Around the Table Q1 2024 by Fahy-Williams Publishing

Q1 2024 The Game Within the Game Q&A with Daryll Johnson

The Power of Board Games on the Battlefield, Classroom and Prison System

Legendary: What If…?

by Jade Sigmund, Marketing Coordinator of Entertainment Products, Upper Deck

elcome to our long-awaited new core set – Legendary: What If…? This set is based on the hit Disney+ animated series Marvel Studios’ What If...?, which is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and inspired by the classic Marvel What If...? comic series. This 350-card set includes brand-new content and contains everything you need to play the game. Fight against four new masterminds, four new schemes, five new villain groups and three new henchmen groups using eight new heroes and five new special bystanders! You will explore parallel realities and significant moments around the Multiverse from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel Studio’s What If…? recently aired its second season, revisiting the vast multiverse with twists on classic Marvel Cinematic moments. Our thematic new core set captures Season 1, where Uatu the Watcher views the horrifying turning points in different, parallel dimensions. Everything comes to a head when Ultron gains all six Infinity Stones, conquers his Earth and attempts to invade the entire multiverse. The Watcher breaks his oath not to interfere, gathering heroes from upperdeck.com

alternate dimensions: Peggy Carter who took the Super Soldier Serum instead of Steve Rogers, T’Challa who was kidnapped from Earth to become StarLord instead of becoming Black Panther, Doctor Strange who dangerously stole the souls of demons to resurrect his lost love, and more. Now, you can team up with heroes to undergo a journey far beyond the limits of this world! For anyone who hasn’t experienced our deckbuilding game Legendary, the game itself fights back against you, with a different dark mastermind pursuing a different evil scheme. Only you can stop them by recruiting heroes, fighting villains and eventually challenging the mastermind themself. For our experienced Legendary players, the game system has some key updates in Legendary: What If…?. We’ve updated the rules for Solo Mode as well as games with larger player counts. These changes should improve the feel and flow of games. There also is now a “Starting HQ Mulligan” if multiple cards in the starting HQ cost seven or more, making early game recruiting more accessible. We’re introducing new keyword abilities in Legendary: What If…? First, we have the namely What If…? keyword. This highlights how a hero’s destiny can

pivot on a single crucial choice, with consequences that spill through the rest of that dimension. Players will guess the class or hero name of the card on top of their deck; if they’re correct, they will get the abilities on the card with the What If…? keyword. Additional new keywords include Soulbind and Liberate. Soulbind incorporates defeated villains your Victory Pile to set off effects. Liberate adds more attack only against villains holding bystanders or the mastermind. With these new abilities on your team, you’ll be able to take down the new masterminds such as Zombie Wanda and Ultron Infinity! If you or a friend has considered exploring the expansive Legendary family, Legendary: What If…? is a perfect starting point. Long-time players also won’t want to miss 350 cards of all-new content. This core set is 100 percent compatible with all Legendary expansions, and fits especially well with other sets from the MCU, such as Legendary: Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy and Legendary: Marvel Studios’ Infinity Saga. Team up with heroes from beyond our world and save the multiverse, available now at local hobby shops and at upperdeckstore.com!

Q1 2024 • AROUND THE table

Family-Friendly Fuzzy Fare

Say Hello to Alpaca and Foxy By Anton Torres, Marketing Manager, Pegasus Spiele North America

egasus Spiele is excited to release two breezy family-weight titles from GateOnGames – Alpaca and Foxy. Both games feature delightful illustrations by Stefano Tartarotti, whose bright and cheery artwork is filled with smiling critters, colorful landscapes and a sense of playful optimism. Let’s start with Foxy, a memory game for one to five players that you can teach and play in 15 minutes. From a set of 48 unique environment cards, deal a deck of 19 cards, shuffle in the fox and begin the game. Each round, a card is revealed that displays an environment and one to three

AROUND THE table • Q1 2024

animals. Players must recall how many of the pictured animals had been seen thus far and record that number secretly using the included dry-erase markers and player boards. For example, in Round 5 the card shows a bear and bunny in the forest. Each player will estimate how many total bears and bunnies had been seen across all cards from Rounds 1 through 5. When the fox is drawn, players will instead guess the total number of different animal types they’ve seen. After 20 brisk rounds, players tally scores by flipping through the deck a second time. When a player’s guess is less than or equal to the correct value, they’ll score points equal to their number. However, if their guess is greater than

the actual value, they score zero for that round. It’s incredibly simple but grows hysterically challenging round after round – maybe more so for adults! Once you’ve finished pushing the limits of your memory, you’ll be ready for the entrepreneurial world of Alpaca. This game is a quirky deck-builder that pits two to four players against each other in a race to become the best alpaca farmer. In classic deck-builder style, players begin with identical decks of 10 basic cards and will draw a hand of five cards each turn. At setup, a central market is created with 12 different alpacas that players can purchase during the game. Alpacas can be used for their abilities and are also necessary for scoring points. There are 22 unique alpaca card types in the box, so exciting new strategies can be explored each game simply by changing which 12 alpacas are used in the market. On their turn, a player can purchase one alpaca to add to their deck, send a single alpaca to their farm, or play alpaca cards to trigger abilities. Alpaca abilities range from simple to wild and are thematically linked to the zany artwork and title of each card, e.g. storekeeper, noisemaker, ticket clerk, Viking, snob. There are plenty of fun card combos and plays to discover. Once a player has filled their farm with eight alpacas, the game has nearly ended. Any alpacas at a farm with end game abilities will trigger, then the player with the highest total score win. But since we’re talking about alpacas, don’t we all win?

pegasusna.com

AROUND THE

BOARD OF DIRECTORS OFFICERS

PRESIDENT Eric Price Mejia Board Game Factory Director – Production/Manufacturers VICE-PRESIDENT Grace Collins Snowbright Studio Director – Creator TREASURER Nicole Brady SAHM Reviews Director – Media & Events

Q1 2024

A Publication by the Game Manufacturers Association

GAMA STAFF

John Stacy EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR john.stacy@gama.org

Chris Materni

Cree Luzskia

DEPUTY DIRECTOR

MEETING/EVENTS DIRECTOR

chris.materni@gama.org

cree.luzskia@gama.org

Gregoire Boisbelaud EVENTS COORDINATOR greg.boisbelaud@gama.org

SECRETARY Monica Rasso Meeples at Sea Director – Media & Events

DIRECTORS

Lee Allentuck The Last Gameboard Director – Publisher Rhonda Becker The Gamers Den Director – Retailer

Adam Ziegler

Cynthia Tuck

Bryan Borgman

Julie Yeager

TECHNOLOGY AND CREATIVE MANAGER

EVENTS COORDINATOR

MEMBER SERVICES MANAGER

EXHIBITOR MANAGER

adam.ziegler@gama.org

cynthia.tuck@gama.org

bryan.borgman@gama.org

Paul McGraw

Mike Boseak

Becky Mangan

EVENTS MANAGER

MARKETING/ COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

EDUCATION/ COMMITTEE MANAGER

mike.boseak@gama.org

becky.mangan@gama.org

julie.yeager@gama.org

John Coviello Little Shop of Magic Director – Retail Matt Fantastic Forever Stoked Creative Director – Creative Aldo Ghiozzi KublaCon Director – Wholesale Radek Gronus FABRYKA KART Director – Production/Manufacturer Beau Heath Arcane Tinman Director – Wholesale Jason Matthews Fort Circle Games Director – Publisher Will Niebling Emeritus Director

paul.mcgraw@gama.org

THE GAME MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION 258 East Campus View Blvd Columbus, OH 43235 Phone: 614-255-4500 • Fax: 614-255-4499 • www.gama.org • media@gama.org Around the Table © 2024 The Game Manufacturers Association

PUBLISHED BY

Fahy-Williams Publishing 171 Reed Street, Geneva, NY 14456 P 800-344-0559 • F 315-789-4263 To advertise, contact Amy Colburn at 315-789-6431 or email amy@fwpi.com. Q1 2024 • AROUND THE table

The era of the Alpaca has arrived! This novel deck-builder pits players against each other in the competitive world of alpaca farming. Players each begin with an identical deck of alpaca cards and fence materials. Customize your deck with alpacas from the market and build a strategy to take advantage of each alpaca’s special ability. You’ll score points for alpacas on your farm and end-game bonus cards. The player with the most points is the winner! (Now go pet an alpaca!)

Foxy is a memory and observation game that will keep you on your toes. Each turn, a new card is revealed and players locate all animals on it. Do you remember how many of those creatures you’ve seen up until now? Write your estimate down and score points equal to your number, but if you guess higher than the actual answer, you will score zero points for that round! Fast-playing fun for all ages.

AROUND THE

Q1 2024

A Publication by the Game Manufacturers Association

Features

Adverstories

Game Within 28 The the Game

Tips and tricks to help retail stores sell games, written by the following companies

Q&A with Daryll Johnson

Power of Board 66 The Games on the Battlefield, Classroom and Prison System

Departments 5

GAMA Board and Staff

8 Letter from the Executive Director 94

GAMA News

Index of Advertisers

38, 39, 53, 68, 74, 75

Arcane Tinmen.................................................... 22 BCW Supplies...................................................... 34 Beach House RPGs............................................. 44 Cephalofair Games............................................ 84 Coyote & Crow LLC............................................. 60 Czech Games Edition......................................... 48 Fireside Games LLC............................................ 90 Floodgate Games............................................... 64 Flying Frog Productions.................................... 26 Gale Force 9......................................................... 30 Ghost Galaxy........................................................ 24 Goliath Coins....................................................... 36 Grand Gamers Guild.......................................... 82 HeidelBAR Games.............................................. 76 Incredible Dream................................................ 78 Japanime Games............................................... 80 KTBG/Burnt Island Games................................ 58 Lightspeed Global Distribution....................... 54 Loke Battle Mats................................................. 40 Magpie Games.................................................... 52 Mana Project Studio.......................................... 56 Mighty Boards..................................................... 20 Mind’s Vision........................................................ 12 Old School Dice & Accessories......................... 62 Onyx Path Publishing......................................... 88 Orange Nebula.................................................... 10 Paizo Inc............................................................... 46 Peachstate Hobby Distribution LLC................ 14 Pegasus Spiele North America............................4 Perplext, LLC........................................................ 97 Publisher Services, Inc....................................... 42 Renegade Game Studios.................................. 86 Steve Jackson Games....................................... 98 The Army Painter................................................ 18 The Op Games 1 - USAopoly Inc...................... 32 The Op Games 2 - USAopoly Inc...................... 72 The Op Games 3 - USAopoly Inc...................... 92 Upper Deck.............................................................3 Wyrd Games........................................................ 70

March 3-7, 2024 Louisville, KY Visit Our Advertisers at the GAMA EXPO Booth Number

Company Name

552...................................... 9th Level Games 748........................................Ad Astra Games 1018.....................................All Game Terrain 138.......................................Arcane Wonders 512........................................... BCW Supplies 1305................................Beach House RPGs 152..................................Cephalofair Games 714...................Czech Games Edition (CGE) 380...................................................Fiat Lucre 523.........................................Fireside Games 332.......................... Free League Publishing 567.............................................Ghost Galaxy 379.................................................GoChuckle 457............................................ Goliath Coins 618..................................... Incredible Dream 412.....................................Japanime Games 759...................................... Loke Battle Mats 238..........................................Magpie Games 472..............Old School Dice & Accessories 322...........................................................Paizo 644....................................Peachstate Hobby Distribution (PHD) LLC 454..............Pegasus Spiele North America 1205....................................................Perplext 724...............................................................PSi 312........................Renegade Game Studios 420.............................Steve Jackson Games 132..................................... The Army Painter 402..........................................The Op Games 255.........................................Vesuvius Media 234..............................................Wyrd Games

Q1 2024 • AROUND THE table

FROM THE executive director

Dear friends,

n behalf of the GAMA team, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year and thank you for your membership in our association. The staff and I are very excited about the upcoming year as we have a lot of great plans to increase the value of GAMA for our members and look forward to sharing them with you over the coming months. I want to personally invite you to join us at this year’s GAMA EXPO 2024 in Louisville, Kentucky (March 3-7, 2024). We are finalizing the schedule of seminars, game nights and special events, and the full schedule will be on our website as this issue lands in your hands. Visit GAMA.org and click on the GAMA EXPO tab at the top of the page. Among the features for this year is an optional pre-conference half day education track on Sunday March 3 for game designers and a workshop on using Shopify POS in your business hosted

AROUND THE table • Q1 2024

by Andrew Zorowitz of Foam Brain Games. In addition, there will be two networking reception Sunday evening, one for retail members plus one for game designers and publishers. The trade show will kick off Monday March 4 with a keynote presentation from New York Times bestselling author, speaker and entrepreneur Peter Shankman talking about how the future will be run by customer experience. Following his talk, we will have our first networking lunch of the week for all attendees in the ballroom at the convention center. The rest of the program is available on our website. Also make sure to stop by the exhibitor hall to see all the latest and hottest games for 2024! The hall is busting at the seams with nearly 300 exhibitors. It’s going to be a great week. Remember that members receive two complimentary badges to the show. Visit our website to sign up for your badge. See you in Louisville, March 3-7, 2024! Regards, John Stacy, Executive Director

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Wisdom Is Your Only Weapon by Tom Mattson, President, Orange Nebula As you read this, Spirit Fire is igniting Kickstarter, kindling the audience’s appetite for a unique game carefully crafted to perform well in the retail space. Spirit Fire is a non-linear, open-world board game system in which you explore unique fantasy realms on an introspective journey of discovery, wonder and mystery. Your choices matter because you’re not following a story – you ARE the story.

his is a substantive, emotionallydriven experience with aspirations beyond the expected iterations on tactical combat and standard gameplay. To emphasize this vision, there is no combat in Spirit Fire. Instead, this experience finds conflict, pressure and suspense in the countless other challenges life asks us to overcome, including the tensions we face deep within ourselves. In the world of Spirit Fire, wisdom is your only weapon.

The game’s system has two principal pieces: the character box and realm boxes. With the first, you create your character, with which you explore the open-world realm boxes. Across these realms, you tell your story in a campaign of your creation, exploring where you want, pursuing the quests and ideals of your choosing, in an experience some have compared to an MMORPG (like World of Warcraft), but that otherwise defies easy classification. With drop-in/drop-out multiplayer (meaning seamless transitions between solo and cooperative play), multiple openworld realms coming at launch (with many more in development) and a plan for a continuous stream of quest packs that can be played in any realm, Spirit Fire is a deeply customizable, ongoing experience. Spirit Fire is our second game to utilize this format, where players have a core box through which they explore subsequent small-box releases. The first, Unsettled, has raised more than $4.8 million in crowdfunding and continues gathering steam in retail. Each small-box release renews interest in the game and expands the audience, resulting in a franchise that is growing each year. Spirit Fire evolves this format further by enabling a continuous campaign and deeper emotional investment. At Orange Nebula, we pour ourselves into each game, treating them as longterm franchises with continual support to encourage a vibrant community and consistent demand. Vindication came out in 2017 and sales increase every year.

AROUND THE table • Q1 2024

Unsettled released in 2021 and is growing even faster. Our metrics suggest Spirit Fire is going to blow them both away. We respect you immensely. Every day your store’s doors open is a testament to herculean effort. We aim to honor that effort by never releasing anything that will find itself in your markdown bin. We believe Spirit Fire is a special game, the type of game your store deserves. We hope it serves you well. orangenebula.com

In Infaernum, You Create the Apocalypse Then You Have to Survive It

by Otavio Lessa, President, Mind’s Vision

hile you read this, Infaernum has been generating buzz on a crowdfunding campaign with a bold take on OSR (Old School Renaissance, a simple playstyle movement that draws inspiration from the earliest days of tabletop RPGs). You get to create a setting for the end of the reality – any reality – and you get to live the final seven days in it. Medieval, sci-fi, historical, present-day, you name it. Everything starts with a prophecy, a major event that triggers the end of all things. Then, the rules will introduce events – random occurrences from the last days. It will be up to you to interpret and reinterpret them in the story being told. For example, the manifestation of the apocalyptic horsemen could mean something completely different in your 12

AROUND THE table • Q1 2024

narrative. Infaernum allows you to treat whatever you wish as a metaphor. An apocalypse where the fallen are the result of religious oppression? An apocalypse where the fallen are machines that turned against humanity? An apocalypse where investigators try to prevent the awakening of an ancient fallen? Or maybe there is no apocalypse at all, just exploration of dungeons and plundering of treasures? What happens after the end? All of this is possible with Infaernum, without any adaptation acrobatics, as thematic changes do not influence the rules. It can even be used as a layer on top of your favorite RPG campaign of any system. The game supports solo, co-op and traditional guided play with the help of a player in the role of a storyteller or gamemaster. In all cases, the players need only three types of rolls: 1d6 for questions, 2d6 for ideas and 3d6 for actions. While there will be special dice, any dice will work. The game can be as simple or as complex as you desire, with control over the level of randomness and difficulty, with multiple optional tools to add many layers to your tale. Character generators, an Oracle to assist with choices in solo or co-op play, extra challenges, and support to use decks of playing cards and even tarot to enhance gameplay are just some of the features included. With gorgeous artwork and a luxurious presentation, Infaernum is a unique game that can change forever your perception of RPGs and story-driven gameplay. Pack your bags and grab your tools because you are going on a journey through the end of your world. Disclaimer: Infaernum is an RPG that deals with dark themes and adult situations, as well as negative feelings and emotions. The game’s setting also features creatures, imagery and situations that are entirely fictional, not representing any actual religion, cult or formal set of beliefs. This is a work of fiction, and all names, characters, terms, events and incidents are products of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance with actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or organizations is purely coincidental. Reader discretion is advised. minds-vision.com

TTRPG Favorites Cast in Midnight Blue

by Marie Canter, Professor at the Arcania School of Dragonology

xpand your collection of Midnight Blue RPG accessories and let your characters emerge from behind the depths of your midnight adventures. In the hallowed hours of midnight, darkness moves in every form, and little is lit but for the speckles of light straining their way through the forest cover. The full moon overhead fuels their fight as they make their way in between the vast shadows of the trees, ground foliage and odd creatures. A steady, calm shuffling announces the approach of one such creature. The Grand Wizard approaches at a slow pace. He seems to know the way, though the organic growth reveals no pathway. One by one, the speckles of light draw near him and hover near his graceful strides over the vines, leaves and branches. With time and patience, he arrives at a modest forest clearing. The awning of trees gives way to an open space that embraces the cool light from the full moon. He comes to a standstill at its center and raises his staff towards the orb nestled in the deep blue heavens above. The speckles of light flitter and disappear into the staff, suddenly lighting it from within. A bright blue light emanates from its core, searing the clearing in a blinding shot of absolute clarity. Just as quickly as it appeared, it is gone. The Grand Wizard lowers the staff solemnly. As it touches the underground, 14

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a rustling of movement shudders over the growth. Vines twist and leaves shuffle. Branches stretch and recoil. Within a few moments they all retreat, leaving two items on display on the bare forest floor. A mellow, kind chuckle slips from the Grand Wizard’s tangle of a beard. A new light has found its way into the forest: it nestles in his dark blue eyes as they gaze on the two items. The chuckle fades away and a relaxed sigh escapes. “Finally,” he whispers for only the midnight moon to hear, “Finally my collection is complete.” Released into this world with such a magical midnight spell, we are proud to introduce the Midnight Blue Dice Companion and Game Master Companion. They join the rest of the Midnight Blue Dragon Shield RPG family: the Player’s Companion and the Spell Codex. For all patient collectors, we hope you will draw wisdom from the newest hue. The Midnight Blue carries a mystical element that even we cannot describe fully. Its complex mystery is perhaps perfectly illustrated by the Game Master Companion itself: a seemingly simple,

transportable storage box which hides countless indispensable features to help every Game Master guide their adventure to new levels. Beyond storing your favorite TTRPG books, it can hold miniatures, dice, pens and more. Unfold the GM screen and arrange maps and tables in the clear overlay pockets. Slide monster cards into the top slots and use the elastic straps to lock in phones and assist the adventure. Or, if you seek a simpler assistant, the Dice Companion is a loyal and worthy choice. Its soft satin lining emits the most beautiful sound when dice are cast upon it. With magnetic divider bars, it provides plenty of flexibility no matter where your travels take you. Store your dice and other small accessories within its wall when on the move again. The newest additions to the Dragon Shield RPG family will complete your Midnight Blue RPG accessory collection – or perhaps entice you to begin one from scratch. Available at your local gaming store from PHD Distribution. We wish you perilous and unforgettable adventures!

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AROUND THE table • Q1 2024

The Army Painter

The Smart Retail Solution by Cecilie Randrup Krog, Copywriter, The Army Painter

n the ever-evolving and growing world of hobby paints and accessories, retailers and distributors are continually faced with the challenge of selecting the best products to stock and sell. Amidst a sea of options, choosing what products to sell is not just about selecting a supplier. It’s about partnering with a company that not only understands the intricacies of the industry but also prioritizes your needs and can deliver the products your customers want and need! With our exciting new Warpaints Fanatic range, customers are sure to be on the hunt for the best new miniature paints on the market. In this article, we’ll tell you how The Army Painter is more than just a market leader; it is a valuable partner for your store. What makes The Army Painter special? Over the years, The Army Painter has become a household name for hobbyists and gamers – and has quickly become the most trusted in all miniature painting. There are several reasons for this. With The Army Painter’s Racks, any miniature games retailer can create a one-stop shop with products such as the revamped, high-performance Warpaints Fanatic range, the industry-leading airbrush-ready Warpaints Air range and 18

AROUND THE table • Q1 2024

the popular Speedpaint range combined with our high-value Color Primers, tools and accessories. With the racks, you have everything a hobbyist needs to assemble, paint and base their miniatures.

to comfortably promote the range, knowing with certainty that the product is accessible when needed. Excellent and accessible – the launch is simply not a success if the products do not deliver on both.

We can supply The Army Painter is known for our ability to supply. Retailers trust that when they put a rack in their store, they can restock it easily! And the numbers speak to that. We dispatch, on average, within three workdays for road orders and 10 days for orders on sea. Great distribution partners in North America ensure the product is available when needed. In 2023, we supplied 98 percent of all units ordered from our warehouse. Although hard to beat, we are committed to being even better than that in 2024 – including the release of Warpaints Fanatic, which is arguably the biggest product launch we have ever had. We want retailers

Customer-centric approach At the heart of our operation is an unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction – to our retailers, distributors and end-consumers. As Adam Abramowicz, tactical marketing executive, puts it: “When a retailer puts one of our racks in their store, they aren’t just putting our product in their store. They are providing our brand with valuable real estate on their floor. So, it’s important that we can deliver for them, because the hardest bottle of paint to sell is one that you can’t keep in stock.” The Army Painter uniquely understands the needs of the customer and retailer, which is what makes us a trustworthy brand and the right choice for all miniature paints and accessories.

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Art Society

The Most Artistic Top 10 Game of 2023! by Eveline Foubert, Marketing Manager, Mighty Boards

rt Society is a new two- to fourplayer, tile laying, family game from Mighty Boards. The game was a standout hit at Essen Spiel 2023, selling out within a day. It has been receiving rave reviews. The game has made several “top 10 games 2023” lists, including ThinkerThemer, The Dice Tower, The Broken Meeple, Man vs Meeple, Tantrum House, Board Gaming Ramblings, BoardgameSteph, Board Stupid and more! In Art Society, you are an art connoisseur trying to impress your peers by putting together the most fashionable art collection of them all! You bid on the hottest works of art, then arrange them 20

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on your drawing room wall into a tastefully curated gallery that’s the envy of the local art scene. But fashion is fleeting, and trends are difficult to predict. The paintings that you and your fellow collectors do not buy will eventually make their way to the museum, changing the worth of your collection. Art Society has excellent shelf presence with a beautiful double layered box featuring a few of the more than 100 original paintings in the game, most inspired by the world’s most iconic works of art. Inside, the game comes with a custom velveted insert/organizer and embossed player boards, making it a tactile product that players will want to hold and interact with. All of this while achieving a $40 MSRP.

With simple, intuitive rules that take less than 5 minutes to explain and an irresistible look, Art Society makes a fantastic gateway game for those new to the hobby, and the mechanics reward repeated plays and careful planning to keep even seasoned gamers engaged. Art Society’s combination of its look, tactile product design, easy to learn mechanics and this accessible price point set it to become a staple on your gateway or family games shelf and an easy, reliable recommendation for your customers. See what the buzz is about and order your copies now! Contact sales@mightyboards.com or your distributor to place your order.

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Fortress and Sanctuary: A Protective Fortification for Your TCG Collection at Home

by Marie Canter, Professor at the Arcania School of Dragonology

lear your shelves and wipe them clean – new inhabitants are moving in. They’re ready to hunker down and anchor their foundation to make your shelves their new, permanent abode. Sleek casings in white and black make them appear nearly invisible, but as the light casts its rays over their surface, dragons appear. Please bid welcome to the Fortress Card Drawers and Sanctuary Slipcase Binders. Their arrival in your local gaming store is heralded for this spring. Fortress and Sanctuary came into being with an auspicious start, for the dragon’s lair was sizzling with creative craftsmanship on this fortuitous day. In the lair, protection is always top of mind. As the massive reptiles huddled over the forge’s flames, they were inspired by the simplicity and duality of dark and light. And so, the forge production began. Again and again, the hammer struck the beaten anvil, and the sturdy form of the first Fortress Card Drawers began to take shape. It was proudly presented to the forge master, who marveled at the clean, sleek, yet unmistakably well-thought-out expression the card drawers featured. The mastery of the craftsmanship lay in the details so neatly packed away in the overall clean form. Housed in a strong and sturdy cardboard frame, the three drawers slid easily into place. Each of the drawers seemed to store so much! More than 17 Cube Shells were safely nestled in a single drawer, and when the forge master tested the storage capacity for single-sleeved cards, his heavily fanged jaw seemed to drop. More than 435 TCG cards of his own personal collection were securely encased in one 22

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drawer. Realizing that there was more room for storage than he had cards at the ready, he created a foam divider to safely hold and organize the remaining drawer. In the same spirit of magical creation, the forge dragons drew the Sanctuary Slipcase Binder out of the flames. Held upright in its strong encasing, the binder featured heavy-duty D-ring mechanisms deeply riveted into its covers. The creative team of dragons even designed the binder in such a way that the Pocket Pages it held would rest their weight on the bottom of the binder slipcase when stored. That way, the pages and binder mechanisms were released from long-term strain, and their pristine condition was cared for.

Currently, Fortress and Sanctuary are cooling off from the flames of the forge. When they are released into the TCG community, they are ready to lay their foundation on your shelves. As both are available in black and white, their combination and the overall expression is up to you. Leave the protection and durability to the dragon’s forge. On April 19, we invite you, curious reader, to discover the storage capacity and heavy-duty endurance of this organizational wonder. Visit your local gaming store to see the Fortress Card Drawers and Sanctuary Slipcase Binders for yourself. arcanetinmen.com

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AT-33700 | BLACK | MSRP: $38,99 AT-33701 | WHITE | MSRP: $38,99

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Changing the Landscape of KeyForge Every Scrap Brings Grim Reminders

by Jeremy Culver, Marketing Coordinator, Ghost Galaxy

n Fall 2018, Fantasy Flight Games released the innovative card game, KeyForge, which became a massive hit, selling more than six million decks (and counting). Unlike most trading card games, KeyForge is sold as complete, procedurally-generated decks. Each KeyForge deck is completely unique and playable right out of the wrapper. This made it appealing to traditional TCG players and board gamers alike, with its great gameplay invoking deep levels of strategy. Now published by Ghost Galaxy, we dive into the shadows of the Crucible, the ever-evolving world of KeyForge, in the next set, KeyForge: Grim Reminders. KeyForge: Grim Reminders is the seventh set for KeyForge, and the second to be published under Ghost Galaxy. As with past sets, Grim Reminders brings a number of exciting elements for players to explore and master in the race to unlock the Vaults. One such element is that it welcomes a new house for players 24

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to call upon, the Geistoids. Geistoids are a fusion of discarded refuse, animated by psychic energy of Æmber and driven to wreak vengeance on a neglectful universe. Every scrap of detritus cast aside by the living is a potential new minion to swell their ranks. With the Geistoids harnessing the power of discarded things, they display the mastery of the new haunted mechanic. A player is haunted any time they have 10 or more cards in their discard pile. This new mechanic adds additional play interactions with the discard pile never explored before in previous sets. Now, instead of looking to cycle your deck as quickly as possible, players may want to discard cards to get haunted, then work on how they can remain haunted for as long as possible. Playing on the theme of “scrap,” Grim Reminders introduces new scrap effects to the game. These resolve when a player discards a card from their hand with a scrap effect during their turn. Discarding unwanted cards from your hand has always been a part of playing KeyForge, but now it could mean gaining

extra benefits from discarding the right cards at the right time. As with all KeyForge sets, Grim Reminders is fully compatible with previous sets. This means players can challenge others to a race to forge three keys even if they don’t have the latest set. In addition to Geistoid, players will join arms with returning houses: Brobnar, Ekwidon, Star Alliance, Mars, Untamed and Unfathomable. These houses and the more than 240 new cards added to the set will see players seeking to find the right combination to fit their playstyle. When they aren’t searching for that perfect combination, they’ll be looking for the new rare “Revenants.” These cards are spectral heroes from the Crucible’s past, now serving houses that none would expect. There’s never been a better time to join or return to KeyForge and embark on the journey to unlock the mysteries of the Vault in a world of infinite possibilities. KeyForge: Grim Reminders will be available in hobby retail stores in March 2024. ghostgalaxy.com

H C ! I S H R E B W M T A T H IN S, R EME REM A

ck ique de n u e iv t in ova the inn Geistoid to jo in t e s r h House the 7t ing ove d is ic t d s a r A . e m s d t ig , en ecre ted emin the new k the Vaults' s nics like Haun Grim R : n e o g p r u o loc cha g to l call KeyF es to un aster new me Archons racin yers wil it r la o P v . a e f f yo gam to m ious ith prev yers will learn rge communit w s e c r la fo e la eck cards, p y join th ly one d le n 240 new effects as the ictory. O . y imp d pla ap rv in in an s. It features s and Scr ssary fo jo e c o e t it n r e s n ey making ny play reatest Archo in a forge k r e o iv f d y eas g to he g akes it l even t for those willin ers alike! m a e iv g r r o o t lay ed gy KeyF is need t deep strate board game p r e y la p e and per lay, y gamep ing card game t r a t s to rad ng for t appeali AVAILABLE TO HOBBY RETAIL STORES IN MARCH 2024

LEARN MORE AT KEYFORGING.COM

Magik of the Dark Stone Shaman Unleashed by Sarah McGrath, Distribution and Retail Relations Lead, Flying Frog Productions

he world of Shadows of Brimstone is filled with unspeakable terrors and hordes of deadly creatures, but there are also powerful and cunning heroes to stand against the darkness! Though players have had many different options of heroes to play over the years – each with different stats, abilities and unique Upgrade paths to follow – the Native American Dark Stone Shaman has been highly anticipated as a retail release! Last year saw the release of the Gates of Valhalla and Valley of the Serpent Kings Adventure Sets, giving players more ways than ever to begin their journey into Shadows of Brimstone, also adding a host of different themes to pick from when choosing which heroes to play. This year sees more new heroes for these Norse and Age of Exploration themes coming to retail, but will kick things off with a hero from the Old West theme that started it all, the tribal Magikwielding Dark Stone Shaman!

