Spiel : Boardgames in the UK

The winners of the International Gamers Award have just been announced on the IGA website.

In the multi-player category, the winner was Le Havre, designed by Uwe Rosenberg and published by Lookout Games. So, Dominion didn’t win (it came second) for a change but, as this award tends to be the one that typically goes to the gamers’ game, Le Havre isn’t really a big surprise.

In the two-player category, the winner was Day & Night, designed by Valentijn Eekels and published by Mystics.dl. I know nothing about this one although I think it has only just been released in the UK.

Full details about the voting can be found here.

The rules to the latest Fragor Games release, Savannah Tails, an ostrich racing game, are now available on Boardgamegeek here.

I particularly like the rules for choosing a start player!

The winner of this year’s DSP has just been announced and the award went to ….. Dominion. Not a massive surprise and it was a pretty clear winner with the second placed game, Le Havre, only receiving 54% of the votes Dominion got. The top ten games were:

• Dominion, by Donald X. Vaccarino (Hans im Glück) – 4735
• Le Havre, by Uwe Rosenberg (Lookout Games) – 2559
• Pandemic, by Matt Leacock (Pegasus Spiele) – 2504
• Finca, by Ralf zur Linde and Wolfgang Sentker (Hans im Glück) – 1695
• Small World, by Philippe Keyaerts (Days of Wonder) – 1155
• Valdora, by Michael Schacht (Abacusspiele) – 1002
• Diamonds Club, by Rüdiger Dorn (Ravensburger) – 911
• Through the Ages, by Vlaada Chvatil (Pegasus Spiele) – 718
• Sherwood Forest, by Nils Finkemeyer (eggertspiele) – 679
• Fauna, by Friedemann Friese (Huch & friends) – 657

Congratulations again to the designer, developers and publishers - just the IGA to go now for a clean sweep.

   

Yesterday saw the UK release of two games I’ve had my eye on for some time. And, as Gameslore had them both on at a pretty good price, I took a diversion via Cold Hatton and picked them up on my way home.

Endeavor has been getting some very good early reports and is a game of world exploration and empire building. With a central board and five large individual player boards, this looks like it may struggle to fit on the normal game table. Looks like another fine addition to Z-Man’s line of games.

Ad Astra is a new game by Bruno Faidutti and Serge Laget and looks to be Settlers crossed with Citadels set in space. This one is also very nicely produced by Fantasy Flight but with a normal retail price of about £43, this is really pushing things in terms of what you get inside the box for your money.

Hopefully, we’ll play one or both of these on Friday.

August saw my mission of getting down to fewer than 20 unplayed games progress quite well with the total falling from 108 to 97. In summary:

2 new games acquired (Ra: The Dice Game and Harry’s Grand Slam Baseball Game)

13 games no longer unplayed (Take Stock, Relikt, Subulata, Pizza Box Baseball, Ghost Stories, Ra: The Dice Game, Automobile, Nacht der Magier, Harry’s Grand Slam Baseball Game, Neuland, Fiji, Stop It! and Finale).

0 games sold

My aim for September is to get down to 85 unplayed but this might be a bit optimistic as there will be two weekends involving the transport of Catherine and Rebecca back to university.