Kingdomino is perfectly fine, but I felt the SdJ nominees this year were all pretty safe choices. If anything, I would've preferred Magic Maze, which seems to be the most unique of the SdJ nominees. Plus, Honshu, which also came out this year, is a much better bid-and-build-domino-cities game than Kingdomino, but I understand it's a little more complex than the average SdJ winner.
Meanwhile, Exit winning the Kennerspiel frustrates me. It's a solid design, and the escape-room-in-a-box can be quite fun, but it's hardly a gamer's game and the other nominees were incredible.
I guess my takeaway is that the SdJ is built up too much and doesn't reflect my segment of the hobby very well.
I'm a digital nomad. I'd like something a bit more exciting than simple card or dice games, but space is at a bit of a premium. Any recommendations for games that have a lot of depth (and thus can be played over and over), are very quick to pick up the basics (so we can teach others), and are physically tiny (or can be)?
I found TIME Stories to be an expensive box of disappointment. You can play it only once since there is only one scenario in the box and you need to buy others after that. You'll be done with it in a couple hours
Ah, kingdomino got an award. I got a copy last year from a friend who picked it up at Essen. It is excellent. Pretty easy to learn, plays in 15 minutes, hidden depths to strategy. Great gateway game, and not too expensive either.
My only house rules are to remove the bonus points for a full board and centered castle, and to allow someone to declare a broken board and discard a tile at any time (instead of discarding their last tile).
I had a feeling Kingdomino would win it. It feels like a classic pretty much right out of the box and is really easy to teach people, yet still provides just enough decisions to engage the brain and be enjoyable. It also has nice chunky components and a fun spatial puzzle to work out.
I think my copy is going to get played quite a bit in the years to come, and I don't think I'll be getting rid of it for a long, long time.
Anyone have suggestions for two-player games?
Link should be http://spieldesjahres.com/en/game_archive/2017
Title should say [2017], all of the winners are http://spieldesjahres.com/en/game_archive
One of the more interesting games that, in the UK, had pretty much gone no where, was "Settlers of Catan". Then, around 1998 IIRC, it got a 10/10 in a gaming magazine and I think this, very much, spawned the revival of German board games on the UK games scene.
Before then it really was mainly war games (warhammer et al), RPGs, and card games (Magic TG from about 1993 onwards).
There are some absolutely fantastic games out there, but just don't buy from the top X games. Know the size of your play group and buy to suit them.
For example Agricola is a great game, but works best with 3-4 players. My group has 5 players so it's "ok" https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31260/agricola
Recent games that have surprised us. If you like poker, Sheriff of Nottingham and 5 players is exceptionally good fun in a group prepared to be able to put on silly voices and get into character. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/157969/sheriff-nottingha...
Also Camel Up is great for parties (up to 10 people with the expansion) and kids love it as well but is a lot of fun in groups of 5 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/153938/camel
Group dynamic is important in buying the 'right' game but you cannot go wrong with Settlers of Catan if you can get 4 players. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13/catan
If you have a local game shop, or even better, a local games cafe, you can usually get a chance to try out a game. Just remember to buy from them. They are your gateway to a whole new dynamic computer games has pretty much tried to destroy.
Board games are so so so good these days, just avoid Monopoly. ;)