Back to Wallenstein, the mystery of the Thirty Years’ War! …or, if you have been reading the last two instalments in this miniseries, just a regular man, shaped by his time, shaping his time. We’ve seen his unassuming beginnings and his meteoric rise early in the war, and then his five years as supreme imperial commander until he was recalled by an ingrate emperor on behalf of his malignant princes. Today, we’ll look at Wallenstein’s second command, the duel of the two greatest commanders of the war, and Wallenstein’s search for peace. Of course, there will be board games on the way.
You can read all posts in the series here:
Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, had taken Germany by storm in 1631. He was allied with the heretofore neutral Protestant electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, had shattered the imperial army under Count Tilly at Breitenfeld, and was taking his winter quarters in Mainz, deep in the southwest of Germany. For 1632, he looked ready to advance along the Danube, first into Bavaria, the home of elector Maximilian, the most powerful Catholic prince in the empire (and Wallenstein’s chief rival), and then into the Habsburg core lands.
Wallenstein had been the emperor’s man to solve his military problems for five years. It was thus an obvious choice to recall him as commander. Even Maximilian was in favor (hoping for Wallenstein to defend his electorate, which had heretofore been blissfully ignorant of war as a first-hand experience). Emperor Ferdinand II was practically begging. Wallenstein agreed – but only to reorganize the army, only for three months. The emperor went along, having no other choice. And, of course, when the three months were over, Wallenstein stayed on, having his supreme authority confirmed and expanded.
We have discussed the Wallenstein rule in Thirty Years War: Europe in Agony, 1618—1648 (David A. Fox/Michael Welker, GMT Games) as far as his dismissal was concerned – when Wallenstein’s influence becomes too high, the Catholic player can avoid losing by dismissing Wallenstein which will halve his influence. Having dismissed Wallenstein, the Catholic player can recall him again for a second bout in command – this time probably shorter, as Wallenstein will have some leftover influence and will thus be closer to the influence threshold that would mean Protestant victory!
Gustavus Adolphus had not been idle while Wallenstein re-organized the army. He had split his army in several parts, taking a good deal of Catholic Germany (and distributing ecclesiastical lands to his supporters), while his main force advanced towards Bavaria. The army of the Catholic League under Maximilian and Tilly attempted to make up for their numerical inferiority with a strong defensive position behind the river Lech. Gustavus Adolphus forced the Lech in April 1632 with the double measure of a crossing south of the Catholic army and the massed use of artillery. The League army was routed. Tilly died of the wounds he had suffered in the battle. One month later, Gustavus Adolphus lodged in the Bavarian capital Munich.
Maximilian beseeched Wallenstein to march for Bavaria and meet the Swedes in open battle. Yet Wallenstein’s mission concerned the entire empire, not just a single electorate. And his caution – half natural, half learned in the campaign of 1626 – led him to pursue a different course. He marched for Franconia. From there, he threatened Gustavus’s supply lines which stretched all the way to the Baltic coast, and he could quickly march to Bavaria, strike at the Swedish king’s new Saxon allies, or retreat to Bohemia, as the situation required it. When he took camp near the city of Nuremberg, one of the greatest cities of the empire, he also evoked the Protestants’ fear of another Magdeburg – more atrocities visited on a large Protestant city. Gustavus Adolphus had to turn and face Wallenstein.
The Swedish king had a battle-hardened army with him, but the difficult supply situation and the vast area which he had conquered had forced him to detach large parts of his army. Even though reinforcements arrived for him in Nuremberg, his combined force was not bigger than Wallenstein’s (strengthened by some of the Bavarian troops) who had built a fortified camp at the Alte Veste outside of Nuremberg. Gustavus, eager to fight a decisive battle and resume his attack on the Habsburg core lands, attempted to breach the defenses for several days, but was bloodily repelled by Wallenstein’s forces. The king had to withdraw. He left a garrison behind to hold Nuremberg against Wallenstein’s siege. The Swedes were not defeated, but the myth of Gustavus’s invincibility was broken.
As the Protestant army had withdrawn southwest, Maximilian feared a new invasion of Bavaria. Once more, he demanded that Wallenstein follow Gustavus to protect Bavaria. And once more, Wallenstein refused. Protect Bavaria he would, though… not by marching south, but north.
Wallenstein’s march for Saxony followed his tried-and-tested strategy of combining pressure on the supply lines with political pressure: When Wallenstein’s army showed up in Saxony, the Saxons would understand how foolish they had been to declare against the emperor. Maybe their elector John George, an imperial loyalist by inclination, could be brought back into the imperial fold. Until then, Wallenstein’s army would winter in Saxony, consuming the food and fodder which Saxon peasants had grown and harvested.
As Wallenstein had foreseen, Gustavus Adolphus followed him to protect his supply lines and his Saxon allies, arriving in November 1632 in Saxony. In Wallenstein’s mind, the campaigning season was over, and he split his army into several winter quarters – a common necessity in Cuius Regio (Francisco Gradaille, GMT Games, forthcoming) as well, as smaller towns are often unable to supply large armies in winter. Yet Gustavus was not done campaigning, kept his force concentrated, and marched on the force under Wallenstein’s command stationed around the village of Lützen.
