Saturday at the fair is its usual crowded and loud self.  So many people crammed into the halls – made worse this year because of the bad weather; so no one is standing around in the open spaces.  I must say that this is the first Spiel in a few years to be this late in the month, and man, the relentless Arctic-like winds are really quite strong!

I’m taking a break between meetings to try to get a little update up here – it may be more pictures than words, but that’s the best I can do from my phone!

Let me start first with the teaser picture from my Ravensburger lunch

This is the 65th anniversary of Amazing Labyrinth, and they have other projects as well. There is a legacy-looking version coming to crowdfunding next year as well (in collaboration with Awaken Realms) – called Labyrinth Chronicles.

And, the big hit for me of the new games coming out from Ravensburger is Glorious Guilds of Buttonville.  It looks like a deck builder but it isn’t.  It’s more of a set collection game, where you draw cards each turn and then possibly play a set of cards from your hand.  When you play cards, you get to execute the action on that card – the power of the action correspondingly stronger as you play more cards in your set.

Bombyx has a couple of neat projects, the one which I find most intriguing is The Secrets of Warden Keene; a cooperative mystery game where you use information found on the gravestones to solve the puzzle.  Apparently – there is no hidden information here, everything will be found on the game bits, but you have to figure out what it is that you are looking for!

They were also promoting Legions, a 2 player duel in the world of Abyss.

During the Show, Kosmos was touting the world’s largest game of Catan, using the boards from their new Catan Connect set.  Apparently there are 3 paper boards in each box, and you lay them out next to each other.  Players start in a certain area and can only interact so far to the left and right of their seat.

Mojito Games has a handful of new games at the show, including Theocratia – 

says Simon W: ” 
This is a dice-drafting game with again, tracks that you can move up with priests of 4 different civilizations. In this game you are playing the Gods, helping in the construction of various buildings and conducting battles in which you tear down some buildings or build others. The game has a slight Terra Mystica feel, with end of round bonuses, the ability to build different buildings and then replace them with a temple, and so on.  But there is also a bit of a fantasy theme with monsters you can fight and crystals from different civilisations which you can create and log in each civilisation’s history book. At the end of the game, the progress of your priest for a given civilisation up a track is multiplied by the progress of their history book to determine your points, with a twist that the highest scoring civilization is removed.
The dice drafting is simple: each die corresponds to a certain action; take it and place it in a matching colored spot to get a bonus and then use the action; but since there are limits on those spots sometimes you must place the die in a non-matching colored spot spot and skip the bonus. The value 6 die is a joker number BUT each time you use it it accumulates you negative points in the end of the game. Fortunately you can use money as a resource to change a die’s pip value.
The game has a civilization feel with competition for terrain but no real technology tree for example. We played it two player and didn’t complete the game; I must say I was not enamoured with it. On the positive side the implementation was colourful and the components luxurious; however the iconography was a bit too artistic and unclear and most importantly the game felt clunky and unengaging and too heavily driven by the dice. This may have changed in a game with more players or perhaps in a calmer setting with a more thorough understanding of the rules, so I wouldn’t write it off completely but that was my initial impression.”

DEVIR is coming with a bunch of new titles in the next year – including at least one new standalone set for Cities.  They are also working on the re-release of Ace of Spades.  Also keep your eyes peeled for an expansion for Rock Hard that will introduce a few new concepts, including a Singles Chart for your songs to climb.

Also, another Dani Garcia strategy game set in Barcelona; now with the theme based on the most famous architect/designer of that grand city.

Board and Dice is still continuing their super-crunchy “T series” of games with Thebai at the show.  In my meeting with them, I did get a nice demo of their upcoming more-traditional-Euro called Art of Rivalry.  An interesting concept in this game will pit two opposing sides, Michaelangelo vs DaVinci, in a completely asymmetric game.  Each side has an entirely different turn structure, and the game can be played 1v1, 2v1 and 2v2.  This looks to be a little lighter than the usual B+D game, but I’m guessing that it’ll be a challenging game!

Hey, here’s a random selfie of Vlaada and I from the subway.

Looping Games had a number of new releases this year, including an interesting flip and write, 20000 Leagues under the Sea, which has players using two different maps to write one, one for the surface and one underwater.

Indie Board and Cards was showing off Journeys Afar The Ketsueki, a modular game where you play with three worlds in any game, but with 6 or 8 different ones to choose from – and each world having its own rules, components and game personality.  It’s currently in crowdfunding at the moment, so you can learn more about this online.

Hasbro was demo’ing the heck out of Sanibel, a 2026 release from Elizabeth Hargrave. I took a short demo of it, but didn’t have time to give it a play.  Avalon Hill’s booth also had a new logo which I had not seen before.

Are you ready for more Heat?   Another expansion should be ready for Cannes 2026 – this time with gravel patches to deal with.  As with the other expansions, there will be a double sided board included giving you two new race tracks.  Also, you should expect to find another season for the campaign mode.

Dewan is one of the bigger releases from Asmodee/Space Cowboys for the show.  A soft release here, with worldwide* release hopefully in January.  The asterisk is for everywhere in the world except for places with tariff policies.  The designers (Goupy, Levet) have a great track record each, so I’m looking forward to trying this one out.  You collect cards each turn and then spend them to travel across the hex based terrain to place houses.  There are multiple ways to score achievements based on your placements.

All-In is a poker based deduction game from Phil Walker Harding.  Players add cards to their hand, some known and some unknown, trying to get the most valuable hand.  When someone thinks they have the best hand, they signal the end of the round.  Players also now make a bet on which player they think has the best hand.  Scoring is done for each particular hand as well as the resolution of the bet.

Carnuta is a neat card game from Hope Hwang and Gary Kim.  Players try to choose cards from the market, each with some scoring icons on it as well as a scoring rubric.  Interestingly, the cost of the cards is paid for with double sided sun/moon tokens – when you use them, you flip them over to the other side.  There is a bit of resource management here with the double sided resources as well as managing the cards in your tableau.

Here is a selfie with Antoine Bauza – and he was working his own Play Punk booth.  They are going to have some expansion boards for Captain Flip for Cannes 2026.  With Repos, he also had a new release of 7 Wonders: Dice, a game that uses some of the mechanics from the base game, but also different enough that it stands  alone. 

Scorpion Masque has been consistent in making games that I’ve been really high on, and their upcoming game, Panorama, looks to be more of the same.  Here you are adding landscape tiles to your display as you are flying around in your hot air balloon.  It looks gorgeous, and from the short demo I got, the game feels well balanced already (though still a WIP).

Space Lab is a new tableau builder, unsurprisingly involving Johannes Goupy, as well as Corentin Lebrat.  Instead of playing cards into a 3×3 grid, you play tiles around your three space lab capsules trying to meet certain objectives.

And finally, for Larry Levy. A picture he can photoshop his own head into so he can have a picture with one of his idols, Simone Luciani.