Belfort sold out, D-Day Dice breaks records, and more...

According to the designers, Belfort is officially sold out from the publisher's warehouse, with the last copies going to Canadian distributor, Lion Rampant Imports. Meanwhile, feedback on the game has been extremely positive. Fans rated it the best game of BGG.con this past week and BGG power reviewers Ender Wiggins and Jeff Temple have given it a very positive and lavishly illustrated review (which is only to be outdone by a recent "Condo of Mystery" webcomic about the game being released page by page.

Here are some quick comments about Belfort from the BGG site:

• "Beautiful board and components. Very good design on board. " - Paul Smith
• "Solid combination of worker placement and area control mechanics." - Marc Buchanan
• "One of the two best 2-player meaty, thematic, worker placement games that is fun and the only one that also has area control." - Jimmy Okolica 
• "A simple, beautiful worker placement. There is a lot of replay in this little box and a ton of sexy components." - Wesley Kinslow
• "Fun game. Fun art. Puts together a host of familiar euro mechanics, but in such a way that is stronger than the sum of its parts. Definitely recommended. " - David Siskin
• "Great game. A much deeper game hides behind a pretty face. Worker placement, area majority, and resource management at it's finest." - Gustav Åkerfelt 
• "This game is as good as it looks! The worker placement is stone age easy and the area control leads to some cut throat interactive gaming." - Zack Stackurski
• "A nice mix of worker placement and resource management." - Andrew Mason
• "Game of the Year 2011?" - Joel Eddy
• "This is simple game that at the front seems like a family game, but it has quite a lot of strategy and agonizing decisions. Excellent components." - Paul Nomikos
• "Such a fun game. A great blend of worker placement and area majority. It all seems to fit together well to create a fun yet challenging experience." - Mike Jones
• "Wow! Worker placement, Area Management, and Variable Phase Order in a wonderful integration without being dry dry dry. Fun! Fresh! Addicting!" - Peter Elsenheimer 
• "A great worker acquisition + worker placement + area majority game, and one of very few games I've playtested that left me aching to play again." - Matt Musselman

In other Canadian Gaming news, D-Day Dice just made history and broke through the record for highest-funded game on Kickstarter.com. To celebrate, all of their Kickstarter supporters will receive a snazzy messenger bag with room for the base game and its expansion. The game still has 15 days left before funding closes and I fully expect them to break through the magical $100k mark. Get involved while you still can, be a part of gaming history, and get yourself a great game and some sweet boardgaming swag while you're at it!

Speaking of Kickstarter, another Canadian boardgame just launched on the site. Published and designed by some talented newcomers out of Ontario, Frankendie is a light dice-rolling party game full of mad scientists, brains, and stitched-together body parts. The illustrations are great, the team has a lot of spirit, and I look forward to hearing them cry out "It's Aliiiiive!" once they're successfully funded. In the meantime, I've added publisher NutForge to our Gaming Canadian page and will continue to track them in the years to come.

Speaking of the Gaming Canadian page, I continue to add new links as I come across them. Joining NutForge in the Canadian Publisher section are some others, old and new, such as Bereb Enterprises (Ontario), GameBrotherZ (Quebec), MJ Games (Quebec), Stein-Thompson Games (British Columbia), Ukloo (Ontario), and Xtra Innings (Ontario). A big thanks to everyone who sent in links - keep 'em coming. The 2012 Canadian Heritage Collection Master Catalogue will be bigger and better than ever.

Last but not least, I continue to blog over at the Global Toy News site. My latest post, Re-Imagining Retail discusses the growing role that board games are playing in the book industry and explores how board games could also become a staple in a wide range of other unexpected retail environments. You might expect that this would be against the interests of a dedicated game retailer but I actually disagree. The gift shop at a zoo is going to carry a narrow band of animal-related boardgames and, by and large, they'd be introducing those games to a brand new audience. Once ushered into the hobby, many members of that new audience will want to dive deeper. That's where you can be helpful. My advice: actively seek to build relationships with other specialty retailers in your community. Become their advisors and their suppliers. Leave them with games to sell on commission. At the end of the day, work with them to get more of their audience interested in games and have them direct more of their traffic your way. By growing the audience, everyone wins.