Amazon deals:

• Twilight Struggle from GMT for 46% off.
• Lords of Waterdeep from WOTC for 41% off.
• Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook from WOTC for 44% off.
• Star Wars Edge of the Empire Beginner Game from Fantasy Flight Games for 42% off.
• In the Year of the Dragon from Ravensburger for 56% off.
• Jenga from Hasbro for 43% off.
• Sushi Go! from Gamewright for 47% off.
• Codenames Duet from Czech Games Edition for 36% off.
• Betrayal at House on the Hill from WOTC for 44% off.
• Mastermind from Pressman for 44% off.
• Googly Eyes from Goliath for 45% off.
• Sequence from Jax for 50% off.
• Ultimate Werewolf Deluxe Edition for 48% off.
• Clank! from Renegade for 36% off.
• Pandemic Legacy Season 2 from Z-Man for 42% off.
• Conan from Monolith for 49% off.
• Dominion Intrigue (second edition) for 37% off and Dominion Empires for 36% off.
• Clans of Caledonia from Karma Games for 39% off.
• Islebound from Red Raven Game for 46% off.
• Harry Potter Magical Beasts Game from Pressman for 55% off.
• Power Grid from Rio Grande Games for 36% off and Power Grid Deluxe for 35% off.
• The Colonists from Mayfair for 52% off.
• Agricola from Mayfair for 35% off.
• SeaFall from Plaid Hat for 71% off.
• Experimental Meds expansion for Pandemic: The Cure from Z-Man for 60% off.
• The Rose King from Thames & Kosmos for 46% off.
• SpyNet from Z-Man for 53% off.
• Smugglers from Thames & Kosmos for 77% off.
• Space Cadets Away Missions from Stronghold Games for 45% off.
• Otys from Asmodee for 49% off.
• New York 1901 from Blue Orange Games for 38% off.
• 1846: The Race for the Midwest from GMT for 39% off.
• Exoplanets from Greater Than Games for 42% off.
• Atari Missile Command from IDW for 67% off.
• The Lord of the Rings: Journey to Mordor from FFG for 67% off.
• Kingdom Builder from Queen Games for 40% off.
• Sons of Anarchy, Men of Mayhem from Gale Force 9 for 71% off.
• Tyrants of the Underdark from Gale Force 9 for 35% off.
• Broom Service from Ravensburger for 39% off.
• Starship Samurai from Plaid Hat Games for 38% off.
• Survive! Space Attack from Stronghold Games for 48% off.
• Stallion Canyon expansion for Flip ’em Up from Pretzel Games for 76% off.
• Robotech RPG Tactics from Palladium for 51% off.
• Black Fleet from Asmodee for 50% off.
• Mythe from Funforge for 76% off.
• Dungeons & Dragons: Assault of the Giants Premium Edition from WizKids for 44% off.
• H.P. Lovecraft’s Kingsport Festival from Passport Games for 62% off.
• Terminator Genisys from River Horse for 64% off.
• How to Train Your Dragon: Terror of the Sea for 75% off.
• Richard the Lionheart from CMON for 44% off.
• Level 7 Invasion by Privateer Press for 46% off.
• Cave Troll from FFG for 46% off.
• Fire & Axe from IDW for 60% off.
• Minuscule from Asmodee for 51% off.
• Neptun from Queen Games for 58% off.

Emily Reviews is giving away Are You Dumber Than a Box of Rocks? from University Games.

OSR-style roleplaying games are featured in DriveThruRPG’s Good Ol’ Games Sale.

Current offers at Bundle of Holding include Mutants & Masterminds Earth-Prime, with the Basic Hero Handbook in the Starter Collection and full core rulebook in the Bonus Collection, Shadowrun 5E Essentials, with the rulebook and key supplements, and Shadowrun 5E Runs & Guns, with additional supplements.

Zatu Games (U.K.) is giving away Duelosaur Island from Pandasaurus Games. Enter with a picture of game night-date night.

