We’re getting close to SDHistCon Summit 2026 (Nov. 6-9 in San Diego), and we’re ready to reveal more details on an exciting new event. The inaugural SDHistCon Summit Night Market (first announced in April) will take place at the convention on Saturday, Nov. 7 at 8 p.m., and will see a carefully-selected group of indie designers offer small print runs of their historical games for sale to convention attendees. This will be a rare chance to get many of these games.

Here are the 10 games we have for this first-ever edition of the SDHistCon Summit Night Market. They’re listed in alphabetical order by game title (click the links to jump to a longer description for any game): COINTELPRO: The Assassination of Fred Hampton (designed by Keith Donaldson), Deny or Punish (designed by Akar Bharadvaj), Iberia: Kings and Emirs (designed by Ian and Sarah Curtiss), Operation Cobra: Normandy Breakout or Bottleneck? (designed by Trevor Bender), Party and Protest (designed by Moe Poplar), Penitent (designed by Dan Bullock), Rex Regnat (designed by Edward Damon), Skybirds (designed by Andy Schwarz), The Underground War (designed by Christopher Thomas), and Throw Down That Flag (designed by Liz Davidson and David Thompson). Read on for a description of each game! (And also check out our companion piece, with famed game designer Mark Herman’s thoughts on the value of this Night Market.)

COINTELPRO: The Assassination of Fred Hampton, designed by Keith Donaldson: A small box (60 cards and 10 bullets) asymmetrical two-player abstract that connects players to the historical 1960s precedent of the U.S. government using law enforcement and intelligence tools not to protect citizens but to manage and suppress political dissent. One player is Fred Hampton, trying to purge FBI infiltration of the Black Panther movement. The other is William O’Neal, the FBI informant, trying to flood the organization with it. Hampton wins by emptying all Infiltration Tokens from the board, or simply by surviving until the deck runs out. O’Neal wins instantly if all 10 tokens are on the pyramid at once. 

Deny or Punish, designed by Akar Bharadvaj: A 30-60 minute two-player lane battler game that models Cold War escalation and deterrence in only 26 cards. Open war between the United States and Soviet Union would be an existential horror, and deterrence is less costly than fighting. Can the two countries achieve their objectives while managing their tensions and distrust? Will trying to do so bankrupt the countries? Or will it end the world in fire? From the designer of Chalice of Poison and Tyranny of Blood.

Iberia: Kings and Emirs, designed by Ian and Sarah Curtiss: A 40-80 minute two-to-four player game set in the 12th-century Iberian Peninsula, covering how for the vast majority of that period, Christians, Muslims, and Jews fought intra-faith conflicts more often than inter-faith conflict. That meant the people were more likely to live, work, collaborate, and fight together for their own local kingdoms and emirates than they would fight over religious identity.  The heart of the game is area control, but players need to maintain balance in their kingdom in order to win, doing so by constructing buildings and wonders, attracting a diverse court, and balancing the faith demographics.

Operation Cobra: Normandy Breakout or Bottleneck?, designed by Trevor Bender: A fast-paced, seven-turn, two-player game on the Allied offensive to break out of the Normandy beachhead from July 25-31,1944. The system uses a novel all-encompassing one-phase sequence of play where all movement and combat is done for both sides at the same time in a highly interactive and immersive manner. Players can push their units to the limit or hold them back to refresh for the next day’s big push. Managing reserves will be key to holding the line. Victory is determined by friendly and enemy losses and progress made across the map. From the designer of Labyrinth: The Awakening, Battle for Kursk: The Tigers are Burning, Korea: The Fight Across The 38th, and more.

Party and Protest, designed by Moe Poplar: A 60-90 minute semi-cooperative worker placement game for two to five players, this covers the Black Power Movement of the 1970s. Players will work as asymmetric factions to control the city while also trying to establish the most enduring legacy. It’s a game about a fractious but formative moment of protest in modern American history. The goal is to control the institutions of the city: the Government, the Police, the Media, the Church and the University. To do this, you need to grow your faction, build coalitions, avoid COINTELPRO, and not have too much friction with other players.

