Leacock’s Lab: April Update
Upcoming releases, appearances, and more for 2025
Hey all. I’ve been heads down over the last couple of months, working on some future (unannounced) projects. While I’m busy with all of those goodies, here’s a quick April update with a preview of what to expect in 2025.
In this update…
Upcoming Releases
Upcoming Appearances
Recent Awards
Daybreak in Real Life
Upcoming Releases for 2025
The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship
The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship™ is a cooperative game for 1-5 players where each player controls 2 characters, lending their unique abilities to protect Frodo, battle enemies in pivotal locations, and evade the menacing Nazgûl and Sauron’s searching Eye.
Three years in the making, this new Pandemic System game will premiere at UK Games Expo, May 30–June 1st and I’ll be on hand to sign copies! The game will be available at your fine local game store in June or you can preorder it on the Z-man website.
I’m working on the design diary now. If there’s something you’d like me to cover, leave a comment for this update and I’ll try to include it.
The introductory scenario of the game will also be available to try out on BoardGameArena soon. We’re expecting this to launch in late April.
Animal Rescue Team
Calling all animal rescuers! When disaster strikes, animals will need your help to escape from floods, fires, and earthquakes in this new cooperative game that I designed with Lisa Towell, a real life animal rescuer. If you like cooperative games, logistical puzzles, and animals (and being able to drive animals around in toylike vehicles!) then you’ve got to check this one out.
This is the first title in the Shut Up & Sit Down Presents line. They’re aiming to spotlight the very best modern board games. And an update: Play to Z will not be crowdfunding this one; they’ll be bringing it directly to retail. Expect to find it at your friendly local game store this fall.
Flickering Stars
Transform your tabletop into a galaxy at your fingertips in Flickering Stars! This is a new punchy, toyetic, and thinky dexterity game that I designed with Josh Cappel.
We still don’t have a set street date for this one, but I’m expecting it to release later this year. Friendly Skeleton has done a stellar job on the product design and I’m looking forward to sharing more as soon as I can.
2025 Appearances
My conference schedule will be a bit lighter than usual this year. I’m currently planning on attending:
The Gathering of Friends, Niagara Falls, New York, April 21–27
UK Games Expo, Birmingham, United Kingdom, May 30–June 1. I’ll be signing games Saturday, May 31 from 10am–11:30am and will be on the show floor, playing The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship each day. Feel free to drop by, check it out, and say hello.
Essen Spiel, Essen, Germany, October 23–26
Likely: DAU, Barcelona, Spain, dates TBA
Recent Awards
Since the my last update, some pretty amazing awards have rolled in:
Pandemic was listed in The BoardGameGeek Hall of Fame. It honors 25 games that have made meaningful contributions to the board game hobby in the areas of innovation, artistry, and impact.
Daybreak received the Lizzie Magie Award for 2025. The award seeks to highlight the cultural contributions of board games to society.
Daybreak was also nominated for the As d'Or-Jeu de l'Année (Ace of Gold) for expert game of the year, 2025 at Cannes. It rewards the best board games of the French market published in the last 15 months.
Daybreak in Real Life
The past three months have been a lot. If you want to reflect some of this in your kit, try adding this crisis card to your set. It loosely models what’s going on in the United States as it pulls out of international agreements and institutions and defunds government funding for climate science and other social programs.
On this same topic, I’d like to encourage everyone who can to actively protest the policies that are halting, deleting, and silencing research into climate change and the federal spending cuts gutting critical programs in climate, healthcare, education, and the sciences. It’s reckless, cruel, and illegal.
If you’re able to, stand up and be heard—while you still can.
There’s a big Day of Action on April 5th and Donna and I will also be hosting a boardgaming event to raise funds for Sister District’s State Bridges Program that day. If you’re in the SF Bay Area and would like to find out more, simply reply to this message.
For the designer diary, I'd love to understand more about the balance between the Pandemic system and the theme. What were the toughest decisions made to either tie the two together or lean towards one over the other?
Hi Matt! I tried DIYing a lord of the rings themed version of Pandemic a number of years ago for fun before I got distracted by other projects so super excited to see this in the works and really curious about your design process!
I’d love to hear the story of how you settled on your mechanic for the ringbearer and associated victory conditions - particularly how to avoid the ringbearer’s movement/actions being too detached from the rest of the game, and how you balanced the mechanics that would enable you to control the timing of the rush to Mt Doom so it doesn’t happen too early in the game but doesn’t always result in a loss either.
I’m hazarding a guess that the board and the orcs etc may take some inspiration from Fall of Rome so also super interested in your process for making Tolkien’s middle earth work well for that - did you start with a structure that worked well mechanically and then map middle earth on to that, or vice versa?