Kennerspiel nominations on Analysis Paralysis

Spiel des Jahres 2025 predictions – Part 2!

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 23:21:26 +0300

The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Sunday, July 13, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2025. As always, there’s six games hoping to win one of the two most important awards in gaming – and one hopeless geek trying to predict which will be the lucky ones. 🤓

I’ve been doing this for five years now and I’ve called eight out of the ten winners correctly, with the second fail happening last year because I just didn’t want to believe the jury would award Spiel des Jahres to the two player game Sky Team. Let’s hope I’ll do better this year, but it’s again a tough choice!

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres 2025

Before we dive into the individual games, let’s look at some numbers to see some objective measures for them – as far as this is possible. What we’ve got at our disposal are the jury’s reviews, recommendations to the S_d_J bot, BoardGameGeek’s average rating and the Bayesian rating. Additionally, I’ve created a poll on BGG where the geeks could have their say:

Game	Jury	R.G	Average	Bayes	Poll
Bomb Busters	8.3 (3)	7.8	8.0	7.1	59.8%
Flip 7	7.0 (1)	5.7	7.2	6.7	35.1%
Krakel Orakel	7.0 (1)	7.3	7.4	5.7	5.2%

The numbers tell a clear story: Bomb Busters is considered the high favourite to win Spiel des Jahres 2025. It’s also top of list for most pundits. But is this position justified? Let’s dive into the details!

Bomb Busters

2–5 players, 30 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (2.0), prediction #1

Players defuse bombs by deducing and cutting unseen wires of different values.

As mentioned before: everybody was talking about Bomb Busters and agreed that it’ll be nominated, so the only question was: Spiel or Kennerspiel? The algorithm was very non-committing at 54% and opinions were equally divided. There’s a couple of aspects worth repeating in this question: first of all, the jury coined the term Kennerspiel and hence kind of gets to decide what games fall under this category. More importantly, they don’t do it by just looking at BGG complexity ratings, but rather by observing the target audience playing the game and hence assessing what games pose a higher barrier to entry than others. In the case of Bomb Busters it’s the training missions that make all the difference: they introduce the concepts at a gentle pace, one at a time, and allow groups to go as deep or as shallow in terms of difficulty as they are comfortable. I’d be willing to place a sizable bet (if I was the gambling kind, which I’m not 🤑) that the people who shout about how hard it is to get into Bomb Busters have skipped the training missions entirely.

In the end, what matters is the jury thought this game is approachable enough to be nominated for Spiel des Jahres, and from my own experience, I agree it’s a very clever and fun game. The jury always emphasises that the latter point is what they really care about, not if they’d give the award to another limited communication co-operative game (after Sky Team last year) nor that the inevitable windfall which comes with the award will again hit the major publisher Pegasus Spiele.

Another aspect that the jury reportedly doesn’t care about, but which would be an important milestone in the internationalisation of the board game hobby, is that Hisashi Hayashi could be the first designer from Asia to win any of the three awards. (Someone correct me please if I overlooked any of the previous winners.)

Flip 7

3–99 players, 20 minutes, 8+ years, light (1.1), prediction #21

Score the cards in front of you, or take another card, risking everything you hold?

After the nomination, I’ve read through the rules, and didn’t really get what would be interesting about this game. Then I’ve tried it on Board Game Arena (BGA) – and I still don’t get it. I’ve been told it develops a whole different dynamic at the table, with people cheering for every card flip – but the same is true for UNO. Spiel des Jahres was always meant to be an ambassador for Kulturgut Spiel – games as cultural assets – and I can’t help but think that Flip 7 would be a failure at that. Flip 7 might have been a great winner in the 80s, but if the jury does decide to award it on Sunday, it would feel like denying the progress in game design in the past decades.

Krakel Orakel

2–8 players, 30 minutes, 10+ years, light (1.1), prediction #7

Can you spot and reveal pictures in a tangle of lines?

Something of a wildcard amongst the nominations, still without English edition announced. I’ve mentioned in the previous article that as a drawing game for people who can’t draw it has strong competition from Pictomania. What I overlooked was the fact that this one’s co-operative, reducing the hurdle for people to engage even further. Overall, this sounds like an appealing package to win Spiel des Jahres, somewhat following along the line of winners we’ve had a couple of years ago, e.g., Just One and Pictures.

Who will win?

I’ll have to go with the herd here and say that any winner other than Bomb Busters would be a surprise. I know Flip 7 has its fans, though I don’t see the appeal, and Krakel Orakel sure sounds nice, but I think the jury will continue the streak of favourite wins.

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres 2025

Let’s take a look at the same metrics as above, but for the Kennerspiel nominees:

Game	Jury	R.G	Average	Bayes	Poll
Endeavor: Deep Sea	8.0 (5)	5.8	8.2	7.4	43.9%
Faraway	7.6 (5)	7.1	7.6	7.2	41.8%
Looot	6.8 (4)	5.0	7.1	6.2	14.3%

Those numbers look much closer than they did for Spiel. Overall, the critical and geek response to Endeavor is stronger, but Faraway might be more up the jury’s alley. Let’s take a closer look at each nominee!

Endeavor: Deep Sea

1–4 players, 60–120 minutes, 10+ years, medium (2.9), prediction #8

Lead your research institute to explore ocean depths and publish your findings!

It’s another game I haven’t played yet, though its predecessor has been sitting on my shelf of shame for ages now. It’s quite interesting that the jury themselves pointed out when revealing the longlist that this game is very much on the heavy side of Kennerspiel, but then proceeded to nominate it anyways. It’s even more curious when you consider that last year’s winner Daybreak has almost the same complexity rating on BGG.

In the end, no matter how enthusiastic the critical response to this game is, this big box with its myriad of icons might just be a tad too intimidating for the target audience of Kennerspiel.

Faraway

2–6 players, 15–30 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (1.9), prediction #3

Explore a mysterious land and fulfill quests on your way back.

Faraway already appeared on some prediction lists last year because it took a while for the German edition to be released, so the international buzz has pretty much eased up by now. Overall, this is a pretty standard engine builder – with the twist of the “reverse” scoring of the cards.

I’ve only played this game on BGA, so take my impression with a grain of salt, but I’m not blown away by Faraway. I guess I’m generally not too much into engine builders and that twist isn’t particularly exciting after the first game or two, when it’s novelty and surprise implications have become familiar. At that point working out the best card to play becomes mostly tedious.

That said, it does play quickly and has some interesting decisions to offer, so there’s that.

Or I’m just a little grumpy at this title for giving me an Ohrwurm of the best worst song of all times… 🤷

Looot

2–4 players, 35 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (2.1), prediction #30

Gather resources and capture buildings to develop your fjord.

Another game I’ve only played on BGA and another one which I think is just fine. I’ve read somewhere someone comparing it to games Reiner Knizia used to design, which is back-handed but fitting compliment. Choosing and laying the tiles sure offer a lot of choices, and I can see how they might be appealing to some people, but once you’ve understood how the different criteria interact, optimising your point booty becomes another tedious exercise.

I probably sound more negative towards the game than I actually am – the game really seems to be fine – but the nomination did come as a bit of a surprise given that even the jury members seemed to be rather lukewarm on it.

Who will win?

This is a really tough one. From the overall reviews, it seems Endeavor would have the edge, but it also appears to be just outside what a Kennerspiel usually demands of the players, so I’ll put my money on Faraway. Seeing Looot win would be a huge surprise.

Alright, that’s it for the predictions, we’ll see each other again in a couple of days to discuss the results. I know I’ll be glued to the livestream. 🤩

Spiel des Jahres 2025 nominations

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Tue, 20 May 2025 17:00:00 +0200

Nominations are out! The jury selected a total of sixteen games for their longlist, nine for Spiel des Jahres and seven for Kennerspiel des Jahres. Out of these games, three games each are nominated for the two awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 13.

Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad) my predictions were and if the agreed with our Kennerspiel score.

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres 2025

Bomb Busters

2–5 players, 30 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (2.0), 54% Kennerspiel, prediction #1

Players defuse bombs by deducing and cutting unseen wires of different values.

Bomb Busters was probably the top favourite pretty much on everybody’s list, and the jury agreed. It did not agree with the algorithm’s prediction that this is a Kennerspiel (more on that below).

Flip 7

3–99 players, 20 minutes, 8+ years, light (1.1), 99% Spiel, prediction #21

Score the cards in front of you, or take another card, risking everything you hold?

