by W. Eric Martin

▪️ On BoardGameWire, Arcane Wonders president Robert Geistlinger explains how a 10% tariff imposed on goods shipped to the United States from China will affect the board game industry. An excerpt:

In short, the publisher has to push the cost of that tariff onto the consolidator, distributor, retailer, or direct buyer so that they can (at a minimum) maintain the razor-thin margins already in place, which will result in (most likely) a US$5-10 increase on every game sold in the United States.

Some distributors and other buyers will not want to pay that cost. In mid-February 2025, Joris Wiersinga of Splotter Spellen announced that GTS Distribution had cancelled "their (large) order" from an upcoming reprinting of Indonesia due to "the unclear business situation regarding tariffs". GTS had taken pre-orders from retailers in the U.S. and Canada, and those shops in turn had taken pre-orders from customers — and all of them had the rug yanked out from underneath them following GTS' cancellation.

And yet what was the alternative? Splotter Spellen wasn't going to eat the tariff, as Wiersinga explains:

Thus, GTS had to either eat the tariff itself — which wouldn't be possible given the margins that distributors work with, buying from publishers (as Geistlinger notes) at 35-40% MSRP and selling to retailers in the ballpark of 50% MSRP — or pass it on to their customers, who would in turn likely pass it on to theirs...and who knows how many customers of either type would have cancelled their orders, with GTS possibly selling much less of its order than it had anticipated.

Wiersinga notes that some U.S. and Canadian retailers have since reached out to order from Splotter Spellen on their own and individuals can order directly from Splotter Spellen should they choose not to dance with a middleman.

▪️ In People, Ashlyn Robinette relays the story of a bride, Michal Lepley, who surprised her husband Ben with an escape-room style challenge during the ceremony:

The pics in the article show a few Unmatched characters that you might recognize. (HT: fanaka66)

▪️ While dismantling my social media house — here's advice should you wish to do the same — I ran across older stories that I might not have shared previously...and even if I have, perhaps they will be new to you:

• In 2015, Daniel Solis writes about "One Thing to Avoid in Game Design", spinning off from a comment by Paul Peterson about his 1998 card game Guillotine.

• In Existential Comics, Epictetus, Nietzsche, Buddha, and Schopenhauer play Sorry!

• In August 2015, mathematicians Casey Mann, Jennifer McLoud, and David Von Derau discovered a new form of pentagon that can tile a plane — only the fifteenth such pentagon that can do so. Game designers take note: Squares are out, and pentagons are in!


• In January 2015, Nat Levan detailed "5 game design debates worth having in 2015", and those debates are no less relevant today...at least for designers. Writes Levan, "Game design requires active consideration on all levels of the concept at the same time, and I think revisiting those debates is an excellent way to practice the skill."

• One of the few things I miss about running a livestream booth at game conventions is the nonsense that we'd sometimes get involved with between guests or after hours, such as attempts at ASMR in the midst of a huge crowd. Remember when ASMR was all the rage? I sure do, and if you want to put a date on its peak, we could go with June 2018 when Mathilde Spriet made this video during her time at Gigamic:

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• In the same spirit as my January 2025 "most anticipated games" video, I present this thought from the end of 2015:


In case you're curious, that favorite game was The Game, which has since been supplanted by The Game: Extreme, as explained here.

• I showed Aldie this video in 2018, writing "So many ideas for the next BGG.CON in November!"

I'm still waiting...

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• My suggestions from 2017: