by Ben Bruckart

The Spiel convention in Essen is a great place to see most of the shiny new games for the coming Christmas and gaming season. I still have never attended, but I keep my ear to the ground and my eye on the blogs to find out what games are all the hype and are rating well for trying /acquiring later. 

The German magazine Fairplay measures the hotness of games through submissions from attendees at Spiele. They like to publish a list of games that people play and then rate on a 1-5 scale (5 being the top). You can find updates and details on their website [ https://www.fairplay-online.de/ ]. They have kept making regular updates on their webpage and Mastodon [ https://brettspiel.space/@fairplaymagazin ].

BGG still has a greatly diminished presence at Spiele with some crew going, but no livestream.  

To be a scout, you just need to register [ https://www.scoutaktion.de/ ] and attest that you are at Spiel and have no conflict of interest. You register online, show their booth that you are a Scout and get activated. 

Like last year, this article isn’t going to weigh in on the number of Scouts who participated but just look at the ratings of the top games across the three days and peek at last year’s top games and their BGG ratings. Understanding for a moment that BGG ratings and scout ratings are not the most reliable ways to value games (since people rate games very differently) I still think you can gain some context of how these games are viewed from their ratings. Fairplay has, in the past, seen better ratings for games which were in close proximity to their booth (hopefully obviated some by from people using their website). While more complex games are likely disadvantaged by having longer play times and potentially less reviews, the Fairplay rankings have often given a peak into the mindset of their scouts. 

A Look Backwards

Just to recap, here is the Fairplay list from Spiel 21, which included some very well known designs:

For Spiel 22, the top games were:

Last year (spiel 22), the top games were Cat In The Box, Tribes of the Wind, Turing Machine, QE (which had just had its German release), Splendor Duel, Akropolis, Atiwa, Evergreen and Kites. 

A small breakdown of last years top five games:

Cat In the Box sits at rank 460 on BGG with an average rating of 7.7 and sits properly in the top 100 of family games with about 4400 ratings. 

Tribes of the Wind didn’t climb high in the BGG rankings but has an average rating of 7.5 with almost 1300 ratings.

Turing Machine has a high rating of 7.8 on 3900 ratings. It had a very slow US release and was difficult to find until the past few months. It has a higher rank on BGG than ‘Cat In The Box.’

Q.E. has a rating of 7.4 on 5100 ratings and has had several different publishers.

Splendor Duel is the highest rated of the games from last year, with an overall position of 175 and top 20 of family games. It has an average rating of 8.0 on 6400 ratings.  It’s also a favorite of mine.

2023 Fairplay Rankings

For 2023, Fairplay was broken apart more physically and had two separate sets of ratings on games.

There was a ranking of the games that were in Halls 3 and 4, which usually consisted of the more meaty games, and a separate ranking for the games in Halls 1-2, 5, and 6, which were often more family-oriented titles.  First, here are the rankings for Halls 3 and 4:

The games that finished in the top 10 of Halls 3 and 4 were:

• Revive
• Darwin’s Journey
• Forest Shuffle
• 5 Towers
• Path of Civilization
• De Gilde Fahrenden Handler (The Guild of Merchant Explorers)
• Archeologic
• The White Tower
• Tipperary
• Earth

Revive sits on top with an 8.2 BGG rating and nearing the top 100 in the strategy category. This is based on about 4,000 ratings. It’s published by Aporta Games and the design team of Helge Meissner, Kristian Amundsen Østby, Eilif Svensson, and Anna Wermlund.

Darwin’s Journey also has an 8.2 on about the same number of ratings. Darwin’s is considered a little heavier. It’s the well-polished baby of Simone Luciani and Nestore Mangone and published by ThunderGryph games. 

Forest Shuffle is a 7.5 on less than a thousand ratings. It’s a lighter card-based game by Kosch and Lookout Games.

5 Towers is a very light card game with a rating of 7.4 and just 131 ratings. It’s by Deep Print Games and Kasper Lapp.

Path of Civilization is a big box Civ game from Fabien Gridel and Captain Games. It sits at a rating of 7.4 with 165 ratings.

The Guild of Merchant Explorers is a map-based routing game by Matthew Dunstan and Brett Gilbert. It has a 7.7 rating on 3400 ratings.

ArcheOlogic is a competitive deduction game with a 7.5 BGG rating out of 66 ratings. It’s entirely new to me and uses an Archeoscope to read coded cards and form the best questions to learn the most data. The designer is Yoann Levit and published by Ludonaute.

The White Castle is the new strategy game from Devir Games and Isra C and Shei S. There’s a more detailed review on Opinionated Gamers main site and it carries a 8.0 BGG rating on < 300 ratings.

