Terraforming Mars got insanely popular right after the release. Now it’s almost impossible not to stumble upon people playing it, whenever I visit a board game cafe or any other tabletop gaming related space. 

Players from all over the world fell in love with TM and the arrival of numerous expansions was obvious. First: the maps of Hellas and Elysium have appeared. Next we could enrich the game with Venus, Prelude and Colonies. Now It’s time for Turmoil – the first expansion funded through Kickstarter. And like all others: it was met with huge success.

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Last month we’ve delved into the topic of board game inserts. Despite so many players asking for these, we still don’t see them often enough in base boxes. Previous article ended with a survey about titles, that you’d like to see upgraded with proper inserts or trays. Below is your top 10 and a bunch of short comments. 

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What do you think of this idea?

Allow a group of friends among users to create a faction/gaming group:

• Select a group avatar (maybe create a custom one?)
• Members can recommend games for the group to play
• Schedule a game night by assigning games to a calendar
• Log game stats from game night
• Post images/videos of their game night
• Other users can follow the group so that they build an audience
• Publishers can send games to the group for playtesting, gameplay video/article, reviews, etc.

I want to continually work on improving features and adding the right ones to make this site a mainstay in the board gaming community. What's holding you back from talking to your friends and sharing links from it?

My first post! Wanted to ask what genre of game you, the reader, like to play? 

I just made a teaser video for an amazing coop game called Kings of Israel! Watch the video and check out the game.

Teaser Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANCG5Ubg3Jw

To enter to win the copy of the game used in the video, leave a comment below before Monday April 22nd at 9:00pm pacific time. Limit one entry per account.

Full rules here: https://www.boardgameatlas.com/sweepstakes/d5uGIG5MgN

What do you like about the site? What keeps you coming back?

This is an automated weekly post to talk about the games that came out on kickstarter this past week.

• Age of Civilization - the pocket-sized civ game! 18,756% of $2,200
• Hidden Oddities: A Witch's Primer 4,283% of $500
• Truth or Drink: The Card Game 2,358% of $9,800
• Hammer of the Scots 1,128% of $5,000
• Blood on the Clocktower 722% of $65,000
• Critical Core 383% of $48,000
• Sengdao 3: Starship Miniatures & Maps 358% of $2,000
• Dungeon Crawl Classics: Soul for the Ocean Dark 355% of $1,250
• Katai Empire the Chinese Army 353% of $6,000
• Ruin Masters 287% of $200,000
• Pantheon of Chaos 3 - Rise of the Beastmen 182% of $6,000
• Tali - Roman Knucklebones, Metal Coins, and 2 Games in One 169% of $3,500
• PLUNDERBUND, the Back Alley Business Board Game 143% of $25,000
• Contagion Chronicle - a Chronicles of Darkness crossover 125% of $50,000
• Bauhaus Chess v2 121% of $1,000
• Wrestlenomicon! 112% of $20,000
• DON'T GET STABBED! The Card Game 109% of $8,000
• Rocket Dogs The Card Game Relaunched 100% of $5,000
• Fraud - The Game of White-Collar Crime™ 74% of $18,000
• Crumbs 72% of $30,000
• Gartenbau 36% of $19,350
• OverBattle: The All War 25% of $75,000
• Champion of Earth (and Dinosoids Expansion) 324% of $200

Fuji Koro is a game where players take on the roles of brave samurai sent by the shogun to restore artifacts hidden within the volcano, that’s supposed to shoot out an ocean of lava in a matter of moments. The situation on the board is on fire, and so is the situation on Kickstarter, as the game keeps having plenty of success. 

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Hello all. Hoping it's OK to share a project I'm a part of called Saito, which includes a Board Game Arcade -- a new open-source online board gaming platform. 

The platform runs atop blockchain tech, with provable fairness, a simple/clean interface, and the ability to run modified versions of games based on community decisions or requests. 

We currently have three games in the arcade: chess, WordBlocks, and Twilight Struggle -- and would love to connect with anyone looking to get their work online and in front of an audience, as well as engage in discussions on board game design more generally. 

For example, the design of the WordBlocks game in the Saito Arcade is open for improvement if people who are familiar with games such as Scrabble had any ideas of how else to rework the board for a better experience.

We have a chat box in the arcade should anyone want to reach out:

https://apps.saito.network/arcade

Or simply ping us here via this thread.

Thanks for your time! Happy gaming everyone.

Hey Alexandr, thank you for making your time! First up, I noticed while stalking through your artstation account that you have quite the Cinderella story! Could you share with us your journey leading up to becoming a freelance artist?

Hello! I am an illustrator artist for video games, board games and books. Most often, I draw illustrations for tabletop games. It is very popular now. Every known universe in the world wants to make its desktop. My video game love originates from console games and a little later it was acquaintance with D&D. I plunged into the world of CRPG and I'm still a fan of them. Although at that time I could not even imagine that I would draw pictures and concepts for real games. I studied at the college of design and thought that I would do house interiors. I even learned to work well in 3D programs, I modeled beautiful buildings. But the crisis struck, there was less work and I started looking for something new. At first I thought to work in the printing industry, but I did not really like it and my first work in the field of games was unsuccessful. I decided to look for work online but everything went very badly until Fantasy Flight Games contacted me. I started drawing art for cards in such cool universes like The Lord of the Rings, Warhammer 40k, Star Wars and others. I began to receive a lot of orders as crowdfunding sites got popular and many people had opportunity to start projects. So I got an order from Isaac for Gloomhaven project.

So when you finally became a freelance artist, did it turn out to be everything you expected? What were some of the toughest challenges you faced? What was the most rewarding?