By their own claim “the greatest card game of all time”, by some other folks’ opinions dull and random.

Krakel Orakel

2–8 players, 30 minutes, 10+ years, light (1.1), 100% Spiel, prediction #7

Can you spot and reveal pictures in a tangle of lines?

Reportedly a drawing game which is still fun for people who cannot draw. With Pictomania, there’s some strong competition in that genre.

Spiel des Jahres recommendations

Agent Avenue (prediction #8)
Castle Combo (#4)
Cities (#29)
Foxy (no prediction): The inevitable “game that got away” and wasn’t on my prediction list at all.
Perfect Words (#43)
The Animals of Baker Street (#19): One of those late arrivals which is probably already forgotten internationally. I think it’s quite charming and I’m happy it got some recongition by the jury.

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres 2025

Endeavor: Deep Sea

1–4 players, 60–120 minutes, 10+ years, medium (2.9), 100% Kennerspiel, #8

Lead your research institute to explore ocean depths and publish your findings!

Interestingly, this is a re-re-implementation of Endeavor, which was recommended back in 2010. The jury has a bit of an inconsistent attitude towards remakes.

Faraway

2–6 players, 15–30 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (1.9), 67% Kennerspiel, #3

Explore a mysterious land and fulfill quests on your way back.

The nomination that allows you to tick off the “that’s supposed to be a Kennerspiel?” on your bingo card.

Looot

2–4 players, 35 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (2.1), 92% Spiel, #30

Gather resources and capture buildings to develop your fjord.

Not going to lie: Looot’s description sounds like the most generic Eurogame imaginable.

Kennerspiel des Jahres recommendations

The Gang (#1 Spiel prediction): I hadn’t played this one when I made my predictions, but did so in the meantime, and really had a blast. It also made me realise that the algorithm probably got its Kennerspiel score wrong, and had to post about it lest my insights go without receipts… 🤓😉
Kauri (#45)
Medical Mysteries: Miami Flatline (#27)
Zenith (#99)

How good were the predictions?

This really is a drama in three acts: the decision of Kennerspiel or not, the algorithm picking the longlist, and finally my guts picking the shortlist.

Kennerspiel score

The algorithm classified thirteen out of sixteen games on the longlists correctly (Foxy was completely absent from the predictions, but its Kennerspiel score in the database is 1%), with Bomb Busters actually on the red list (as predicted in the last article), and Looot and The Gang on the anthracite list (as predicted on social media). 81% accurate isn’t bad for a simple model classifying a vague concept.

Longlist

This was a pretty poor year for the algorithm (again). It caught correctly three out of nine games on the Spiel longlist (plus one from the other list) and two out of seven on the Kennerspiel longlist (again plus one from the other list). Just 31% accurate is really bad, and even 44% accurate when counting the games from the wrong lists isn’t great. I thought the changes to the algorithm were working great, but clearly there’s still a lot of room for improvement.

I actually thought this year, I’ll also calculate some “proper” performance metric, which is one of the standard tool to evaluate how good a given ranking is: the Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (nDCG). I won’t get into the details here, but the general idea is to rank item (as we did with our predictions), then score them according to their relevance (in this case we give all games on the longlists a relevance of 1, with all other games getting 0). The higher our ranking sorts the recommended games, the higher the nDCG, and the better we consider the ranking. So, here are the results of the past years:

2021: 0.655
2022: 0.795
2023: 0.669
2024: 0.803
2025: 0.718

So, in that respect this year was a pretty average year for the predictions. It got somewhat redeemed by the misses being overall still pretty high on the full prediction lists.

Shortlist

Again, a poor performance: I’ve only predicted two out of six nominations correctly (one on the wrong list), matching the (bottom) performance from last year. Have I lost my edge? Well, I know it won’t stop me from coming back next year with more predictions.

That’s it for now, we’ll be back soon with a little more in-depth analyses on the six nominees and their chances of winning an award.

Spiel des Jahres 2024 predictions – Part 2!

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 12:00:00 +0300

The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Sunday, July 21, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024. We’re blessed with another year of very strong games and I’m certainly very excited to learn what games will win the two awards.

I’ve been doing this for four years now and I’ve called seven out of the eight winners correctly. No reason to rest on any laurels – there’s another batch of awards coming up, and this year might be the closest race yet!

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres 2024

Game	Jury	R.G	Average	Bayes	Poll
Captain Flip	7.2 (5)	5.3	7.0	6.0	28.9%
In the Footsteps of Darwin	7.0 (3)	5.1	7.4	6.2	13.2%
Sky Team	8.8 (4)	7.0	8.2	7.5	57.9%

Obviously, Sky Team is the high favourite according to all metrics. But will the jury follow the numbers? Let’s take a closer look at all the nominees and their pros and cons.

Captain Flip

2–5 players, 20 minutes, 8+ years, light (1.1)

Hoist your flag, recruit a colorful crew, and earn as many gold coins as you can.

The first release by PlayPunk, co-founded by hall of fame member Antoine Bauza, immediately landed them their first nomination. This game is doing to Paolo Mori’s Libertalia what Draftosaurus did to 7 Wonders. That’s a lot of Spiel des Jahres cred in just two sentences.

On the surface, there isn’t all that much to this game of flipping tiles and filling your ship with a colourful set of characters. It’s quite random and solitaire – yet this design somehow manages to pull the magic trick of keeping everyone around the table invested in every single draw and flip of a tile. It’s fast, it’s immediate, it’s fun – in other words: it’s perfect Spiel des Jahres material.

In the Footsteps of Darwin

2–5 players, 20–30 minutes, 8+ years, medium light (1.6)

Assist Charles Darwin with his research for On the Origins of Species.

I’ll admit I have neither played nor heard all that much about this game until Ben Maddox’s interview which I’ve mentioned in the previous article. One very interesting outcome was that In the Footsteps of Darwin was designed from the onset very intentionally with winning awards in mind. So far this plan seems to (almost) work out: The game got nominated for both As d’Or and Spiel des Jahres, widely regarded as the most important awards in board gaming. It didn’t win the former, but now has the chance to win the latter.

Sky Team

2 players, 15 minutes, 12+ years, medium light (2.0)

Pilot and co-pilot work together to land planes.

Sky Team is only the third two-player-game to be nominated for either Spiel and Kennerspiel after Jambo and Targi. Of course, neither of them won, and I’ve already made the somewhat bold statement during the nominations predictions that Sky Team “has next to no chance of winning”. I’m not so sure of that anymore. For starters, there were similar sentiments that card games or co-ops wouldn’t have a chance of winning Spiel des Jahres – until they did. Also, the jury stated that one can simply play this game in teams – given that MicroMacro and Dorfromantik are essentially solo games that play well with a group, I’d say this logic checks out.

Of course, the strongest argument for Sky Team is its overwhelming reception, both within the geek community (it’s en route of breaking into the BGG top 100) and the jury (just look at the phenominal average score of 8.8).

One last thought about it being nominated on the red list even though most pundits had it under anthracite. First off, it should prove that Spiel des Jahres isn’t nearly as shallow as the grognards want us to believe. Second, it shows that the question of Spiel or Kennerspiel is much less about complexity and much more about approachability. The studio did a great job of providing a clear yet compelling first game experience, while literally hiding the extra material (and complexity) at first.

Who will win?

It may be my ignorance, but In the Footsteps of Darwin is for me the outsider amongst the nominees. I have a really hard time deciding between the other two games. Sky Team appears to be quite an exceptional game, but maybe the whole two-player-curse is still too much of a burden. In the end, my (proverbial) money is on Captain Flip – it’d be the winner most in keeping with the most recent choices.

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024

Let’s take a look at the same metrics as above, but for the Kennerspiel nominees:

Game	Jury	R.G	Average	Bayes	Poll
Daybreak	8.3 (4)	4.5	7.8	6.5	40.8%
The Guild of Merchant Explorers	7.3 (3)	6.9	7.7	7.0	24.8%
Ticket to Ride Legacy	8.0 (2)	7.1	8.8	7.3	34.4%

Daybreak hasn’t been available in retail for very long (not at all yet in Europe outside Germany), which harms its rating related metrics. This way, Ticket to Ride Legacy looks like the favourite by those numbers, but Daybreak would be the frontrunner according to the jury and the poll. Again, let’s take a look at the nominees in details to understand their chances of winning.

Daybreak

1–4 players, 60–120 minutes, 10+ years, medium (3.0)

Cooperatively decarbonize the planet and create resilient societies.

