Image from stonemaiergames.com

At the end of a YouTube video released on April 5th, Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games, very quietly announced his new game. For someone who, in the space of three games, has gone from publishing a sleeper hit to a juggernaut, I find it surprising (and awesomely cool) that Jamey appears to have chosen such a low key way to reveal the first details of his (and, I assume, Alan Stone’s) hotly awaited next game.

The video is a part of his “My Favourite Game Mechanism” series on his YouTube channel, episodes of which tend to be watched by an average of about 300 people. In this particular episode, Jamey is talking about teaching games, using FFG’s Hey, That’s My Fish as an example. As clickbait videos go, it doesn’t even register. But, beginning around 6:48 in the video, Jamey calmly drops a bomb, revealing that his next game is… Charterstone, a “legacy euro” game.

Here’s what he has to say about it:

Of course I leapt immediately to BGG, looking for more info, but a search for “Charterstone” brings up nothing. A Google search revealed Stonemaier LLC’s trademark application for “CHARTERSTONE”, registered March 8th.

So will Charterstone generate Scythe levels of hysteria and Kickstarter pledges? I’d bet my hat on it.

A full announcement about Charterstone will be forthcoming from Stonemaier Games in May.

UPDATE: Jamey revealed a few more details in the latest episode of Board Game Blender – namely that the game involves players competitively building a village, and being able to place workers on their opponents’ buildings.