SMOOSH JUICE
Digging into the Business of Board Games, and Wild Vikings Return from the Past | BoardGameGeek News
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▪️ As a follow-up of sorts to two earlier posts about U.S. tariffs — one featuring Arcane Wonders president Robert Geistlinger, and another featuring publisher thoughts from GAMA Expo 2025 — I suggest reading “The Business of Board Games: Cashflow, Tariffs, and Teapots“, a blogpost from Nathan McNair from Pandasaurus Games. Here are a few excerpts:
Most of the time when I start my workday it begins in 3 pieces of software – my inventory software, my cashflow software, and our accounting software. These are the basic lifeblood of most companies that sell physical goods: what do I own, how is it selling, when will I need more, can I afford to print more, when will I make more money, what do I owe, and what am I owed. It all makes for a fairly convoluted math problem where you carefully layer future revenue over future expenses so that you can get a 10,000-yard picture of what your company’s finances will look like over the next few years…
[A] 20% tariff is manageable… What isn’t manageable is the absolute chaotic nature of how these things are being implemented. Tariffs on, tariffs off, extra tariffs, no extra tariffs. 15% increase on April 2nd. Just kidding, only 15% on some things but we aren’t saying what those things are…
I ordered games in September of 2024, and it cost me 10,000 USD that we had no way of knowing would happen.The games I am ordering today could cost anything from zero dollars in extra tariffs to ???, and that is what I can’t manage.
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▪️ In February 2025, I covered Atlas Games‘ Replay Workshop, which consists of a sprue-recycling program that transforms plastic sprues and unpainted miniatures into recycled game accessories.
In October 2024, Atlas Games was awarded a $99,359 grant from Minnesota Pollution Control Agency “to fund equipment and staff to increase Replay Workshop’s capacity to collect, process, and market color-sorted post-consumer recycled HDPE and polypropylene in smaller quantities for its business and other businesses that need smaller amounts than what’s available on the recycling market”.
That equipment arrived in late March 2025, including a handheld near-infrared scanning device for identifying plastic types and an Extruder XL. Says Atlas Games co-owner John Nephew, “It can process a whopping 65lbs of plastic per hour. That will go a long way toward helping Replay Workshop meet its grant goal of processing 50 tons of recycled plastic in the next year.”
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▪️ Wild Vikings, a 2008 title from Wolfgang Dirscherl and HABA has won the jury’s 2024 U-more Award, a.k.a., the Japan Boardgame Prize, with this design being newly released in a Japanese edition by retailer/publisher Sugorokuya in December 2023.
The other nominees for the U-more were Mister Diamond, a 1993 title from Gunter Baars out in a JELLY JELLY GAMES; 六華 (Rikka), from 橋本淳志 (Hashimoto Atsushi) and Arclight Games; and aiue battle, from Kazunari Yonemitsu and Gentosha Education.
In the “voter selection” portion of the 2024 Japan Boardgame Prize, aiue battle came out on top, with Johan Benvenuto‘s Harmonies placing second and Johannes Goupy and Corentin Lebrat‘s Faraway placing third. 六華 (Rikka) and Mister Diamond also placed in the top ten.
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▪️ Alliance Game Distributors has been purchased by the (unrelated) Alliance Entertainment Holdings, with Mike Didymus-True covering background on the deal and Alliance’s history on BoardGameWire.
▪️ I’ll close with a non-game-related something else uncovered from my clearing out social media accounts: Artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates unusual audio installations, such as this presentation of ceramic bowls floating in fountains:
And this installation that features finches and electric guitars: