Just in time for PAX, Ares Games’ launched to retail Battlestar Galactica Starship Battles ($60). It’s a spaceship miniatures combat game in some ways similar to other such games on the market. Movement is facilitated by templates. There are cards for various pilots. And draw tokens to determine damage.

Like its namesake television show, however, the game features an added level of realism for spaceship movement. Ships carry momentum from round to round. They can face and fire one direction while moving in another. And the game even carries rules for elevation. Kinetic energy and other maneuvering factors are tracked for each ship on a small, individual plastic control panel.

Battlestar Galactica Starship Battles starter sets come with four prepainted plastic ship figures, two Colonial Vipers and two Cylon Raiders.

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North Star Games has brought to the American market The Quacks of Quedlinburg ($55), winner of the 2018 Kennerspiel des Jahres (Connoisseur’s Game of the Year) award. Nothing to do with ducks, the game is about concocting miracle cures from such fantastical ingredients as toadstools, mandrake, spiders, pumpkin, and crow skull.

Each round, players draw ingredients from their personal bags and place them around the swirling spaces of their cauldrons. Depending on how far they’ve gone that round, and assuming they’ve managed to avoid blowing up the concoction, they’ll score victory points and purchase additional ingredients.

Some of the ingredients also allow for special actions when placed in the cauldron. For example, crow skulls may allow a player to draw bonus ingredients and mandrake may help prevent blow-ups. Alternate ingredient books are included with the game to vary these impacts.

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Brain Games’, who’s big hit is the penguin-flicking Ice Cool, has remade Curse of the Mummy (previously published by Ravensburger) also with a penguin theme. Game-play is essentially the same. Pyramid of the Pengqueen ($30) has a two-sided, vertical, magnetic game board. On one side, a group of players move penguin pieces around the pyramid to collect sets of treasure. On the other, one opposing player moves the mummy piece trying to catch the penguins with its magnet.

Passing on the penguins, Brain Game’s Orc-Lympics ($15) goes with a fantasy theme. Players draft teams of human, goblin, dwarf, elf, halfling, djinn, and orc contestants for a variety of sporting events. Each group has strengths for certain of the sports but at the end of the draft, each player can keep representatives from at most three of the fantasy races.

Pikoko ($30) is a trick-taking card game where players wager on the number of tricks they can take. There’s a twist, though. Instead of seeing one’s own hand of card, players only get to see everyone else’s cards.

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Winning Moves’ newest games include an original abstract and two revived classics.

The abstract is Triple Cross ($20), which has players filling a vertical device with orange and green pieces to score the greatest number of three-in-a-row sets. The pieces slide in to horizontal rows and can be used to push an opponent’s pieces out the other side. Or a player can snap a clip on the end to fix that row.

Clue Master Detective ($30) is a super-sized version of the classic deduction game, with additional rooms, weapons, and suspects. The mansion board also has snoop spots, which allow a player to look another player’s cards.

A Milton Bradley title from the early ’90s, 13 Dead End Drive is kind of the inverse of Clue. Players divide up the game’s 12 characters in secret and then try to kill off all but their own. Each turn they can move any of the characters around a three-dimensional game board. When they manage to maneuver a character pawn in to one of the various danger spaces, they can press a little lever or switch and literally topple a statue or drop a chandelier on the piece to kill it. 13 Dead End Drive is exclusive to Go! Calendars & Games until January.

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At PAX Unplugged, AEG previewed Tiny Towns (April, $40), a title that pairs resource collecting with polyominoes. Players take turns calling out a resource type for everyone to place in one space of their 4×4 town board. Resource combinations that match specific patterns can then be replaced with a building type—all of the resource pieces are removed and the appropriate building is placed in one of the emptied spaces. Play continues until no one can possibly make another move.

Buildings score victory points, as well as potentially providing some benefits during play. In addition to those available for everyone to build, each player has their own secret building type (referred to as a monument), tougher to fit on the board but with greater benefits.

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Gamewright’s newest release is Twin It! ($15), a fast-play matching game with cards in more than 100 different patterns. Each player gets a stack and everyone turns over a new card at the same time. The first to correctly point to a pair of matching cards scores the point.

The cards are also two-sided, making the cards on top of each player’s stack fair-game for matching.

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Though summer is generally considered the height of convention season, fall too provides some great opportunities for game events in the United States.

