Garrett’s Games and Geekiness posts a weekly audio podcast on board games and has posted 296 episodes so far. The 296th podcast is a review of their favourite games of 2011. They broke things down into 5 categories: Feld, Heavies, Medium Weights, Card Games, Fillers.
Feld refers to Stefan Feld who had a 1-2 punch this year with Trajan and Castles of Burgundy (I’ve yet to play either as I haven’t been able to find them locally yet).
Heavies consists of 4 games: De Vulguria Eloquentia, Vinhos, Florenza and … Belfort!
He was torn about where to slot Belfort since it’s not as heavy as those other three, but he wanted people to know that the cartoony art might make some think that it’s not a deep game – but it is deep. So that’s really cool!
To finish off his list, his favourite medium weight games are Asara, Crows, Principato, Casa Grande, Firenze, Sun, Sea and Land, Ticket to Ride: Asia. His favourite card games are Biblios, 23, Stich-meister. His favourite Fillers are Kingdom Builder, Paris Connection, Burdigala, Arriala, Cambria, Color Stox, Mondriaan 2020 and Super Rhino!
Great list Garrett! Looks like there’s a few on there that I’ll have to check out.
-Jay Cormier