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  Artist Diary: Castle Combo Comes Out of the Oubliette!

  by EscapaStef on January 16, 2026

  by Stéphane Escapa After we published the artist diary for Castle Combo, I went through all the feedback from gamers, and I realized the research work on the characters' background was a key ingredient in the secret sauce, regardless of how fun it was to me. I then thought I had to crank the volume up to eleven for Out of the Oubliette!, the Castle Combo expansion debuting in late 2025 from Catch Up Games. This time, we would have only twelve characters. While chatting with developer Seb and designers Mathieu and Greg, we realized we couldn't have weak characters. On the contrary, we needed stylish characters with a nice reference or inspiration behind them — and the mechanical side of the theme wanted all of these characters to be prisoners, locked-down pariahs, so they couldn't be squeaky clean... Even so, we didn't want to caricature dark and brooding characters; we had to stay fun and quirky so that the new cast would feel at home in the base game's roster! I dove back into a sea of research: pop culture, history, obscure websites... Outside of their mechanical inner workings (costs, shields, ability, and scoring), the identity and profession of all twelve characters were not set in stone when we started thinking about them. The Man in the Iron Mask and the Fortune Teller were obvious good candidates, but all of the others needed work. As we did in the base game, all four of us brainstormed to find jobs that fit the cards' abilities or scorings — ideally both. In the end, eleven characters were found easily, but the twelfth was way more of a challenge. Looking for our twelve felons Without further ado, here are the thoughts behind these new cast members! LADY IN THE IRON MASK The Man in the Iron Mask was an obligatory choice. As he had three shields, I decided that I would start with him...or rather her. Because we care about gender parity, the Man in the Iron Mask became a Lady. As you may know, I love coming up with stories, so she was obviously going to be the sister (or half-sister, or cousin) of the Queen. I know, we already did that with the Prince and the Stable boy, but a leopard cannot change its spots. My first instinct was to copy Her Majesty the Queen's design. This is quite fun because that character was the first one I worked on and the last to be finished. At the last moment, Seb told me the character wasn't iconic enough, and Mathieu thought the colors I had chosen made the card hard to read, so I completely redesigned her dress, taking inspiration from Marie-Antoinette's famous and gorgeous puffy dress! I also placed a lys flower (a lily) on the side of her mask. In the Three Musketeers novels, Milady bears this withered mark, branded with hot iron on thieves', beggars' and slaves' shoulders – and it could be found on other lowly individuals in the XVIIth century. Our characters having very small arms and very big heads, the placement of this symbol was obvious. The mysterious Lady in the Iron Mask TOADY & PEDDLER The abilities and scorings of the Toady and the Peddler (who was initially a smuggler) were similar, so I came up with a link between them. Again, there was a kind of story involved: the Peddler being ambitious (with his vertical scoring) he placed his son at the King's court (horizontal scoring). So that you have this parental link in the character design, they have the same face, which is a blend of Game of Thrones' odious Littlefinger and the smirking and smug Ser Davos. Both also have a hat with a peacock feather, which is yet another Game of Thrones reference. Daddy Peddler Toady kiddo CONSPIRATOR The Conspirator's ability was obvious, and I had already designed that manipulative character for the base game – he almost ended up taking Michel the Messenger's place! We thought he would be a good fit for a Clergy role, with his Richelieu-inspired likeness. We added a doll version of the King in his hands, just for funsies. Conspirator gonna conspirate PLAYWRIGHT The Playwright is inspired by Armande Béjart and...her husband Molière himself since he played multiple female roles in his own plays. Playwright (and actor, obviously...) PRINTER The Printer – or at least her garb – is straight outta Madeleine Plantin's portrait. Plantin is a printer from the XVIth century. Diane de Poitiers, from the same period, had more or less the same accoutrement, so she was a reference, too. The irreverent caricatures around her – that obviously got her jailed in the first place – are a nod to Charles Philipon's works that depict Louis-Philippe the First as turning into...a pear! Irreverent Printer KING OF BEGGARS The idea of adding the King of Beggars was an early thought. Aside from the Man in the Iron Mask, this was the only other character with three shields, so it needed to be iconic. Who to embody him better than the Great Coësre from Paris' Cour des Miracles? An old leper/miser with a lame limb, but who reigns over all the Parisian beggars and thieves? Now this is classy! All hail the Beggars' King! ART FORGER The Art forger would, of course, copy an adjacent ability: an obvious choice of character. She is directly modeled after Properzia de Rossi, a Renaissance sculptor. You can find a few fakes around her that might ring a bell: a miter, a clock, a sculpture, and a famous painting. Art Forger and her latest creations CUTPURSE Mathieu had the perfect word for the Cutpurse: "Try to imagine Red Riding Hood gone wrong." Like many characters from the Village, I didn't draw inspiration from historical figures or works of art. I stumbled on this costume only while browsing an online shop. All this research at least taught me there were harsh trials if you wanted to become Master Thief of the cutpurses' brotherhood... Cutpurse dear, what a nice hood you have! PRINCE OF THIEVES The Prince of Thieves was a character who we couldn't miss on since its scoring was one that interacted with the expansion's new mechanism. We needed a character with serious rizz! We thought about a poacher, but that was a bit too dark. The card instead suggests some sort of vigilante, with an ability that steals from the rich and a scoring that scales on prisoners (whether freed or not). We stayed in the silly, quirky fun of Castle Combo, and instead of being literal and quoting Kevin Costner, we went for Mel Brooks' Robin Hood, as well as Westley in The Princess Bride, both portrayed by Cary Elwes. Prince of Thieves (in tights) FORTUNE TELLER For the Fortune Teller, Esmeralda was the main reference, along with Méjaï, in Le Scorpion, too. Enrico Marini's comic book was a key read when I was younger, and I wanted to pay tribute to that incredibly charismatic character. I even included her black cat, Pharaon. This Fortune Teller was once an outcast, too CARDINAL'S HAND For the twelfth and last character, we hesitated a lot. They were supposed to have a military shield, and their power was to be tied to the clergy. We questioned which character or job was the best suited to tell that story. A Templar would have been perfect, but there's already one in the base game. So who else? A brother in arms? A kind of Swiss guard? A fanatic? After multiple sketches, we opted for Milady de Winter, sworn enemy to d'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers, and she obviously will be the Cardinal's sidekick. I drew inspiration mainly from the actress Mylène Demongeot (and her superb red dress), who plays her part in both classical movies shot by Bernard Borderie in 1961. The Cardinal's Hand could have been a King's Hand... Fear the crimson Cardinal's Hand! As for icons, most of the job had been done with the base game, so there was no real surprise or complication. The only really new icon was the padlock, placed right before the ability, and this was meant to be instantly recognizable. It was rather easy to make, taking only a few sketches before we reached its final iteration. Locking in the design for padlocks A last word? Thank you again to all who read through my diary(ies!) – your comments on the first one made me want to write a second! I hope you've appreciated the research and thinking behind this small expansion. Though I regret the Swiss Guard is not part of the cast, who knows, maybe Mathieu and Greg have more ideas in their heads... Stéphane Escapa

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  Balance Matter, Pick Up Bags at the Airport, and Stuff Your Greedy Goose