I had the good fortune of trying out Daybreak at SPIEL Essen last year. I’ll admit, when I sat down at the table, I was overwhelmed by the flurry of icons. 😵‍💫 But quickly, the gears all fit together and the beautiful thematic touches won over my heart before we’d finish the second round. This design is a masterpiece and the way it manages to make a statement without forgetting to be a fun game experience is quite outstanding.

This doesn’t mean it’s perfect – game play can feel fairly solitaire and some thematic choices aren’t to everybody’s taste. Some called the game too easy, other too hard. Some find the heavy topic of the climate crisis disturbing their escapism, others find the game overly optimistic and relying too much on technical advances for its solutions. And pretty much every German seems to take offence with nuclear power being presented as a green source of energy. So should this game receive the award, I think it’s safe to say it’s going to generate some conversations, both in public and around the Christmas tree. In my opinion, this is the strongest argument for making Daybreak the Kennerspiel 2024.

The Guild of Merchant Explorers

1–4 players, 45 minutes, 14+ years, medium light (2.0)

Explore strange lands, establish trade routes, and search for treasure.

This game is so old, not only did I already predict it to be on the longlist last year, but reportedly even its German publisher had already marked it as “out of print”. Now it’s nominated for the biggest award in board gaming and can hope for many more print runs to come.

Despite its age, I still haven’t played it, so I don’t have much more to say about The Guild of Merchant Explorers. My impression is that it was received very warmly and the nomination certainly wasn’t a surprise (other than it not being clear what year it belongs to), but I haven’t heard of much enthusiasm either, so a win would come unexpectedly.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West

2–5 players, 20–90 minutes, 10+ years, medium (2.5)

Build train lines across the United States in a twelve-game campaign.

This game might be the first hobby board game I’d call a true blockbuster title: the biggest publisher in town hires some of the most famous designers to make one of the most popular titles even bigger. Marvelisation in action. Of course, just as Marvel movies can be perfectly executed and highly entertaining cinema, Ticket to Ride Legacy has received high praises for its game play experience.

This experience comes at a cost though. The game retails for 100 euros or more, which is an extremely steep ask for an award that otherwise emphasises approachability every chance they get. It would be very disappointing if the jury displayed this kind of blatant disregard of the economic reality of many of its target audience.

And then there’s the issue of the game’s narrative: Unlike in classic Ticket to Ride, where you’re simply riding the existing railroads, the legacy version is all about building and expanding westwards. For that, it heavily relies on the common tropes of the “Old West”, which is often romanticised in American culture. The designers themselves acknowledge omitting its darker side in a pretty tired note at the end of the rulebook:

Native American tribes were dispossessed and killed. Railroad laborers were exploited, mistreated, and injured. While designing this experience, we found no way to include these elements within the lighter theme of the game.

The German edition made it somehow even worse by translating “light” as “shallow”. I don’t say that every game needs to address every possible problematic aspect of its setting nor that the jury shouldn’t have nominated TtR Legacy because of it, but a note like this just seems like a poor excuse. Harald Schrapers, the jury chairman, wrote an essay in Spielbox 2024/2 expressing his disappointment about the thematic embedding – and yet he still ranks TtR Legacy amongst his top games of 2024.

Who will win?

I guess I made my position pretty clear: if the jury takes their own mission of promoting Kulturgut Spiel seriously, they need to hand the award to Daybreak, period. Even leaving the somewhat political considerations aside, there’s too many aspects speaking against Ticket to Ride Legacy and not enough for The Guild of Merchant Explorers, so my clear favourite on all acounts is Daybreak.

I feel I’ve leaned pretty far out of the window, especially given that I called this the closest race yet. 😅 We shall see if my predictions come true on July 21 – I’ll be even more excited than usual!

Spiel des Jahres 2024 nominations

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 17:00:00 +0200

Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad) my predictions were and if the agreed with our Kennerspiel score.

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres 2024

Captain Flip

2–5 players, 20 minutes, 8+ years, light (1.1), 100% Spiel

Hoist your flag, recruit a colorful crew, and earn as many gold coins as you can.

In the Footsteps of Darwin

2–5 players, 20–30 minutes, 8+ years, medium light (1.6), 97% Spiel

Assist Charles Darwin with his research for On the Origins of Species.

Sky Team

2 players, 15 minutes, 12+ years, medium light (2.0), 66% Kennerspiel

Pilot and co-pilot work together to land planes.

Spiel des Jahres recommendations

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024

Daybreak

1–4 players, 60–120 minutes, 10+ years, medium (3.0), 99% Kennerspiel

Cooperatively decarbonize the planet and create resilient societies.

The Guild of Merchant Explorers

1–4 players, 45 minutes, 14+ years, medium light (2.0), 95% Kennerspiel

Explore strange lands, establish trade routes, and search for treasure.

Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West

2–5 players, 20–90 minutes, 10+ years, medium (2.5), 94% Kennerspiel

Build train lines across the United States in a twelve-game campaign.

Kennerspiel des Jahres recommendations

How good were the predictions?

This really is a drama in three acts: the decision of Kennerspiel or not, the algorithm picking the longlist, and finally my guts picking the shortlist.

Kennerspiel score

This was a bad year for the Kennerspiel score… 🙈 It classified four out of sixteen games wrong: It saw Sky Team and Harmonies as Kennerspiel and Botanicus and Ritual as Spiel. An acuracy of 75% is pretty poor – the only solace I can take is that I correctly saw Sky Team on the red list… 🤷

Longlist

It’s not getting better… 😅 The algorithm picked out only three out of nine games on the Spiel longlist, plus one game for the wrong award, plus one “honourable mention”. Things look a little brighter for Kennerspiel where the algorithm predicted four out of seven entries, plus one honourable mention. In summary, this would be a 44% hit rate (63% if we count all those pluses). In a year where I was more confident about the longlist than in any previous edition, it’s a bit disappointing.

There’s some good news though: 11, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 22. Those are the positions on their respective prediction lists for seven out of the eight misses. I’ll call those pretty close – Ritual on #292 of the Spiel list is the only catastrophic miss.

Shortlist

Again, not great… Only two out of six nominees called correctly, one of them on the wrong list. That’s my worst year so far – the score so far is two years with three and two years with four correct predictions. I did announce this more or less, but it’s still a bit disappointing. I’ve got some ideas how to improve the algorithm for next year, so let’s hope it’ll be better… 🤞

That’s it for now, we’ll be back soon with a little more in-depth analyses on the six nominees and their chances of winning an award.

Spiel des Jahres 2023 predictions – Part 2!

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 15:32:50 +0300

The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Sunday, July 16, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023. We’re blessed with another year of very strong games and I’m certainly very excited to learn what games will win the two awards.

After two years of calling both winners correctly, I’ve missed the Spiel des Jahres 2022 winner Cascadia last year, so I hope I’ll do better this year. 😎

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres 2023

Before we dive into the individual games, let’s look at some numbers to see some objective measures for them – as far as this is possible. What we’ve got at our disposal are the recommendations to the S_d_J bot, BoardGameGeek’s average rating and the Bayesian rating. Additionally, I’ve created a poll on BGG where the geeks could have their say:

Game	R.G	Average	Bayes	Poll
Dorfromantik	7.0	7.8	6.5	69.6%
Fun Facts	6.2	7.0	6.0	13.0%
Next Station	7.5	7.5	6.5	17.4%

This looks like a head-to-head between Dorfromantik and Next Station: London. Or could this be an underdog win for Fun Facts? Let’s take a closer look at the nominees.

Dorfromantik: The Board Game

1–6 players, 30–60 minutes, 8+ years, medium light (1.7)

There’s a lot of buzz going on around this video game adaptation that the jury describes as a “feel-good-game”. It sure feels soothing how the landscape evolves over the course of the game, while presenting an interesting challenge to score as many points as possible. The campaign mode with its unlockable content offers some fresh challenges every time and provides a great excuse to come back to the game again and again.

I definitely had a lovely time playing through the campaign for eleven straight evenings. I even found myself looking forward to incorporating that new tile I just unlocked into my strategy for the next game and chase a new highscore. Sure, for the last game or two it did feel like I was mostly going through the motions just to tick off the last few boxes, but on the other hand: what was the last game you played for eleven days in a row?

But hidden in there is also my biggest concern: for me, Dorfromantik is essentially a solo game. Of course, you can discuss with your group where to place a tile, but that’s true for any solo game – by that logic, they’re all just “co-operative games you can play on your own”.

