13 New Tabletop Games For Winter The Best Of Bgg Con

Positioned shortly after Germany’s massive Essen Spiel, BGG.CON showcases the hottest new games, and even provides convention staff to teach rules. For fans of Euro-style board games, this is a rare opportunity to play games that won’t see US distribution for months, or in some cases, much longer. As for the attendees, BGG.CON’s 2,800 gamers may seem paltry up against the 60k+ of a Gen Con or PAX, but that 2,800 figure comprises top designers, reviewers, and the most active of BGG website users (don’t worry, the trolls stayed home). Publishers know that this convention holds outsize influence, and it shows: they’re all here too! Yet unlike other major cons, BGG.CON’s focus is on play, not sales. By weekend’s end, attendees will pass final judgement on the current year’s slate of games, seed the coming year’s releases with all-important buzz, and even get an early peek at far-future prototypes. That being said, it’s time to brace your wallet, as this year’s crop is quite strong. Codenames challenges players to hone the art of sounding clever but blaming their teammates when they can’t put the pieces together. It’s not your fault, they should have paid more attention to those high school vocabulary quizzes. With 25 random words scattered across the table, the clue-giver on each Codenames team must utter only a single-word clue in an attempt to tie some number of words together. The clue-giver also shares the number they intended, and their team can attempt that number of guesses, but here’s the catch: only 8 of the 25 words will further the current team’s progress if guessed. Picking the wrong card may do nothing, benefit the opposing team, or even trigger an immediate loss for the current team.The concept seems simple enough once grasped, but the pressure comes on when teams begin competing to identify their 8 cards using as few clues as possible. Following a limited release back at Gen Con and a sold-out first printing, Codenames has taken hold of gamers, responsible for many a late-night brain meltdown. It’s safe to say that convention-goers will be pulling out Codenames well beyond 2015. Publisher Czech Games Edition even ran a nightly LARP version of Codenames at BGG.CON, requiring players to act out their clues. Codenames is back in stock and available both in stores and online, with stock updates posted to CGE social media. Card drafting is out, and instead, each deck of cards is laid across the table in some form of pyramid shape. As players take cards, working their way from bottom to top, they’ll make cards on higher levels available. With a blend of face-up and face-down pyramid rows, players will tread carefully to not open up too great an opportunity for their opponents, adding a major element of strategy in climbing the pyramid. There’s fresh blood in the credits as well, with prolific game creator Antoine Bauza collaborating with fellow tabletop superstar Bruno Cathala (hot off of Five Tribes and Abyss). These tag team champions have managed to craft an experience that stands on its own legs, while still feeling very much inspired by its source material. 7 Wonders: Duel was an Essen release staged for quick worldwide distribution, and landed in stores mid-November. The verdict on this one is going to be out for a long time. Even Friese himself hasn’t played all five hundred and four variations! But the buzz surrounding this title at BGG.CON was undeniably hot, and as that statistics teacher is likely to remind you, the law of averages dictates there should be at least a few gems tucked away in this box. 504 was sold in pre-release at BGG.CON, with an official wide release date of November 25th. BGG.CON was the perfect storm of success for the The Gallerist. Designer Vital Lacerda (Vinhos, Kanban, CO2) has established quite a name for himself among BGG.CON’s core demographic: fans of heavy Eurogames. The Gallerist also just happened to land in Kickstarter Backers’ mailboxes earlier this month, making it an easy choice when settling in for a more complex game that you might not usually have the time or proper group to play outside of the con. There is a lot going on in The Gallerist, and there was a lot of The Gallerist going on. The Gallerist is available now, in most game stores and online. Players fill their city by taking tiles from a 5×5 grid market, requiring them to send one architect to do so. Each architect is limited in what grid positions they can purchase from, though, and those restrictions carry over to further limit where players can place these new tiles in their own city. Add in a bit of resource management, and you’ve got a puzzle complex enough that it will force you to plan several moves ahead, while also paying attention to the moves of others. Quadropolis never felt overwhelming, though, as the game-long puzzle was broken down into manageable, bite-sized decisions, giving it the makings of a very successful casual strategy game. Another notable achievement for Quadropolis is that the two games included (normal and advanced modes) both feel distinct and complete, rather than one being a constricted or hastily-expanded version of the other. This plays well for Days of Wonder’s customer base, as the publisher is eager for another accessible hit in the vein of Ticket to Ride. Previously seen in prototype form under the name City Mania, the newly-named Quadropolis was the first publicly-playable iteration of the game. It’s undergone a graphic design treatment in line with Days of Wonder’s typically lavish productions, and the choice for translucent plastic bits actually works quite well. Quadropolis is set for a worldwide release in March 2016. The co-op hit of BGG.CON, Burgle Bros