Mensa Select Winners & Origins Nominees

 

Mensa Select Award Winners

The Mensa Select Award is chosen each year by members of Mensa, looking for games that are challenging, original, easy to learn and, most importantly fun! Are any of this years games on your favourites list? Any now on your to buy list?

 

Circular Reasoning – say what? This is an abstract game that almost no one on Board Game Geek seems to have heard of. A race to reach the centre of a circular board that is broken up into 3 concentric rings, with a rotating gate that moves according to the number of player pieces in that ring. It certainly sounds like an interesting (or infuriating) challenge to time your moves while avoiding your opponent. With this and last years Spiel des Jahres nominee The Game, I am impressed by the capacity for these awards to highlight games that have passed by most members of the board game community!

 

Favor of the Pharaoh – Favor of the Pharaoh takes something as simple as dice rolling and adds a mesmerising array of powers that unlock new dice and let you manipulate your roles like crazy that offers a huge depth of interesting decisions. Taking it even further, you’ll only ever play with 20 out of the full 50+ powers, giving a great degree of replayability. Come, peasants, seek the Favor of the Pharaoh!

 

 

New York 1901 – Live the great skyscraper age in turn of the 20^th century new york, where the land of Manhattan was rapidly bought up to be turned into tetris-shaped building tiles. Keep an eye on the hottest real estate and aspire to the biggest most impressive buildings. Or, you know, just try and buy up all the lots your opponent’s want too!

 

 

The Last Spike – Not much of a looker, The Last Spike is kind of what happens when Acquire gets hit by a train (in design terms). Fortunately though, I like Acquire! The aim is to make money by connecting cities by train lines, and speculating on which cities are going to get connected. Each time a city in whom you’ve bought land gains a connection, you get a payout! But if you hold too much in one city, no one is going to build towards it!

 

Worlds Fair 1983 – You’ve all been put in charge of selecting exhibits for New York’s Worlds Fair, the most important display of science, technology, arts and culture. Thing is, you each want to be seen as having made all the difference, so it’s going to get competitive! Part area control, part set collection, and featuring a card driven Ferris wheel! What more could you want? This was one of my top picks when it was on Kickstarter so I’m glad to see the Mensa Select Committee choosing to vindicate me!

 

Origins Award Nominees

The Origins Awards are presented each year at the Origins gaming convention in June, and 2016’s nominees have just been announced! What are your picks for this years winners?

 

Board Games

 

Champions of Midgard – Viking placement with a healthy pile of dice! Elements of resource management and lots of dice combat, this has widely been compared to classic Lords of Waterdeep. Whereas Lords was, in all honesty, a themeless game, Champions of Midgard certainly captures its theme within a system that is similarly simple to get into. While I definitely enjoyed my one play of this, I can’t deny the accusations that luck plays a pretty strong role.

 

La Granja – Another game I’ve actually played, and one I really enjoyed! Set in a Majorcan farmstead and featuring a plethora of interesting mechanics with multi-use cards being front and centre… and either side! The crazily competitive (and brutal) central market adds a great dollop of competitiveness to proceedings. This would be my personal pick (with the caveat that I haven’t played the games that follow).

 

 

New York 1901 – The only game here to be shared with the Mensa Select Award winners, and with its positioning as a new gateway game, its clear as to why. It’s certainly a game I’ve been hoping to try out.

 

 

 

Orléans – A near miss for the Kennerspiel des Jahres prize last year, Orléans takes you to medieval France in which you’ll be trying to balance the competing demands of Knights, Traders, Builders and Monks. Listeners to board gaming podcasts will remember that Orléans has caused uncountable numbers of pronunciation issues. Seriously, it’s not hard. Say it with me. Orléans. See, simple.

 

 

Star Wars: Imperial Assault – Perhaps the ultimate character driven game in the Star Wars universe, Imperial Assault has powered to near the top 10 games on Board Game Geek (take from that what you will) and the miniatures and Star Wars obsessive in me really wants to get my hands on this game! But, for what is not a great deal more than a Descent clone, I’m not sure it deserves the award more than the other games in this category.

 

Card Games

 

7 Wonders Duel – The golden boy of the recent BGG awards, 7 Wonders Duel still sits there fluttering its eyelids at me but, thus far, I’ve not succumbed. It is only a matter of months before I do though…

 

 

 

Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn – If artwork alone were the condition for winning this prize Ashes would hands down take this category before the other 4 even knew an award was available. This is a collectible card game style battle game focused around dice as a resource-generating mechanic. It’s set to get a lot of support over the next couple of years so now would be the time to check it out!

 

 

The Grizzled – Offering you a brutal theme and not shying away from it is an achievement to be cherished in this hobby of fantasy and sci-fi coatings. The Grizzled is a cooperative game where you and your friends take on the role of a group of French soldiers in WW1 where the aim is just to survive. And that is not a challenge to be sniffed at. I may not have played it yet, but this is the game I’m most keen to play. So in the absence of better information I’ll chose The Grizzled!

 

Medieval Academy – A game for aspiring knights to aid their training. Players need to draft the cards they want and then play them at the right time to improve their standing in each of the knightly lessons. But, just like in real school, each of these lessons earn you points at different times during the game.

 

 

Welcome to the Dungeon – Guns & Roses puns not withstanding, this is a bluffing game whose premise far outweighs the gameplay I’ve seen (only played two games though! Not ready to call this a final judgement!). Sat in a tavern boasting of your bravery, you each will attempt to show off how little equipment you need to take on the dungeon you are all populating with monsters.