Top 10 Most Anticipated Games at Gencon 2026
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Transcript
Hello, my friends. It's that time of year. Gen Con is upon us. The week after this video goes live, Gen Con will be in total craziness. Now, what I'm going to do today is go over my top 10 anticipated games. Now, uh I've been going through the Board Game Geek preview list, and from what I can tell, all these are listed as for sale at there, which means that you should be able to go there. A lot of these come in airlifted and they're very limited releases. So, it might be hard to get some of these, but they are theoretically for sale, so you should be able to get some of these. So, let's go through my top 10 most anticipated games. That's going to be at Gem Con.
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Number 10. Number 10. Number 10.
This next one is called Pulitzer. Uh now, in this you take the reigns of a team of American investigative journalists during the age early stages of the turbulent decade of the 1970s, the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate crisis. You'll be you'll work to maintain the prestige and sales of the newspaper while dedicating the necessary resources to complete the investigation of the big story. You'll be using a board and a string to connect the evidence, which is a unique and cool concept. Now, you'll use secret worker placement. Some evidence will be worth more to you as a personal goal, and you'll need to find at least five of those to be able to score in the end. Now, you'll be matching evidence and column cards to pin it on your board, but you'll also be getting points by having a further reach than your opponents by gathering houses and having majorities of those different houses in different colors. Now, this was actually on my asant anticipated list, but it was with a small publisher in Spain, but guess what? 25th Century Games has the new revised edition coming to Gen Con.
And again, I think they're airlifting some a small amount of copies in and they've done a lot to the game. They've changed some of the balances. They've changed a lot of the graphic design and and logos to make it easier to play. They've redone a lot of the rules that's supposed to be a better version of the game. And since I never still didn't didn't get get a chance to play it, this is the best chance now because it's going to be the best edition of this. And that is Pulitzer
number n.
This next one is called Kingdom Crossing. And when this first got announced, I almost just I actually did just pass over because I my brain said Animal Crossing and I wasn't interested in that. Uh and I know that's I just don't have time to play video games right now. But uh you know then on the Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast, Jamie uh by the way, if you don't listen to Secret Kal Gaming podcast, you need to. They've been around for even longer than I have in the industry and they just make the best podcasts. Uh but he was talking about uh this game, how great it is. So, it kind of made me look into it, and it does look really cool. Essentially, you're going to help the queen build a new bridge. You're going to scour the kingdom, recruit the best artisans, gather construction resources, and create magnificent decorations. But, however, you can never use the same bridge more than once in the same day.
So, it's inspired by the problem of the seven bridges of Coinsburg, which is a famous historical puzzle asking if it was possible to walk across the city's seven bridges, crossing each only once. Now, also with gameplay combines engine building and programming mechanisms. It's a cute game, but the BGG weight is three. So, it's a mediumweight Euro, and you're gonna be using action tiles to puzzle your way around the board, crossings, crossing over bridges, buying cards that build a tableau of engine building, but also act as a multiplier for the game and scoring with the resource track that matches that card's color. But there's also, you know, in-game uh bridge goals. You're going to be trying to put out houses, endgame goals you're going for, and putting out all your footprints. So, it seems like it is a a pretty chunky medium weight hero that looks cuter than it actually feels as you're playing it. Uh, and so this one's on my list. And Kidden Crossing is going to be at the Pandasaurus booth.
Number eight. Number eight.
