Award Announcements: The Spiel des Jahres, Kennerspiel des Jahres, and Kinderspiel des Jahres

By Firestone

The biggest awards in boardgaming were announced today.

First up is the big one: The Spiel des Jahres, which is the German game of the year. This is a highly sought-after prize, as a win here can mean big sales—look at Ticket To Ride!

There are only three nominees:

Qwixx, by Stefen Benndorf

Augustus, by Paolo Mori

Hanabi, by Antoine Bauza

I've played Hanabi, and it's terrific.

They also released a list of "recommended games"—kind of a consolation list of games they think you still ought to play.

Libertalia, by Paolo Mori

Divinare, by Brett Gilbert

Hand auf Herz, by Julien Sentis

Escape: The Curse of the Temple, by Kristian Amundsen Østby

La Boca, by Inka and Markus Brand

Riff Raff, by Christoph Cantzler

Rondo, by Reiner Knizia

Mixtour, by Dieter Stein

Yay!, by Heinz Meister

I've played Escape: The Curse of the Temple, and Libertalia, and the latter is one of my favorite games of last year.

The Kennerspiel award is for more complex, gamers'-type games. The nominees are:

Bruges, by Stefan Feld

Legends Of Andor, by Michael Menzel

The Palaces of Carrara, by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling

I've played none of these. The recommended games for this category are:

Terra Mystica, by Jens Drögeüller and Helge Ostertag

Tzolk'in, by Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini

I've played Tzolk'in, and you can check out my review of it.

And finally, the Kinderspiel des Jahres—the children's game of the year—nominees:

Mucca Pazza, by Iris Rossbach

Gold am Orinoko, by Bernhard Weber

Der Verzauberte Turm, by Inka and Markus Brand

And the recommended games:

Kakerlakak, by Peter-Paul Joopen

Kuddelmuddel, by Haim Shafir and Günter Burkhardt

Move & Twist, by Kerstin Wallner and Klaus Miltenberger

Pingi Pongo, by Peter Neugebauer

Bim Bamm!, by Lukas Zach and Michael Palm

Baobab, by Josep Maria Allué

Linus, der Kleine Magier, by Wolfgang Dirscherl

Mix Fix, by Andrew Lawson and Jack Lawson

Madagascar Catan Junior, by Klaus Teuber

Star Wars—Battle Of Hoth, by Bastiaan Brederode and Cephas Howard

I've played none of these...

Which ones have you played? Were there any glaring omissions in the nominees? Which ones do you think will win?

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New Expansions for Age Of Steam, Seasons, and the DC-Comics Deckbuilding Game

By Firestone

As we lead up to Origins in a few weeks, companies are announcing new games and expansions. First, over on Boardgamegeek, designer Alban Viard announced that he's designing a new pair of expansions for Age Of Steam. It sounds like he's going to use the actual game box as a part of the game. From the announcement: "The box might be a mountain and we will have tunnels to cross the mountain under the box! The network will be cut by the mountain and the players might arrange the different maps around the mountain."

Asmodee Games announced on Facebook that their popular card game Seasons is getting an expansion called Enchanted Kingdom. It adds "40 Power cards; 10 Enchantment cards; 12 Special Ability tokens; 16 Energy tokens; 2 'Raven' tokens 1 'First Player' token; 2 'Bespelled Grimoire' energy reserve expansions for individual game boards; 7 'Decreased energy reserve' tokens." And it should be ready by Origins!

Finally, though Cryptozoic Entertainment hasn't announced it yet, a couple of retailers seem to have outed a standalone expansion: Heroes Unite. A description on the site says, "Play as Shazam!, Hawkman, Red Tornado, Nightwing, Black Canary, Batgirl, or Booster Gold in Heroes Unite, the first standalone expansion for the DC Comics Deckbuilding Game! Unlock special abilities, like Force Field or the Helmet of Fate, and unleash devastating card combos against your opponents! Craft your hero deck into a well-oiled machine to take on the most vile villains in the DC Universe in your quest for Victory (Points)! Mix the cards from Heroes Unite with the core DC Comics Deckbuilding Game set to wage the ultimate showdown!"

Check out our Double-Take Review of the DC-Comics Deck-Building Game.

Thanks for reading!

