Asmodee Group announced that it is in talks to acquire Rebel, the publisher and distributor of games in Poland. Rebel already distributes many of Asmodee’s games, including Ticket to Ride and Dobble.
Asmodee UK, formerly Esdevium Games, will be taking over distribution of Bananagrams and other games from the Bananagrams company in the U.K. as of April 1st.
Van Ryder Games has acquired the U.S. and Canadian distribution rights for English-language versions of Makaka Editions’ series of French graphic novel game books. Expect a Kickstarter project for these in March.
Pegasus Spiele is partnering with Frosted Games to distribute some of the latter’s titles on an exclusive basis and other titles on a non-exclusive basis. Those games under the exclusive arrangement will get a Pegasus Spiele logo on the box. Among these is Augespielt! (“Game Over!” in English), a murder-mystery game set at the annual German SPIEL game convention.
Pegasus Spiele is also expanding its relationship with Portal Games, taking over exclusive distribution of the latter’s products in Germany.
Renegade Game Studios and Hunter’s Books are partnering to copublish the latter’s roleplaying games, including the upcoming titles Kids on Bikes and Outbreak Undead. Renegade will handle marketing and distribution to hobby retailers.
Bananagrams debuted four new games at Toy Fair, all scheduled to be available this summer. Of these four, three are completely new games unrelated to the Bananagrams line. That one other item is Big Letter Bananagrams ($19.99), with tiles that are 50% larger than the ones in their flagship game. These high-contrast bolded letter tiles are designed to help gameplay for low vision players.
Qwordie ($19.99) is a quiz game played with letter tiles. Players collect letters to build out answers to simple questions, such as “A cow, sheep, pig, and duck all make well-known sounds. Spell one.”
Word-a-Melon ($19.99) combines spelling and memory games. In an oval watermelon-shaped tray, letter circles are placed face down. Roll a die, flip over the circles — which has a really neat tactile element as they all flip around in the tray — and try to form words out of the letters you’ve revealed, collecting the letters as points. Letters you don’t use or can’t are flipped back over. It’s a cute looking game with the revealed letters looking a bit like seeds in the watermelon. Like the other fruit-themed games offered by the company, Word-a-Melon comes in a cloth bag shaped like the food — in this case, a slice of watermelon.
The one non-letter-tile-based game debuting was Cobra Paw ($14.99). This game is simply a set of double-six dominoes with symbols instead of pips, plus two dice with those symbols. Roll the dice, try to grab the domino with those symbols first. There’s also a Kung Fu cat on the cover. My recommendation: if you like dominoes, get Cobra Paw because it’s a pretty cool set of dominoes, plus it comes with some interesting dice and rules for a tile-grabbing game.
30 Mar
Posted by David Miller as CCGs, Classic Board Games, Electronic Games, Modern Board Games, Other
Bananagrams
Ten-year-old Louis Webber won the first Bananagrams Challenge in London. The live Grand Final event followed a series of classroom contests with 15,000 participants and an online Best of the Bunch series between representatives from each of the 500 participating schools.
Chess
A 32 year-old record has been broken for the smallest computer implementation of Chess. The new program, BootChess, requires only 487 bytes.
Players from Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo gathered at the Zone 4.4 Individual Chess Championships in Lome, Togo, where Oladapo Adu won the open section with a score of 8/9 and Omolabake Coker won the women’s section with a score of 7/7. Both winners hail from Nigeria.
After facing serious resistance from a former professional still playing the same openings he did 30 years ago, Wesley So managed to pull ahead and win the Bunratty Chess Congress.
Carissa Yip of Massachusetts continues to break records. At 11 years old, she is now the youngest ever female U.S. Chess master.
The open section of the Winton Capital British Chess Solving Championship was won by Piotr Murdzia of Poland. Among the locals, perennial winner Jonathan Mestel did it yet again.
Go
Seventeen year-old rising member of the insei league, Song Jihoon, won Korea’s Amateur Gosku tournament. He hopes to become a professional some day.
Su Guangyue, a fourth-year law student from China, took home the trophy at the 13th World Students Go Oza Championship in Tokyo. He had placed second last year.
Rubik’s Cube
At the Edinburgh Spring 2015, Oliver Frost completed a 4×4 in a world record 2:10.47.
Magic: The Gathering
Teruya Kakumae of Japan (champion of Grand Prix Kobe in 2014) finished first at Grand Prix Auckland on a fast-playing Mardu deck.
The final Khans of Tarkir/Fate Reforged Limited event, Grand Prix Cleveland, saw Bill Tsang champion on the strength of red commons.
Subbuteo
More than 200 players gathered in Frameries, Belgium for FISTF’s largest tournament of the year. Reggio Emilia placed first in the European team section, while the Italian team’s Emanuele Licheri won the individual open section.
Den Mulia was champion of the TFAS U19 Cup for FISTF in Singapore.
Brothers Cédric and Benjamin Garnier of France played each other in the finals of the Yokohama Satellite. Cédric came out on top.
Draughts
At the European Blitz Championship in Cannes, the winner in the women’s section was Zoja Golubeva of Latvia and in the men’s section Alexander Shvartsman of Russia.
Speaking of exclusives, now at Target, for the same $15 price as the original, is Bananagrams WildTiles. This version adds six monkey tiles, usable as any letter.