Castles of Burgundy, Voidfall crowdfunding successes see owner numbers surge in September

Successful crowdfunding deliveries dominated the top of the new owner charts on BoardGameGeek in September with the arrival of The Castles of Burgundy: Special Edition and Voidfall to people’s doors.

CoB: Special Edition is a pimped out version of Stefan Feld’s 2011 classic eurogame, boasting a graphical redesign and sculpted plastic pieces. Awaken Realms and Ravensburger joined forces for the Gamefound campaign to raise almost €3m from over 22,800 backers.

It was added as an ‘owned’ game by more than 3,000 BGG users in September, easily topping the chart according to data collated by user Igor Larchenko.

Voidfall, an attempt by designers Nigel Buckle and Dávid Turczi to create a eurogame-style 4X board game to rival Eclipse, added just over 1,600 users amid its own Kickstarter fulfilment, while award nominations magnet Heat: Pedal to the Metal added just shy of 1,500 new owners.

Point City, a card-drafting, engine-building game by from the designers of 2019’s Point Salad, was also a notable addition to the Top 10, as was newspaper-centric tile-laying game Fit to Print.

The huge buzz around new Stonemaier Games offering Apiary, which promises bee worker placement in space, surged to the top of the September BGG wishlists charts with just over 1,300 additions.

Fellow worker placement game Bruxelles 1893: Belle Epoque was second in the ranking, with General Orders: World War II, a pint-sized wargame from Undaunted designers Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson, coming in third place.

Forest Shuffle and Nucleum were the only titles to keep their place in the wishlist Top 10 from August, putting on an extra 525 and 483 respectively.

Nucleum was one of the most anticipated games at this year’s Essen Spiel game fair, while Forest Shuffle potentially benefitted from its addition to BoardGame Arena at the end of August.

New Owners Top 10, September 2023