Last week, Dungeon Crawler Carl stormed the Hotness at #1 like a reality TV contestant kicking down a dungeon door. This week? Carl’s been shoved to #12 and the throne belongs to Lairs - the competitive dungeon-builder that’s been quietly climbing for two weeks and has finally claimed the crown. Meanwhile, Eternal Decks has made one of the most dramatic jumps we’ve tracked, rocketing from #14 to #2 in a single week. ...
The dungeon has opened and the hobby is sprinting down the stairs. Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable has claimed the #1 spot on the BGG Hotness, riding the wave of one of the most beloved LitRPG franchises in modern fiction straight into the board game space. Last week’s entire top 3 - Regicide Legacy, Nippon: Zaibatsu, Yotei - have all been pushed down or out entirely. The crown changes hands fast on this list, and this week it belongs to Carl and Princess Donut. ...
There has been a coup. Regicide Legacy has torn through the Hotness like a blade through a royal court, seizing the #1 spot out of nowhere and dragging its predecessor Regicide along for the ride at #9. Two slots for the same franchise in the top 10 is a statement - and a rare one. This week’s list is the most volatile we’ve seen in a month. Eight new entries. Brass: Pittsburgh drops from #1 to #4. Both Lord of the Rings titles that dominated for weeks have either dropped or vanished entirely. The lesson? The Hotness doesn’t care about your campaign stretch goals from last week. It only cares about what landed today. ...
This week’s Hotness is doing two very hobby things at once. First, it is completely losing its mind over established brands. Second, it is still making room for sharp new designs that can cut through the noise if they show even a whiff of momentum. The result is a list split between giant familiar names and fresh arrivals trying to prove they belong. That tension is the story of the week’s movement: a new Brass: Pittsburgh campaign powers to the top, Middle-earth refuses to leave the room, and a cluster of new entries suggests people are still hungry for discovery, provided the pitch is immediate and the table presence is obvious. ...
BGG Hotness Review: Week of March 30, 2026 This Week’s Top 20 # Game Trend 1 The Lord of the Rings: The King’s Gambit 🆕 NEW 2 Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit 🆕 NEW 3 Brass: Pittsburgh 🔺 +10 4 The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship 🔺 +4 5 Brass: Birmingham 🔺 +6 6 The Old King’s Crown 🔺 +1 7 Nippon: Zaibatsu 🔻 -1 8 Grimcoven 🔺 +11 9 Slay the Spire: The Board Game 🆕 NEW 10 SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ➡️ = 11 Arcs 🔺 +4 12 Ark Nova ➡️ = 13 Heat: Pedal to the Metal 🔺 +1 14 Concordia: Special Edition 🔻 -12 15 Phantom Epoch 🔻 -14 16 Voidfall 🔻 -11 17 Magical Athlete 🆕 NEW 18 Harmonies 🆕 NEW 19 Arkham Horror: The Card Game 🔻 -10 20 Spirit Island 🆕 NEW Dropped off: One Piece Dawn Of Liberation, Roborover 2077 Last Hope, Dune Imperium Uprising, All In Predictions, Speakeasy ...
BGG Hotness Review, Week of March 23, 2026 This week’s Hotness is saying something pretty loud. The hobby wants spectacle, yes. But it also wants familiarity. It wants the shiny new sci-fi campaign monster and the comfy old euro in fancy clothes. It wants cyberpunk robots, Roman merchants, cosmic dread, train-era economics, and apparently at least one cozy village-builder trying to elbow its way into the conversation. That mix matters. ...
The BGG Hotness list is one of the best real-time signals for what the hobby is collectively obsessing over. This week, the signal is loud and clear: interaction is back. The Top 5 #1: Concordia Special Edition is holding firm for a second consecutive week. That’s not a fluke. Concordia has always been the euro that euro-sceptics love, precisely because your card plays directly mess with what’s available to opponents. The Special Edition adds enough production value to justify a re-buy for existing fans, and it’s pulling in new players who skipped the understated original box. A 12-year-old design outperforming everything new on the market. Let that sink in. ...
