Boardgames To Go 229 - Spiel des Jahres and Kenner nominations 2024
Release Date: 07/01/2024
Boardgames To Go 243 - SdJ & Kennerspiel 2025 Opinions & Predictions
Boardgames To Go
Opener: , and again I'm talking about vacation-linked boardgames Closer: The Dornücopia we've got planned for EsCon in a couple weeks. I'm always happy to talk about the Spiel des Jahres. The winners, the nominees, the recommended titles, the jury process, and the award's immense, positive impact on our hobby. That goes for the Kennerspiel and Kinderspiel, too...though I'm woefully ignorant about the children's category. This time it's just me talking about the games, severall of which I've played, but some I've missed. I don't think...
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Boardgames To Go 242 - Spiel des Jahres Wayback Machine for 2005 (with Jonathan Takagi)
Boardgames To Go
Please join us on the where you can chat online with other podcast listeners. Openers: Mark: Jonathan: 2005 Flashback & Quiz Closers: Jonathan: My top games of 2005 Mark: Hosting my own (small) event instead of traveling to a con? The Wayback Machine is back. One more time, a friend joins me to go back in time to an earlier Spiel des Jahres, looking at the winner but also the other nominees and recommended games. In addition, my guest helps me think about the earlier time itself, and how the games, the hobby, and the community may have...
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Boardgames To Go 241 - Session Report & Feedback
Boardgames To Go
Please join us on the where you can chat online with other podcast listeners. Opener: Join us to play games online together on May 3. We're meeting on the , as well as the I set out to give myself a break this month, just talking about some recent games and fielding a few questions sent to me. In fact, I've been doing so much gaming lately that I had to whittle my list down to just these six games to share my impressions about. Then the feedback questions ended up being more fun to dive into than I expected. These kinds of shows are...
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Boardgames To Go 240 - Dice Tower West and the Mark Madness 2025 Champions
Boardgames To Go
The annual voting/predicting competition called Mark Madness is now finished. The results are posted with the rest of the updates for episode 239, and here co-host Eryn Roston returns one last time to share the winners. Unconscious Mind was our collective favorite for game cover art, and Adam Brocker is this year's winner. The plan now is for Adam to help me run next year's Mark Madness, in 2026. Next, I share my time at Dice Tower West. This is the second year in a row that I've gone to this national boardgame convention. Is it national? I think so. It's certainly big. Held in Las...
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Boardgames To Go 239E - Mark Madness 2025 (with Eryn Roston)
Boardgames To Go
The Championship is now set! https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/354557/mark-madness-2025-game-cover-art-with-eryn-roston
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Boardgames To Go 239D - Mark Madness 2025 (with Eryn Roston) Elite Eight
Boardgames To Go
Be sure to go vote at https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/354557/mark-madness-2025-game-cover-art-with-eryn-roston?itemid=11634552#11634552
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Boardgames To Go 239C - Mark Madness 2025 (with Eryn Roston) Sweet 16
Boardgames To Go
The round of 32 is finished, leaving us now voting on the Sweet 16 of game cover artworks. The choices are getting more difficult. And we have a new leader in our prediction contest. #Davecember celebrity loofish is representing his namesakes with a currently-in-first-place position for his guess...but with others on his tail.
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Boardgames To Go 239B - Mark Madness 2025 (with Eryn Roston) Round of 32
Boardgames To Go
Eryn is back to talk with me about the results of the first round voting. Half of our original 64 game cover art entries have now been knocked out of the contest. Now successive voting rounds keep halving the remaining contestants every three days. What have we seen so far? No ties, though a couple matchups were close. A few more were blowouts. Are there common threads? Surprises? Plus...Eryn teaches me how to look at art more critically...by SQUINTING. Achievement unlocked. -Mark
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Boardgames To Go 239 - Reminder for Mark Madness
Boardgames To Go
If you're playing along with Mark Madness this year, the time for predictions is over and you'd better start voting. Whether you've done a prediction or not, the link below takes you to the place where you can choose your favorite game cover art as 64 titles square off against each other in one-on-one matchups.
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Boardgames To Go 239A - Mark Madness 2025 Kickoff (with Eryn Roston)
Boardgames To Go
Play along and predict the winners at Predictions must be submitted by March 12 to be in the contest Once again, the month of March give me a chance to bring back "Mark Madness," my podcast-hosted voting contest. Like its namesake sports tournament, Mark Madness is where 64 games are pitted against each other in successive rounds of single-elimination votes. As before, I took the winner of llast year's contest, Eryn Roston, and asked him to co-host this year's contest. Furthermore, Eryn has helped define the special nature of the contest this year. It's...
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Openers: Voyages
Closers: Virtual Flea Markets (VFMs) at game conventions and other events
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It'll be no surprise to any listener that I care about the Spiel des Jahres. In addition to its decades-long strong & beneficial effect on our boardgaming hobby, these awards are a better predictor for me than any other. Predictor of what? Of the games I'll actually continue to own and play with family & friends. True, they skew more toward lighter games, but that's ok with family. And truthfully, that's the preference of myself and several of my longtime gaming friends, too.
If you only know the SdJ from recent years when it homed-in on the lightest games, more about parties than strategy, then I'd forgive your feeling that these aren't an award process that means much to a hobbyist. I'm thinking of recent winners like Just One, Pictures, MicroMacro Crime City, and even Dorfromantik. However, while you may long for the days when the award was bestowed on more gamer-ish titles like Tikal, Torres, and El Grande, my own personal highlights are the titles in between those two groupings. I'm thinking of Catan, Thurn und Taxis, Carcassonne, Dominion, Hanabi, Dominion, Ticket to Ride, or Alhambra.
Not only the winners, too--I've learned to pay attention to the other nominees and recommended list of games, too. Just last weekend my friends Davebo and Jeff were visiting. Along with some other local gamers we played a lot of great titles, but guess what was on the table, pulled from my collection: Luxor and Imhotep, two fantastic nominees that were merely overshadowed by the steamroller winners those years (Azul and Codenames, respectively).
The titles nominated for Spiel des Jahres are Captain Flip, In the Footsteps of Darwin, and Sky Team. In addition to these nominations, the SdJ jury recommended the following six titles: Harmonies, Passt nicht!, Phantom Ink, Schätz it if you can, Trekking Through History, and Trio.
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Then for the Kenners the nominees went to Daybreak, The Guild of Merchant Explorers, and Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West. Plus the recommended list: Bier Pioniere, Botanicus, Forest Shuffle, and Ritual.
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I think it's July 21 when we'll hear which games are the ultimate winners, but do take a look at the other nominees and recommended games. There's a good chance you'll enjoy those games, too, maybe even more than the winner.
-Mark