The Inside Voices group is giving away a package of board game accessories, including a game tracker from Daft Concepts, a Quiver card case, and a game bag from Board Game Tables.

Handelabra’s digital board games, including Bottom of the 9th and Sentinels of the Multiverse, are on-sale for $1.

The Call of Cthulhu video game is 25% off on Steam.

Brawlin’ Brothers is giving away The Big Score from Van Ryder Games.

GJJGames is giving away five copies of The Board Game Designer’s Guide audio book.

Mayday Games’ Winter Sale runs through the 15th with buy-one-get-one on Poetry Slam and Bad Doctor, and other games up to 60% off.

Making Time for Memories is giving away two Harry Potter games from Pressman: Triwizard Board Game and Magical Beasts Game.

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Troy University in Alabama is looking for adjunct faculty with tabletop experience to teach online Game Design and Development classes.

Along with several sales and distribution positions, Learning Resources has an opening for a Marketing Coordinator to handle social media and influencer campaigns and support trade shows.

At Educational Insights in Gardena, California, there are opportunities for an Associate Marketing Manager, to manage PR, social media, and the company’s customer loyalty program, and a Product Manager, to lead conceptualization, manage vendor relationships, and collaborate with functional teams as required in the development of new products.

ThinkFun in Alexandria, Virginia has an opening for a Human Resources Manager.

Wizards of the Coast in Renton, Washington is recruiting for:

• Principal Game Designer, requiring significant experience and a passion for Magic, The Gathering.
• Creative Lead to help grow the company’s digital business (Magic, D&D, and Avalon Hill).
• Director of Communications and Publicity, skilled at both corporate and brand-level communications.
• Product Marketing Manager, supporting regional development and localization for MtG.
• Principal Game Designer for digital publishing, requiring at least 8 years of AAA experience.

Tabletop Tycoon in Londonderry, New Hampshire needs an Accounting & Bookkeeping Lead. Responsibilities include developing budgets, reviewing invoices, and managing workflows.

Games Workshop has many openings in sales and retail, also one for a Trainee Citadel Miniatures Designer and a one for a Visual Merchandising Manager. The former will sculpt minis. The latter will create product displays.

An unnamed United States board game manufacturer is looking for a UK Marketing Director, among who’s responsibilities will be managing two PR companies and an advertising agency.

Bezier Games is in need of an experienced, full-time Social Media Manager to generate buzz. The position is based in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Renegade Game Studios is seeking a Development Coordinator to manage the playtesting process from its San Diego office. The company is also looking for a Video Editor to help with 1-2 projects per month.

Atlas Games has an opening for a Marketing Coordinator in Duluth, Minnesota. The successful candidate must have industry knowledge, as well as skills in writing, editing, analytics, and task management.

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Through February, Osprey Publishing is discounting books, ebooks, and games up to 70%.

Nearly 30 of Monte Cook Games’ Numenera books, adventures, maps, and more are available at Humble Bundle all together for just $15.

Decision Games’ Deal of the Month (February) is discounts on Axis Empires series titles, 34% if you buy both Totaler Krieg and Dai Sensou.

Evil Hat Productions, to clear out inventory, has priced 30 items at $10 or less.

Gayme Master is giving away The Ultimate RPG Character Background Guide by James D’amato.

Tilted Table is giving away two copies of Nosh from Crafty Games, one live on Wednesday and one by drawing on Friday.

Emily is giving away three sets of dice, two to random retweeters, one to the person who correctly guesses the number of dice in the cup.

Mail4Rosey is giving away The Wimpy Kid 10-Second Challenge from Pressman.

Amazon-hosted giveaways:

• Game of Kingdoms
• Polyhedral dice set
• Bull Sh*t Card Game and Bull Sh*t Card Game
• Giant Yard Dice Game

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French book publisher Hachette Livre today announced that it has entered in to exclusive negotiations for the purchase of Gigamic from founders Jean-Christophe Gires and Stéphane Gires. Gigamic, also based in France, publishes a variety of strategy and family games, with its best-known titles probably being Quarto and Quoridor.

