Category Archives: News

UK Games Expo 2021 – Surviving Covid

Last weekend was the fourteenth UK Games Expo after the cancellation of last year’s. Sometimes known as UKGE, or simply Expo, UK Games Expo is the foremost games event in the UK, but like so many events, fell victim to the pandemic in 2020.  This year was quieter than usual, with everything more spread out and some notable absentees (most obviously Asmodee).  The UK Games Expo Awards were handed out as usual, and those that went enjoyed themselves and found the “Covid Measures” sufficiently secure without being too onerous.  None of the group regulars went this time, but that was largely due to other circumstances, so we are looking forward to next year.

UK Games Expo Logo
– Image by boardGOATS

Spiel des Jahres Winners – 2021

The 2021 winner of the coveted German Game of the Year or Spiel des Jahres award has been announced as MicroMacro: Crime City.  This is an unusual choice in that it is very different to most traditional games and arguably is more a cooperative crime-solving activity using the medium of “Where’s Wally?“.  The “game” is played on a large monochrome map, with a deck of cards.  The cards ask questions with the answers to the questions on the map.  In turn, these lead the players to the solution to each of the sixteen cases.

– Image by BGG contributor Hipopotam

As a family challenge, MicroMacro: Crime City can certainly be a lot of fun, though it might not be seen as a game in the traditional sense.  There has been an increasing tendency by the committee to reward games that challenge the conventional idea of a game, with notable nominees including the 2018 Spiel des Jahres nominee The Mind, 2019 Kennerspiel nominee Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, and the 2017 Kennerspiel winner, the Exit: Das Spiel series.  While this may make games more relevant to more people, it also means the Spiel des Jahres awards increasingly are less applicable to more traditional gamers.

– Image by BGG contributor kalchio

As usual, the Kennerspiel des Jahres was awarded at the same ceremony. This award honours slightly more challenging games and this year went to Paleo. This is a co-operative campaign game, where players try to keep the human beings in their care alive while completing challenges. The Kinderspiel des Jahres award winner was announced last month and went to Dragomino, a children’s version of Kingdomino where players are hunting dragon eggs.  As usual, congratulations to all the winners and nominees, in what has been a very difficult year for everyone.

MicroMacro: Crime City
– Image adapted by boardGOATS from the
live stream video on spiel-des-jahres.de

Spiel des Jahres Nominations 2021

The nominations for the Spiel des Jahres have been announced.  There are three categories, the Kinderspiel (children’s game) , the Kennerspiel (“expert’s” game) and the most desirable of all, the family award, the Spiel des Jahres.  The nominees for this year’s awards have been announced as:

  • Kinderspiel des Jahres
    Kinderspiel des Jahres 2019Dragomino by Bruno Cathala, Marie Fort and Wilfried Fort
    Fabelwelten (aka Storytailors) by Wilfried Fort and Marie Fort
    Mia London by Antoine Bauza and Corentin Lebrat

Last year, the winner of the Spiel des Jahres was Pictures, a game where players model the picture on their card using the available components, e.g. shoelaces, coloured cubes, etc.; players get points for correctly guessing other players images and for other players guessing their image.  This is considerably lighter than some of the earlier winners, notably, Tikal and El Grande, or even some of the best known winners like The Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne or Ticket to Ride.  As the main award winners have become lighter over the years, we have found the Kennerpiel des Jahres better fits to our tastes.  The Kennerspiel nominees are not especially complex games, but are typically a step up from the light, family-friendly games of the main prize, the Spiel des Jahres.

– Image by from spiel-des-jahres.de

Last year the Kennerspiel award went to The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine a game we have still been unable to play thanks to the global pandemic.  The Crew beat our preferred choice, Cartographers.  In contrast to The Crew, as a “Roll and Write” game, we have played Cartographers a lot.  So far, we are unfamiliar with the nominees this year and likely won’t get the chance to play any of them until some time after the winners have been announced (19th July in Berlin for the Kennerpiel and Spiel des Jahres Awards; 14th June for the Kinderspiel des Jahres).

Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale
– Image by boardGOATS

 

Goats in the News: The Goats are Back In Town…!

Last year, a group of Kashmiri goats went on the rampage in Llandudno.  It is actually not uncommon for them to visit the town when food is scarce, but now they are back, and thanks to a lack of contraception caused by the pandemic, there are more of them than ever.  Apparently they’ve been caught queuing at the chippy, waiting for a bus, and going to school—they are a very popular sight kidding around in town.

– Video by 5 News on youtube.com

 

Boardgames in the News: The Monopoly Community Update

As well as the variety of different editions, over the years, there have been a number of updates to the classic Monopoly game.  These include include changes to the iconic cast iron tokens including the popular addition of the cat a few years ago. In the eighty-six years of the Monopoly Brand, however, the Community Chest cards have remained unchanged.  Until now that is.

Monopoly Cat Token
– Image of unknown origin

The original Monopoly game was set in Atlantic City; according to The Monopoly Companion by Phillip Orbanes, the Community Chest was the city’s “forerunner of the United Way” and was a welfare organisation.  For this reason, the Community Chest cards mostly give players money (compared with the Chance Cards which usually move players to another space).  There are just sixteen Community Chest cards in the classic Monopoly game, and the space is marked by the iconic treasure chest logo.

