Recently in Game awards Category

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the The Finnish Players' Picks 2007 GeekList. See the full list at Lautapelaaja.net. This year we had more voters, more hardcore gamers voting and lots of interesting games on the list. A good year, and another proof the hobby is indeed growing!

The winner? Puerto Rico.

Last year was a disaster, now things look much better! The Finnish Adult Game of the Year for 2007 is Thurn und Taxis, the Finnish Family Game of the Year is Ubongo and the Finnish Kids Game of the Year is Piikkisiili.

The list of finalists was very impressive, too, but I think they chose very good winners (well, Piikkisiili doesn't seem that hot, but the kids game list is a different thing altogether). This has been another good year for board games in Finland!

Finnish gamers, head to Finnish Players' Picks 2007 voting page to tell me which games you enjoyed the most during the last year.

Finnish Players' Picks have been chosen for 2006! The winner is Caylus. Nice surprise, I'd say. I wonder how much the fast release of the Finnish edition helped...

A GeekList of top 25 games is once again available, as are the complete results.

Finnish Game of the Year awards for 2006 are out now, and what a huge disappointment they are! Best children's game is Build-a-Burger (I would've given the award to Das kleine Gespenst, but I don't know anything about Build-a-Burger). Best family game is Quackle, which seems to be a clone of Snorta!, or at least the idea is similar. Best game for adults is Pentago, which is ridiculous! An old abstract game with a single new idea and nice bits, and the jury goes drooling over it.

What about Samurai? Elasund? Pingwin? Pirate's Cove? Bloody amazing.

Here's the information in Finnish.

Finnish Players' Picks 2006 voting is now open and remains so until end of September. If you are Finnish or live in Finland, feel free to list five to seven of your favourite games from the last year (1.9.2005 - 31.8.2006). Remember: the voting isn't about your all-time favourites or the best games released in the last year, but the best games you've played during that period.

The voting form is the way to go. If you have any problems (for example you can't read enough Finnish to understand the form), contact me.

Ok, finally: Finnish Players' Picks 2004 voting is over, votes have been tallied and I can announce the results: Puerto Rico wins, again. Carcassonne is second and catches up, losing only by two votes.

Once again, there's a GeekList of the top games (here's last year's list).

The whole list can be seen at the results page.

Some highlights: St. Petersburg scores seven votes, Ticket to Ride gets ten. Goa gets just three votes. Best new game is Attika with 21 votes. A Game of Thrones, Power Grid and Coloretto do well, too.

Friday's are slow at work. Thus, I had plenty of time to tally the votes for the Finnish Players' Picks. However, I'm not telling you anything yet, you'll have to wait for another boring day at work before I do the GeekList. All I'm saying that top of the list had both same old hits and surprising newcomers.

The winner of the International Gamers Awards is St. Petersburg. Neat. When I wrote about the nominees, I wished but didn't expect it to win. Now the game has won both IGA and DSP awards - my taste in games is better than I thought, it seems.

It is no surprise that I was correct about Memoir '44 winning the two-player game award. Both games are excellent and I recommend them highly for all serious gamers.

Carcassonne wins the Finnish Game of the Year 2004 award. As we all know, Settlers of Catan didn't make it, not even to the finals. However, it got a special mention as an interesting, new kind of game. So basically, I think that reads great game, but too complicated for the award.

Finalists included Yundao, which is an interesting remake of Fish Eat Fish. Yundao certainly seems to look much better than Fish Eat Fish, which is an ugly game.

Here's the official Finnish page.