Spiel Des Jahres 2016 Predictions
It’s almost time! Next week the winners of the coveted Spiel des Jahres awards will be announced. Codenames has had its suit freshly pressed, while Karuba has bought a new fedora especially for the occasion. Both the Spiel and Kennerspiel prizes are huge. Earning a nomination is enough to put a game on almost every hobby gamer’s “to play” list (and well they should) but victory can up sales of a game by a factor of 100.
For the first time I’ve actually had a chance to play all the nominees for both prizes (we’ll just quietly forget about the Kinderspiel, the children’s game of the year, that was awarded last month), so where do I think the prizes will go? It’s an exciting year! Read on, and let me know who you expect to see win!
Spiel des Jahres
The German “Game of the Year”, the board gaming Oscar, given to the game the judges see as the best game published (in Germany) for families. This means the game needs to be rules light, have a good degree of replayability, and bring something new in terms of design and player experience. This years nominees are…
Unless you’ve been trapped under a collapsed board game shelf for the last year, in which case I commend you for still reading my articles but suggest you should probably get some help, you will have heard some passing reference to Codenames. A super slick party game, this absolutely hits all the criteria of the award (you can read our review here!) Extremely entertaining it has been a huge success and I know a lot of people a keen to see this win. I wonder though whether the word play and humour translates as well to German (honestly, I have no idea). I also prefer the game at 6, so each team can discuss their answers, to 4, the typical family size. Plus, not everyone enjoys coming up with clues… there’s a few things that I feel might mean Codenames just misses out on the award.
Karuba is a romp through the jungle. Each player has 4 willing adventurers trying to reach 4 temples on the other side of the board. You’ll lay tiles featuring paths to connect said adventurers with their matching temple, or discard tiles you don’t like to move the adventurers along the paths. The ingenious element to this game is that everyone gets the same tiles, in the same order, yet each chooses whether and where to play tiles by themselves. Amazingly everyone ends up with completely different approaches. This is an impressively elegant game, a nice theme, and really fits that traditional euro game style. There isn’t much interaction between players, but it is quick, very clever, and an extremely strong contender for the prize.
The least well-known game (outside of Germany) when the nominations were announced, publisher Kosmos hurried along the US/UK release after the nomination and I managed to get a copy for myself at the UK Games Expo. This is a very interactive game, in which players are trying to make the best contributions to a series of monuments in ancient Egypt. This is done by putting your bricks on boats that will be sailed to one of the monuments. A key element of the game is timing when your bricks arrive in each of the monuments to score maximum points. The thing is, anyone can move any boat, and so inevitably people will be moving stuff around to screw each other over. It’s a breeze to teach, and much more interactive than Karuba. However, in all honesty, I’ve not been that impressed with the game overall. I’ll save my detailed thoughts for an upcoming review but the way the systems are set up, in my experience, encourages bet hedging to such a degree you might as well not care what is going on…
My prediction
I would love to say that Codenames is going to win it, based on my personal experiences of playing the game, but for the Spiel des Jahres I have to pick Karuba! I’ve only had one play of it, but not only does it fit that classic euro game box, the game creates amazing decisions and real tension in a simple, appealing package. Codenames is a fantastic party game, but I think Karuba is a better family game (just!)
Kennerspiel des Jahres
The Kennerspiel des Jahres is a newer award given to the best strategy game, awarding games that are considered a little bit too complex for the Spiel, yet whose rules remain easy enough to understand for families with maybe slightly older kids. Previous winners include 7 Wonders, Istanbul and last year’s Broom Service.
Phwoar! Here we go! The board gaming phenomenon that is Pandemic Legacy is now up for one of its most prodigious awards. Combining the classic cooperative experience of Pandemic with an astonishingly clever integration of Rob Daviau’s Legacy format sees the gameplay evolve over the course of the campaign, with permanent gameplay effects and an engaging story. Surely a game that shot up to the top of the Board Game Geek leader boards can’t help but win this award… right? Well, for all the changes, at its core the game is still Pandemic. More importantly, these prizes have always recognised replayability, and the limited number of plays (even if that number is at least 12) might be its downfall. That said, playing through the campaign is an unforgettable experience and the need to keep a coherent play group together makes it almost tailor made for families…
Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King
Much more classic Kennerspiel material, Isle of Skye is a tile laying game, each player building their own island/island chain and aiming to score points from the various features each tile may contain. Each game features a set of objectives that score multiple times over the course of the game and offer up a set of targets that change every time you play. The real, wonderful, meat of this game though lies in the auctions. Each player draws tiles from the bag each round and secretly sets a price for them, needing to always work out what the other players want. But if no one later choses to buy your tile, your money is lost. So it needs to be priced to sell… but you want to get as much money as possible. It’s a wonderful system that makes the game about your opponents. Its biggest weakness is in how inexperienced players can inadvertently give other players a leg up by under pricing high value tiles, but since this is an award that rewards longevity, this is not the worst weakness to have.
Demonstrating the judges willingness to acknowledge novel new mechanics, T.I.M.E. Stories is the final Kennerspiel nominee. This really sets the bar for originality in board gaming, having players explore a unique story in the board gaming equivalent of a point and click adventure. The setting sees players as agents sent through time to investigate strange goings on in different places in time. Each scenario plays out through a series of beautifully illustrated vistas, showing a location, that players interact with, solving some incredible puzzles and battling the occasional (or not so occasional) monster. T.I.M.E. Stories has been heralded as the greatest game of 2015 by some, or an outrageous cash-grab by others, as each scenario (sold separately) can only be played once, but which ever way you see it, T.I.M.E. Stories represents a tremendous achievement. Given you can only play the game once, and that game can be played in an afternoon, I can’t see it winning the Kennerspiel, but it’s great that its uniqueness has been acknowledged here.
My Prediction
I think this one comes down to the importance the judges will place on longevity and replay value. Does Pandemic: Legacy, with its in built limit offer enough to win? I’ve not played Isle of Skye nearly as much as Pandemic Legacy; I don’t own it for one thing. But I can absolutely see it having the legs to go a long long way. Pandemic Legacy is the more unique experience, but I expect the award to go to Isle of Skye. It might not be number 1 on BGG, but it is a fantastic game, and the one we might still be playing this time next year.
Which ever game you think will take home the prizes, this year has seen a phenomenal selection of games released, all of which deserve your attention. What do you think of my picks? Which games do you think will take home the prize? Let me know in the comments!
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