Mignoned

Alhambra won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award in 2003.
And here is the reason why:

Granada, 1278. At the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, one of the most exciting and interesting project of the Spanish Middle Ages begins: the construction of the ALHAMBRA.

The best master builders in the whole of Europe and Arabia want to demonstrate their skill. Employ the most suitable teams of builders and make sure that you always have enough of the right currency. Because no matter whether they are stonemasons from the north or horticulturalists from the south, they all want a proper wage and insist on their "native" currency. With their help towers can be constructed, gardens laid out, pavilions and arcades erected and seraglios and chambers built.

In Alhambra, players are acquiring buildings to be placed within their Alhambra complex.

The money in Alhambra comes in four different currencies and is available in the open money market. The 54 buildings of six types become available for purchase in the building market four at a time; one building is available in each of the four different currencies. On a player's turn, a player may 1) take money from the open money market, 2) purchase a building from the building market and either place it in his Alhambra or reserve, or 3) engage in construction and re-construction projects with buildings that have been placed in the player's Alhambra or reserve. The game rewards efficiency, as when a player purchases a building from the market for the exact amount of money, the player may take another turn.

Players with the most buildings in each of the six building types in his Alhambra score in each of the scoring phases, and points are awarded for players' longest external "wall" section within their complex. The game ends when the building market can no longer be replenished from the building tile supply, and there is a final scoring, whereupon the player with the highest score wins.

You can try out the game here :
https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=alhambra


The team would like to thank the publisher Queen Games, as well as our wonderful developer Tisaac for his precious help in putting the final touches to this wonderful game adaptation developed by Board Game Arena.

Stay tuned for more games in the next weeks : it will be exciting.
More is coming soon!

Carcassonne. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and the mammoth starts throwing menhirs at you.

It's pretty obvious that Carcassonne is one of the most played boardgame worldwide.

So now it is time for a new version to join Board Game Arena:
Hunters and Gatherers.
Where you play as... Hunters and Gatherers.


Thousands of years before the people of Carcassonne built mighty walls and castles, their ancestors roamed the land, hunting, fishing, and gathering what they needed to survive. Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers combines the classic tile-laying gameplay of the original Carcassonne with new thematic features and adjusted scoring rules for an all-new challenge. Players take turns placing tiles to expand a prehistoric landscape full of forests, rivers, lakes, and grasslands, and then score each natural feature. Wild animals from mammoths to saber-toothed tigers lurk in the grasslands, affecting your hunter score at the end of the game.

Belt, emergency idea generator, activate!

Same Game, New Features !
One of the highest-rated standalone versions of Carcassonne of all time, Hunters & Gatherers includes everything from the original published in 2002, plus updated art and additional menhir tiles, bonus tiles that give you extra turns to take special actions. When you complete a forest with a menhir, take an extra turn to draw and place a menhir tile and resolve its special effect—anything from scoring bonuses to a wildfire that chases all saber-toothed tigers away from a connected grassland. Use menhir tiles to your advantage to get ahead of your opponents!

Will you strategically place your tribe members and win the game?

You can find it out right here:
https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?ga ... dgatherers

We're still thankful to the same people, as the game is handled by the same dream-team from Hans Im Gluck, the board game designers Bernd Brunnhofer and Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, and of course our hand-down fantastic developer, LeSteffen.

You'll find your usual Carcassonne interface, so if you already know how to play Carcassonne, you'll feel at home.
Except for the scoring and a few options.
You'll be glad to find that there is a way to try out tiles before playing, and many other options.
You shouldn't be saying "let's do that again I think I blinked".

Ready to mark down history by being the proudest tribe of all?
You can play it now

Congratulations to every winners of Season 3!

Season 4 is NOW launched.

During last season, we introduced new rules, especially on turn-based Arena. We also recently improved a lot of things in the Arena UX. Season by season, we will continue to improve Arena little by little, so please don't hesitate to post your feedback!

New rules for Turn-based Arena

Following your feedback and to avoid Arena ranking cheating, we established new rules:

• For Arena turn-based game, for a given game, you are now forced to play on the table where it's your turn for the longest time. Example: if you have 2 Carcassonne games, you can't play on the game where it's you turn for 5 minutes before playing on the other one it's your turn for 5 hours.
• You cannot start a Arena realtime game if you have a turn based game with the same game in progress where it is your turn to play.
• At the end of the season, all turn based games will be stopped, and the player who consumed the most time will lost the game (all the opponents will be winners).
• 5 days before the end of the Season, this is not possible to create new turn-based table anymore.