One final question remains: Will the jury award Spiel des Jahres to another comforting hex-tile-laying game one year after Cascadia? They always claim that they don’t concern themselves with such considerations, and the two games do play out quite differently. Still, the award is meant as an ambassador for the board gaming hobby, so highlighting the breadth of what a game could be beyond plopping hexes on the table yet again can’t be entirely dismissed.

Fun Facts

4–8 players, 30 minutes, 8+ years, light (1.0)

The pitch of a party game that allows you to get to know your group, but in a controlled and gentle manner, seems to be a perfect match for a Spiel des Jahres. Of course, there isn’t “enough game” to it for the ‘geek crowd, so don’t be fooled by the numbers above. The jury definitely has a fondness for very direct games that mostly play above the table: in the interactions between the players.

Still, I was a little surprised by the nomination. Whilst the reviews were by and large very positive, the game seems to work best with players you already somewhat know. In a fairly random group, the game can fall flat since you have no reference points to go on about when comparing one player’s answer to another one’s. A Spiel des Jahres should work for anybody, so that caveat seems significant to me and puts Fun Facts at some disadvantage in the competition for the red meeple.

Next Station: London

1–4 players, 25–30 minutes, 8+ years, light (1.4)

By my count, this is the forth “random’n’write” game to be nominated for either award over the past decade, and to be honest, I’m not sure what this particular variant adds to the genre. I do find it very elegant how the fact that every players draws a different underground line every round breaks the symmetry such that everybody’s tube map will look different despite following the same cards. But as far as the actual gameplay goes, I found the very similar Voll Verplant to be the more intriguing puzzle. My final grump is that a winning map looks nothing like an actual underground map: the scoring incentivises players to zig-zag through quarters and back and forth across the river, and that’s just not how an efficient public transport system is designed.

This is not to say Next Station: London wouldn’t be a fine game and a deserving nominee, but I’d be fairly disappointed if it did win the award that puts it in line with such giants as CATAN and Carcassonne.

OK, one more complaint, then I’ll shut up: I had a hard time learning the game from the rule book, and I’ve played over 600 different games. How would this fair with the average gamer?

Also, there’s zero interaction between players. (Yeah, I lied, I wasn’t done.) Like, not even a race for completing an objective first or anything. Why would the jury shout from the roof that games are a cultural and social good worth studying and promoting, just to put the spotlight on a game that has players silently ignore each other for half an hour whilst drawing the least efficient tube maps possible?

Again, not a bad game by any stretch, I just don’t see it as Spiel des Jahres material.

Who will win?

Alright, I guess it doesn’t come as a surprise that I don’t think Next Station: London will (or rather: should) win. As I already said, Fun Facts is in some respects the perfect Spiel des Jahres, still my money is on Dorfromantik. It has a couple of things going for itself:

The jury clearly disagrees with my assessment of it being a solo (only) game, so that doesn’t seem to be an obstacle.
Maybe being a solo game isn’t all that bad? Maybe it’s time to highlight this part of the hobby? But then again, Harald Schrapers, chair of the jury, wrote a whole editorial on how he’s “totally not interested” in solo gaming (spielbox 2019/7).
From a social aspect, maybe the strongest draw could be the promise of bringing video gamers into the analogue tabletop world. As an ambassador for the hobby, this could be the most valuable asset of them all.

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023

Let’s take a look at the same metrics as above, but for the Kennerspiel nominees:

Game	R.G	Average	Bayes	Poll
Challengers!	6.4	7.2	6.3	29.8%
IKI	6.6	7.7	6.9	14.9%
Planet Unknown	6.7	8.0	7.2	55.3%

The numbers clearly favour Planet Unknown to win Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023. Will the jury agree with the wisdom of the crowd?

Challengers!

1–8 players, 45 minutes, 8+ years, medium light (1.8)

This one was a bit of a surprise to the algorithm, but not because it was nominated, but on what list. It had a 0% Kennerspiel score, and unlike some other decisions by the algorithm, in this case I agreed with its classification. The cartoonish appearance and the lack of player agency during large portions of the game seem much better suited for a Spiel than a Kennerspiel. And indeed, when presenting the longlist in ascending order of difficulty, the jury mentioned Challengers! as the simplest amongst the Kennerspiel recommendations, i.e., the one that would have been most likely to leap over to the other award. Having played this game now with more players, I do see where the jury is coming from: there’s a lot of details going on that aren’t intuitive on first playthrough. What’s worse: In the usual setting, where one player explains the rules to the rest of the group, you might have up to three head-to-head battles with new players left entirely to their own devices and being confused what’s the difference between “gaining the flag”, “in flag possession” and “on flag loss”.

So, while I do think that this game plays out like a Spiel for skilled players, it presents the barriers of entry like a Kennerspiel for casual players, and that’s what matters most for the classification of the award type.

But once that barrier is cleared, I think this is quite an exceptional game, certainly in the sense that there isn’t really anything like it out there. The jury mentions that this is a Kennerspiel that creates a party game atmosphere, and I think once you buy into the mindset and let go of control of your team, it’s really entertaining to come up with interesting combos, just to see your team completely fail to execute your brilliant strategy on the pitch.

Of course, there’s a lot of luck and randomness involved, which can lead to frustrating moments, but this is a game that plays out so quickly that it’s not a bug but a feature. There really are a lot of clever little design decisions in there which make this game sing. I’m certainly already excited to see how Challengers! 2 will stir up the formula.

IKI

2–4 players, 60–90 minutes, 14+ years, medium (3.0)

This is the second edition of a game that itself re-implements Edo Craftsman Story, a game that is almost a decade old. In a time that’s dominated by the cult of the new and where a second print run is the exception, it’s nice to see so much appreciation for a game past its initial hype cycle.

I haven’t played IKI yet, so don’t have much to say about the gameplay. The jury points out how the mechanics actually capture the spirit of being a trader in Japan at the time, which sounds like an intriguing proposition.

The last thing I’ll have to say is that the complexity seems on the upper end of what the jury would consider for a Kennerspiel. Not out of the question, but it does make a win for IKI less likely.

Planet Unknown

1–6 players, 60–80 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (2.2)

Another game I haven’t played, but the buzz is quite strong. The combination of tile laying and tech tree seems fresh enough. Opinions are split on the central carousel that determines what tiles are available to each player every round – both if it was necessary to blow up the price of the game like this and whether calling it the Lazy S.U.S.A.N. space station is a clever pun or a little trite.

By all means, the reviews are strong and both weight and length seem to hit the sweet spot of a Kennerspiel, so Planet Unknown is definitely a strong contender.

Who will win?

I think it’s clear that all three nominees are very strong and have a realistic chance of winning – none of them would be a big surprise. But in the end I’ll go with the title that had the strongest reviews and was the frontrunner right from the start: Challengers! It’s the most unusual game amongst the nominees (which isn’t necessarily something the jury cares about, see the very safe picks from last year), but I think in many respects it can push the public’s perception of what a board game can be and do, which is something the jury cares about deeply. (At least I interpret their choises this way… 😉)

Let’s see if this bet-against-the-odds will pay off for me. We’ll be wiser on Sunday! I hope you’re as excited as I am. 😎

Spiel des Jahres 2023 nominations

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 23:20:42 +0300

Nominations are out! The jury selected a total of fifteen games for their longlist, ten for Spiel des Jahres and five for Kennerspiel des Jahres. Out of these games, three games each are nominated for the two awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 16.

Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad) my predictions were and if the agreed with our Kennerspiel score.

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres 2023

Dorfromantik: The Board Game

1–6 players, 30–60 minutes, 8+ years, medium light (1.7), 100% Spiel

Probably the strongest contender for a nomination beforehand. No surprises here…

Fun Facts

4–8 players, 30 minutes, 8+ years, light (1.0), 100% Spiel

Together with That’s Not a Hat, designer Kasper Lapp had two entries with quite some buzz, though the algorithm wouldn’t pick it up and placed Fun Facts on #36 of the predictions.

Next Station: London

1–4 players, 25–30 minutes, 8+ years, light (1.4), 100% Spiel

This was the #1 prediction, so the nomination is a logical consequence, even though I didn’t see it being nominated.

