Game of the year nominees announced!

Look for this logo when hunting down great games.
Look for this logo when hunting down great games.

It is “Oscar Season” for the board game industry! The Spiel des Jahres, or German Game of the Year, award nominees were announced on Monday. It is the most sought after award in the hobby, as just being nominated means more sales for your game, and winning ensures exponentially greater sales.

The award began back in 1978 and deals specifically with family style board games. A jury of judges reviews all games released in the German market over the past 12 months and selects games based on their originality as well as their accessibility. There are other awards that have cropped up over the years, with specific country best game awards (Portugal’s Jogo Do Anno), more hobby or publication specific awards (Board Game Geek’s Golden Geek Award, the Dice Tower Awards), but the Spiel des Jahres has remained the most prestigious, and most influential in the game market. In 1989 a Kinderspiel des Jahres, or kids game of year was introduced. Unfortunately many of these kids games don’t get released in the United States, so I won’t cover them in depth here. In 2011 the jury determined that there was a need to award games of greater complexity and introduced the Kennerspiel des Jahres, or expert game of the year, and I have loved many of the games announced for this new category.

The award is not just good for publisher sales though, it was also been useful in identifying games that are worth your time and money. In my own collection I have 10-12 spiel nominees or winners, and three of my favorite games of all time (Dominion, Kingdom Builder and 7 Wonders) were awarded the prize. As the board game industry continues to grow it is really helpful to have that award sticker on the box to separate the great games from the also rans.

 

This year’s Spiel des Jahres nominees are:

Codenames by Vlaada Chvatil. This is the best party game since Apples to Apples, and my vote to win it..  in part because it’s the only one of these nominees I’ve played so far! I have written about it previously when it made the rounds at Barnes and Noble. Below is Eric Martin’s fantastic overview.

Imhotep by Phil Walker-Harding. This game has not made it to the U.S. just yet, but with the award nomination announcement, its release date has been moved up to late June. It looks to be a great family game about building Egyptian monuments. Players assign  blocks to different shared boats that then ferry them over to different building sites. However any player can move any boat so there is lots of room to cause havoc in the plans of other players. The order of the blocks on the boat itself also matters for how each block scores. Much like other Spiel Des Jahres nominees, the game uses simple actions to create a strategic experience.

Karuba by Rudiger Dorn. A fantastic looking game that combines the best things about bingo and tile laying games. Players all have a board with a start and end points for 4 different adventurers marked in the same spots. One player draws tiles and yells out the number on the tile, and they and all other players place that tile on the board, or discard it to move an adventurer. So everything is symmetrical, but how you use the different tiles announced will determine your success.

 

This year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres, or Expert Game Nominees are:

 

Isle of Skye in play
Isle of Skye in play

Isle Of Skye by Andreas Pelikan and Alexander Pfister. This is an innovative tile laying auction game. All players draw three tiles each round and use coin tokens to secretly set the price for two of them, while axing the third. Then players reveal their prices, and in turn order each player can buy one tile from another player. Players keep any tiles not sold, but must pay the price they set. So there is a wonderful tight rope act of trying to price tiles to be attractive other players, but not pricing them out of the market. Players use these tiles to build a village and work to accomplish certain scoring goals that vary from game to game. In another interesting twist, all goals score at different times over the course of the five rounds, so timing is crucial as to when to go after any given goal.

 

red.0Pandemic: Legacy by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau is a fantastic Legacy style games. I covered these games with permanent consequences previously, and it’s no surprise to see this great concept get recognized by the jury. As a recap, in Pandemic Legacy each game is a month of the year, and decisions in any given game change the game permanently. There is also a storyline that plays out through a “legacy” deck of cards that introduces new twists as players work through the games.

 

pic2617634_mdTime Stories by Manuel Rozoy is an adventure game system. I also talked about this in a previous blog, specifically about the single use nature of the game’s set up. Each game is a module that represents one story and players work together to solve the case, kind of like a mystery. However, once a story is solved, its secrets have been revealed and replaying it would be like rewatching a movie, or rereading a book. However the concept has allowed the designers to create some very compelling story content in board game form, and deserves recognition.

 

The winners will be announced on July 18th, and I will post then to celebrate the winners. Best of luck to all the nominees, and I am looking forward to trying out the three games I haven’t played on this list before the winners are announced.

