Brass: Birmingham gets a sequel, Votes for Women gets ads banned by Facebook
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Happy New Year! Anyone who thought 2024 might take some time to warm up with board game news need not have worried. Not only did Facebook ban adverts for critically-acclaimed wargame Votes for Women, claiming it represents a “sensitive social issue”, but we’ve also got a sequel to BoardGameGeek’s number one ranked game Brass: Birmingham on the way. Stonemaier Games ignited matters with the reveal of dragon-themed Wingspan spiritual successor Wyrmspan - and designer Connie Volgelmann was kind enough to talk through her design process for the game with BoardGameWire. We’ve also got our regular links to interesting board game design articles and musings and a host of board game industry jobs. If you enjoy the newsletter, please ask your friends and colleagues to sign up too - thanks for reading!
BoardGameGeek’s top ranked game, Brass: Birmingham, is getting a sequel this year
Brass: Birmingham, the industrial revolution-themed strategy game which ousted Gloomhaven as BoardGameGeek’s top-ranked game early last year, is getting a sequel. Roxley Games founder Gavan Brown revealed yesterday that the new game is slated to be the company’s next Kickstarter, with a planned launch in the last quarter of this year. Brass: Birmingham is itself a sequel to Martin Wallace’s 2007 release Brass, which sees players take on the roles of competing cotton entrepreneurs in Lancashire through the 18th and 19th centuries.
Canada-based Roxley launched a Kickstarter campaign for an updated edition of Brass – named Brass: Lancashire – and a more significantly reworked version of the game, Brass: Birmingham, in 2017. That campaign garnered huge success, with more than 13,600 backers committing over C$1.7m ($1.25m) during the 25-day crowdfunding.
Facebook bans ads for award-winning Votes for Women board game’s new Kickstarter, claims it is a “sensitive social issue”
Votes for Women, the critically acclaimed card-driven wargame about the fight for women’s suffrage in the US, stands to miss out on up to $60,000 of backing for its second print run after Facebook repeatedly banned ads for the game due to it featuring a “sensitive social issue”. Tory Brown’s debut game, published by Fort Circle Games, catapulted both designer and publisher into the board gaming limelight following its release in 2022, picking up widespread praise from reviewers including Polygon’s Charlie Hall, who named it one of the year’s best board games, and game design luminaries including Undaunted series co-designer David Thompson.
Awards recognition soon followed, and spurred by the game’s success publisher Fort Circle launched crowdfunding for a second printing of the game on December 17 last year. But Fort Circle founder Kevin Bertram told BoardGameWire the Facebook ads for the campaign he has been submitting since the start of the New Year are all being rejected.
How we made Wyrmspan: Designer Connie Vogelmann on creating 2024’s hottest game so far
Stonemaier Games' big reveal of Wyrmspan - a new game "in the world of Wingspan" - earlier this month might have descended like a dragon out of the blue, but it's no surprise Elizabeth Hargrave's hugely lauded 2019 design is getting a spiritual successor. The task of designing "Wingspan with dragons" was given to Apiary creator Connie Vogelmann - but as she explains in this Q&A interview, the new game is far more than just a reskin of its feathery predecessor.
The long-running board game industry podcast from Ignacy Trzewiczek and Stephen Buonocore has left Dice Tower for BoardGameGeek
Board Games Insider, the long-running industry podcast created by former Stronghold Games president Stephen Buonocore and Portal Games president Ignacy Trzewiczek, has left its home on the Dice Tower Network to join BoardGameGeek. Buonocore and Trzewiczek have been providing their regular takes on the inner workings of the board game industry through more than 300 episodes of the podcast since February 2015, when their debut show took a look at whether it was worth it for publishers to attend the giant toy fair in Nuremberg, Germany.
More recently the pair have been joined on the cast by Corey Thompson, who has just stepped down from his role as the long-time host of the Dice Tower podcast Dice Tower Now. He is also the executive producer of comedy board game YouTube channel Above Board TV. Board Games Insider is targeted at listeners who are already part of the board games industry, or who are interested in working in the sector, with a focus on “unravelling the onion” to highlight the inner workings of the business side of board gaming.
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And finally - Ukrainian model maker Denys Tsiokhla is making a string of incredible large-scale Warhammer models out of paper - via Wargamer.
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