Nucleum, Sky Team, and Imperium: Horizons Win 2024 IGA Awards!

Posted on September 6, 2024 by huzonfirst

The results of the 2024 International Gamers Awards (IGA) have just been announced.  In the Multiplayer category, Nucleum takes the prize, edging out Voidfall for the honor.  In the 2-player category, SdJ winner Sky Team winds up on top, beating out Match of the Century.  And in the Solo category, Imperium: Horizons wins, after a close contest with For Northwood!.

The biggest winner would have to be David Turczi.  Not only did he co-design both Nucleum and Imperium: Horizons, but he is also the co-designer of Voidfall, which didn’t win, but was nominated in all three categories!  Quite the year for Mr. Turczi.  Congratulations to all the designers of the winning games, including Turczi, Simone Luciani, Luc Remond, and Nigel Buckle.

Here is how the nominated games in each of the categories finished.  The vote count in the final showdown between the two top games in each category is shown in parentheses.

MULTIPLAYER CATEGORY
1. Nucleum (9-7)
2. Voidfall
3. The White Castle
4. Ticket to Ride Legacy
5.  Daybreak

2-PLAYER CATEGORY
1. Sky Team (9-5)
2. Match of the Century
3. Voidfall
4. Lacuna
5. General Orders: WWII

SOLO CATEGORY
1. Imperium: Horizons (6-4)
2. For Northwood!
3. Voidfall
4. Witchcraft!

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Dale Yu: Review of Vendetta (Masters of Crime) – spoiler free [Essen SPIEL 2024]

Posted on September 6, 2024 by Dale Yu

Vendetta (Masters of Crime)

  • Designers: Lukas Setzke, Martin Student and Veren Wiechens
  • Publisher: Kosmos
  • Players: 1-6
  • Age: 16+
  • Time: 2-4 hours
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3AGForL

Vendetta is a cooperative deductive murder mystery game where players must solve puzzles, follow clues and make decisions to solve a case. They do this using the included deck of cards, 12 hidden realistic clue documents, and the Internet. Through a choose-your-own-adventure mechanism, players make decisions that influence the course of the game and lead to solving the case in the end. One by one, they enter different realistically designed locations and encounter the various suspects. Then they choose from 3 different ways to deal with the situation and receive points based on their decisions. Complex puzzles and escape room elements must be solved in order to progress further in the case.

Thematically, the game moves in the environment of the mafia in today’s New york. As a member of the mafia you have to uncover the mole in your own ranks who caused the death of the eldest son of the godfather. It’s up to you whether you act morally or use other methods to make your victims talk.

The game is closely intertwined with the real world, and players have to keep using traditional apps like Google Maps or Wikipedia to gather information. Writing emails, detailed web pages and cell phone calls are also part of the immersive gaming experience.

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Top 100 Week: Personal Favorite Years

Posted on September 6, 2024 by Talia Rosen

We close out Top 100 Week here at the Opinionated Gamers today by sharing our personal favorite years for board game releases.  This is the idea that started the conversation among OG writers about what was the best year for board game releases, which led to the wealth of data collection that we’ve shared this week and will now cap off the week with our own findings from our Top 100 lists.  With a deluge of new game releases coming soon at Essen Spiel, we’ll see if 2024 becomes anyone’s favorite year and what new games crack into our Top 100 lists in the months to come.

Talia Rosen: My personal favorite year turned out to be 2005 (followed by 2007) with 9 of my Top 100 games coming from 2005.  It looks like 2005 was quite a year for new games in my book, most notably Nexus Ops, Twilight Struggle, Caylus, Kreta, Louis XIV, Aton, and Wits & Wagers.  These continue to be some of the best games ever designed in my opinion.  I adore the team combat, objective-based point system, unit variety, and economy of Nexus Ops.  I think Twilight Struggle continues to be the pinnacle of card-driven asymmetric two-player combat, and Caylus is still the reigning champ of worker placement for me.  Kreta and Louis XIV are still my favorite area control games of all-time when you don’t have 5 players for a game of El Grande.  Aton is still one of the very best quick two-player games ever, and Wits & Wagers simply cannot be beat when it comes to trivia and family gatherings.  If I could only keep games from one year, I think it would pretty easily be 2005.  In a distant second was 2007 due to the joy of Galaxy Trucker, the ingenious card allocation of Biblios, the Feldian perfection of Notre Dame, the extortion of Before the Wind, and the knife-fight-in-a-phone-booth agony of King of Siam.

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Dale Yu: Review of Until Proven Guilty: The Starry Sky Necklace (spoiler free) [Essen SPIEL 2024]

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Dale Yu

Until Proven Guilty: The Starry Sky Necklace

  • Designer: Enrico Procacci
  • Publisher: dv Games
  • Players: 1+
  • Age: 14+
  • Time: 90 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Until Proven Guilty is a narrative co-operative game inspired by court-themed visual novels, television series, and video games. In the game, you take on the role of Peter, a brilliant lawyer who’s still a rookie, yet now involved in complicated criminal trials. Can you help Peter defend his client? Each turn, read the trial card and choose an evidence card to refute it. Enter the evidence number into the web app and read the result: if it’s correct, some jurors will side with you, and you can continue in the trial; if it’s wrong, some jurors may side with your opponent, and you will have to try again. Depending on the evidence you choose, you may even receive personalized answers!

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Top 100 Week: Top Years

Posted on September 5, 2024 by Talia Rosen

One of the main drivers for this whole week was trying to figure out the “best year” for board game releases. There seem to be as many opinions on this topic as people in the conversation — with everyone having their own theory for the “best year” for board game releases. So we took a “scientific” approach by having 19 members of the OG each independently come up with their own list of Top 100 games of all-time. Then we used a spreadsheet to graph all 983 games that appeared across those lists of favorites, and we came up with the graph above. You can see that 2013-2019 stand tall (along with 2004), but ultimately 2015 emerged victorious as the consensus best year of all-time for board game releases based on the aggregate votes across all of our Top 100 lists!

  • #10 – 2007 – 64 votes
  • #8 – Tie: 2011 and 2016 – 69 votes each
  • #6 – Tie: 2004 and 2017 – 74 votes each
  • #5 – 2014 – 75 votes
  • #4 – 2018 – 77 votes
  • #3 – 2013 – 78 votes
  • #2 – 2019 – 81 votes
  • #1 – 2015 – 82 votes
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Dale Yu: Review of Nekojima

Posted on September 4, 2024 by Dale Yu

Nekojima

  • Designers: David Carmona, Karen NNguyen
  • Publisher: Unfriendly Games
  • Players: 1-5
  • Age: 7+
  • Time: 15-30 minutes
  • Review copy provided by publisher
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3Ms399x

In Nekojima, “The Island of Cats” in Japan, an electricity network is developing to supply the various lively districts of the island. The installation of electric poles becomes more complex due to the narrowness of the territory and its curious population of cats strolling on the cables. Nekojima is a wooden game of skill and dexterity in which you have to keep an entire installation in balance. Players take turns placing or stacking denchuu — 電柱, or electrical poles — respecting the locations without any hanging cables touching. Be careful not to be the one to bring down the structure. This game requires reflection, concentration and skill. In competition, the player who knocks down the structure loses. In co-operation, the goal is to go as far as possible.

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