  by W Eric Martin on January 15, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin To follow up on this November 2025 post, let's get an overview of what German publisher AMIGO will release at the start of 2026: ▪️ Matter Matters is a German-language edition of Tsutomu Dejima's 2024 trick-taking game milkuro. The deck consists of 44 cards with numbers in two colors — gold and purple — that always sum to 45. Each turn, a player leads to the trick by saying one of the two colors, then whoever plays the highest card of that color wins the trick and leads the next one. When you win a trick, you place it in front of you next to the gold or purple side of a "balance" card. If you take the same number of tricks in each color, you score points equal to the number of tricks taken; if not, you lose points equal to the difference between the two colors. In a two-player game, if you have the most points in a round, you win it, and the first player to win two rounds wins the game. With 3-4 players, you play 3-4 rounds, then whoever has the most points wins. ▪️ Greedy Goose is a card game for 2-6 players from George Feledichuk, Duvey Rudow, and Leo Taylor in which you want to snatch as many snacks as possible — but if you get too grabby, you'll lose some of what you already hold. In detail: The deck consists of cards numbered 1-4, with 3s being present in both green and yellow; twelve action cards are present as well. Spread all of these cards face down on the table. Each player takes three cards in hand. On a turn, you must turn a face-down card face up. If two identical cards are now face up, you must end your turn and add all face-up cards to your hand. If not, you can either reveal another card (and again check for matching cards), stop and collect all face-up cards, or end your turn, leaving all face-up cards for the next player. If you reveal an action card, you can either steal a card from an opponent or give them one of your cards, depending on what the card shows. You can also ignore it, and in either case, you then discard this card. If you ever hold more cards of the same type than the number showing on that card, you must discard all of those cards, removing them from the game. Pick up a second 1 — gone! Hold more than three green 3s — gone! Continue play until all face-down cards have been revealed, then score your hand. A 1 is worth 3 points, and each other card is 1 point. Whoever holds the most points wins. The rules don't say the geese are stuffing themselves to the point of throwing up, but that definitely seems like what you're doing. ▪️ Koffer, Katze & Sombrero is a card game for 2-4 players from Christian Kudahl that has you pick up luggage at the airport, and to make things easy for yourself, you want to pick up everything in the proper order: The deck contains 40 cards numbered 1-10 in four colors, and to set up, you shuffle the deck, then lay seven cards in a row with one end being designated the front. Each player takes seven chips. On a turn, you will take one card from the row, with the first card being free, the second card requiring you to place a chip on the first card, the third card requiring you to place chips on the first two cards, and so on. When you take a card, you start a pile in that color or add it to an existing pile — but if the number on this card is lower than the card it's covering, you must turn the new card face down. In the future, you can place any value face up on a face-down card. When you can't fill the row to seven cards at the end of your turn, complete the round so that everyone has the same number of turns, then tally your score, with face-up cards being worth as many points as their number, face-down cards worth -1 point, and chips worth 1 point. To add more variety, you can draw three of the fifteen special cards at random. Each card has either an end-of-game scoring effect or a condition that affects play during the game. ▪️ Wizard: 30-Jahre-Edition is a 30th anniversary edition of the first German release of Ken Fisher's trick-taking game Wizard in Germany, with AMIGO having sold nearly four million copies of Wizard at this point, aside from its other Wizard-branded titles and spinoffs. This edition features two new special cards: the witch and the vampire. The vampire copies the card that was flipped at the start of the hand to determine the trump suit, so the vampire is always trump...unless a jester was flipped or one of the other special cards. The witch counts as worse than a 1, so it's unlikely to win a trick, but after the winner of the trick has been determined, you place any card from your hand into the trick, then place any non-witch card from that trick into your hand. To play with these two special cards or any of the other seven that are included from earlier anniversary editions, you shuffle them into the deck just like any other cards. As with wizards and jesters, you can play a special card on your turn instead of being forced to play a card that's on-suit. Wizard: 30-Jahre-Edition also includes scoring chips in values 10, 20, 100, -10, and -50 so that players don't have to record scores on paper.

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  Oath and Arcs Move to New Publisher Buried Giant Studios

  by W Eric Martin on January 14, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin Designer Cole Wehrle has announced that he's leaving Leder Games in order to co-found the new publisher Buried Giant Studios with his brother and developer Drew Wehrle, illustrator Kyle Ferrin, and Ted Caya, former director of operations for Leder Games. Buried Giant Studios has secured the rights to both Arcs and Oath, two Cole Wehrle designs first published by Leder Games, as well as all existing stock of those games. Leder Games will remain the publisher of Wehrle's game Root. For its first project, Buried Giant Studios will fulfill the Oath: New Foundations crowdfunding campaign that Leder Games ran in mid-2024. Next, it will launch a crowdfunding campaign in Q2 2026 for Arcs: Beyond the Reach, with Kyle Ferrin mentioning that he's "already working on a SET of Arcs expansions". Beyond that, in a Discord post Cole Wehrle writes: I've got two new game concepts that I'm working on. They are both late 2027 projects at the earliest, but I'm pretty excited about them broadly. The first is a noir-y either far future or wizard-y "school game" involving murder and mystery and taking place over several years. I think I've got the basic concept worked up but I need to spend a lot of time to find the right mechanical framework. The second is a proper geopolitical game. Though I've worked on a lot of political games in the past, they are basically always focused on a single state (Root, Oath, Arcs, etc). Arcs is sorta the exception here, but only sorta. There are stories that those games can't tell because of how narrow their focus is. I think I actually have a good mechanical engine for this one, but there are lots of scope questions that need worked out. I'd love to push the chronicle structure of Oath in a very different direction. In the short term though it's the final bits of production polish on NF, the Arcs expansion, and finishing An Infamous Traffic. U.S. publisher Hollandspiele released An Infamous Traffic in 2016, and in September 2025 Wehrle posted an update on the game's second edition, along with a work-in-progress photo. Additionally, Cole and Drew Wehrle's company Wehrlegig Games, which they started in 2018 to release a second edition of Cole's game Pax Pamir, will essentially be a studio inside Buried Giant Studios that focuses on historical games.

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  Act Like a Human as You Read Minds, Erase Words, and Become a Goat

  by W Eric Martin on January 14, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin New Year's Eve is now two weeks in the past, but we can still talk about party games, yes? Surely we'll have some need for them at future events prior to December 31, 2026? Working on that assumption, here's a sampling of new and upcoming party games: ▪️ In Q1 2026, R&R Games will release "Normal" Human from designers Jasper Beatrix, Phil Gross, and Bobby West, and this 4-16 player game seems squarely in the R&R mold, while riffing on Spyfall and A Fake Artist Goes to New York. One player is secretly an alien amongst all the humans, and you want to help the alien escape detection from a government agent. Each round, the agent leaves the room, everyone other than the alien receives a task to act out, then the agent enters the room and tries to spot the alien, who must quickly figure out what the normal humans are doing and try to fit in. R&R Games shared this image to convey the nature of "Normal" Human: Yep, that seems like an R&R title, all right. To get in the right spirit, start playing at 1:00 a.m. at a convention when you're slightly out of your mind from lack of sleep. ▪️ Coincidentally, Bitewing Games will crowdfund a Kasper Lapp design titled Totally Human in its Q1 2026 crowdfunding campaign for Reiner Knizia's Gold Country. How do aliens need to act like humans this time? The alien invasion has begun, and humans are in a rush to escape Earth before it's too late. The only problem is that aliens have already disguised themselves as humans. Our only hope is to weed out the aliens via the power of...multiple choice questions! In Totally Human, players are given hidden identities (human or alien) and must answer three multiple-choice questions as "human-like" as possible, but aliens don't understand human culture completely and face restrictions on how they can respond. • The humans' goal is to escape on the biggest alien-free rocket to form a new colony out in the stars. • The aliens' goal is to blend in and sneak onto any rocket with humans for a tasty, post-invasion snack. Both aliens and humans can achieve their goals on different rockets, but it's also possible that nobody wins. Be careful who you trust! ▪️ In 2026, Austrian publisher 1 More Time Games will release One Word Away from designer Markus Slawitscheck. This 2-8 player game carries an element similar to 2021's Last Message from Juhwa Lee and Giung Kim and will be available solely in German upon launch. Here's the quick take: Whether playing co-operatively or in teams, on a turn you write down three clues to try to help your fellow players guess a secret word, but before they can do so, one of your clues will be erased by either a die roll or the other team. Can you construct your clues so that they'll still be able to guess correctly? ▪️ GOAT, a.k.a. Greatest of All Time, is a December 2025 release from Matt Fantastic, Blaise Sewell, and Dolphin Hat Games that plays somewhat like a reverse charades in that everyone knows what you're performing and they can influence what you do. Each of the 3-8 players takes a turn as the actor, drawing three action cards, then placing one on the table. Each other player gives the actor a modifier card in secret, then the actor reveals as many modifiers as they like and performs the not-charade. After each person has acted, everyone votes simultaneously for which performance they thought was best, with that player earning 2 points. Each player also scores 1 point for each of their modifiers chosen by an actor...which suggests that the best approach to winning is to choose no modifiers when you act since that only helps others score, but that would run counter to the spirit of the game, so don't do that. ▪️ To continue the pattern of party games that remind me of other games, we come to Tic Tac Top, a 3-7 player game from Simona Greco and Marco Rava that Explor8 will release in a combined English/French edition in March 2025. Your goal is to mind meld with the round's active player and think like they do. More specifically, the leader will reveal a theme card and a list of twelve words or phrases related to the theme. In secret, the leader will rank seven words from this list in order from most to least relevant, while everyone else fills a tic-tac-toe grid with nine items from that same list. Once everyone is finished, the leader will read their list from top to bottom, with each player circling an answer they wrote when the leader says it. If you've circled three items in a row first, let everyone know as you earn bonus points for matching the leader best. Each line you make is worth 1 point, and since the leader listed only seven items, you can score at most 5 points, aside from the bonus. The leader scores based on how quickly someone created a line and how many lines the player with the most lines created. I would imagine you play until each person has been leader once, then tally each player's score. The tic-tac-toe element of matching others calls to mind Martin Ang's JinxO, which I reviewed in July 2025. The gameplay itself is not similar — only the scoring, which recalls one of the first games most people learn. Side note while talking about this game: Swiss publisher Game Factory will release Dito!, a German-language edition of JinxO, in Q1 2026.

