Board games

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Trump tariffs terrify board game designers

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Placko called the new policy “not just a policy change” but “a seismic shift.”

Rob Daviau, who helps run Restoration Games and designed hit games like Pandemic Legacy, has been writing on social media for months about the fact that every meeting he’s in “has been an existential crisis about our industry.”

Expanding on his remarks in an interview with BoardGameWire late last year, Daviau added that he was a natural pessimist who foresaw a “great collapse in the hobby gaming market in the US” if tariffs were implemented.

Gamers aren’t likely to stop playing, but they might stick with their back catalog (gamers are notorious for having “shelves of shame” featuring hot new games they purchased without playing them… because other hot new games had already appeared). Or they might, in search of a better deal, shop only online, which could be tough on already struggling local game stores. Or games might decline in quality to keep costs lower. None of which is likely to lead to a robust, high-quality board gaming ecosystem.

Stegmaier’s forecast is nearly as dark as Daviau’s. “Within a few months US companies will lose a lot of money and/or go out of business,” he wrote, “and US citizens will suffer from extreme inflation.”

The new tariffs can be avoided by shipping directly from the factories to firms in other countries, such as a European distributor, but the US remains a crucial market for US game makers; Stegmaier notes that “65 percent of our sales are in the US, so this will take a heavy toll.”

For games still in the production pipeline, at least budgetary adjustments can be made, but some games have already been planned, produced, and shipped. If the boat arrives after the tariffs go into effect—too bad. The US importer still has to pay the extra fees. Chris Solis, who runs Solis Game Studio in California, issued an angry statement yesterday covering exactly this situation, saying, “I have 8,000 games leaving a factory in China this week and now need to scramble to cover the import bill.”

GAMA, the trade group for board game publishers, has been lobbying against the new tariffs, but with little apparent success thus far.

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Hands-on with Frosthaven’s ambitious port from gigantic box to inviting PC game

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I can say this for certain: The game’s tutorial does a lot of work in introducing you to the game’s core mechanics, which include choosing cards with sequential actions, “burning” cards for temporary boosts, positioning, teamwork, and having enough actions or options left if a fight goes longer than you think. I’m not a total newcomer to the -haven games, having played a couple rounds of the Gloomhaven board game. But none of my friends, however patient, did as good a job of showing just how important it was to consider not just attack, defend, or move, but where each choice would place you, and how it would play with your teammates.

I played as a “Banner Spear,” one of the six starting classes. Their thing is—you guessed it—having a spear, and they can throw it or lunge with it from farther away. Many of the Banner Spear’s cards are more effective with positioning, like pincer-flanking an enemy or attacking from off to the side of your more up-close melee teammate. With only two players taking on a couple of enemies, I verbally brushed off the idea of using some more advanced options. My developer partner, using a Deathwalker, interjected: “Ah, but that is what summons are for.”

Soon enough, one of the brutes was facing down two skeletons, and I was able to get a nice shot in from an adjacent hex. The next thing I wanted to do was try out being a little selfish, running for some loot left behind by a vanquished goon. I forgot that you only pick up loot if you end your turn on a hex, not just pass through it, so my Banner Spear appeared to go on a little warm-up jog, for no real reason, before re-engaging the Germinate we were facing.

The art, animations, and feel of everything I clicked on was engaging, even as the developers regularly reassured me that all of it needs working on. With many more experienced players kicking the tires in early access, I expect the systems and quality-of-life details to see even more refinement. It’s a long campaign, both for players and the developers, but there’s a good chance it will be worth it.

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New Catan game has overpopulation, pollution, fossil fuels, and clean energy

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The Unsettling of Catan —

If pollution levels go too high, the game ends for everyone. It’s a fun escape!

–

Catan: New ENergies box in a green hill landscape with nearby wind turbines

Enlarge / If you didn’t know what “New Energies” meant, this promotional image puts a windmill on it.

Catan GmbH

In Klaus Teuber’s Catan (previously Settlers of Catan), the player is tasked with starting from scratch and building as much as they can: the largest army, the most cities, the best sea ports for easy trading, even the longest road. It’s all beneficial, and the only real drawback is that you have to prioritize certain things over others. There wasn’t direct conflict or battle, but there were scarce resources, and the savviest player could corner the market for them.

Catan was released in 1995. Now, in 2024, Teuber’s son, Benjamin Teuber, is releasing Catan: New Energies, which he developed with his late father. While it is “rooted in classic Catan mechanics of trading, harvesting, and building,” there are some decidedly 2024 issues at play now that the Vikings have settled in for more than a millennia.

As detailed by Benjamin Teuber in a Fast Company interview, New Energies will see players:

  • Choosing between cheaper fossil fuel power or research-intensive renewables
  • Limited in resources as pollution grows
  • Ending the game entirely if pollution hits a certain level
  • Countering pollution with “green tokens” from renewable building
  • Dealing with the effects worldwide climate change exacts on smaller islands
  • Realizing that “As in real life, the most sustainable player does not always win.”

It is, however, a hopeful game. The game comes by its “meaningful, evidence-based message” as sincerely as is possible for a mass-produced product. New Energies is printed and assembled in the US, contains no plastic, and uses sustainably sourced wood and paper materials. It’s available now for preorder at $70 and due in the spring of 2024.

  • Catan: New Energies with all pieces and boards laid out

    Catan GmbH

  • A player board from Catan: New Energies. The brown pieces are drawn more frequently at the beginning, but gradually transition to green tokens.

    Catan GmbH

  • Dev cards from Catan: New Energies.

    Catan GmbH

As with Catan games in general, the game’s competition for land and resources is balanced by the presence of other players, whose actions, appetite for trading, and even collaboration can affect outcomes.

“Very often at the end of the game, you see everybody completely freaking out, like, ‘Oh man, we’ve got to save the world!’” Benjamin Teuber told Fast Company. “But the pollution is already here, like what did you expect? And then maybe people start working together, and that’s a really nice effect that makes you think ‘if we do all work together and all did our share, then it can work, and all it cost is that we grow a little bit slower.’”

If you haven’t played a Catan game in a while or missed most of the variants and alternate settings, New Energies might provide a distinctly fresh experience. The artwork, by Ian O’Toole (On Mars, Rococo, Fit to Print), is distinct from the original. And the new systems look like they’ll provide some new layers of strategy for those who might feel too familiar with the core Catan concepts.

At a minimum, you can test your friends’ patience and sense of humor by playing as a game-ending cheap coal villain. Global footprint marker? Environmental inspector? Not your problem.

This post was updated at 3: 30 p.m. Eastern to note the game’s overall hopeful nature, which might not have been apparent at first glance.

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