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Players have been waiting for the release of this hero for a long time, as a powerful shapeshifting character harnessing the energy of Brimstone’s most valuable and dangerous resource … Dark Stone. The Dark Stone Shaman is a hero focused on their connection with nature and the potent power lying within the corrupting black rock. Using this power, the Shaman brings their tribal Magik to life, casting spells from three different spell decks: Battle, Protection and Shapeshifting. With many different spells to choose from, players decide the style and path they want their Shaman to take, as a fierce warrior using the Dark Stone to fuel their own attacks, a protective support character providing their teammates with magical wards and healing or a cunning shapeshifter unleashing the animal spirits of the ancestors by transforming into different animal forms. The Dark Stone Shaman will feel right at home in the Old West core sets of City of the Ancients and Swamps of Death, but they can be introduced into any campaign as part of Brimstone’s fully

modular design. Will your players lead them into battle amongst the Vikings of the Norse Lands, or create a powerful team of Magik users in the Forbidden Fortresses of Japan? Since otherworldly gates can be found within every Brimstone world, there are no shortage of reasons one can imagine for the Dark Stone Shaman to appear and join the fight against the darkness, no matter which theme and setting your players choose to explore. The Dark Stone Shaman Hero Pack comes with all of the cards and spell decks needed to play, the hero character sheet, Upgrade Skill Tree and counters, as well as highly-detailed plastic miniatures for both the male and female versions of the hero, and plastic miniatures for transforming into a large bear form, a deadly wolf form and the nimble and versatile mouse form! Players will have the chance to harness the power of the Dark Stone and unleash their inner animal form this spring, when the Shadows of Brimstone Dark Stone Shaman Hero Pack arrives to retail on March 21!

flyingfrog.net

The Game Within the Game

arylle Johnson, owner of Right Wrong Games, enjoyed a unique opportunity in 2023: A chance to take part in Squid Game: The Challenge, a reality competition inspired by the South Korean fictional series. Johnson walked us through her career as a self-publisher, her experience on the show, and how her role in tabletop gaming played a part.

What brought you to the tabletop industry?

I was raised by a professional athlete who instilled the importance of mental grit and perseverance. My mom, on the other hand, encouraged me to chase my dreams and see beyond societal norms. These influences led me to unconventional career paths, eventually bringing me to the world of board games. Before diving into tabletop games, I successfully ran a hip-hop dance studio in Surrey, Canada, which unfortunately closed during the pandemic. Looking for a new venture that allowed flexibility to live abroad and under the sun, I delved into e-commerce through an Amazon FBA course. This journey, coupled with a friend’s idea for a card game inspired by a real-life office spat, unexpectedly dropped me into the tabletop game industry.

What made you want to participate in the live action reality TV version of Squid Game?

Q&A with Daryll Johnson

Having battled social anxiety throughout my life, the idea of speaking on camera was once daunting. However, on my nomadic journey through Mexico, with the constant exposure to meeting new people, I was pushed outside of my comfort zone. I saw Squid Game as the ultimate challenge to test my newfound social confidence in a high-pressure environment with cameras, 456 strangers and constant surprises.

How did the pressure compare to producing and releasing a game?

The pressure in Squid Game contrasted sharply with the meticulous planning involved in tabletop game design. Creating and publishing games involve strategic control, including playtesting the core game loop and A/B testing ads, price 28

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undertones. I took some time after the show to reflect on what makes me the happiest and what I want to offer the world. I realized the joy in childhood games and how important it is for adults to play and have laughter. Life can be so serious, and I want my games to help make adults feel like kids again–even just for a moment. That’s why I made Tiger Banana Pancake.

As a small business owner, how did those leadership skills come into play during the games?

points and visuals. Conversely, Squid Game lacked predictability, demanding on-the-spot, unscripted reactions with no room for correction. The lack of predictability in the show definitely heightened the intensity compared to real life business and product design. However, Squid Game is just a game, and when you leave, it doesn’t have a tangible effect on my professional and personal life. So, I’d say producing a game has more pressure!

Did you take advantage of the show to have people play tabletop games during your downtimes?

During filming, everything was taken from us–no phones, no personal items, not even a toothbrush or socks! All we had was each other, and we made the most of it by playing social deduction games like werewolf, volleyball made from socks and underwear, and even ninja slap! I did send prototypes of my game, Tiger Banana Pancake, to fellow

contestants after Squid game and it was really fun seeing the videos of them having fun with it.

What’s next for you and your company? Are you leveraging your newly acquired fame for your business? I’m really excited for what’s coming up next! I’m launching Tiger Banana Pancake in January 2024 – it’s a wild party game blending Simon Says and speed. I’m also working onShips vs. Squids, a game inspired by my time on the show. While I don’t consider myself famous, I recognize the importance of growing my personal brand as an entrepreneur.

What (if any) new perspectives did playing such a competitive game bring to creating a tabletop experience?

Prior to Squid Game, my company Right Wrong Games was making light strategy card games with serious

While I knew that volunteering as the Lieutenant would increase my chance of elimination to 50 percent, it was my chance to showcase leadership and bridge my life as a board game designer with the show. As a former dancer and dance studio owner, it wasn’t my first time on stage and I wanted to take the opportunity. So much of the experience at Squid Game was outside of the games and challenges. The whole experience felt like a psychological experiment. I found that understanding human dynamics, navigating when to stand out and when to stay silent was especially important. To be liked and known by the right people was a ticket to getting further in the show. This proved itself true a few times, but not all of it made it into the show.

Anything else you want to share about the experience? Go after your dreams! Getting started is the hardest part – whether it’s applying for a reality tv show, starting a business, moving abroad, making a board game or meeting new people, do the things that scare you. In a world that promotes perfection, know that it’s okay to be imperfect and that it’s only failure if you give up. Enjoy the journey and take challenges for lessons.

Feel free to follow my journey and get a peek at behind the scenes on my TikTok account, @daryllejohnson and @rightwronggame, and check out my new game at tigerbananapancake. com. Q1 2024 • AROUND THE table

THE GROWING POPULARITY OF 2-PLAYER GAMES By Matt Vaughan - GF9 Studio Manager In recent years, the realm of board gaming has witnessed a notable surge in the popularity of twoplayer games. These more intimate experiences offer a unique opportunity for players to engage on a smaller scale offering a personal while still intense gaming experience. At GF9 we have many boardgames that can be played with 2 players, including Firefly: The Game, Dr. Who: Don’t Blink, and Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps. Our latest game “Star Trek: Away Missions” joins this group. A tactical miniatures battle, Away Missions was designed as a 2-player game first and foremost, allowing you to outwit, out plan, and outplay your opponent in singular combat.

Why 2 Players?

Replayability Playing two player games offers a great opportunity to play the same opponent time and time again. This means the game needs to offer great replayability. From games like chess with deep strategy, to collectible card games with almost unlimited expansions – a good two player game offers opportunities to battle your opponent time and time again. In Star Trek: Away Missions the tactical nature of the game, and with the mission deck determining how you will need to play to win, no two games will ever play alike. Add to that the ability to construct your deck to try different strategies (or even grab a whole new away team!) means you can play the same opponent many times and always have a new challenge.

Two player games offer a great opportunity to play more games! Gone are the days when boardgame nights required gathering a large group of people. With 2 player boardgames, you can enjoy all the excitement and strategy with just one other person. This makes it ideal for couples, roommates, or those who simply prefer more intimate gatherings. No more waiting for everyone to arrive or organizing schedules - just grab your favorite game and start playing!

The explosion in popularity of 2 player boardgames has transformed the way we approach game nights. With the ability to enjoy gaming experiences with smaller groups and the opportunity for quality time with your partner, these games have captured the hearts of many enthusiasts. So next time you are planning a game night, grab your favourite crew, your favourite opponent, and throw down in the Battle for Wolf 359 - you won’t be disappointed!

Whether you’re competing against each other or working together as a team, these games allow you to strengthen your bond while having loads of fun. From intense battles to cooperative challenges, there’s something for every couple’s gaming preference.

Star Trek: Away Missions is available now.

Star Trek: Away Missions, like many 2-player games, also offers a great in-store experience. Take your Away Team to your local game store, and meet new and like-minded players. With tournament support through the Organised Play kit, it’s a great opportunity to meet new opponents, and new friends!

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gf9.com

Gnome Hollow by Pat Marino, Director of Hobby Games, The Op Games

lmost two years ago, The Op made a strategic decision to create new teams focused on specific product categories including party games, co-branded games and hobby games. Our Hobby Games team is committed to creating games for Hobby Ambassadors. We define this group as folks who game as a primary hobby and are looking for engaging and approachable games to share with friends and family who may be newer to tabletop strategy games. We specifically seek out new games with rules that are quick to teach, intuitive to remember and offer a meaningful decision space that keeps both new and experienced gamers

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engaged in the action. For this reason, we fell in love with Gnome Hollow from Ammon Anderson. Gnome Hollow is a mix of tile placement and light worker placement that is easy to teach, with quick turns that still allow for deeply satisfying combos. What makes this game so approachable is the combination of streamlined rules, the theme and stunning watercolor artwork. In addition to designing the gameplay, Ammon Andreson also created all the watercolor artwork by hand. He then scanned the originals and enhanced them digitally to create a whimsical world that players want to visit again and again. From the start, Anderson had a vision for the world of Gnome Hollow, and even the prototype featured stunning artwork. With the support

of our Art Director Arlo Hitzemann, Anderson has taken the look of the game to a whole new level while maintaining the charm that so many play testers and early reviewers fell in love with. In addition, Manny Vega (Flamecraft) was brought in to help write narrative for the rules and box that immerses players into the story of the game in a way we think fans will love. In the game, each player has a pair of gnomes that they will use to harvest and trade mushrooms to collect points. At the start of their turn, players place two tiles to form mushroom rings in a central garden area. Larger rings are more challenging to build but offer more opportunity to harvest valuable mushrooms and activate bonus abilities. After placing two tiles, players take a single worker placement action with one of their gnomes to either claim a mushroom ring, visit a signpost to gain bonuses, collect wildflowers or to trade mushrooms at the Pinwheel Market for treasure. Players earn points by using clever planning to collect treasures, by completing rings and for gathering unique wildflowers. With three different end game conditions, it is important to be efficient and keep a close eye on the competition. The Op is incredibly proud to be partnering with Anderson to launch Gnome Hollow at Gen Con 2024. The game has already been shown at many conventions and playtesting events and was a huge hit at GAMA Trade Show 2023, leading to many competing offers from game publishers in the U.S. and Europe. The Op has already begun a long-term marketing plan to build further excitement for the game, including early media previews and demos of the game. Keep an eye on The Op social channels for more updates on the artwork and game play, or visit our booth at GAMA for a demo! sales@usaopoly.com

Gnome Hollow is a beautiful Eurogame featuring spatial, tile placement/worker placement mechanics where players grow a tabletop garden of mushrooms and flowers. Players place tiles to develop rings of valuable mushrooms. Once completed, they harvest each mushroom, choose bonuses, and eventually carry their mushrooms to market to sell for the shiniest treasures available in the hollow. Player boards automatically calculate scores while simultaneously offering strategic decisions. This whimsical game is watercolored to celebrate the full beauty of nature.

12+

2-4

Improve Your Collection with the BCW Card Catalog by John Parker, BCW Supplies

ardboard boxes have been the standard for storing cards for decades. They do the job, but they aren’t the most elegant solution. To address this, we introduced the 3200 and 1600 Collectible Card Bins for those looking for long-lasting bulk card storage. With that in mind, we would like to introduce the 6 Drawer Card Catalog for collectors wanting an appealing storage solution that allows easy access to cards. Like our Collectible Card Bins, these are made of acid-free plastic that adds a sleek and professional look to your collection. Like the card bins, the drawers in the card catalog have slots that hold card partitions. These can create subdivisions within each drawer or act as a bookend to keep cards in a partially filled drawer from falling over. Each card catalog comes with six partitions,

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and more are available separately. If you need further organization, our tall card dividers work perfectly in the drawers. Each drawer has a slot at the front that holds an included top loader. This allows you to customize a label for each drawer, letting you keep track of your collection easily. Each drawer also has a convenient handle, letting you pull drawers easily, as well as stops to prevent you from accidentally pulling them out of the catalog. If you do want to remove a drawer, simply lift the drawer slightly while fully extended. As mentioned previously, the card catalogs are made of heavy-duty plastic, making these more stackable compared to corrugated cardboard options. The card

catalogs need a little assembly. You will need to snap the pull handles into each of the drawers and attach the four optional feet that can raise the unit or help it lock in place when stacked on another unit. They also come with clips which attach the catalog to a neighbor, adding security or stability. If you prefer to use existing shelving, the card catalogs fit perfectly in an IKEA Kallax or similar systems. Each drawer is 14-3/8 inches long, and wide enough to hold BCW top loaders or magnetic card holders. Each drawer will hold about 700 loose sports cards, 1,150 loose gaming cards, 210 cards in standard toploaders, or 45 cards in 35 pt magnetics. Card catalogs will look great at home or at the local shop. The sophisticated style will fit in with nearly any decor. It is perhaps the first storage box you won’t want to hide away in a closet. As such, this is perfect for stores that want to reach or retain WPN Premium status, or collectors that want to show how seriously they take their hobby. Whether you collect Magic, Pokémon, Flesh and Blood, or any other card in between, the BCW 6 Drawer Card Catalog is the ultimate storage solution. bcwsupplies.com

IRIDIAN Card Sleeves

• Ultra thick 130 microns for durability • Clear glossy front for optimal card viewing • Matte, textured ﬁnish for best possible shuue • Safe for storage [Acid Free] • 100 per pack • Available in: Red, blue, green, yellow, black, white, mulberry, sky, petrol, and silver. Look for more colors coming soon at bcwsupplies.com/iridian

If You Carry This Game, Squirrel Fans Will Come! by Joe Ward, Game Designer, Goliath Coins

n the movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner heard a voice saying, “If you build it, he will come.” If you carry this game, Squirrel Fans will come! A lot of them. More than you thought existed. Many of you know us as the creators of Dice Coins and Goliath Coins. While we love producing our fantasy and pop culture coins, we are also avid gamers. More than a year ago, we were introduced to an obscure card game called Swoop which uses standard poker cards. While we thought it was a great

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game and loved playing it, we saw flaws that needed to be fixed and had ideas on how to dramatically improve the game play. Essentially, we needed to create a new game with Swoop as the inspiration. We also thought it should have custom themed cards. Immediately, we knew it had to feature squirrels! One of the first coins we designed featured an RPG Ranger character. As an afterthought, our artist put a squirrel on his shoulder. Our Kickstarter backers loved this and demanded the squirrel have its own coin. We subsequently created two squirrel coins and they have turned out to be our most popular coins! For example, a week prior to Gen Con, we did a post in the Facebook group “Fans of Gen Con.” It gave our booth number and featured several of our coins, including the squirrel. We were stunned that over the four days of Gen Con, we had several hundred people come to our booth wanting to buy the squirrel coin. Either they loved squirrels themselves or knew someone who did. That is when we truly started to appreciate the power of the squirrel! Of course, if the squirrel was being featured in the game, then the game itself

had to be worthy! We spent the next year experimenting, refining and playtesting Squirrels The Card Game. The universal reaction is that people love the game. Many call it addicting. It is fast, fun and easy to learn. It plays just as well for two players as it does for eight. It is hard to believe, but there are some people who don’t like squirrels. However, even those people love the game! For squirrel fans, we have amazing artwork featuring the six major species of squirrels in the United States. In the game, players battle to get the lowest score each round by getting rid of their cards. Push, skip and wild cards wreak havoc on you and your opponents! Use the powerful squirrel cards to instantly clear the center pile of cards and keep your turn going! Each game is challenging, unpredictable and exciting. This is a game that everyone will go nuts over! We are taking pre-orders now for shipment in June. If you are attending the GAMA Expo, you can see demo copies at the Goliath Coins booth. We hope to see you there. friendzygames.com

KeyForge: Grim Reminders from Ghost Galaxy is the seventh set of the world’s first unique deck game. It introduces a new house, Geistoid, along with new mechanics to learn and master. sales@ghostgalaxy.com

Get The Easter Escapade from the Grand Gamers Guild and all the Holiday Hijinks titles in your store.