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  Designer Diary: The Two Towers: Trick-Taking Game

  by bryanb on January 13, 2026

  by Bryan Bornmueller The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers™ Trick-Taking Game is a co-operative trick-taking game based on the second novel of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It is a standalone sequel to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring™ Trick-Taking Game. Players continue their adventure through Middle-earth over eighteen new chapters. "The Road Goes Ever On" Based on positive early feedback for The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game, the team and I were lucky enough to embark upon a sequel as soon as the files got handed off to the printer. We wanted to follow the framework we had established in our adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring: the basic trick-taking rules, use of characters cards as the main goals, chapter cards, the shape of the box, and the game following the story of the novel as closely as possible. A key choice (and an easy one) was to closely mirror the structure of Tolkien's original story rather than that of the film adaptations. Tolkien splits The Two Towers into two distinct sections. The first follows Aragon, Legolas, Gimli, Merry, and Pippin and introduces Treebeard and the kingdom of Rohan, while covering the battle of Helm's Deep. The second, about two hundred pages later, goes back and tells the concurrent story of Frodo and Sam's odyssey with Gollum. I realized that it wouldn't make sense to include the five Rings cards in the part of the game where Frodo (and The Ring) are off on the other side of the Anduin. This left a five-card hole in the deck that needed to be filled. "Still dark and tall, unbroken by the storm, the tower of Orthanc stood." A game called "The Two Towers: Trick-Taking Game" obviously needed two towers, but where did they fit? Without The One Ring to provide a trump card (to allow the player to win the trick they are played in), I decided that the two towers could each work as trump. Tolkien was famously vague about which towers the title referred, so I decided to call the cards the White Tower and Black Tower. These simple names served the chapters well as I could have these same two cards thematically represent different things at different times in the story. Having two equal trump cards led to situations in which a tiebreaker was needed. After trying many options and failing to find a thematically satisfying tiebreaker mechanism, I decided that the towers should cancel each other out when played in the same trick. Although this tiebreaker method would be unspeakably annoying in a competitive trick-taking game, it turned out to be a satisfying tool that allowed players to get out of tight spots and work together in a co-operative game. Having two towers in the game also allowed us to include two chunky wooden tower tokens (based on Elaine Ryan's wonderful illustration) to help players remember who had each of these key cards. "I am called Strider", answered Aragorn. "I came out of the North. I am hunting Orcs." One of the key obstacles in the first book of The Two Towers is the Orcs. They are a constant threat and a major presence in the world of Middle-earth. As the cards in the players' hands represent that world, I realized the Orcs could fill in the remaining three open card slots. The Orcs cards are effectively dead cards in a player's hand and pose a threat that can cause a loss if they are not handled with care. They don't have a suit of their own, so they can be played only if the player cannot otherwise follow suit. Orcs cannot be lead, which means a player with an Orcs card in hand will need to give up the lead in order to dispatch their Orcs. Forth the Three Hunters! With these five new cards (two Towers and three Orcs) along with the suits from the original game, showcasing gorgeous new artwork from Elaine that reflects the changing environments of the story, the main deck was set and the design process for the chapters and characters could begin. The shape and tone of The Two Towers' story is quite different than that of The Fellowship of the Ring. The Fellowship of the Ring starts as a small stream in the shire that meanders and grows, slowly revealing a wider world filled with fantastic characters, dangers, and lore primarily from Frodo's point of view. The Two Towers plunks the reader down in the middle of the action, changes perspective frequently, and takes ever larger leaps across Tolkien's extraordinary literary landscape. These differences formed an excellent canvas on which to try to accomplish key goals for the sequel. First, I wanted folks who had played through The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game to find chapter nineteen (the first chapter of The Two Towers: Trick-Taking Game) familiar to the previous game's chapters, but also fresh and exciting. If it were too similar, the game would be stale, but if it were too different, fans of the first game would be disappointed. The second major goal was to have more variety from chapter to chapter than in Fellowship. After more than a year of work on the system, I had a good sense of how many new characters and rules players could handle in a chapter and wanted to use that knowledge to introduce more new ideas per chapter. Luckily, the perspective switches and exciting character introductions in The Two Towers fit this perfectly. "We will make such a chase as shall be accounted a marvel among the Three Kindreds" One of my major goals when designing characters in an adaptation is to make sure their actions and goals line up with the original material and function within the context of the trick-taking language I've created. When reading reviews and comments about The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game, I love when folks spot the thematic nods I had in mind. I won't go into all of the characters in the game so that you can discover them at your own pace, but I will discuss the characters in "The Departure of Boromir", the first chapter of The Two Towers: Trick-Taking Game. First up is, of course, Aragorn. He was designed both to show off his freshly crystalized role as the leader of the company and to highlight the White Tower and Black Tower cards. Without Frodo and The One Ring to assign a starting character, we use the White Tower to lead things off. Aragon's goal is inspired by the classic German card game Doppelkopf, a game I played a lot in college. In Doppelkopf, the players dealt the two Queens of Clubs form a hidden partnership. Doppelkopf, like most traditional games, is competitive, but I love the idea of how this sort of partnership might work inside of a co-operative trick-taking game. The two Tower cards take the place of the "Grannies", so Aragorn needs to win a majority of tricks alongside the other player with a Tower card. No one at the table but the player with the Black Tower will know who they are (including Aragorn), so this classic device can lead to tension at the game table which mirrors the tension in Tolkien's narrative. Boromir, the namesake of the chapter, deserved both a fitting farewell and presented a chance to further highlight the fun of the Tower cards and Aragorn's goal. Boromir needs to win at least two tricks before the Black Tower is played, thereby keeping Aragorn in the dark a bit longer given that Boromir can win no tricks after the Black Tower has been played. Thematically, I like the idea that the Black Tower represents something bad happening in the story such as the death of a great warrior. Character set-up actions are also a fun place to insert nods to the original story. In this chapter, Boromir is a bit too busy fighting off orcs for any exchanges, but Aragorn (and only Aragorn) could choose to use his set-up action and help Boromir in his final hour. The last two characters in chapter 19 are Legolas and Gimli. I wanted to stay true to the thematic ties of Elves to Forest cards and Dwarves to Mountain cards established in The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game without simply repeating their original goals. I also wanted to adjust the difficulty between different player counts. Therefore, in a three-player game they need to win six cards of their suit and in a four-player game they need to win four cards of their suit. Having "mirrored" goals makes it a bit easier to wrap your head around all of the new goals all at once. If you learn one, the other is easy to remember. "The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards." Bryan and TaylorI am fortunate to be part of a large organization that allows me to both design games based on stories that I love and to make those games available in over twenty languages worldwide. There are many people who have done so much to help shape the game, and I am beyond grateful for all of their hard work. Taylor Reiner once again was indispensable in leading game development. Taylor tested the game countless times with many different groups and contributed a wealth of feedback and insight that honed the game to its sharp and challenging final form. Be sure to check out his developer diary videos (part 1 and part 2) for even more insight into the development of this game. Elaine Ryan's amazing illustrations continue to bring Tolkien's world to life in exciting and beautiful new ways. The theme of the game is much stronger with Elaine's art breathing life into it, and it is amazing to see her evolution of the character designs from The Fellowship of the Ring into the next arc of the story. Extra thanks also go to Matt Fantastic for art direction and Blaise Sewell for graphics. And of course, the game would not be possible without all of the amazing folks at Office Dog and asmodee: Bree, Lupe, Jay, Randy, Luke, Krystal, Preston, Ellie, and Mike. "I do not know the history of Wizards" The credits page of the rulebook contains a short designer's note with some of my inspirations for The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game. Here are links and more details: • Familiar's Trouble / Trick'n Trouble, The Crew (both The Quest for Planet Nine and Mission Deep Sea), and Hameln Cave / Sail for showing just how much potential the idea of co-operative trick-taking has. • Doppelkopf: As mentioned above for many of the tower-based goals and hidden partnership. • Chapter 24: Tichu — [o]There is a Wormtongue event inspired by the Grand Tichu rules of making a big choice before you've seen your whole hand.[/o] • Chapter 25: Skull King — [o]I wanted to use the idea of changing/growing hand sizes and not dealing the whole deck to give a feeling of scope to Helms Deep.[/o] • Chapter 29: Tichu — [o]The new weariness cards introduced in Part 2 were very much inspired by the Dog card as you need to win the lead, then give it up at the correct time. Somethings this is helpful, sometimes a terrible trap.[/o] Bryan Bornmueller Additional Interviews and Discussion about The Two Towers: Trick-Taking Game: ▪️ Podcast Interview Trick-Talkers Episode 43 ▪️ Space-Biff! Space-Cast! #52. Fellowship of the Trick All quotes: Tolkien, J. R. R., The Two Towers. HarperCollins, 2005.

