Games Magazine Games of the Year 2009

[Charlie Davis]

Since 1980, GAMES Magazine has published a game buying guide in the December issue of the magazine. At some point, they settled on rating and reviewing 100 games so it became known as the GAMES 100. By the early 90s, GAMES Magazine began honoring the best game in several categories and then choosing an overall Game of the Year. For those of us that were not into the internet or the hobby game world, this may have been our earliest contact with many of these games and more importantly the reviews that came with the list. I know I used the magazine to make wish lists in the early 80s for my Christmas list. The GAMES 100 issue included lots of electronic games up until 1995 when they started making 2 lists, one for the electronic/computer games and the original for the board/card games. This has always been a good mass market guide to non-mass market games. Here are this years winners.

The 2010 GAMES Magazine award winners.(announced in October 2009)

Game of the Year - Small World*

Best Family Game - Roll Through the Ages*
runner up - Wasabi!

Best Abstract Strategy Game - Blox
runner up - Magnet

Best Family Card Game - Amerigo
runner up - Byzanz

Best Family Strategy Game - Dominion* and Dominion:Intrigue
runner up - Royal Palace

Best Advanced Strategy Game - Le Harve
runner up - Agricola

Best Party Game - Dixit
runner up - Triviathon

Best Historical Simulation - Fields of Fire
runner up - Halls of Montezuma

Best Puzzle - La Ora Stelo
runner up - Fits

*These games will be part of the CharCon Premier Boardgame Tournament for 2009.

[Travis Reynolds]

Three of the winners are part of the Premier Board Game Tourney at CharCon 2009!

TR

[Travis Orders]

I would love to see what Dixit is like... does it have a US distributor yet?

[Travis Reynolds]

Yes, Asmodee.

TR

[Charlie Davis]

This is a great list of modern games that cover a wide range of topics and styles. Putting any of these on your bookcase would be a good thing. Having played a good portion of them, here are my quick thoughts. I would love to hear from anyone that has played the ones I have not.

Small World - excellent, buy it if you like light conquest type games, The random races and special abilities is a very cool feature, you have to maximize your score every turn, don't hold back

Roll Through the Ages - very good, a dice game like yatzee but with a lot more choices, A quick strategic game that is easy to play

Wasabi! - very good, you are trying to line up ingredients on the board to make your sushi, it is fun but I don't know how to win

Blox - Very, very good, you use a limited set of cards to move your blocks on the board to gain points, you need good visual skills and to work a couple of turns ahead, chess players should do well at this one

Dominion and Dominion:Intrigue - Excellent, build your deck and at some point change to building victory points, lots of re-play value, Intrigue seems to take a little longer but it is still a good addition

Royal Palace - Good, interesting worker placement game, the more workers you have on a space the more benefits you get. Only played once but it seemed to be a good game.

Le Harve - Very good, but long, build up your economy and convert it to victory points, this is called an engine(economy) building game. I like it better than the next offering

Agricola - Very good, similar to Le Harve but I find it very hard. I just cannot get the big picture and make everything work together. Great design though.

Dixit - Great Party game and I do not like party games, similar to Apples to Apples except everyone uses beautiful full color art cards to match the theme, I like it a lot.

Fits - Pretty good, this is kinda like Tetris, everyone starts with the same set of pieces however each player uses a different start piece so the boards always come out different, a random piece is drawn and everyone slides it onto their board. Different scoring systems are used and the game is addicting.

Magnet - Have not played it
Amerigo - Have not played it
Byzanz - Have not played it
Triviathon - Have not played it
Fields of Fire - Have not played it
Halls of Montezuma - Have not played it
La Ora Stelo - Have not played it