Now, this next one is called Stonk Market. Uh, there's not a lot of images of of this game available yet. This is a rhineria realtime trading stock sort of trading game where you buy into company stocks like Blammo or Chatterfly at the same time watching out for evershifting ston exchange which will dictate the stock that's worth negative points at the end. Now, Ryder Cania redesigned this is theoretically people have said this is Cania has redesigned pit, but it does it in a new way with sharper scoring and more of a nod toward strategy. Now, that sounds great to me uh because I love I don't like pit, but I do like stock market games. I do like real-time games. I like Panic on Wall Street, which last year was Wolf on Wall Street at Gen Con. Um, so I do like that aspect, but to have a Kenichi bring this back. U, now there's a story from Nick Murray on bite from bitewing games and he was chatting with Cole Whley from from Leader Games who does, you know, Root and Arcs and Oath and all that. And in his personal bag, he pulled out Weedle. Now, this was the Rhinoitia game with a lukewarm BGG rating that that most people haven't heard of. Um, and Cole said it was one of his favorite games and they pulled it out. So, and and ended anyway, uh, Nick ended up buying a copy, playing it, loved it, ended up playing it with all with all play leader. Uh, and that's how this got built. And so, this is a
reimplementation of Weedle that came out in 2002, and it's going to be at the Allplay booth.
Number seven. Number seven.
Hey, a top 10 Essen or or Gen Con list would not be filled if there wasn't a Kramer and Keling title on it, right? This is Market Fresh. Uh these are this is one of my favorite tag team design duos. Uh this is a a stacking tile placement game for one to four players where you take a crate from the supply or one from your face up one and you're going to add it to your hand and then you're going to choose one of those to place in your stall above and and you're going to score points accordingly. Now the more protos you match that is visible on your board, the more you'll score. You'll also earn bonus points at the end of the game for each prototype that you have the most for or the second most. And you'll do that by marking those with farmers out on the board. So, you can always see who's in the lead for that. But the tiles, the production of this looks amazing. The tiles look like these huge chunky dominoes with three-dimensional produce in them. That looks awesome. And when you're stacking tiles up, you can do it on multiple levels as long as one half matches what's below it. So, it kind of almost gives me that that uh Miyabi feel that that uh I believe that was Michael Keling did that one. That was kind of cool. You're doing like three-dimensional building, but some rules. This just looks really cool and the production looks amazing. And these guys have just tried and true. So that's why it's on my list. Now this is a reimplementation of a 2020 game called Chewbacca that I have not played.
Number six. Number six.
The next one is Rhinelander. And this is another Reritzia game that originally released in 1999 uh but is being republished by 25th Century Games. This is the second reprint of 25th 25th Century Games. By the way, guys, if you don't know what they're doing, you got to check it out because they they just been knocking it out of the park the last handful of years. Uh, and this also has new Eono Tool art. So, this thing is I've only been able to see the cover of this, but it looks amazing. I'm sure everything else is going to look amazing. It's Eono Tool. He's one of the three artist credited artists for this. And this your Duke's trying to establish dusties along the banks of the Ryan River. Now, you hold a hand of cards that correspond to the the numbered plots on each riverbank and you're going to be placing knights on there in open plots and you're going to be holding them to basically, you know, from the cards that you've played. Now, after establishing duchies, you're going to attempt to expand them and to include more plots of the land as well as buildings, different buildings like castles and cathedrals and cities. And these buildings both add to the value of the duche and provide you with, you know, advantages during gameplay. Uh, I've heard a lot of people say this is their favorite Cania. I've heard them say it's the most underrated Kinesia. I like these sort of sort of abstract area control games, but it's a card hand management thing. I mean, Kitia is one of my favorite designers ever, and this seems like to be the style of game that I would like, and so I'm dying to play this one. This is Rhinelander.
Number five.
The next one is Duel of Mock. Now, this is from Stonemer Games, and this is a standalone game that combines mechanisms from Scythe and Expeditions, which was this, you know, sort of spiritual successor to Scythe. Now, and it it kind of distills those downs and brings them together into a 45minute head-to-head clash, two-player game. One player uses the size scythe rules and components including a new faction and player mat and the other player uses the expedition rules and components and including a new mech character and companion. Now when I say components, you only have to buy this game. You don't have to have scythe or expeditions. Everything is in the box. You you just open up. You can play it. You don't need to have any extra things. Now, as long as you know as long as you know one of those games and your opponent knows the other, you could play D of Mock pretty much right away and you don't need anything other than this to play. If you don't know either or or one of them, you it's no problem. You just learn that side. Everything is in the box that you learn to play. Uh the duel takes place in a tight space on a new double-sided map where you race to four stars on a new double-sided triumph track and the devious me keeps the game, you know, close by giving small boosts to their opponent every time you place a star. Now another thing is all existing scythe factions, player mats, encounter cards, factory cards are compatible with this as are all existing ex uh expeditions mech characters, companions, discovery cards, items, meteorites, you know, half the quests. Likewise, the components in the duel of Mock are compatible with side and expeditions.