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  Run Trains for Ghosts, Stick a Village Together, and Watch Your Step in Castle Nightingale

  by W Eric Martin on January 12, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin The North American branch of asmodee passed along a release calendar for February 2026, and I thought I'd highlight three items on that list: ▪️ In an industry populated by game publishers that shower the market with new releases, Sand Castle Games is doing something different. It debuted in 2019 with Tom Lehmann's Res Arcana, then released Eric B. Vogel's First Empires in 2022, and in February 2026 it will release its third title: Castle Nightingale from Bruno Cathala, Eliette Fraile, and Jérémy Fraile. Here's an overview of this asymmetric two-player game: Castle Nightingale looms out of the night, both intimidating and full of promise. Three ninjas have slipped inside, searching for the fabled treasure hidden within...yet a vigilant samurai patrols the halls, watching and listening for intruders. Two players face off in Castle Nightingale, with the ninja player trying to steal five relics before the samurai player can capture the three ninja thieves. The castle is comprised of an inaccessible garden surrounded by four double-sided floor boards, each showing two secret passage spaces and areas in five colors. Each turn, the ninja and samurai each choose one of three action cards in hand, with the samurai also choosing a nightingale tile not used on the previous turn. The ninja player resolves their action, then moves across the floor, marking each space of their movement with a footstep token. If they step on a colored space matching the samurai's hidden nightingale tile, the ninja stands revealed; otherwise, next turn the ninja can treat any of their footsteps as their starting space. If the ninja picks up a vase, the samurai can still recover it on their turn by either closing the final secret passage or landing on the ninja's space...as long as the ninja has been revealed that turn. While the ninja moves space to space, the samurai treats each colored area as a single space, allowing them to move quickly within the castle. Each player has specialized one-shot equipment they can use at any time, starting with one item and gaining more as they play certain cards. Each player has ten cards that they'll cycle through until either the samurai has captured all three ninja or the ninja have stolen five of the six relics hidden in the eight vases. Castle Nightingale will debut at the 2026 FIJ game fair in Cannes, France, with a simultaneous release in North America on February 27. ▪️ On February 6, 2026, Corey Konieczka of Unexpected Games will release Cozy Stickerville upon the world, and you can probably get a feel for the game from its title. Should you need more to go upon, here's an overview of this 1-6 player game: Explore the land, uncover mysteries, and follow your residents' personal stories. Build your village with over eight hundred stickers, including houses, farms, shops, and animals. As your village grows, so do your options: go fishing, explore the mine, find true love, and more! Create your legacy as your choices unlock new options and can have lasting repercussions in future games. The buildings you choose have unique effects, and each decision creates new possibilities in future years. And for even more, check out the designer diary from Konieczka that I have scheduled for publication on January 20, 2026. ▪️ Ghosts Galore is a v. non-Lookout-looking title from German publisher Lookout Games. This 2-5 player game from Michael Luu has you building ghost trains one track tile at a time because, well, let's quote from the rulebook: Deep underground, monsters are roaming in an abandoned mineshaft! But, unfortunately, it is quite boring down there. What better thing is there to do but to build a ghost train, to give their existence meaning once again? Think of the monsters, and give them something to occupy their time! Or perhaps you're actually the monster, and Michael Luu is trying to give your existence meaning once again. In any case, each player starts with a 3x3 grid showing different types of doors around its perimeter, along with one face-down tile. Each round, players take turns either flipping a new tile from the round's stack and (optionally) claiming it, or claiming a tile that's been revealed on a previous turn. Once each person has claimed a tile, you all place your tile on an empty space on your board, then start a new round. After eight rounds, you place the tile you started with, then score points, with the nine monster types scoring in different ways. Ghosts, for example, are worth 3 points each unless you have at least three on the same track, in which case those score 6 points each. A satyr scores points equal to the number of different monsters on its track. A slime scores points equal to the number of curves on your tiles. Connect doors of the same type to score bonus points. Ghosts Galore is due out in the U.S. on February 20, 2026.

• 
  Rank Your Friends, Help a Bee, Solve Circus Crime, and Twist a Temple to Solve Its Mysteries

  by W Eric Martin on January 12, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin To follow up on early January 2026's post about three titles due out in the U.S. from Thames & Kosmos — The Gang: More Players, The Gang: Deluxe Edition, and The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth — here's what else is coming from that publisher: ▪️ As I noted in November 2025, Kasper Lapp's Wildblooms will receive an English-language edition, with this being a game for 2-5 players in which you take turns drafting flowers from a shared area. Each drafted flower causes all flowers of that color to grow, no matter who owns them. In this imaginative interpretation on pollination, flowers have bonus effects on them, so growth in your orange bloom might cause growth in a red one. Whoever ends up with the most fully grown flowers wins. Wildblooms is due out in Q2 2026. ▪️ Another family game coming from Thames & Kosmos is Temple Twist, a 1-4 player co-operative game from Bernhard Weber that presents the following challenge: A cryptic notebook leads your archaeological expedition deep in the jungle to an ancient temple rumored to hold incredible artifacts. Your goal: Explore the rooms of the temple and escape before your energy runs out! But that's easier said than done because the temple is a maze of movable walls and mysterious mechanisms! Now it's time to work together. Using your action cards, you'll navigate through this unique structure, move walls, and even rotate the entire temple! In this action-packed game, players take turns choosing an action card from their hand to strategically manipulate the three-dimensional temple and move the explorer cube through the maze of rooms. Play through a series of increasingly difficult expeditions, or pick up some challenge cards and dive right in. This game combines strategy, co-operation, spatial reasoning, and hands-on action with a first-of-its-kind 3D-maze-gameboard that changes as you play. Temple Twist is due out in Q2 2026 in the U.S. and in early March 2026 from KOSMOS. The description hints at what you're doing during play, but this promotional image included in the Thames & Kosmos catalog is far more illustrative of gameplay. ▪️ Oh My Word is a real-time, word-based party game for 2-6 players from Andrew and Jack Lawson that KOSMOS released in German in Q3 2025 and that Thames & Kosmos will release in the U.S. in Q2 2026. Here's how to play: Each round starts with someone pulling a random letter from a bag, choosing a category among those visible on the table, then giving a word or term starting with the drawn letter that fits the category. Once you cover the category, the next player goes, doing the same thing with the same letter and a different category. While you're all doing this, a random timer is counting down, and the player taking their turn when the timer expires receives a "bad luck" token. Try not to end up with the most tokens! ▪️ A second party game on the Thames & Kosmos schedule is Realtalk: Fourth Wing from Johannes Berger and Julien Gupta for 3-6 players. Yes, another Fourth Wing-related game following these two others! I can imagine creative industries employing an adaptation metric to compare the "hotness" of various IPs, with the license cost ramping up accordingly. Each round, one player sees two question cards in secret, with sample questions being "Who would be most likely to wrap Xaden around their little finger?", "Who would really get on Dain's nerves?", and "And who wouldn't even make it through threshing?" They secretly rank everyone at the table by how well they think each person would fit the question, then shuffle a third question card with the other two before revealing them. Everyone else is trying to figure out which question that player is answering, scoring a point for the group if the majority of guesses are correct. ▪️ With more than thirty million EXIT games sold worldwide, you won't be surprised to find more on the 2026 release schedule: • Q1 2026: EXIT: The Game – The Circus Mystery from Inka, Markus, and Emely Brand asks you to solve a series of high-profile burglaries that have occurred in each of the cities where the circus has performed. • Q1 2026: Inka and Markus Brand's EXIT: The Game – Kids: The Great Bee-scape is a 20-minute challenge for players aged 5 and up to help a bee find her way home. • Q2 2026: EXIT: The Game – Family: The Trophy Case/Night at the Carnival from the Brand trio features two cases that each take about an hour to play. In one, a thief wants to steal the trophy from an animal talent show, and in the other mysterious power outages keep occurring at the fair, threatening to leave our heroes in the dark. • Q3 2026: In the newest EXIT advent calendar, The Magic of Christmas, the Brand trio places you in a bizarre situation: Peace, the scent of pine, not a soul in sight – a long hike through the unspoilt forest is just what you need. You're happy to have escaped the hustle and bustle of the pre-Christmas season and are resting in a picturesque clearing when you hear a loud bang and everything goes black. When you wake up, the forest around you is enchanted, and you are surrounded by snow! Red baubles hang in the trees; lights twinkle in the undergrowth. Then, shock hits you: Your hands! They're completely covered with green fur... To make your way through this adventure story, you open a new door in the advent calendar each day. Solve the riddle or challenge presented, and you'll know which door to open the next day, with the secret of the forest being revealed once you've cleared all 24 doors.