For Hachette Livre, which already publishes party games (quiz games, etc.), and which added mobile games to its portfolio in 2016, this investment is part of a strategic decision to explore the leisure activity market that sits alongside publishing, in particular all the segments of the consumer gaming market.

Stéphane Gires will continue to manage Gigamic after the transaction closes.

According to the Hachette Livre announcement, Gigamic’s annual sales exceed €15 million.

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Get a free Bones Black Owlbear figure for every $40 of order from Reaper Miniatures. Similar deals will apply through 2019 with a different figure each month.

Hasbro games are on-sale at Target.

Modiphius Entertainment’s January Sale includes deals such as the Star Trek Adventures Gamemaster Bundle with a 15% discount on the rule book, map, GM screen, player reference sheets, dice, and tokens.

Game tables are 20% off in Geeknson’s Winter Sale.

In 18 days, Meeple Gamers will give away North Star Games’ Evolution on Android or iOS to 25 winners.

Follow and retweet, today, Pandasaurus Games for a chance to win Machi Koro 5th Anniversary Edition.

To celebrate 3 million podcast downloads, HappyJacks RPG is giving away a set of Ancient Dragon Dice from Easy Roller Dice.

Mister Tarrasque has arranged for a 10% discount on anything from Kobold Press.

At Bundle of Holding, the Oone Dungeons offer features a generic dungeon maps.

Get free promo cards with preorders of Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth from Osprey Games.

Get a set of alternate ship cards with any Blood & Plunder ship order from Firelock Games.

Miniature Market has instituted a new daily deal system, where the price of the item on-special is dropped each day by 5% until it sells out.

Erica Ever After is giving away Mastermind from Pressman Toy.

Super Samar is giving away two game bundles, one for the United States and one for the United Kingdom.

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The St. Louis Chess Club and World Chess Hall of Fame has openings for a Gallery Attendant, a Retail Associate, and a Graphic Designer. The last includes significant management responsibilities, such as assigning tasks to other staff, selecting vendors, and representing the organization to the public.

Modiphius Entertainment has openings in its London office for a Finance Assistant (full or part-time), a Marketing & Communications Manager, and a Logistics Assistant. The Finance Assistant will handle bookkeeping, accounts payable, and account receivable. The Marketing & Communications Manager will promote the company’s products to distributors, reviewers, and customers. The Logistics Assistant (or Manager) will require experience with imports and exports and freight arrangements. The company is also looking for a Freelance Layout Artist to work remotely.

Gen Con is looking for a temporary Administrative Assistant for the Events Team. The job starts in February and lasts until August. Location is Seattle.

Atlas Games is looking for a Marketing Coordinator at its office in Duluth. The position requires knowledge of marketing analytics and the hobby game industry.

American Sign Language Proficient RPG Game Masters are wanted by RPG Therapeutics to run games in Spokane, Washington.

A full-time Chess Coach with at least an International Master rating is wanted by The University of Texas at Dallas. In addition to training the team, the Coach will also be responsible for recruiting students at international tournaments.

PSI is recruiting for a Vendor Account Coordinator to manage relationships with board game publishers “leading to the development of customer delight.”

The Field Museum in Chicago is recruiting for an After School Game Designer. It’s a temporary part-time position for the spring program in which teens will create board and card games about freshwater ecosystems.

Good Games in Indianapolis is planning to expand its e-commerce business and needs an Online Sales Manager.

Galileo Learning runs a summer camp for elementary school-aged children in Mahanoy Plane, Pennsylvania, where it needs a Game Design Instructor.

STAR is looking to hire a Dungeons & Dragons Teacher for elementary after-school programs in Culver City, California.

Hasbro is looking to hire a Contract Graphic Designer to work on the Transformers TCG.

