Die neuen Battlehosts für das Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game sind da – und mit ihnen ein aktualisierter Quickstart Rules Guide. Doch wie viel vom Original steckt in den vereinfachten Regeln? Wir schauen uns die neuen Battlehosts und ihre Regeln genauer an und prüfen, ob der Einstieg damit wirklich gelingt.

Dieser Beitrag wurde von Nina Horbelt geschrieben

Loneliness is an epidemic. And evidence shows it is not just an issue in the USA where I live, but across the developed world. For some reason, as much as it promised to unite us, the Internet seems to have found so many ways to fracture and fragment society. Longer working hours and the pace of modern life combined with the geographic mobility often finds us living hundreds or even thousands of miles from our friends and families. And if you work remotely, it can be even worse. As an educator, I find that despite interacting with hundreds of teenagers every day, and attending several compulsory meetings with adults every week, I can start feeling isolated and lonely too. To make matters worse; despite living within walking distance of John Steinbeck’s birthplace (and grave), I have only one, small, used bookstore and no board game stores nearby. Fortunately, I travel often to attend conferences, present my research and check in on family a few hours away. And this has led me to a way to feel more connected.

[caption id="attachment_334660" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] It’s a beautiful Fall day in Santa Cruz, CA, so where should we go? The beach? Nah! I am going to my FLGS, Game Santa Cruz![/caption]

About three years ago,…

The post Why I Love Board Gamers appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

This weekend, just a few days before yesterday’s Braided Skies reveal, Stonemaier Games hosted its 13th annual Design Day. On Sunday, the Design Day itself featured designers, playtesters, and gamers from St. Louis and around the country for 12+ hours of playtesting and gaming at Pieces Board Game Bar and Cafe.

The purpose of Design Day is to bring together designers, playtesters, and content creators to give and receive feedback on game prototypes, expand their network within the gaming community, and learn from clever mechanisms in published games. If you’d like to know details about how the day is structured, you can read about previous Design Days here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Why We Run This Event

On paper, the event doesn’t make much sense. We’re not promoting anything. There’s really no focus on Stonemaier Games at all. To put it simply, Design Day is just something we like doing. 

We like doing it for the designers, the playtesters and gamers, and the content creators. The creative energy is palpable and inspiring, and it seems to be a worthwhile, joyous experience for attendees. I’m also on the lookout for future Stonemaier products (so far we’ve published four games that appeared at Design Day), but I’m mostly just trying to be helpful to other creators and maybe help them find the right publisher.

How Does Design Day Work?

• We opened most ticket sales in the spring to past attendees (around 80 tickets), then sold the remaining 30 tickets to people who signed up for a back-in-stock notification (you can use this year’s listing to get a notification for 2027). We added a few extra people this year, though there are space and noise limitations we are mindful of. We charged $45-55 per ticket, which accounts for about 40% of the total food/beverage/space cost for the day (Stonemaier covers the rest).
• Joe sent an email each month containing new information and an actionable step for attendees. The most complicated step is creating the calendar of events, which requires us to consider game length, player count, table size, etc.
• We share and participate in casual, optional activities on Saturday. People travel great distances to Design Day, so we try to offer a full weekend of activities for those who want it. One local attendee, Melissa, is always very kind to open up her home for a gaming evening, and some attendees visit friends or sightsee in St. Louis. It’s also become a tradition to introduce attendees to disc golf; this year around 30 people participated on a hot afternoon at Crestwood Park. Designer Ben Rosset also ran a Q&A about game design and manufacturing in the morning, and Paul Salomon (Gamehead Games) ran a playtesting event on Saturday evening.
• Pieces Board Game Bar and Cafe provided the space, food, and drinks (and access to their huge game collection). This was our second year at Pieces’ new, bigger location, and it’s still great! The tables are much more spread out, and nearly every table is wheelchair accessible. Pieces serves their delicious homemade cookies throughout the day, and attendees optionally enjoyed their delicious gaming-themed mocktails and cocktails. Pieces has its busiest day on Saturday (and Saturday is a very busy day in that area of St. Louis), hence why Design Day is on Sunday. We use a buffet format for meals: Bagels and muffins for breakfast, poke bowls for lunch, and a nacho bar for dinner. There are veggies and gluten-free options at every meal.
• The schedule of the day is preset. People sign up for tables in advance (we guarantee that each designer who signs up in advance will get to playtest their game at least twice, and we ask designers to share rulebooks in advance for attendees to peruse). It’s very structured. We never interrupt the day with announcements, and every game ran on schedule. Attendees were also flexible for games that ended early or when the designers didn’t show up–they simply picked another game to play.
• A mix of unsigned prototypes, to-be-published/crowdfunded prototypes, and a few published games were played, with the intent being that each can inform the experiences of the other. There’s this great mindset of talking about game design from all angles throughout the day.
• Playtesters optionally filled out a short form (created by Hilda Vazquez) after each playtest to give to the designer.
• I spent most of the day observing various games, checking in with designers and playtesters, and trying to have a few minutes of quality time with each attendee.

