get to digging, we talk about Hanami, Brink, and Railway Boom.

If you don’t want to miss an episode, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts/Google Podcasts/Stitcher/Spotify, or add our RSS feed to your favourite app. Reviews and subscriptions really help us and would be greatly appreciated! To download the episode directly, click here.

If you’d like to discuss anything in the episode, please do so in the comments below, visit our BoardGameGeek guild, join our Discord, or Facebook Group! Any feedback is also always helpful. If you’d like to show your support for the show, we also have a Patreon with some fun rewards, and a merch store!

Timecodes:

02:14 – Hanami
12:06 – Brink
24:22 – Railway Boom
36:05 – Essen SPIEL 2026 Preview 
38:16 – 1st CEO
39:24 – Robo Run
40:56 – -60°
43:49 – Apocalypse
45:31 – Kalypso
46:51 – Timespan
49:42 – 17 Dice Bets
52:51 – KumoKumo Park
54:11 – Chronocritters
56:09 – Tikal Legend
57:38 – Ancient Empires
59:10 – Almighty
1:01:41 – Old Ones Origins
1:06:02 – Courtroom: The Noir Trilogy
1:08:51 – For the Gods!

Thank you to Heart Society for generously letting us use What’s On Your Mind, Kid? from their album Wake the Queens.

The post BGB Podcast #371 – Essen SPIEL 2026 Hype List appeared first on Board Game Barrage.

Yokai Hyakki Hakko is a game from… you guessed it… Japan! This is a small box card game about collecting monsters and ghouls from Japanese lore. There are eight types of monster cards. You will be collecting them. If you manage to collect all eight types, you win immediately. If no one manages that, the game ends when the deck runs out. You determine who wins by points. For

Reversalers is a 2-player microgame from Japan, designed by Ryusei Nakata of Ryusei Games.  You randomly set up five treasure cards to be fought over. Treasure cards are worth points. Some have a fixed number of points, while for others the point values depend on other factors, for example the fighter card played by your opponent, or the fighter card remaining in your hand. The

Bloody Breakers is a 2-player microgame from Japan, designed by Ryusei Nakata. It is a game with just 16 cards. This seems to be a common format in Japan.  Box back You have four types of cards in the game. There are four copies of each card type. Each card has a scoring criteria on the left and also an ability at the top right.  During the game both players will

I have been wanting to bring Faiyum to the table again for some time. Finally I did a 2-player game with younger daughter Chen Rui. She absolutely slaughtered me, even though it was her first play. She went into building and using workshops, and I didn't. There seemed to be few workshops so I thought it wasn't worthwhile to get into. I really enjoy how differently each game of

"Joraku" is a Japanese term which means advancing to the capital. In Japanese history, sometimes local warlords will lead their armies and move to the capital, claiming that they are there to protect the Emperor from evil forces. In truth, they want to take control of the Emperor and rule the nation. The game Joraku has an interesting combination of two popular game mechanisms - trick-taking

Shogun Solitaire is a card game for one player. Your mission in Shogun Solitaire is to lead a coalition of four clans to unite feudal Japan. Each clan must secure three objectives within their territory to achieve unification under a single Shogun. To accomplish this, you’ll need to deploy armies in strategic combinations, outsmarting your enemies. The game’s object is to become the Shogun by unifying all the clans of feudal Japan.

-Grant

Mit Festung Europa verlagerte Konflikt ’47 den Krieg ins Herz des Kontinents. Doch während die Alliierten dort um Dresden kämpfen, bereitet Japan den nächsten Schlag vor. Invasion Amerika führt den Rift War über den Pazifik und bringt den Krieg dorthin, wo ihn die USA kaum erwartet haben: ins eigene Land.

Dieser Beitrag wurde von Geoffrey Förste geschrieben

Shady Lady is yet another game by Kaya Miyano I have played this year. This is a very Japanese style game - minimalistic but clever. It has a juicy element of trying to read your opponents and sometimes cunningly misleading them. You have a hand of three cards. There are only two types of sets in this game, three cards of the same value, or three cards in sequence. Cards are numbered 1 to 4,

New Old is a game from Japan. What stands out the most about it is the box design. It is deliberately designed to look like two boxes side-by-side, one brand new and the other one pretty old and worn. The cards inside and the rules are like this too. Some cards are normal, but others look like old cards at different levels of wear and tear. The rules come in two sheets, and one of them is

LOOP is designed by Takashi Saito, who is from Nagasaki, Japan. I bought this game when I was traveling in Nagasaki. Because of this the game will have a special place in my collection. This is a climbing card game, like Tichu and Big 2. You play different combinations of cards and your goal is to play all your cards. The most important twist in this game is

Dog Poker is first in a series of animal poker games from Japan by Kaya Miyano. I bought both Dog Poker and Cat Poker when traveling, and only later realised I already own Cat Poker. Cat Poker is the original Japanese version of Panda Panda. Although named poker, neither game is similar to poker. Or maybe animals play poker differently.  In Dog Poker every card

Rikka is from the makers of Tiger & Dragon, which I greatly enjoyed. The use of mahjong-like tiles is nice. Although not absolutely necessary, it does make the game experience better. You can consider Rikka simplified mahjong. It does feel like mahjong, but there are some important differences. You start with a hand of 5 tiles. On your turn you take a tile then discard a tile. Tiles in

Ukiyo-e is the 2025 Japanese edition of an old game from Michael Schacht, called Crazy Chicken (2003). This is a simple, mostly abstract card game, so it is easy to retheme. I would never have imagined a game about crazy chicken getting transformed into a game about traditional Japanese woodblock prints.  In this Japanese edition of the game, you are collecting pieces of art by famous

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We play a lot of games. Which is great, because a lot of games get made, and we get to play them … but it does come at the cost of always having to learn (and teach) something new, grappling with rules, and gets in the way of enjoying the game. Would it be better if we just devoted ourselves to one game? Before we join a Mahjong club, we talk about Wingspan Pocket, Greylune, and Marrakesh.

If you don’t want to miss an episode, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts/Google Podcasts/Stitcher/Spotify, or add our RSS feed to your favourite app. Reviews and subscriptions really help us and would be greatly appreciated! To download the episode directly, click here.

If you’d like to discuss anything in the episode, please do so in the comments below, visit our BoardGameGeek guild, join our Discord, or Facebook Group! Any feedback is also always helpful. If you’d like to show your support for the show, we also have a Patreon with some fun rewards, and a merch store!

Timecodes:

01:53 – Wingspan Pocket
09:16 – Greylune
19:11 – Marrakesh
36:53 – Sticking with one game

Thank you to Heart Society for generously letting us use What’s On Your Mind, Kid? from their album Wake the Queens.

The post BGB Podcast #367 – One vs. Many appeared first on Board Game Barrage.

Von den fünf Verrückten von Heldbergs Games kommt ein weiteres schräges Spiel namens Yubitsume. Verrückt sind sie nach eigener Einlassung, und schräg, ja, das passt auch. Denn bei Yubitsume geht…

The post Yubitsume appeared first on Reich der Spiele.

  Gambler x Gamble!! (two exclamation marks) is a game from Japan released in 2024. It is a reimplementation of a 2016 game called Gambler x Gamble! (one exclamation mark), which won the Group SNE Contest in 2015. We all know what it will be named when it gets a third edition, don't we? When I read the rules, the first thing that comes to mind is this is Machi