Wallenstein, caught unprepared, scrambled to get reinforcements for the battle that was now upon him. He hoped that at least the cavalry of his lieutenant Gottfried Heinrich, Count of Pappenheim would arrive in time, maybe even the infantry. Until then, he took defensive positions at Lützen, obscured by the morning mist and the smoke from having set the village on fire.
The ensuing Battle of Lützen, fought on November 16, 1632, was Wallenstein’s fiercest tactical challenge. The Protestant army had a slight numerical superiority, its core formed by veterans of many battles (usually on the winning side), and it was commanded by the greatest tactical commander of the time. The initial Swedish assault shattered Wallenstein’s left. The Swedes also gained Wallenstein’s artillery battery on the left wing. Yet when the battle seemed already lost, Pappenheim arrived with his cavalry regiments and turned the tide. Pappenheim, however, was severely wounded, and most of his cavalrymen fled. Colonel Ottavio Piccolomini took some regiments from the center, and, helped by the onset of more fog, could stabilize the front.
In the meantime, Wallenstein’s right had repelled the Protestant assault on their side and were now battering the Swedish-German troops under Prince Bernard of Saxony-Weimar. Bernard called for support, and the king himself answered with a group of select cavalrymen. Gustavus Adolphus was wounded, lost touch with his forces in the fog, and thus fell into the hands of imperial soldiers who killed him and plundered his corpse. News of the death of the king spread among the Protestant ranks. They responded quite differently to Pappenheim’s forces when faced with the loss of their commander: Gustavus Adolphus had been beloved, a hero, the savior of Protestantism. The Swedish-German troops battered Wallenstein’s right wing and took his second battery. Their strength, however, was insufficient to expel the imperial forces from their defensive positions. The fighting ended when night fell. Wallenstein withdrew his army in good order.
Lützen had been no victory for Wallenstein. He had given up the battlefield and his losses were heavier than those of the Protestants. Yet Wallenstein could retake the positions lost, and he could recruit new soldiers to take the places of the fallen. Gustavus Adolphus, on the other hand, could barely be replaced. The imperial side could be content with the campaigns of 1632.
After Wallenstein’s last great operational success, the campaign against Denmark in 1627 and 1628, he had made peace with his enemy from a position of strength. His inclination now was to do the same – only peace would confirm his large acquisitions in Bohemia, Silesia, and Mecklenburg, and as he grew older and sicker, frequently bed-ridden, he meant to enjoy them. As the Swedes were nowhere near as thoroughly beaten as Denmark had been, Wallenstein started smaller with attempts to prise their Saxon allies away from them with a mix of persuasion and force: While he treated with his former marshal Hans Georg von Arnim, who, as a devout Protestant, had left imperial service for reasons of conscience after the Edict of Restitution, and now served the Elector of Saxony, Wallenstein’s new lieutenant Heinrich von Holk (another Protestant, and the former commander of the forces resisting Wallenstein at the siege of Stralsund) marauded in Saxony.
The emperor had good hopes that his Saxon vassal would return into the imperial fold and commended Wallenstein for his diplomatic efforts. In the meantime, Wallenstein (and his new second-in-command Matthias Gallas, promoted after Holk had died of the plague in September 1633) also treated with the Swedes (in the person of Gustavus Adolphus’s chancellor Axel of Oxenstierna who now directed Swedish politics), yet nothing would come of that: Both sides seem to have tried to stall the other’s war efforts with diplomacy and undermine the confidence of the allies of the other. For example, the Swedes offered Wallenstein to become King of Bohemia if he allied with them and fought against the emperor – an absurd notion, as Wallenstein’s confirmation by the Protestant estates of Bohemia would have been at odds with their expropriation in 1621 from which he had acquired his Bohemian holdings.
The Swedish advances were not acknowledged by Wallenstein himself. As his health deteriorated, however, others started speaking with his voice, chiefly his brother-in-law Adam Erdmann, Count Trčka, his marshal Christian von Ilow, and the Bohemian diplomat Vilém Kinský. They hoped to bring about an alliance between Wallenstein, the Bohemian emigrants, and the foreign powers supporting them against the Habsburgs – Sweden, and possibly even France.
Both sides used their tentative diplomatic efforts and the resulting operational lull in 1633 to consolidate their forces after the exertions of the previous year. By fall, though, they were ready to strike again. Wallenstein marched to Silesia to retake the last Habsburg dominion held by the Protestants. Their commander, the Bohemian Heinrich Matthias von Thurn, surrendered in exchange for his release after the capture. Emperor Ferdinand resented that this arch-rebel who had been in the Bohemian uprising from its beginning in 1618 went unpunished.
The Swedish main army, commanded by Bernard of Weimar, struck at Regensburg and invaded Bavaria again in November. Wallenstein sent some regiments under Johann von Aldringen to support the Catholic League army, but his own army remained in Bohemia on the principle that any threat to the Habsburg core lands could be blocked as long as imperial forces held the city of Passau on the Danube. Maximilian complained bitterly to the emperor about Wallenstein’s passivity.
