It’s Southern Board Game Fest Week!
The greatest week in Louisiana gaming has arrived! Southern Board Game Fest (“SoBo”) starts this Friday, and we are putting the finishing touches on all the events. I thought I would spotlight some of the new stuff and old favorites that we are featuring at the festival. First, let’s talk about an event that Board Game Gumbo is hosting, and yes, we are very excited!
Unmatched Tourney!
The big new addition is our first annual UNMATCHED tourney! That’s right, we are going to duel with our favorite Unmatched characters from Restoration Games. The tournament starts on Friday night, which is a good time to mention that we are adding actual organized gaming on Friday night this year for the first time. Tickets are free if you have your badge, and the event is supported by Restoration Games, who graciously gave us some special promo cards to hand out to each of the participants and to the finalists.
But I also want to throw a shout out to our friends at The Beans & Dice Podcast out of Tampa. Rob and Carlos provided us with an amazing surprise gift for the winner of the tourney. Can’t wait for you to see it!
The format will be simple. We will break up into pod play, and choose two (or three, depending on the size of the pool) characters to play. Always wanted to play the Cobble & Fog set? Haven’t been able to find The Witcher characters or Bruce Lee? We’ll have all of these and more at the tourney.
We will play one match against everyone else in the pool, using a different character each time. Then, the survivors of the pool will face off for the finals.
Unmatched is still my undisputed favorite skirmish game of all time, and I’ve got over 40 different characters available for us to play. Come out to Southern Board Game Fest this March 20-22, 2026 in beautiful downtown Lafayette for all of the fun!
SoBo Is A Sellout!
For the second year (and I think the third festival in a row), Southern Board Game Fest is a sell out! Yes, we have sold all of our allotted three day badges, as well as the Saturday / Sundy one day passes, too. Thanks to all of the board game publishers and volunteers who made it happen!
But I have to give a special shout out to Burky from GameToppers LLC who for the third festival in a row really came through to help us across the finish line with an amazing package of goodies that we will raffle off at the festival, as well as a prize pack we are giving out for social media shares. Thanks Burky!
Spotlight On GeauxPub, Part Deux
Finally, I want to spotlight our GeauxPub section a bit. Almost ten years ago, Jason Dinger (of Captains of the Gulf fame) came back from UnPub 7 in Baltimore excited about the event and wrote up his experience for us. I had heard of Unpub (and ProtoSpiel) events before but did not know a lot about them. I knew when we started SoBo that we had to eventually include our own spin on an event that allows designers and publishers to get instant feedback from ready and willing gamers at the convention.
We called our event, “GeauxPub” — meaning, Go Publish — and it was a hit right away. We’ve actually a game or three that was demoed at GeauxPub get signed or get published successfully, games like Playground Empires from local Acadiana designer Sterling Birdwell and published by Houston area publisher, HutChu Enterprises LLC.
This year, our two GeauxPub coordinators, Jeremy and Josh, have over 51 different events listed in the database, featuring:
— Playground Empires
— DeadHeaders
–Qualm
— Captains of the Gulf: Deux and The Acadians: Deux (two player, shorter versions inspired by the original games)
— Fair Share: The Clockwork Revolution
— Eond
— Agents of Chaos
If you are heading to beautiful downtown Lafayette, Louisiana for SoBo this weekend, why not try out a game that is in development (or even just starting out with fresh playtests) and give some feedback? The designers would really appreciate it, and it might just spark a thought in you.
Until next time — or until SoBo — laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumb