The Opinionated Gamers

Congratulations to Antoine Bauza and Michael Menzel for winning the two awards announced today by the SdJ jury.  Hanabi was a bit of a surprise, but not a huge shock.  It was clearly the best of the three nominated games and I guess that won out over perceived issues with its difficulty, box size, and expansion ability.

I think we need to step back and give the jury some credit for its picks over the past two years.  Obviously, individual tastes will vary, but you could easily say that Hanabi and Kingdom Builder were the best *games* of the three respective nominees and each won despite doubts about their perceived difficulty.  You could probably make a similar statement about Village’s selection as last year’s Kennerspiel.  I applaud the jury for their faith in the willingness of the gaming public to support more involved games.  While I continue to be suspicious at any attempt to find patterns in the jury’s selections over the years (more and more, I think it just comes down to the games this small group of individuals happens to like), there are some indications that slightly more complex games are becoming acceptable.  Of course, this comes after successive wins by Dixit and Qwirkle convinced SdJ watchers that the trend was hurtling towards uber-light games, so there’s still a big danger in trying to read the tea leaves.  Nevertheless, it’s nice to see that a game can have more than half a dozen rules, or require a modicum of thought, and still take gaming’s biggest prize.

What did everyone else think?  Surprised/happy/infuriated by today’s announcements?

Larry

OK, as you probably know, the Spiel des Jahres award will be given this coming Monday.  As we have in previous years, the writers of this blog have tried to predict the winner…  Each year, we come up with a different way of doing it.  This time around, we first tried to predict the winner without even knowing who the finalists would be!   (Details here).  As you can see, the game that we all thought would win the prize did not even make the short list of finalists…  Sigh.

Once given the list of three games, we then voted again on which game we thought would take home the prize on Monday.  The methodology was simple – each participant could only vote for one game.  The votes have been tallied and we think the winner will be…

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Here we are at the end of our journey to discover which games are a particular designer’s masterpiece.  And we’ve saved some of the best for last, as we lead off with five highly renowned designers.  Our final installment includes almost two dozen names, so let’s not waste any time!

Uwe Rosenberg – Joe: Bohnanza;  Larry, Matt, Liga, Dale: Agricola
Joe: According to BGG, my selection of Bohnanza is clearly and unequivocally wrong. Bohnanza’s a very popular game – but 10,000 people more list Agricola as owned on the site, and Agricola ranks more than 200 places higher. But as I still rate Rosenberg’s card game designs as his greatest accomplishment (and am willing to discount the ownership difference as owing primarily to the fact that Bohnanza pre-dates BGG), Bohnanza is the only choice in my mind.

Larry: I sympathize with Joe’s choice—Bohnanza is not only a seminal design that was hugely innovative, but it continues to be extremely popular today. And it emphasizes just how good Rosenberg’s early card games were, even if many of them are now little known. But as big a design as the bean game was, Agricola was bigger. Much bigger. It’s a way of life for many gamers and did what many thought was impossible: finally knock Puerto Rico off the top of the BGG rankings. Most gamers will always associate Uwe with Agricola and that’s why it has to be his masterpiece.

Matt C: Agricola, hands down. I suspect there are more copies of Bohnanza floating around than Agricola (with the BGG data leaning towards more complex games) but Larry hit it on the head that there are those that consider the game “a way of life”. I just can’t see Bohnanza doing something similar.

Liga: Agricola is one of those games able to shake the market. The first one able to depose Puerto Rico from the throne. I prefer much more Le Havre and Ora et Labora, but there is no doubt that Agricola is Uwe’s masterpiece.

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Some of the OG writers have been giving their opinions of which game represents the masterpiece of a bunch of well known designers.  We’ve reached the letter K and, as most of you know, that’s a very prominent initial among modern designers.  So let’s continue with our list.

Michael Kiesling – Joe: Vikings;  Larry: Tikal
Joe: I think the real question, with regards to Kiesling, is how to treat his co-designs in comparison to his solo offerings. I’m happy to consider a co-design – but given my druthers I must admit to viewing a solitaire design as more of a masterpiece. This makes Vikings an easy selection for me.

Larry: While Vikings has a nice reputation and is one of Kiesling’s few solo designs, I see no reason why his remarkable work with Wolfgang Kramer should be excluded from this discussion. Tikal is one of only two games to sweep all three major gaming awards and it still gets plenty of play today. While other Kramer collaborations, including the excellent Maharaja should be considered, I think the first game of the Mask trilogy is the best choice as Kiesling’s masterpiece.

Reiner Knizia – Larry, Joe: Euphrat & Tigris;  Liga: Medici
Larry: In spite of the amazing number of great games that Knizia has created, I think E&T is a reasonably straightforward choice as his masterpiece. Almost from the beginning, it had the reputation as one of the great game creations and the passing years have done nothing to diminish that. It’s interesting to note that 10 years ago, Modern Art would have received serious consideration and 5 years ago, there probably would have been significant support for Ra or Lost Cities. But today, I think E&T is a fairly easy selection.

Liga: Master Knizia designed a lot of outstanding games like E&T, Lost Cities, Ra, Modern Art and Through the Desert. But I think his masterpiece is Medici: the best auction game ever that handle 6 players, takes 5 minutes to explain, and is appealing both for gamers and casual players.

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