• 
  Designer Diary: Children of the Colossi

  by Sacob on January 11, 2026

  by Jacopo Sarli Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble — these were the board games I knew when I decided to create my own. Inspiring, right? The idea came to me one morning when I woke up remembering something that happened to me in primary school. I was eight years old, and there were a couple of classmates who spent a lot of their time playing some sort of Age of Empires game with pencil and paper. My dad had taught me how to play video games when I was young, and Age of Empires was my favorite. I was a shy kid — very shy. After some time, I finally gathered the courage to talk to them. "I'd love to play with you," I said. "How do you play? What are the rules?" One of the kids answered: "There are no real rules. We just draw stuff and attack each other." I vividly remember my disappointment. How could there be a game without rules? What's the fun in that? Fourteen years later, when I was 22, I randomly remembered that long-forgotten episode and thought: Wouldn't it be cool to create a board game? My brain thinks pretty random things sometimes — or most of the time, ha ha. So again — Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble. That was the extent of my knowledge. There had to be something else out there, I thought. Well, I wasn't prepared for what the modern board game world had been cooking up in the meantime. I'm a curious person and love researching things I don't know. I googled "top board games of all time", and one of the first results was a video featuring a man with a strange hat. I remember my excitement; he was talking about so many incredible games I'd never heard of. That's how I discovered The Dice Tower. (Who would've thought?!) That's how my journey began. Prologue It has been an enormous journey, as you can imagine. While designing this game, I was also discovering hundreds of other board games, reading countless articles on BGG, watching what feels like a billion YouTube videos, listening to design podcasts, and even working on other designs along the way. It would be impossible to write a design diary that covers all the iterations Children of the Colossi has gone through over the years, so instead I thought I'd walk you through its main core design ideas. Prototype of a version close to the final one (Image: Piotr Wojtasiak) Children of the Colossi is a dudes-on-a-map game built on strong Eurogame foundations. The game is roundless; players keep taking turns until the endgame is triggered when someone reaches 10 points. It's a hybrid design that combines the strategic decisions, strong sense of progression, and combo-building of Eurogames with thematic immersion and strong interaction through battles. Players represent tribes struggling to survive in a harsh wasteland where resources are scarce and every choice matters. Towering above this barren land are the Colossi: ancient, mysterious, and enormous beings that wander endlessly. On the backs of these creatures grow magical cities. No one built them: not us, nor any known civilization. Instead, when a Colossus is born, a city begins to sprout and develop as the creature matures. From egg to newborn, and from newborn to Colossus: the journey that defines this world The cities of the "grown-up" Colossi are already inhabited by other tribes; we may visit and explore them, but we cannot claim them as our own. Our objective lies elsewhere: to tame the newborn Colossi. If we succeed, then one day, when they are fully grown, our people will finally be able to live prosperous lives on the back of a Colossus of our own. Dynamic Map I really like small maps, maps without too many regions or too much dispersion. Tight maps force players to be close to one another, avoiding that feeling of being spread too thin, while allowing for constant maneuvering and interaction across the board. That's why the map in Children of the Colossi is made up of only eight regions. A few map designs in chronological order Blood Rage is one of my favorite games in this genre. I love how Ragnarok reshapes the map by destroying entire regions. I wanted to capture something similar, then the idea struck me: What if each region could change dynamically over the course of the game? What if regions slowly built up tension, only to release it in a climactic battle? That's when the Colossi and their eggs clicked perfectly. Eggs would serve as the battle trigger. Once a region accumulates enough eggs, a battle erupts. This aligned beautifully with my goal of designing a game in which battles happen without players being forced to attack one another. Instead, the game itself would trigger battles as inevitable events, leaving players to strategically plan around them. A key piece of the puzzle was deciding that eggs should also cover spark vents, the game's main resource. In theory, every region starts identical: each has a set number of open vents, with each of them depicting a spark icon. The more open vents a region has, the more spark can be harvested there. This created a second layer of tension: as eggs accumulate in a region, it edges closer to triggering a battle — but at the same time, fewer vents remain open for harvesting spark. In the image above, the "white" region has no eggs yet. That makes it an excellent region for harvesting since all its vents are still open and full of spark. You'll want plenty of units there to maximize your gains. The "blue" region, on the other hand, is already filling up with eggs. That makes it weak for harvesting, but dangerously close to a battle trigger (which happens automatically once all vents are full). You'll want plenty of units there, too. This time to prepare for the upcoming fight. Two regions, two different incentives — where will you commit your strength? Later, I decided that battle rewards should also be dynamic rather than pre-established and fixed on the board as in many area-majority games. The map doesn't just change as eggs are placed; it also evolves through the rewards it offers. Eggs themselves are the battle rewards! After all, players are fighting to tame the newborns inside them. This way, the value of each region and the reasons why you might commit to one battle over another shift dynamically throughout the game, according to where and when players decide to place new eggs. Eggs come in different types, each with their own reward, which can be easily identified from the illustrations. At the end of each turn, the active player moves a Colossus figure into an adjacent region, then draws a random egg from the bag and places it on the first available vent in that region. Turn after turn, this system ensures regions evolve — not just in harvesting potential or proximity to battle, but also in the kinds of newborns waiting to be claimed. One region might build toward a high VP payoff, while another could become the source of rare, powerful abilities. Yellow eggs hatch into newborns that are immediately worth VP; colored eggs hatch into special units with unique powers or passive abilities that you'll recruit for the rest of the game The final piece of the puzzle was creating dynamism on the map through the Colossi figures themselves. At the end of each player's turn, the active player must move one Colossus figure into an adjacent region. Their position matters since they act as both the "spawn point" for units and the gateway to the Colossi cities. To add new units to the map, you must glide them down from the Colossus into the region where its figure currently stands. Likewise, to send units up to the Colossi boards, you must lift them from a region of the map containing that Colossus figure. These two mirrored spawn points keep shifting from turn to turn. No regions are inherently "weak" because every region is always valuable in some way. Some are better for harvesting resources, while others are better for preparing for battle. Some have better battle rewards, while others act like a "spawn point". This balance constantly shifts throughout the game, shaped by players' decisions. Create Combos with Units, Not Cubes I love combos. I love chaining actions together to create cool sequences. I'm the type of player who will spend turns setting up the perfect combo (even if it's inefficient and costs me the game). The payoff and satisfaction are so good that I'll do it anyway. What I don't love is how combos are often done in a lot of games: resource conversion. Gain a red cube, turn it into a blue cube, turn that into a green cube, and finally spend the green cube for 1 VP. Not my cup of coffee. I don't even drink coffee. Whatever. I wanted something different. Since I was designing a dudes-on-a-map game, the idea struck me instantly: "This game has Euro foundations, so what about a Eurogame in which instead of juggling multiple resources, you have only one main resource, and that resource is your units themselves. And if units are the resource, then they must also be the key to creating combos." That thought became a mantra: a core design pillar I built the rest of the game around. I loved it because it felt more thematic. These combos make me feel like I'm doing something in a living world, not just solving an abstract formula that turns cubes into points. A sketch showing how different actions can chain together into combos I created a system of simple actions that are deeply interconnected, and they had to be simple as otherwise big turns would become too complex. A lot of the game's depth already comes from interaction on the map, not to mention the additional complexity of the Colossi boards. A basic combo could be as simple as deploying a unit onto the map, moving it into a harvestable region, then harvesting to gain energy. A slightly more advanced combo might be to take a unit already on the map, move it into a Colossus region, hook it onto the Colossus city, and immediately use that unit to perform an extra action on the Colossus board. (This probably doesn't make sense if you haven't played the game yet, but trust me, it works.) Units as a Resource Beyond enabling combos, units also needed to feel like the main resource of the game, so I designed everything around that idea. Your units are the key to literally anything you want to accomplish. Since you have a limited number, you need to be careful about how you use them. • Want to perform actions? You need to place units on the Colossi boards in worker-placement spaces. • Want to harvest energy? You need to send units into the wasteland and maneuver them properly. And so on. This aligned perfectly with another core pillar of the game. One thing I always loved in Rising Sun is how you can send units onto the Shrine tiles to gain rewards. I wanted to take that idea and blow it up into something much bigger, something absolutely central to the game, so I built a system in which you have only one type of unit, but you use them for both taking actions and fighting on the map. The game has two worlds: • The Wasteland board, which represents the map where players fight for newborns and resources. • The Colossi city boards, where players take actions. Your units are the key resource for both. You constantly have to juggle: how many do you want active in the Colossi city to fuel your actions, and how many do you need in the Wasteland to contest battles? The more units you commit to the Colossi boards, the more actions you can perform on your turn, but the more units you deploy onto the map, the greater your chances of winning battles. How you distribute them — and especially when you decide to pivot from one focus to the other — is one of the most important decisions in the game. Two different but connected worlds: the Colossi cities above and the barren Wastelands below...with your units as the living bridge between them During development, we kept noticing that the deploy action (the classic "take units from your reserve and place them on the map") was always seen as the boring action. Players used it often because it was necessary, but it never felt exciting or satisfying. So we started asking: "What if we removed it entirely?" At first, that idea was terrifying. How could a dudes-on-a-map game possibly work without a deploy action? But then...everything clicked, and it wasn't just viable — it was way better. Now, there is no reserve. All units start already in play. They're either in the Wasteland (fighting for eggs and resources) or on the Colossi boards (taking actions). • If you want more units on the Colossi boards to fuel your actions, you need to take them from the map and use the lift action in a region with a Colossus figure. • If you want more units on the map, you need to perform the glide action with units that are still in the city. (Take them from the Colossi board and fly them down into the Wastelands board.) Lift...and glide This system creates a beautiful push-and-pull. Your pieces are never idle, and every move feels like a meaningful redistribution of your limited resource. Even the cover art shows a fearless envoy gliding down into the Wastes. Personally, I'm afraid of heights, so I don't think I'd survive long in such a harsh world... Before this change, the cost of participating in battle was the same as in most games of this genre: your units would simply return to your reserve. I have always liked how Dune: Imperium approached casualties in battle: every unit that participates in battle dies, no matter who wins or loses. That felt thematic and tense...so I went with something similar. But since we had just eliminated the idea of a reserve, I needed a new system. That's when the idea of resting units was born. Now, after every battle, the units that fought are laid down to show that they are resting. Resting units can't fight or harvest, but they can still be moved across the map. To "heal" a resting unit, you need to move it into a region with a Colossus figure and perform a lift action, placing it back onto the Colossus board. Thematically, this clicked perfectly. The Wastelands are barren and empty, so the only way to restore your people is by visiting the healing tents of the Colossi cities. This created what I like to call the "circle of life": 1) You have units on the Colossi board. You could keep them there to perform more actions, but you choose to send them down (using the glide action) to the Wasteland to fight. 