Monopoly
– Image from
fineartamerica.com

The Community Chest cards currently include include “Bank error in your favour, “Hospital fees” and “You have won second prize in a beauty contest,” and do sound a little dry and out-dated.  So, yesterday, Hasbro announced that they will be changing all the cards and asking the public to vote for possible replacements with the new version available in Autumn.

Monopoly Vote
– Image by boardGOATS from
monopolycommunitychest.com

Boardgames in the News: Asmodee’s Plan B

When Asmodee acquired F2Z/Filosofia/Z-Man Games etc. in 2016, the then owner of F2Z, Sophie Gravel, activated her “Plan B” and set up a new company, Plan B Games.  This company was successful almost straight away, winning the Spiel de Jahres Award & Deutscher Spiele Preis just two years later, with Azul.  Since then, Plan B has released the follow-up games Stained Glass of Sintra and Summer Pavilion which, although not as popular as the original, were still very successful in their own right.

Azul
– Image by boardGOATS

Plan B were also responsibly for the three Century Games (Spice Road, Eastern Wonders and A New World) which were all variously successful, and the more recently released games, Beez and Alma Mater.  In 2017, Plan B Games acquired German publisher Eggertspiele, the publisher responsible for many well received heavier, strategy games including Great Western Trail, Mombasa (Deutscher Spiele Preis winner), and Village (Kennerspiel des Jahres & Deutscher Spiele Preis winner), as well as the lighter Spiel des Jahres winner, Camel Up.

Century: Spice Road
– Image by boardGOATS

Given the quality of all these games, almost inevitably, just five years after they acquired F2Z, this week Asmodee announced they have now acquired Plan B and their subsidiary brands (Eggertspiel, Next Move Games and Pretzel Games).  This time Asmodee are absorbing the whole team including Sophie Gavel, perhaps avoiding the necessity of acquiring her Plan C in five years time…

Camel Up
– Image by boardGOATS

Boardgames in the News: Fake Games from a High Street Name

As reported previously, fake and counterfeit goods are not uncommon online, especially with purchases from certain auction sites.  Even companies like Amazon are not immune though, thanks to co-mingling of stock with that from other third-party sellers and returned items.  More recently, however, there have been lots of reports of issues with copies of Pandemic, Dead of Winter, Carcassonne, Catan, and Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle bought from Zavvi.  This is of note, not because of the games (which have been targeted before), but because Zavvi is a reputable high street name.

Pandemic
– Image by BGG contributor kilroy_locke

Zavvi is owned by The Hut Group (aka THG), along with a range of other companies that sell everything from lipstick to language services.  The Hut Group also own I Want One of Those (aka IWOOT) who have recently been selling quite a lot of games at a good price including Sagrada, Horrified, and Ticket to Ride: London.  There doesn’t appear to be any question of the authenticity of these games, but IWOOT have been selling copies of Dead of Winter, Pandemic, Carcassonne and Hogwarts Battle too and these also seem to be fakes, presumably from the same, communal supply as the Zavvi games.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle
– Image by BGG contributor zgabor

Both Zavvi and IWOOT have been reluctant to acknowledge that the games are fake insisting to customers that they “do not handle fake goods”, they “source all stock direct from the brand suppliers”, and “items sold by ourselves are not counterfeit”.    Neither Zavvi nor IWOOT are known for selling counterfeits.  So, assuming it is against company policy, how their supply chain became contaminated is an interesting question and it is possible that they themselves have been the subject of a deception.  It seems unlikely that these fakes were supplied through the usual UK distribution channels, but it is possible they were bought in good faith from another supplier.

Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game
– Image by BGG contributor mikehulsebus

Perhaps the biggest issue here is the poor Customer Service people have reportedly received, including standard unhelpful replies or an offer of only a partial refund.  It seems persistence is the only answer, though reporting the company to the Trading Standards and/or the finance handling service (credit card company or PayPal), can help.  For those struggling with IWOOT, suggesting to Customer Services that they look at “ISM ticket 1195382” can also help (ISM is the Ivanti Service Manager ticketing system).

Boardgames in the News: Going in too DeeP

Four years ago today, the driver of a sports utility vehicle in Huntsville, Alabama had a seizure and lost control of his car.  His path took him through an Office Depot car park, across another road, through another empty car park and then a fence, and finally ploughed into The DeeP, a games and comic store.  Somehow, he narrowly missed numerous items that would have stopped the vehicle, but would have caused serious injury to the driver had he hit them.  Remarkably, nobody was seriously hurt, but the games store had plenty of cameras to show what happened to the stock…

– Video by Deep Comics & Games on youtube.com

Boardgames in the News: Fined for Playing Dominoes

The Metropolitan Police have reported that they have fined twelve people who were caught playing Dominoes.  According to their report, last Tuesday (29th December 2020), officers were called to a restaurant on the Whitechapel Road, London, where the owner initially claimed that the only people present were workers.  He tried to prevent officers from entering a darkened room where they found twelve people playing games.

– Video from met.police.uk; via youtube.com

Whitechapel is currently covered by the London-wide Tier 4 Covid restrictions which mean people “must not leave or be outside of your home or garden” without reasonable excuse.  Chief Inspector Pete Shaw said: “The rules under Tier 4 are in place to keep all of us safe, and they do not exempt people from gathering to play games together in basements.”  Tower Hamlets Local Authority are considering fining the restaurant owners for their action and all twelve gamers were issued with Fixed Penalty Notices.  Perhaps they should have considered playing games online instead…

Setting up for online gaming
– Image by boardGOATS