Emperor Ferdinand II had always been the source of Wallenstein’s power, often against the advice of his allies. Maximilian had always been suspicious of Wallenstein. The Spanish Habsburgs had had a more ambivalent stance. They had respected Wallenstein as an effective commander who spread Habsburg influence in Germany, but had resented his refusal to support their wars in the Netherlands, and, in the late 1620s, against the French in Upper Italy. In December 1633, they found themselves in a pickle: The Habsburg governess of the Netherlands, Isabella Clara Eugenia, aunt to the King of Spain, had died. With Dutch naval supremacy, they could only bring a new governor in by land, along the Spanish Road linking Upper Italy and the Netherlands – whose middle part in Germany was now in the hands of the Swedes. The Spanish representatives in Vienna lobbied for Wallenstein to give the new governor, Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, an armed escort of several regiments. Wallenstein refused. An army of a few thousand men with the Cardinal-Infante could not possibly withstand any Swedish attack on its way, he argued, while he could not spare thousands of men when the Habsburg core lands were under direct threat. Spain was snubbed. If the Spanish had ever supported Wallenstein, henceforth, they wouldn’t.
It doesn’t look so good anymore for our hero! In the next post, we will wrap up the story of Wallenstein. Watch this space!
Won by the Sword (Ben Hull, GMT Games)
Thirty Years’ War: Europe in Agony, 1618—1648 (David A. Fox/Michael Welker, GMT Games)
Cuius Regio (Francisco Gradaille, GMT Games, forthcoming)
A recent biography which succeeds at dispelling the Wallenstein myth is Mortimer, Geoff: Wallenstein. The Enigma of the Thirty Years’ War, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2010.
For an older, more encompassing biography with literary aspirations, see Mann, Golo: Wallenstein. His Life Narrated, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York City, NY 1976.
On the reception of Wallenstein and his changing image from his contemporaries all the way through the 20th century, see Bahlcke, Joachim/Kampmann, Christoph: Wallensteinbilder im Widerstreit: Eine historische Symbolfigur in Geschichtsschreibung und Literatur vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert [Conflicting Conceptions of Wallenstein: A Symbolic Figure from History in Historiography and Literature from the 17th to the 20th Century], Böhlau, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2011 [in German].
For a short introduction to the Thirty Years’ War, see Schmidt, Georg: Der Dreißigjährige Krieg [The Thirty Years’ War], C.H. Beck, Munich 2010 [in German].
A magisterial monography on the entire war is Wilson, Peter H.: Europe’s Tragedy. A New History of the Thirty Years’ War, Penguin, London 2009.
In this new version of the app there are more Avatar options, more Avatar settings and more Avatars!
You can now use Multiple Select to set Illustrations, Background colours and Shapes for multiple selected Players. This makes it even easier to visually create a group of Players!
It is now possible to:
Read more about Avatars and all options here: Avatars
Illustrator Annika was so generous to create another illustration!
You can now use her chameleon to create even more Avatars.
Her range of pöppels is also expanded with 5 new colours!
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Travel back in time to the radical 1980s where you'll put together a crew of criminals for the heist of the decade
There have been dozens of “Pikathulhu” mashups of much-beloved pocket monster Pikachu and much-terrifying Lovecraftian horror Cthulhu, but why stop there?
The Adventures of Conan expansions pack contains two expansions Queen of the Black Coast and Nemedian Chronicles
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Join a cast of hungry, adorable critters as they attempt to sneakily swipe some delicious, sizzling meat from the backyard barbie. Can you outwit the humans and fill their bellies?
Get ready for Gen Con 2025 with a preview of anticipated new board game releases and highlights from key publishers making waves in the industry.
First a bit of background on Silk, she is quite a new Superhero as she first appeared on 1st April 2014 in the amazing Spiderman. She is of Korean American descent and was a love interest of Spider-Mans, her full name is Cindy Moon and she was bitten by the same Spider that had bitten Peter Parker. Her abilities are Superhuman strength, Speed, Agility, Equilibrium, Reflexes. Stamina and Durability. She also has the ability o stick to solid surfaces, she has organic web generation, precog silk-sense, she is an expert in hand to hand combat and has an Eidetic memory.She was a member of Spider-Army, Web-Warriors and the Agents of Atlas. She briefly took on the name Spider-Woman during the spider verse story line of 2022-2023.
So how does she play in the game? Her best ability is her tuck mechanic that lets her defuse dangeours encounter cards allowing her to turn them into a future card draw in her alter ego, this gives better control of the encounter deck espeically in a solo game. She has a strong defense allowing her to take damage which is useful whether playing solo or multiplayer where someone needs to take the hits. In a multi player deck with other web warriors she can share the benefit of those cards like Web of Life and Destiny. Her main disadvantage is her low damage output which especially in solo can mean she struggles against bosses.
You can order her hero pack at: https://www.bgextras.co.uk/marvel-champions/marvel-champions-hero-wave-9-agents-of-shield/marvel-champions-the-card-game-silk-hero-pack
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Guess the numerical answer to trivia questions, and keep going until you believe answers total up to a final score you’re happy with. But if that total goes over 21, your team automatically loses!