2) After the battle, they rest. 3) To heal them, you lift them back up into the Colossi cities. 4) Once healed, you must decide again — keep them in the city for actions, or send them back down to the Wasteland. The cycle is complete. The original circle of life It's a natural, cyclical rhythm that ties together the two worlds of the game and reinforces the core idea that your units are your only resource. The Colossi Boards Children of the Colossi always featured Colossi boards, but they went through many, many forms over the years. At first, they were designed as the main way to score VP and ultimately win the game. The system worked, being dramatic and tense, but in practice it felt a little too “gamey”. So I pivoted. I transformed the Colossi boards into common battle boards where players could send their units to fight in order to gain special battle actions. Suddenly, they weren't just point generators; they were active spaces of conflict and opportunity. This also opened the door for modularity. Each game, you would select a different set of Colossi, which meant a different mix of powers and strategies. The Colossi became more than just thematic dressing; they became the heart of the game's variability and replayability. Colossi boards when they were the battle mechanism. Players would use worker-placement spaces depicted on their cards to take battle actions. After Cosmodrome Games picked up the project, they brought in Dann May and Brenna Noonan to help me finish development — and they did something truly amazing. From the beginning, my game featured strong faction asymmetry. Each player had a clear identity that made them feel different from one another. Think Root, but way simpler and lighter. I didn't want players to have to "learn a whole new game" every time they sat down playing a different faction. At the same time, I was worried that, as my first design, I couldn't really pull it off at the level needed. I knew I wasn't (and still am not!) as good as Cole Wehrle. Design of the asymmetric player boards Dann and Brenna made a bold decision: They stripped away the asymmetry from the player factions and instead shifted it into the Colossi. The Colossi boards stopped being "battle boards" and instead became the main way to gain new units, unlock special actions, and acquire ongoing abilities. Each Colossus carried the theme of what once might have been a faction identity. • The Builder Colossus let you construct houses in the wastelands. • The Golem Colossus gave you access to powerful neutral units to fight over. And so on... In other words, your "faction identity" now depended on which Colossi you chose to interact with during the game. Instead of being locked into a single asymmetric role from the start, you developed your identity organically based on your decisions. The first draft of the new Colossi boards This system went through countless iterations, but it always felt too complex. Right from the start of the game, players had to learn a pile of new rules depending on which Colossi were in play. Another big issue: I wanted the Colossi to be central, not just a convenient way to gain powers. Players needed to interact with them as much as possible. I experimented with all kinds of action systems, some more clever than others, but they all ran into the same problem: distraction. Players spent too much time looking at their own boards or managing their hand of cards instead of focusing on the Colossi boards and the map, which were supposed to be the heart of the game. After a long time (and a lot of false starts), I finally made the hard call: scrap everything and merge the action system directly into the Colossi boards. That way, the Colossi weren't just "there" in the world; they were the game's central mechanism. Chronological iterations of the action system, often featuring a player board or a hand of cards — until the final version, which required neither I was so glad I took this step. Suddenly, players weren't distracted anymore. The game became incredibly focused. Everything was centered on the map and the Colossi, with nothing else pulling attention away. The system was simple. You had units on the Colossi boards, and you decided how to use them. Each Colossus board represented the magical city on the creature's back, full of wonder and unique places to explore. Mechanically, this came to life through worker-placement spaces, each representing a different building or landmark in the city. The connections between the spaces acted like roads, showing the paths your tribe would travel to move from one part of the city to the next. Different Colossi board iterations at various stages of design. There was a lot of back and forth, so it's impossible to place them in a strict chronological order of evolution. This change allowed me to make each Colossus board distinct. At set-up, you randomly select three Colossi to use for the rest of the game. From that moment, the entire play experience shifts depending on which ones are in play. Their impact comes from four key factors: 1. Theme and unique actions. Each Colossus has a strong identity. For example, Strovo is the Colossus of spark, while Romather is the Colossus of Newborns. Their boards feature two or three unique actions tied directly to their theme: Strovo lets you gain and spend spark in unusual ways, while Romather offers special methods to gain newborns outside of battles. 2. Unique newborns. Each Colossus brings its own set of newborns, added to the bag at set-up alongside a pool of VP eggs. These newborns provide passive abilities or units with special powers, always tied to that Colossus's theme. Since newborns are one of the main ways players grow stronger, which sets are in play radically changes what's possible on the map. 3. Action economy. The game has four basic actions (such as moving units or harvesting energy), but each Colossus board is missing one of them. That absence reshapes the entire puzzle. For example, if Orlyth is in play, you'll have plenty of opportunities to glide down to the map or lift back up into the city — but no way to move your units across the map. You'll need to find that capability somewhere else. 4. Banner cards. Each Colossus has a set of six unique banner cards. During set-up, you randomly select a number equal to the player count and remove the rest. When a player reaches the top of a Colossus city, they look at the available banner cards and choose one to keep. A banner card grants a powerful one-shot action. Once used, it is flipped face down, but when that player reaches the top space again, they not only choose another banner card, they also refresh all their previously used ones — creating a mini-engine of recurring, powerful benefits. Together, the three chosen Colossi create a unique experience every time you play, not only through their themes, newborns, and action mix, but also through other countless smaller details. Both Dann and I are avid Magic: The Gathering players, and we often thought of the Colossi as working like colors in Magic. By mixing different Colossi, you mix their personalities and strategies, reshaping the game each time — just like building a deck from different colors. Picture of a prototype in a late stage of development (Image: Piotr Wojtasiak) Battles as Interaction...But Not in a Destructive Way One thing that never changed was my vision for what battles should represent: the culminating point of interaction — moments of tension, bluffing, and tactical opportunity. From the first prototype, I wanted battles to be free-for-all contests. Players coexist peacefully in regions until a battle is triggered. No one ever says, "I attack you." There are no feel-bad moments of being singled out, no ganging up on the leader, no turtling, no king-making. Equally important, there is no destructive interaction. You can't kill your opponents' units or tear down what they've built. There's no take-that. Instead, you win by being prepared, out-maneuvering, bluffing, and reading your opponents' intentions. That vision has been constant. What did change — many, many times — was the mechanism that makes it happen. I won't bore you with the dozens of different battle systems I tested over the years, but I can say this: Designing a battle system that feels fair, tense, and rewarding is one of the hardest challenges a designer can face (in my opinion). A few examples of different systems I tried over the years... The final battle system is deceptively simple. Every player has the same small set of battle cards. At the start of a battle, everyone chooses one card simultaneously...but players don't reveal them all at once. Instead, they reveal them in reverse turn order, one at a time, resolving the effects of their chosen card and any other battle actions they've set up (like newborn powers and banner cards). Each player gets only one turn, and when all turns are done, the player with the highest strength wins. Strength itself comes almost entirely from your units on the map. Each unit is worth one strength, with only a handful of special effects that might tweak that number. Cards don't directly give you strength; they shape how you fight, when you fight, and what tricks you can pull off to outmaneuver your opponents. The core inspiration for the card mechanism came from the brilliant Concordia. After you play a card, it goes into your discard pile, out of reach, until you play a specific "refresh" card that lets you return your discards to your hand — but when you refresh, you also perform a movement action for every card you pick up. If you've timed it right, waiting until you've spent a lot of your cards, you can turn that refresh into a massive, game-shifting move. It's not a dead turn; it's an opportunity. Of course, there's a downside. The longer you wait to refresh, the more limited your options become, and since your discarded cards stay face-up in front of you, your opponents know exactly what you've already spent. The fewer cards left in your hand, the more predictable you become. Suddenly, bluffing, timing, and reading the table become just as important as raw strength. Final version of three battle cards To spice things up and create more tense and unpredictable battles, I introduced ambush cards. Each player has six battle cards: half are normal battle cards, the other half are ambush cards. Unlike normal cards, ambush cards aren't revealed during your battle turn. Instead, they are flipped simultaneously at the end of the battle, after every other action has been resolved. Ambush cards are high-risk, high-reward. If you were the only player to play a particular ambush card, you get to unleash its powerful effect, like moving units at the last moment, potentially swinging the entire battle. But if another player chose the same ambush card, neither of you gets the effect. Instead, you both return the card to your hand as a small consolation prize. This creates a double-edged sword: Ambush cards are game-changing when you pull them off, but if you misread the table, you waste your chance. Timing and bluffing become essential. Do you risk it all for the perfect ambush, or play it safe and keep your strategy steady? Final version of the three battle cards that feature "ambush" powers We (I) All Stand on the Shoulders of Collosi (Giants) As the tribes in my game stand on the backs of the Colossi, so do we stand on the shoulders of giants, giants who inspired us, taught us everything we know, and most importantly, sparked the passion for what we do in life. I would like to thank some of the designers who inspired and guided the design of this game, whether they know it or not. They probably won't ever read this diary, but this is the least I could do. I don't know any of them personally (yet!), but I hope to change that sooner rather than later. In no particular order: • Jamey Stegmaier — Your articles and videos have taught me so much. You are probably the main reason why I'm even here today, writing this diary! • Eric Lang — You designed some of my all-time favorite games, several of which heavily inspired Children of the Colossi. From you, I learned how to build tension using just a few but meaningful key pieces. You are truly a master of that craft. • Ivan Lashin — Thank you for being the first one to believe in this project and convincing Cosmodrome to take it! I'll be forever gratefull!! • Paul Dennen — Dune: Imperium is a masterpiece. It showed me how tense, meaningful battles can be woven seamlessly into a Eurogame. That lesson shaped my design more than you know. • Richard Garfield — You inspired entire genres of games. I really believe modern gaming would not be the same without Magic. I'll be eternally grateful for that spark. • Geoff Engelstein, Ryan Sturm, and Mike Fitzgerald — thank you for the Ludology podcast! When I was starting out, it was such great teaching tool that could be easily digested with my headphones wherever I was. • Hideo Kojima — Even though you're not a board game designer, your vision for games has drastically shaped how I think about design and how I see games as a whole. I'm also deeply thankful to Cosmodrome Games, who believed in me and in this project from the beginning. You have become like a second family to me. And I have to mention Pauliina Linjama, whose artwork perfectly captured the world we created together. This game wouldn't be the same without you! A final, and the biggest, thank you goes to Dann May. Dann was incredible — he accompanied me on the journey of my first published game. Thank you for being there through the ups and downs, and for your endless patience in dealing with someone who's a perfectionist and never truly satisfied with anything he does. You began as the game developer, art director, and graphic designer, and ended up as a friend I will never forget. I truly hope I'll have the chance to work with you again! Jacopo Sarli Me holding the first final copy ever produced