Wolves from Coyote & Crow, a semi-cooperative game for three to six players, is available starting in April! Order from your favorite distributor or visit Coyote & Crow’s website.

marc@grandgamersguild.com 616-916-1179

coyoteandcrow.net/retailers

In Kutná Hora from Czech Games Edition, master the intricacies of a dynamic supply and demand economy as you mine silver, expand guild influences and build a historic Czech city and beautiful Gothic cathedral. czechgames.com/en/kutna-hora

Time Division from HeidelBÄR Games involves strategic planning, clever reversals and animal antics in this time-traveling dueling card game. Battle across three distinct eras in a bid to gain control of a collapsing temporal rift. heidelbaer.de/en/heidelbaer-games-en/ time-division

Dragonbane Bestiary from Free League Publishing includes no less than 63 wondrous creatures for the player characters to encounter. Among these fantastic beings are nine new playable kin, each with their own unique ability. dragonbane-rpg.com

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Kinfire Delve: Vainglory’s Grotto from Incredible Dream is a standalone card and dice dungeon crawler. With deep cooperative gameplay, premium components and a $20 price, it’ll fly off your shelves. Email Rob Hunt at sales@ incredibledream.com

The Fortress Card Drawers and Sanctuary Slipcase Binder from Arcane Tinmen are designed with every consideration in mind. Mount an impenetrable defense of your valued TCG collection while staying stylish and securing everything. arcanetinmen.com

Iridian Sleeves from Spectrum, powered by BCW Supplies, are tournament-quality sleeves made of thick 130-micron polypropylene in 10 colors. The glossy front and a textured finish on the back give an enhanced, superior shuffle.

The Vale of Eternity from Renegade Game Studios invites you to enter a fantastical world of monsters, spirits and gods! This game features 70 creatures from global myths! Each game is unique and unpredictable.

bcwsupplies.com/iridian

The Dragon’s Fury Dice Tower from Old School Dice & Accessories is beautifully hand-painted and available in three colors. They fit up to 25mm dice and feature the dice exiting from the dragon’s mouth with an additional tray. MSRP $69.99 oldschooldice.com/accessories/dice-trays-towers

Warpaints Fanatic from The Army Painter is the new gold standard for gamers, painters and hobbyists of all skill levels. The Mega Paint Set includes 50 high-quality paints and a free paint station. thearmypainter.com/pages/warpaints-fanatic

More New Products on pages 53, 68, 74, 75

Q1 2024 • AROUND THE table

The Must-Have Accessories for a Growing RPG Sector! by Matt Henderson, Founder and Co-Owner, Loke Battle Mats

s the old saying goes, you only need three things to play an RPG: rules, dice and maps. With 2024 poised to be a hugely exciting year for all things tabletop roleplay with so many eagerly anticipated releases, the expanding Book of Battle Mats range from Loke will have the maps covered! Easter 2024 will see two new releases added to the award-winning Book of Battle Mats range. As with all Loke Battle Mats’ map books, the maps offer incredible value and reusability; generic maps can be used any fantasy RPG for numerous encounter scenarios and easily customized thanks to their wipe clean laminated finish. The innovative 360-degree spine ensures the maps lay completely flat, perfect for use with miniatures and 3D scenery. These RPG map books are hugely useful for anyone planning or running a roleplaying game. The handy 1-inch grid makes planning and running tactical combat encounters a breeze. The detailed artwork really immerses an encounter in the setting, bringing life to the scene. With dozens of maps in handy books at your fingertips, a map for any encounter

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can be produced at a moment’s notice, no need to draw maps mid-game on the fly. The Giant Book of Battle Mats – Wilds, Wrecks & Ruins combines huge maps with all the essential outdoor fantasy RPG themes. From perilous plains to dread desert, river valleys to rugged coasts and mountain tops, this book of 62 beautiful maps will provide the perfect backdrop to infinite encounters. Opening to 24 x 17 inches, the Giant Book of Battle Mats allows unrivalled flexibility, creating the perfect encounter scene in seconds just waiting to be explored. The Big Book of Battle Mats – Wrecks & Ruins shares a fantasy outdoor

theme with its Giant counterpart and features entirely unique map designs. Featuring sites and scenes of special adventuring interest, the Big Book focuses in on where the action will be. From ruins, to cave entrances, bridges, boats and much, much more, The Big Book of Battle Mats is a prefect standalone map book for tactical encounters. It also combines with 3D scenery, miniatures and other terrain to create the focus point of encounters and landscapes. Opening to 12 x 16 inches, The Big Book of Battle Mats is perfect for any fantasy RPG. Each map page can be used individually (the innovative 360-degree spine allows the book to fold fully in half), and combined with the opposing map page when the book is laid open. The book is the perfect size to fit on a bookshelf or in a backpack alongside notes and rulebooks. The laminated finish means the maps are fully wet- and drymarker compatible, making customizing the maps the work of seconds. Loke’s Book of Battle Mats range will continue to be the map products that RPG enthusiasts will be looking for. The full range of RPG map books and RPG accessories from Loke Battle Mats is available from your usual hobby distributor. lokeltd.co.uk

What’s That Game?

Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza by Jenna Schroeder, Director of Communications, Dolphin Hat Games

t Dolphin Hat Games, we take pride in offering top-selling games for your store. With the goal of fun in mind, we design all our games to be easy to learn, quick to play and approachable for everyone. Our most popular game, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, has sold more than 5 million copies, been translated into 20 languages and played in more than 50 countries! It puts a smile on our faces knowing how many people we have helped create fun memories through interactive game play.

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As a retailer, we know you are focused on providing high quality products for your customers that will sell. Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza is popular with all ages, it’s sold at an economical price point and comes in a durable and portable box, making it an easy “yes” for your customers. What inspired this game’s creation? Dave Campbell, the founder of Dolphin Hat Games, and most importantly my big brother, has always been a gamer. From Risk to Nintendo, his childhood was full of game play. After many years in sales, he decided to leverage his creative nature and venture into the world of game design. After some success and failure trying to break into the game industry, one night he landed on an idea that was something special. Channeling elements of some of his

favorite games, Dave took a simple card game and added color confusion, audible cues, physical actions and cute characters and created something entirely new and exciting. Using mostly food emojis for his initial card designs (because hey, he was a little hungry!) Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza was born! The best way to sell? Demo your heart out! Retailers love our games because they move off their shelves quickly! Grab a Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza deck and take out the special cards first. Play a round slowly, explaining as you go. Encourage a steady pace, remind players they can look at the back of the cards for word order and that the goal is to get rid of your cards. Next, explain the three special cards (Gorilla, Groundhog and Narwhal) and their actions. Play another slower-paced round until everyone understands. After that, go for it and have fun! We are big believers in demoing our games, it makes for an easy sale! We are happy to provide demo copies with new accounts and when stores add additional titles. With five seasonal/expansion variations of Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, family party games like 800lb Gorilla and some exciting new launches coming in 2024, our portfolio of games is sure to keep your customers entertained. And get ready to love our characters even more with our new plush game mittens box set, key chains and a soon-to-be-released graphic novel! We value our retailers and their time, so we make working with us easy. You can purchase from us directly or, thanks to our partner PSI, through AGD, ACD, GTS and PHD. Join the Dolphin Hat family today and watch our games fly off your shelves faster than you can say, “Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza!”

dolphinhat.com

DOLPHINHAT.COM

“I have yet to play this game with people where we aren’t laughing our butts off. It’s such a hoot! Well worth a purchase. I love it so much, it’s one I gift to people on the regular."

SEE MORE 5-STAR REVIEWS ON OUR WEBSITE!

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MSRP $9.99

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The Gateway Game to TTRPGs is

Start Here!

by Jessica Goldstein Blair, Beach House RPGs

im Beach worked on a lot of the Second Edition AD&D, including the Monstrous Manual, and was the first TSR game designer that Wizards of the Coast hired to move to Seattle. He has been published in more than 75 game products over the years. During this time, the number of pages in Core Rulebooks crept steadily up, along with the MSRP, increasing the barrier to entry into RPGs. When FLGSs around the country started offering D&D 101 classes because too many new players were struggling, Beach knew there could be a better way to introduce new players and decided to make it himself. Beach developed the Start Here Roleplaying Game and started running it at Seattle’s many conventions more than a decade ago. I have been playing it that long, and it was my son’s first RPG at the age of 7; he is now 15 and still playing in a regular campaign and at conventions. The pandemic provided the time needed to really refine the rules and the campaign settings. In 2021, Beach began 44

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rigorously play testing the system and the campaign settings. Beach House RPGs (BHR) was formed, and Start Here was funded on Kickstarter in September 2023. It will release in June 2024. Start Here is an introductory RPG designed for dice-curious beginners, RPG fans who want to teach friends and family in a fast and easy way, and RPG players who want to try being the GM in a streamlined system. Complete beginners can learn the rules in just 10 minutes, creating a character takes only 10 minutes, so in 20 minutes everyone is ready to jump into the game and play! You can demo Start Here in just 2 minutes! Watch the FLGS Demo video at youtube.com/@BeachHouseRPGs. Beach House RPGs is exhibiting at 10 consumer conventions in 2024, and will conduct additional consumer marketing to help drive sales to FLGS. There are several future releases planned for Start Here, including further adventures in the existing campaign settings; introducing new campaign settings in popular genres like superheroes, mythos, anime and horror; plus, expansion into murder mystery kits and solo adventures.

Collaborating on the project are several TTRPG legends. These legends, who are influencing the campaign settings and writing adventures, encounters and plot hooks, include Ed Greenwood, Elisa Teague, Jamie Chambers, Jennell Jaquays and Misha Bushyager. The Start Here Box Set is $50 MSRP and includes: Start Here RPG Book 1: Beginning Players • Beginning players rules • The Serpents & Strongholds fantasy setting • Sample heroes and adventures Start Here Book 2: Experienced Players • Experienced players rules • The Star Ex science fiction setting • Sample heroes and adventures Start Here Book 3: Campaign Sampler • More Serpents & Strongholds and Star Ex • Zombiesaurus Rex modern setting, sample heroes and adventures • Wizards & Wranglers wild west setting, sample heroes and adventures Contact Jessica Goldstein Blair at jessica@beachhouserpgs.com or 206-8325454 for more information. jessica@beachhouserpgs.com

Join the Wardens of

Wildwood!

by Rue Dickey, Marketing and Media Specialist, Paizo

ime has come for the annual Greenwood Gala, where the Wildwood Lodge will elect its new leaders and celebrate the peace brought about by the Treaty of the Wildwood. Invited as honored guests, the adventurers are excited to participate in such a wonderful celebration but quickly find themselves embroiled in violent political conflict. Assassins target the Verudan Forest’s leaders, in-fighting breaks out amidst the candidates and a new contender rises from the ashes – one set on a path of vengeance over peace. Wardens of Wildwood is a three-part Adventure Path set in Verudan Forest – and the worlds it interacts with. With equal measures of combat and political intrigue, this campaign presents ample opportunity for diplomacy and statecraft to find solutions – or lead to new conflict. The very society of the Wildwood is at its breaking point, and if it falls, the stability of the entire region may be in danger. 46

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Underneath the surface, an even greater danger brews. The Verudan Forest has long been associated with the Plane of Wood, and those ties are clearer now than ever. A mysterious artifact from a rebel druid, a power deep within the roots of the fores, and old wounds make for a dangerous mix in this druidic conflict. Wardens of Wildwood is the first fully remastered Adventure Path for Pathfinder Second Edition, implementing all of the quality of play improvements from the Pathfinder Remaster Project. This Adventure Path will be published as a set of three softcover monthly volumes, each of which includes backmatter that helps GMs run the adventure – from gazetteers of the area to NPC write ups and more. This Adventure Path has strong

ties to Pathfinder Rage of Elements, the elemental rulebook released in July 2023. As the adventure goes further into discovering secrets of the Plane of Wood, GMs and players alike may benefit from a copy of Rage of Elements or its accompanying spell card deck. Come May, GMs can use the creatures and beasts of Pathfinder Howl of the Wild to flush out the flora and fauna of the Verudan Forest. Get ready to delve into a forest of dangers, April 2024! paizo.com

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Adding Value for Customers with

Kutná Hora: The City of Silver by Nathan Meunier, North American Marketing

ith Kutná Hora: The City of Silver now officially launched at retail in North America and building positive buzz among players, one of our big focuses is on enhancing the player experience by adding even more value for your customers. The premium metal coin packs have been hugely popular among players. We’ve also released a free browser-based mobile-friendly companion app that streamline resource tracking for players who aren’t feeling very confident in math. In addition to those nice extras, we wanted to set you up for further success with even more helpful tips for piquing customer interest in our latest thematic euro. The quick pitch It’s a highly thematic city building game for two to four players. Each player is an influential family with ties to several of the city’s asymmetrical guilds. Over the course of multiple rounds, they’ll play action cards from their hand that trigger effects, like building across the shared city grid or mining the area beneath the city, for example. Of course, each building and each delve into the dark mines influences the game’s dynamic economy, making the price of each commodity vary based on supply and demand. The more you produce, the less valuable it becomes! But as the population increases, demand will drive values up again over time. A few other useful USPs to convey: • Every game of Kutná Hora plays quite differently thanks to the unique ingame dynamic supply and demand economy, asymmetrical guild 48

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combinations and player choices. • All resources in the game, whether they’re being spent or earned, are represented by coins. Players simply consult the current market values of each resource on the cardboard computers. (This is also a good time to highlight the premium coin upgrades). Alternatively, the free web-based app tracks and calculates resources quickly and easily. • Kutná Hora isn’t as overwhelming as it might initially look to some new players. Sure, it’s a medium heavyweight city building euro with a big table presence and a lot of interlocking systems. But all of the core gameplay is handled with the simple hand of double-sided action selection cards. Showing off the colorful cards and explaining this can help ease any potential customers who might be a bit intimidated by the game at a glance. Players crave the bling There’s no denying it. Players love the shiny metal coin packs we’ve made available as a premium upgrade. The coin pack (MSRP $29.95) contains 51 metal coins in three denominations (ones, fives, 20s), and each coin is modeled after the actual Czech grochen that was historically minted in the city during that time period. They feel good in the hand and make a nice satisfying clinking sound when spent. We’ve seen a high attach rate of over 75 percent with the coin upgrades. Displaying the coin packs alongside the game box is a great way to draw the eye and bring attention to the game itself. You could also open a pack and spread them in a small bowl on your retail

counter, next to the game box, as they’re very tactile, satisfying and inviting to touch. Free companion app The free companion app for Kutná Hora is useful for streamlining resource and income tracking to speed up gameplay, while also offering an additional (more predictable) economy mode. If you run into any customers who are intimidated by how the game’s cardboard computers and resource tracking works, this is a great option to ease them into the experience. Be sure to stop by our online retailer portal for direct orders – with free shipping over $350 and no case quantities. Visit czechgames.markettime. com for more information.

czechgames.com

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magpiegames.com

In Groo: The Game from Steve Jackson Games, players try to build a town without having it stomped to rubble by Groo. This quick, silly game is illustrated by the great Sergio Aragonés! warehouse23.com Dead Man’s Rust from Onyx Path Publishing is a complete campaign for the Scarred Lands campaign setting. It features detailed write-ups of four major locations in central Ghelspad, new playable options and more! studio2publishing.com/products/ scarred-lands-dead-mans-rust

Return to Dark Tower Fantasy Roleplaying from 9th Level Games is the officially licensed RPG for Restoration Games’ Return to Dark Tower board game. Take on perilous quests, raise an army and defend your kingdom. 9thlevel.com/returnto-dark-tower-rpg Discover AK’s revolutionary Acrylic Inks from Lightspeed Global Hobby, designed exclusively for figure modelers. The premium pigments offer exceptional gloss, saturation and vibrancy. Available in 30ml bottles, they offer semitransparency and highest lightfastness. lsghobby.com/account/register

With Collectionomics from Fiat Lucre, people can share their prized possessions while playing a fun party game. Novel voting mechanics, a point system and silly arguments make gameplay appealing. Coming to Kickstarter in 2024; scan the QR code to sign up for alerts.