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It’s that time of year again – time for the des Jahres awards! These are a set of awards given to the German game of the year. The Spiel des Jahres (family game of the year) has been around since 1978, with the Kinderspiel (childrens game) being officially added as an award in 2001, and the Kennerspiel (connoisseur’s game) being introduced in 2011. Despite being only one of a myriad of awards out there, these tend to be the most like the Oscars and get the most scrutiny from the hobby game community. Every year since this blog started, I’ve done an annual rundown of the titles nominated and given my predictions, and I’m 22-16 overall with my picks. Last year, I broke my three year streak of getting all three winners correct as I only got the Kinderspiel right, so let’s see if we can get back on track this year.
I’m 6-4 overall with my Kinderpiel picks, which I only started picking in 2015. And here is how I’ve done over the years:
You’ll notice that I have gotten the Kinderspiel winner correct the last four years in a row. We’ll see if we can keep that streak up this year. Without further ado, here are the nominees!
Cascadia Junior (Fertessa Alysse/Randy Flynn, Flatout/AEG) is a kids version of 2022 Spiel des Jahres winner Cascadia. In the game, you’ll be drawing double hex tiles and adding them to your habitat. If you ever create a group of three animal icons, you’ll cover them up and draw a matching animal token, placing it on a panorama board (but not looking at it). Once everyone has placed 10 tiles, the game ends, and you collect habitat tokens for having groups of 3-5 and 6+ identical terrain groupings. You’ll then reveal all your tokens, add up the scores, and see who won.
It’s certainly not unheard of for the kids version of a game to win Kinderspiel – My First Stone Age and Mysterium Kids have both done it. And plenty have also gotten nominations – Taco Kitten Pizza got a nod last year. This one looks like an interesting distillation of the Cascadia rules, though I’m really not a fan of the hidden-from-everyone-including-the-player scoring. Still, it doesn’t look bad.
Le Clan des Souris (aka Die Mäusebande, Christoph Lauras, Débacle Jeux/Game Factory) is a game about collecting teeth, because apparently other cultures use a Tooth Mouse instead of a Tooth Fairy. A 3×3 (or, in a more advanced game, 4×4) grid is laid out, and players have to find animals on the tiles to collect their teeth. Before time runs out, as tracked by moons, players need to find different sizes of animals to collect their teeth. In the advanced game, there are monsters to be beaten, stuff to beat those monsters, and other bonuses/obstacles to discover.
This game is only available in French and German, but it seems like a fairly simple memory game. Memory games don’t tend to do well in Kinderspiel voting, but I have enjoyed seeing the different ways the mechanism is explored over the years. The three sizes of animals look like it really throws a wrench in just straight memorization. It looks fun.
Topp die Torte! (Wolfgang Warsch, Schmidt Spiele) is a game about building cakes. Each player starts the game with a unique base layer with a number of colored bars. You’ll also get a stack of 7 layers from which you’ll draw two. From those two, you’ll choose one to add to your cake, and you’ll pass the other. If the colored bars line between the tile you placed and the tile below it, you gain gems of those colors based on symbols present on the bars. Gems are placed in jars, which (when full) get you coins with points on them. After everyone has placed seven layers on their cake, the game ends, and the player with the most points wins.
This is a spatial game, where players really have to visualize where the layers will line up so they can get maximum gems. There is some luck in what you draw, as well as points from the coins. But the draft becomes the most important, as you have to pick both what you’re going to keep as well as what your neighbor will get. It looks like a pretty cool game.
My predictions for the winners are at the bottom of the post, but for now, let’s get to the granddaddy of them all, the Spiel des Jahres.
I’m 8-6 Spiel in my predictions for the Spiel des Jahres. Here’s how I’ve done over the years.
Captain Flip was the one pick I made last year where I was pretty certain I was correct, and then the jury went against tradition and picked the heaviest game nominated. I haven’t gotten to play Sky Team yet, and while I do think it looks very good, it’s still a surprise that a two-player game got picked for family game of the year. Anyway, I’m going to try to get back on the horse this year with my pick. Here are the nominees.
Bomb Busters (Hisashi Hayashi, Pegasus Spiele) is a cooperative game about being part of a bomb disposal squad. Each player has a rack of wires, and other players have to logically figure out what you have. On your turn, you can either do a solo cut, where you reveal two of your wires that have the same number, or a dual cut, where you ask another player if a particular wire is a number that matches one of yours. If they do, you both reveal. If not, you’re one step closer to blowing up. There’s equipment you can use to make your life easier, but the main goal is to find all the wire pairs before the bomb detonates.
This game kind of gives me Hanabi vibes as players are trying to logically figure out which stuff to reveal without having it all blow up in their faces. It also gives me a little bit of The Crew, as there are a ton of missions in the box to keep things interesting. And it looks like a pretty good logic puzzle style game with a slightly more intense theme than the cover art would suggest.
Flip 7 (Eric Olsen, KOSMOS/The Op) is a push-your-luck card game where you’re trying to score points by taking unique cards. In a round, players will take turns deciding if they want to hit and take another card, or if they want to stop and just take their points. If they hit and get a number (0-12) that they do not have, they are safe. If they get a repeat number, they bust and are out of the round. There are also special action and modifier cards that could come up. When someone gets to 200 points, the player with the most points at the end of that round wins.
