EXPANSION OF THE YEAR: DESCENT: ALTAR OF DESPAIR

First off, a disclaimer: Had the CA$H N’ GUN$ YAKUZA expansion been released domestically and I had played it, rather than just coveting a friend’s copy, it almost certainly would have taken this spot. I mean, it comes with throwing stars, swords, and a sawed off shotgun. But that’ll have to be a shoe-in for next year. However, early this year we saw the second expansion to Fantasy Flight’s DESCENT: JOURNEYS IN THE DARK and it did everything that I want an expansion to do—it built on established ideas and enhanced gameplay to such a degree that you’ll not want to play without it once you do. Powerful heroes (Kirga, anyone?) and piles of new items coupled with some really cool new monsters and the best published scenario (“The Thing In the Pit”) make this expansion an essential for fans of the game. I was actually notoriously lukewarm about DESCENT until the expansions really developed the idea to a point where I felt that the pace of the gameplay matched its depth and potential. The upcoming ROAD TO LEGEND looks like it’s going to be the victory lap.

EUROGAME OF THE YEAR: THEBES

Eurogames suck. They haven't always, and they don't always, but by and large the genre is at the point where we're getting all the Bushes and Silverchairs and none of the Pixies and Mudhoneys. I think there's really a core canon of Eurogames that pretty much represent the extent of what the genre can possibly offer but beyond that it's repetition. The trend has outstayed its welcome and has resulted in more “me too” also-rans and formulaic repetition than Grunge generated in the mid-to-late 1990s. Really great, or even very good, Eurogames are few and far between these days and frankly I’ve gotten to the point where it has to really interest me to even get me to the table. Peter Prinz’s THEBES managed to recapture some of the fun and simplicity of the better Eurogames while featuring some neat and not entirely abstract mechanics that actually impart a sense of theme and narrative--in this case archaeological digging in the era of Indiana Jones. The game has a light tone overall and it’s perfect for casual play yet it has enough drama (thanks mostly to the random chit pulls that comprise the digging mechanic) to stay interesting for longer than the typical 2-3 game Euro lifespan. Be warned though, it’s definitely a Euro so there’s very little interaction or conflict.

REPRINTED GAME OF THE YEAR HANNIBAL: ROME VS. CARTHAGE

This was the most difficult category for me because it’s hard not to hand the prize to TALISMAN almost by default- Black Industries really did a nice job on the production and updating of that game and it’s definitely great to see one of the great adventure games of the 1980s back in print. Yet I have to give the nod to Valley Games’ incredible, magisterial, and completely against-the-odds reprint of HANNIBAL: ROME VERSUS CARTHAGE. With eBay prices for the 1996 Avalon Hill edition reaching levels that only the five richest kings of Europe could afford and demand continuing to rise due to the popularity of the card-based wargame genre it inspired, HANNIBAL was an almost mythical game assumed to be lost in the red-tape shuffle generated by the Hasbro buy-out of Avalon Hill. Valley Games somehow got the rights for a reprint and pulled out all the stops in making it a definitive, truly special edition of one of the seminal games in the hobby.

WARGAME OF THE YEAR: TIDE OF IRON

Sure, some folks are going to argue that TIDE OF IRON is more of a board game than a wargame and some will argue that there isn’t any distinction between the two in the first place. However, I believe wargames are a distinct category and deserving of their own award. Although I haven’t had a chance to fully play some of the other contenders for this spot (like NAPOLEON’S TRIUMPH, A VICTORY LOST, and ATHENS AND SPARTA), I feel confident awarding the prize to TIDE OF IRON because it represents the best that “pop” wargaming has to offer- an accessible, near-perfect balance of historical flavor (if not specificity) and classical wargaming mechanics with out-of-the-box playability, a reasonable amount of abstraction, and production design that makes even the best wargame publishers look cheap and lazy. Every time I play it I’m still amazed at how much meat, atmosphere, and challenge the designers packed into such a relatively compact package.