Spiel des Jahres recommendations

Akropolis: Having won the As d’Or and being placed #5 by the algorithm, “just” a recommendation is almost disappointing… 😉
HITSTER: Only #18 by the algorithm, but I squeezed it in as an honourable mention. This could’ve been a strong contender for Spiel des Jahres, but it works best with a paid Spotify subscription, which really hampered its chances for a nomination.
KuZOOkA: I’ve even had this down for a nomination, so a recommendation was expected in the end.
MANTIS: This year’s obligatory jury suprise, just #173 prediction according to algorithm. Another simple card game by the Exploding Kittens publishers.
QE: For me this was a candidate for a Kennerspiel nomination – in the end, the algorithm was right, predicting a place on the longlist for Spiel des Jahres.
Sea Salt & Paper: At #17 of the predictions a near miss. Another fairly simple card game that was on many commentators’ lists.
That’s Not a Hat: As mentioned with Fun Facts, this was another much discussed game. At #20, the algorithm actually gave it the better odds.

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres 2023

Challengers!

1–8 players, 45 minutes, 8+ years, medium light (1.8), 0% Kennerspiel

Challengers! was definitely one of the jury members’ darlings and couldn’t possibly be absent from any predictions list. The algorithm put it on #16, I saw it amongst the nominations – for Spiel des Jahres… We’ll have more things to discuss on this topic in the follow-up predictions article.

IKI

2–4 players, 60–90 minutes, 14+ years, medium (3.0), 100% Kennerspiel

Even though the algorithm placed it #2 amongst the predictions, this game feels a bit like an underdog, partially because it was originally released in 2015, but didn’t receive much attention until its got a second edition. Now it’s nominated for the most prestigious award in board gaming!

Planet Unknown

1–6 players, 60–80 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (2.2), 7% Kennerspiel

The only Kennerspiel nomination I got dead-on right, even though the algorithm placed it only on #21 – again for the wrong award…

Kennerspiel des Jahres recommendations

Council of Shadows: I even thought a nomination was possible, even though the algorithm placed it only #82. In the end probably a bit too heavy for a nomination.
Mindbug: First Contact: Jury surprises, part 2. This one the algorithm had only as prediction #101. I can’t say I’ve heard much else about the game otherwise either, though it has a very famous name amongst its design team…

Special Awards 2023

Unlock!: Game Adventures

1–5 players, 30–60 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (2.4), 100% Kennerspiel

The jury also awarded two special awards this year, the first in five years and the first ever for a Kinderspiel. This honour goes to the Unlock! series in general, and to their latest installment in particular, which lifts the concept on a wonderful meta level by choosing the three popular games Mysterium, Ticket to Ride and Pandemic as background stories.

At this point in the history of Spiel des Jahres it is almost a running gag that Pandemic designer Matt Leacock has never won the main award. He was nominated three times with various Pandemic variants and received said last special award for Pandemic Legacy: Season 2. Now his game inspired another special award winner – but still no main award. Maybe the jury waits for Season 13 for that?

How good were the predictions?

This really is a drama in three acts: the decision of Kennerspiel or not, the algorithm picking the longlist, and finally my guts picking the shortlist.

Kennerspiel score

Of the fifteen games on the two longlists, the algorithm classified two wrong – both nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres: Challengers! and Planet Unknown. The former was sorted as the lightest amongst the connoisseur games as presented by the jury, so at least that seems like a near miss, even though the algorithm was 100% convinced it should be on the Spiel des Jahres list. 🙈 Still, overall 87% correct ain’t too bad.

Longlist

This one’s pretty bad… 😅 The algorithm predicted a mere six out of fifteen games (40%) correctly. I can at least claim for myself that I predicted or mentioned honourably a further four games, bumping the accuracy to 67%, which is somewhat in line with previous years.

Shortlist

It’s not getting any better. This year, I only called three out of six nominations correctly – one of them for the wrong award. Two out of those predictions were “manual overrides” because the algorithm didn’t pick up those games at all. Overall, the weakest year so far for my predictions, it appears I need to adjust the algorithms a little bit.

That’s it for now, we’ll be back soon with a little more in-depth analyses on the six nominees and their chances of winning an award.

Spiel des Jahres 2022 predictions – Part 2!

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0300

The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Saturday, July 16, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2022. We’re blessed with another year of very strong games and I’m certainly very excited to learn what games will win the two awards.

I’m proud to say that I’ve called both awards correctly for two years running, so there is a bit of pressure to keep up the streak. 😅 So without further ado, let’s look at the nominees.

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres 2022

Game	R.G	Average	Bayes	Poll
Cascadia	8.1	8.0	7.6	77.8%
SCOUT	6.9	7.7	6.5	13.6%
Top Ten	7.2	7.6	6.2	8.6%

No doubt, the numbers are in favour of Cascadia. But will the jury agree? Let’s look at the nominees in a little more detail.

Cascadia

1–4 players, 30–45 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (1.9)

As mentioned, Cascadia was high on everybody’s list from the beginning. This tile-laying game of creating landscapes filled with animals certainly hit a nerve with the geek community: it’s currently ranked #68 overall on BGG and #1 in abstract games.

Despite these high praises and the strong numbers, I feel like there are a lot of caveats here. First, our Kennerspiel score was a little undecided as to what award it should be nominted in, so that speaks for a Spiel on the heavier side. Not a negative per se, but the jury did favour very light games over the past years for the family award. Also that classification as an abstract game isn’t particularly favourable: it exposes the fact that the setting is nothing but an excuse to draw cute animals on the tiles.

None of this matters if the gameplay was an overwhelming experience. But when reading through the jury’s reviews, the tone isn’t exactly enthusiastic. While everybody seems to have a good time, Cascadia doesn’t leave a lasting impression.

When you think of Spiel des Jahres as an ambassador for the hobby board gaming, I don’t think Cascadia is the best game for this job. Overall, it might be a fun, clever puzzle, but it also has a slightly dry and geeky aura to it that might fail to pull in new players.

SCOUT

2–5 players, 15 minutes, 9+ years, light (1.4)

As soon as the nomination for SCOUT was announced, the jokes started to come in where on the tiny box the publisher would even put the red meeple. There certainly was a time when a small box card game would have been considered without chances of winning Spiel des Jahres, but Hanabi proved that this certainly isn’t the case anymore.

Card games do have some advantages: they’re cheap, portable and don’t intimidate anyone. But all accounts, SCOUT also has some very clever mechanisms going for itself.

Still, I would consider this to be the dark horse in this year’s race, though it would be a great service to the hobby if the jury showcased this gem from Japan to the Western markets.

Top Ten

4–9 players, 30 minutes, 14+ years, light (1.1)

Top Ten was the nominee that filled the “not another party game” square in the annual Spiel des Jahres bullshit bingo. I got the impression most geeks saw this as another variation of Wavelength and glanced over it. But when reading through the reviews, they’re full of testimonies of joy and laughter. What better motivation to get people to the table?

Of course, there are always caveats. Maybe most importantly, a game like this requires the group to come together and bring the game alive with their creativity. That’s not to everyone’s liking, but the fact that the people around the table matter more than the mechanics is still a plus in my book.

The other, more formal, concern is that this would be the first Spiel des Jahres that doesn’t (claim to) work for three players. I’ve stipulated years ago that a Spiel des Jahres must work for three and four players, full stop. But the jury stated that MicroMacro doesn’t work for four players, and claiming games like Codenames and Just One can be played with three players is just a lie publishers habitually print on boxes. This didn’t stop the jury then and it shouldn’t stop them now.

Who will win?

I guess you don’t need to read between the lines above, my favourite for Spiel des Jahres 2022 is Top Ten. It just fits best in line with past winners: approachable, quick, fun – the best games of the three to bring all kinds of people together around the table. By all means, Cascadia and SCOUT seem strong games that definitely have their fans, but my feeling tells me that Top Ten is the kind of game the jury is after.

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres 2022

Let’s take a look at the same metrics as above, but for the Kennerspiel nominees:

Game	R.G	Average	Bayes	Poll
Cryptid	8.6	7.5	7.2	25.0%
Dune: Imperium	6.9	8.3	8.0	52.5%
Living Forest	7.3	7.4	6.3	22.5%

The recommendation algorithm picks Cryptid as its favourite, whilst the geeks choose Dune: Imperium. Or maybe Living Forest will surprise everyone in the end? Let’s take a look at the candidates!