This is a pretty light card game that seems like a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoy light push-your-luck games, and this looks like a good one. It bills itself as “THE GREATEST CARD GAME OF ALL TIME” right on the cover, which is kind of off-putting to me, even if it is just a joke. However, the game does look fun and it’s one I’d like to try.
Krakel Orakel (Die 7 Bazis, frechverlag) is a party style drawing game where players are trying to get their fellow players to guess a drawing. The trick is, you’re drawing on a board that has a bunch of scribbles already printed on it, and you have to use those lines. Each player gets a word, then has two minutes to make their drawing on their board. Once everyone is done, the words get mixed with some dummies from the deck, and each player gets to vote on one word they think was not drawn by another player. If players can survive four rounds without losing too many points, they win.
I’m not a party game fan, and I don’t think this one would make a convert of me. I think it has a clever twist with the preprinted lines, but at the same time, I can see that being really frustrating and limiting for some people. Sculptors like to talk about seeing their sculpture in the medium before they start, and that’s something I think you’d have to do here. It looks like an interesting twist on drawing games, but it’s not one that I’m personally interested in trying out.
Before we get to my pick, let’s look at the Kennerspiel des Jahres.
I’m 8-6 in my picks for the Kennerspiel, which is awarded to a slightly heavier game each year. It’s typically not a heavy game, more like a next step up from the SdJ. Here’s how I’ve done:
I had gotten five in a row correct before I talked myself out of picking Daybreak last year. I have played both that and Guild of Merchant Explorers this year, and like them both. But it was indeed a case of the jury defying tradition again and picking a heavier game than they usually do. Still, I’m going to try to get to 6 out of the last 7 with this year’s pick. Here are the nominees.
Endeavor: Deep Sea (Carl de Visser/Jarratt Gray, Burnt Island Games/Grand Gamers Guild) is the latest game in the Endeavor line. The original Endeavor came out in 2009, and was a game of exploration and economics. The 2018 reprint (subtitled Age of Sail) updated the game and brought a whole new set of fans to the system. This sequel is about underwater exploration, and while it has similar mechanisms, it is a different game. Players will be performing actions on different tiles that will make up the modular board. These include diving, traveling, using sonar, and research. The game has a conservationist bent to it, and the goal is to score the most points as you explore and understand the deep sea better.
I’m not getting into all the mechanisms of the game because there are a lot of moving parts, and I’m trying to keep this at least relatively brief. But, it looks like a good sequel to Endeavor (I’ve played the original, but not the reprint) that takes the system in a different direction. I’d imagine that the third game might head to outer space, but who knows. I think this looks like a lot of fun, with my only hesitation being that I think it might have just a few too many moving parts for the Kennerspiel this year.
Faraway (Johannes Goupy/Corentin Lebrat, KOSMOS) is a game about taking a journey and completing quests. In each round, players will simultaneously add a card to their journey rows. Starting with the player who played the lowest number, they will then draft a new card to their hand. After eight rounds, players will score their journey. This is done by flipping all the cards face down, then revealing them one by one, starting from the end (i.e. the last card they played). Cards have different scoring conditions, including different symbols to collect and colors needed, and you can only score cards that have been revealed. So the first card you play won’t get scored until the end, while the last card you played will score before anything else has been flipped. The player with the highest score wins.
Faraway is the only nominee from any of the categories that I have played. It’s a very interesting game that takes a little thinking to get your head around the concept. There’s a lot of thinking in the game, especially at the start as you figure out your strategy going forward. It can run long with higher player counts (my first game was with six players who kept getting very distracted), but it shouldn’t take too long once people understand the flow. I like it, and I think it’s a good nominee for this award.
Looot (Charles Chevallier/Laurent Escoffier, Gigamic/Game Factory) is a Viking themed game where you’re pillaging the land to build up your own community. Players are placing Vikings on a shared board to collect resources and building to put on their own board. The different buildings have different rules for capture. There are also different Longships you can get that will give you more points, and these have resource requirements to make them operational, and will lose you points if not completed. In the end, when all Vikings have been placed, the player who has the most points wins.
Looot seems like a pretty interesting puzzly game, as you’re trying to figure out the best way to get resources and buildings. That you’re picking up stuff from a shared board is interesting, especially that your Vikings don’t have to be adjacent to your own Vikings, which means you need to b mindful of what others need and try not to make it too easy for them. It seems like a pretty good game that, due to the title, I might have skipped over looking at had it not been for the nomination.
OK, it’s time for my picks. For the Kinderspiel, I’ve been waffling between two choices. My general guiding principle is to pick the one with the dexterity element, but none of these have one. Memory games don’t tend to do well in voting, so I’m not going with Les Clans des Souris. That leaves Cascadia Jr and and Topp die Torte. After much deliberation, I’m going with…
This is a weird pick for me because I think it’s the game that I personally would be least interested in. However, at the same time, it’s the one that feels the most like a Kinderspiel winner. Topp die Torte looks really cool and interesting, but I can also see it being super frustrating for kids. I mentioned that memory games don’t tend to do well in KidJ voting, but Les Clans des Souris does have a great concept and looks like a pretty solid game. Cascadia Jr, despite having more randomness in the scoring than I would like, does have that light puzzle feel, nice art, and a panorama where you can build your own nature scenes. Also, it’s based on a popular board game IP, and those games do have a history of doing well (just since I’ve been doing my predictions, My First Stone Age, Dragomino, and Mysterium Kids have all won). So, I think it’ll be Cascadia Jr, though I’d be happy seeing either of the other two win.