Kickstarter Weekly - May 18, 2013

It's another week in the books here at TOG, but before we're done we thought we would bring you another round of Kickstarter news so you can plan the final destination of a portion of your gaming budget over the weekend. Prepare to Die! - Game Salute

Yep, we've been all worked up over here about the upcoming series of games based on The Princess Bride and Game Salute has kicked things off with a campaign to get Prepare to Die, a party game based on the famous line of Inigo Montoya, to market! Jeremiah recommends this one! You can check out his preview of this one here.

Admiral - Bombat Games

I (Jeremiah) have a soft spot for pirate ship type games, this one looks like it has potential, but is very pricey to get in on. $60 for a "half set of Admiral" and $95 for the basic game. But like I said it has potential for those of us who like to sail pretend ships and blast cannons at our friends!

Pixel Dungeon - Octopus Apocalypse

This is a set of fun paper miniatures for table top gaming/RPGing. Super cheap to get in on with lots of packs full of creatures, heroes, and locations!

Funded!

Upon A Fable—Kickin' It Games

This one ends on Monday, and it's over the line! It's a Euro for 1 to 6 players that features worker placement and card drafting. One reviewer described it as " Agricola meets 7 Wonders." That has us intrigued...

Paradise Fallen - Crash Games

Coming in just under the wire to get funded last week was the core game to what is promised to be a larger gaming universe in Paradise Fallen. Congrats to Crash Games, and we're looking forward to seeing this on the shelves soon!

Thanks as always for reading, and we so appreciate folks who subscribe to the blog over on the right --->

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Euphoria!—A Bonus Kickstarter Weekly

Jeremiah is still going to have a Kickstarter Weekly roundup tomorrow, but we thought we'd highlight a new Kickstarter campaign from Friend Of the Blog, Jamey Stegmaier! Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia is a worker-placement game that "incorporates mechanical elements of Alien Frontiers, Tzolk'in, and The Resistance with thematic inspirations from dystopian fiction like The Hunger Games, Fahrenheit 451, Wool, and Brave New World.

In Euphoria, you lead a team of workers (dice) and recruits (cards) to claim ownership of the dystopian world. You will generate commodities, dig tunnels to infiltrate the opposition, construct markets, collect artifacts, strengthen allegiances, and fulfill secret agendas." Sounds fun!

And once again, Jamey is so confident in his product that he's offering a 100% money-back guarantee.

Euphoria is already fully funded, and they're almost to the level that scores everyone some sweet steampunk dice, so hop on over and back this sucker!

And make sure you come back on May 29th, when we'll have an interview with Jamey about Euphoria, lessons learned from Kickstarter, and lunch! Have a great weekend!

Board Game Night—At the Root!

We're super excited to be able to announce that Jeremiah is hosting our first ever Board Game Night, at the Root Cafe in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. (Click here for directions)

Join us Friday, May 17 from 7:00-11:00 PM. Jeremiah will be there with a nice collection of games, some old favorites, some new prototypes, and a few fun party games. There will be games for newbies curious about the games we play, as well as the seasoned gamers.

Here's a few games that will be on hand:

Carcassonne—A fun tile-placement game; this is a staple for any gamer's collection!

The Great Heartland Hauling Company—A fun quick-playing game of cards and cubes!

Kingdom Builder—Easy to learn, but ever-changing!

DC Comics Deck Building Game—Use your cards to gain other cards and defeat the super villains!

The Resistance—There are no words!

The Agents—A prototype card game.

Princes of the Dragon Throne—Another prototype game from our friends at Game Salute.

Looking forward to see you all there! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for more details!!

Fantasy Flight is KILLING ME!

by Firestone So...we all know the dangers of CCGs, right? It's not called cardboard crack for nothing, after all...

Then along come LCGs: Living Card Games that release noncollectible, predictable packs every few months. "Oh, this I can handle," I think to myself.

Myself was very, very wrong.

Fantasy Flight Games just announced YET ANOTHER bigger expansion for The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game: The Black Riders.

"A fantastic adventure awaits you! With The Black Riders, you and your friends will accompany Frodo Baggins as he begins his epic journey to destroy the One Ring. Three new scenarios carry you out of the Shire and along the road to Rivendell, but you must be wary. The Nine are abroad, the lure of the Ring is difficult to resist, and your every action has a meaningful consequence…

The Black Riders recreates a selection of dramatic event as told in the first half of J.R.R Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring. It is the first of a series of Saga expansions that eventually will allow players to replay Frodo's epic journey from the Shire to Mount Doom, as well the dramatic events experienced by other members of the Fellowship."

