Knavecon Daily Board-Game Brief — Saturday, 06 June 2026

Knavecon Daily Board-Game Brief — Saturday, 06 June 2026

Saturday briefing here, and it’s actually been a solid few days for news. The dust is settling after UK Games Expo and the Spiel des Jahres hype, BGG just dropped their June Hotness video, Origins is less than two weeks away, and there’s a hummingbird game absolutely destroying Kickstarter. Let’s get into it.

BGG released their Best of BGG June 2026 video yesterday, running through the current Hotness and the Golden Geek Award winners. The top 10 trending games include Cozy Stickerville at #10 (riding that Spiel des Jahres nomination), Seti still hanging around, and War of the Dragon: The Wheel of Time making a strong showing. The actual BGG Hotness sidebar right now features Rolling Deep (Bitewing Games, 2027), Lands of Evershade, Terraria: The Board Game, Compania, and Feya’s Swamp. Terraria in particular is generating mixed-but-interesting chatter — Tom Vasel reviewed it last month and the consensus seems to be it’s great for fans of the video game but a real time commitment. There’s a BGG thread titled “We Could Not Finish Terraria: The Board Game” which tells you everything you need to know.

Hover — A Surprisingly Brutal Hummingbird Game is the Kickstarter story of the moment. It asked for $10,000, it’s sitting at over $301,000 with nearly 3,900 backers and still has 12 days to go. Kicktraq page here. The pitch is nature-based asymmetric strategy — hand-drawn art, real hummingbird behaviours, cutthroat gameplay. It’s a debut design from Victor Shiu and the kind of thing that blows up when the theme and the art click perfectly. Worth a look if you like your games pretty but mean.

Meanwhile, the Concordia Special Edition from Awaken Realms is now live on Gamefound. This one had the AI art controversy earlier in the year — BGG users review-bombed it and Awaken Realms eventually committed to no AI art in the final product, per BoardGameWire. Concordia is an all-time great game so this will attract attention regardless, but there’ll be plenty of people who already own a perfectly good copy and don’t need a premium reimagining. Make your own call on that one.

The Spiel des Jahres 2026 nominees are now fully out there and getting debated. For the main award it’s Cozy Stickerville (Corey Konieczka / Unexpected Games), JinxO (Martin Ang), and Morty Sorty Magic Shop. The Kennerspiel des Jahres nominees are the ones our crowd should care about: Boss Fighters QR (app-supported co-op monster-bashing from Pegasus), Moon Colony Bloodbath (Donald X. Vaccarino, via Rio Grande/Alea — yes that name is real), and Rebirth (Reiner Knizia / Mighty Boards). Knizia winning would continue an absurd late-career run. Moon Colony Bloodbath is a Vaccarino design so expect clever mechanisms with a slightly unhinged theme. Winners announced July 12. Full nominees at ICv2.

A few things worth watching: Origins Game Fair kicks off June 17 in Columbus and tends to be where publishers preview their Gen Con releases, so expect a wave of announcements in the next two weeks. The Dice Tower’s Crowdsurfing episode from June 3 highlighted Casus Belli on Gamefound as one to follow. And Shut Up & Sit Down currently have their Regicide Legacy review front and centre on their site — they’re calling it “absolutely delicious,” which tracks with what everyone else is saying about it too. If your group liked the original Regicide, the Legacy version seems to be the real deal.

For the Knavecon community specifically: with Origins in less than two weeks, now’s the time to start watching for new game announcements that’ll filter through to retail and Irish game shops by autumn. If anyone’s thinking about what to bring to the next Knavecon, the Kennerspiel nominees are always a good bet for games that’ll spark proper table conversation — especially Moon Colony Bloodbath, which has a name that’ll sell itself before you even open the box.

The social media thought: “The Kennerspiel des Jahres shortlist has a game called Moon Colony Bloodbath and another by Reiner Knizia. 2026 board gaming is in a wild place and I’m here for it.”