Cryptid

3–5 players, 30–50 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (2.2)

This still is an interesting nomination to me. Logical deduction games haven’t received much attention by the jury in the past, so it’s quite nice they highlight this genre as well. It’s still a tough sale for the general audience: essentially, you’re trying to solve a very cerebral puzzle, and there’s plenty of people who don’t particularly enjoy that kind of pastime.

But even within the genre, I have some reservations about Cryptid: I’ve played it twice, and both times someone at the table understood their clue wrong, which meant the game just completely fell apart. It feels in a way “irresponsible” to “unleash” this game to a wide audience that often will play fast and loose with the rules.

Finally, in the very same genre we’ve also had The Search for Planet X released in Germany recently which I consider to be the stronger game.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually quite like deduction games and Cryptid in particular. Lots of people do – there’s a lot of positive ratings of this relatively old game, so the strong performance for the recommendation algorithm is partially explained by that.

Dune: Imperium

1–4 players, 60–120 minutes, 14+ years, medium (3.0)

There have been much discussions beforehand if the jury would nominate a franchise game. They obviously did, and to paraphrase the jury’s chairman Harald Schrapers, they simply don’t care about these things, only if the game is fun. Many people will agree that Dune: Imperium is – it’s currently ranked as the 15th best game of all times on BGG.

Does this make it the favourite to win Kennerspiel des Jahres 2022? Not necessarily. For starters, it is pretty complex for an award that’s meant to take gamers one (and only one!) step further than the typical Spiel. There’s also some consideration if this combination of deck building and worker placement is too similar to last year’s nominee Lost Ruins of Arnak. I don’t think the jury cares - they might’ve, if Arnak had actually won.

In the end what we have is a fairly complex game with lots of high praises that might be just out of reach for the main award.

Living Forest

1–4 players, 40 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (2.2)

Living Forest has received wider distribution only quite recently, so hasn’t gathered too many ratings and is hence not strongly represented in the recommendations yet. But the jury has given almost unanimously high praises, so don’t make the mistake of overlooking this one.

The mixture of deck building and push-your-luck isn’t particularly new – it’s the same receipe behind Kennerspiel des Jahres 2018 winner The Quacks of Quedlinburg. But Living Forest still manages to create its very distinct spin on those ingredients and adds a pleasant dose of player interaction on top of that.

I’ve heard many experienced games being somewhat lukewarm on Living Forest after a game or two. I obviously don’t want to deny them their opinions, but I believe some of them aren’t quite open to the wonderful journey that the game takes you on as you explore the Living Forest deeper and deeper. During the first game, you might just be happy to draw some cards and build some trees. Then you discover the synergies and create a more efficient engine. Finally, you realise how ever decision you make affects the other players and become fiercely competitive.

I’ve played dozens of games on Board Game Arena and I’m still looking forward to many more!

Who will win?

Again, I think it’s pretty clear from the above that my money is on Living Forest to win Kennerspiel des Jahres 2022. It just hits the sweet spot of a fairly approachable game that offers enough challenges for those who are ready for a bit deeper experience. Cryptid and Dune: Imperium are clearly very strong games in their own right, but both the jury’s and my own enthusiasm quite clearly point towards Living Forest.

So it appears that for both awards I picked the nominee the community considers the least likely. We’ll know more on July 16. This award ceremony will actually mark the first time it’s being held on a Saturday evening and I have the immense honour to be in Berlin for the event. Needless to say, I’m very excited about this. Follow me on Twitter for some live coverage! 😎

Spiel des Jahres 2022 nominations

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Tue, 24 May 2022 17:04:17 +0300

Nominations are out! The jury selected a total of fifteen games for their longlist, nine for Spiel des Jahres and six for Kennerspiel des Jahres. Out of these games, three games each are nominated for the two awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 16.

Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad) my predictions were and if the agreed with our Kennerspiel score.

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres 2022

Cascadia

1–4 players, 30–45 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (1.9), 53% Kennerspiel

It’s probably safe to say this was the most mentioned game for a nomination. The question wasn’t so much if Cascadia would be nominated, but where: our algorithm classified it as a Kennerspiel (just about, more on this below), but the jury put it on the Spiel list in the end. The game has been discussed now so much that many consider it the favourite for the win, but I think the competion is very strong.

SCOUT

2–5 players, 15 minutes, 9+ years, light (1.4), 98% Spiel

SCOUT was one of the game I really had to mention because there were some strong reviews, but the algorithm didn’t quite pick it up. (It was #39 on my predictions list.) Availability seems very patchy and a significant number of commentators could have seen it on the Kennerspiel list instead, so this getting nominated is still a bit of a surprise in the end.

Top Ten

4–9 players, 30 minutes, 14+ years, light (1.1), 98% Spiel

While not entirely new in its core concept, the jury’s reviews of Top Ten were so strong that I was the most certain about this one being nominated. There’s plenty of people who seem unhappy about the prospect of “yet another party game” winning Spiel des Jahres, but I’m sure the jury has a much better insights into what the market craves for than anybody else.

Spiel des Jahres recommendations

7 Wonders: Architects: One of the more expected recommendations. A crowd pleaser without being very exciting or new either.
echoes: The Dancer: I’ve definitely had this series on my radar (if you pardon the pun), but the algorithm put echoes: The Cocktail as the highest bet on #46. By the way: this recommendation “proves” that the jury doesn’t shy away from app assisted games. They care much more about spreading board gaming to wider circles than gatekeeping “the pure lore”.
Magic Rabbit: Every year, the jury has some surprises in store, and this is definitely one of them. According to BGG, it was first released in 2020, and the lack of mentioning it elsewhere meant that our algorithm completely missed it. 🤷 A super quick co-operative deduction game does sound like an intriguing proposition though.
My Gold Mine: The other big surprise on the list. It seems on the border to Kinderspiel, which might partially explain why the algorithm placed it only at #49.
So Clover!: I even saw this as a candidate for a nomination, so the recommendation is well expected.
Trek 12: Himalaya: At #15 on the predictions, I’d call this a near miss. The jury has given the spotlight to many roll & write games over the year, and it appears this one offers enough new ideas to the genre for a recommendation.

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres 2022

Cryptid

3–5 players, 30–50 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (2.2), 74% Kennerspiel

Cryptid was the #1 candidate for the algorithm, so the nomination does not come as a surprise from that perspective, though deduction games haven’t received that much recognition by the jury lately.

Dune: Imperium

1–4 players, 60–120 minutes, 14+ years, medium (3.0), 100% Kennerspiel

The possibility of a nomination for Dune: Imperium was heavily discussed beforehand, but less because of the actual game and more about the question if the jury would give recognition to a game with a strong franchise. Indeed, this hasn’t really happened since The Lord of the Rings more than two decades ago, so this alone speaks volumes to the quality of this game.

Living Forest

1–4 players, 40 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (2.2), 77% Kennerspiel

Following the enthusiastic reviews by jury members, anything but a nomination for Living Forest would have been a surprise. As it stands, these praises also make it the early favourite to win Kennerspiel des Jahres, but there’s still plenty of time until the final decision in July.

Kennerspiel des Jahres recommendations

Ark Nova: As expected, this heavyweight got the “Barrage treatment” – a place on the longlist, but the jury made it clear that this game is outside the scope of a Kennerspiel.
Khôra: Rise of an Empire: While frequently mentioned by other pundits, our algorithm only gave it outsider chances at #38. The theme seems quite bland, but that never stopped the jury before.
Witchstone: At #11 on the predictions list, I’m going to call this one a very near miss. It’s been on many other lists too, so no surprise it got recommended by the jury.

How good were the predictions?

This really is a drama in three acts: the decision of Kennerspiel or not, the algorithm picking the longlist, and finally my guts picking the shortlist.

Kennerspiel score

Out of fifteen games on both longlists, our algorithm classified fourteen in agreement with the jury – that’s 93% accurate. Only Cascadia was marked incorrectly as a Kennerspiel, but its score was merely 53%. So really, the algorithm considered this as a coin toss, as did most commentators, so I’d say that’s a pretty good result for the Kennerspiel score.

Longlist

Overall, I called nine out of fifteen games on the longlist correctly, which matches the result of two years ago and is two short of last year. Five out of nine correct for Spiel (four if you don’t count Cascadia on the wrong list, or even only three since SCOUT didn’t come out of the algorithm) and four out of six for Kennerspiel is a fine result, but clearly this year was less predictable than last.

