Gamefound Board Games to Follow in September 2026

Gamefound was built by people who had run crowdfunding campaigns themselves, and the platform shows it: the pledge manager is native rather than bolted on afterwards, and following a project before launch often earns you something. Here are the Gamefound board games worth following this month.

Trials of MAYA

Trials of MAYA launches September 8 and is the campaign to watch.

What is Trials of MAYA?

Trials of MAYA is an expandable card-driven arena combat game. It combines three genres: MOBAs, classic 90s tactics games, and TCGs without booster packs. It plays 1 to 4 players in 60 to 180 minutes for ages 14 and up, with nine asymmetric champions, five game modes and 340-plus cards, published by Department of Lore.

The engine is the Energy Gambit. Your champion is piloted by a three-slot action mat. Each round the cards slide right, the one falling off pays you energy, and you commit a fresh card face down into the empty slot before everyone reveals simultaneously. That card’s energy value sets your initiative now, lower going first, and returns as energy two rounds later.

What Board Game put the card system at the top of its list of strengths, describing the play as “varied, exciting and surprisingly quick” despite the number of options on the table. Big Boss Battle reached the same conclusion, noting the system makes you plan across turns rather than in isolation.

The arena keeps things tight: a grid with walls, spikes, high and low ground and voids, plus push and pull for collision damage. Simple enough to learn quickly, varied enough that positioning is a real decision every turn.

The depth sits in the champions. Each has passive abilities, stats you upgrade during the match by completing open objectives, and a deck you construct beforehand from cards gated by its species and two classes. The design is built as a system rather than a single game, with the intent that players eventually build their own decks, arenas and modes on it.

For followers specifically, there is a gift. Following before launch gets you a free champion, Bird-Drink-Pot, with a miniature, portrait mat, signature cards and a 24-card starter deck. Contents across the range are fixed at print with public card lists, no boosters and no random pulls.

Independent context is on the BoardGameGeek listing, and the official page has the full component and mode breakdown.

Opera Magna

Closing September 22. From the designers of Barrage and Potion Explosion. You are supplying a cathedral, and the market moves value every time anyone acts, which turns the usual euro question of what is efficient into what is efficient right now.

FIEF: France

Closing September 17. New edition of the medieval struggle game about dynasties, marriages, betrayals and the papacy. It has always been a negotiation game wearing an area control costume.

Herobound

Closing September 4, so move quickly. A solo game of the month project from Gabe Barrett, built for players who game alone and prefer a steady drip of content over one big box.

Following costs nothing, so follow widely

The follow button notifies you at launch, which matters when early-bird tiers are limited, and it sometimes unlocks a gift outright. There is no reason to reserve it for campaigns you have already decided on.

Then use the weeks that follow. Three questions do most of the work:

Can you play it before you pay? A Tabletop Simulator build, a print and play, or a convention demo tells you more than any trailer. Trials of MAYA has a Tabletop Simulator version.

Do you know what you are buying? Published card lists and contents locked at print let you evaluate the whole proposition rather than a promise.

Has anyone independent touched it? Convention play, preview coverage from outlets that publish a review policy, and a real BoardGameGeek presence with rulebooks posted all indicate a project well past the rendering stage.

Follow or back Trials of MAYA on Gamefound when the campaign goes live.