Do board games based on licensed IPs allow us to boldly play where no one has played before — or are we stuck in a Groundhog Day scenario of endlessly re-playing the same events we’ve seen before? Why am I thinking about this? No reason…but here’s a round-up of IP-based tabletop games that have crossed my path over the past few months:

• In April 2024, WizKids will release Star Trek: Into The Unknown, a 2-6 player game from Max Brooke and Michael Gernes that “features the most detailed Star Trek ship models in tabletop gaming, all designed to scale”. The game draws inspiration from six decades of Star Trek material and is pitched as follows:

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Traverse headlong into the unknown where you’ll negotiate and fight alongside iconic characters using your quick wit and tactical maneuvering to overcome complications and challenges. True to Star Trek, research and diplomatic actions and not just combat have lasting impacts on the game, causing missions to evolve in surprising ways.

Choose your officer, deploy your crew, explore the galaxy, navigate anomalies, position your ships to strike, or negotiate terms with the enemy. Players will instantly immerse themselves as the egalitarian Starfleet or as the oppressive Vorta and Jem’Hadar as they decide how to handle tense mission objectives and unexpected complications.

Mock-up of a Defiant-class escort

Embark on a journey to remember through an extensive campaign narrative. Your decisions matter, and they affect the outcomes of your unique story. With upcoming expansion featuring new missions and new ships to command, Star Trek: Into the Unknown is dedicated to delivering an expansive universe to your doorstep.

The black area on the game cover at upper right indicates that stuff will be visible in the final packaging, but said stuff is not yet finalized or approved by the licensor.

• Following the delivery of Mythic Battles: Ragnarök to backers, Monolith Board Games plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign for Conan: Red Nails, a campaign set in “the wilds south of Stygia – a wilderness teeming with forgotten beasts and lost cities”.

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Monolith also plans to offer the King Pledge once again should you desire to obtain a muscular stack of all-things Conan.

• In February 2024, Steve Jackson Games will Kickstart Munchkin Shadowrun, with an expected release in July 2024.

• Mantic Games has announced a renewed partnership with Skybound Tabletop that will lead to new expansions for The Walking Dead: All Out War, starting with one based on the Commonwealth in 2024.

• Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy: The Groot Escape from Spin Master is a charades-style party game for 3-7 players in which you’re trying to get your fellow players to grab the right item from a display, and in addition to giving physical clues, you can say “I” and “am” and “Groot”.

• In 2024, Brotherwise Games will release Mistborn Deckbuilding Game from John D. Clair, with players controlling characters from the Brandon Sanderson book series and engaging in “Allomantic” battles by burning metals to unlock powers.

This will be followed in 2025 by another Sanderson-based game: Shards of Creation.

• Oink Games has continued to successfully license Jean-Claude Pellin‘s Nine Tiles, a game I covered in 2015 from the Tokyo Game Market that has sold more than 200,000 copies to date. Each player has a 3×3 grid of double-sided tiles, and each round you race to match a pattern on a revealed goal card.

The newest version is ナインタイル: Mickey and Friends, featuring the soon-to-be-in-the-public-domain Mickey Mouse, along with other Disney characters.

• Similarly, on December 14, 2023, Oink Games will release Mini Minion, a new licensed version of Taisei Kato‘s TomaTomato. The game contains four types of cards — Mi, Ni, On, Minion — and you lay out cards one by one in a row, with players needing to say the tongue-twisting combination quickly without error to avoid being penalized.

• In Q3 2024, CMON will crowdfund Liam Foley and Renart de Maupertuis‘ Degenesis: Clan Wars, a board game developed by German publisher SMV that’s based on its own Degenesis RPG. Here’s an overview of this 2-5 player game:

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Degenesis: Clan Wars is an asymmetric, semi-cooperative, tactical-scale skirmish wargame in which one player embodies the Hostile, who controls the swarms of Cockroaches and Clanners ready to tear the Protectorate and its citizens to shreds, while everyone else takes on the role of individual Cult members: powerful, iconic figures ready to tip the balance of the Clan Wars in their favor.

Throughout the expansive campaign contained within the box, players have to manage their roster of characters, make life-and-death decisions in every moment, struggle to keep their team together in the face of overwhelming opposition, battle against the Hostile’s own objectives and goals, and, hopefully, survive…if they’re lucky.

SMV posted background on the game, along with images and mini pics, in this April 2023 newsletter.