Spiel des Jahres Winners!

Each year, the Spiel des Jahres award goes to the best family friendly game (released in Germany). It must have reasonably simple rules, and a theme that most people will enjoy. So don’t expect to see many hard sci-fi or high fantasy themed games winning. Many of these games are ideal for people completely new to the hobby, although don’t assume they are all “gateway” games.

For slightly more in-depth games, the Kennerspiel des Jahres rewards elegant game design for games targeted to a more experienced audience. These definitely aren’t designed with new gamers in mind, but the award still tends to go to games that a family could enjoy.

Whatever games you prefer to play, winners (and nominees!) of these awards are well worth checking out. You can be sure the games will be well designed, produced and stand up to a lot of plays! The judges play the nominees to death in the run up to the announcement, only those games that remain fun after a multitude of plays make it this far!

 

Colt Express cover art  

Spiel des Jahres Winner: Colt Express

 

Many congratulations to publisher Ludonaute and designer Christophe Raimbault on winning the coveted Spiel des Jahres for Colt Express! This is a wonderfully themed game staring you in the world’s least competent Wild West train robbery, featuring an amazing 3D train centrepiece. There’s no two ways about it, this is an amazing component that is sure to attract anyone who see’s it. This game wouldn’t be nearly as cool, nor have received nearly as much hype, had it been played on a simple board.

There is already news of expansions to Colt Express in the works! Colt Express: Horses & Stagecoach is due to premier at Spiel 2015 (in October), adding horses and a stagecoach! Oh maybe you guessed that already. Well, I can at least tell you that the horses will allow players to race along beside the train as in all the best westerns, while the expansion is also adding new train cars, hostages and a playable marshal. Plus, Ludonaute are already talking about a Colt Express: Marshal & Prisoners expansion for February 2016 and a Colt Express: Indians & Cavalry expansion for October 2016. Clearly this is a game with a long bright future ahead of it!

Colt Express Train

Interestingly, Machi Koro, one of the nominees, already has an expansion out: Machi Koro: The Harbour, adding a load more building cards and landmarks to the intriguing city building game, but more importantly adds a whole new way to play that’s incredibly interesting. Instead of having all cards available from the start, the game begins by shuffling the building cards together and drawing a random selection to start the game, giving the game a huge amount of variety. It would be interesting to see what might have happened if the Spiel des Jahres judges took this into account.

Machi Koro also has a new expansion coming out at the end of this month: Machi Koro: Millionaires Row, adding more buildings, including some described as Major Landmarks… Ooo… Also a deluxe edition containing the base game and both expansions is due out at the end of August, so if you are thinking of picking this up maybe wait until then? My! So many expansions! Even the final nominee The Game: something something du Kannst, is getting an expansion, adding the numbers 100-150 to add even more excitement and fun…! Just kidding, I made that last one up.

 

Broom Service cover art

 

Kennerspiel des Jahres Winner: Broom Service

 

More congratulations go to Alea/Ravensburger for Andreas Pelikan’s Room Service. Just like in a real hotel, witches will be zipping around delivering potions to demanding guests. Wait, what? Oh! Broom service. That makes more sense! The game has a big map full of stuff, potions, cloud-destroying magic wands, terrain types, victory points and a plethora of towers. But at the heart of Broom service is a neat little action card mechanism.

Each turn, you pick a set of actions that you want to perform. Then the first player choses an action to perform first, and they have to choose whether to take the weak, cowardly action, or be brave and get a bonus. Then if anyone else has the same action card, they have to play it, again making the same choice. The issue is, of course, that if you’re brave and someone else has this card, you don’t get to do anything! The last player to play that card gets to choose the next card. You want to go last, so you can take the brave action without fear, but you want to go first so that you can chose what action everyone is doing! Oh God the decisions!!

Broom Service Game

What’s interesting is that this brave/cowardly card mechanism was the core of Andreas Pelikan’s earlier game, Witches Brew, which was nominated for the Spiel des Jahres back in the depths of history (2008). Which immediately raises an ugly question: why is the same mechanism being given a second bite at the Spiel? Well, Witches Brew (which is sadly almost impossible to get hold of in English) was purely a card game. But the addition of the board in Broom Service adds not just one other element, but also an element that drives interaction with the cards you are choosing.

You can use the position of opponents on the board to make a guess at what actions they are going to want to perform. And your actions affect now not only affect you, but can be used to affect your opponents through interaction with the board. Particularly with the manipulation of turn order that also comes out of the cards. So there is more to think about and more scope for interaction and takes that original action card mechanism to a whole new level.

 

With images from board game geek users: W Eric Martin (as always!), JackyTheRipper and Hanibalicious.

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