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More than 60 Chess pieces carved from wood and bone during the 17th century have been found during excavations at Berezovo in norhtern Siberia. Eight fashioned from fossil ivory were exhibited at the most recent Women’s World Chess Championship.

Archaeologists excavating a pottery workshop in Israel dating back 1,800 years found that the facility had recreational facilities for workers, including a spa and game room. Inside the game room were four game boards similar to Backgammon or Mancala.

A dot pattern carved in to a 4,000 year-old rock shelter in Azerbaijan was determined to be an example of a game known as 58 Holes, or Hounds and Jackals, another precursor to Backgammon. Previously found examples of the game from that period were limited to Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Near-East.

Professor Manuel Eisner, with the Violence Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, studied 700 year-old coroner’s records to produce a map of murders in 14th century London. Among his discoveries:

Like in modern societies, homicide was most likely at weekends. Almost a third of all cases (44) occurred on Sundays. Sunday was the day when people had the time to engage in social activities – drinking and playing games that would occasionally trigger frictions leading to assault.

For example:

• In March 1301, an argument that resulted when three men interrupted a Chequers game being played by two others, ended with one of the interrupting men forcibly stripping one of the players of his clothes and stabbing the other in the chest with a dagger.
• In November 1321, two men got in to an argument playing the dice game Hazard inside a brewery. Outside after the game, one attacked the other with a sword then ran away and took refuge in a church. Sometime in the following week he escaped and was never caught by authorities.
• In December 1323, a tavern-keeper was stabbed by a customer that he had beaten in a game of Backgammon.

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Recall those modular dice towers from The Broken Token? With some extra samples on hand, the product’s inventor Corey Young assembled what he claims is the world’s tallest dice tower, over 11 feet tall. True record or not, that’s certainly an impressive dice tumbler!

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A group of senior high school students at the American British Academy in Muscat set a new record for computer processor built from dominoes. With 15,000 dominoes, they constructed a 5-bit adder that can sum numbers up to 63. [For a fascinating explanation of how this works, I suggest this video from the person who built the 4-bit adder.]

Keisuke Fukuchi of Japan took home the trophy at the World Othello Championship held in Prague, Czech Republic. At 11 years of age, he’s the youngest champion ever in the tournament’s 42 year history. On his flight home via All Nippon Airways, a congratulations was announced by the pilot, Kunihiko Tanida, the previous record holder for youngest Othello champion (which he had held since 1982).

The World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis reclaimed the record for the world’s largest Chess piece. It previously held the record with a 14 foot tall king from 2012 to 2014 but was then eclipsed by a school in the town of Kalmthout, Belgium. The new record-making piece is a 20 foot tall black Staunton king with a base of 9 feet 2 inches and a weight of 10,860 pounds. It was hand carved from African Sapele Mahogany.

Magnus Carlsen of Norway successfully defended his World Chess Champion title against Fabiano Caruana of the United States by intentionally playing for a draw in standard time controls and then winning three straight in rapid tie-breaks. At the World Rapid Chess Championship, though, Carlsen tied with three others for second place. The winner in that event was Daniil Dubov of Russia. Following that was the World Blitz Chess Championship, where Carlsen again came out on top.

With a win at the London Chess Classic, Hikaru Nakamura of the United States secured first place in the multi-tournament Grand Chess Tour series.

Among artificial entities, Chess engine Stockfish won both Rapid and Blitz categories of the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship. Houdini came in second in Rapid, where the final match took place over 200 games, and Komodo came in second in Blitz, where the final was 300 games.

Nigel Richards won his fourth World Scrabble Championship with a final game score of 575-452, that achieved with such words as “groutier” (68 points), “zonular” (100 points), and “phenolic” (84 points). His opponent managed “maledict” for 95 points.

A new edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary makes legal play out of “sheeple”, “ew”, “OK”, “yowza”, and “zomboid”. It also adds another q-without-a-u word, “qapik”, a monetary unit from Azerbaijan.

