Clash Royale's second Supercell licence, Paizo's retailer tier, and one die for Festung Cherbourg

The desk covers 14 to 16 October 2026. BoardGameWire filed nothing in those three days, so the business here comes from the trade press and from the campaigns themselves. Three moves stand out: a mobile game licence heading back to Kickstarter, a crowdfunding campaign that opens a shop counter in the middle of its run, and Capstone's slate for SPIEL Essen, the four-day fair that starts next week. Two campaigns opened inside the window itself, on 14 and 15 October.

Maestro Media opens Clash Royale: The Grand Arena on Kickstarter on 20 October, its second tabletop deal with the mobile publisher Supercell. 1

The first was Clash of Clans: The Epic Raid, which Maestro Media released this year. Clash Royale is the card battler set inside the same universe. 1

David Gordon, Ryan Rodriguez and TAM designed it, and the box prints all three names under the title. Two to four players, ages 12 and up, 30 minutes: deploy cards along two lanes of battle, knock down the opponent's towers and collect Crowns. 2

"We've spent years building the experience and infrastructure to take great ideas and turn them into games that fans can actually get their hands on," Maestro Media founder and CEO Javon Frazier said. He describes the campaign as a way for Clash Royale players to play "in a world they already love". 1

Frazier puts the publisher's half of a licence deal at manufacturing, crowdfunding and fulfilment. The licence holder's half is the world and its audience. 1

Paizo's 13 Omens Kickstarter opened on 14 October. When ICv2 wrote it up the next day it had raised $235,084 from 1,702 backers, about $138 a backer. 3

On 21 October the publisher adds a retailer reward tier to the live campaign. Shops will be able to preorder the same products the backers are buying: the core book, the game master's screen, dice and more. 3

The game reaches retail on 2 June 2027, so the campaign is taking trade orders more than seven months before the street date. 3

13 Omens is Jason Bulmahn's horror game, and it runs on a shared dice bag. Safe Dice and Omen Dice go into the same bag, and a bad Omen roll can kill a player character. The story is written in three acts. 3

Capstone announced Prague Unseen and a second Pirates of Maracaibo expansion on 14 October, and pre-orders for the first are open. 4

Prague Unseen is a nineteenth-century Prague game by Jindrich Pavlasek, Michal Peichl and Petr Vojtech. One to four players, just under two hours, $69.99. 4

The board changes as the game runs: players can add new action spaces to it. Four mini-games drawn from the city's myths unlock abilities while the players fight for majorities in four neighbourhoods. 4

Pirates of Maracaibo: Bermuda Triangle is the second expansion for the 2023 game by Ralph Bienert, Ryan Hendrickson and Alexander Pfister. It adds 60 cards, treasure hunts in the triangle, new improvement cards and an upgraded solo version, for $18.99 with the base game required. 4

Adam Niechwiej founded the Polish publisher Strategemata in 2009 to publish his own wargames. He works as a CNC machine operator in Wrocław. 5

On 14 October he talked to The Boardgames Chronicle about Festung Cherbourg 1944, his game about the American attack on the port of Cherbourg in June 1944. 5

Combat is a single die roll against a target number read off the Terrain Effect Chart. There is no combat results table anywhere in the game. 5

The abstraction buys Niechwiej flexibility on time and terrain scale. It is also why the game rewards geometry: the more hexes the attacking units occupy, the better their chance of success. 5

The rest of the scale follows that priority. One hex is 1,000 metres and the map is 68 by 48 centimetres. Units are battalions and companies, turns are eight hours, and stacking is banned so the board stays legible. 5

The 12-phase turn is where the two armies separate. American units move first and then assault, while the German sequence is reversed, which makes coordinating several units harder for the defender. Niechwiej uses that order to put the historical problem on the table. 5

American units from different divisions are barred from combining in one Assault or Defensive Fire. 5