How Were the Games?

I truly am inspired and awestruck by the creativity, innovation, and vulnerability of the designers at this event. Everyone puts a lot of work into these games, and I loved listening to the constructive interactions between designers and playtesters.

Design Day isn’t a competition, but as a way of helping designers see how far along their games are, we ask attendees to rate each game on a 1-6 scale indicating how close a game is to being publishable.

Based on this rating scale–basically, how close they are to being a successful publishable game–here are the top-rated games of Design Day 2026, with brief descriptions in the words of the designers:

1. Alchemists of Avalon by Tyson Gajewski (5.8): Mancala, resource manipulation, drafting, contracts
2. Among Mortals by Brendan Hansen (5.5): Card game with a shared board. Area Control, Hand Management, Variable Powers, Hidden Affinities
3. Puzzle Factory by Ben Rosset (5.5): Worker Placement, Puzzle-making, Partial Simultaneous Play
4. Moominos by Hilda Vazquez (5.4): Card/Tile drafting, Thinky-puzzle, Set Collection
5. Delvers of Deepgate by Clayton Smith (5.17): Tower Defense Dungeon Dive
6. The Royal Tent by Heather Dixon (5.17): Shared Engine Building, Rondel, Contract Fulfillment, Variable End-Game Trigger
7. Treat Street by Jacob Gentrup (5.11): Series of mini card games
8. Top Flight by Kyle Boyer (5.07): Push your luck racing
9. Aragonite by Wes Kendall (5.06): Pattern block-laying, trick-taking, bag-building, engine-building
10. Synchrony by Austin Bailey & Jason Jones (5.04): Ephemeral engine and tableau-building, asymmetric set collection, time-as-a-resource

Other games rated 5.00 on average were Dice Rogue (Joe Totherow), Franchise Wars (Pete Wissinger), Magic Tricks (Chris Porter), and Pips (Ben Morayta).

If publishers are curious to learn more about some of these games, I’m happy to talk to you about them and connect you to the designers (if they’re looking for a publisher)!

Next Year

If you want to attend Design Day next year, you can use this year’s listing to get a notification for 2027, and if there are any extra slots, we’ll likely announce them in our April e-newsletter.

Have you found value in running or attending events related to your industry? As alternatives to Design Day, there are Protospiel, Unpub, and other playtest events around the country, including some at Geekway to the West in St. Louis in May.

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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.

There is a dangerous moment in every board gamer's life when a non-gaming friend says, “Sure, I'll try one.” Remain calm. Do not make any sudden movements. And, most importantly, do not immediately disappear into the basement and return carrying a box large enough to contain a microwave.

We have been waiting for this moment. That's the problem. When you love tabletop games, introducing someone to the hobby can feel like being handed five minutes to explain your favorite band, restaurant, television series, vacation destination, and minor religion simultaneously. You want them to understand why this thing matters. You want them to experience the clever mechanisms, impossible decisions, ridiculous betrayals, dramatic reversals, and that beautiful moment three hours into a game when everyone suddenly realizes Dave has been quietly collecting sheep for reasons nobody fully understands. So we get excited. And excitement makes us terrible ambassadors. Or, at least, obviously biased ambassadors to the point of destroying our credibility.

