Love Letter 

• Designer: Seiji Kanai
• Publisher: Z-man
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 14+
• Time: 15-30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4juD2xa
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In a quick game of risk and deduction, can you outwit your friends and earn the trust of the noble Princess? The noble Princess is looking for an ideal partner and confidant to help with her royal duties when she one day assumes the throne. You must prove your worth and gain her trust by enlisting allies, friends, and family of the Princess to carry a letter of intent to her. Can you earn the Princess’s trust and become her confidant?

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For the last two days, I’ve been looking at creating my own gaming Hall of Fame, inspired by BGG’s recent launching of their own Hall.  I want there to be some comparison between the two groups of games, so I’m basically following their lead by focusing on “modern” board games that are at least 10 years old, no traditional games, and no roleplaying games.  I’m way too much of a masochist to simply list the games I want to honor, so I’ve decided to discuss all of the games I considered and saying why I chose the ones I did and why I left the others out.  Yup, I’m that insane.  My criteria for selection are Popularity, Innovation, Impact, and Fame.

My process is to come up with a list of prospective games in chronological order and then put them into one of four categories:

• Yes – Games I considered to be obvious choices for my Hall.  No matter how big my HoF winds up being, I will find room for all these games.
• Likely – Strong candidates that I would like to add, but which aren’t shoo-ins.  If the total number of Yes and Likely games isn’t too high, all of these will make it; otherwise, I’ll have to make some hard choices.
• Possible – Games with a pretty good argument for being added.  If, after all the Yes and Likely games are added, there’s still room, I’ll go through these and put the best ones in.
• No – Not serious candidates, but games with some notable aspects that I wanted to cite, for reasons of quality, popularity, innovation, or historical importance.

I’ve divided the time period under consideration into the following five periods:

• Period 1:  1950-1989
• Period 2:  1990-1999
• Period 3:  2000-2004
• Period 4:  2005-2009
• Period 5:  2010-2014

We’ve already covered the first three periods, looking at a total of 72 games.  Today, I’ll talk about games from Period 4 and Period 5.  So let’s start off with one of the most influential games ever designed.

Yesterday, I talked about how the Geek’s newly minted Hall of Fame has inspired me to come up with one of my own.  I’m sticking to their ground rules, so the focus is on “modern” board games that are at least 10 years old, no traditional games, and no roleplaying games.  Rather than just listing the games I want to honor, I’ll also be discussing all of the games I considered and saying why I chose the ones I did and why I left the others out.  My criteria for selection are Popularity, Innovation, Impact, and Fame.

My process is to go come up with prospective games in chronological order and then put them into one of four categories:

• Yes – Games I consider to be obvious choices for my Hall. No matter how big my HoF winds up being, I will find room for all these games.
• Likely – Strong candidates that I would like to add, but which aren’t shoo-ins. If the total number of Yes and Likely games isn’t too high, all of these will make it; otherwise, I’ll have to make some hard choices.
• Possible – Games with a pretty good argument for being added. If, after all the Yes and Likely games are added, there’s still room, I’ll go through these and put the best ones in.
• No – Not serious candidates, but games with some notable aspects that I wanted to cite, for reasons of quality, popularity, innovation, or historical importance.

I’ve divided the years under consideration into the following five periods:

• Period 1: 1950-1989
• Period 2: 1990-1999
• Period 3: 2000-2004
• Period 4: 2005-2009
• Period 5: 2010-2014

Yesterday, I discussed 34 games from Period 1. Today, I’ll talk about games from Period 2 and Period 3.  So let’s get started with a game that isn’t particularly well remembered today, but which has vast historical importance.

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I love it when creative endeavors get recognition.  That might be yearly awards, citations of lifetime recognition, and the like.  Part of that is the satisfaction of seeing good work rewarded.  But much of it is historical and my love of researching the history of things I enjoy.  This includes movies, sports, television, and, of course, games.  A lot of great works are now forgotten, a status that isn’t always deserved, and awards can lead to their rediscovery.  So you might have found that a little remembered film called All the King’s Men won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1949.  Normally, you wouldn’t think of checking out a 75 year old movie, but with a recommendation like that, you might, in the hopes that it’s actually worthwhile.  (Spoiler alert:  it absolutely is!)

The same is true of games.  Some older titles continue to get played years after their release, but most of them don’t and some of these are still worth playing.  But tastes change, some games go out of print due to issues with the publisher, lots of things can happen that can lead to games being forgotten.  So if a design has an award win or a Hall of Fame citation, that might lead you to see what all the fuss was about way back when.  As they say in sports, flags fly forever, so even if a game’s current rating seems low, they probably loved it back in the day.  And even if a title doesn’t hold up, many of them influenced future games, so they live on in that way.  With the thousands of games released each year, it’s hard to remember the notable ones and annual or lifetime recognitions are a great way of tracking the titles that deserve special status.

As some of you might have guessed, this discussion is inspired by the recent announcement of BoardGameGeek’s Hall of Fame.  To celebrate its 25^th birthday, the Geek chose to honor 25 games as inaugural members of its Hall.  This has led to a good deal of discussion and led some folks to speculate which games they would have chosen.  To be honest, it was the first thing that popped into my head when the project was revealed, so I decided to follow through on it and this article is the end result.  However, at the OG, we like to take the volume up to 11, so I’ll not only be listing the games that make my personal HoF, but I’ll also include all the games I considered and relate my reasoning for why I chose the ones I did and why I left the others out.  Basically, you’ll be following the same path I did when I started thinking about this, since I had to list a bunch of games before I could be sure which ones I wanted to include.  And that larger list of games will let me delve even further into the history of boardgames and that’s something I always enjoy doing.

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