Designer of the year *cough-cough*

I'm guessing this might generate a couple of comments. Your "official" Designer of the Year is ...

www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgam...esigner_of_the_year/

... yeah, you probably could have guessed, I know.

And he's still going on about last years... (I did learn something new - he changed his mind due to public opinion more than I realised.) After four paragraphs I bailed out. I can live with the suspense.

I'm doing a Designer of the Year award also. Currently it's an even tie between everyone who has released a game so far this year. I'll make my final decision early on New Years Day after I've looked at the Ranking list on T.O.S.

Has he actually played the games this year or is he relying on word of mouth?

It's a competitive field, but I think we've got a winner for the "Most Useless Game-Related Award" Award, 2009.

Me too! Me too! *Ahem*....This year i'll be giving out, my famous "one-thumb" award to anyone who wants it!



Come on Ladies and Gents get your award right Here !

You've inspired me. I'm going to call my award The Finger!

EDIT- Bugger! I just made a decision. That won't do at all.

I can't decide whether to give awards this year.

Do I win?

Steel Driver was a pretty good train game, as far as train games go. Martin Wallace has got to be the king of overly complicated economic games with pasted on themes.

Friese's fast flowing forest fellers is actually a lot of fun despite the homoerotic title. It is a logrolling race game, but a lot of the spaces on the track (river) are whirlpools/eddies/whatever that send you back towards the beginning. The fun part of the game is advancing your pieces forward as quickly as possible while knocking as many opponents back as possible. Some really hilarious chain reactions can occur.

Larry lists some designers that produced real shit this year like Michael Schacht, Dorn, and Kramer, but in the end I don't think his winning picks are all that bad, except for Knizia getting rewarded for publishing multiple games, even though none of them were any good.

Meh. I'll treat Larry's awards the same way I treat the Oscars: elitist awards given to outside-the-mainstream usually piles of crap that I'll never watch by industry insiders who think they're tastemakers for the entire country.

I'll never understand why people put so much stock in the Academy Awards when picking good movies. I can think of less than a dozen winners from the last 20 years in any category that I care anything about.

Larry's pick is pretty much the same. I don't have any of Martin Wallace's games and never will because I don't care for them. Of course, considering Larry's euro bias, I shouldn't be surprised.

The comments appear to already have 2009's winner picked out.

Sag.

The comments to the effect of "I don't like Wallace's games, but he's the clear winner" are kind of funny.

Yeah i HATE boardgames and Wallace's game are shit too, but at least i didnt cry myself to sleep after playing his games so this year's top-of-the-shitpile-award goes to....

It's a lifetime achievement award thing, right? He deserves recognition. BRASS is playable. AGE OF STEAM is a really good game. RAILROAD TYCOON is a barrel of monkeys as far as train games go. And, of course:

RUNEBOUND.

Also, what game provided a better outlet for latent homoeroticism than STEEL DRIVER? The guy played his cards well.

Yeah steel driver's immensely sexy if you're into that kinda thing!

Apparently quantity is greater than quality.