Ten years of Ares Games: some of the games published since 2011.
On December 15th, 2011, Ares Games released War of the Ring 2nd Edition: it was the first game published by the company. Since then, many beautiful games - created with the help of designers, artists, sculptors from all over the World - took shape and hit the gaming tables: from long-lived lines such as Wings of Glory Miniature Game, Sails of Glory, Sword & Sorcery, to recent successes such as Masters of the Night and Ian Brody's Quartermaster General games.
To celebrate this milestone and thank the players who have shared this journey, Ares Games is running a special contest on Gleam: the Ares Games' Ten Years Anniversary Sweepstake will offer to five selected winners a prize bundle including a selection of our best-selling games and newest titles.
To join the sweepstake, players can submit an entry using the online form on Gleam. They have 11 ways to enter and multiply their chances of winning, by signing up to the Ares Games Newsletter, or doing different activities on social networks. The contest ends on January 6th, 2022, and the winners will be selected by random draw.
10 Years of Ares Games
Ares Games was established in July 2011 by a group of Italian entrepreneurs interested in the gaming world. Soon after, in August 2011, the agreement with Sophisticated Games to publish a new edition of “War of the Ring”, the game designed by Roberto Di Meglio, Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello, was announced. In September, the company signed the agreement with the authors Andrea Angiolino and Pier Giorgio Paglia to publish their game system, formerly published as “Wings of War,” under a new brand, “Wings of Glory.”
“War of the Ring Second Edition” was released in December 2011, with renewed graphics and improvements to the original design. The first “Wings of Glory” products arrived in March 2012 – the WW2 Wings of Glory Starter Set and eight WW2 Airplane Packs.
Today, the Wings of Glory lines offer a wide range of items: Starter Sets, Airplane Packs, Special Packs, Squadron Packs, Game Mats and other accessories. The WW1 Wings of Glory has also been expanded by a stand-alone game, Tripods & Triplanes, where the WW1 historical setting is turned upside down by the crossover with H.G. Wells' novel "The War of the Worlds”. The War of the Ring line was also expanded along the years, and today includes two expansions for the War of the Ring Second Edition - Lords of Middle-earth and Warriors of Middle-earth, and two stand-alone games, The Battle of Five Armies and Hunt for the Ring.
In 2013, Ares Games launched its first two projects on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform: the tabletop game of ship-to-ship combat Sails of Glory, inspired by the Wings of Glory game system, and designed by Andrea Angiolino e Andrea Mainini; and the cooperative tactical Sci-Fi miniatures game Galaxy Defenders, in partnership with Gremlin Project studio, designed by Nunzio Surace and Simone Romano. These projects were among the most-funded Italian projects on Kickstarter for many years. Other 11 Ares’ projects have been funded on Kickstarter since then. The most recent ones, Sword & Sorcery Ancient Chronicles and Orconomics Second Edition, are scheduled to ship to backers in the first part of 2022.
___________________________________________
Along its 10 years of company history, Ares’ catalog has grown to 12 game lines – in addition to War of the Ring, Wings of Glory, Sails of Glory, and Sword & Sorcery, the range includes Age of Conan, Galaxy Defenders, Family Games, Card Games, Euro Games, Thematic Games, and last but not least, the Dungeonology and Black Rose Wars lines – the English edition of games developed by Ludus Magnus Studio.
The Euro and Thematic lines, today, include many games of different types, including the best-sellers Inkognito and Last Friday, the Quartermaster General series – by Ian Brody – Master of the Galaxy and Masters of the Night – in partnership with Igrology – and Last Aurora and Diabolik – Heists and Investigations – with Pendragon Studios.
___________________________________________
While expanding its publishing range, the company also grew in size and activities. In 2014, Ares Games opened a subsidiary in the USA – Ares Games LLC, managed by game industry veteran Jim Long – to further develop its international business and support North American customers.
In 2017, Ares Games activities further expanded, thanks to distribution agreements with some of the most innovative European publishers, starting with two Polish companies, Galakta and PHALANX, granting to Ares exclusive North American rights for their games. They were just the first of a series of partnerships with other publishers to take their games to a broader audience. Presently, Ares Games also distributes in North America board games published by Asyncron, Escape Studios, Hexy Studios, Hobbity.eu, Horrible Guild, Nuts! Publishing and Pendragon Games.
Roleplaying Games are the most recent addition to our activities, with two partnerships announced in 2020 with Italian RPG publishers Quality Games and Acheron Books, to bring their successfully crowdfunded games Lex Arcana and Brancalonia to the US and other English-language markets. The RPG catalog is going to be further expanded soon with the upcoming First They Came, published by Chaos League, and new products from Quality Games and Acheron Books.
Ares’ story does not end here, of course. New games are coming in early 2022: Last One Alive, our first dice game; Orconomics, the economic game of modern Orcs; The Thing – The Board Game, based on the 1982 cult movie. And other exciting projects are in the pipeline, such as War of the Ring Card Game and the 25-anniversary edition of City of Chaos… and many more new games are in the works!
___________________________________________
The Ares Games staff wants to thank everyone who has shared the first 10 years of our journey: our designers, artists, fellow publishers, distributors and stores, and the most important people – everybody who is playing our games – and we look forward to play with you for many years to come!
Follow Us on