Expand Carcassonne, Faraway, Toy Battle, Feya's Swamp, and Duel for Middle-earth

Here's a round-up of additions to games you might already own — or, in case you're looking for holiday gift suggestions, that someone you know owns:

▪️ As part of its "Let's Play Mittelalter" (Middle Ages) event that opened 9 October 2026, the Europäisches Hansemuseum in Lübeck, Germany has a new Carcassonne expansion for sale in its shop courtesy of designer Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and publisher Hans im Glück. Carcassonne: Die Hanse / The Hansa transforms Carcassonne into a Hanseatic citym, with players picking up barrels of goods as they complete roads and cities, then loading them into ships to (hopefully) score points. (Here are rules in DE and EN.)

"Let's Play Mittelalter" runs through 31 October 2027.

▪️ On 26 February 2027, Repos Production will release The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth – Journeys, the second expansion for Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala's The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth. The only description I've seen of this item so far is that it includes "new events and new opportunities to travel through Middle-earth".

▪️ Repos Production has also teased a goodie for Paolo Mori and Alessandro Zucchini's Toy Battle that will be available at SPIEL Essen 26.

▪️ Helge and Anselm Ostertag's 2025 game Feya's Swamp from Fractal Juegos was the talk of SPIEL Essen 25 — partly because it was in such short supply — but now the game has been available on markets around the world, and in 2027 the Ostertags and Fractal Juegos will release Feya's Swamp: Mushroom Forage, which adds two new clans to the game; three types of mushrooms for trade, temple offerings, and objectives; and two new rules ("Fishing Progress" and "Construction Tax" that you must use with the expansion and can add to the base game as well.

If you're not familiar with Feya's Swamp, you can check out my August 2025 write-up or video.

▪️ At SPIEL Essen 26, French publisher Catch Up Games will have a new expansion for Johannes Goupy and Corentin Lebrat's 2023 game Faraway. (For background on how to play, check out my overview from Gen Con 2023. You should also look at artist Maxime Morin's Faraway diary, which is phenomenally interesting.)

Faraway: Beyond the Veil, the third Faraway expansion, features thirteen spirit cards, with two spirits being available on the table each turn. If the card you add to your tableau satisfies an available spirit's requirement — such as three cards numbered higher than 40, four stone resources, or three green cards — you tuck the spirit under the card you just played. Effectively, these two cards are now merged into one, with each spirit card bearing a scoring condition that triggers at game's end (as with the cards you normally play), while possibly also contributing symbols that will help satisfy or boost other scoring conditions.

After Catch Up Games releases an English-language version of Beyond the Veil at SPIEL Essen 26, Pandasaurus Games will release it in North America in Q4 2026.