The best games from Michael Kiesling 🇩🇪👨 2025

Azul invites you to step into the captivating world of Portuguese artistry and craftsmanship. This board game draws inspiration from the introduction of azulejos, originally white and blue ceramic tiles, by the Moors. The tiles found a new home in Portugal when King Manuel I, during a visit to the Alhambra palace in Southern Spain, was enchanted by the exquisite Moorish decorative tiles adorning its interior. Filled with awe and inspiration, the king promptly ordered the embellishment of his own palace in Portugal with similar decorative tiles. As a skilled tile-laying artist, you are tasked with the prestigious mission of adorning the walls of the Royal Palace of Evora.

Players take turns drawing colored tiles from suppliers to place on their boards. Points are awarded based on how the tiles are arranged to decorate the palace, with extra points for specific patterns and completing sets. Wasted resources will reduce a player's score, and the player with the most points at the end wins.

Azul: Summer Pavilion takes players back to Portugal to embark on an artistic challenge of crafting a summer pavilion, a task assigned by King Manuel I. As master artisans, players must use their skills to construct the pavilion using the finest materials while efficiently managing their resources.

Players aim to bring all their wizards home to the Raven Castle before their opponents. The game board is set up in a circle with towers placed in a specific order, and each player starts with a certain number of wizards and movement cards. Players move their wizards or towers based on their played cards, capture opponents' wizards to fill their potion bottles, and ultimately try to place their last wizard in the Raven Castle to win. The game can also be played in teams with a variant that adds various spells.

Linko! is a dynamic card game, also known as Abluxxen, that combines strategy and luck. The objective is to play your cards wisely to score points while using your turns to disrupt your opponents' plans.

Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra is a visually striking and strategic board game designed by Michael Kiesling. It offers a unique twist on tile drafting, focusing on creating beautiful stained glass windows.

Players manage their own wildlife parks with the goal of grouping animals by species. Each begins with the same set of 33 unique animal tiles placed randomly in their park, while certain spaces remain unoccupied throughout the game. Players take turns choosing tiles to place in their parks, and the game ends when all tiles are moved, leading to a scoring round based on the size of animal herds and proximity to water holes, with various game modes to enhance replayability.

Create an elegant, graceful, and refined Japanese garden. Careful planning and attentive observation are essential for maintenance. Skillfully place stones, shrubs, trees, ponds, and pagodas on multiple levels to become the best garden designer of the season. Test your skills with one of the five included expansions!

That's Life! (also known as Verflixxt!) revitalizes the traditional roll-and-move game genre with elements that give players more strategic control. In this game, players navigate a path laid out with tiles, aiming to collect as many positive tiles as possible while avoiding negative ones. The addition of guards and clovers introduces strategic depth, turning what could be a game of chance into one of tactical decision-making.

King Agamis rules from his castle in a land filled with rich cities, expansive forests, and rugged mountain ranges. Beneath the mist, dangers lurk, challenging only the bravest adventurers. Players must move strategically and bravely confront eerie creatures to earn the king's favor, with three adventure scenarios available based on player age and experience.

Haste Worte is a party word game by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling. Players have 30 seconds each round to write down as many answers as possible for the given category or question. After that, they bid on how many unique answers they have, revealing bids simultaneously and reading answers in order, with players receiving points for successful answers.

Welcome to the wilderness of North America! Breathtaking mountain views and spectacular geysers await, with vast forests and prairies providing habitat for native animals. Your task is to group animals of the same type into large families while ensuring they have access to water sources and avoiding bad weather.

Players roll dice to form specific combinations in a race to win in Kniffel Master. Each player has a personal game board and four tokens. On their turn, they roll up to three times and record their results to earn stars based on various combinations. The first player to collect fifteen stars finishes the game, and the player with the most stars wins.

Vikings is a fast-paced economic board game that, despite its title, focuses more on resource management and strategy than on traditional Viking themes like exploration or combat. The game's standout feature is its unique pricing wheel, which introduces an innovative approach to acquiring resources.

Tikal is a compelling strategy game set in the dense jungles of Central America, where players embark on an expedition to uncover lost temples and hidden treasures. As explorers, players reveal new parts of the jungle board, discovering temples that need to be excavated and treasures that can be collected. The objective is to score points by controlling these temples and treasures. Notably, Tikal is the first game in the renowned Mask Trilogy.

