Czech Games trials Hachette for UK distribution through exclusive Wispwood deal, after a decade of Asmodee as sole UK distributor

Codenames and SETI publisher Czech Games Edition has signed its first-ever distribution agreement with Hachette, as the French publishing giant continues to expand out its European board game distribution operation in the face of competition from industry heavyweight Asmodee.

CGE has agreed an exclusive deal with Hachette for the UK distribution of its new title Wispwood, an abstract, family-weight polyomino tile-laying game from first-time designer Reed Ambrose.

The trial comes after a decade of Asmodee being the sole distribution partner for CGE’s titles in the UK, with a Czech Games spokesperson telling BoardGameWire: “We’ll see how the cooperation on Wispwood goes and decide on the next steps from there”.

CGE’s decision to trial Hachette BoardGames UK in distributing the title comes at a hugely important time of year, with Christmas gift buying now taking place in earnest – a potentially tricky moment to highlight and market a new release from an unknown designer.

Hachette’s head of marketing, Corina Cretu, told BoardGameWire, “We believe in Wispwood. It is a fantastic game, both mechanically and visually.

“Flavien, our CEO, fell in love with it at [Spiel] Essen and wanted it as soon as possible on the market. We wanted to make sure it would be available in the UK for Christmas, because we truly believe it will be an exceptional gift for people to play in the festive period!

“Of course there is huge competition in December, and that exceeds the gaming market. We are prepared to support Wispwood into 2026, and it will be one of our London Toy Fair highlights.”

Asked whether any further distribution tie-ups with CGE were in the works, she added, “We are, of course, always looking at adding more amazing games to our catalogue, and CGE have many of those, but for now we are only working on Wispwood.”

Hachette began a heavy push into board games in 2019 by picking up French tabletop publisher and distributor Gigamic, French distributor Blackrock Games, and by founding in-house publishers Studio H and Funnyfox.

It has since gone on to buy publishers including Le Scorpion Masqué, Sorry We Are French, Catch Up Games, La Boîte de jeu and Hiboutatillus, Canadian board game distributor Randolph, and now runs Hachette branded board game operations in the US, UK and the Benelux region.

Other distribution deals signed by Hachette Boardgames in the last couple of years have included taking over US distribution rights for Super Meeple from Asmodee USA, scoring a deal to distribute MicroMacro publisher Edition Spielwiese‘s games in the US and UK, and picking up the UK rights for distributing Trefl games.

Asmodee remains the world’s pre-eminent hobby board game distributor, having expanded heavily through M&A in the last decade to operate more than 20 local distribution businesses.

About two thirds of Asmodee’s net sales – which reached €1.36bn during the last financial year – come from the company distributing games from other publishers, while almost 70% of Asmodee’s 2,200-plus workforce are focused on distribution.

BoardGameWire reported earlier this week that one of Asmodee’s top executives, Steve Buckmaster, would be stepping down from his role driving the board game giant’s global distribution operation after almost 24 years with the company and its predecessor business in the UK.