More New Products on pages 38, 39, 68, 74, 75

The Giant Book of Battle Mats – Wilds Wrecks & Ruins from Loke Battle Mats is a must-have for any fantasy tabletop roleplaying game. With 62 huge maps in a handy book, just open and roll initiative! lokebattlemats.com Q1 2024 • AROUND THE table

By Gamers for Gamers

LSG Hobby Adds Archon Studios RAMPART Modular: Eternal Cathedral by Gary Wollenhaupt, LSG Hobby

rchon Studios is a new game in town for board games, wargaming and RPG terrain markets, and you can find it at LSG Hobby. Toronto-based LSG has added the exclusive Archon Studios lines to its portfolio of gaming products for distribution to retailers. Archon is well known for its highly successful Kickstarter campaigns to fund its board game adaptations of electronic titles from consoles and PCs. The company also manufactures figures, structures, terrains and other accessories available through select distributors in 12 countries. Archon Studios was founded in Poland by gamers who were designing tabletop games for some of the most iconic worlds in pop culture and video games. They began launching Kickstarters for their roleplaying and tabletop war games, and the rest is history. The founders’ passion drives innovation and technological progress for all their products. LSG recognized an opportunity to help spread

the word about what makes Archon Studios unique. “We are thrilled to offer Archon Studios’ array of precision products for this market,” said LSG Owner Linus Hiew. “At first, we ordered only a few products as a trial. When they quickly sold out, we knew we had found a winner for the gaming world.” Archon Studios is steadily expanding its product range, including miniatures, plastic terrain and accessories designed for RPG and wargaming enthusiasts. Archon Studio is also notable as a board game publisher with a strong focus on popular IPs such as Heroes of Might and Magic III, Wolfenstein and Masters of the Universe. The company had massive success with the Kickstarter platform, with more than 14 successful campaigns, releasing hundreds of breathtaking models. One of Archon Studio’s distinguishing features is its unwavering commitment to excellence in its products. The company’s state-of-the-art facility in Poland features modern CNC machines – a rarity in Europe. The meticulous manufacturing process uses high-quality hard plastic (HIPS) for durable figures and accessories.

RAMPART Modular: Kazumi Temple 54

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Archon has carved out a niche for developing board game versions of popular video games. The board game edition of Heroes of Might and Magic III was ready to ship at the end of 2023 after three years of development and 27,000 backers on Kickstarter. Design and gameplay work continues on the Master of Orion: Ad Astra 4X board game, an adaptation based on the popular PC game. The Kickstarter is scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2024. These new product launches drive interest in well-designed games as well as a nostalgia factor from those who remember playing the originals. In the meantime, many in-demand products are available now. The Dungeon and Lasers line includes modular terrain and tiles to design layouts, dungeons and dynamic sculps of classic roleplaying monsters. Rampart Terrain features modular terrain sets and a range of detailed alternative sculps. Archon Studios offers gaming stores attractive price points without sacrificing the durability or detail that customers demand. The fan-funded development ensures a solid customer base when products launch. Gaming retailers can order from LSG once they have registered an account on the LSG website. LSG offers free shipping with the appropriate minimum order quantity. “Archon Studios products are a perfect fit for gamers to breathe life into whatever setting they desire,” Hiew said. lsghobby.com

Bounty Hunters in the World of Cowboy Bebop by Laura Fontanella, Translatress, Mana Project Studio

ave you ever holidayed on one of Jupiter’s moons? Have you ever gambled in an orbiting space casino? Ever faced dark figures from your past and had to choose between that distant time and your own future? Ever chased someone with a bounty on their head? If you love sci-fi settings, if you’re fond of those that draw heavily on the imagery of the 90s, if you love roleplaying stories that combine investigation, action and melancholy, then you really can’t miss the official Cowboy Bebop RPG: a jewel for all those players who loved this animated series. With the Cowboy Bebop RPG, published by Mana Project Studio with

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the support of Don’t Panic Games and officially licensed by SUNRISE Inc., you can experience the myriad adventures and vicissitudes that only a bounty hunter in this brave new solar system can face. Even though this RPG is a must-have for those who have watched the popular anime series, this game is also designed for those who haven’t, with a set of in-game examples based on the anime that, episode after episode, will draw you into the world of Cowboy Bebop. The official RPG of Cowboy Bebop is indeed a great opportunity to immerse yourself in this amazing setting, to explore its conflicts, its people and their contradictions. Being a bounty hunter is an opportunity to discover various themes: crime, mistakes, complications, difficulties, marginalisation, despair. Who can call themselves a hero in such a contest? Who has the right to be the one who chases another? Can some Woolongs buy your freedom, your

silence or even your loyalty? The highly cinematic rules are designed to let you play your anime series, your characters, in the world of Cowboy Bebop. After each episode, the past may come knocking at your door, triggering a special episode about your character, a moment to put them under the spotlight of the narrative shared at the table. With a quick and straightforward sixsided dice system, your bounty hunters will hunt down a myriad of different bounty archetypes. In a procedurally generated world, deciding the tone of the narrative and actions through musical genres, you can acquire bonus dice and twists to the rules to create ever new situations. With the official role-playing game of this much-loved anime, you will play out your stories as a bounty hunter in a universe that mixes jazz with westerns, noir movies with buddy cops series. With an original and narrative gameplay system, scene by scene you will see your characters change, face their troubled past, invent a future for themselves – or, on the contrary, get stuck in their memories.

manaprojectstudio.com

Creating a New Tabletop IP by Sean Jacquemain, Communications Director, KTBG

n the board game industry, you end up working with various intellectual properties (IP), taking a known story from a movie, book or video game and porting it into a tabletop game. Each IP is unique and when you don’t control them, you need to collaborate with the people who do. It takes a lot of work to meet the requirements of the client while still delivering a fun gaming experience. In the past, a licensed game could be nothing more than a tired ruleset with a popular IP slapped on it. However, in recent years, designers and publishers are working hard to deliver games worthy of the fandoms. Another approach publishers are taking is to create their own board game-based IPs, ones that suit the game and that they can control completely. At KTBG, we knew instantly we had created a world that people loved when we launched Creature Comforts. The 58

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game, designed by Roberta Taylor and featuring adorable art by Shawna Tenney, was a huge hit, and it really felt like a fully formed story. Each of the different forest critter families had their own home base to prepare for the cold winter months with things like rocking chairs, quilts and pots of hot tea. The positive response to the game made it clear that we had an opportunity to add to that story and we got to work immediately. We tasked Taylor with creating a fully standalone sequel to Creature Comforts. Before we knew it, she had started to lay out the groundwork for the game that would become Maple Valley. Although the ideas were coming quickly, it was the first time Taylor had been tasked with such a specific assignment. Making a new game that has its own mechanisms and goals and that retains a similar feel to an existing world can be a real challenge. Over the course of a weekend, the KTBG team and Taylor got together to work on the design. By the

end of it, they had gotten to 80 percent of what the final game would be. Tying the games together required the addition of more outstanding cozy art by Tenney. Keeping the visual aesthetic consistent made a huge difference in solidifying this newly developing IP. The world starts to take more shape, the characters stories evolve more and, as a consumer of the games, you really feel the continuity. This is one of the key elements to developing your own IP. With both Creature Comforts and Maple Valley available at local gaming stores in 2024, KTBG has created its own cute, cuddly IP. This isn’t the end of the story either. Taylor and KTBG already have plans for further additions to the world. An IP is something fans recognize and will follow and collect. Using a popular one for a game is great when you have the opportunity, but publishers should always be on the lookout to create their own.

kidstablebg.com

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The More You Give by Connor Alexander, Owner, Coyote & Crow

’m as competitive as the next gamer. I love head-to-head card games, firstperson shooter video games, area control tabletops, the works. But as a game designer, I’ve noticed a real dearth of games that offer a chance for competition that aren’t zero sum situations. Why do we feel the need to create games where

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the economies or mechanisms reward the winners by punishing other players? Can’t we still play for a win without crushing those around us at the table? As a Cherokee citizen, I’ve been wanting to bring some of the ideas of my heritage into gaming for quite a while. I’d like to think there’s a bit of it in both Coyote & Crow and Naasii for sure. But with my new game, Wolves, I wanted to take it to the next level. Wolves introduces gifting as a mechanic. If you’re not familiar, gifting economies are found throughout many Indigenous cultures and the idea is simple. If someone has a need for something and you have more than enough of that thing, you give it to them. That’s it. There’s no purchasing, no trade or barter. You just give it to them.

In Cherokee culture, we have something we call “gadugi.” It translates roughly to the idea of strength through cooperation. For Wolves, I wanted to put gadugi onto a tabletop game. The idea was to create a cooperative game that still had an individual winner. While games like Pandemic offer a fully cooperative experience, I wanted one where players had an incentive to work together because it benefits them as well as the other people at the table. Which brings me back to gifting. Every community in Wolves has different strengths and weaknesses in the resources they can provide. This means that if you need fish on a particular turn and you don’t produce very much of it, you might come up short. But your neighbor has extra. Why would they give it to you? Because you produce more corn than they do and if your community fails, they lose access to that potential corn. Everyone survives together or no one does. Strength through cooperation. That’s great for the communities, but what about the individual players? Where’s their incentive to be competitive you ask? Being able to supply your own people with fish while also supporting your neighbors comes with prestige, bragging rights, swagger. Every leader is always being watched, evaluated, compared. And at the end of the game, if you can all survive through the winter, and you happen to do the most to keep everyone alive, that level of status is serious political capital. Come out with more status at the end of the game, and you get elected chief of all of the communities. I hope Wolves makes people take another look at cooperative games, zero sum win conditions, and ideas like gadugi. Let’s be competitive while lifting each other up.

coyoteandcrow.net

From the award winning designer of Coyote & Crow, Connor Alexander, comes a semi-cooperative game for 3-6 players about sharing resources. Take on the role of a community leader trying to ensure your people’s survival through the winter. Only through strategic gifting of resources to others can you all survive. If any community fails, everyone loses. If all players makes it through the winter, the player who gifted most effectively is elected chief of the communities! Available: April 2024 SRP: $55 Case Count: 6 Ages: 15+ Play Time: 45-90 minutes FSC certified eco friendly design Indigenous designers and artists pull from real world Native American concepts

Q1 2024 • AROUND THE table

A Dice Company Focused on the FLGS! by Randall Switlick, CEO, Old School Dice & Accessories

re you tired of ordering from multiple companies for your dice and accessories? Are shipping times and customer service lacking? Are you frustrated that your dice venders try to sell around you at their own websites? If any of the above is true, then Old School Dice & Accessories is the solution for you! We built our company to support brickand-mortar stores first! Our wholesale program is designed to be the best and most profitable for the FLGS in the entire industry. So, what makes Old School Dice & Accessories so special?

Fast and free shipping Nice wholesale discounts mean NOTHING if you are giving back money in shipping costs and the product takes forever to get to you. We have FREE shipping at only $100 and we ship 99% of our orders within 24 business hours. You cannot get better than that! A huge product line means one-stop shop Cool things sell and that is what we make! We have a huge catalog of unique and high-quality products. We pride 62

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ourselves on our always-expanding product line, including unique gemstone, sharp-edged, metal, resin, hollow metal and liquid-infused dice. We also provide top-quality accessories including rolling trays, dice towers, dice bags, wood cases and more. We develop new products almost evert single month, which your “dice goblins” will love. We want to be your new one-stop shop! More for less Our wholesale discount rate is one of the best in the industry! In addition, every month we offer generous promotions for our existing customers, designed to get more products into your hands for less cost to you. Those two combined make us one of the best values available.

own dedicated sales representative to help them in any way. We also offer a no hassle 100 percent product guarantee! Professional packaging Packaging is important! Our products arrive in beautiful, shelf-ready packaging, complete with SKUs and barcodes (excluding bulk products and die singles). We also feature great product displays where you can feature our premium dice, resin sets and D20’s! FLGS-focused We come from retail, so we feel this is the most important point. Many of our competitors set up their companies

Great customer service We believe in treating our brickand-mortar stores like valued business partners. If you succeed, then we succeed. We strive to keep our stores informed on our latest products and best business practices. Each account has its to focus on retail sales first, and then got into wholesaling later. We are opposite! We created this company with the primary goal of working with the FLGS! What this means is that we are focused 100 percent on you and your needs. We invite you to join us today so that we can show you the very best products and service in the industry. Remember, Old School Dice & Accessories focuses on you, the FLGS! oldschooldice.com

We’ll be at GAMA Expo Booth #472

Everything Ever for Everyone, Anywhere

Floodgate Games’ Exciting Party Game is Coming to Hobby Retail by Ian Birdsall, Marketing Manager, Floodgate Games

hat makes a great party game, and why should your customers care about one? Successful party games share several key elements: inclusivity, familiarity, memorability and, most importantly, enjoyment and fun! Ensuring a game meets these criteria is crucial to being seen by friends as an outstanding connoisseur of fun. New party games are coming out all the time, and it’s rare to find one that consistently hits the mark with a wide variety of players. Until now! Everything Ever is the party game you’ve been preparing for your whole life. The gameplay is simple and engaging; anyone can enjoy it. Name a thing from each card face up on the table. With 250 different category cards, players deal with only a few at a time, using a fraction of the total. If players can’t think of a response, they take the card as a negative point, and the category is replaced from the deck. Alternatively, they can change

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the category if they have cards in hand. The player with the fewest penalty cards wins! Everybody knows something about everything, and with diverse categories, everyone can be an expert. Each card included in Everything Ever has unique artwork and a fun, brightly colored motif to visually convey the lightheartedness of the game. The familiar and easy-to-learn gameplay makes Everything Ever enjoyable for anyone, from kids to co-workers to the person at the bar who needs a friend. The

game rewards cleverness every turn, and its quick setup and playtime make it an excellent game for when you’re on the go! While Everything Ever could be called a trivia game, it’s more of a game of references. You’ll never need to know a specific piece of trivia on your turn. For example, a card could ask you to name something for “Everything that has a horn.” You could go with animals, a ram, a bull or get abstract – a marching band has a lot of horns! Getting creative can reward players as well. If a player says something that works for multiple cards in play, they get a little bonus! Let’s say the above card is in play with “Every superhero.” Well … Loki could work for that, right? Part of the fun with Everything Ever is how the other players hold one another’s feet to the fire, so to speak. Taking too long to come up with an answer? Bzzz! Take the card, next person. Don’t think Loki was a good answer? Throw down a Judge Card as a warning or outright refusal of the answer. A little playful ribbing among friends is always great for a memorable game night. Floodgate Games has also developed several variant ways to play, making the 250 category cards in Everything Ever a toolbox of gaming fun! You can learn more about Everything Ever at everythingever.party. floodgategames.com

COMING TO HOBBY RETAIL! Everything Ever is the party game you’ve been preparing for your whole life!

EVERY BO DY PART

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And now you can order this incredibly successful party game for your customers to pick up. Everything Ever includes 250 different category cards to ensure that each game will be unique.

Everybody knows something about everything, and you’ll only need to know one more thing than your friends do!