Several run through the upcoming weekend. Perhaps the biggest, certainly the most elaborate, is Play Fair, a consumer toy and game show Saturday and Sunday in New York City. At Play Fair, families will find demonstrations, activities, and character appearances from some of the largest brands. Look for a world-record slime, drone races, life-sized games, virtual-reality opportunities, and more. Tickets are generally $30 per person for a 4 hour session but a discount code (“TOYASSOCEMP5“) shared with us by the Toy Association will give you $5 off per ticket.

EuroQuest, an event put on by the Games Club of Maryland, begins Wednesday in Pikesville (just outside Baltimore). Featuring board game tournaments and an active and friendly open game room, EuroQuest is also a good place to catch some of the hot releases from Essen Spiel on this side of the Atlantic.

Gamehole Con, Thursday through Sunday (November 2-5) in Madison, Wisconsin, hosts nearly 2,000 scheduled events covering all types of tabletop games, including the live action True Dungeon.

Also starting Thursday (in Morristown, New Jersey), Metatopia is a convention for game designers, with scheduled playtests, seminars, and panel discussions. Gamers who haven’t yet been hit with the design bug are also welcome, to help with playtesting.

Friday through Sunday in Lancaster, Pennsylvania is Fall-In, which focuses on historical miniatures gaming. There’ll be tournaments and scheduled games for a wide range of periods and systems. Also, dozens of classes on painting and terrain-making.

Another war game-focused event follows the next weekend, Friday-Sunday (November 10-12). That is the San Diego Historical Games Convention, where in addition to open gaming and scheduled miniatures, attendees have access to a number of play-with-the-designer events, a large game raffle, and free table space in the flea market.

Con on the Cob takes place the following weekend (November 9-12) in Richfield, Ohio. This one includes all types of analog games, along with a healthy dose of art, music and comedy performances, cosplay, and partying.

Then just before Thanksgiving we get three major conventions all on the same weekend! BGG.Con November 15-19 in Dallas is sponsored by the Board Game Geek website. Its big draw is a large open gaming room and a library of hot new titles but unfortunately it’s been sold out for a while.

ChiTAG is an event in two parts. There’s the consumer show, the Chicago Toy & Game Fair, Saturday and Sunday (November 18 &19), with many large and small exhibitors welcoming the public to play. There’s also the Chicago Toy & Game Week track of professional conferences and networking events that begin on Thursday (November 16), such as meetings for inventors and educators and the TAGIE Awards Gala. A special part of ChiTAG is the Young Inventor Challenge, a design contest for children ages 6-18. Prizes include over $10,000 in scholarships. For tickets to the consumer show, discounts of 50% are available through Groupon.

Finally, there’s PAX Unplugged November 17-19 in Philadelphia, where you might find me some part of the weekend. PAX Unplugged is a new convention from the organizers of PAX West, PAX East, etc. The series might be described as fandom events but this one is specifically focused on tabletop games. In its first year, it’s already seeing strong support from hobby game publishers. There’ll be a keynote address from the president of Wizards of the Coast, live performance Dungeons & Dragons games (Dice, Camera, Action! and Acquisitions, Inc.), open gaming, vendors, lots of board and card game tournaments, and a variety of panel discussions.

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Badges for the newest PAX convention go on-sale next Wednesday, May 3rd. Other PAX events have sold out, so if you’re interested don’t hesitate.

PAX Unplugged takes place November 17-19 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. The event is a joint effort of Penny Arcade and ReedPOP, and will focus entirely on tabletop games.

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Penny Arcade, partnering with ReedPOP, is launching its first tabletop-focused game convention, PAX Unplugged. The event, which is scheduled for November 17-19 this year at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, will join five other PAX shows with special attention to board games, card games, RPGs, and miniatures.

PAX Unplugged will take all the elements that have drawn millions of gamers to PAX – the chance to play and see the reveal of highly-anticipated upcoming games, attend game-inspired music concerts, participate in tournaments and watch panels with industry leaders – but with a renewed focus on fostering the best event for the burgeoning tabletop gaming community.

That makes the weekend before Thanksgiving a hot one for game events. PAX Unplugged is scheduled opposite BGG.CON and ChiTAG, though each serves different target markets.

Tickets to PAX Unplugged will go on sale in the spring.

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