Um, you know, for side, there's three new factory cards, six new encounter cards, a completely new set of, you know, 60 combat cards. For expedition, there's 30 new discovery cards, items, quests, and meteorites. This is just very audacious. This is amazing that like there's a dueling game that is a standalone game, but it can expand two other games or two other games can expand into it. It just it sounds amazing. Inside is is hugely it was in my top 20 of all time. Well, just in my top 100. So, I'm really interested in this one. That is Duel of Mock Stone Meer Games.
Number four. Four. This next one is a little bit of a cheat because typically I have not played any of the games that are on this list. This one I played about a year ago, an early prototype um and I loved it and I've heard and I know that they have done a lot more development work to it from now since since then. And this is called Dino Racer. This is coming from um Underdog Games. Uh, this is a wild racing game of prehistoric proportions where five wacky dinos compete in a prehistoric race to finish. Now, race cards are flipped and those advance the dinos forward in one space on the track. But then players draft those cards as betting tickets and they're going to score points based on which dinos first, second, or third.
Now, the faster dinos, the ones that's more likely to win, they award fewer points. while the underdogs give you higher rewards, but they don't finish first, second, and third as often. So, you have that balance. And as the race unfolds, there's different checkpoints. When the last dino gets to a new checkpoint, it flips over and it triggers un unexpected events that can dramatically shift the standings. After three races, the player with the highest score wins. And the card no one drafts. This is what I loved about this. As you draft these betting tickets and as they're moving forward, the one that nobody takes is the dinosaur that moves up an additional space. So, it's one of those things where it's like, "Oh, I want this one, but if we leave this one, this will move up." Uh, this is just a very interesting game. I loved it. You know, there's lots of racing games out there. U, this one, you know, you got Camel Up, you got you got Down Force, you've got, you know, last year, you got, you know, uh, Magical Athlete.
There's lots of little racing games. This one, out of all of those, it it is as good as those, but this is the most streamlined and most approachable. You could pretty much play this with anyone, including non- gamers that haven't played really anything before, uh, but gamers like it, too, and that's why it's on this list. I'm dying to see and play the final version.
Number three.
This next one is Mountain Goats Legacy. This is from All Play. Now, I love Mountain Goats. It's one of my favorite little filler games. I'm not usually huge on legacy games because typically you destroy things and it's one time through and usually have to play with the same people the whole time through. It's just hard to do. This is a little different from that. I'll tell you why. But this essentially combines dice rolling and events into a longer version of mountain goats. But after the first session, more and more hazards and gameplay tweaks show up. The dice now have a goat symbol. When rolled, you'll be able to use that. Use one of the unlocked player powers. These can change with every session as well. Now, there's also a new system called courage that greatly affects your ability to mitigate luck and refine your dice rolls. Now, this game can be played as either a single session or a legacy game. As a legacy game, it is fully replayable and resettable. You will not be asked to destroy or modify components. And the first session can be also can be combined with the original Mountains game. And that's why I'm saying that I usually don't like legacy games, but this one is on there because of that.
You can reset it, you can replay it, you can play them separately. So, in theory, I guess it's not really technically I don't know what the definition of legacy game is. I think of ripping stuff up and permanently doing things. This sounds more like, hey, it's a campaign, then you can replay all the campaigns, but you can just play the first one if you want to. This sounds awesome. Mountain Goats Legacy from All Play.