EVERYTHING EVER MSRP $19.95 USD • SKU: FGG-EE UPC: 850030923172 • CASE QTY: 12

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The Power of Board Games

on the Battlefield, Classroom and Prison System by Marie Lassaigne

hat do a prison inmate in a minimum- to medium-security facility, a military officer and a first-year political science student have in common? The answer might surprise you; it is board games! James “Pigeon” Fielder, PhD., an instructor of political science at Colorado State University where he researches human behavior in game worlds, has undoubtedly contributed vastly to the use of role-playing games for far more than leisure. Dr. Fielder has demonstrated that board games can teach a variety of groups critical skills that contribute to their growth as individuals, including crisis intervention in risk-free environments, application of abstract concepts in the classroom, and the consequences of behavior to inmates. He is best known for implementing board games in classroom, military and prison settings. Dr. Fielder’s interest in board games began when he was 6 years old. He was given one of the first editions of Dungeons & Dragons. As such, he specializes in role playing games (RPG) and has designed several scenarios to accommodate for the different populations he works with. Though Dr. Felder joined the military, he remained passionate about roleplaying games. This led him to combine the two and create war games inspired by his love for RPGs. In his 25 years in the Army and Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Fielder designed and implemented war games to simulate real-life situations. His 66

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first military training event was a small unit tactics game of his design in 1997. It enabled a 12-person squad to predict how a dangerous situation might unfold and be better prepared to handle the consequences. Fast forward a few years, Dr. Fielder had made a name for himself creating military training events. His most impressive design yet took place in 2005, with more than 5,000 participants in a game that lasted an entire week. Players defended positions with blank weapons, launched real aircraft and treated fake injuries on the battlefield. Data was gathered throughout the week by referees and the results helped guide future military interventions. He also helped protect the lives of thousands in Afghanistan by combining political science theories with role-playing gaming strategies to forecast the 2014 Afghan presidential election and potential for violence in Kabul. Dr. Fielder highlights that role-playing games are an underutilized tool to teach effective crisis interventions in a risk-free environment. As his career advanced, Dr. Fielder took an interest in restorative justice. He mentioned that the American incarceration system focuses heavily on retribution rather than rehabilitation. Dr. Fielder reached out to inmates who were interested in improving their lives and began mentoring them. He mentors around 40 inmates and provides them with books on games, game designs and in-person courses. He plays games like

Pathfinder and Starfinder, as well as Dungeons & Dragons. Why? The answer is simple: to succeed at these games players must be able to operate following proper conduct, and they are often confronted with the consequences of their actions in a risk-free environment. That is the power of games. Through the trial and error of playing, the inmates build on their understanding of ethics, accountability and critical thinking. These skills impact other aspects of their lives, teaching them how to be a better person. Unfortunately, most prisons in the United States are private. This has hindered Dr. Fielder from reaching more individuals and implementing these interventions more frequently. In fact, all the inmates he helped had heard of him through word of mouth. His work with inmates demonstrates how a small game can have a substantial impact. Inmates often have better critical thinking skills, and are more rational, ethical, and accountable after working with Dr. Fielder. It also gives them a hobby that promotes the development of those skills and a social support circle. Dr. Fielder has also been teaching political science for nearly five years at Colorado State University. He designed a role-playing board game where 150 students are divided into teams of six. Each team must form a country of

intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations, or nongovernmental organization, like a private business. He gives them almost complete freedom, on the condition that they are equipped to handle a crisis, have an overall goal and a DIME model (diplomacy, informational, military and economic). The game starts the same each time, but Dr. Fielder adjusts the scenario based on the teams’ actions over multiple sessions. His students often report having had an easier time grasping the complexity of international politics. They say that applying these concepts and observing how they would play out is particularly helpful. Dr. Fielder also ensures that students will dare to take risks during the game by placing emphasis on the reflection that takes place after the game. The students are never graded on their ability to win the game but on their ability to reflect how their actions played out and the consequences of the choices they made. He describes it as reinforced learning though active teaching. Board games are incredibly versatile and powerful to teach a variety of skills. Whether tabletop games are implemented for a startup, small business, non-profit organizations or even a large corporation individuals will benefit from playing games. In fact, some of Dr. Fielder’s

colleagues at CSU have started following his lead. A professor in comparative politics recently designed a card game for her class to address conflicts between states. Dr. Fielder recognized that getting into board games can be intimidating but encourages professionals to not be afraid or nervous and to take risks. Dr. Fielder crafted a document with steps for professors to design their own games, adapted to their respective class objectives. It contains references to research and articles analyzing board game designs and mechanisms, as well as their benefits and scope of use. He also included a list of games that will allow familiarization with the various board game mechanics. The point is to learn something in an active manner, applying concepts in a real-time, fun environment, that delivers on the course objectives. Dr. Fielder, who calls himself “a professional gaming nerd,” is also the professional and educational game director for Mobius World Publishing, a Littleton, Colorado-based RPG designer firm. “The beauty of role playing is the true embodiment of one’s character in the game,” Dr. Fielder said. “If you are lucky and if you are dedicated, all the good

parts of the character stick with you. That is how they can make us better, happier people, critical thinkers and more efficient crisis responders.” In the future, Dr. Fielder would like to create a consortium of board game designers which tailor their products to various fields. With only a handful of universities offering programs dedicated to tabletop game design, the industry of tabletop games remains niche and involves only a small percentage of the total population. However, their benefits are far reaching and not to be underestimated. Dr. Fielder is a staunch advocate of making RPGs and all other tabletop games more accessible to distinct populations. In 2023, he held a TED x Talk about his innovative game designs, training events and the incredible power of the “Magic Circle,” a reference to the plethora of benefits associated with playing board games. The social phenomenon of competition, communication and collaboration increases the human potential for action and individual growth. Q1 2024 • AROUND THE table

Squirrels The Card Game from Goliath Coins is a fast, fun and easy-to-learn game where players battle to get the lowest score. Each game is challenging, unpredictable and exciting. friendzygames.com/wholesale

Romance of the Seven Realms from Ad Astra brings cinematic space fighters to Squadron Strike! An expansion of the 2018 product, this has better art, more fighters, more scenarios and special cards. adastragames.com This 200-card expansion from Upper Deck brings all three Ant-Man films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe into a single, deluxe-sized set! Relive the epic battles of the Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man trilogy. upperdeckstore.com With 10 Days in the USA from The Op Games, travel the country as you chart your course. Can you beat your fellow travelers in a race to complete a 10day journey? sales@usaopoly.com

In Everything Ever from Floodgate Games, players take turns listing things from categories like “Every dinosaur movie” or “Every brand of soap.” Win by collecting the fewest cards once the deck runs out. everythingever.party

AROUND THE table • Q1 2024

Vindication Archive of the Ancients Edition from Orange Nebula Includes all the major expansions, Kickstarter bonuses, modules, promos and most the packs and nick-nacks from across its five-year history. retail@orangenebula.com

More New Products on pages 38, 39, 53, 74, 75

COMING SUMMER 2024

Based on the hit game Foundations of Rome!

www.arcanewonders.com

CAN’T STOP THE TRAIN by Kyle Rowan, Design Lead, Wyrd Games

he Silver Ferryman is coming back around the bend in Vagrantsong: Encore, the eerie and exhilarating expansions for the spooky boss battler, Vagrantsong! Here are just a handful of the exciting new features to explore in the upcoming expansion:

A new chapter to explore In Bridge of Leaves, players will find themselves lost in the woods on a brittle train track. Will you manage to survive, or will disaster bring everything crashing down around you? Similar to other chapters, Bridge of Leaves has five unique scenarios to survive. Players can either incorporate the Bridge of Leaves chapter into their main campaign, or they may play it as its own standalone campaign in Short Trip Mode. New ways to play Vagrantsong: Encore offers a way to play the game without having to dive into a long campaign. Whether players have already played through the story or are just starting off, Short Trip Mode provides a way to experience the game in smaller, chapter-sized chunks. With four chapters to choose from, players will be able to experience four brand-new endings against a new and uninvited antagonist.

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New Haints to save Have you heard the desperate banshee screams of the Dungarvon Whooper? Can you escape the jagged teeth of Slag Pile Annie’s furnace? Will you bet against the odds once you face the wide grin of Mr. Pleasant? Every new Haint in this

expansion will require different strategies in order to save them from this ghost train. In one scenario, players might have to avoid bouncing bombs from sending them to their graves, while others might have players appeasing a hive of bees. Who knows, maybe vagrants will even need to prepare a meal or two for a few lost souls. New bones to roll Vagrantsong: Encore will also introduce new dice: Smoky Bones! Players will earn Smoky Bones through various effects, such as from new Junk cards and scenario effects or any other effect, to help mitigate the impact of unfavorable rolls. Combine their results with your standard Bones to overcome the odds! New obstacles to overcome Some aspects, such as loss, will weigh heavier on players’ hearts in Vagrantsong: Encore. When vagrants go westbound this time around, they will earn negative, semi-permanent effects called Baggage that will need to be removed by either yourself or by your friends. If you go westbound too many times, you’ll find your vagrant one step closer to the grave. But you won’t let the Silver Ferryman take hold of your friends. If a vagrant is in dire straits, is too haunted, you’ll be able to play a Save Your Soul scenario to pull them back from the train’s ghostly grip. And if you’re victorious, they might even come back with special knowledge learned along the way. Vagrantsong: Encore will have new and experienced players returning to the Silver Ferryman this summer!

wyrd-games.net

10 Days in the USA

by Arlo Hitzemann, Art Director of Hobby Games, The Op Games

orking on Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum’s 10 Days in the USA was a great honor and opportunity for us. It took a village to bring new life into this classic game. Our staff from various departments came together and got fully invested to make this refresh the best one yet. We shared brilliant ideas and executed as a team. We researched previous versions of the game and studied reviews in various markets to evaluate the different approaches previous publishers have

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taken. We play-tested multiple versions of the game over and over and asked ourselves what works, what can be improved, whether the story and illustrations were in sync with current times, are the rules clear and easy to follow, how accessible is the current layout and UI, etc. As we all know, the game mechanic is well designed and our main goal was to maintain a way to support the mechanic with beautiful, modern artwork that does not interfere with gameplay. We adjusted the story to a group of friends embarking on a road trip through the U.S. with a camper van and we

upgraded the rules to be a “Travel Guide” that truly guides you through learning the game with ease. We evaluated the color accessibility and improved the overall color theme to accommodate players with visual impairments. After landing on our color theme, we infused a very modern, clean art style that is timeless and will hopefully bring joy to the table and help the game stay in the market for many, many years. Spoiler alert: The cover layout was designed with expansions in mind and we sure hope to expand the 10 Days storyline into other parts of the world. Our process when working with existing games often includes the deconstruction and reconstruction of layouts and components. This helps us to filter out what elements and artwork are vital to mechanics. To create the best possible game, we deconstructed the cards and rules and found solutions to improve the UI and player experience. The card layout changed to feature a new hierarchy that supports game mechanics and helps players stay focused. We created a more traditional rulebook themed as a Travel Guide. We restructured the rules to help guide players through their journey of learning the game. More visuals and organized sections make learning the game very easy. In true Travel Guide fashion, we supported the new layout with fun illustrations of landmarks our country has to offer. Looking back at the development and design of this iteration of 10 Days in the USA, we feel like we have created a version that players can enjoy for decades to come and hope you, all players around the globe, will share. sales@usaopoly.com

LET THE JOURNEY BEGIN! Travel the country as you chart your course, using destination and transportation cards. With a little planning and a dash of luck, can you best your fellow travelers in a race to complete a 10-day journey?

2-4

In Star Trek: Away Missions from Gale Force 9, players will lead their own landing parties to complete missions, conduct espionage, fight in glorious battle or assimilate distinctiveness. gf9games.com/awaymissions

Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza from Publisher Services, Inc. is a wildly entertaining and easy to learn card game for all ages! With more than 5 million games sold worldwide, it’s a customer favorite!

AQUA from The Op Games invites players to dive into the beauty and wonder of the ocean. This game offers solo play and optional modes along with stunning artwork depicting the diversity of ocean life.

jenna@dolphinhat.com

sales@usaopoly.com Gnome Hollow from The Op Games is a beautiful Eurogame featuring spatial, tile placement/worker placement mechanics where players grow a tabletop garden. This whimsical game’s watercolors celebrate the full beauty of nature. sales@usaopoly.com

This convenient merchandiser from All Game Terrain has all the products gamers need to make any environment on miniature bases, terrain pieces or boards. It can also be converted to a pegboard or slatwall display.

The Avatar Legends RPG Starter Set from Magpie Games brings players into the setting of Avatar Legends! Weave tales of selfdiscovery and action with your team, and work to bring balance to the world! christopher@magpiegames.com

sales@allgameterrain.com 74

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More New Products on pages 38, 39, 53, 68

Hasty Baker from GoChuckle is a beautifully illustrated, fast-paced family card game. Strategically sabotage other players as you race to complete dessert recipes. It’s a great takethat game for all ages! info@gochuckle.com

Heiki Strike Alternative from Japanime Games is a tactical two-player card game featuring deep strategy, intense action and competitive gameplay. It offers a variety of strategies for building your deck and deploying your units. japanimegames.com Art Society from Mighty Boards is a tile-laying family game that made it to several “top 10 games 2023” lists! With simple, intuitive rules and an irresistible look, it’s a fantastic game for new and expert players.

Frosthaven: Play Surface Books from Cephalofair eliminates the need for Frosthaven map tiles and most overlay tokens. Just open the books to your scenario and play! Requires a copy of the Frosthaven board game to play. MSRP $69.99

sales@mighty-boards.com

retailers@ cephalofair.com

The Dark Stone Shaman Hero Pack from Flying Frog Productions contains everything you need to play as a Dark Stone Shaman in your games of Shadows of Brimstone! sarah@flyingfrog.net Q1 2024 • AROUND THE table

CGE Brings HeidelBÄR Games to the U.S. Market by Nathan Meunier, North American Marketing for CGE

ome of you might have already seen that Czech Games Edition has been expanding our lineup as of late to include a selection of games from our long-time friends and German partners HeidelBÄR Games. This is an exciting recent development for us, as we’ve been helping them expand their U.S. distribution. We’re excited to announce this will continue to grow in 2024 with even more fun, accessible and adorable small box releases from HeidelBÄR Games alongside CGE’s upcoming games ahead. For those who may not be familiar with our relationship, HeidelBÄR Games distributes the German language editions of many CGE games in their country. While we directly handle our own English language versions of CGE games for North America, we typically work with other partners on versions of our games in other languages. We also own a small share of HeidelBÄR Games and have been working together for a long time. It feels a natural fit to be the ones to help bring more of their releases to the U.S. market. Here’s a look at what’s available so far and what’s coming up in 2024!

dueling card game packs punchy, clever reversals and hidden information strategizing into a fast-paced puzzle challenge for two players. It’s a quick game with high replay and three wildly distinct eras to play across – including a super goofy spin on the 1980s!

Next wave: A bundle of six new small box games Building out on last year’s releases, we’re also bringing out a selection of six more small box HeidelBÄR Games that are poised to do well in the U.S. market. Sweet & Spicy (an updated more kidoriented version of Spicy with brighter artwork) is the newest offering. The other games in the pack include: Tails on Fire, Hungry Monkey, Coyote, Animal Poker and Blaze. This special retailer bundle will be launching in April, with 18 games (three copies of each of the six games) in a nicely designed counter display box. The retailer

bundle will cost $323.10 for the 18 games and display.

Fish & Katz: An insta-buy

Another big HeidelBÄR release that’s coming in April is one that we think you’ll find is super easy to sell to players of all ages. Fish & Katz (MSRP $29.95) is a quick, silly kitty-themed card slapping game of fast-paced set collection. What makes it ultra cute is the fact the game comes with a handful of soft kitty finger paws that you wear on one finger and use to select your cards. Seriously, just show customers the cute finger paws and see their reaction. It’s an adorable addition to the roster this year, and we can’t wait to see how it does! You can check out each of these games and learn more at the CGE booth at GAMA. Don’t hesitate to place a direct order on these titles over at our online retailer portal at czechgames.markettime. com We look forward to seeing you soon!

The first wave: Spicy and Time Division In late 2023, we began distributing two HeidelBÄR Games releases. Many of you may already be familiar with Spicy (MSRP $17.95), a hot and wacky bluffing party game that launched in 2020 amidst the global pandemic. It’s done quite well, and we’re happy to be giving another push to get in front of more audiences now that people can gather and play games together more easily. Time Division (MSRP $29.95) is an all-new release that was launched in the U.S. for the first time around PAX Unplugged. This unique time-traveling 76

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cge.as/retailerportal

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G A M E S

Light Your Shelves on

by Jane Hoffacker, CEO and Co-founder, Incredible Dream

s a hobby board game retailer, you understand the importance of stocking your shelves with games that not only sell but also create lasting memories for your customers. Enter the Kinfire series, which includes Kinfire Chronicles and Kinfire Delve – high-quality, innovative board games that will get your community excited to play!