At the beginning of my freelance career, I was not looking for a job in other countries. Our local customers often did not behave very well, and I had little experience to stand up for myself. I learned to negotiate and conduct work and I got a job at a firm to study. It was fun, so great to discuss the project and the news of games every day. But in the end I wanted to draw something new. This is a big freelance plus, that you yourself choose what to draw. Today I can draw ancient ruins, tomorrow demons or cyberpunk eyes concept art for my own project. 

Let's start talking about Gloomhaven. Did you anticipate the game's massive success from the beginning?

The success of Gloomhaven was unexpected for me. It was the first big board game in which I drew the whole characters illustrations. I was very happy when the game began to collect good funding and when Isaac open second reprint was hard to believe, I was very happy about the project.

How do you think your art style, experience, and skills made you a great fit for handling Gloomhaven's art?

I think my style was good fit for the game and I think the players liked the illustrations. Although this is not the main thing in the game, as far as I know, the players have enjoyed the gameplay the most.

How detailed were the briefs for each of the characters? Were you able to exercise a lot of creative freedom or was there a clear direction for the desired look?

Isaac is a real creator, he came up with all the races and how they should look. We discussed every detail, shared the reference, what should be their clothing, culture, architecture. I am very pleased that each race was unique and new, it was a good opportunity to prove myself. This was the first sketch I did for the cover art.

Which character was your favorite and why? Could you use that character as an example to share with us your typical design process from start to finish?

All races in Gloomhaven are very interesting. Although one is very unusual - Aesther. After the cataclysm in their homeland, they became semi-ghost. They half exist in the world, their clothes and they are translucent. On the one hand, they are human-like, but they had to be made unusual. I tried to add all sorts of unusual colors, glitches, black bottomless eyes, as if in them only emptiness.

What do you think makes a good character design that will be loved by many people?

This is a pretty hard question. Do you remember how Miranda Presley a character from The Devil Wears Prada explained to the main character how difficult it is to find the right blue color? I think to create an up-to-date design, you need to follow all modern trends. You need to dive into games with a similar style, explore design, modern fashion, know the history of costumes, watch a lot of movies to know how it all works. We must try to make unusual combinations of colors, fabrics, anatomy, even the state of the surrounding world such as time of day, weather, lighting, so that each illustration is different from the previous one. At the same time, the artist should try to keep everything in the same style and color scale. I was very surprised when I learned that one artist Michiyo Yasuda was responsible for the colors of all the Ghibli films. I review them every year and get inspired by them.

How many alternate designs did you have to come up with for your characters?

As far as I remember, all the sketches were liked by Isaac from the first sketch. Isaac knew exactly what he wanted, it's a great quality for a client to have, and I guess my experience with fantasy style paid off. All the work was very interesting and it was very much enjoyable even though it was hard work. I worked on the principle one illustration per day. Now I am working on a new game and I am doing a lot of sketches and variations of one creature, while the client prescribes the lore and mythology behind the game's world. 

Now that Gloomhaven's been released all over the world, is there anything you wish you would've altered in your art before production?

When the game was released, we immediately began to make add-ons and Founders of Gloomhaven game in the same world. I had almost no time to think that I wanted to change. Probably every artist would like to change his art after some time when he grew up as an artist. Probably I would like to spend more time on each illustration and make them even better and more realistic.

How has Gloomhaven's success impacted your career and you as an artist? Has it been all good? or are there downsides as well?

I think the overall success of the game influenced me well. I heard a lot of good reviews, it is always very nice and motivates me to draw. More people signed up on my Instagram. There are more orders for board games from indie authors. But I think this is both a plus and a minus, I would like to be engaged in projects in other styles as well. It's busy but for relaxation I most often play on my PC or PS4. I would really like to work on such games as Dishonored, TES or Deus Ex.  

What are your next steps in your career? Are there any exciting developments in the works that you'd like to share with us?

I have a lot of good work now. Recently, I made the backgrounds for a project I have been working for a long time and I will finish it soon, I hope it will be interesting and will please the players. You can check some updates on Kickstarter. And as I mentioned before, I started working on a new desktop project that will be very diverse and amazing in illustrations, I vouch for this.

And lastly, what is your dream project?

I dream to draw my comics and make the game in cyberpunk style. The working title is Entropy Hunter. You can follow the tag #entropyhunter on instagram and see the concepts that I've been drawing in recent years. I draw them less often, but I try not to throw away the idea. This genre is not very popular and it is not often possible to find inspiration in games, movies or music for this, but major sources such as Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell and Akira become truly cult with time. I hope that I can do something similarly successful in the future.

I hope everyone enjoyed learning more about the man behind Gloomhaven's art! If you'd like to see more of his works, you can follow him on instagram, facebook, and artstation.

Thank you for reading!

Happy weekend BGA I hope all your dice are being nice. My last post about 3D printers went over well and I wanted to play off that and start up a discussion about general accessories. Aside from more or fancy dice and additional meeples what are some good general accessories that can be used to improve most games or the playing experience. I'll start things off with card holders. I have been wanting to get some since first playing Ticket to Ride with the original cards. Those things are small and with a few players having larger hands they stop being fun to hold on too fairly quick. I never got around to buying any but it was one of my first printing projects and they are a game changer.

A couple weeks ago user Markus integrated the BGA API with his recommendation engine. You can see his announcement here.

Today I've integrated his engine directly into the website! You can see the general recommendations if you're not logged in but if you log in and have some games on your owned list you can see your personalized recommendations here.

Let me know what you think!

Next week of April is going to be filled with well known names and gallons of hype on Kickstarter. Some of the most beloved board games, including ones that were never funded on KS until now, are getting new editions and expansions launched there. And what’s the funniest… all of them on the same day.

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