On to my Spiel des Jahres prediction, and this is another one where I went back and forth between my choices. Ultimately, I think I’m going with
It was between this and Bomb Busters for me. Krakel Orakel seems like this year’s weird pick – the one that is interesting because it’s so quirky, but ultimately doesn’t have a shot. I ended up going with Flip 7 because I think it’s an easily accessible game that will really reach a lot of people who might not be that into gaming. While I think Bomb Busters looks great, I think the theme is probably going to turn a lot of people off. It coming the year after “avoiding a plane crash” was the theme probably doesn’t help. While Flip 7 does seem very small and simple for an SdJ winner, that’s my choice, and I’m sticking with it.
Time for the Kennerspiel prediction, and while I’m not 100% confident in my pick, I arrived at this decision quicker than the others. I’m going with
Faraway seems like the kind of game the jury will go for. Simple rules, the twist on scoring, and a fairly compact game make it seem like the clear frontrunner. Endeavor: Deep Sea and Looot seem like very good games, but just with a lot of moving pieces that might be kind of intimidating. I have played Faraway and haven’t played the other two, so maybe that’s my bias showing, but I’ll go with Faraway as this year’s Kennerspiel winner. If it doesn’t win, I think Looot would be my second choice, but I’m sticking with Faraway.
So, there’s my predictions. The award winners will be announced on Sunday at 6pm German time (GMT+2), so we’ll see if I managed to get it right this year. Thanks for reading!
EDIT: Well, that didn’t go well. For the first time since 2016, I’m 0-3. Topp die Torte won the Kinderspiel, giving Wolfgang Warsch his second dJ award – he’s now one step closer to the career Grand Slam, just need an SdJ. Bomb Busters won the SdJ, meaning that a cooperative game has now won 5 of the last 7 years. Endeavor: Deep Sea won the Kennerspiel, which was a surprise for me because I thought it would be a little too heavy. Between that and Daybreak last year, it seems the jury might be moving in a little bit of a heavier direction with these picks. Anyway, not a good year for me, so we’ll see if I can do better next time.
It’s that time of year again – time for the des Jahres awards! These are a set of awards given to the German game of the year. The Spiel des Jahres (family game of the year) has been around since 1978, with the Kinderspiel (childrens game) being officially added as an award in 2001, and the Kennerspiel (connoisseur’s game) being introduced in 2011. Despite being only one of a myriad of awards out there, these tend to be the most like the Oscars and get the most scrutiny from the hobby game community. Every year since this blog started, I’ve done an annual rundown of the titles nominated and given my predictions, and I’m 22-16 overall with my picks. Last year, I broke my three year streak of getting all three winners correct as I only got the Kinderspiel right, so let’s see if we can get back on track this year.
I’m 6-4 overall with my Kinderpiel picks, which I only started picking in 2015. And here is how I’ve done over the years:
You’ll notice that I have gotten the Kinderspiel winner correct the last four years in a row. We’ll see if we can keep that streak up this year. Without further ado, here are the nominees!
Cascadia Junior (Fertessa Alysse/Randy Flynn, Flatout/AEG) is a kids version of 2022 Spiel des Jahres winner Cascadia. In the game, you’ll be drawing double hex tiles and adding them to your habitat. If you ever create a group of three animal icons, you’ll cover them up and draw a matching animal token, placing it on a panorama board (but not looking at it). Once everyone has placed 10 tiles, the game ends, and you collect habitat tokens for having groups of 3-5 and 6+ identical terrain groupings. You’ll then reveal all your tokens, add up the scores, and see who won.
It’s certainly not unheard of for the kids version of a game to win Kinderspiel – My First Stone Age and Mysterium Kids have both done it. And plenty have also gotten nominations – Taco Kitten Pizza got a nod last year. This one looks like an interesting distillation of the Cascadia rules, though I’m really not a fan of the hidden-from-everyone-including-the-player scoring. Still, it doesn’t look bad.
Le Clan des Souris (aka Die Mäusebande, Christoph Lauras, Débacle Jeux/Game Factory) is a game about collecting teeth, because apparently other cultures use a Tooth Mouse instead of a Tooth Fairy. A 3×3 (or, in a more advanced game, 4×4) grid is laid out, and players have to find animals on the tiles to collect their teeth. Before time runs out, as tracked by moons, players need to find different sizes of animals to collect their teeth. In the advanced game, there are monsters to be beaten, stuff to beat those monsters, and other bonuses/obstacles to discover.
This game is only available in French and German, but it seems like a fairly simple memory game. Memory games don’t tend to do well in Kinderspiel voting, but I have enjoyed seeing the different ways the mechanism is explored over the years. The three sizes of animals look like it really throws a wrench in just straight memorization. It looks fun.