Community backed and critically acclaimed Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall made it to many Top 10 lists for 2023, and boasts accolades such as the “Dice Tower Seal of Excellence” and “No Pun Included’s 2023 Game of the Year.” These honors aren’t just badges; they’re testaments to the game’s quality and its capacity to captivate players. Game night made easy We designed Kinfire Chronicles with real-life gamers in mind. You know, those who don’t want to spend forever setting up. That’s why our setup and cleanup are faster than brewing

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a cup of coffee. Each quest is a satisfying, 45- to 60-minute adventure – perfect for fitting in a quest on a weeknight or stacking up several on the weekends. Credible creators The games are the brainchild of industry veterans. Kevin Wilson is a veteran game designer known for Arkham Horror and Descent. We matched him up with a team of artists and writers from Cyberpunk 2077 and Witcher 3. I brought in my own experiences from producing the Emmywinning animated series, Arcane: League of Legends. Our dream team worked hard to ensure that every aspect of Kinfire, from its storytelling to its artwork, is nothing short of extraordinary. Kinfire Delve: A standalone sensation Kinfire Delve is a standalone game series that you can offer new customers as an affordable entry point to Kinfire or present to existing Kinfire fans as a fresh challenge. And, while

Kinfire Delve is not a CCG, we’ve been delighted to see it attract interest from the likes of Command Zone, the popular gamer podcast for CCG players. I’ll admit, we specifically designed this series for FLGS with its attractive shelf presence, smaller footprint and affordable price point. These qualities will not only help make the sale easier, but the serialized content will bring customers back to your store for the next game. Our first game in the Kinfire Delve series is Vainglory’s Grotto. We are releasing the second game, Scorn’s Stockade, on April 2. Retailers can preorder now at bit.ly/incredibleretailer or through distribution to have both games in stock. Bring Kinfire to your community We’re an independent game publisher who’re passionate about the board game community and the power of board games to bring people to the table. We’d love the privilege to be in your store and on your tables! But, discover for yourself why Kinfire has … well … been catching fire. Stock Kinfire today, and watch as it becomes the highlight of game nights in your community. You can check out our retailer specials online or at GAMA Expo 2024!

incredibledream.com

Heiki Strike Alternative Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master

by Mikael Yang, Editorial Manager, Japanime Games

n the immersive realm of Heiki Strike Alternative, each turn unfolds as a captivating chapter in the narrative tapestry of commanders and their enigmatic Heiki. As players step into the roles of these strategists, the dance of tactics and storytelling takes center stage, bringing the intense world of tactical warfare to life. Picture the scene: commanders positioned across from each other, a battleground awaiting the clash of Heiki forces. Two Battleground cards, representing Air Superiority and Sea Superiority, set the stage for the commanders’ maneuvers. Armed with Action Point (AP) and Tech Point (TP) cards, the players brace for the impending clash that will unfold in the main phase. The main phase, the narrative heart of each turn, is where the commanders’ decisions shape the fate of the ongoing saga. Distinct actions come into play, each contributing to the commanders’ overarching strategy and deepening the narrative complexity.

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The Deploy action, a tactical maneuver, involves paying the cost on the Heiki card to send them to the front lines. Whether deploying Land Heiki to battlegrounds or air and sea Heiki to their respective areas of superiority, each deployment mirrors the commanders’ directives in the ongoing conflict. Supply, a pivotal action, requires expending 1 AP to draw a card from the base. In the narrative, this mirrors the commanders’ logistical efforts to bolster their forces, ensuring a steady stream of resources for the battles that lie ahead. Order actions introduce complexity, as Heiki with special abilities come into play. The commanders must strategically activate these abilities, considering associated costs and available resources. Research, limited to once per turn, allows commanders to delve into advanced technologies or intelligence by discarding cards from the base to gain TP. This mirrors the commanders’ efforts to enhance their strategic capabilities as the conflict unfolds. As the active commander navigates through these actions, their decisions become threads woven into the overarching narrative fabric. The tension builds as each move contributes to the ebb and flow of the conflict, mirroring the unpredictable nature of warfare. The turn concludes with the commander discarding down to a hand size of five (or nine with Air Superiority), symbolizing the strategic choices made and unmade in the heat of battle. Unused AP and TP are lost, underscoring the commander’s commitment to the chosen course of action. In essence, each turn in Heiki Strike Alternative is a microcosm of the larger narrative – a delicate balance of strategic choices, resource management and the relentless pursuit of victory. As commanders engage in this tactical ballet, they add new chapters to the evolving saga, making each turn a captivating episode in the dynamic world of Heiki warfare.

japanimegames.com

Head to the battlegrounds!

Join us for the release of Heiki Strike Alternative at: Heiki Strike Alternative is a tactical card game for 2 players. Take the oﬀense and be the ﬁrst to occupy three battlegrounds, or play defensively and drain the opponent's resources to secure your victory.

www.JapanimeGames.com sales@japanimegames.com

How We Sold More Than 400 Copies in One Weekend

by Glenn Flaherty, Social Media Manager, Grand Gamers Guild

t Grand Gamers Guild, we regularly attend conventions, and along the way we pick up tricks that help our booth do better and better. Now, these ideas aren’t just for booths. As someone with a brick-and-mortar background, it’s good advice for stores, too.

Have signage that sells for you

Almost like a self-service line, having small signs that explain a little bit about each game really invites customers to interact with a product. For example, The Artemis Odyssey sign would say “Discover planets, trade between factions, establish bases and rule the galaxy!” They can read it at their own pace and without the pressure of a salesperson looming over them. If they are interested, they’ll ask more. I’ve seen this open a lot of doors for conversation that result in sales. Artemis Odyssey is one of our biggest movers and these signs have helped a lot!

Arrange for customer flow

Another tip that helps is making yourself customerflow friendly. Are there barriers to interacting with your merchandise? Does it invite eyeballs? One thing I noticed at Pax Unplugged was how nearly every booth was set up at 90-degree angles. How do we stand out? We could’ve had a free giveaway gimmick, but instead we angled our demo tables. This broke up the monotony, made it easier for passers-by to see what we have and made it easier to interact with the products. As soon as we did this, it worked! People instantly gathered around our titles. Sure, it was a little touch, but removing physical barriers made an immediate impact.

What is your beacon?

As much as we want to sell all of our merch, we must remember that overloading the mind doesn’t help us put the best light on our games. Give your products the space they deserve and prioritize what you want first and foremost. For us, our beacon game is Holiday Hijinks. They are small, super-affordable 18-card escape room games. We put them right on the corner of our booth and gave them their own table with a spin rack that stood up vertically. There was plenty of space to look at each game in the series and to flip through the cards. This really gave gamers a chance to interact and see what it’s about. The result: we sold more than 400 copies. Of course, having a great game is what closes 82

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the deal, but framing the game well is what initiates the opportunity. And people love a spin rack.

Meet your customer where they are

I say this in terms of meeting them physically and in every other sense. We offer a wide range of price points and sell our games instore, online, as downloads, at conventions – even school fairs. Yes, an untapped and eager crowd who is primed to have a good time. Up in good ol’ Michigan we took a chance on a table at a school fair and it was a resounding success. In short, look for opportunities. Where might your customers be?

Keep the momentum going

Are the results of these tactics always immediate? No, but they often pay dividends in one way or the other – even if you have to wait to see the results. For us, keeping the momentum going means fueling the love of our Hijinks line with our newest entry: The Easter Escapade. It introduces new puzzles and a new storyline that emerges as you try to untangle an egg hunt in disarray! We make sure that our current customers know about it and use targeted online advertising to make sure other gamers know about it, too. Nothing so large that it breaks the bank, but the exposure from the ad has done wonders to spread brand awareness and raise the profile of every game we publish. So the question for you is how will you start your momentum and how will you keep it going? I hope these tips help! Feel free to reach out if you have other questions or comments. As always, I can’t wait to hear from you! Until next time. Happy gaming! Glenn Flaherty can be reached at grandgamersguildsm@gmail. com.

grandgamersguild.com

60’

MSRP: $9.99

DIFFICULTY: 1/3

A 60-MINUTE MYSTERY FOR 1 OR MORE SLEUTHS OF ANY AGE

Affordable, easy to display, and uniquely inviting. Each title has new riddles and puzzles to solve, as well as an app-based hint system to avoid frustration. Collect them all!

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The next room is blocked by a pile of decorations meant to be hung before the event begins. No time for that. Shards of chocolate are strewn across the floor. Among the remains are the pie ces How can you get past them?of a delicious-looking bun ny! It must have made someone ang ry.

What was wrong with it?

type: While you have this card, you find.

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to interact with any

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in the PSi booth

Honey, We Shrunk the Gloomhaven by Price Johnson, Chief Operating Officer, Cephalofair Games

ephalofair Games is in the business of selling consumers big games. Really big games. Really heavy big games. Gloomhaven packed nearly 20 pounds of unpunched boardgaming goodness. Frosthaven raised the stakes another 10 pounds! So, what made more sense for our next titular release than a micro travel game for solo dungeon delvers that fits in their pocket?! Introducing Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs. A joyful celebration and miniaturization of what we love most about the core Gloomhaven experience brought to life by designers Joe Klipfel and Nikki Valens. In Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs, everything from the components to the storyline have been shrunken down to let you get the classic Gloomhaven experience while on your lunch break or on a flight! Think: “Gloomhaven Combat-Sudoku.” Just enough of a puzzle to scratch that fantasy RPG dungeon crawling itch – but now in a 20-minute window! Narratively, you will play as one of six playable characters who have recently found themselves magically miniaturized within the city walls of Gloomhaven. You will have to scale furniture, conquer foes and outfit yourself with odd little bits and bobs in order to restore yourself to your proper size. This solo player campaign will unfold over 15 scenarios, with each playable class featuring a unique scenario of their own. Physically, game components in 84

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Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs have been reduced to as small of a footprint as we felt was responsible – and most innovatively small enough to fit entirely on a plane tray table! Entire scenarios are now played on the back of single cards. Mercenaries are represented by 10-milimeter “Micro-Miniatures,” a tribute to the beloved Mighty Max and Polly Pocket toys of our past! Modifier decks and monster ability decks have also creatively been replaced in favor of a brand new and inspiring modifier die and chart system designed by Nikki Valens. All in all, you’ll be completely set up in 2 to 3 minutes – a Gloomhaven first! The concept was first inspired by Joe Klipfel’s community print-and-play

design Gloomholdin’ – a clever handheld version of Gloomhaven. This consisted of a single character and a number of custom scenarios, all of which let you play the essence of Gloomhaven in a single hand or in your lap, without all the setup, teardown or juggling of thousands of components. “After speaking with Joe and learning he’d devised Gloomholdin’ simply as a way to play Gloomhaven, a game he had no time or space for at home, we knew we wanted to consider publishing something similar for all the other gamers we know that may resonate with,” said Price Johnson, COO of Cephalofair Games. “As two busy dads ourselves, we get Gloomhaven and Frosthaven are just too big of a commitment for any number of reasons! And we knew that with the help of Nikki Valens we could really refine this into a familiar, but refreshingly new, Gloomhaven experience!” Nikki Valens, acclaimed designer behind such titles as Mansions of Madness: Second Edition, Legacy of Dragonholt, and Artisans of Splendent Vale was brought on very early by the team to spearhead development and ultimately provided significant co-design to overhaul systems and streamline gameplay – further merging the concepts of the traditional Gloomhaven games with the micro strategy Klipfel had devised in his print-and-play. The result is a quaint 10-ounce box packed tightly with 20 scenarios of Gloomhaven dungeondelving adventure and epic strategy perfect for board gamers of all experience levels!

cephalofair.com

Introducing Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs, a new little adventure from Cephalofair Games. Designers Joe Klipfel, Nikki Valens, and Isaac Childres have created a smaller, more compact version of Gloomhaven that gives you the same deep strategy combat of the original game in a fraction of the size. Its compact footprint and streamlined system means you can set up and play a scenario in under 20 minutes on your coffee table or even an airplane tray table. Player Count: 1

Time: 20 Minutes/Scenario

Age: 10+

Estimated April 2024 release, available through distribution partners or directly from Cephalofair!

Buttons & Bugs UPC: 732388179008 MSRP: $20 Contact Information - retailers@cephalofair.com

Get Free Promos for Your Store! by Sophia Gambill, Sales Assistant, Renegade Game Studios

hat’s better than the joy of getting a new game? How about a new game and a free promo item! At Renegade, we are working to create fun and interesting promo items to help boost board game sales in retail stores. We recognize the power of a pre-sale promo item, and we believe a super cool promo can help you sell super cool games! Free promotional items with new games aren’t something we just started including; we include promo items with many of our board games. Some of our favorite promos of the past include our screen printed wooden meeples for the My Little Pony Deck-Building Game and foil character cards for the Power Rangers Deck-Building Game Shattered Grid Expansion, just to name a few. That’s just the start. We are always striving to ramp up the quality and coolness of our promos! You can use these promo products as sales incentives and prizes for those weekly board game events and so much more! One promo item you won’t want to miss is coming this spring with the G.I. JOE Deck-Building Game Silent Interlude Expansion. The promo item for this release is a 3D Cobra Silent Castle Dice Tower! This is a replica of the toy from the 80s but

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is a real functional cardboard dice tower for use in not only the G.I. Joe DBG, but all Renegade Game Studios G.I. Joe games (Mission Critical and the RPG)! With promos historically being available only through our webstore, there are many game stores who haven’t gotten their hands on our promo items. Well, we are here to change that.

Starting with the G.I. Joe Silent Interlude Dice Tower, we are making some of our new promo items available through our distributor partners! The Silent Interlude Dice Towers (RGS02655) are available for free on a 1:1 basis with purchase of the Silent Interlude Expansion (RGS02654) from participating distributors and from the Renegade Retailer webstore! Place your orders for the Silent Interlude Expansion and get this exclusive G.I. JOE Silent Fortress Dice Tower to help promote sales at your store! As always, our promo items from past and upcoming releases are available to retailers for free through the Renegade Retailer webstore page. If you aren’t a Renegade Retailer, sign up now! As a Renegade Retailer you have the option of ordering directly from Renegade Games. This provides access to exclusive board games and past promotional items not available from your distributor. You can sign up using the link on our website’s resources page at retailers.renegadegamestudios. com/retailers/. Make sure to sign up for our Retailer newsletter on our retailer site to know when our next new game and promo item combo is dropping! You won’t want to miss it!

renegadegames.com

www.renegadegames.com

• Expansion to the award winning Alice is Missing RPG • Investigate new mysterious locations • Explore brand new stories with new Suspect, Location, Character, Searching, and Clue cards • Introduces Relationship cards that help you to deepen your connections to the other characters. • Core game is required to play

Welcome Back to Silent Falls. Releasing February 29th, 2024

3-5 Players

Playing Time 2-3 hours

Ages 16+

RGS02660

MSRP $20

Defy Death in Dead Man’s Rust for Scarred Lands! by Travis Legge, Scarred Lands Developer, Onyx Path Publishing

his tale begins in the city of Leoni, home to the catlike Manticora during the Night of Chronicles. The player characters are enjoying the festival when they meet an aging dwarven bard named Dradoki Bronzeleaf. Dradoki is looking for adventurers to escort him to the Broadreach Horizon, an area of the Hornsaw Forest which has been reclaimed from titanic corruption by the indigenous elves and dwarves. Dradoki is a veteran of the divine war and is willing to share tales in addition to payment in coin for the party’s aid in returning him home. On the journey to the Broadreach Horizon, the adventurers encounter a band of undead monstrosities. These animated corpses wind their way through the countryside like a macabre parody of a marching band. These monsters wear heraldry from the city state of GlividAutel, known throughout Scarn as the stronghold of evil necromancers of the Society of Immortals. The party soon discovers undead from Glivid-Autel are appearing with greater frequency in the Hornsaw forest and the northern area of those woods that make up the Broadreach Horizon. The undead aren’t the only outsiders making their presence known in the Broadreach. Hollow legionnaires, heroes from the pristine area to the northwest of the Hornsaw, known as the Gleaming Valley, have begun visiting the Broadreach Horizon on a mission of diplomacy. The hollow legionnaires were

AROUND THE table • Q1 2024

born after the end of the Divine War, as a gift from the god Corean to his loyal hollow knights who could no longer have families of their own. As the hollow legionnaires seek their place in the world, they reach out to neighboring peoples including those of the Broadreach clans, to forge new friendships. Diplomacy, however, is a difficult business. Things take a dark turn when hollow legionnaires sent to engage the Broadreach clans go missing. The remaining legionnaires beseech the part for aid in tracking their missing brethren. As they seek answers, the heroes must face titanic minions, undead monstrosities and the harsh environment of the Hornsaw Forest. The mystery of the missing legionnaires sets the party on a quest that will take them into the heart of Glivid-Autel and pit them against some of the most powerful and twisted necromancers the Scarred Lands have ever known. Dead Man’s Rust is a campaign book taking the players across the Scarred Lands while offering a range of play from level 1 to level 11. This book details a massive section of the continent of Ghelspad, offering settlements for over two dozen Broadreach clans and information on several major cities including Glivid-Autel, Leoni, The Golden City and Citadel. Dozens of NPCs and monsters are presented for the Game Master to draw from, and several new subclasses, spells, and playable peoples are included for players to use. Embark on your epic journey through the Scarred Lands with Dead Man’s Rust!

theonyxpath.com

At the Night of Chronicles in the city of Leoni, the adventurers enjoy a wild revel. Opportunity arises when the aging bard Dradoki Bronzeleaf hires the party to escort him to the Broadreach Horizon. The perilous voyage takes the group through titanspawn infested lands, but should they survive, they arrive at the last bastion of uncorrupted wood in the Hornsaw Forest. There they meet the clans of the Broadreach elves and a century of hollow legionnaires dispatched to the Forest of Blood to offer aid and friendship. Dead Man’s Rust contains: • A complete campaign taking characters from level 1 to 10 • Detailed write-ups of four major locations in central Ghelspad: the Broadreach Horizon, The Gleaming Valley, the Hornsaw Forest, and the necromancer’s stronghold of Glivid-Autel • New playable options including races, subraces, and subclasses • New monsters, magic items, and more!

