Recent releases from USAopoly include Samurai Jack Back to the Past ($35), based on the animated series, Thanos Rising ($50), a Marvel comics cooperative dice game, and Blank Slate ($25), a family-friendly fill-in-the-blank party game.

Coming next month is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: A Gemstone Mining Game ($35). Based on Quartz, the push-your-luck game of collecting crystals from Passport Game Studios, this Disney version works with up to seven players, each as one of the dwarfs.

In October, USAopoly ships Harry Potter Codenames ($25), with art from the films and gameplay similar to Codenames Duet but multiplayer.

Later in the fall, we’ll see Fantastic Beasts Perilous Pursuits ($30), a cooperative dice game where the goal is to put the beasts back in the suitcase.

While it wasn’t on display at the show, I was told there would be another expansion for the Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle deck-building game sometime in 2019.

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Just as Toy Fair was starting, the news went out that Ravensburger, Wonder Forge, and BRIO were all being reorganized under a new Ravensburger North America division. Most of what we saw at the show game-wise is starting to be listed under the Wonder Forge brand line, but there were quite a few games that were coming out with a Ravensburger logo on them. Several items featuring Minions and other characters from the Despicable Me movie franchise were found in both brand lines.

On the Ravensburger side, Despicable Me Labyrinth (Spring, $32) is a themed version of their popular Labyrinth game line. The Despicable Me-themed Eye Found It! (Fall, $26) joins that game’s line with a six-foot board and a card game version (Fall, $6). Those last two were so new, that even though they had them for display at the show, they were waiting for the licensor’s artwork approval, so no photos as of yet!

Wonder Forge’s Despicable Me showings included Linked Up (a Fall Target exclusive, $15), where you place plastic “link” bars connecting character images on a tight board; Battle Matching (Summer, under $10), a cute take on a memory/picture matching game; and Surprise Slides (Summer, price TBD), a spin and move game that’s a bit like Snakes & Ladders if you could move snakes and ladders around during the game.

Wonder Forge’s other items this year mainly featured Disney properties. The Elena of Avalor Flight of the Jaquins game (Fall, $20) features sculpts of Jaquins, a player-assembled palace, and bilingual cards. The game also has different modes of play to scale for age ranges: your kindergartener can play with your fourth-grader, each with different objectives, to complete first. Mickey and the Roadster Racers Bump ‘n’ Race (a Spring Toys R Us exclusive, $20) features a very simple game element with four small cars representing racers from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, a sloped playing surface, and movable barriers to bounce off of.

The trivia-with-images game line Pictopia has two new entries, a smaller sized Marvel Cinematic Universe-themed Pictopia game (soon) and a big box Harry Potter edition (Summer). Each game has similar game play with trivia questions on the back of a card that features four images. The Harry Potter game contains questions about all of the movies, including Fantastic Beasts.

Back on the Ravensburger side of the booth, we find Krazy Wordz (Spring, $20). Create words out of your letter tiles, and then players choose which word sounds like it would fit the definition on the term cards in the center of the table. Does a “Garbuna” sound more like an Australian marsupial or a brand of chocolate bar to you?

The tenth anniversary editions of Notre Dame and In The Year of the Dragon are coming! (Availability date and retail prices TBD.) Both games will come with expansions included.

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The most anticipated from USAopoly, Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle ($50), was only at Gen Con in very limited quantities but should be at retail in September. It’s a cooperative deck-building card game developed to be very beginner friendly. The box opens to look like a trunk filled with Harry’s possessions and the cards are packed in boxed for a series of games to introduce the rules in a graduated fashion. In terms of game-play, each person, in the role of one of the Harry Potter characters, gets their own personal starting deck of spell, ally, and item cards but they must work together to defeat the villains.

Also highlighted at the show was the recently delivered Star Trek Panic ($40). This one, another cooperative title, has players defending the starship Enterprise from alien attack while at the same time working to complete a number of missions. It’s a variation on Castle Panic from Fireside Games but has a central Enterprise figure that can turn and also has shields to absorb some of the damage.

Later, USAopoly plans two expansions for Marvel Munchkin, Mystic Mayhem ($20, September) and Cosmic Chaos ($20, December). The former features Dr. Strange and The Defenders, the latter Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova.

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Due in August from USAopoly is Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle: A Cooperative Deck-Building Game. The game has players adopting the roles of Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Neville to combat a series of villains infiltrating Hogwarts Castle. Each has their own deck of cards, to which they’ll add spells, magical items, and other characters.

Hogwarts Battle comes with a game board, health tracker boards, dice, card boxes, and 245 cards at a suggested retail price of $50.

[5/11/2016] Note: The information above was gleaned from the websites of BBCW Distributors, CoolStuffInc, and BoardGameGeek, who may have released the information early. It has not been confirmed by the publisher.

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