by W. Eric Martin

▪️ If you’ve played Gricha German and Corentin Lebrat‘s Tag Team, you won’t be surprised to discover that publisher Scorpion Masqué plans to release a new set in 2026. I mean, the box includes a teaser sheet featuring Excalibur in the fabled stone and the word “2026”.

At SPIEL Essen 25, Scorpion Masqué marketing director Joëlle Bouhnik ran me through plans for the game line, which would ideally consist of two standalone Tag Team boxes annually, with each set being playable with all others. Staying on theme, these sets will take a “tag team” approach when it comes to design, with the as-yet-to-be-named “Arthurian legend” set being by Benoit Turpin and Florian Sirieix, the third IP-based set by Christian Kudahl, and the fourth set by the original designers.

Work-in-progress art and design

The Arthurian set will contain six characters with the same average complexity as those in the original release:

• Morgan lets you see the card the opponent adds to their deck, although not where they place it, before you choose your card.

• Percival has a card-stacking ability that influences how he attacks.

• The Green Knight gains power temporarily whenever its health marker drops, encouraging you to take risks in exchange for big swings.

• Excalibur gives power to your tag team partner, and if it takes enough damage, it breaks rather than being knocked out.

• The Dragon gains scales as it loses health, with the scales affecting card abilities along the lines of Bödvar in the original release.

• Merlin has a skill tree along which you can move tokens to gain health, shield yourself from an attack, and so on.

The second Tag Team set should be out in June 2026, with the third set out by the end of 2026.

▪️ Another Scorpion Masqué title in development is a Jon Perry and Christian Kudahl design that currently bears the name “Oddball“, both because the featured characters look goofy and because the two players in this game are playing an odd sport with their drafted characters. What is that sport? The details are nebulous, other than it employing an odd ball, with players participating in bouts for control of the ball and victory in each bout.

Work-in-progress art and design

To set up, players draft their team of characters, with you (if I recall correctly) choosing one card from four, choosing two cards from the three the opponent gives you, then getting a new set of four to do it again.

The bout leader plays a card, and you must follow the same suit, with yellow serving as a joker. Each card features a star value, a strength value for the current bout, an initiative value to see who leads the next bout, and a text effect that occurs in a specified situation. You’re trying to win bouts to score points from your characters, but you can also score from controlling the ball and carrying out various effects, so “Oddball” is a quasi-drafting and trick-taking card game with special powers.

Work-in-progress art and design

Bouhnik says the plan is to create character names and artwork via a Keyforge-style automated system using art from animation designer and cartoonist Thomas Wellmann.

▪️ The final 2026 title in development to be shared is currently titled “Panorama“, with this being a tile-drafting game in which you assemble a personal panorama one tile at a time, with the ridged edges allowing you to combine tiles in specified ways.

What are you trying to do? Create large unified fields that score in particular ways, while also competing for shared objectives that vary from game to game. Despite the simplicity of the design — or perhaps because of it — Bouhnik noted that the image below shows the 82nd version of the design. As graphic designers well know, never label a file “final”; just keep increasing the numbers and use the highest numbers on hand.

Work-in-progress art and design

▪️ While I was in the Scorpion Masqué booth, Flavien Loisier from Hachette Boardgames UK stopped by so that we could admire his drip — his fully playable MicroMacro drip, mind you.