Topp die Torte! (Wolfgang Warsch, Schmidt Spiele) is a game about building cakes. Each player starts the game with a unique base layer with a number of colored bars. You’ll also get a stack of 7 layers from which you’ll draw two. From those two, you’ll choose one to add to your cake, and you’ll pass the other. If the colored bars line between the tile you placed and the tile below it, you gain gems of those colors based on symbols present on the bars. Gems are placed in jars, which (when full) get you coins with points on them. After everyone has placed seven layers on their cake, the game ends, and the player with the most points wins.
This is a spatial game, where players really have to visualize where the layers will line up so they can get maximum gems. There is some luck in what you draw, as well as points from the coins. But the draft becomes the most important, as you have to pick both what you’re going to keep as well as what your neighbor will get. It looks like a pretty cool game.
My predictions for the winners are at the bottom of the post, but for now, let’s get to the granddaddy of them all, the Spiel des Jahres.
I’m 8-6 Spiel in my predictions for the Spiel des Jahres. Here’s how I’ve done over the years.
Captain Flip was the one pick I made last year where I was pretty certain I was correct, and then the jury went against tradition and picked the heaviest game nominated. I haven’t gotten to play Sky Team yet, and while I do think it looks very good, it’s still a surprise that a two-player game got picked for family game of the year. Anyway, I’m going to try to get back on the horse this year with my pick. Here are the nominees.
Bomb Busters (Hisashi Hayashi, Pegasus Spiele) is a cooperative game about being part of a bomb disposal squad. Each player has a rack of wires, and other players have to logically figure out what you have. On your turn, you can either do a solo cut, where you reveal two of your wires that have the same number, or a dual cut, where you ask another player if a particular wire is a number that matches one of yours. If they do, you both reveal. If not, you’re one step closer to blowing up. There’s equipment you can use to make your life easier, but the main goal is to find all the wire pairs before the bomb detonates.
This game kind of gives me Hanabi vibes as players are trying to logically figure out which stuff to reveal without having it all blow up in their faces. It also gives me a little bit of The Crew, as there are a ton of missions in the box to keep things interesting. And it looks like a pretty good logic puzzle style game with a slightly more intense theme than the cover art would suggest.
Flip 7 (Eric Olsen, KOSMOS/The Op) is a push-your-luck card game where you’re trying to score points by taking unique cards. In a round, players will take turns deciding if they want to hit and take another card, or if they want to stop and just take their points. If they hit and get a number (0-12) that they do not have, they are safe. If they get a repeat number, they bust and are out of the round. There are also special action and modifier cards that could come up. When someone gets to 200 points, the player with the most points at the end of that round wins.
This is a pretty light card game that seems like a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoy light push-your-luck games, and this looks like a good one. It bills itself as “THE GREATEST CARD GAME OF ALL TIME” right on the cover, which is kind of off-putting to me, even if it is just a joke. However, the game does look fun and it’s one I’d like to try.
Krakel Orakel (Die 7 Bazis, frechverlag) is a party style drawing game where players are trying to get their fellow players to guess a drawing. The trick is, you’re drawing on a board that has a bunch of scribbles already printed on it, and you have to use those lines. Each player gets a word, then has two minutes to make their drawing on their board. Once everyone is done, the words get mixed with some dummies from the deck, and each player gets to vote on one word they think was not drawn by another player. If players can survive four rounds without losing too many points, they win.
I’m not a party game fan, and I don’t think this one would make a convert of me. I think it has a clever twist with the preprinted lines, but at the same time, I can see that being really frustrating and limiting for some people. Sculptors like to talk about seeing their sculpture in the medium before they start, and that’s something I think you’d have to do here. It looks like an interesting twist on drawing games, but it’s not one that I’m personally interested in trying out.
Before we get to my pick, let’s look at the Kennerspiel des Jahres.
I’m 8-6 in my picks for the Kennerspiel, which is awarded to a slightly heavier game each year. It’s typically not a heavy game, more like a next step up from the SdJ. Here’s how I’ve done:
I had gotten five in a row correct before I talked myself out of picking Daybreak last year. I have played both that and Guild of Merchant Explorers this year, and like them both. But it was indeed a case of the jury defying tradition again and picking a heavier game than they usually do. Still, I’m going to try to get to 6 out of the last 7 with this year’s pick. Here are the nominees.
Endeavor: Deep Sea (Carl de Visser/Jarratt Gray, Burnt Island Games/Grand Gamers Guild) is the latest game in the Endeavor line. The original Endeavor came out in 2009, and was a game of exploration and economics. The 2018 reprint (subtitled Age of Sail) updated the game and brought a whole new set of fans to the system. This sequel is about underwater exploration, and while it has similar mechanisms, it is a different game. Players will be performing actions on different tiles that will make up the modular board. These include diving, traveling, using sonar, and research. The game has a conservationist bent to it, and the goal is to score the most points as you explore and understand the deep sea better.
