Archive for the 'Splendor' Category

The winners of the Spiel des Jahres and the Kennerspiel des Jahres were announced yesterday.  The winners were Camel Up and Istanbul.  It’s always interesting to try and work out the winners because I know what I like the most (and would vote for) is definitely not the same as what I think will be voted for by the jury, because the SdJ awards are for a more general German game-playing audience (and not a more serious gamer audience).

If it was my choice, it would have been Splendor for the main prize as it’s the one I enjoy the most; however, I guessed Camel Up would be picked as the winner as it’s a more accessible game for a wider audience and the card pyramid offers an appealing, physical element.  So, Camel Up winning wasn’t a surprise to me.

The Kennerspiel was a hard one to call – I had it down to Istanbul and Rokoko.  I really like Istanbul but I wondered if it was slightly too light for the Kennerspiel, even in the context of the SdJs.  However, Rokoko was maybe too far the other way as it’s a tense game with a lot of elements to balance and time correctly.  So, I was happy with either of those being the winner.

I thought this year’s SdJ was a good one as I found all the games to be good quality – whereas, some years I scratch my head wondering how some of the games were picked.  In fact, it’s the first year I’ve found myself playing all the nominees, and playing some of them quite a lot.  I still think Lewis & Clark should have been at least a recommendation though (if not a nominee) for the Kennerspiel.

Links to my reviews of all the SdJ nominees, winners and some recommendations are on my SdJ 2014 page.

James.

Splendor is a light, fast game of constant, small decisions.  Overall, it’s a race to be the first player to score 15 Victory Points (VPs) by buying development cards using the 5 different coloured currencies (gems).

Each development card is a colour and each card shows its cost as well as how many VPs it is worth.  Each card you purchase gives a permanent reduction on your future purchases; for example, a card costing 2 red gems and 3 green gems would only cost 2 red and 1 green if a player had already bought 2 green cards.  As a result, players’ purchasing power increases as the game unfolds.

The game mechanic of discounting future purchases means that every card you buy is potentially useful and means each player has a slightly different view of the game because the costs of the cards on display become different for each player.  Also, whilst gaining VPs is slow to start, with as players purchase the cheap (bottom row) cards usually worth no VPs, the game accelerates as players’ purchasing power increases and they can more regularly buy the expensive (top row) cards worth higher amounts of VPs.  (Players can also score VPs by gaining noble tiles which are awarded as soon as a player has bought enough different coloured cards as shown on the tiles.) Read the rest of this entry »

The Spiel des Jahres nominations were announced this week.  I have added a page for the SdJ with the details of the games as well as links to reviews of the games: SdJ 2014 page.

The winners will be announced on July 14th.