Ishtar from the award-winning designer Bruno Cathala was one of our favourite games we played at the Tabletop Gaming Live. Now it is finally available.

Also available are:
Ishtar from the award-winning designer Bruno Cathala was one of our favourite games we played at the Tabletop Gaming Live. Now it is finally available.
Also available are:
I’m still trying to catch up with all the new games available from my various suppliers. It will keep me busy for quite a while, but in the meantime here are some of the games I’ve already added in the last few days.
Two interesting games have arrived today: Kingdomino Duel from Blue Orange Games and Die Inseln im Nebel from Schmidt Spiele.
Roll the dice, choose the ones you want, and put them together in pairs to create your dominoes. Domino by domino, fill in your map while entrusting the territories of your kingdom to loyal dignitaries. Gather favors from wizards in order to cast powerful spells that will allow you to rule without having to share.
(Source: Publisher description)
Kingdomino Duel is a standalone game that preserves the essence of the acclaimed original Kingdomino. In this game, instead of adding dominoes to your kingdom, you will choose two dice to combine into a single “domino” that must then be drawn into your kingdom.
The islands still lie beneath the dense fog. The farther you go over the island with your balloon, the more the fog lifts and you explore the breathtaking landscape.
(Source: Publisher description)
Use the local wind skilfully to save energy. Because you still need it often enough to accelerate or decelerate. Steer completely against the wind at the right time to reach your goal.
You will discover the neighbouring landscape where the balloon is by placing tiles on the adjacent fields. This is how cities are built, monuments are erected and landscapes grow.
The games and expansion on general UK release for next week have been confirmed:
There are more games coming from Germany, but we are not sure yet, if they will arrive next week or the week after. More about these games on Monday!
A very busy week comes to an end, time for us to give you a quick summary of what has arrived this week:
Tuesday:
Blue Lagoon and Everdell proved to be quite popular and are already out of stock, but hopefully we will get more copies next week.
Wednesday:
Thursday:
Friday:
All in all a very busy week with 23 new releases. And by the looks of it next week won’t be any quieter, but more about next week on Monday.
We are at the time of the year when every day brings new games. Today was no difference, here are the new arrivals:
Also arrived have two hot restocks:
With Essen starting today, the new releases presented at the show are starting to come in. Early next week we are expecting three:
The biggest source of information in preparation for the onslaught of new games coming in after the end of the Essen show is always the superb Essen preview list on BGG.
But another way of trying to find out what the hot games after Essen could be (and with the number of games coming out we have to be selective), is to have a look/listen and some videos/podcasts talking about their most anticipated games for Essen. It worked quite well for me last year, so I did it again this year. I’ve watched a total of 13 videos on Youtube and made notes about the games that are being mentioned. Sorted by the number of times a game got mentioned, here is my totally non-scientific Top 20 of the most anticipated games for Essen 2019 (in case of a tie, I used the thumbs up on the Essen preview list as a tie-breaker):
Here is the playlist with all 13 videos:
Most of the games in the Top 20 are no surprise because they are the “common ground” between all those videos I’ve watched. But watching all these videos it was interesting to see that the common ground seems to be smaller this year (= a lot of the Top lists included games only mentioned once or twice in the videos) compared to the last two years which indicates for me that we are looking at a good Essen year with a wide selection of interesting games. As always with Essen the trick is to find the games that have staying power beyond the initial hype about nice looking components, interesting themes and a well-known designer (these seem to be the most often used criteria to select games of interest in the preparation for Essen).
Last year’s Top 5 of the podcast summary list was Charterstone, Nusfjord, Altiplano, Meeple Circus and Clans of Caledonia. All five turned out to be really good to solid games and also did quite well in regards to sales (besides Charterstone which for some reasons didn’t do very well).
Let’s see how this year’s games will perform…
Rolling Bandits is the new small dice from Blue Orange Games:
ROLL YOUR DICE, GET ON THE TRAIN AND PLUNDER AS MUCH AS YOU CAN TO WIN THE GAME!
The players are at the head of a group of Bandits which they send to the assault of a train in order to plunder the riches. The players will launch their Bandits, attack the train and rob the passengers before the other players. The richest player at the end of the game wins.
The game has arrived today and pre-orders will get shipped tomorrow morning.
It’s a great time of the year for board game fans: We still get a flood of games that have been presented at GenCon but haven’t made their way to Europe yet and we are starting to see the first Essen announcements popping up.
We have added a few new games to our pre-order section, here are a few highlights: