When Gen Con throws open its doors on July 30 in Indianapolis, simply walking into the Exhibit Hall won’t guarantee you a copy of anything. Many of these titles vanish within hours — months ahead of a broad retail release — because attendees line up for first dibs.
Plan your path before you go, in other words. Below is where to track down 10 of the most sought-after games of the year, among them Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings crossovers that fans have had circled for months. Staying home? Preorder links follow each entry.
The vacation game that will wreck your travel budget
From Rodrigo Rego and Danilo Valente, the designers behind Landmarks, Abroad is a new strategy title that drops you into a four-week European trip and asks you to wring every last drop out of it. Postcards get collected, locals hand over tips, and bucket-list experiences get ticked off.
Driving all of it is a 240-card deck of destinations spanning the continent — which means enormous replay value, plus a fair number of evenings lost to daydreaming about Czech breweries and coastal fortresses in Croatia.
Find it at booth 419 or preorder at Portal Games.
Ants is the one I’d sprint to
Among the strongest board games I got to the table at Spiel Essen 2025, this one is making its North American debut at Gen Con. The job is colony management: harvesting resources, linking cards into combos that squeeze more out of every action, and breeding specialist ants to battle rival insects and claim fresh ground.
Nobody attacks anybody directly. Even so, you’ll be studying your opponents constantly, since everything comes down to sensing the precise moment to quit expanding the anthill and start banking points.
Find it at booth 611 or preorder at Capstone Games.
A cutthroat 2007 classic, back from the dead
Allplay’s revival of the long out-of-print 2007 design pulled in over $1 million on Kickstarter, and it has finally arrived. Here’s the twist: whatever you buy or sell, your fellow players set the price.
Every round therefore becomes an exercise in reading the table. How much are they willing to spend? Which goods should you be manufacturing for the economy that’s forming around you? Fresh components and artwork are a step up, but the joy is still in undercutting everyone else.
Find it at booth 2119 or preorder at Allplay.
Take a mech underground and hope you have the fuel to come back
Far beneath the surface you’re digging for minerals and abandoned gear, all while keeping one eye on the fuel gauge that determines whether you make it back to sell what you’ve found. The catch is that everything you do opens up fresh openings for your opponents.
So each turn needs to hit as hard as possible — refining your deck and reinforcing your mech to descend even further.
Find it at booth 1003 or preorder at Czech Games Edition.
Build a solar system, then decide what gets to live on it
Suns, planets, asteroids, biomes: you’re piecing together a universe and coaxing bizarre life forms into existence according to each planet’s heat, water and radiation levels.
Astronomy buffs are clearly the target audience, and the cosmic artwork is stunning. Because every player draws their own missions, no two tables are steering their worlds toward the same outcome.
Find it at booth 2527 or preorder at Board & Dice.
Capybaras, pumas and armadillos walk into a preserve
Set in the Patagonia region of Argentina, this one tasks you with rehabilitating wilderness and growing an ecotourism draw through animal breeding. Thanks to a modular map, the puzzle changes each session as you gather sets of cards depicting terrain types and species to assemble habitats.
What you end up with is a nature reserve that guests take in from viewing platforms you’ve deliberately positioned. Scoring flows from every creature and every uninterrupted run of terrain those platforms touch.
Find it at booth 215 or preorder at Pandasaurus.
A Middle-earth war game that doesn’t eat your whole evening
Bloated strategy games are a familiar complaint, and the latest asymmetric board game set in The Lord of the Rings answers it with simultaneous turns for everybody. Between two and four players command separate armies across Middle-earth.
That leaves you perpetually second-guessing what the players beside you intend, both to budget resources and to keep from being outflanked. Allies such as Gandalf and the Witch-king become available as you race to destroy the One Ring or corrupt the Fellowship.
Find it at booth 817 or preorder at Asmodee.
The Sanderson game you probably can’t buy anywhere else
Released in June, the trick-taking game drawn from Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere sold through instantly. For the foreseeable future, Gen Con is the sole place to get one.
The godlike Shards that struggle for influence throughout Sanderson’s novels appear as cards, a number of them wielding special abilities that expand your choices within a trick or overhaul your score once play ends. The rules are brief and straightforward, making it a gentle entry point into the fantasy setting regardless of experience.
Find it at booth 339 or sign up to be notified the next time it’s in stock at Dragonsteel.
Captain Sonar, but in space
Few board games I’ve played match Captain Sonar for sheer mayhem: real-time hidden movement, teams playing submarine crews, everyone desperately trying to overhear the opposing table’s chatter. Star Trek: Space Hunt relocates that pandemonium to battles among the stars.
Ships draw on a limited pool of resources to trigger special abilities — sweeping for the enemy, warping out of danger — and no two handle alike. Consider it a chance to relive the tense standoffs scattered across Star Trek history.
Find it at booth 2321 or preorder at Miniature Market.
Wingspan, shrunk down for your carry-on
Elizabeth Hargrave designed Wingspan as an engine builder that real-life birders could pick up without a background in gaming. Wingspan Pocket pushes the idea further — one row of cards, far less text, and icons handling the heavy lifting so a card can be parsed instantly.
The box shrank as well. Toss it in your luggage and play once the morning bird walk wraps up.
Find it at booth 2909 or preorder at Stonemaier Games.
No tabletop convention in North America is bigger or older than Gen Con, and the Exhibit Hall is its beating heart, packed with vendors from every corner of the globe presenting their latest designs. Demos are free throughout the weekend. The games themselves frequently don’t survive that long.