We start explaining. “This one's actually pretty simple.” This sentence is usually followed by eighteen minutes of rules. “You have workers, except they're technically druids, and you're placing them on action spaces to collect resources so you can fulfill contracts, although they're called prophecies, and the purple resource isn't actually a…

The post Your Friend Doesn’t Need to Become a Gamer Tonight appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Es ist schon einige Zeit her, seit Games Workshop uns mit einer Battlehost-Box beglückt hat. Nun erhält Rohan endlich eine Aktualisierung, und als Überraschung legen die Entwickler gleich zwei weitere Battlehosts nach: Elben aus dem Düsterwald und die berüchtigten Jägerorks um Bolg.

Dieser Beitrag wurde von Nina Horbelt geschrieben

Die Chaosbarbaren haben bereits letztes Jahr die alte Welt ein wenig erschüttert. Jetzt wird nachgelegt mit den Kriegern des Chaos. Eine weitere Welle von Neuerscheinungen steht an. Wir haben uns angeschaut, was Games Workshop angekündigt hat. Sind die Krieger des Chaos weiterhin eine ernstzunehmende Bedrohung auf dem Schlachtfeld?

Dieser Beitrag wurde von Nina Horbelt geschrieben

I've been playing board games since the 1970s, and playing what are considered hobby games since the 1980s. (Yes, I am that old.) I've also played many RPGs in that time, and even a few wargames. I've seen many changes over the years, especially regarding the treatment of women in the hobby. Thankfully, things have improved greatly for women in gaming since those long ago days.

It was once the case that a woman just had to accept sexist remarks, inappropriate jokes, and offensive artwork as part of the gaming experience. Even after demonstrating interest and ability, many women were dismissed or belittled. Now, attitudes in many spaces have changed, and it is easier to find groups and shops that not only welcome women but embrace the different perspectives we bring to the hobby.

But…

As the saying goes, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Unfortunately, even in the year 2026 CE, I still encounter more than a few casual assumptions about women who play and buy board games.

I don't bring this up to bash anyone, or to throw an entire gender under the bus. As I said, things have improved greatly. Learning is happening, and positive change is all around. There are some…

The post Top 6 Assumptions About Women in Board Gaming (And Why They’re Often Wrong) appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Am I actually the person acting like a jerk right now?

I participate in a wide variety of discussions on the internet (mostly in relation to tabletop games), and on occasion I will find myself responding to some aggravating comments. It’s in those moments when I’m pounding away at the keyboard that I try to step back and ask myself, “Wait, am I being a jerk?”

Sometimes the answer is no. But sometimes, sure enough, my response isn’t kind (or at least neutral), and that is directly counter to my goal of building community. Regardless of how the other person is acting, I have control over my own behavior.

There are various versions of this question; here are some others that I ask myself (and often wish others would ask themselves):

• Would I speak differently if the other person was a friend or if I was face to face with them?
• Is the phrasing of my question, request, or post aligned with the outcome I’m hoping to achieve? (i.e., if I start a conversation by calling a game “a total joke”, I shouldn’t be surprised when the ensuing conversation ignores my more salient points)
• Is this an opportunity to ask a question instead of assuming or declaring? (i.e., it’s really important to get the facts straight before forming conclusions. See also this open letter to the internet.)
• Am I addressing the right person for this criticism or question? (i.e., if I have a question about a game in a specific language or digital format, am I asking the correct publisher/developer?)
• What if everyone requested this or asked this privately? (i.e., if 1,000 people asked this same question, would that be fair to the person I’m asking? See also the value of public questions.)

I truly believe that the internet would be a better place if we more consistently asked ourselves a self-awareness question. So I asked Stonemaier ambassadors to see if any of them had a question along these lines, and they had some great responses beyond those listed above. Here are a few of the 100+ questions they shared:

• 

  Am I participating in this discussion to be helpful or I just have something to prove?