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  Prepare for Conflict in Brawlhalla, Fallout, and The Malice of Light

  by W Eric Martin on January 10, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin ▪️ The Malice of Light Adventures will be the debut title of new publisher Twin Tale Studios, which is owned and run by twin designers Adam and Brady J. Sadler. The setting for the game comes from Brady Sadler's six-book fantasy series "The Malice of Light", with two books — The Acrid Sky and The Withered Roots — released to date. Here's an overview of the game: The Malice of Light Adventures is a co-operative roguelike boss-battler for 1-4 players that combines modular gameplay, quick character progression, and elegant combat in a fast-paced, replayable format inspired by the Sadlers' previous titles like Heroes of Terrinoth and Street Masters. Players will battle dangerous foes in iconic locations from the books while contending with escalating villain schemes across multiple acts, culminating in a dramatic boss encounter. The Sadlers plan to crowdfund this title in 2026 on Gamefound, with five previews to date highlighting characters, miniatures, cards, and more. ▪️ UK publisher Modiphius Entertainment is adding a new title to its Fallout line of games that includes the Fallout: Wasteland Warfare miniature-based board game and its Fallout Wasteland Warfare Roleplaying Game. Here's an overview of Fallout: Power Play, a far more compact card game for 2-4 players due out in January 2026: Welcome to Fallout: Power Play!, in which you control one of four factions from the Fallout universe: the Brotherhood, Raiders, the Enclave, and Super Mutant. You are all vying for control of locations within the Wasteland. You will spend your turns attempting to gain the most influence in locations on the board, winning points at the end of each round for each location where you have the most influence. To gain influence, play agents into locations, play and complete quests (which come with other rewards as well), use "power play" cards to respond to opponents, and struggle against the Wasteland itself as each turn a randomly drawn card brings an unpredictable change to the game, from sudden atomization to a surly deathclaw rampaging through your home base. The first player to gain 10 points wins. ▪️ A video game getting its first tabletop adaptation is Ubisoft's fighting game Brawlhalla, which has been transformed into a 2-4 player card game by designer Manuel Rozoy. In late 2025, publishers Maestro Media and FLYOS ran a crowdfunding campaign for Brawlhalla: The Card Game, which is due out in the first half of 2027. In this brawl game, each player has their own deck matching one of six legends. On a turn, you take two actions: move, delay, or attack, with the same action allowed twice. You'll move around the 4x5 grid, launching light or heavy attacks against opponents depending on whether you've grabbed your unique weapon, ideally knocking them far outside the playing area to KO them. You can play 1v1 matches, team matches, or a free-for-all, with varying modes depending on the length of game that seems ideal.

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  Designer Diary: Bayou Boss, or Getting Swamped with Ideas

