Pics from Gen Con 2026 VII

Roughly a month after Gen Con 2026 ended, it's time to wrap up my coverage of that show before getting too lost in the SPIEL Essen weeds, although thoughts of that show were ever-present in publisher's media presentations:

Czech Games Editions, for example, had a full display copy of Kingdom Come: Deliverance – The Board Game, a 1-4 player game from Vlaada Chvátil and Tomáš Holek that CGE will debut at SPIEL Essen 26. [Disclosure: Czech Games Edition has previously advertised on Board Game Beat]

CGE announced this US$200/€150 game in July 2026, but even with that price tag and mock-up images, it was hard to get a handle on how sprawling this game is meant to be.

Aside from the metal coins, the massive shop, and the horses with individual stats, you have the game board itself, along with the cards that be purchased in the display at back and the three storylines set up for this particular game: "Plague Infection", "Neuhof Slaughter", and "At Your Service, My Lady". Here's a close-up of the former one:

And here are a couple of player game boards, which are massive so that you can track stats, points, equipment, tools, achievements, and so on. This seems like a highly ambitious project, and I wish CGE well in bringing it to the finish line.

Asmodee hosted a media event prior to the opening of Gen Con 2026 to highlight both new releases and upcoming games, such as Adventurers Required from first-time designer/artist Bethany Linder and publisher Lookout Games.

In each of four rounds, you see the power of the tower floor, which will affect conditions for gameplay or the distribution of treasure, then each of you drafts a hand of four adventurers...with you holding your hand of cards backwards. You can peek at a couple of cards in your hand, so you can draft (blind or not), take from the market, or draw from the deck. You want a low noise value, and cards with matching numbers cancel out, but you might also want certain roles (healers, slimes, mages, etc.) based on the floor.

After four rounds, you receive a treasure bonus based on the collective noise of your four teams, but the game can end early if someone blasts past the 48-noise threshold, awakening the sleeping wizard to destroy those clunky characters.

Only Colors is a co-operative game from designers Émilie and Jérôme Soleil and publisher Zygomatic that will debut in February 2027 for the FIJ show in Cannes, France.

Each round, each player receives a card listing five things or concepts, then you receive an icon card showing what thing you must try to convey through the arrangement of at most three colored sticks! "Arrangement" specifically means the horizontal placement of sticks with no stacking or angling.

If others guess your card correctly, great! If not, boo! In either case, those sticks are now out of play, with the team collectively trying to win as many cards as possible. Seems like a hang-out-and-chill game along the lines of Concept...

Brady Peterson's Hundo from Moodbox Games is a party-style card game for 2-6 players in which you're trying not to make the center pile go over 100 — but you're playing cards by just flipping them from your deck, so your control over what happens seems limited.

I didn't get a detailed description and rules aren't yet available, so that will be it for now. Reminds me of ye olde ONO 99, which my family played frequently.

DuckTales: Lucky Dime Heist is one of six "REWIND" titles from publisher Maestro Media that were crowdfunded in November 2025 and are coming to market by the end of 2026.

This two-player design by Nate Weisman pits Scrooge McDuck and his grandnephews Huey, Louie, and Dewey against Magica De Spell and Fintheart Glomgold. In each round, players play an inspiration card, take actions, then score trying to reach the victory conditions on a particular episode card first.

All six REWIND titles use the same game system, so characters and episodes from various games can be combined.

In January 2027, Maestro Media will re-introduce Jacques Zeimet's Ghost Blitz to the North American market.

In this 2010 game, which has sold more than one million copies in 20+ languages, a card showing two of the five objects is revealed from the deck each turn, then players race to grab the proper object. What's proper? If a object is depicted in the right color (book=blue, chair=red, etc.), then grab that. If not, then see which color and object is not depicted and grab that. Collect the most cards to win.

Each turn in the party game That Tracks from Matt Fantastic, Trisha Loter, Andrea Pincumbe, Blaise Sewell, and Bezzerwizzer Studio, players face twenty years of trend lines for four subjects and must try to identify which subject matches which line.

I always wonder what the lifespan for games like these is. Right now, you're unlikely to know the exact answers, or else the game wouldn't be much of a game, but what will your memory retain by 2030? By 2036? Still, game lines like Scene It? and Trivial Pursuit have been hugely successful, so it's not like timelessness is a necessary element for sales success.

Hypothetically is a party game for 3-6 players from Max Anderson, Zac Dixon, Austin Harrison, and Robert Hovakimyan that IV Studio released in July 2026.

Each turn, the active player chooses one of two questions on a prompt card, e.g., "What is the diameter in inches of the largest marshmallow you could lift?", after which everyone peppers them with questions about the situation — "Are you pressing the marshmallow sides softly or digging your fingers into the goo?" — then writes their guesses, with you scoring if you're closest to the active player's answer.

As with Only Colors above, this design seems more like a framework for conversation than anything else. Interestingly, Hypothetically seems like the game that I had wished Fun Facts would be...

At Gen Con 2026, Brotherwise Games launched Shelfy, which it bills as "an all-new collectible product in partnership with 20 tabletop publishers, including Cephalofair, Van Ryder, AEG, and Restoration Games. Shelfy is a new blind bag collectible, featuring miniature board game boxes sized for display in a six-inch miniature shelf."

I'm baffled by the appeal of such a thing, but I also cut up boxes to right-size them in regard to their included components, so I'm clearly not the target customer for this product line, especially given this detail: "There are 28 games to collect in Shelfy Season One, including four special alt chase foils!"

Nope, not for me. I understand the appeal of blind boosters, the lottery feeling of not knowing whether a "big payoff" awaits you, but I'd rather save my money for games I could actually play.

I'm so glad that I don't mess with any of this stuff. I write posts here, then they're distributed automatically via the few social media channels I use, and that's that. Keeping it simple...

I asked a passerby about this, and they said that the garage used to be open to all, but that wasn't the case during Gen Con. Gross.

Had to a take a pic of this shirt to share with my wife, who speculated that one of those dumbass kids probably gave this T-shirt to their dad as a gift. I can see that happening. After all, pretty much all kids are dumbass kids at various points in their childhood and youth, and I can imagine one of them wanting to joke about that, ideally hoping to give themselves an out in the future when they once again engage in dumbass activities...

My Gen Con 2026 coverage is now over.