2020 Spiel des Jahres Nominations

Hey folks!  The 2020 Spiel des Jahres nominations were announced today. In case you missed them, here’s the categories, nominations, and quick summary of the game.

 

Spiel des Jahres

My City

• Designer: Reiner Knizia
• Publisher: KOSMOS

 

My city is a legacy game that uses polyominoes to build your city.  Each chapter of the campaign has a few rule changes.  Like most legacy games, game play will change and be unique between players.

 

Nova Luna

• Designer: Uwe Rosenberg and Corne van Moorsel
• Publisher: Pegas Spiele

 

Nova Luna is a tile placement game.  In Nova Luna, players are picking tiles with tasks on them, and when you place them you’re trying to complete these tasks to place one of your tokens on them. The first place to place all their tokens first wins the game.

 

Pictures

• Designer: Christian and Daniela Stohr
• Publisher: PD-Verlag

Pictures is a party game in which players are using different sets of items to make pictures from a central grid. Players simultaneously use one of the five different set of objects to mimic a photo from the grid. At the end of the round, players are guessing what everyone made. Correct guesses earn the artist and the guesser points. The player at the end of the game is the winner.

 

Kennerspiel des Jahres

Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale

• Designer: Jordy Adan
• Publisher: Thunderworks Games

Cartographers is a flip and write game. In it, players are playing over 4 seasons or rounds. In each season, there are different goals that will earn players points based on the criteria met. These are types of terrain and patterns players draw on their score sheets or maps.

 

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

• Designer: Thomas Sing
• Publisher: KOSMOS

 

The Crew is a trick taking card game.  It’s a cooperative trick taking card game.  Each mission in the game, players are given different goals.  These goals are common knowledge, but what’s not common knowledge is what cards are in the players hands.  Missions players get can be something like win the trick in X suit with the #6 card. So in the game, you’re trying to work together to let the correct players win the correct trick.  All the normal trick taking rules apply like following suit.

 

The King’s Dilemma

• Designer: Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva
• Publisher: Horrible Guild

 

The King’s Dilemma is a legacy style game that has players forming a single council made of different house factions.  Each player represents a different faction. Each game, a series of dilemmas are resolved by popular votes.  The result of this votes will change the story line and different consequences will resolve putting different houses in more power than others.

 

So there you have it. The nominations for Spiel and Kennerspiel.  I haven’t listed the kids games nominations. I’ll probably do that in a later post. I didn’t have too much time to put this one together.

 

I haven’t played any of these games. I’ve heard good things for each one.  Out of both nominations, I want to play Nova Luna and The Crew the most. Let me know if you’ve play any of these or have your own guesses for the winners.