As usual, just before Christmas, the boardGOATS Un-Christamas Dinner was accompanied by the anual voting for the GOAT Awards.  After food and festivities (including the now infamous Gamers’ crackers) the group voted for the two two awards:  the Golden GOAT for our favourite game played during the year and the “GOAT Poo” award for our least favourite.  Everyone had the usual three points to hand out for the Golden GOAT Award (plus a bonus if wearing Festive Attire), though a maximum of two points could be given to any individual game.  Everyone could also nominate up to two individual games for the GOAT Poo Prize and share any special memories as their “Moment of the Year”.

– Image by boardGOATS

First up was the Moment of the Year.  This almost always generates a lot of discussion, and this year was no excepetion, until Blue reminded the people near her of the game of Ticket to Ride with the Japan Map, back in March.  She commented that her Moment of the Year was when Pine galloped across the room to say that Pink had lost fifty-two points thanks to Purple brilliantly claiming a single route from Hiroshima to Okayama and entirely unintentionally preventing Pink from completing his four long Tickets.  Word quickly spread round the room and it was almost a unanimous decision that this was the winner (though opinions differed on whether Purple’s train placement or Pink’s disgust that followed or Pine’s glee was the actual “Moment”).

– Image by boardGOATS

This year, it was agreed that there were no outstandingly awful games this year so it wasn’t awarded,  even though Roll for the Galaxy, River Valley Glassworks and Crappy Birthday got a couple of nominations each (clearly the last of these must have been people joking however). The unofficial “Marmite Award” which goes to games with nominations for both the Golden GOAT and the GOAT Poo prizes, went jointly to two older games, Bohnanza and Saboteur, which clearly divide opinion.  And finally, there was the Golden GOAT Award for the best game played in the year.  Previous winners including Stamp Swap, Wingspan and 6 Nimmt! were ruled out, but there were plenty of options remaining.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink’s gerrymandering in favour of Zoo Break (with various offeres of bribes) were largely unsuccessful.  The initial vote gave a three-way tie between Finspan, Intarsia, and Fromage.  Finspan was ruled out as it had recieved one nomination for GOAT Poo (the first tie breaker), which meant that for the first time in three years, the winner was not going to be a Stonemaier product.  That left a two game run-off between the beautiful Intarsia and the smooth cheese-themed Fromage.  Victory went to Fromage, which had been so well recieved that several people had backed the crowdfunding campaign for the follow-up, Formaggio.

– Image by boardGOATS