I thought I was doing an okay job of keeping up with this game. But I blink and suddenly I'm three Saga Expansions behind—The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill, The Hobbit: On the Doorstep, and The Heirs of Numenor. And now this new one. Plus a new adventure pack—The Steward's Fear—just came out.

How long is this model tenable? I'm a fan and I'm falling behind. I can't have every single gaming dollar go toward this game. What about Netrunner?! And what about the other cool games out there?! If these start going out of print, and I fall behind with no financially feasible hope of catching up, I'll just stop buying altogether.

This has already happened with the Game of Thrones LCG. I'm interested, but so much of it is out of print that there's no way I'm going to bother trying to jump in now. What must it look like to someone coming to LotR: The Card Game brand new? "There's how much stuff for this? Nevermind..."

Abstract Distraction—A Review of Zertz

by Firestone

Today we're going to review a two-player game that's 13 years old—how retro! It's an abstract game, which means I'm terrible at it, but more specifically it means it's a game that has little-to-no luck, and often has no theme. Zertz is part of Project Gipf—a series of six abstract games designed by Kris Burm.

Components

• 37 round discs that make up the "board."
• 24 marbles: six white, eight grey, and 10 black.

Setup

You put five white, seven grey, and nine black marbles into a common pool. (The extra one of each color is used in a variant.) Use the discs to form a hexagonal game board. Then choose someone to go first.

<-----UPDATE: My friend Drew made fun of me this morning when he saw this post, because my discs were upside down. I've always played that way, and now I feel like a complete dork.

Gameplay

The goal of the game is to capture marbles—either two of each color, three white marbles, four grey marbles, or five black marbles. The first player to achieve one of those goals, wins.

One your turn you can do one of two things:

• Place a marble and remove a piece of the board, or
• Capture one or more marbles already on the board.

It's important to note that the marbles in the pool, and the ones on the board, don't belong to either player. You can choose one of any of the colors of marbles and place it on an empty disc that makes up the board. Then you remove a free disc from the board—and free means there's not a marble on it, and you can remove it without disturbing any other pieces. If there are no free pieces, you just place the marble.

The other thing you can do is capture marbles—and in fact if you can do that on a turn, you must do that. To capture a marble, you simply jump over it, as in checkers. There must be an empty disc for the jumping marble to land on. The colors don't make any difference: you can jump any color with any other color. And if, after capturing a piece, you can capture another, you must do so. But if there are multiple pieces you could capture, you can do so in any order you want—even if that means you're capturing fewer pieces.

If you capture a piece, you don't place a marble and you don't remove a disc.

If, through removing discs, you manage to isolate one or more discs, you can claim those pieces—including the marbles on them. But you can only capture marbles this way if there are no vacant pieces in the group. So often you're isolating one piece with one marble on it, and claiming that marble.

You keep playing like this until one person meets one of the goals listed above.

Recommendations

Youth Group Game? No! It's for two players, and it's abstract, so...no. If one of your kids likes chess, this would be a good game to bond over, though.

Family Game! Maybe! Again, it's two-player, so not a great game for a whole family, but you could certainly play it with a spouse or kiddo.

Gamer's Game? Definitely! There's enough meat here to please any hardcore gamer—unless you just don't like abstracts.

The Verdict

I'm really terrible at abstracts. I don't know if they're too analytical and mathy for me. My brain's just not wired to do well at them. But there are a few that I do still enjoy, and Zertz is one of them. I've played DVONN and Yinsh in Project Gipf, and while I would say Yinsh is the most newbie-friendly of those I've played, Zertz is my favorite.

It's easy to learn, but full of subtleties and new things to learn. And the thing is just gorgeous.

One of the most interesting aspects is that you're often sacrificing pieces, in order to set up the colors you need to win; it makes the game very interesting. And you'll find yourself trying to manipulate your opponent into making bad tradeoffs with you. Have I mentioned yet that I'm terrible at this?

The downside—and this is true of most abstracts—is that someone who's played before will often just crush someone who hasn't. And one mistake can certainly cost you the entire game.

