It’s a bit of a slow news week as publishers, designers, and distributors all gear up for Essen Spiel, but here is the board game (and board game-related!) news that caught our attention for the week ending October 11, 2019.
Gaming News
- 2019 Toy & Game Innovation Awards (TAGIE) finalists have been announced, with winners set to be announced at the Chicago Toy & Game Week event at the end of November. Among the nominees are Kane Klenko for, among others, Pandemic: Rapid Response and Pat Marino for The Op’s Die Hard: The Nakatomi Heist Board Game, Harry Potter: Death Eaters Rising, and Star Wars: Dark Side Rising. The marketing team at The Op is also nominated for the rebrand of the company, which I’ll have to say I may have mocked a bit at first but has kind of grown on me. The full list of nominees is on the TAGIE website.
- Codenames is expanding once again, this time into the world of yellow people. Codenames: Simpsons follows the mechanic of the original, with spymasters giving clues to team members who need to try to guess the characters on the brightly colored cards. The game will be on shelves for the holidays.
- The sixth, or maybe third, depending on how you want to count, Terminator film hits theaters at the end of the month, but the first tie-in game won’t be available until the end of the year. Terminator: Dark Fate, the Card Game (and yes, that really is the correct punctuation) is a cooperative deck building game from River Horse.
- ToysRUs.com is back. The new website is a collaboration between TRU Kids, the company that bought the Toys-R-Us IP, and Target, which is powering the website. In fact, when you visit the website, you will be directed to Target.com to complete the transactions. Target’s already strong toy category, which was helped a great deal by the demise of the original Toys-R-Us, will likely grow as they recieve an undisclosed cut of each sale from their former rival.
GeekDad and GeekMom Reviews
Here are the games we’ve reviewed this week:
- Jonathan Liu reviewed Calico and Wizardz Bluff.
- Elizabeth MacAndrew reviewed Tricky Druids.
What We’re Playing
Finally, here’s what the GeekDads played this week:
- Greg Howley played Smash Up, Dungeons & Dragons, and Sentinels of the Multiverse.
- Jonathan Liu played 3 Secrets: Crime Time, Tapestry, FlickFleet, SlipStrike, Adventure Games: The Dungeon, Dust in the Wings, and Mooncake Master.
- Robin Brooks played Warhammer Underworlds: Beastgrave and Block Happy.
- Rebecca Angel Maxwell played 7 Wonders and Love Letter.
- I played Western Legends, our featured image this week, along with Game of Thrones: Oathbreaker and Wingspan.