Penitent, designed by Dan Bullock: A 60-90 minute solitaire game where players take the role of Quaker reformers, tasked with designing a visionary American penitentiary in the early 19th century. Players will draw a floorplan for their model penitentiary and determine how it is governed by resolving a sequence of event cards. Will your penitentiary adhere to the Auburn reform’s silent system or Pennsylvania’s bold solitary confinement system? Will your inmates achieve rehabilitation through ceaseless labor or intense religious instruction? Will your penitentiary serve as a model of reform or be instructive only for its failure? From the designer of No Motherland Without: North Korea in Crisis and Cold War, 1979: Revolution in Iran, The Gods Will Have Blood, and more.

Rex Regnat, designed by Edward Damon: A 45-75 minute two-to-four player game set just before the annihilation of the Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, where players take the roles of political factions negotiating a new constitution for the state using a modified trick-taking system in which every card matters. Each faction, from the moderate reformers to the absolutist reactionaries, has their own goals for the constitution, but some factions share desired policies, making for an interesting blend of selfishness and cooperation. Should outrage grow too high, the game will end in an overthrow, with the government collapsing. From the designer of Hench and more.

Skybirds, designed by Andy Schwarz: A 15-45 minute game for two to four players where you’ll fight for dominance in the skies over the battlefields of World War I. Aerial combat is simulated by winning rounds of a ladder-climbing, empty-your-hand card game. After each victory, the more skillful players gain more powerful weapons (relative to those who finish the round behind them), and these weapons, represented by tokens, can be deployed for better bonuses during future rounds. These tokens also unlock further progression down the path to victory, but if you use the most recently won bonus, you cannot make further progress along that path until you reclaim the spent token. From the designer of Envelopes of Cash and more.

The Underground War, designed by Christopher Thomas: A tense 20-minute two-player tile-laying duel where players take the roles of sappers during World War I. Players each have their own boards showing the same physical space but different information, with a screen between them. On a turn, a player can listen for enemy tunnels or exchange tiles in the their hand, then will add to their tunnels, place a deception tile, or place a bomb tile to detonate sections of earth beneath no-man’s-land or sap one of the three sections of enemy trenches. Players earn one point per enemy tile destroyed and three points per section of enemy trench destroyed, with the first player to 10 points winning. From the designer of Revolution: State of War.

Throw Down That Flag, designed by Liz Davidson and David Thompson: A 30-45 minute solitaire game that tells the story of the First Minnesota on the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Having already suffered catastrophic losses on July 2nd, the battered survivors of the 1st Minnesota were back in the fight the next day, where they aided in repelling Pickett’s Charge and took a major role in the counter-charge which successfully ended the conflict. The defining moment of their day came when Private Marshall Sherman captured the battle flag of the 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment by threatening its bearer, Lieutenant John Lee, with his bayonet. Newspapers reported him demanding, “Throw down that flag, or I’ll run you through.” Both Sherman and Corporal Henry O’Brien received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their actions that day, and the flag Sherman seized has remained in St. Paul ever since, a prized relic of Minnesota’s most celebrated Civil War action.

Throw Down That Flag leverages a mixture of traditional hex-and-counter concepts and a chit-pull activation sequence with a unique solitaire resolution system that means it’s always the player’s turn. It’s a  low-complexity, quick-playing game that can serve as a bridge between non-gamers and wargamers. It also features unique features with the Color Guard and other units/counters that are forced into action as impromptu flag bearers, providing a mechanical grounding and importance that reflects the title of the game.  From the designers (together) of Night Witches and Queen of Spies, as well as the Valiant Defense series (David alone), the Undaunted series (David with Trevor Benjamin), Oath: Clockwork Adversaries and Foxes and Lions (Liz with Richard Wilkins and Paul Wright respectively, and many more titles.

Expect to read more about several of these titles at Conflicts of Interest Online soon!