Well, I just got done with a weekend full of new games at the local CapCon2. This is an event run by Capstone Games – which just happens to be headquartered in my hometown. It’s a wonderful event, free to participate – though the badges were limited, so you had to act quickly in order to secure a badge.
Capstone opens up their warehouse space with tables and chairs, and you can always also move into the adjoining store. There were anywhere from 20 to 60 people there at the times I was there, and plenty of games to play! Capstone had a full library of their previous releases, and they also had a handful of games that will feature at this year’s SPIEL fair in Essen. Many of them will be done here in the US by Capstone, and others were here for a test-drive (so to speak) – and decisions on those will be made in the upcoming weeks.
A number of the games are already available for pre-order here:
Here is a picture of that table of “new Essen games”…
So, I spent most of my weekend playing these new games – both from my own bag as well as off the Capstone table. Some quick thoughts here, full reviews to follow on most:
Minikin City – my first game of the con, and probably the hit. Played three times. A super light game for a game that has Luciani as a co-designer. A tableau builder of sorts where you play cards into a “trick”; the trump suit of which is pre-determined by an open line up of cards. The cards are ranked; and the stronger cards earn rewards. Cards from the market are drafted in reverse order of strength though; so there are certainly reasons for not trying to win. Played cards go into your display, and you will use these to score at the end (similar to the scoring in Faraway). Most scoring criteria need to be activated by Minikins to actually score; and the main way to get these is to win tricks.
Timespan – from Alion – a tight simultaneously played asymmetric civilization game. Players each have a Civ with a random government board to start; you will use your actions to manage resources and move up on five tracks. The tracks give lots of extra actions, so there is a fair bit of combotastic strategy here. Score points for finishing tracks and bonuses for finishing first. Generally, you’re actions are only in your own area – so the game speeds along as all players can take their action turns at the same time. You play cards onto your own board, but you can only have 4 at a time, as you add cards to the area, previous cards will slide off the right side (and might even give you benefits when they “die”). Lots to like about this game, and I can’t wait to get my hands on my own copy.
Wild World – Another game from Norway that was a great puzzle. It’s a big deck of cards game where you have multiple options on how to use your cards. You can use them to attack monsters to score VP, you can play them to your home area to generate resources needed to get more cards, you can play them to your board to generate other bonuses, and you can always discard them for money. On top of this puzzle is a little bit of worker placement for actions such as gaining more cards, money, crystals, fighting strength. A very neat puzzle, and after my first game, one that seems to have lots of possible paths. I won (barely) concentrating on defeating monsters while one opponent nearly topped me by mostly playing cards to his board for points there. Another one on my must-pick-up-at-Essen list, and one that will likely supplant Riverside as my favorite Chilifox game.
Terravista – staying in my Norwegian gaming era, this is a route building roll and write game where you mark lines connecting hexes based on a die roll. As you achieve things, you’ll move up on tracks, and in the base game, the winner is the first to cross the finish line on all the tracks. The boards are all different so rolls will affect people differently. There are a few combos on the tracks, but not too many – so this one comes down mostly to how efficiently you can use the random dice rolls. Nothing spectacularly new in the roll-and-write genre, but everything works well here.
Dickory – a cute 2p shedding game, now published by Playte, that has a rotating rank system – you play with ranks of 1 to 12, and you’ll move the arrow on a clockface to determine where in the circle is the highest rank. Thus, plans can change each time the clock changes. Very clever.
Hellas – another Playte game; this is another game in their impressive line of miniaturized classics. I actually never had the original as I missed the White Goblin 2016 version, and I will say that this abstract game still plays well ten years later – in fact, it may end up being my favorite Dorra game.
Gachapon Trick – continuing with reprints from Playte; a wonderfully chaotic trick taking game from Daniel Newman. Here, you play tricks, must follow any previously played color, and the winner is the highest card of the most frequently played color. The winner gets to buy cards from the trick as well as may buy one card from the top of the reserve deck (just like a real life gachupon). Use set collecting scoring at the end of the round. I’ve loved this one since I first played it, and now I have a chance to acquire one given the wider distribution of Playte vs New Mill.
Traveluencer – staying in the Trick taking lane; this one is themed around making travel posts and having the most successful blog. You get 15 cards in your hand that you must play over 7 tricks. You use your cards similar to Zimbabwe Trick – if you play multiple cards, they are ordered to form a single number. If you play “8”, “3” and “4” – your play will be 348. The highest played number wins each trick (taking into account the pre-determined trump suit). Three times in the round, a random event card will shake things us.
Upland & Prairie – a new Peer Sylvester design from Osprey. Back in the day, when I was just cutting my teeth in Eurogames, Peer was one of my favorite designers. It’s been awhile since I’ve played one of his – this one is a tactical game of building paths on a map. There are 3 colors of markers, and each turn the active player secretly draws 3 – one to play on the map, one to keep for scoring, one to put back in the bag. Game ends when a color connects the goal hexes, and the player with the most of that color wins. If the bag is emptied before a goal is met, then you want the most diversity – as the player with the most sets of the three colors wins. It looks like it will play long, but I’ve yet to have a game go longer than 15 minutes!
Upside Town – a new magnetic stacking/construction game that will be at Spiel. Clever magnetic pieces of 1, 2, and 3 stories. The 2 and 3 story pieces have the same polarity at each end, so they can’t stack upon each other. The 1 story piece has one of each, so can always be used. Use action points to buy pieces, split/join pieces, buy goal cards, etc. You have a street of 5 building sites in a row, and you work to meet the criteria on the scoring cards. Advanced game has some game-end-state bonus cards as well. Only played once so far, but looking forward to more plays.
Kano – a beautiful game about traditional Japanese painting. You collect paint pots of a single color each turn from a 4×4 array and then drop them into your painting grid letting them fall under the effects of gravity. If your paint pots are in the right orientation, you can turn them into painting tiles. Two changing scoring criteria cards make sure each game plays out differently.
Always a Bridesmaid – an intriguing card game where you play cards face up into a row, vying to be the second highest total on the table. Each player starts with an identical set of cards, but each player must choose which cards to include in their starting hand; so there is some interesting hand management. A little bit of bluffing and a little bit of push-your-luck are involved here. I honestly haven’t figured out how to do well at this game yet, so I will still want to play this more to figure that out.
Isle of Bears – a 2p abstract game where you try to control all the stacks of bears. As often happens with stacking games, the piece on top controls the whole stack. Move/Jump/Swap the stacks of bears and you can also push them off the islands and murder them. Your possible actions each turn are determined by a display of 3 action cards (each player has an identical deck) A tactical back-and-forth game that is quick to play.
What a great start to my 2026 Essen season – I’m definitely hoping to add this to the annual calendar as way to get things started!
Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor
