GAMA Expo 2025: For All Mankind, Verdant Arizona, Gems of Iridescia, Vine, and Gnomes & Wizards | BoardGameGeek News

by W. Eric Martin

▪️ At GAMA Expo 2025, Douglas Beyers described For All Mankind, which he co-designed Julia Drachman and they released in early 2025 through their Bad Cat Media brand, as “CATAN in space with nukes”. The slightly longer description on the BGG page reinforces that blurb:

For All Mankind is a fast-paced game of strategic exploration, clever trades, and diplomatic shenanigans. Build your empire across the ever-changing solar system. (Careful, the planets move!) Gather, trade, and invest your resources — and do whatever it takes to stay ahead of the competition.

Expand: Grow your empire with colonies (more loot!), research (more power!), and espionage (more nukes!).

Scheme: All is fair in interplanetary domination, but you would never double-cross a friend…right?

Profit: Be the first to reach 10 points, and see your name etched in the stars forever!

▪️ Galen McCown debuted in 2024 with Super Snipers, the first release from Galen’s Games, and in late 2024 he crowdfunded a “mint tin series” of four games due out in Q3 2025. Those games are:

• Heritage Farms — a 1-2 player game from McCown based on the puzzle of how a farmer gets his fox, chicken, and corn across a river without one of those things eating another. Now two farmers face off to get two sets of items across the river first, with market bonuses allowing one-time actions that help you or confound your opponent, ideally leading to them losing three of their goods and the game.

• Verdant Arizona – a Robin David design for 1-2 players in which you collect cacti and arrange them in a personal garden, with your pick for the round determining what your opponent can grab.

• Dice Clash – a game from McGown, Jonathan Carnehl, and Ryan Sromek with 1-2 players controlling a warrior with a special power and a 3×3 battle grid that you’ll assign dice to in order to attack, parry, re-roll, and use your warrior’s unique power.

• Mint-Tin Monster Mash-Up – a 1-2 player game from Chris Backe in which you are a mad scientist who mixes the front and back half of various monsters to create that creature’s battle stats as well as a unique “if-then” statement from the front “if” and the back “then”, e.g., “If you roll <5, then +1 damage" or "If your first roll has a 1 or 2, then flip one of your dice". You then use dice and a rock-paper-scissors-ish system to attack your opponent, trying to be the first to wipe out three monsters.

▪️ Roberto Panetta of Rock, Stone & Dice Games showed off the final look of Gems of Iridescia, which he crowdfunded in Q4 2024 and expects to release in Q3 2025.

▪️ Gnomes & Wizards from Bobby Powell of CavernWire Games went through a nearly identical production cycle, but advanced one year, crowdfunding in Q4 2023 and hitting the market in Q3 2024.

▪️ The next title from Powell and CavernWire Games will be Vine, a 1-5 player tile-placement game that will be crowdfunded in 2025 and that plays as follows:

Grow your beanstalk from the ground up to absorb more light, propagate, and produce green beans ready for harvest. The light engine-building card game Vine leverages an action-point system used by players to compete to develop the highest-yielding garden of pole beans. Cut back your plants to grow more veggies throughout the season, develop additional root systems to absorb more sunlight, and let your vines climb high to produce the most points by the end of the game.

▪️ To show a bit more of the Louisville, Kentucky environment, here’s a piece of public art that I dubbed “Detached Fly Wings”:

Mmmm, I’m sure you’re craving something to eat now…