Note: these changes have been made following a huge discussion with you to find the best way to address turn based Arena (read viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17703 for details). We'd like to thank all of you that help us to make this solution possible!

Arena interface improvements

[*] The Season number and end date of current season is now clearly displayed on the Arena lobby.
[*] Arena hall of fame: you can now access all the stats, rankings and results for current and past seasons, for all games.
[*] Your latest Arena results have been integrated to each game page.


Important: recent games are not concerned by the end of this season

All games published (= out of Beta) less than 1 month before the end of a season are not concerned by the end of the season (no trophies, no relegation).


It's up to you to find the way of the elite!


May the odds be ever in your favor!

Happy New Year 2021 !

It's been rough, but it's now time to dive into a new year and changes.

First, we need to thank all of our Members, Premium or Free, who have been enjoying Board Game Arena for years.
You helped bring your family, friends, or events to the platform.
Thanks to all of you, and to developers, publishers and game designers, Board Game Arena is getting bigger every day.

There's now over 5 200 000 accounts on Board Game Arena.

And more than 269 games available.

We couldn't have dreamed of such a growth in such a short time.

THANK YOU.

We also want to thank our wonderful team of moderators, working in the shadow, who are helping us more than ever:

Tyfo,
Hell_Gring_Goth,
Ynata,
Falabule,
Eman13088,
MsMayhem,
Coxy5,
Kangourou_mutant,
Romdos,
and
BlueMerry.

And the developers, but the list is too long to be displayed here
Thank you. You're awesome. Really. And we couldn't have dreamt of better people to have with us.

So what's next?
Let's keep it simple: many, many things will be coming to BGA.

We will try to make them happen during 2021. But of course it will depend on many parameters.
First parameter is the size of the core team: we are only 4 people to manage BGA.
And we have hundreds of developers working on different games.


What we want to keep:

- Low price for Premium:
Due to the increasing prices of banking fees, we're keeping the price as low as possible (As an example, that's why the lower Premium subscription you can get using Paypal is limited to 2 months, due to their fees).
That's something we need to pay attention to. We're also considering more ways for you to support BGA, but it takes time.
For the newcomers, please note that we still don't display ads and we do not sell or share your personal data to any third parties. Yeah, we're doing it the "hard" way but we think that you don't have to be tricked.
BGA is living out of the support of its Premium subscribers, and we want to keep it like that. The price could evolve as we would align to the different fees and charges, but we intend to keep it as low as possible.
That's what freedom is to us. Power to the users.

- Strong moderation:
More and more families, kids and companies are joining the platform everyday. Of course, as we welcome everyone, we cannot always filter bad behaviors at first sight.
We give people a chance to stay, to read the rules, and to just act kindly. We understand that some could get frustrated by losing some games, and we strongly encourage them to get better.
But there will still be some bad behaviors: that's why we're developing tools, analysis and moderation case studies to help us keep the service run as kindly as it can.
We will, of course, reward good manners. We want to value that.

- Game releases:
Every Wednesday, a new game. Every 2 weeks, a big game. There is plenty of games coming for 2021 that you can't even dream of.
We're striving for quality and we're trying tools to get games validated on as many configurations and as many user-cases as possible.
Our developers are aware of the bugs and other problems, and we want to improve the way you can send feedback.
This year, we will strive to get the highest quality we can for releases. Browsers are evolving, technology is always moving, we will keep on making games playable on as many platforms as we can.
But please, update your browser: we cannot support Netscape anymore


What we want to update:
- One of the big changes for 2021 is going to be on the main website: The overall 10-year-old interface is outdated.
We understand that it's totally fine for our oldest members, as they are used to it, but it's still not normal to have to click on a game, to add it to your favorite list to be able to play.
It's also not normal to have to click more than 5 times to start a game. We know this, it's been a way to fix the lobby. But should be changed.
Profile pages are outdated, friend system is vintage, privacy control should be better, etc... We know that.
You'll be glad to know that this year we will start a new version of BGA that should improve everything, but we will go step-by-step (ohhh babyyy).
Depending on your feedbacks and our analysis, you should be able to discover a new and simpler interface to play games, add friends and manage your accounts.
This is the big goal for 2021, but it could also be delayed. That's a very big project. We have already been preparing stuff on our side since months, we will update you during the year about it but don't expect anything until a few months.
The new version will probably go into beta first, with a specific access, so you will still be able to use BGA as it is for the next year.

- Streaming and Streamers :
We would like to propose some content related to BGA on a regular basis. Currrently we have the Wednesday BGA LIVE going on, but we want to provide more content in different languages
for you to interact with people in different ways: knowing more about the games, the strategies, and have some fun.

- Quality Of Life:
Weak opponents, finding players, overall access, bugs: we will track down more data on any issues that are going on.
During the whole year, we were able to keep the service up to 99,5% of the time. We want to get it as close to 99,99% as possible (we're not dreaming about 100% as nobody can, but why not.)
We will try to improve translations and support for pronouns in the next version, as well as a better way to control your data.
Also note that we never ask for your real name, and that's for this reason: we want you to be able to play without having to bother about your IRL life.
We will improve these aspects too, as they matter to us.

- Tournament, Arena:
It's already in progress as you can see on some pages now, and it will continue to improve. In fact, that's something that will never get "done" as it needs tweakings and fine-tunning all the time.
We check feedback and statistics, and we will try to make ARENA a great way to find out your exact level worldwide.


Many more things are coming, and we cannot get into more details here, but we wanted to share our main priorities with you.
Board Game Arena's audience will be growing, and the service must evolve. One step at a time.

It's a long road we've gone through since more than 10 years, and while we're staring at the horizon, as far as we can see there, we can say that it's far from finished.
But with your help, your love and passion (thanks for your supports through emails) we're feeling confident about the upcoming years.

Better times will come, with you,
but we're also expecting to get back to real boardgames, around real tables.
We're proud to be there for you to enjoy playing games with your friends, or have your weekly dose of board games, but we're also really eager to get back to real tables, with real components to touch,
and to see you in real life during events, worldwide.

We're wishing you the very best for 2021.
Love, Games, and friends.
More than ever, we want you to take care of you and your relatives.
We will take care of everything else.

#PlayWithTheWorld


With strong love from the team :

Greg Isabelli
Emmanuel Colin
Ian Parovel
Jurica Hladek

What's white and falls in December?

CONCEPT !

Spiel des Jahres, BoardGameGeek, As d'or, Golden Geek... close to 20 Worldwide awards for this game!
Yes, it's one of the presents for this year from the Repos Production Team.

This game, created by Alain Rivollet and Gaëtan Beaujannot is a total MUST-HAVE on any gaming library.

How does it play?
Simple.
and brilliant.
for 2 to 12 PLAYERS!

In Concept, your goal is to guess words through the association of icons. A team of two players – neighbours at the table – choose a word or phrase that the other players need to guess. Acting together, this team places pieces judiciously on the available icons on the game board.

To get others to guess "milk", for example, the team might place the question mark icon (which signifies the main concept) on the liquid icon, then cubes of this colour on the icons for "food/drink" and "white". For a more complicated concept, such as "Leonardo DiCaprio", the team can use the main concept and its matching cubes to clue players into the hidden phrase being an actor or director, while then using sub-concept icons and their matching cubes to gives clues to particular movies in which DiCaprio starred, such as Titanic or Inception.

The first player to discover the word or phrase receives 2 victory points, the team receives points as well, and the player who ends up with the most points wins.

We strongly recommend you to play with strangers. It works in any language.
And don't take it too seriously, it's only a game.
A wonderfully fun game you can try here:
https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=concept
Please note that tables are grouped by language - don't forget to set yours in your account preferences

All our thanks go to the awesome people at Repos Production, to the game designers too, of course, and to the work done by our developer,
Tisaac.

Oh and don't forget that this version contains more CONCEPT - Discover the expansion: More CONCEPT! Available for Germand and French only - for now.
Enjoy this game online or on a real table during these holidays, it's a good way to keep in touch with your relatives in a fun way.
Take care, and Merry Holidays to all !

Hi-dilly-ho, neighborinos!

Saint Petersburg (or Sankt Petersburg in German) is a well-made success story above all. The game is based on what has made Alhambra, San Juan or other similar games successful: each player plays on their own with few interactions and neat components.
The game has won many awards, all around the world, and has been very popular amongst players ever since.

In Saint Petersburg, you're developing the city at the beginning of the 18th century, with craftsmen, constructions and nobles to manage. A true German-style game, i.e. mechanics are really the heart of the game.

The game is split into several rounds, each of which is composed of virtually similar phases, the cards changing for each phase.

Basically, you place cards face up on the board, and either buy one, take one from your hand (a reservation), put one from your hand on your own board, and pay the cost or pass. So 4 possible actions. Easy.

