International Gamers Awards 2021 Nominations Announced

Posted on August 21, 2021 by huzonfirst

The International Gamers Awards, which has been selecting their Games of the Year for over 20 years, has announced their nominations for their 2021 awards.  For this year only, an expanded period of eligibility was used, due to the effects of COVID-19; games released between January 2020 and June 2021 were eligible.  The number of categories was also expanded from previous years.  There are now three:  Best Multiplayer Experience; Best 2-Player Experience; and Best Solo Experience.  Because of the way the categories are structured, it’s possible for the same game to be nominated for more than one category.

Here are the nominated games, together with their designers and their publishers:

MULTIPLAYER
Anno 1800  (Martin Wallace) – Kosmos
Beyond the Sun  (Dennis Chan) – Rio Grande
Dune: Imperium  (Paul Dennen) – Dire Wolf
Hallertau  (Uwe Rosenberg) – Lookout Games
Lost Ruins of Arnak  (Michaela Stachova, Michal Stach) – Czech Games Edition
Nidavellir  (Serge Laget) – GRRRE Games
Paleo  (Peter Rustemeyer) – Hans im Gluck
Praga Caput Regni  (Vladimir Suchy) – Delicious Games

2-PLAYER
Botanik  (Sebastien Pauchon, Frank Crittin, Gregoire Largey) – Space Cowboys
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion  (Isaac Childres) – Cephalofair Games
Imperium: Classics/Legends  (Nigel Buckle, David Turczi) – Osprey Games
Jekyll vs. Hyde  (Geonil) – Mandoo Games
Lets Make a Bus Route: The Dice Game  (Saashi) – Saashi & Saashi
MicroMacro: Crime City  (Johannes Sich) – Edition Spielwiese
My City  (Reiner Knizia) – Kosmos
Undaunted: North Africa  (Trevor Benjamin, David Thompson) – Osprey Games

SOLO
Calico  (Kevin Russ) – Flatout Games
Cantaloop: Book 1  (Friedemann Findeisen, Grzegorz Kobiela) – Lookout Games
Clever Cubed  (Wolfgang Warsch) – Schmidt Spiele
Hallertau  (Uwe Rosenberg) – Lookout Games
Imperium: Classics/Legends  (Nigel Buckle, David Turczi) – Osprey Games
MicroMacro: Crime City  (Johannes Sich) – Edition Spielwiese
Sleeping Gods  (Ryan Laukat) – Red Raven Games
Under Falling Skies  (Tomas Uhlir) – Czech Games Edition

In addition to the nominees, there were five recommended games, which just missed receiving a nomination.

Recommended Games
CloudAge  (Alexander Pfister, Arno Steinwender) – Nanox Games  [Multiplayer]
My City  (Reiner Knizia) – Kosmos  [Multiplayer]

Unforgiven: The Lincoln Assassination Trial  (Tom Butler) – Green Feet Games  [2-Player]

Hadrian’s Wall  (Bobby Hill) – Garphill Games  [Solo]
Red Rising  (Alexander Schmidt, Jamey Stegmaier) – Stonemaier Games  [Solo]

The winners in the three categories will be announced during the first week of October.  Congratulations to all the nominees!

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Patrick Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2021 (Part 13)

Posted on August 21, 2021 by Dale Yu

My new favourite Olympic sport is sport climbing!

sport climbing

I’m what you might call a climbing fan from afar. There have been occasional visits to indoor climbing centres over the years but that’s about it; too much pain and effort required to get good at it. I’ve seen sport climbing competitions before so it wasn’t entirely new. But what I liked about it (and why I felt it relevant here) is that this sport felt more like a game than any other. I enjoyed watching the climbers try to puzzle out how to get past a particular boulder problem (and building / saving reserves to be able to execute), and watching how they navigated tricky sections of the lead climb. And I loved the drama and gasps of someone falling from the lead climb just short, and the tension-breaking cheers of a contender making a new high and kicking on!

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Dale Yu: Review of Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe

Posted on August 20, 2021 by Dale Yu

Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe

  • Designers: Matt Leacock, Tom Lehmann
  • Publisher: Z-Man Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 30 minutes
  • Times Played: 5 with review copy provided by Z-Man Games

When the original Pandemic Hot Zone North America came out, I thought that it was a great idea to shrink down the hugely popular cooperative game and sell it at mass market stores at a lower price point.  Given the timeliness of the theme, it seemed like a great plan.  From what I can tell, it has been a success, and I was not overly surprised to see that a followup game was released in the series – namely, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe.  What did surprise me is that there are plans for a full set of games AND you can combine those parts to create larger and more complex games.

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Three Games I Travel With

Posted on August 19, 2021 by xitoliv

Today I wanted to talk about the games that make up my sort of “go bag.”  If I’m headed somewhere, that isn’t intended to be a “game night”, say, maybe a birthday party or a get together because some folks from out of town are in for the weekend, what I bring.

In this case, the three titles I want to talk about are, well, usually in the arm rest/center console of my car, so there’s no need to pack or remember to bring them.

As I’ve grown older, what I pack has shifted. I rarely, for instance, bring them out unprompted or even bring up that I brought something. I’m growing more comfortable with simply conversing, not ludologically evangelizing, and acknowledging that some folks don’t have much interest in playing a game.

I think that’s part of why party games don’t make the cut. My personality wouldn’t feel comfortable derailing a night of other types of interaction with a game as the centerpiece.

So I drift to card games: something a few of us can unobtrusively entertain ourselves with, while others go about enjoying each other’s company in their own way.  If, these games of ours come up in the course of conversation, and if, someone else seems intrigued, we’ll do it. Otherwise, I’m content to let them ride along with me in the car until the moment arises.

Anyway, these are the games.

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Encyclopaedist (a review)

Posted on August 18, 2021 by xitoliv

Designer: Sengoku Ichiro (千石 一郎)
Publisher: 数寄ゲームズ (Suki Games)
Players: 3
Playing Time: 20-30 minutes
Times Played: 3 on purchased physical copies; a few more times with a Google Sheets mock-up


I’m going to talk below about the many ways I love Encyclopaedist and its tragic flaws, of which there are many. Some of them are in the game’s conceit: it is three-player only; some of them are in the components: you’ll exhaust the provided post-it notes after only a few games; some of them are in the game’s potential as a commercial product: you can mock it up with three pieces of string and a pad of post-it notes; some of them are in the mechanics, ….well, we’ll get into those.

But I love the game.

In short, each player will have a category (such as “things that can be sharp” or “one syllable words”), and, variously, the players will attempt to guess words in the different intersectives of the venn diagram created by three brightly colored ropes.

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Age of Assassins (a review)

Posted on August 17, 2021 by xitoliv

Designer: Muneyuki Yokouchi (横内宗幸)
Publisher: 操られ人形館 (Ayatsurare Ningyoukan)
Players: 3-4
Playing Time: 30 minutes
Times Played: 8 (some on a friend’s copy, some on a copy I purchased (1st ed.), some on a second copy I purchased (3rd ed.))

I first played Age of Assassins in 2014.  I didn’t own a copy at the time, and while there were rumors it was licensed, at some point I stopped holding my breath for that imminent announcement.  I loved it then, (and I hope that isn’t Spoiler City for our destination.)  In the intervening years, as my knowledge of how to acquire small print run games from Japan has increased, I eventually bought a copy, and, well, now have 2. 

It is a drafting game with sequential resolution.

Let’s break that down.

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