Building Rome in 90 minutes or less

The Civilization PC series has been a hit since the early 90s.
The Civilization PC series has been a hit since the early 90s.

With the announcement of Civilization 6 last week my mind has been abuzz with excitement. Civilization is a grand strategy  PC game covering massive spans of time. The board game industry has been producing similar games for years, and some say Sid Meier, the creator,  was even inspired by the great boardgame Civilization from Avalon Hill in 1980. But the problem, for both the video game and the board game, has been one of time investment. Avalon Hill’s grand epic took as much as six hours, and its sequel Advanced Civilization ballooned to eight. Covering such a grand scale with any sort of detail seemingly requires a massive time investment, and as the years go on, it is no wonder that fans of such strategy games flock to the PC game. There the computer can handle all of the complexity and bookkeeping, and players are able to save and play over several days or weeks without taking up the entire dining room table.

The allure of this civilization theme in boardgames did not die out with the advent of the more convenient computer version. In recent years many board games have tried to capture the feeling of building a civilization without the complex and time consuming nature of older civilization games. Some games use the theme like a coat of paint, merely motioning towards the progression of humanity over generations, while others abstract the essence of the great Sid Meier classic, and condense it to a reasonable play length. Here are a few games that will make you feel like you are building an empire, and also perfectly fit how much time you might have in an evening.

A player's city in 7 Wonders towards the end of the game.
A player’s city in 7 Wonders towards the end of the game.

7 Wonders is a smash hit board game for doing the impossible. The game takes the theme of building a civilization and boils it down to a thirty minute game you can play with up to 7 people. Its secret is a simple card drafting system. Players receive a hand of cards, select one, and pass the remaining cards to the left or right. Since players all choose simultaneously, there is no time spent waiting for others to take their turn, and the game takes the same amount of time regardless of how many are playing. However, within this simple system, there are some tough decisions that mirror those in other civilization games. There are resources to manage and trade with your neighbors, military conflicts, scientific discoveries, great buildings, and of course the titular wonders. Now while it is an excellent game where the civilization theme comes through, it is not like the grand strategy games of years ago. 7 Wonders is an abstraction of those classics that focuses on the feeling of building up an ancient city instead of covering all of human history.

Cards splayed out in Innovation to show more icons.
Cards splayed out in Innovation to show more icons.

Another card game that abstracts the civilization theme is Innovation. Created by the mad game scientist Carl Chudyk, Innovation boils civilization down to its fundamental technologies throughout the eras and creates a confrontational and chaotic card game out of them. Players play cards of five different colors into stacks in front of them. Each card is a technology represented by a unique action that players can take with that card along with several icons that represent aspects of a player’s civilization. Players can use attack cards inno_flyeragainst those with fewer icons of a certain type, or follow the actions of other players with whom they have the same or more icons, creating a back and forth battle of trying to stay ahead in the six different icons. The piles of cards can then be spread out up left or right to reveal more icons from past technologies, escalating the battle even further. Unlike 7 Wonders, which covers ancient civilization, Innovation covers the full history of human invention, from the wheel to nuclear fission. Players draw through 10 stacks of cards that represent the different eras of history, and attempt to claim ever increasing victory point achievements for each era.

Both games succeed in condensing the feeling of building a civilization into a tighter more focused package, but not without losing something in the translation.  For example, there is no map in either game, and outside of the “neighbor” concept in 7 Wonders denoting specific interactions with the players to your left and right, there is no sense of place. This sacrifice in favor of brevity necessarily removes the exploration and travel aspects that were part of the original Civilization boardgame and the PC game series. To condense the experience each game focused on one aspect of the theme. In the case of Innovation, the game itself is the tech tree of a grander strategy game, while 7 wonders captures the city building and advancement found in the PC game.

The map in Deus give the game more of a sense of place than other light Civilization games.
The map in Deus give the game more of a sense of place than other light Civilization games.

One lighter civilization game from recent years manages to bring in the map but still keep the game length from exceeding that 90 minute sweet spot. Deus uses hexagonal tiles to represent a map with different resources to exploit and barbarians to conquer. All interactions with the board and other players, however, are done through cards played to different columns in a player’s tableau (the play area in front of them). Each column represents a different color of card and corresponding type of building that might be part of an ancient civilization. When a player builds a card, they place a token on the map representing that building.

