Czech Games Edition is selling Drillers at Gen Con next week, which for most people is the first chance to own it ahead of the wider Q3 release. It arrives with more heat than a mid-year deck-builder normally gets.
Run game nights? Backseat Gamer handles RSVPs, waitlists, date polling, and game voting so you can focus on playing.
Start organising for freeDrillers is a deck-building game for 1 to 4 players, 12 and up, at roughly 30 minutes per player. You take a mech into an abandoned mine and strip out whatever a long-gone mining corporation left behind. Every card is multi-use, every level down brings better minerals and worse problems, and fuel is always running out. Get back to the surface and you can sell your haul, upgrade the mech or hand the logistics over to drones. If Clank! is your reference point for greed versus getting out alive, you are in roughly the right neighbourhood, though this one is a tighter engine. The box includes four mech miniatures modelled on real-life iconic vehicles.
It is designed by Roman Bednář and Adam Španěl, the latter a co-designer of Project L alongside Jan Soukal and Michal Mikeš, so a game built around tight multi-use cards and no wasted turns is not a surprise.
Got a regular group? Create a private community, poll for the best date, vote on games, and let your friends RSVP in one place.
Set up your group for freeWargamer's Mollie Russell gave it 9 out of 10 on 20 July, praising the snappy play and the theme while criticising the translucent gem cubes, which are hard to tell apart and a genuine problem for colourblind players. Her verdict: "If I had to pick a favorite, right this minute, of the games I've played this year, Drillers would be top of the pile."
The best gossip out of CGE's Gen Con plans is not Drillers at all. Alongside learn-to-plays for Drillers, SETI, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Galaxy Trucker, Wispwood and Codenames: Critical Role Adventures, the publisher is previewing an unnamed "complex yet thematic Euro-style board game from two well-known designers". Given what CGE has put out lately, that is a proper guessing game.
Gen Con runs from 30 July to 2 August, with CGE at booth 1003 and room 235. For everyone not flying to Indianapolis, Drillers is a Q3 2026 release at $59.99 or €49.99, so it should reach UK shelves this side of the autumn rush.
Sources: Czech Games Edition | CGE press | CGE at Gen Con | Wargamer | Boardcubator | Board Game Bliss