I’m not getting into all the mechanisms of the game because there are a lot of moving parts, and I’m trying to keep this at least relatively brief. But, it looks like a good sequel to Endeavor (I’ve played the original, but not the reprint) that takes the system in a different direction. I’d imagine that the third game might head to outer space, but who knows. I think this looks like a lot of fun, with my only hesitation being that I think it might have just a few too many moving parts for the Kennerspiel this year.
Faraway (Johannes Goupy/Corentin Lebrat, KOSMOS) is a game about taking a journey and completing quests. In each round, players will simultaneously add a card to their journey rows. Starting with the player who played the lowest number, they will then draft a new card to their hand. After eight rounds, players will score their journey. This is done by flipping all the cards face down, then revealing them one by one, starting from the end (i.e. the last card they played). Cards have different scoring conditions, including different symbols to collect and colors needed, and you can only score cards that have been revealed. So the first card you play won’t get scored until the end, while the last card you played will score before anything else has been flipped. The player with the highest score wins.
Faraway is the only nominee from any of the categories that I have played. It’s a very interesting game that takes a little thinking to get your head around the concept. There’s a lot of thinking in the game, especially at the start as you figure out your strategy going forward. It can run long with higher player counts (my first game was with six players who kept getting very distracted), but it shouldn’t take too long once people understand the flow. I like it, and I think it’s a good nominee for this award.
Looot (Charles Chevallier/Laurent Escoffier, Gigamic/Game Factory) is a Viking themed game where you’re pillaging the land to build up your own community. Players are placing Vikings on a shared board to collect resources and building to put on their own board. The different buildings have different rules for capture. There are also different Longships you can get that will give you more points, and these have resource requirements to make them operational, and will lose you points if not completed. In the end, when all Vikings have been placed, the player who has the most points wins.
Looot seems like a pretty interesting puzzly game, as you’re trying to figure out the best way to get resources and buildings. That you’re picking up stuff from a shared board is interesting, especially that your Vikings don’t have to be adjacent to your own Vikings, which means you need to b mindful of what others need and try not to make it too easy for them. It seems like a pretty good game that, due to the title, I might have skipped over looking at had it not been for the nomination.
OK, it’s time for my picks. For the Kinderspiel, I’ve been waffling between two choices. My general guiding principle is to pick the one with the dexterity element, but none of these have one. Memory games don’t tend to do well in voting, so I’m not going with Les Clans des Souris. That leaves Cascadia Jr and and Topp die Torte. After much deliberation, I’m going with…
This is a weird pick for me because I think it’s the game that I personally would be least interested in. However, at the same time, it’s the one that feels the most like a Kinderspiel winner. Topp die Torte looks really cool and interesting, but I can also see it being super frustrating for kids. I mentioned that memory games don’t tend to do well in KidJ voting, but Les Clans des Souris does have a great concept and looks like a pretty solid game. Cascadia Jr, despite having more randomness in the scoring than I would like, does have that light puzzle feel, nice art, and a panorama where you can build your own nature scenes. Also, it’s based on a popular board game IP, and those games do have a history of doing well (just since I’ve been doing my predictions, My First Stone Age, Dragomino, and Mysterium Kids have all won). So, I think it’ll be Cascadia Jr, though I’d be happy seeing either of the other two win.
On to my Spiel des Jahres prediction, and this is another one where I went back and forth between my choices. Ultimately, I think I’m going with
It was between this and Bomb Busters for me. Krakel Orakel seems like this year’s weird pick – the one that is interesting because it’s so quirky, but ultimately doesn’t have a shot. I ended up going with Flip 7 because I think it’s an easily accessible game that will really reach a lot of people who might not be that into gaming. While I think Bomb Busters looks great, I think the theme is probably going to turn a lot of people off. It coming the year after “avoiding a plane crash” was the theme probably doesn’t help. While Flip 7 does seem very small and simple for an SdJ winner, that’s my choice, and I’m sticking with it.
Time for the Kennerspiel prediction, and while I’m not 100% confident in my pick, I arrived at this decision quicker than the others. I’m going with
Faraway seems like the kind of game the jury will go for. Simple rules, the twist on scoring, and a fairly compact game make it seem like the clear frontrunner. Endeavor: Deep Sea and Looot seem like very good games, but just with a lot of moving pieces that might be kind of intimidating. I have played Faraway and haven’t played the other two, so maybe that’s my bias showing, but I’ll go with Faraway as this year’s Kennerspiel winner. If it doesn’t win, I think Looot would be my second choice, but I’m sticking with Faraway.
So, there’s my predictions. The award winners will be announced on Sunday at 6pm German time (GMT+2), so we’ll see if I managed to get it right this year. Thanks for reading!
EDIT: Well, that didn’t go well. For the first time since 2016, I’m 0-3. Topp die Torte won the Kinderspiel, giving Wolfgang Warsch his second dJ award – he’s now one step closer to the career Grand Slam, just need an SdJ. Bomb Busters won the SdJ, meaning that a cooperative game has now won 5 of the last 7 years. Endeavor: Deep Sea won the Kennerspiel, which was a surprise for me because I thought it would be a little too heavy. Between that and Daybreak last year, it seems the jury might be moving in a little bit of a heavier direction with these picks. Anyway, not a good year for me, so we’ll see if I can do better next time.
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