ALSO AVAILABLE FOR SCARRED LANDS 5E!

Ultimatch

A Colorful Cooperative Card Game of Clever Matches and Risky Choices by Justin De Witt, CCO, Fireside Games

ltimatch is a new card game coming from Fireside Games in Summer 2024. While its roots may feel familiar, we’ve taken the “play-a-card-to-matcha-card” idea to a whole new level. In this colorful game, players will cooperate to match cards in their hands to the faceup cards at the bottom row of a pyramid made of face-down cards. Every match removes a card, which may reveal the next card up the pyramid. The team wins if they remove all the cards from the pyramid, but they lose if every player must pass one after another. When making matches, players have access to their own hand of cards plus a row of faceup cards built from the hands of all players during setup. This row is called the alta-hand. In addition, each player may start their turn by trading one card with another player. Table talk is limited though, so making sure to trade for the right card at the right time is crucial. The cooperative element makes this game unique enough, but the real excitement comes in the

AROUND THE table • Q1 2024

various ways players can make matches. Every card shows the numbers one through eight in six different colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple). The simplest match that players can make is to play a single card matching one of the faceup cards by either number or color. Players will be familiar with this method of matching from other games. Ultimatch goes beyond that, though, by letting players use two cards to make even more matches. Players can use addition or subtraction to create a number match or combine two primary colors to match a secondary color (yellow

and blue make green). If a player is able to play two cards so that the final result matches both number and color of a faceup card, they’ve made an ultimatch. The reward for making an ultimatch is to draw two cards, keeping one in their hand and adding the second faceup to the alta-hand for the rest of the team to use later. Ultimatches are key to winning the game as it’s the only way players can draw new cards. There’s no shortage of engaging, clever moments in Ultimatch. Is it worth the risk to play one card now or save it for a better match later? Can you guess what card the other player needs this turn? Should you use a card from your own hand or burn a precious one from the alta-hand? Filled with risky choices, Ultimatch is an addictive just-one-more type of game that keeps experienced gamers interested and offers thrilling options to those new to the hobby. Plus, the cooperative nature reinforces teamwork and means no sore losers at the end of the game. Ultimatch is for one to five players ages 10 and up and plays in 20 minutes.

firesidegames.com

AQUA by Dan Halstad, Game Designer of Sidekick Games, The Op Games

hen the world was thrust into the unknown of the pandemic, I turned to an unexpected source of inspiration for my next board game design: my then 7-year-old son, Tristan. His dreams of becoming a marine biologist and a game designer sparked an idea that would serve as a much-needed creative outlet during our new isolated way of living. And so, our journey of creating AQUA began in those restless days stuck indoors, one that would blend our shared love for marine life with our board game obsession. Over several months, Tristan and I dedicated our spare moments to the project. Our time was consumed by researching marine life, sketching art, components and layouts, and playtesting various mechanisms. Tristan and I discussed each element in great detail to ensure we captured the essence of what makes coral reefs so magical to us both: the multiple layers of these ecosystems and the diverse array of marine life that call them home. The focal point of our narrative

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was always centered around the growth of coral formations, the subsequent flourishing of reefs and the establishment of habitats for smaller marine creatures. This, in turn, paved the way for the introduction of larger marine species, creating a dynamic ecosystem that mirrored the intricacies of the natural underwater world. The narrative seamlessly connected with the game’s mechanics, creating a thematic cohesion that complements an immersive gaming experience. Following the height of the pandemic, I was able to reconnect with Daniel Skjold Pedersen and Asger Harding Granerud, two popular figures in the board gaming world who I am privileged to have as my closest friends and business partners at Sidekick Games. Convinced of its potential, they recognized the unique

blend of simplicity and depth in the core puzzle and quickly agreed that it made an ideal choice for a family game that could also captivate the interest of seasoned gamers. The result of our labor is now before you – an embodiment of the beauty and awe of the ocean, coupled with a gameplay experience that can be enjoyed by players of all ages. AQUA’s stunningly detailed components are illustrated by my favorite board game artist Vincent Dutrait. Known for his beautiful illustrations, Dutrait’s work on AQUA completely elevates the overall experience, bringing our abstracted oceanic world to life on the tabletop. As a parent, I find immense pride in the result of our efforts and a shared experience with my son that I will never forget. Tristan has contributed his youthful creativity and enthusiasm to a project that will soon transcend our kitchen table, into the homes of families and friends worldwide. My sincere hope is that it finds its place on your family’s table, sparking conversations, fostering connections and igniting a curiosity about the boundless wonders that lie beneath the surface of the sea.

sales@usaopoly.com

Immerse yourself in the enchanting depths of a coral reef ecosystem. Cleverly expand your coral formations and create ﬂourishing habitats, attracting an array of fascinating marine animals.

AQUA invites you to dive into the beauty and wonder of the ocean, delivering an incredible variety of gameplay experiences for the whole family.

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GAMA news

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Q1 2024 • AROUND THE table

INDEX OF advertisers Company......................................website

Romance of the Seven Realms

ADA 15002 - $37.95

adverstory page

ad page

9th Level Games.......................................... 9thlevel.com..............................................................................9 Ad Astra Games............................................ adastragames.com.................................................................96 All Terrain Games......................................... allgameterrain.com......................................16......................17 Arcane Tinmen............................................. arcanetinmen.com.......................................22......................23 Arcane Wonders........................................... arcanewonders.com..............................................................69 BCW Supplies............................................... bcwsupplies.com..........................................34......................35 Beach House RPGs...................................... Jessica@BeachHouseRPGs.com...............44......................45 Cephalofair Games..................................... cephalofair.com............................................84......................85 Coyote & Crow LLC...................................... coyoteandcrow.net......................................60......................61 Czech Games Edition.................................. czechgames.com..........................................48......................49 Fiat Lucre....................................................... annapurnaboardgame.com...................................................9 Fireside Games LLC..................................... firesidegames.com.......................................90......................91 Floodgate Games........................................ floodgategames.com...................................64......................65 Flying Frog Productions............................. flyingfrog.net..................................................26......................27 Free League Publishing.............................. freeleaguepublishing.com.................................................. IFC Gale Force 9.................................................. gf9.com...........................................................30......................31 Ghost Galaxy................................................. ghostgalaxy.com...........................................24......................25 GoChuckle..................................................... hastybaker.com.........................................................................8 Goliath Coins................................................ friendzygames.com/wholesale..................36......................37 Grand Gamers Guild................................... grandgamersguild.com...............................82......................83 HeidelBAR Games....................................... cge.as/retailerportal.....................................76......................77 Incredible Dream......................................... incredibledream.com..................................78......................79 Japanime Games........................................ japanimegames.com...................................80......................81 KTBG/Burnt Island Games......................... kidstablebg.com...........................................58......................59 Lightspeed Global Distribution................ lsghobby.com................................................54......................55 Loke Battle Mats.......................................... lokeltd.co.uk..................................................40......................41 Magpie Games............................................. magpiegames.com.......................................52................50-51 Mana Project Studio................................... manaprojectstudio.com..............................56......................57 Mighty Boards.............................................. mighty-boards.com......................................20......................21 Mind’s Vision................................................. minds-vision.com.........................................12......................13 Old School Dice & Accessories.................. oldschoolgaming.net...................................62......................63 Onyx Path Publishing.................................. theonyxpath.com..........................................88......................89 Orange Nebula............................................. orangenebula.com.......................................10......................11 Paizo Inc........................................................ paizo.com.......................................................46......................47 Peachstate Hobby Distribution LLC......... phdgames.com.............................................14......................15 Pegasus Spiele North America.................. pegasusna.com............................................... 4........................6 Perplext, LLC................................................. perplext.com..................................................97.....................BC Publisher Services, Inc................................ dolphinhat.com............................................42......................43 Renegade Game Studios........................... renegadegames.com...................................86......................87 Steve Jackson Games................................ sjgames.com..................................................98....................IBC The Army Painter......................................... thearmypainter.com....................................18......................19 The Op Games 1 - USAopoly Inc............... Sales@usaopoly.com..................................32......................33 The Op Games 2 - USAopoly Inc............... Sales@usaopoly.com..................................72......................73 The Op Games 3 - USAopoly Inc............... Sales@usaopoly.com..................................92......................93 Upper Deck................................................... upperdeck.com............................................... 3..................... FC Vesuvius Media............................................ vesuviusmedia.com...............................................................95 Wyrd Games................................................. wyrd-games.net............................................70......................71

To advertise, contact Amy Colburn at 315-789-6431 or amy@fwpi.com

www.adastragames.com Available through Distribution or Direct 96

AROUND THE table • Q1 2024

Issue

AROUND THE

2024

A Publication by the Game Manufacturers Association

Q2 Q3 Q4

Deadline Apr. 12 Jul. 12 Sep. 27

Mailing Date

May 17 Aug. 16 Nov. 1

Still Packin’ a Punch!

by Jennifer Handy, Vice President, Perplext

ack O Game SET 3 is 10 years in the making! As in previous sets, a wide range of mechanics and play levels build upon the current breadth of the line. Pack O Game SET 3 debuts new mechanics for the line such as drafting and trick-taking. Perhaps the most note-worthy of the new titles is WIN, a horse racing game for two to four players that borrows and builds upon the popular Long Shot: The Dice Game. Players bet and wrangle horses with hopes of winning the most cash after one race. SET 3 also allows NUT to have an official place in the line after becoming a fan-favorite following its limited bonus release from the SET 2 KickStarter project. Here’s an overview of the eight new titles in Pack O Game SET 3:

Time Capsule cards for end-of-game points! MAD – In this trick-taking game, winning a trick isn’t always desired because each card has a “Science” (+) and “Madness” (-) side that challenges the balance of players’ score piles. Trick winners take an opponent’s card into one of their matching score piles – two suits of which are imbalanced from the start – with the goal to reduce each suit to zero. Lowest score wins! NUT – In this “set-connecting” game, players earn points by creating trees with clusters of orthogonally connected, same-color nuts. Nuts are collected from communal columns, and at the end, players only count their highest valued nut cluster in each of the six colors to see who wins!

WIN – A game where players bet on horses and earn cash in various ways. Each round, Run cards advance three horses and players take turns performing one of five actions that grow increasingly limited. After three horses finish the race, players add up their winnings to see who won!

BOG – In this two-player battle-for-the-Bog, gamers play frogs from their hand, move them onto lily pads (playing area), land on flies to draw more cards and on opposing frogs to earn points. Complete frog “routes’ and score frog “formations” for even more points to win the game!

YET – A card-drafting “race for time” where players move their airships around a clock, capturing face-up

FAR – Each player uses royalty to rule land in an ever-growing kingdom. Rule just

perplext.com

enough territory to earn points, as too much greed will cause a revolt and loss of points. Ruler with the most points wins! IRK – Play cards and create connected clusters that match colors played in your scoring pile. Block and disrupt opponents’ patterns to tank their scores. Determine player majorities for each color/symbol, then reward points based on clusters in the center area to see who wins! SLY – Players protect their hens at the hen house while also playing their foxes to gobble up opponents’ hens. The player with the most points from safe hens, exposed enemy foxes and gobbled hens is the winner! New Pack O Game titles will be available in Spring 2024!

Q1 2024 • AROUND THE table

A True Game Changer How Tabletop Games Transform People and Communities by Katie Duffy, Marketing Manager, Steve Jackson Games

abletop games have provided people with a welcome distraction for thousands of years (think ancient Egypt and Senet, circa 2620 BCE). We seem to have a distinct need for play whether times are good or bad. As we continue to face societal challenges ranging from climate change to chronic loneliness, perhaps it’s no surprise that consumers are turning to games that evoke delight, excitement, wonder or nostalgia. But is this desire to roll dice, move meeples or create collaborative stories merely escapism, or is something more happening with each turn? In her TED talk, “Games Can Make the World a Better Place,” Jane McGonigal, PhD, discusses how avid gamers can develop exceptional selfmotivation, improved social skills and enhanced meaning and purpose simply by playing games on a regular basis. Dr. McGonigal’s work focuses primarily on video-game enthusiasts, particularly MMORPGs. (She describes these games as “the ideal collaborative problemsolving environment.”) The structure of MMORPGs is not terribly different from tabletop roleplaying games such as GURPS or The Fantasy Trip, so it’s safe to assume that tabletop roleplayers can develop these skills as well. But TTRPG players aren’t the only ones who benefit from game time. Board game enthusiasts may improve their critical thinking and strategic skills, creativity and self-confidence by engaging in the hobby. Even games meant for young children help to teach patience, emotional regulation and courtesy – soft 98

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skills that are vital for success. The positive effects of tabletop games go beyond the individual. In an age of isolation, tabletop games can offer a vital social outlet for people, regardless of their background. Despite the proliferation of digital communication and social media – or perhaps because of it – it’s no surprise that game stores and board-game cafes have become popular throughout the United States. It’s also no surprise that so many of these venues function as de facto community hubs that host events, serve as meeting places and give back to those in need. After all, gamers love a challenge. What can be more challenging than tackling real-world issues. What can be more rewarding than a “victory” that has a real-world effect? The tabletop game industry will continue to evolve as tastes and audiences change. But even in light of these changes, the role that games have in shaping individuals and communities will remain steadfast. Industry insiders should celebrate this unique role that games play in the lives of billions of people throughout the world. They should also consider how they can better support the unique ecosystem of game stores, boardgame cafes, extracurricular programs and local gaming groups that help introduce

people of all ages to the world of tabletop gaming. Games do not change the world by themselves. However, countless studies have shown that games change people for the better by improving individual skills and bringing diverse groups together. By creating spaces where people can socialize, cooperate, collaborate and engage in friendly competition, tabletop games make room for possibilities and real-world transformation. That’s something we need more than ever.

Try To build a Town wiThouT

having iT sTomped To rubble by groo The barbarian !

Fans of Mad Magazine love Sergio Aragonés, and they love his character Groo the Barbarian. Groo is a warrior and wanderer, never in one place for long . . . because he’s such a klutz the people run him out! In this fast, fun game, each player tries to build a town and keep it intact against the twin threats of rival armies and Groo’s “helpful” visits. Roll dice to gain resources, spend them on buildings or troops . . . but anything you can’t use is passed along to your rivals!

#PlaySJGames

sjgames.com

Ultra-portable, strategy card games

Bet and Influence a horse race to win the most cash.

A card-drafting airship race for time around a virtual clock.

A trick-taking game in which players balance positive and negative cards.

A ‘set connecting’ game in which players earn points by filling trees with nut clusters.

Hop around lily pads to land on flies and opposing frogs in this battle for the bog.

Rule land in an ever-growing kingdom but too much greed will cause a revolt.

Introducing 8 thrilling new titles.

Find them at your local game store! packogame.com

Create clusters matching the colors you play in your scoring pile.

Protect your hens and use your fox to gobble up opponents' hens.