Number two.
This next one is called Hell of a Deal, and this is from Smirk and Dagger Games. This is a cooperative poker game against the devil himself and all the minions of hell. Now, of course, they all cheat. Now, to compete, you'll have to cheat like hell. And the more you do, the more doomed you'll all become because you'll face off against diabolical bosses, each of whom twists the game in unique ways. It's real poker with all you trying to individually beat the house. Every boss will challenge how you approach the hand and has a bare minimum hand to beat. Should the shouldards be dealt uh that don't help you, that's what you're going to be doing. You're going to be cheating. Now, it is Texas Holdem style game and players get not two but three cards dealt to them which is the third one's you know one up your sleeve and you can earn powerful favor cards that let you cheat like making a fourcard flush but at the cost of a curse or suffering temptation. Now your chips will earn you souls which is the currency in the game which you'll need at the end of the big table to go against the devil himself or you're betting one of your five power chips.
You can gain immediate abilities like revealing one of the boss' cards or taking a face up discard into your hand, but lose the hand and your wagered chips flip over to deliver harsh penalties. Suffer too much temptation and the game ends at a loss. Manage to win against the devil himself and you just might earn your way back to the living. Now, this reminds me of a more gamey version of The Gang, which is a small little filler game from Thes and Cosmos, which is like a cooperative sort of poker style game where you're trying to rank whose hands are better without knowing them, but that was completely cooperative. This is also uh you know cooperative, but this seems like it's this is like a 90minute game. This is a full immersive experience. Smirk and Dagger always does very interesting things, different things. Uh and I like the sort of poker element, but it's also a gamer game as well. That's why it's this high on this list. Number one.
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So, they've worked together before. I gotta say, the reason why it's number one, also, uh Forbidden Island came out, I believe, in 2010, and it's the game that sort of got me back into the board gaming hobby. Used to play games all the time as a kid. I'd have games stacked up over my head, asking every single person throughout the house if they wanted to play. They said no, I'd go to the next person until some poor soul agreed to play with me. And that is why my dad nicknamed me the Game Boy. uh way this was actually before Nintendo's Game Boy came out. Uh and so I was nicknamed the Game Boy, which is why my channel is called Game Boy Geek, actually. Uh and so Forbidden Island brought me back into the hobby back in 2010ish. And I started creating videos what 13 years ago, in 2013. And Forbidden Island is the reason why I started doing this. So I have a special place in my heart for the Forbidden series. I love Forbidden Island. So in this, it's a seven episode quest. Well, you'll work together through shifting moments in time, unlocking abilities, revealing hidden components, and triggering lasting changes that reshape the game. The world evolves with you with new rules, new challenges that escalate, and each episode uh in the city. Now, your path will transform forever, and it's essentially a sevenstage campaign with each stage being replayable on its own, and with the resolution of of a stage introducing new elements as you move on to the next. Now, that's the main reason why I'm even more interested in this because now I've seen some pictures online of things where like, yeah, you open doors and certain things happen.
I'm not exactly sure how you're going to replay things. Like, do you just replay them with the things that are already unlocked or do you play them without them locked? I'm guessing you just you could play them with the ones if unlocked or just without them like like they never happened. I'm not sure. But the fact that you could play any of the seven games just, you know, oneoff is the main reason why this is also on this list cuz I know it will get to the table more for me than a straight normal legacy game. But it does also have those elements of unlocking new things and your ch your decision tier will affect the ne, you know, the next the next one. This just sounds amazing and again for the reasons I mentioned at the beginning is why it's my number one. [snorts] Well, I hope you enjoyed this top 10 most anticipated games list. Uh, hopefully it's helped you learn about things that you didn't know. If you did hear about them, hopefully it's let you learn more. Uh, I hope you guys have a great Gen Con. This has been the Game Boy Geek, breaking down barriers, growing relationships through board games, and helping you on the next one you love.