Nevertheless, I can wholeheartedly recommend this for anyone who's ever wanted to dip a toe in the abstract sea. Or maybe you want to cannonball in instead: Zertz is your game.

Thanks so much for reading! Don’t forget to tell your friends about us by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, and Instagram as well as subscribing over on the right!

Kickstarter Weekly - May 13, 2013

This week we're starting off with a Kickstarter Weekly! So let's get rolling! The fine folks at Game Salute/Springboard are currently running two campaigns right now:

Alien Frontiers 4th edition - This edition of the Kickstarter classic is being packed out with new game components, some new promo cards, and a new double-sided game board! $50 gets you a copy of the game and some cool promo goodies! Check out the campaign here!

Epic Death! - In this card game players control a party of adventurers seeking the glory of battle and attempting to achieve the most "Epic Death" to create a great legend for themselves. Of course, their opponents are trying to kill them off in the lamest way possible. The campaign funded in just one day, so you can bet they're gonna smash some stretch goals! You can score a copy of the game for a pledge of $35, and secure yourself all of the stretch promos as well!  Check it out here!

Storyteller Cards - Buttonshy

As we said in our last Kickstarter Weekly piece, Jason Tagmire of Buttonshy has launched the first campaign under the Buttonshy brand. Storyteller Cards are a creative tool for writers, teachers, game masters, game designers, etc. If you're looking for a cool tool to get your creative juices flowin,g this is it! The campaign is halfway funded and it only takes $10 to get yourself a deck of the cards! You'll find all the details here!

Going Once...

Francis Drake - Eagle Games The campaign for Francis Drake has been a smashing success and is going to fund! There is still time to jump in on this one but it closes this evening! $59 scores you a copy of the game and helps them hit another stretch goal before the clock runs out! Check it out here!

Thanks so much for reading! Don't forget to tell your friends about us by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, and Instagram as well as subscribing over on the right!

Adventure Maximus! Need We Say More?

by Jeremiah Kickstarter featured a campaign yesterday that really caught our attention, and while we will be doing our regular Kickstarter weekly post tomorrow, we couldn't help but write about this campaign today!

Adventure Maximus, is a quick-playing RPG for...KIDS! The campaign touts that characters are created in 2 minutes, and the kids can not only play the game, but they can be the game master and run the game!

Normally we don't cover RPGs here on TOG, but the concept of there being an RPG for the kids has really caught our attention. It seems to be very appropriately themed for the youngsters as well. Nothing too creepy or scary—the goblins are known for eating waffles, etc. I (Jeremiah) am certainly not the biggest RPG fan in the world, but Adventure Maximus seems to take the fun elements of the genre and package them in a kid-friendly way. (Creativity, story telling, team work, using your imagination!)

The campaign is cruising along, and for $15 you can get a print-and-play version of the game, or for $35 you can score a physical copy along with all the stretch goals they hit.

Definitely worth taking a look at this one, which you can do RIGHT HERE!

Thanks for reading, please check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! And don't forget to subscribe to TOG over on the right! Have a great day!

Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation: The Reprint!

by Firestone  

Good news, fans of awesome 2-player games! Fantasy Flight just announced that they're reprinting the Reiner Knizia game Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. I talked about this game way back in August when Jeremiah and I posted about our favorite 2-player games. I lamented the fact that it was out-of-print, but it's coming back later this year!

It’s similar to Stratego, in that you have pieces that only face you, so your opponent’s not sure who’s who. Each piece is a character, and each character has special abilities. The good guys are trying to get Frodo across the board to Mordor, and the bad guys are trying to kill Frodo. Superb game.

Here are the differences in the new edition—from the press release:

• The rulebook contains additional clarifications to make the game even more accessible and easy to play.
• This compact new edition features bridge-sized cards, as well as scaled down character stands and tiles, with new character cards to serve as reminders of character abilities. The game board now has visual reminders, such as character limit indicators and darker mountain borders, to help clarify play.
• It features stunning new artwork for variant game Fellowship characters, as well as for several cards.

I don't particularly like the fact that the tiles won't have the special power text on them anymore, but at least you'll be able to play the game again! Save some money in the budget for this one—or add it to your Christmas list.

Thanks for reading! And please, check us out on Facebook and Twitter.