• Does this affect my daily life? If so, is there anything I can do about it?
• Is this helping or hurting?
• Will this comment help anything/anyone?
• What am I trying to achieve?
• Am I treating this person like a person, or like a symbol of something I dislike?
• Am I responding to what they actually said or to the worst interpretation of it?
• Am I expecting others to think the way I do?
• Deep breath, how would I want someone to respond to me on this?
• Does my comment add value to the conversation?
• Would I be happy with what I wrote if I come back to the thread and reread it in the future?
• If I did not know me and my intentions, what would be my first reaction to reading what I wrote?
• Is my response furthering a meaningful discussion or just adding fuel to the fire?
• Is my comment on topic?
• Is this really worth letting someone who has no real impact on my life get me upset?
• What am I actually upset about that is provoking this reaction from me?
• What am I missing?
• What implicit bias do I have that is making me react this way?
• What is driving my need to respond right now?
• What is the right thing to do/say?
• What would my mom/spouse think if they saw me acting this way?
• Would I do/say this in a professional setting?

Do you have a go-to self-awareness question that helps you be the best version of yourself on the internet? Let me know in the comments.

Also read: An Open Letter to the Internet

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.

I spent the last 4 days at Geekway to the West, an absolutely incredible game convention in St. Louis. Today I’ll share some of my highlights and observations through three lenses: Jamey as a publisher, designer, and gamer.

Publisher Jamey

Stonemaier Games participates in a few ways at Geekway: We donate a lot of games to their play-and-win section, which has proven year after year to be a great way to share our games with people who haven’t tried them.

We also have a booth in their vendor hall (Geekway primarily focuses on casual gaming, but they do have vendor space too) run by my coworker Dave and staffed by an amazingly generous demo team. Our main intent at the booth is simply for people to have fun and learn about our games, and it’s a nice bonus if we sell some games too (this year it looks like our booth revenue was around $16k, and people could also place orders on our webstore and pick up their order at Geekway since our warehouse is located in St. Louis).

I like that Geekway provides publishers a lot of different options. You can have a booth if you want, but you could also have a demo table through Double Exposure, you could just put games in play-and-win, or you can just wander around and connect with people (or scout games to potentially publish).

I’ll also add that having several years of t-shirt and hoodie sales provides a really nice way for me to look around any room at Geekway and identify people who know Stonemaier Games. The warm hoodies were particularly helpful, as the main hall at Geekway was quite cold this year.

Designer Jamey

There are two sides to Designer Jamey at conventions: past and future. For games I’ve already designed, it’s immensely gratifying to see people playing them. I don’t think I’m alone, as I saw other designers checking in on people playing their games (this happened to me while playing the card game Oopsy Poopsy). I taught and played Euphoria Essential and Origin Story, and I had a great time learning the game Dark Heists from the designer, Moe Poplar.

Then there are the games I have yet to to design. I love playing a variety of published games at Geekway to learn from them. This year I played 14 new-to-me games and 6 games I already knew (it’s nice to revisit games to look at them from a fresh perspective).

Geekway provides several opportunities for designers to get feedback about unpublished games, including the clever Playtest to Win area.

Last, I’m so grateful for everyone who either played a game with me or just came up to me to say hi. Those moments and that time means the world to me. As someone who has social anxiety about approaching people, seeing others do it to me gives me the courage to do the same for others. Thank you for the inspiration!

Gamer Jamey

While Geekway is part work for me, it’s also part play. I love playing games with delightful people, and Geekway is full of them. In total I played 20 different games at Geekway (plus a round of disc golf) with around 60 people. I spent most of my time in a smaller ballroom in the first floor of the connected hotel–it was a much quieter in there (and warmer) than the main convention hall. Thanks to everyone who took the time to play with me!

I appreciate play-and-win as a gamer too, as it helps me narrow down which games to play out of so many options (though I did also check out both Blood Rage and The King Is Dead from the main library to revisit them). Without play-and-win, I wouldn’t have discovered the delightful game 3 Chapters, experienced the whimsy of the cat game Oopsy Poopsy, or delved into the strategic cleverness of Galileo Galilei.

While Geekway does have a few events people can sign up for, the vast majority of the convention is casual gaming. This, I’ve found, is my preferred structure for a convention, as I like the fluid nature of going from game to game at my own pace, remaining flexible as to what I play and how long I play. I’m grateful to Geekway for embracing this format, and I’m always open to suggestions for other similar conventions!

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If you were at Geekway to the West this weekend (or you’ve attended a gaming event in 2026), I’d love to hear a few of your highlights!

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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.