Below are the reactions of some of our writers to the SdJ nominations.

Chris Wray:  When I heard the nominees this morning, I was struck by how much the SdJ has changed since I started following it several years ago.    

I’ve written material the length of a book — literally — on the history of the Spiel des Jahres and its winners.  And this year’s nominations, when combined with last year’s, have my interest in the award waning.  I may even break apart my beloved Spiel des Jahres collection to make room for other games.

From my vantage point, the SdJ has become less and less about awarding innovative, family-weight games, and more about trying to predict what ultra-light game will become popular in the coming year. It feels like the ghost of Colt Express is haunting the award: faced with a winner that just wasn’t that popular, the jury appears to be engaging in a multi-year correction of trying to validate itself by picking games with more mass market appeal. (Or, if one were being cynical, the correction is about trying to pick games that will give them enough of the revenue they earn by licensing their logo onto game boxes.)

I don’t blame them, necessarily, even if I think their strategy is a poor one long term.  But as a commentator on such things, I think it is pretty clear that the award is changing: we now have enough data to posit that many wildly popular winners of years past (Catan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and especially Dominion) might not hit the right notes for today’s jury.  And given the turnover in jury membership, that is unsurprising: it is literally not the same group of people as just a few years ago. 

 Fantasy Realms: The Cursed Hoard Expansion

• Designer: Bruce Glassco
• Publisher: WizKids
• Players: 3-6
• Ages: 14+
• Time: 20-30 minutes
• Times played: 4, with review copy provided by WizKids (maybe 30+ plays of the base game over the past 4 years)

The base game, Fantasy Realms, came out in 2017, and became a constant filler that summer.  You may have heard of it this week as the base game was just named a finalist for the 2021 Kennerspiel des Jahres award.  It is a quick game but yet one that offers players a surprisingly deep amount of strategy.  In Fantasy Realms, each player is the ruler of a far-away kingdom, trying to make the best and strongest kingdom possible – being represented by a hand of seven cards.  Each of these cards has a base strength, a suit and some form of bonus and/or penalty value.  In the game, you will draft from a very small deck.  The Cursed Hoard expansion gives players two different modular expansions that they can add separately or together to enhance the base game.  Before I get to the expansion though, let me recap some of the base game (in case you missed our original review!)

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