One of my favorite board game designers is a guy named Stefan Feld. Oddly, none of his games are in my current Top 10, but I really like almost everything he's done. His games have unique mechanisms and interesting themes, so it was really great to hear he's releasing two games before the end of the year. The first one is his latest partnership with the publisher Alea, and it's called Bora Bora. It looks to be another game where you manipulate dice in an interesting way—just as you do in his designs Macao and The Castles of Burgundy.

The second game is a card-driven game set in Venice called Rialto.

What's interesting about Feld games is that lately it's been difficult to get his newer stuff here in the States, because American publishers are passing on his games. For a while, anyway. The Castles of Burgundy looked like it was only going to be available as an import, but enough fans—like me!—raised a stink that it was eventually brought over and an English version produced. The same thing happened with his game Trajan—which is one of the best games I've played in the last six months. It was recently announced that we'll be getting an English version—but this is after many months of being told it wouldn't happen.

So hopefully we won't have to go through that waiting process with these two games. Publishers need to see that he has a rabid fan base and just plan to bring his games over here.

If you get a chance to play any of his games, I highly recommend it! And expect some in-depth reviews of his games from us in the near future.

Thanks for reading!