Create a flower garden for the world-famous Sanssouci Palace in this tile-laying game. Compete against up to three other landscape architects, building rose gardens and vineyards while meeting specific building requirements. Players manage personal boards divided into rows and columns, drafting tiles to fulfill garden layouts and earn points based on completed rows and columns. The game lasts 18 rounds, with bonus points awarded at the end for completed objectives.

"Coal Baron," also known as "Glück Auf" in German, is a strategic and immersive board game that plunges players into the world of coal mining. In this game, players become managers of their own coal mines, sending workers underground to dig tunnels and extract coal of varying quality to fulfill contracts.

Players compete in a majority game using dominoes, suitable for 2-4 participants. Each player has a game board with wooden tiles depicting grass, bushes, pines, and oaks, which are used for majority scoring on a central board. Throughout the game, players can place dominoes and plants, earn points based on their placements, and strategically acquire resources to maximize their scores. The game concludes when all players have used their dominoes.

Verflixxt kompakt is a smaller version of the original game with smaller pieces and fewer path tiles. It is designed for up to four players, each controlling two pawns in games with three or four players. The game features a new variant called Wurminator, where a large worm alters the number of negative game pieces when it lands on a player's pawn.

Pueblo challenges players to masterfully construct a tribal structure that remains aesthetically pleasing while cleverly concealing their own colored building blocks from the Chieftain. This engaging board game blends strategy with spatial reasoning, inviting players to think creatively and plan tactically.

"Jubako" boxes are elegantly decorated containers, often made from fine woods, used to serve Japanese cuisine during special occasions like New Year's. In this game, 2-4 players stack treats by cleverly filling their own box with rice, fish, and various vegetables. The domino-style game pieces feature two treats each and require careful placement and stacking.

Mexica is a strategic board game that invites players to immerse themselves in the development of Tenochtitlan, the ancient city on an island in Lake Texcoco. The game focuses on urban planning elements, such as partitioning the city into districts, erecting buildings, and constructing canals. It's the third game in the renowned Mask Trilogy.

Azul: Queen's Garden invites players back to Sintra's palace, tasking them with crafting an exquisite garden for Queen Maria of Aragon.

The Palaces of Carrara takes players to the renowned marble-producing region of Italy, where they compete to acquire marble at the best prices and use it to construct buildings. The game's strategic depth lies in balancing the cost of marble with its potential value in building construction. Players must be savvy in their purchases, as any decrease in marble prices can also benefit their opponents. The decision of when to buy marble becomes crucial, especially when considering the fluctuating values of buildings in the town. The Palaces of Carrara includes two levels of play – beginner and advanced – making it accessible to new players while offering depth for experienced gamers. Wolfgang Kramer, the co-designer, emphasizes the importance of starting with the beginner version to fully grasp the game's mechanics and how they interact.

In Asara, players immerse themselves in a competitive world of architectural magnificence, aiming to become the most renowned builder by erecting the tallest and most beautifully adorned towers. This strategic game unfolds over four rounds, symbolizing four years, during which builders must cleverly gather and assemble tower pieces to construct their masterpieces. The game mechanics revolve around a strategic use of a hand of colored cards, which players use to claim action spaces on the board. These spaces provide essential resources, such as tower pieces and funds, or opportunities to build and enhance your towers.

Heaven & Ale is a strategic board game set in the intriguing world of monastic brewing. Players take on the roles of monks in charge of ancient monasteries, tasked with brewing high-quality beer. The game combines resource management, timing, and competitive elements, challenging players to skillfully balance the upgrading of their monastery's garden with the efficient harvesting of resources necessary for brewing.

Guide your fearless explorers through the cursed swamp, collect treasures, and avoid obstacles! During each round, players move one of their explorers forward. Leaving a space occupied by a game piece requires picking it up, which can either be beneficial if it’s a treasure or detrimental if it’s a ghost. Points are awarded for collecting sets of treasures and reaching the end early, while points are lost for any ghosts collected along the way. The player with the most points wins!

The name of the game has little significance. Players place positive and negative cards in groups and aim to either take the resulting points or avoid the overall theme. This game strikes a balance between the previous versions, being less mind-numbing than Hornochsen and more strategic than 6 Nimmt!

Cuzco is a new edition of the 2018 game Java by the French publisher Super Meeple. It shifts the action to South America, aligning with the other titles in the Masken trilogy and the original design plans of the authors.