I agree that Agricola, Race and Pandemic belong. I consider Pandemic good, but it's amusing and attracts a wide range of gamers. I think In the Year of the Dragon (which I like, a bit) Stone Age (ditto) and Kingsburg (don't like, but only mildly) will all disappear without a trace in a year or so. No need to rehash my thoughts on Hamburgum and Brass. Haven't tried Tribune or Tinner's Trail.

What games would I have added? Well, Kutschfahrt is new to me, but the Geek says it was '06. Galaxy Trucker seems an odd omission. Its in the middle of the pack, in terms of my enjoyment, but it's novel. I can't think of any other games, so I guess I'm not complaining about the list.

I haven't played any of the 2 player games, so no comment there.

Looking at the 2007 winner and nominees, several of those games were flashes in the pan (at least locally). I can't completely absolve myself of blame (Yspahan), but I guess this is just a yearly thing. If you nominate 5-10 games a year, you are bound to have some that just don't stand up to scrutiny a few years (or even year) later. Which just reminds me that I should play Combat Commander again.

I think the IGA should put a bigger delay between games and nomination. Games released June 30th are eligible, and they've got the nomination before the end of August? No doubt many of the voters are more hardcore than I am (see "I haven't played that..." above), but that's still a narrow window. The Historical Simulations nominees (also just announced) are published in 2007, which is better.

Still, lists are always good for arguing about, so have at it.

Incidentally, I almost called Dominion an "organic" game; its a shorthand I've used to describe games where the rules form the seed of gameplay, but other aspects determine it (such as card text). I have no idea where I got that from, and I'm not sure its correct. Just thinking aloud ...

Slow to the party, but I just noticed The Dice Tower did their 2007 awards ... as always, awards provide a good way to bicker. I can't argue with Race for game of the year, though.

I almost wrote a post in response to Eric Martin's "Publisher's can't win" article, but I'll just note it. In general, if they aren't holding my money for extended periods of time, I complain just to grumble about something.

Now for the kicker ... if you lap the group (if judges place that you are "in the pack" then you get a 20 points award, but your extra lap ahead is erased and you are considered to be behind the new leader). [Anyone who falls a lap behind suffers -20 points and is effectively eliminated].

Obviously NBC didn't show all the race (which took about 50 minutes) but they showed a good chunk of it. I wonder if there are other games that have interesting tactical rules (beyond just "Be better") ... I know yachting does (not that I understand them). Any others?

• The animeeples provide enough customization to suit me. Actually, I guess I could do the stickers, too, since that's pretty easy.
• Amazingly, the aspect of David's customization that tempts me is ripping up the box and pasting it onto a carrying case. All I've done is put the cards in four (CCG) card carriers (and sleeved the cards used in every game) and the box barely closes.
• It's still too early to say if my main bone of contention (the cards decide it) is there. I suspect the grotesque combinations I saw were flukes ... still, I find the game enjoyable. I do think that the "Early family growth" is the main path to victory, but exploring the gamespace is amusement enough.
• I have noticed how much the occupations/improvements change each game. If people get the "food" stuff out early, then their won't be scrambles for the day laborer (etc), since alternate means exist, and everyone will be flush and racing for more family members. If they don't, then people will be pausing after their first child, wary of over-extending. Just like the road order in Caylus, a subtle effect.
• Needless to say, I'm still enjoying the game, but I was surprised how interesting (and different) the solo games were. The focus is completely different, in that you only have to consider pressure in actions, not in time, so you are happy to let accumulators build up ("8 sheep? I think I shall.") But the food pressure (3 per family member) does make it more difficult.
• If I do make houserules (apart from just tossing out a few cards), I'm most likely to change the VP per family member; 2 VPs perhaps.
• The rules do mention drafting the occupations/improvements and that certainly seems interesting once people have the game down. Still think it would be too long, though.
• How have people handicapped themselves? I played with no starting food (but as the start player, mainly because everyone wanted me to go first). That seemed reasonable, as it cost me an early action or two to catch up.

Based on Larry's comment, some musings...

Whether I'm pro-variance or anti- depends on the game, to a certain extent. In a large scale business game, I want a tight spread. For example, I may sell 900,000 cars or 1,1M cars in country X over the year. Not "I may sell 0 or 2 million." {I'm looking at you, Automania). Combat, to my mind, is a highly variable event. How many people have had bullets whiz by their head, bounce of a flask, strike their helmet, etc? An inch difference? Dead.

However, I take Larry's point ... at a certain level of war (say, the Eastern Front) Armys could (and did) estimate troop losses due to combat, exposure, illness, accidents, etc. To my mind, that makes Axis and Allies combat system feel roughly right. A good player can glance at a combat and have a rough feel for the losses. But the system does allow for bizarre outcomes, which:

1. Allow weaker players to sometimes win.

2. Make for good stories (Frunk and possibly some others may recall us figuring out the odds of him losing a Memoir '44 tournament game were not a "Million to one" as originally stated, but somewhere on the order of "500-1000 to 1"). I did have one argument a decade ago that a specific Titan battle was a "Million to one" event. Our math (and we did math) suggested that was roughly correct. But take enough events, and you'll see things like that.

3. Prevent exact calculation at the table and hopefully reduce analysis paralysis (although I'm firm in blaming the slow player, not the system; still, you shouldn't encourage them).

Now, systems should be well designed (cough Vampire: The Masquerade cough), but there's nothing inherently wrong with it, for a chaotic theme ... and fighting counts. I rather like the Pokemon miniature system, where each miniature spins, and has a pie chart on the base showing results. So each figures hit/miss can be very finely tuned (in extra few degrees of "Miss"), and quite elegant.

But I've got nothing against WOW's "Six dice may be 0-6 hits." Also Nit picking, since each character usually throws ~2 defense dice, the curve that Dennis alluded too is even more compressed. 0 Hits becomes reasonably likely (since some of the 1s and 2s will get reduced) but six (and even five) are rare. Although the special powers on criticals can drastically increase variance, which Larry will dislike. (One of them is "If you critical on this melee attack, roll a magical attack of four dice." Yeouch. Again, my decision to be affected by that was poor.]

One other point ... even if the combat sub-system was exactly as Larry described (2-4 hits instead of 0-6), the overall system varies dramatically, due to critical breakpoints. Imagine a character with 6 wounds. If you get 3 hits, then 2, they get another turn and heal, kill you etc. If you get 3 and 3, they die. This is insanely important (and one of the key elements of luck in Titan, which usually throws enough dice in a battle to make it more like the East Front analogy than Axis and Allies). If you have the 0-6, again, you expect 3 and 3, but now also have the (very rare) single shot kill or "don't kill in three attacks".

The "variable" system is more variable, but in the aggregate either game will likely be decided by the "Just missed killing him" results.

So I don't think you can just look at the combat subsystem and decry its variability.

Update: Based on Larry's comment, I created a poll on BGG.

This is the extent of my gaming knowledge today.

I've managed to hit a few semi-classics recently, including Wyatt Earp, Medici, Rette Sich Werr Kann, and Puerto Rico. To nobody's surprise, they are all holding up well. The few games of Stage II make me wonder (yet again) why this isn't being reprinted. Ah well, I'm no expert on the business side.

Not much new gaming going on, as the real world has intruded slightly, and I'm spending some time on bridge technique (to improve) and learning the Blue Club bidding system (just because).

Update: It says 400 Previously owned (which includes some expansions). Considering that I often trade away games I don't want for games I know I probably won't want, that number is lower than I expected.

(OK, I've got a few games that I will likely not play but are too good/collectable to let go. Crawl before walking, and all that). Of course, about half of my games played this year have been Race. In fact, the top four games (Race, Strat-o, Bridge and Glory to Rome) account for over half of the games logged. So I guess I don't really need a 250 games. If I have one more sale (which seems likely) then I may actually slip beneath 200 games.

The shelf space is nice.

By the way, I just discovered that one of my Go books (The Nihon Ki-in Book of Proverbs) has 6+ used listings on Amazon, all for $90 or up. Has anyone sold books on Amazon? (And if any of my Loyal and Faithful readers want to buy my copy for $60, I'm game).

Let's start a new feature -- "How far did Brian read before stumbling?"

From the lovely Susan Rozmiarek's review of Tinner's Trail.

Tinners’ Trail is about mining ore in Cornwall, England during the 1800s ... Apparently one of the biggest challenges miners faced was water filling the mines.

I'll become an ameritrasher yet. Games about farming? OK (apparently). Keeping water out of mines? I'll pass. My experiences with Brass have soured me on Wallace's economic games. I'll wait for Tinners Trail to prove itself. (We'll see where Brass is in a year).

From the lovely Valerie's review of Origins:

Rio Grande gave away free drinks

From the lovely Larry's race review:

I’ve now played Race about eight times