Every so often, I wonder whether we've hit peak "roll-and-write" in the game industry, but dice are a wonderful tool for game designers to challenge players with the unexpected, and they're intuitively easy to use, and they allow for relatively inexpensive game productions — although many publishers lean in the other direction in their manufacturing — so we're unlikely ever to retreat to the pre-Qwixx era of 2011. Here are a few of the latest games announced in this style of gameplay:
In November 2026, Office Dog will release The Lord of the Rings: Circle of Conflict, a 2-4 player design from Stephen Buonocore and Geoff Engelstein that could in theory support any number of players should you have additional copies on hand. How? Because each player represents armies of both the Free Peoples of Middle-earth and the Shadow, and you compete against your left-hand neighbor with one army and your right-hand neighbor with the other.
On a turn, two dice are rolled, then each player chooses to use one die for their Shadow forces and the other for the Free Peoples. A battle board between each pair of players records information about certain battles, as well as how badly the Fellowship has been corrupted, so based on that public info and what you think your opponent(s) are doing, you make choices to try to succeed on both fronts.
Intertwined forces of a more natural sort await in Three Sisters: Harvest Edition, a new version of the 2022 game Three Sisters from Ben Pinchback and Matt Riddle. The game name refers to three crops — maize, beans, and squash — raised together by the Indigenous peoples of North America. To quote from an article on "Historical Indigenous Food Preparation":
Corn provided support for beans, beans provided nitrogen through nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria that live on the roots, and squash and pumpkins provided ground cover to suppress weeds and inhibit evaporation from the soil...
Archaeological evidence dates the adoption of the Three Sisters complex in North America to 1070 AD. The complex was adapted to local conditions over the 500 years before contact with Europeans, so much so that it was the dominant food plant association of every nation practising agriculture in the northeast USA as well as in several other parts of North America, including southern regions of Quebec and Ontario, Canada.
In the game Three Sisters, each of up to four players has their own gameboard in which they manage these crops, as well as compost, tools, perennials, and other interconnected elements. In each of eight rounds, players take turns drafting a die from a "farmer action wheel", then everyone uses the lowest-valued undrafted die for an additional action.
Three Sisters: Harvest Edition, which is co-designed by Adam Hill and due out in May 2026 from 25th Century Games, includes the original game as well as a new "twelve-chapter campaign mode", with the components and gameplay elements of this campaign being playable as expansions for the original game.
Farming is also at the heart of La Cosecha, a design from Isra C., Shei S., Michael Keller, and Andreas Odendahl that German publisher Spielworxx will debut in October 2026 and that Capstone Games will release in North America. La Cosecha is set in the world of La Granja, a Keller and Odendahl design that debuted in 2014, and the publisher offers this short description:
It’s harvest time on Mallorca, where you run your farm in the idyllic hamlet of Alpich near the town of Esporles. Each round, you harvest goods such as olives, grapes, and grain to mark boxes in different areas of your farm sheet. Fields need tending, the barn roof needs covering, and market carts want loading — your farm is full of opportunities, with the challenges differing on the two player sheets. In "La Fiesta", shown at top in the image above, you will host a banquet, and in "El Camino", you can travel the long road to Port de Palma.
Often, you'll need upgraded goods such as food and wine, which you must first produce from harvested goods. You need to balance short-term revenue against long-term planning. In addition, you can acquire tools and farm extensions with special abilities that may give you the decisive edge.
Whoever manages to use their revenue most effectively, combine the strongest bonuses, and keep an eye on the competition will earn the greatest renown and win.