Except that, cards are rather expensive and money quickly becomes scarce. Knowing that for all similar cards the cost decreases, and that the remaining cards in the next round will cost one less. So the game holds a certain "push your luck" flavor: you buy right away, you reserve or you wait until it becomes cheaper.

Some cards will bring money, depending on the phase, and others will bring victory points. It's all about making the right investment choices at the right time.

In the end, the rules are extremely clear, well explained and very fluid. You don't have to wait between turns, even at 5 players.

You can give it a try here :
https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?ga ... petersburg

All our thanks go to Hans Im Gluck and to the game designer Bernd Brunnhofer, without forgetting of course to tip our hats to our developer Marcuda for the top-notch work he has done on this adaptation.

You'll probably enjoy the interesting mechanics, including playing by phases with different gains at the end of each one. The whole feel is very strategic, and the game will especially please analytical players.

It works like a card game, for lovers of management and calculation games.

And now, what else can we ding dong diddly do for you?

- Knock knock!
- Sul sul.
- Who's there?
- Your new neighbor!
- Welcome to... ? Is that you ?
- Yes, and i'm with a new friend : Welcome to... New Las Vegas!

Oh, i already know him. Get in and get a seat. We have to talk.

It's time to release these 2 games!
Welcome to... is a game that has been awarded close to 20 awards worldwide, from Golden Geek awards to TricTrac, for good reasons: it's simple, addictive and challenging.
It's like The Sims, or Simcity: You build up houses or casinos, take care of the neighbours, but you don't have to care about Karen directly as she will probably mess around with Steve, you just have to build the places, whatever happens to the people living there is not your job. And the reason is that you'll already suffer enough from planning things.

As an architect in Welcome To..., you want to build the best new town in the United States of the 1950s by adding resources to a pool, hiring employees, and more.

Welcome To... plays like a roll-and-write dice game in which you mark results on a score-sheet... But without dice. Instead you flip cards from three piles to make three different action sets with both a house number and a corresponding action from which everyone chooses one. You use the number to fill in a house on your street in numerical order. Then you take the action to increase the point value of estates you build or score points at the end for building parks and pools. Players also have the option of taking actions to alter or duplicate their house numbers. And everyone is racing to be the first to complete public goals. There's lots to do and many paths to becoming the best suburban architect in Welcome To...!

Because of the communal actions, game play is simultaneous and thus supports large groups of players. With many varying strategies and completely randomized action sets, no two games will feel the same!

And when you'll get tired of Welcome to...
Rediscover the game with a new theme and new mechanisms in Welcome To New Las Vegas!

The game plays with a set of two different sheets — one dedicated to the map, the other used to keep track of the score and objectives — where you have to build and open casinos in the streets, hotels in avenues, create golf courses, give performances to the tourists, and move limousines for VIPs in order to build the greatest and most entertaining city and win the game!

Welcome To New Las Vegas keeps the same roll-and-write with dice-without-dice mechanism from Welcome to... Your Perfect Home: you flip cards from three piles to make three different sets with both a casino number and a corresponding action from which everyone chooses one. You use the number to fill in a casino on your street in numerical order. And everyone is racing to be the first to complete public goals. There's lots to do and many paths to becoming the best resort architect in Welcome To New Las Vegas!

That's 2 games released, the first one, Welcome To... being for Premium subscribers, and Welcome to New Las Vegas being free for all.

You can find the games here:
For Welcome to... https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=welcometo
For Welcome to New Las Vegas https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?ga ... ewlasvegas

Both of them are designed brilliantly by the same game designers, and are beautifully illustrated by Anne Heidsieck. So you should feel at home in both of them

Please note that you can also buy the real game at your local retail store to help the publisher

We would like to thank of course the publisher, Blue Cocker, and more specifically Alain Balay for his support in bringing the games to Board Game Arena.
Also, nothing would have been possible without the hard work of our developpers, Tisaac, Justinfernal and, of course, joezg (you rule).

Of course, the Wednesday releases are part of BGA Opus Magnum Calendar releases, because we just simply couldn't release a game before it has been tested

Enjoy building your cities, having games with up to 12 opponents (We might increase this later if it's proven to be stable enough), and let's celebrate boardgames together.

There will be more coming,
but that's it for today
Dag dag.

(PS: anything related to Simcity or The Sims would be a simple coincidence.)
(PPS: Klapaucius cheat-code doesn't work either.)