Walking in Burano Roll & Write

• Designer: Wei-Min Ling
• Publisher: EmperorS4
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Says the publisher: “The citizens of Burano, a picturesque island in Venice, are known for their creative flair in decorating their houses, making them a popular attraction for tourists and locals alike.  Players select dice of different colors to decorate the houses with plants, curtains, chimneys… and of course, the annoying cats. This version maintains the neat scoring from the original game and adds a unique gaming experience of roll and write.  Based on the different decorations on the houses, tourists and inhabitants evaluate the players with points. At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins.”

Walking in Burano is one of the many interesting small games from EmperorS4; and I was delighted to see that there is a new roll and write version of the game – though interestingly, it comes in nearly an identical sized box as the original!

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I finished designing First Monday in October in 2020 after years of working on the game.  Or I thought I was finished.  I had published the first designer diary that summer and a follow-up article about the game’s design a couple months later.  BGG News even covered the game that year.  The game just had to wait until the fantastic Shores of Tripoli and phenomenal Votes for Women were completed and delivered… but those productions were of course held up significantly due to the global pandemic.

In the meantime, I continued to play First Monday in October over and over just because I really enjoy it.  I made a game first and foremost that I would like to spend hours playing repeatedly for years.  I wasn’t really playing the game to develop changes, but just to have fun.  But then in mid-2022, I happened to play it with the brilliant Brian Mayer, designer of Freedom: The Underground Railroad, and he had a curious idea that stuck in my brain…

Every year, the voters for the Meeples Choice Awards choose their three favorite games from the previous calendar year.  The awards have been around since 1995, making it one of the oldest annual awards in the hobby.  The list of nominated games have just been announced.  Here are the 28 nominated games, in alphabetical order, together with their designers and publishers:

• Akropolis (Jules Messaud) – Gigamic
• Atiwa (Uwe Rosenberg) – Lookout
• Carnegie (Xavier Georges) – Quined Games
• Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition (Muneyuki Yokouchi) – Bezier Games
• Challengers! (Johannes Krenner, Markus Slawitscheck) – 1 More Time Games
• Clank!: Catacombs (Paul Dennen) – Dire Wolf
• Dead Reckoning (John D. Clair) – Alderac
• Dice Realms (Tom Lehmann) – Rio Grande
• Findorff (Friedemann Friese) – 2F-Spiele
• Great Western Trail: Argentina (Alexander Pfister) – eggertspiele
• Heat: Pedal to the Metal (Asger Granerud, Daniel Pedersen) – Days of Wonder
• Marrakesh (Stefan Feld) – Queen
• Mosiac (Glenn Drover) – Forbidden Games
• Next Station: London (Matthew Dunstan) – Blue Orange Games
• Planet Unknown (Ryan Lambert, Adam Rehberg) – Adam’s Apple Games
• Ready Set Bet (John D. Clair) – Alderac
• Return to Dark Tower (Rob Daviau, Justin Jacobson, Brian Neff, Isaac Childres, Noah Cohen, Tim Burrell-Saward) – Restoration Games
• Revive (Kristian Ostby, Eilif Svensson, Helge Meissner, Anna Wermlund) – Aporta Games
• San Francisco (Reiner Knizia) – Rebel Studio
• Space Station Phoenix (Gabriel Cohn) – Rio Grande
• Splendor Duel (Bruno Cathala, Marc Andre) – Space Cowboys
• Starship Captains (Peter Hoffgaard) – Czech Games Edition
• The Green Fivura (Taiki Shinzawa) – Kentaiki
• The Guild of Merchant Explorers (Matthew Dunstan, Brett Gilbert) – Alderac
• Tiletum (Simone Luciani, Daniele Tascini) – Board&Dice
• Turing Machine (Fabien Gridel, Yoann Levet) – Le Scorpion Masque
• Wonderland’s War (Tim Eisner, Ben Eisner, Ian Moss) – Druid City Games
• Woodcraft (Vladimir Suchy, Ross Arnold) – Delicious Games

The only designers with multiple nominated games are Matthew Dunstan and John D. Clair, while the only publishers with more than one game on the list are Alderac (3) and Rio Grande (2).  It’s the sixth consecutive year in which Reiner Knizia has at least one nominated game, as the Reinerssance continues; remarkably, San Francisco is the 51st game of his to receive an MCA nomination.  Alexander Pfister’s recent MCA success is almost as good, as he has received nominations in the last 5 years and 8 of the last 9.

There will now be a second round of voting and the three winning games will be announced in a week.  Congratulations to the nominated designers and publishers!