Shortlist

Just like the past two years, I predicted four out of six nominations correctly in total – I think 67% accurate is a result to celebrate. Even if you don’t count Cascadia, 50% is still pretty good and I’m glad it worked out fine – when I saw the longlist with its numerous surprises, I was afraid I’d be way off this year. 😅

That’s it for now, we’ll be back in July with a little more in-depth analyses on the six nominees and their chances of winning an award.

Spiel des Jahres 2021 predictions – Part 2!

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0300

It’s time! On Monday, July 19, we will finally know which games won Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2021. I really think this is an exciting year with six very strong nominees that all have a lot of arguments going for themselves (and a few against). Even after following the whole year releases very closely, I’m still torn as to who’d be the favourites to win. Algorithms won’t be much help here either – the sample is just too small. So I’ll have to go with my instincts instead… 🤷

Last year I manage to call both awards correctly. Quite a bar to clear again.

Let’s check out the nominees!

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres 2021

Before we dive into the individual games, let’s look at some numbers to see some objective measures for them – as far as this is possible. What we’ve got at our disposal are the recommendations to the S_d_J bot, BoardGameGeek’s average rating, and the Bayesian rating. Additionally, I’ve created a poll on BGG where the geeks could have their say:

Game	R.G	Average	Bayes	Poll
MicroMacro: Crime City	8.0	7.9	6.9	61%
The Adventures of Robin Hood	7.2	8.1	6.1	32%
Zombie Teenz Evolution	2.4	8.1	6.0	7%

Overall, MicroMacro seems to be favourite, but will it survive our own scrutiny?

MicroMacro: Crime City

1–4 players, 15–45 minutes, 10+ years, light (1.1)

As has been discussed many times, possibly the greatest strength is the immediacy of this game. Better than no rules required: not even opening the box is required. Genius. Also, the jury emphasises that the winner should be ambassador for the hobby board gaming. MicroMacro would definitely broaden many people’s perception of what a modern board game can be. On top of that, it also made quite the impression amongst the more hardcore gamers, which shows its universal appeal.

But before we get too excited, there are some important caveats. The crime theme might be the most obvious – murder and other quite mature topics might not be everyone’s idea of family entertainment. The publisher certainly struggles with this: my edition says 8+ years on the box, later editions seem to say 12+. They also introduced some form of content warning for the successor, so parents can stay clear of cases that might not be suitable for their offspring. Overall, judging by their statements, the jury seems to have little objections to some comic figures being murdered, so this might not be an obstacle to the red meeple after all.

The other issue is player count. The box claims that this game is for 1 to 4 players, but the jury “corrected” this in their announcement to 1 to 3 players. Those who played the game know that sometimes even two players can be a crowd, so this game wouldn’t really be one to be enjoyed by the whole family around the Christmas tree – and candles definitely won’t provide enough light to read the details off that giant map… 🕯

Let me take this opportunity to address the “it’s not a game, it’s a puzzle” faction. First off, even if this were true, the jury clearly wouldn’t care: Already in their second year, in 1980, they awarded a special prize for the Rubik’s Cube, which undoubtably is a solitaire puzzle. An experience someone who loves games would enjoy? Bring it on…

Still, I’d like to make the argument that this is, in fact, a game. The standard version, where the game asks you to answer one question about the case after another, might present itself as a series of puzzles, with no player decisions to influence the course of the game at all. But I’d urge anyone playing this game to quickly switch to the advanced version. There, players are presented with the crime, but are then left alone to investigate the full story on their own. No guiding hand by the game, no feedback if the investigation is complete. The group needs to decide for themselves in what order to investigate the different scenes and when to call it complete. This experience differs crucially from a classic puzzle that gives you unambiguous feedback when it’s done.

But then again, it really doesn’t matter anyways…

The Adventures of Robin Hood

2–4 players, 60 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (1.7)

Robin Hood has been praised for its narrative experience that perfectly blends art, mechanics and storytelling. The classic tale will draw in many people for their childhood memories. Moving around freely on a game board and opening “advent calendars” along the way just sounds like a lot of fun, and the book looks gorgeous.

Keeping in mind that there is no English edition yet and consequently only very few ratings on BGG, it is actually remarkable how highly our algorithm already rates the game. By all appearances, this is a strong contender.

If there’s one drawback, it might be the price point. It retails at around 50€, but will have run its course after a finite number of plays. This might not sit well with the very casual audience the award is aimed at.

Further, it appears the designer chose a pretty traditional set of characters. This might please fans of the original stories, but for my taste I’d appreciated the courage for a more diverse representation in 2021. The jury wants to award a game for everyone, so any player should be able to see themselves in the game.

Zombie Teenz Evolution

2–4 players, 15–25 minutes, 8+ years, light (1.3)

There’s no way around it, this is the dark horse amongst the nominations. Neither the core mechanics nor the zombie theme seem terribly exciting for hardcore gamers, but for many people that haven’t played dozens of zombie games, this is actually surprisingly appealing. The legacy elements promise an interesting and engaging story, and unlike Robin Hood, this game has been praised for its diverse cast, including a wheelchair on the cover. I imagine this must mean the world for a lot of kids who feel very empowered by this image.

The numbers don’t look very good for this game, but then again, it had just been released and it doesn’t really seem to be targeted at BGG’s core demographics. But there is a serious obstacle to winning the main award: both the cartoon artwork and the “teenz” in the title suggest that this is a family game. And while many people will refer to the red award as the “family game of the year”, the jury will go through great length to avoid this term since, again, the Spiel des Jahres is meant to be for everyone and that includes groups without children. Pinning the award on what appears to be a game for a young audience might exclude some loyal fans.

Who will win?

I’ve been going back and forth on this – as you can tell, there’s pros and cons for each of the nominees. In the end though, my money is on MicroMacro: Crime City to win Spiel des Jahres 2021, ahead of The Adventures of Robin Hood on close second, with Zombie Teenz Evolution in a respectable, but slightly more distant third place. The immediate access of MicroMacro and potential shift in the perception what a game can be is just too enticing to pass.

Still, any of the potential outcomes on July 19 wouldn’t surprise me. It’ll be exciting!

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres 2021

Let’s take a look at the same metrics as above, but for the Kennerspiel nominees:

Game	R.G	Average	Bayes	Poll
Fantasy Realms	6.8	7.5	7.0	5%
Lost Ruins of Arnak	7.5	8.1	7.6	79%
Paleo	7.6	7.9	6.8	16%

This promises an even closer race – the numbers certainly don’t yield any clear favourites. 🤷

Fantasy Realms

3–6 players, 20 minutes, 14+ years, medium light (1.7)

Fantasy Realms has been around internationally for some time and has garnered a loyal fanbase, though it failed to make a huge impact so far. Winning Kennerspiel could change that.

It certainly has a lot going for itself. A quick card game with lots of winning combinations to be discovered sounds like something the jury always appreciates, in particular since they clearly lean towards simpler games for both awards. The fast playing time and wide player count could make it the ideal “step up” for those who seeks the next challenge after enjoying a Spiel des Jahres winner.

There is the issue of its bland theme and artwork. It doesn’t have to be a negative though, as a generic setting might just mean lots of people will be open to playing a particular game. In this particular case, the artwork does feel pretty old-fashioned, including some of the more problematic tropes of the genre. When drawing in new gamers, appealing artwork is very important, so I really think this game could be a winner with better artwork.

Lost Ruins of Arnak

1–4 players, 30–120 minutes, 12+ years, medium (2.8)

Arnak certainly is a fan favourite (currently #63 on BGG, and climbing) – choosing this game could make the skeptical crowd on the ‘geek very happy. Probably unsurprisingly, it’s also by far the most selected option in the poll. The game does come with a broadly appealing theme, a successful merging of two evergreen mechanics (deck building and worker placement), and great development work that makes playing the game very intuitive.

It is on the pretty heavy side for the award though. There’s a lot going on in terms of different tiles, tracks, effects… If a Kennerspiel is meant to be one step up, this game might really be two steps.

It also seems to draw some lukewarm responses from critics. While the execution of the design is generally praised, it doesn’t seem to do anything special. On the other hand, this comes from people who have played hundreds of games and chase that next big innovation, while the Kennerspiel award is targeted at people who might have never played a worker placement nor deck building game and might really enjoy those mechanics here.

