Re-Roll: This Week’s Tabletop Game News for Week 42 of 2019
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 18, 2019.
The Herb Witches, the first expansion to Quacks of Quedlinburg, is available now from Amazon and your local game store. The expansion adds a fifth player, along with a new herb, extra-large pumpkins, and a few other things to add some new excitement to an already pretty great game. You can take a look at the rulebook on North Star Game’s website.
Exploding Kittens, Inc., the company behind the eponymous game, has received a $30M investment that will allow them to “develop new games, grow its team, expand IPs, take control of production and distribution, and build community,” according to TabletopWire.
Sit Down Games has a slew of new releases for Essen, including Hidden Roles, a small expansion for Magic Maze, Magic Maze on Mars, which we covered here recently, House Flippers, Palm Reader, Space Bowl, and Wormland. All of these titles are available for preorder now to be picked up at Essen, and should be in stores soon.
The Op is bringing another family party game to Target. In Match-O-Rama, 4–8 players try to guess what others will say to given categories, but the twist with this one is that players are guessing which other players sitting near them will have the same answer. The game is currently available exclusively at Target.
You might OD on cute after playing Jellybean Games’ new Hidden Panda game, a social deduction game about passing around baby pandas. The game is now available for preorder.
Ars Technica has a post ranking every Ticket to Ride map. I disagree with a lot of their choices—I’d definitely rank Africa dead last on the list, since it’s a game we disliked so much we didn’t even keep it—but it’s a cool overview of the entire (current) TTR world.
R&R Games has released Hanabi Deluxe II. The tile-based take on the Spiel des Jahres winner includes the Master Artisan expansion.
Finally, here’s what the GeekDads played this week:
Michael J. played Ex Libris.
Robin Brooks played Wildlands and Block Happy.
Jonathan Liu played Dust in the Wings, Ecos: First Continent, Mooncake Master, Paleolithic, Planetoid, Silver & Gold, SlipStrike, Unlock! Expedition: Challenger, Wayfinders, and The Zorro Dice Game.
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This post was last modified on October 18, 2019 5:01 am
Rob, GeekDad's Gaming Editor, is a technical writer for Google (provided by HCL). He is alo college professor teaching design, programming and 3D printing, watches a ridiculous number of movies, plays as many board games as he can, and loves history, from the medieval period to the technological age. He's also the Umpire-in-Chief for his local Little League, and is a Little League Certified Tournament Umpire.
His kids are a 20 year old college junior and a 16 year old high school senior. (Although there's a good chance that they're older now and this just hasn't been updated.)