Tipperary is a new tile laying game by Lookout Games and Günter Burkhardt that has a 7.3 rating on less than 150 ratings.

Earth is a successfully kickstarted game that is now full retail. Maxime Tardif’s game has a 7.8 rating on almost 9000 ratings and is near the overall top 200 of BGG games. 

The games that finished in the top 10 of Halls 1, 2, 5, and 6 were:

• Faraway
• Tribes of the Wind
• Kuhfstein
• Bonsai
• Quicksand
• Drachenhuter (Dragon Keepers)
• Sea Salt and Paper
• Lacrimosa
• Mycelia
• Schnitzel Jagd (Prey Another Day)

Faraway is a 2-5p card game by Johannes Goupy and Corentin Lebrat by Catch Up Games. You work with a limited hand size to choose cards based on lands you will explore (which are also cards). It has a rating of 7.6 on 250 ratings.

The Tribes of the Wind is back again this year and is discussed above. It’s been on the big board two times in a row, both second place.

Kuhfstein by Rita Modl and Schmidt Spiele is a new game about sending cows from an overrun town to your farms. It has a BGG rating 7.5 on 31 ratings.

Bonsai did well this year with a 7.5 on 200 ratings. In Bonsai, you (I hope in a relaxed manner), grow your bonsai tree through meditation and cultivation of cards. Its by Rosaria Battiato, Massimo Borzì, and Martino Chiacchiera by DV Games.

Quicksand is a real-time cooperative game, so probably less relaxed than Bonsai.  It’s for 1-7 players by Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva by Horrible Guild Games. It has a 6.7 on ~50 ratings.

Dragonkeepers is a new game by Michael Menzel and KOSMOS games. You juggle herding dragons with changing cards and spells to score.

Sea Salt and Paper, by Bruno Cathala and Théo Rivière and published by Bombyx, has garnered some attention with some game awards already and is currently rated a 7.4 on BGG with 3.5k ratings. It’s broken into the top 200 of family games.

Lacromisa by Devir games and designed by Gerard Ascensi and Ferran Renalias is a Eurogame about finishing Mozart’s Opus Requiem. You do this by optimally completing works of music, traveling and exhibiting music across several time periods. It has clever card play that you use on your board. It has also been nominated for several awards. It has a rating of 7.8 on <3k ratings.

Mycelia by Daniel Greiner and Ravensburger is a deck building game with a fantasy forest theme. It has a 7.6 rating on < 200 ratings. 

Prey Another Day is by Matthew Dunstan and Brett J. Gilbert (the same team that made The Guild of Merchant Explorers) and published by Edition Spielwiese/Good Little Games. It’s a quick little game with a 7.0 rating on <200 ratings and has a very light weight of 1.10/5. 

Now all these ratings will change over time with more reviews and plays. As context, they are captured on October 11 (3 days after Spiel) and we plan to looked at them again after Spiel ’24.

Fairplay also gives a list of honorable mentions which are games that are rated well but don’t have many ratings. This year the honorable mentions were: 

Halls 3+4	Halls 1-2, 5-6
* Age of Innovation * Great Western Trail: New Zealand * Djinn * Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory * Voidfall * Ghost Writer * Kutna Hora: The City of Silver * Obsession * Moorland * Fit to Print	* Keep the Heros Out * Sunrise Lane * The Fox Experiment * Trekking Through History * Next Station: Tokyo * Kites * Distilled * Ancient Knowledge * Challengers! Beach Cup * GAP

While I would like to see Fairplay voters drastically increased to give larger variety of scoring and ratings, it serves as an early tool for hype driven games.

I did not attend Spiel this year and I only have limited plays on the Honorable Mention games. I have found, for heavier gamers, ‘Great Western Trail: New Zealand’ is an excellent game. For an all day and sometimes multi-day affair, Hegemony is a long investment but fun game. The rules are a significant set of overhead. I am looking forward to Challengers! Beach Cup with my son and more plays of Darwin’s Journey. I, however, did not like my experience with Earth or Forest Shuffle for the same reasons… the card text is so important and small and it was onerous to pay attention to the shared cards on the table. I forward to trying most of these games and thank Fairplay for their efforts to get exposure to these games.  

Links:

Halls 3+4

Halls 1-2, 5-6

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/385761/faraway

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/362986/tribes-wind

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/393887/kuhfstein

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/366994/bonsai

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/396655/quicksand

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/383109/dragonkeepers

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/367220/sea-salt-paper

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/348450/lacrimosa

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/392023/mycelia

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/234260/prey-another-day