On that note: I’ve heard there’s another Indiana Jones movie in the making – I smell a branded version of Arnak soon… 🤠

Paleo

1–4 players, 45–60 minutes, 10+ years, medium (2.6)

Paleo was for me an early favourite and hasn’t disappointed so far. While it’s not exactly a “fresh” theme, the prehistoric setting hasn’t worn out yet, the graphics are clean and inviting and the mammoth on the cover definitely makes we want to explore more. But maybe most importantly the mechanics are the most innovative amongst the nominees – without leaving less experienced players lost. Every turn offers a quick but always interesting decision. As the Spiel nominees prove, co-operative games are in higher demand than ever, and this one has the whole table involved from the first to the last card in your deck.

As you can tell, I quite enjoyed playing Paleo and think it’s very much worthy of the Kennerspiel trophy. But it’s not just my enthusiasm, the critical response was very positive and might get second time designer Peter Rustemeyer’s hopes up.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s consider what could get in the way of Paleo’s victory. First off, the often criticised rule book. The jury is very harsh when it comes to judging rule books – rightfully so, as badly written rules are the biggest obstacle in the way of players enjoying a game. But they wouldn’t have even recommended Paleo if they thought the rules as printed are too obtuse, so I doubt it’s a concern now.

The game is also on the heavier side of what’s usually consider for the award, but for me it’s about the same complexity as Wingspan – if anything easier to approach as a co-operative campaign game. Talking of which, the different modules and levels make it feel somewhat finite, but then again the levels are fairly replayable and the jury doesn’t seem to mind too much anyways.

One last sticking point might be player count. It’s well compatible with usual Kennerspiel metrics as printed on the box, but the rules start by saying that under no circumstances should you try this game for the first time with four players. That first play is really critical for a game that’s supposed to reach a wide audience, so this caveat could prove costly.

Who will win?

I’ll contradict the BGG crowd and say that Arnak has the lowest chance of winning Kennerspiel – despite all its quality there seems to be no “hook” that would draw new players in. On the other hand, judging by the jury’s statements, Fantasy Realms would make a fabulous winner – if it came with a fresher, more appealing look… So, after all my praises, it’s no surprise Paleo is my favourite to win Kennerspiel des Jahres 2021. However, I really do believe that all three nominees are very strong and have a realistic chance of winning.

That’s all for now – I feel like I need to apologise since it took me over two thousand words just to express “they’re all pretty good…” 🤷 Anyways, all this makes me just more excited for the announcement on July 19. 🤓

Spiel des Jahres 2021 nominations

contact@recommend.games (Recommend.Games) — Tue, 18 May 2021 23:25:00 +0300

Nominations are out! The jury selected a total of fifteen games for their longlist, eight for Spiel des Jahres and seven for Kennerspiel des Jahres. Out of these games, three games each are nominated for both awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 19.

Let’s dive straight into the nominations and recommendations, before we discuss how good (or bad) my predictions were and if the Kennerspiel score is any good.

Nominated for Spiel des Jahres 2021

MicroMacro: Crime City

1–4 players, 15–45 minutes, 10+ years, light (1.1)

MicroMacro was a strong favourite of many pundits, so it is no surprise to see it nominated. The proposition of jumping straight into the game – before even unwrapping the box – is clearly something the jury values highly.

Kudos also to the publisher for timing the announcement of the sequel MicroMacro: Full House perfectly! Interestingly, the next installment will include a form of content warning that should enable parents to decide if a particular case is suitable for their children. This system might remove the main obstacle for MicroMacro to claim Spiel des Jahres.

The Adventures of Robin Hood

2–4 players, 60 minutes, 10+ years, medium light (1.7)

Another game that was on everybody’s mind. It looks as though Michael Menzel managed to capture the essence of Andor’s narrative game experience with a system simple enough for the red award.

Zombie Teenz Evolution

2–4 players, 15–25 minutes, 8+ years, light (1.3)

This game completely eluded me (as pretty much everybody else) – our algorithm placed it in 345th position. 😳 In all fairness, it received very few ratings so far. Further, its younger target audience is not well represented in BoardGameGeek’s user base, so the algorithm struggles to pick up the signal amongst the noise.

Looking at the three nominations it’s worth noticing that they are all co-operative. While it may seem plausible that people seek a bonding experience while they’re locked inside due to a raging pandemic, these games have of course been in the development for years. Generally, co-operatives have been on the rise for years now, so those three nominations shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the natural crescendo of a long term trend.

Spiel des Jahres recommendations

Biss 20: This one was at least #30 on the predictions list. Another light co-operative game, very much in keeping with this year’s theme!
Chakra: Completely missed this one – BGG’s release year is 2019, but the German edition just came out, so it slipped under my radar.
Point Salad: Sometimes, when I see a game, I get the immediate impression: “This is Spiel des Jahres material!” Point Salad was one of these games…
Switch & Signal: I even had this one down as a nomination – for Kennerspiel des Jahres. Another co-operative, of course.
The Key: Sabotage at Lucky Llama Land: I had its two other cousins on my nominations list who have more ratings and hence are much more visible to the recommender. I’d like to learn the jury’s reasoning for picking this game in particular out of a series of three. (And counting?) 🤷

Nominated for Kennerspiel des Jahres 2021

Fantasy Realms

3–6 players, 20 minutes, 14+ years, medium light (1.7)

Our algorithm was 100% sure Fantasy Realms wasn’t a Kennerspiel. 😅 (More on that below.) After publishing my predictions, I read more praise by jury members, and realised how well it suits their criteria, so in the end it wasn’t a surprise to see it nominated – just on this particular list.

Lost Ruins of Arnak

1–4 players, 30–120 minutes, 12+ years, medium (2.8)

Lost Ruins of Arnak has already made its way into the BGG’s top 100, and the jury clearly agrees with this assessment. While it’s quite heavy for one of the awards, it’s still lighter than some previous winners (though that hasn’t happened since 2013’s Andor), so don’t write if off just yet.

Paleo

1–4 players, 45–60 minutes, 10+ years, medium (2.6)

Not to brag, but I called this one months ago. 🧐 The jury did complain about many rule books this year not being properly tested, and while they didn’t mention Paleo specifically, after all the discussions before the announcements that one was clearly on their mind. In the end, the game’s strengths clearly outweight those obstacles.

Kennerspiel des Jahres recommendations

Aeon’s End: This game has been around for some time and earned itself a strong fan base, so a recommendation by the jury was a fairly safe bet.
Barrage: Definitely on the very heavy side even for a Kennerspiel, yet Udo Bartsch’s high praises left no doubt about a recommendation.
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion: Similar to the previous entry, I had a good feeling about a recommendation, but didn’t think it’d be actually considered for the award.
Riftforce: I completely missed this one, as did the algorithm, placing it at position 81. At least it classified it correctly as a Kennerspiel – with 51% confidence. 😰 The only pure two-player-game on either list, this proves how hard it is for lower player counts, even during a pandemic induced shortage of playmates.

How good were the predictions?

This really is a drama in three acts: the decision of Kennerspiel or not, the algorithm picking the longlist, and finally my guts picking the shortlist.

Kennerspiel score

When I introduced the Kennerspiel score a couple of months ago, I didn’t really have a good validation set to evaluate my model against. Now I do!

Out of the fifteen games on the longlist, the algorithm classified thirteen correctly. One was predicted wrong on either side of the line: The model saw Fantasy Realms as a Spiel and Switch & Signal as a Kennerspiel, but the jury saw it reversed. 87% accuracy is actually pretty decent for such a simple model trained on a small dataset, but it’s still a nagging feeling just how far off the score for Fantasy Realms was.

Anyways, we live and we learn, and the model has already been updated with the jury’s latest decisions, so hopefully next year it’ll work even better!

Longlist

I called eleven out of fifteen overall, with five out of eight for Spiel des Jahres and six out of seven for Kennerspiel des Jahres. I reward myself a point for The Key: Sabotage at Lucky Llama Land as I always treated them as a series. 🔑 Likewise I consider Aeon’s End, Barrage, and Gloomhaven as hits. Feel free to disagree.

I’d say this really is a satifying result. Last year, I only called nine out of fifteen games on the longlists, so my approach is definitely moving into the right direction.

Shortlist

Two out of three for both awards dead on, another game at least predicted for a recommendation – that’s not too bad. 🧐 I will not deny that Zombie Teenz Evolution bothers me though since I hadn’t even heard of that before.

Still, this year’s outcome sets quite a high benchmark to exceed next year. I’ll take the learnings from this year and hopefully will be able to improve my methods even further. 🤓

All that’s left to do is waiting. The jury will announce the winners on July 19, we’ll be back shortly before that with the favourites for the two awards. 🏆