Spiel des Jahres 2009

The Spiel des Jahres is the biggest award in the world of board gaming. Its a German award and is presented to the best family game of the year. It's a big award and can easily increase the number of sales of a game.

Previous winners have included, Keltis, Zooloretto, Ticket to Ride and Carcasonne. The games have to have been released in Germany within the last 12 months and I believe to not have any moving pieces.

This years nominations are looking really good, mainly because there are a couple of great games that have been released outside of Germany in the nominations list.

 

Dominion
This is a great card game where players are buying cards to add to there deck. Its been compared to CCG's but without the collectible element. Everyone starts off level and its not down to how many packs of cards you have bought.
I have posted a review of this earlier and really like the game. I think its got a good chance of winning even if its a card game which historically haven't done that well.

Pandemic
The second of the games that most of you have heard about or maybe even played. This is a co-operative game where the players team up to stop the spread of deadly diseases. It's another great game that deserves its nomination.

Fauna
This one is only available in Germany I believe and is by the same designer as Powergrid. Although this is probably as far from that game as you can get. Fauna is a trivia game where players guess statistics on animals. Such as weight, length of tail and origin. I am not sure of this one, I think Friedemann is a great designer just not sure that this one is the winner.

Fits
Reiner Knizia finally won the award last year for Keltis (Lost Cities the board game) but I don't think he will be adding another trophy to the mantelpiece with this one. Fits (Fill in the space) is essentially Tetris the board game. Players must use the shapes to fill in the spaces and match up symbols to score extra points.

Finca
This game is set on the island of Mallorca with the players growing and managing different fruits by placing workers on the island. The key is to be as efficient as possible in the distribution and delivery of the crops. This one looks very colourful and has all the ingredients of being a winner.

Personally I really hope either Dominion or Pandemic win this year. It would be great to see a game that originated from a non German publisher take home the title.

The winner is announced at the end of June, so stay tuned.

Dominion Review by Count Zero

Dominion is a card game that borrows heavily from the CCG market. It's currently taken the Board Game Geek crowd by storm and for good reason. It's a fantastic game that has been warmly accepted.

Opening the box you get 5 decks of cards, a rules booklet and a plastic insert. Not exactly brimming with components but as its in essence a card game you don't need anything else. Also the re-playability of this game is amazing, you are sure to get your monies worth out of these 500 cards. The cards are of good quality and are going to last, although card protectors are always a good idea. The artwork is pretty good, maybe not as good as the Race for the Galaxy artwork but they convey the role of the cards very well and all tie together with a common theme.

The rule book explains the rules very well with a couple of examples and explanations of the cards and effects. The plastic tray allows you to sort out the cards and stack them to make things easier to use in the future. There is a inlay available on the geek that makes sorting out the cards and finding them much easier.

The huge number of cards are broken down into 3 main card type. First up are the money cards, these show golden coins with either a 1, 2 or 3 stamped in the middle. The cards are your currency cards and are used in the game to buy other cards. Next up are the green victory point cards. These also come in three flavors and are worth either 1, 3 or 6 victory points and are used in the end game scoring.
The main bulk of the cards are the action cards. There are 25 different types of action cards and there are 10 of each. These action cards cover numerous places in your dominion and provide you with the game actions of your deck.

Game setup is very easy. The money and victory point cards are separated and placed on the table. 7 single gold coin cards are dealt to every player along with 3 single victory point cards. This gives each player a deck of 10 cards. These cards are shuffled and placed in front of the player. Next 10 of the possible 25 action point cards are chosen. The rules have a number of set combinations that help you get started but you could easily randomly select 10 action cards and use those.
The table should now have 3 piles of money cards, 3 piles of victory point cards, 25 action point cards plus a trash marker and maybe some other card types. Each card has a cost associated with it and is shown in the bottom corner. This can be anything from 0 to 6 gold.

From now on each players turn consists of a single action point followed by a single buy although the cards that you are going to play will seriously affect this. The first couple of turns are very straightforward. You draw 5 cards from your deck, so your initial hand will be a mix of gold coins and victory point cards. As you have no action cards in your hand you skip this and move onto the buy phase. You now discard a number of gold cards to buy a single card from the numerous piles of cards in front of you. You are mainly going to start by buying the action cards, but you can buy more of the money cards and the victory point cards. The card you have bought and the gold cards used are put on your discard pile along with any cards left in your hand. You then draw another 5 cards as your next hand.
Each payer then has there action and buy phases. When it gets back to you you will have 5 cards that are again made up of the remaining gold and victory point cards. You will not have an action phase but you will get the chance to buy another card. Again the gold cards, the card you bought and the rest of your hand are all placed on the discard pile. You should now have 12 cards in your discard pile. These are gathered, shuffled and 5 new cards are drawn for your next hand.
When it is next your turn you should hopefully have an action card in your 5 cards. In the action phase you will play this card and then use the actions or bonus's that the card gives you. These can vary from drawing extra cards, gaining extra actions, harming the other players, gaining gold or managing your deck. These first few hands are all about setting up your deck to be as efficient as possible. After your actions have run out you then get a buy phase. Hopefully you will have enough gold to buy another card for your deck.

This is the main crux of the game, everyone starts out on an equal footing and its up to the players skill and a little bit of luck to get there deck working as efficiently and effective as possible. There are numerous card combinations available. Some basic ones involve the village card (+1 card, +2 actions) followed by the smithy (+3 cards). This pairing allows you to in effect draw 4 cards from your deck then get to play an additional card. Other cards such as the market (+1 gold, +1 buy, +1 card., +1 action) are a good all rounder giving you a number of benefits. You can stack up any number of cards, so you could start with a market, the card you drew was a village, you play this and grab another card. This is a smithy which you then play. Out of the 3 cards you draw from playing this card you get another village. All of the cards actions and bonuses are accumulative so playing 3 market cards would give you +3 gold to spend.

After a number of turns you should have a fairly reasonable engine running allowing you to speed through your deck and allow you to buy at least one card every turn. When this has happened its time to start buying the victory point cards. You don't really want to get them too early as they make up part of your deck. They are in effect useless until the end game, so buying lots of them too early will dilute your deck. Drawing 5 victory point cards would make for a useless hand.

the game ends when either the 6 Victory point card deck is exhausted, or three other decks are exhausted. The current player then finishes his turn then all players count up there victory point cards. The person with the highest number of victory points wins the game.

I think dominion is a great game. It has taken the task of building a deck of cards into a game and it works very well. Due to the fact that there are so many types of cards each game will be very different. Plus, all players will start on a level footing. With CCG's the person who had the most money would generally have the better deck. There is an element of skill involved, finding cards that work together is very important and you can learn a lot from someone who has played the game. But the more you play the more combinations become apparent and the more your mind starts working out other tricks that can be played.

I can see that Dominion is going to have a large number of expansions. The designer started out with 100 different cards and picked 25 of these for the game. This means that we are going to see a fair number of expansions with new actions cards over the coming years. I believe that these expansions are going to be playable in there own right, which will also be nice for players who have maybe missed out on this great game.

Summary

Presentation 500 cards make for a very re playable game that uses new mechanics. 9/10

Clarity of Rules Rules are clear and concise, you will be playing in no time. 8/10

Game Length Games can range from 20 mins to 45 depending on the number of players. 9/10

Value Good card stock plus loads of re-playability. 8/10

Overall A fantastic card game that plays fast. It's going to stay on the hot list for some time. (9.5/10 not an average)