Javier Dominguez of Spain, who last year finished in second place, managed a win in this year’s finals, taking home $100,000 and the trophy for Magic: The Gathering World Champion.

Akiko Yazawa of Japan, cancer survivor, won her second World Backgammon Championship title.

Topping a field of 76 contestants from 46 countries, Quetzal Hernandez of Mexico won the Catan World Championship in Cologne, Germany.

Elena Short of Ukraine finished first in both the women’s classic and women’s blitz sections of the World Championship in Draughts 64.

Wu Yiming, 11 years old, of China became the country’s youngest female professional Go player.

In late December 2017, thirteen year-old Que Jianyu appeared on Chinese television and solved three Rubik’s Cubes while continuously juggling them, and did so in a world record 5 minutes 6.61 seconds. Then in December of this year, he went on Italian television and broke his own record by just over 4 seconds. Between these two events, he also broke speed records for solving three Rubik’s Cubes simultaneously with hands and feet (1 minutes 36.39 seconds) and solving a single Rubik’s cube while hanging upside down (15.84 seconds).

At the Cube for Cambodia event in Melbourne, Australia, Feliks Zemdegs solved a 3×3 Rubik’s Cube in a world record 4.22 seconds.

Max Park of the United States set four new Rubik’s Cube world records. He solved:

• 4×4 in 18.42 seconds and 5×5 in 37.28 seconds at SacCubing in Roseville, California.
• 6×6 in 1 minute 13.82 seconds at WCA Asian Championship in New Taipei City, Taiwan.
• 7×7 in 1 minute 47.89 seconds at West Coast Cubing Tour in Fresno, California.

Several new world records were set for solving Rubik’s Cubes while blindfolded. At the end of the year, the records stand as follows:

• 16.55 seconds for 3×3 blindfolded, set by Max Hilliard at the Puget Sound NxNxN in Tacoma, Washington.
• 1 minute 26.41 seconds for 4×4 blindfolded set by Kaijun Lin at the Please Be Quiet Beijing in Beijing, China.
• 3 minutes 1.01 seconds for 5×5 blindfolded set by Stanley Chapel‎ at the Shaker Fall in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

Grégoire Pfennig of Belfort, France built the largest order working Rubik’s Cube puzzle, 33×33. Imagine how long it would take to solve that!

A group of four in Moscow set a world record for the number of escape rooms attended in 1 day, 22.

At the World Rummikub Championship in Jerusalem, Kohei Numajiri of Japan came in first place, Sasha Erlich of Israel came in second, and Matthijs Delvers of Netherlands third.

Ankush Khandelwal of the U.K. won the Pentamind World Championship, a tournament that consists of matches in Quoridor, 7 Wonders, Acquire, Liar’s Dice, and Chess 960.

Brain Games held its first ICECOOL World Championship event at BaltiCon in Riga, Latvia, where Khanh Hung Dong of Canada took home the trophy and a prize of a weekend for two at Snow Village in Lapland.

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At Bundle of Holding, the Adventures in Middle Earth offer gets you six products for Middle Earth roleplaying with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition for $30. And the Doctor Who RPG offer includes core rules and six supplements for $32.

At Humble Bundle, the 5E Dragons, Dungeons, Maps & More bundle includes dozens of third-party D&D adventures, supplements, and print-and-play products, everything for $15.

Digital board games from Acram Digital, including Instanbul and Steam: Rails to Riches, are up to 60% off in the company’s Winter Sale.

Save 10% through tomorrow at The Broken Token with code “TREATYOSELF”.

Warlord Games’ Bad Santa Deals means selected Gates of Antares products are 50% off, ebooks are 20% off, and among other deals you get a free plastic box set with the purchase of any core box.

Discounting 12 RPG ebook titles 99% off regular retail price is Skirmisher Publishing’s Holiday Festivity bundle at DriveThruRPG.

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