Different card columns represent different aspects of your civilization.
Different card columns represent different aspects of your civilization.

Blue cards and ship tokens represent naval buildings,  green farm buildings represent production, soldiers represent your military etc… In this way the game combines what is essentially a card game with a spatial element not found in the previous two games.

Each of these games extract an element of the grand civilization games on the PC and hones it into a game of its own. 7 Wonders captures the sense of city building, Innovation makes the tech tree live and breathe, and Deus captures the map and the balancing act of managing different aspects of a civilization. The key to keeping these games short is focusing in on a part of a larger whole, but still making it feel like a complete game in its own right. All three of the games capture that wonderful civilization theme, and will keep gamers plenty busy while they wait for Civilization VI.

Collection reflection

Today I do not want to talk about any game in particular, but more about board game collecting. You see, I have been very reflective about what a board game collection is these past few weeks. When I returned home from Essen last October, my suitcase overflowing with the latest cardboard wonders, I resolved to take a hiatus from purchasing new games. After all, I had just added a bumper crop to my collection, and I wanted to make sure I would get the most out of these latest purchases. However, it wasn’t just the extreme influx of games that inspired this self imposed break, and this was not the first time I had to take a step back and reflect on the wall of cardboard, and how to manage my collection

As with any hobby, when you are passionate about it, the excitement and anticipation of the hobby often outstrips the time you have to participate in it. When I first started playing board games, they were an escape. Consequently, whenever I needed a distraction from the stresses of everyday, I would research a new board game, and seek out a new target to add to my collection. As a result, I quickly ended up with more board games than I reasonably had time to play. In the hobby, folks joke about this as a sort of “acquisition disorder.” It first hit me a few years ago when I came home one day with a fresh walmart book shelf under my arm my previous shelves overflowing.  I realized at that time that I needed to do something to keep this mania in check.

Room to grow!
Room to grow!

So I resolved to never have more board games than I had shelf space. Having just acquired a new bookcase, this would prove to be easy… at first. Sure enough those shelves filled over the months that followed, that particular time in life being one in which escapism into this hobby was often my best refuge. But when the time came, and the shelves were full, I stuck to my resolution. Even now, as I upgraded those shelves in January, I did not expand their capacity. Having some kind of limit, even if it is largely arbitrary, has kept the collection from going out of control. So what happens when I run out of space?

Board games, unlike many collections, like spoons or stamps, are valuable to me based on their use. After all, they are made to be played, and are not art in a museum. Nothing makes me happier than a game beginning to look worn from frequent play. Browsing new games always makes me reflect on the collection that I have. With so many games to choose from, what could a new game possibly offer? With each game that enters the library, another will most certainly get played less. And if this is the case, perhaps they can be let go, to make room for something new.

As I have mentioned before, my board games are not just a wall of cardboard, but one of nostalgia. Each game box reminds me of the great times I have had when that particular game has hit the table. But if a game has fallen out of favor, and is just collecting dust, is it worth keeping around just for that nostalgic reminder? Alternatively, if a game has never found a place, or hit the table due to being too complex, or requiring the right group, do you hold on to it in the hopes that it will have its day in the sun? All of this is further complicated by the fantastic collections of games that my friends each have, many of which also deserve a play on game night.

The short list of game to be culled.
The short list of game to be culled.

So it is time for cardboard survival of the fittest. These next few weeks I am blowing the dust off some old games and asking them to earn their place in the Cardboard Empire. Some don’t even make it to the trial, but are immediately relegated the trade/sell pile. A few are from my earlier days in the hobby and just don’t grab my attention like they used to. Sometimes when I test one of these games they remind me why they are a part of my collection in the first place.

For the games that don’t make the cut, there are many options. I give a few of them away to friends with an interest, or kids who might like the game. There are after school programs that always appreciate an expanding library. The board game community has also organized its own kind of auction system at boardgamegeek.com, and the website also allows users to list games for trade. One man’s trade pile is another’s treasure, and I have had great luck in the past swapping games that I was less than fond of for something a bit more up my alley. A little curation goes a long way. After all, every empire has its borders, and one corner of my living room is all I ever want this one to conquer.