is another game that was seeing a ton of action throughout the show due to its status as a recently-delivered Kickstarter project. Gamers had their copies in tow, eager to get them to the table, and reception was positive across the board. Self-published indie game designer Tim Fowers is now three-for-three following the successful Wok Star, and Paperback, so even non-backers took notice, making Burgle Bros one of several hot games to sell out on the show floor. For those not at BGG.CON, though, Burgle Bros is sold direct online, and is now in stock. The poker element is what really makes the game shine. Each pair of destination spaces has a poker card between them, and players must assemble a three-card play using two cards from their hand and one neighboring card from the table. This turns Tiny Epic Western into a six-hand, simultaneous poker game that drives the larger strategy game. The choice to each player is which poker hands they feel are worth sitting in on. In chatting with the staff at Gamelyn Games, it also came across that entrants in their Tiny Epic series are refined for two-player experience prior to scaling up to a four-player rules set. This is the reverse of most design paths, but explains some of the series’ success, given the rising demand for strong two-player games. Gamelyn Games is on a roll with their Tiny Epic series (you mall recall Tiny Epic Galaxies from The Escapist’s Origins 2015 roundup) and Tiny Epic Western looks to only increase the quality of the franchise. Tiny Epic Western is set to hit Kickstarter on January 11th, and publish later in 2016. The food theme doesn’t come through so much as Food Chain Magnate seems to very accurately emulate the experience of growing any small business. The map is hotly contested, but your performance is truly determined in the hiring, management, and training of your ever-growing staff. Each of the many positions you could hire for also comes with its own card, providing more space for Food Chain Magnate to display its awesome retro burger joint art aesthetic. Food Chain Magnate comes from a family of intensely complex Euro-style games that you may never be afforded the opportunity to try unless you attend a show like BGG.CON. Published by Splotter Spellen, the game is unlikely to ever see North American distribution, but is available now for import at cost of a cool 100 Euro. Clearly aimed at the family market, Treasure Hunter leans heavily on a single game mechanism: the card draft. Players draft a hand of cards to compete in three different color-based challenges, but the blow of defeat can be softened when prizes are awarded to both the highest and lowest point totals for each color. Prizes are randomly determined, and are public knowledge, so the optimal strategies of aiming high or low will fluctuate from turn to turn, but this keeps any one player from falling too far behind. In gradually ramping up the complexity of a card drafting game, Treasure Hunter feels like the missing link for families stuck between the excellent games Sushi Go! and 7 Wonders. Treasure Hunter was available for sale as a pre-release at the Queen Games BGG.CON booth, but the publisher is staging a December North American release. Equipped with 15 wooden spheres (three each of five colors), players rush to create a stack of up to 11 spheres before time runs out. While they’ll gain a point per sphere used, they’ll also have to give two points back for each violation of six randomly-drawn rules cards. These rules all relate to the position and quantity of spheres used, such as “must have exactly two black spheres,” “all blue spheres must be touching,” or “no spheres may be placed on top of green spheres.” After a few plays, Dimension is the sort of game you’ll wind up buying simply so that you can play it further and have more opportunities to redeem yourself. This may or may not have happened to me. Dimension was a 2014 Essen title that has only recently made its way to North America. It is now available in stores and online. As of now, the game’s unique hook is its combat resolution. For each contested territory, players shift their forces across three smaller battles, the resolution of which affects other battles, armies, and the state of the board in different ways. This sort of game has been attempted before, though, so Cry Havoc is treading the same ground upon which others have failed to deliver. However, with the strength of the demo at BGG.CON and the title’s connection to Portal Games (who have a stunning track record of high quality releases), this game is one you can get excited about. Following Mombasa‘s Essen debut, publisher R&R Games had a BGG.CON booth stocked with pre-sale copies, and Mombasa was constantly in play. Thematically, Mombasa puts each player in command of a 19th-century trading company establishing its business in Africa. While this theme may understandably be a turn-off for some, the gameplay is solid. Hype for breakout designer Alexander Pfister is also riding high, as he has now managed to put four games into BGG’s top 1000 rank in just over one year (Isle of Skye, Port Royal, and Broom Service). R&R Games is positioning Mombasa for wide North American release in December. For this new edition, the staff at FFG stripped Fury of Dracula down before building it back up with a restructured combat system and a new mechanic that allows Dracula to cast misdirections. The artwork and graphic design has also been completely redone, making this re-release the definitive edition. Most gamers are simply happy to no longer pay eBay prices for this “grail game,” so a slate of positive changes is icing on the cake. Fury of Dracula is available now at game stores, and direct from Fantasy Flight.