New in this design is a German defence line of fortifications of varying quality. Infantry can abandon them during play, and the units freed that way can hold the next line or mount a counterattack. 5

Niechwiej drew most of the map and the counters himself. Krzysztof Korzeniak drew the infantry icons, and the rulebook reprints an essay by Jean Paul Pallud that first ran in After the Battle in 2010. 5

Mantic Games told its readers in September that Plants vs. Zombies: The Board Game would launch on Kickstarter on 14 October, and it did. The campaign closes on 5 November. 6

Kicktraq, the campaign tracker, showed 3,237 backers and £438,206 pledged against a £25,000 goal when this desk read the project on the morning of 16 October. 6

Three days in, that works out at £135 a backer and about £146,000 a day. 6

The game is Mantic's version of PopCap's tower defence, built in partnership with PopCap. One to four players defend a house against waves of zombies with plants, teamwork and card play. 7

Feuerland opened the Gamefound campaign for The Danes on 15 October. The platform's home page still carried the start entry, marked sixteen hours old, when this desk read it on the morning of 16 October. 8

By that morning the project page showed €428,007 from 3,949 backers, 428% of a €100,000 goal. The goal was cleared in 23 minutes and 12 seconds, and the campaign has 20 days left to run. 9

The Danes is credited to Gernot Köpke and Uwe Rosenberg, with illustration by Dennis Lohausen. One to four players, about 180 minutes, ages 14 and up. The English Gamefound Edition costs €100, with delivery listed for October 2027. 9

The campaign opens on the game it follows: A Feast for Odin came out ten years ago and still sits 27th on BoardGameGeek. 9

Dale Yu reviewed Syzygy on Opinionated Gamers on 15 October. Asuka and IKE designed it, EmperorS4 publishes it, and three to six players take about 15 minutes over it. 10

Nine planet cards go face down in a row, and the table wins if they end up in sequence, 1 to 9 or 9 to 1. Each player gets four actions to make that happen. 10

A turn is one of two things: look at a planet card, or pass and flip your lowest-numbered token. 10

Looking carries a price. The only words a player may speak are "Oh my god", in whatever tone they choose. That tone is the whole information channel. 10

Yu lists the tones available: surprise, confidence, confusion, disappointment. 10

He calls the placement restriction the biggest single factor in whether a team wins. A card must be placed between two others; the two cards at the ends of the row are not valid destinations. 10

Draw the 1 or the 9 and there is no slot where it belongs. It goes beside an end, and the table then has to be talked into moving that end card later. 10

The god tokens left behind are numbered one to four. They let the table trace the order someone looked at cards, and work out what that player now knows. 10

Three versions ship in the box. The base game uses the nine planets; a Trial for the Gods version uses planets 1 to 7 with a Black Hole; the hardest version adds the Black Hole to all nine planets. 10

Syzygy was a Tokyo Game Market release. Yu first played it at a convention years earlier, and EmperorS4's reprint put it back in front of him. 10

He rates it "I like it", as do John P and Jonathan F. Joe Huber, after three plays, is neutral and says he would be happy to play it again but has no wish to own a copy. 10

Three dates to keep from this issue: Clash Royale: The Grand Arena opens on Kickstarter on 20 October, Paizo adds the 13 Omens retailer tier on 21 October, and Plants vs. Zombies closes on 5 November. 136

SPIEL Essen runs from 22 to 25 October, and BoardGameWire published its round-up of the SPIEL.talks programme on 13 October. 11

One session there is data rather than advice. On the Thursday at 2:40pm, the social scientist and game critic Johannes Blumenberg presents a study of 50 years of designer networks, built from BoardGameGeek data on more than 132,000 games and almost 60,000 designers. 11

Women have accounted for 9% to 10% of board game designers since around 2020, and the talk examines whether differences in professional networks and collaboration patterns help explain that split. 11

The mechanic from this desk to test next is the 13 Omens bag: one shared bag, two kinds of die, and a character's life riding on which one you pull. 3