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

Canadian Games at Essen

The giant boardgame trade show, Internationale Spieltage (aka Essen Spiele), is currently underway in Germany and Canadian games are there in force. We've been keeping an eye out for how various Canadian games are faring in BoardGameGeek's GeekBuzz metrics, which attempt to gauge the popularity of the various games present at the fair.

Most popular right now among the games we're tracking are Belfort (averaging 4.8 stars out of 5), Jab: Real-Time Boxing (4.6 stars), D-Day Dice (4.2 stars), Québec (4.1 stars), Undermining (4.1 stars), Quarriors! (3.9 stars), Ticket to Ride: Team Asia & Legendary Asia (3.6 stars), Alba Longa (3.3 stars), Pamplona: Viva San Fermin! (3.3 stars), and 1812: The Invasion of Canada (3.3 stars). That last one, by Ontario-based designers Beau Beckett and Jeph Stahl, is new to us so we're glad to now have it on our radar.

BoardGameGeek is also doing a great job of posting video interviews and rules explanations with the designers and publishers. Check out some of the Canadian Content below:

The Games of Summer

Another crosspost from the latest "Canadian Made, Canadian Played" newsletter. In it, we cover the acquisition of Z-Man Games, provide overviews of some new and upcoming Canadian-designed games, and keep you informed of some upcoming Great Canadian Board Game Blitz tournaments in your area.... Enjoy!