  by Simon_Weinberg on January 9, 2026

  by Simon As with many games, it is astonishing to look back at the origins of Bayou Boss and realize that I started with a completely different idea! Bayou Boss is a trick-taking game with three twists, which I'll come to in a moment. As a recap, a classic trick-taking game like Whist involves a player leading a single card of a certain suit. Players must play a card with the same suit ("follow suit") or, if they cannot because they lack the suit, can "trump" if they want, with the trump suit being designated at the start of the game. The winner of the trick is the player who played the highest trump, or if no trumps were played, the player who played the highest card in the suit led. When I was a kid, my family played one trick-taking game avidly, and that was Solo Whist, or "Solo" as we called it. In this four-player game, you evaluated your cards, then there was a single round of bidding during which you said how many tricks you thought you could win. The player who bid highest would win the bid, and all other players would pit themselves against the bid winner to prevent them from winning that many tricks. The bid I liked the most in Solo was the "Misère" bid – literally "misery" – which is what it could feel like because you vowed to take no tricks, then everyone tried to make you win by playing their lowest cards! Perhaps a better-known game in which you try to avoid tricks is Hearts, although in this case you try to avoid only heart cards and the Queen of Spades, which is slightly more forgiving than in Solo. The idea of Bayou Boss is that each trick taken is worth 1 point. The player with the fewest points after several rounds wins, so players will try to avoid winning tricks — and now for its three twists: ▪️ The first twist is that players are obliged to trump when they can't follow suit, whereas in Solo and Hearts there is no trump suit. Fortunately, there is a way to change the trump suit — even during a trick round — by playing a raven, of which there will be a few in the game. ▪️ The second twist is that only half the cards are dealt out at the beginning of the game; the rest will be collected by players and added to their hands during the game, with the winner of a trick being first to choose. One card per player is turned over into the "swamp" in the center of the table, so you can see what's on offer and decide what to play. Winning no tricks with your initial cards will usually ensure that you collect only bad or fairly bad cards as you play, with "bad" meaning good since you'll likely win tricks with them later. This means that you must decide when to use your stronger cards to win a trick and take a point you don't want in order to get a "good" card for the future. ▪️ The third twist is that the swamp will contain character cards that do special things to mess with the game. Some characters guarantee you will win a trick, some guarantee you'll lose, and some will mess with who wins a specific trick or allow you to do other sneaky things – like give your trick away or determine who is start player. Then there's the raven, which allows you to change trump mid-term and stitch someone up. The game includes more characters than you use in a single game, so each play should feel different depending on who shows up in the swamp. Anyway, back to its origins... Bayou Boss started life in September 2023 as an idea to, like in Solo Whist, bid the number of tricks you wanted to win. I had a special idea for how to do that in which you reserved a bid so that no one else could make it. This seemed like a good idea...until I discovered that I had just reinvented Oh Hell! — or at least a variant of it that I found online. Oh well, oh Hell. I didn't give up, though! The next idea that occurred was to build your hand of cards during the game by having cards in the middle that you won and added to your hand. This then led to the idea of having bad cards as well as good cards to take, which ultimately led to my first prototype with the additional idea that you try to avoid tricks. The first special cards I had in the game were the "Change trump", "Always win", and "Always lose" cards, which are called "Raven", "Heron", and "Manatee", respectively, in the final game. I also had a title for the game: "Mea Culpa", which is the rough Latin equivalent of what the Australians might say as "Sorry, not sorry!" This was also the name for the card changing the trump, which can be very powerful. Within ten days I had a working prototype, and I put it to one side to test at the Gathering of Friends, an invitation-only event held each April. The event in 2024 included a day of playing trick-taking games, and we played the game with six players. It went down so well that I was approached by Brent Lloyd, who kindly wanted to playtest the game and help me find a publisher. Along with his friend Darren Bezzant, Brent playtested the game extensively, while I was able to test their suggestions in parallel. What came out of this was tweaks to the character card distribution and the endgame scoring. In addition, originally I had used several characters more than once, but in the end I added new characters that we tested so that every game could feel different. Then Brent approached me, explaining that he had decided to start a publishing company called Thunderbolt Games and would like "Mea Culpa" to be his first published game! I was honored. Brent explained that he would be working with Frank DiLorenzo from R&R Games, who would help in every aspect of the game as Brent learned the ropes. Fast-forward a few months as Frank and his team came up with a new name and theme for the game, with fabulous artwork from Brandon Lewis. Bayou Boss is a great name that fits well with the game as the central pool of cards became the swamp and the characters became swamp creatures whose nature is linked to their special abilities. The beautiful and fun art really gave flavor to the game, and I love it. Bayou Boss is great fun with all player counts, with the deck being designed to be adapted for the number of players. There are always twists to be discovered in the combination of the characters, with laugh-out-loud moments when a player is victimized or shoots themselves in the foot! All in all, it's a quick fun game that should go down well with gamers and families alike. Bayou Boss should be available in the UK, the U.S., Canada, and Australia at the time of writing. I hope y'all enjoy it! Simon Weinberg

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  Collect Your Crew and Grab Your Gang for New Adventures in 2026

  by W Eric Martin on January 8, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin ▪️ U.S. publisher Thames & Kosmos has announced two new releases that will debut at Gen Con 2026, with the headliner being The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth, a standalone sequel to Thomas Sing's 2019 game The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. As with the original The Crew, The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth is a co-operative trick-taking game in which players attempt to collectively complete missions through card play. Here's a teaser for the game's setting and what you're doing: Travel around the world in a race against time on the hunt for Charlemagne's secret treasure. Follow clues that will lead you up Mount Everest, through the Amazon Rainforest, and beyond. It's up to you how your story will end. Will you make it in time, or will you be too late? The only way to find out is by playing. Lava fits in there somewhere as well. The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth, which retails for US$15, will contain 25 stages in the player journey, and Thames & Kosmos estimates that the game will ship to buyers in mid-August 2026. ▪️ The other Gen Con 2026 debut is related to a Q2 2026 release, with that being The Gang: More Players, which German publisher KOSMOS had already revealed in November 2025. This expansion to John Cooper and Kory Heath's co-operative game The Gang includes new four sets of bidding poker chips, allowing for games with up to ten players. New gameplay mechanisms are hinted at, but not revealed, so perhaps there's more of a twist to the expansion than finding room for more chairs at the table. One new item that is mentioned are "exit chips" that simplify the game when playing with five or six people. The Gang: More Players retails for US$10. ▪️ As for the Gen Con 2026 release, that would be The Gang: Deluxe Edition, which is a blingy edition of The Gang that features ceramic poker chips, casino-quality cards, and a custom playmat, as well as expansions, presumably the previously released The Jokers & More from 2024 and Tools of the Trade from 2025. However, the game page on the Thames & Kosmos website mentions two expansions, but the company's press release mentions three mini-expansions, including a new one titled "The Dealer". I've asked for clarification...

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  Toss Clowns, Snag Cat Toys, Make Colorful Teddy Bears, and Forgo Thoughts and Prayers

  by W Eric Martin on January 8, 2026

  by W. Eric Martin ▪️ Daniel Newman of New Mill Industries says that after releasing sixteen titles in 2025 — both original games and new editions of older titles — he's scaling back, with only two titles coming out in each half of 2026 and with rotating sales for titles in stock. Here are the two games available for pre-order on February 1, 2026: • The Fluffy Rite is a new edition of Kusaka Satoru's 2015 trick-taking game for 3-5 players from Japanese publisher Roughneck:7: As Lord Teddy's most prized toymakers, it is our duty to make the best bears possible for his approval. However, one must not shine too brightly as Lord Teddy is terribly insecure. The annual honoring of (and sacrifices to) Lord Teddy, known as "The Fluffy Rite", has come upon us once more and we must do our best — but not TOO good as we don't want to earn His wrath. Cards have only colors, not numbers, and each card can be used as either a head or a body of that color. Players combine two cards — one for the head, another for the body — to make one bear during each trick. The combination of colors of each assembled bear and the order of play will determine the winner of the trick. The player(s) with the second most trophies in a hand wins a game point, and whoever first gets two game points wins the game. • Newman's own Hearts and Minds is "a light-hearted game for 3-4 players about responding to tragic events. Thoughts and Prayers are worth nothing. What's really important is winning the Hearts and Minds...except when it isn't. In more detail, Hearts and Minds is a trick-taking game in which players each choose their own scoring conditions by selecting a goal card from their hand. Each goal can be used only once and "may have rules that change how the player must play that hand". ▪️ Swiss publisher Helvetiq has a new trick-taking game of its own for February 2026: Cat Trick, a 3-5 player game from designer Nagian. Players represent kittens who are grabbing at toys through their card play. You can play any card to a trick, then whoever has played the highest trump card (or the highest card if no trumps are present) wins the trick. Five colors of cards can be collected, but if you take more than four of a color, you've gotten too greedy and other kitties will pounce on your toys. ▪️ Another trick-taking game hitting the market in February 2026 is Joshua Buergel's The Fox in the Forest Deluxe from Renegade Game Studios. This new edition of 2017's two-player-only The Fox in the Forest add three expansion modules that can be used individually or in combination. Poison cards cost you a point when you take one; goal cards place two additional ways to score points into play each hand; and special cards make it less certain who will win each trick. ▪️ I covered two of Mike Petchey's card game designs from Huff No More in July 2025, and he came out with another before the end of 2025: Tricky Landing, which is a dexterity-based trick-taking game: The circus has come to town, and the troupe of clowns have an extravaganza prepared. All participants are ready for a series of death-defying stunts as they are fired from colorful cannons across the big top. Who will make the most spectacular landings and put their competitors to shame? Find out in Tricky Landing, in which rather than play cards, you throw them toward a target card! Make a successful landing for your card to be part of the trick, with the order in which cards land determining the lead suit. Miss the target and you'll set the trump for the next trick, but if more than one player misses the target, you all take a penalty. Play three rounds to determine which death-defying clowns have put on the best performance.