Category Archives: annual awards

My GOTY for 2023 is…

annual awards, by the numbers, gaming stats, GoTY, stats

Happy New Year.

I hope 2024 is a better year than 2023 for everyone. Hopefully that will be the case when the Tories get obliterated at the ballot box.

After much deliberation I have finally decided which of the 43 new to me games that I played in 2023 is my game of the year.

It wasn’t an easy decision.

But before I reveal the results of that deliberation, last year I did a couple of “minor” awards. So this year I thought I’d repeat those two categories before doing the big reveal.

Roll & Write of 2023

I played 4 new roll and writes this year. A drop from last year. However these four new games were pretty good.

Here are the four contenders. They are a great demonstration of how varied this genre of board games can be.

The winner is Motor City.

Motor City is the follow up to last years winner Three Sisters. It’s definitely the most complex of the four games.

Like it’s two predecessors it can seem a bit overwhelming with its two pads. I felt it wasn’t as combotastic as Three Sisters. But it’s still a very nice ‘on the heavier side’ roll and write. It feels totally different to the previous two in the series.

Expansion of 2023

I didn’t buy many expansions this year. There were the promo packs for Rolling Realms. But I’ve not got them to the table. So ineligible for this award.

I think there can only be one winner for this award this year, and it feels a bit of a cheat. It is touted as a stand alone expansion. The winner is Dune Imperium Uprising.

I love Dune Imperium and I love the changes introduced in Uprising.

And now for the big decision, and the one you are really interested in.

GOTY of 2023

My game of 2023 is…

Lord of the Rings the living card game revised edition.

I think what swayed it for LoTR is Nathan. When I played it with him Nathan was keen to play the game and take on the next scenario. He asked to play it again.

And even though I’ve played one or two of the other contenders with Nathan also. It was that reaction and the fond memories of playing with him that contributed to the decision.

Plus as I’ve written in previous posts I’m a Tolkien fanboy. So I love the theme.

Even with just the revised core set FFG included a fun to play campaign with some nice variety in the scenarios. It was interesting to see FFG play with different mechanics.

What’s your game of 2023?

My 2023 GOTY Contenders

annual awards, by the numbers, gaming stats, GoTY, stats

Each year (usually a bit later than this post) I choose my game of the year (GOTY) from the new to me games that I have played throughout the year.

I’ve decided to shake things up a little this year by dedicating two posts to it.

There is this post giving you the contenders for this year. Which will be followed by a post announcing my GOTY.

Let’s start by using the cool 3×3 image the bgstats can generate of the top 9 played new to me games of 2023.

I should point out that being in this 3×3 is no guarantee that the winner will be one of these games.

My 3×3 of top 9 played new to me games of 2023

What surprised my with this 3×3 is Stonemaier Games account for a third of the games in this top 9 played.

Ok it’s time for the raw data showing all the new to me games played in 2023.

Technically I have only played 43 new to me games in 2023. Bgstats records Dice Masters as a new to me game. Which we all know it isn’t. But my plays of Dice Masters was before I had started using the bgstats app to record all my game plays.

I also shouldn’t include 51st State Ultimate Edition as a new to me game. It’s just a new edition (no changes to the game, it’s just a fancy version) of a game I’ve already played.

So excluding these two games narrows the field only slightly. It doesn’t make the decision any easier.

The 2023 stats for the new to me games I played

Which of these would be your GOTY?

My Game of 2021 is…

annual awards

I suppose this is the third and final post in what has turned out to be a poorly conceived and written annual review for 2021.

Before I go on and pick my game of 2021. I should just recap the criteria for qualifying as a candidate to be chosen as a potential game of the year.

There are basically only two criteria to make the “short list”. First the game has to be a new to me game. So basically a game I haven’t played before. Secondly I have to have played it in that calendar year.

The candidates for this years game of the year are…

It’s a pretty strong list. A nice mix of new and old to chose from.

However my game of 2021 is …

My Game of the Year 2021 – Dune Imperium

This won’t come as a surprise to anyone. Despite Gavin not liking it. But he’s wrong on this. We have to remember the cards in this game and Vampire the Masquerade Rivals (the runner up to my game of the year) hated him (how he upset the card gods I don’t know) and coloured his judgement on those games. Plus he likes Barenpark. It’s all we need to know.

What can I say? This mashup of worker placement and deckbuilding is awesome.

This is what I said about Dune Imperium back in October about what I liked about it.

“The unique player abilities (which I believe the Arnak expansion adds), the combat, twice as many rounds, the influence tracks, the worker placement plus the reveal stage, dual use cards, the take that element. Oh and that the scoring is much closer.”

Naturally I love the theme. I’m a fan of the books. Love Lynch’s movie adaptation (more than the very visually impressive recent Villeneuve cinematic outing). I think using art based on the latest movie works well.

I’m looking forward to the imminent (January?) arrival of the first expansion. It looks very exciting and shakes things up.

Dune Imperium my game of 2021.

2017 Game Awards

annual awards

Welcome to another attempt at click bait and our second ever Whitespider1066.com awards ceremony.

I  know the first one was held earlier last year. But I wanted to include the December games in the running for any of the awards.


Unlike other award ceremonies here at Whitespider1066.com we have tried to keep them to a minimum and have only 4 categories. Technically there is a 5th but that had it’s own post, and may very well generate a lot of hate this year (ok since writing that, it generated none whats so ever).

Also I’d like to remind folks these awards are made up of games that not only came out last year,but where new to me.So they can include games that came out before 2017.

Like last year the awards are starting off with looking at games that really captured their theme.

The contenders for Most Thematic Game of 2017 are:

My Most Thematic Game of 2017 is…

This is a hard one to decide, Xia with its open world sandbox Elite the boardgame, really capturing the sci-fi genre, captaining your own ship, choosing your own way through the universe. I’d almost say it could be rebranded as a Firefly boardgame. However the award is going to Star Wars: Rebellion. It really is the original trilogy in a box. Capturing the epicness of the movies, and the struggles of the Empire and Rebellion. Plus I love Star Wars!

Next up are the games that just look stunning, from the art, to the graphical design, to the components used. These games really do prove you should judge a book by its cover.

The contenders for Best Looking Game of 2017 are:

My Best Looking Game of 2017 is…

I nearly went with Kanagawa with this one, because I love the oriental art style of the game. However I think this award can only go to Santorini. The game just looks so visually stunning when playing with the 3D buildings. The cartoon like art is attractive, bright and appealing. I love it.

For this next award of Best Kickstarter Project to qualify the game had to be delivered in 2017.

I would like to add I have been a little disappointed with one two of the kickstarters last year, mainly due to the fulfilment of the pledges. Somehow I have managed to be one of the last to have his pledge sent out on quite a few last year. If I wasn’t so paranoid I’d suspect a conspiracy of some sort.

The contenders for Best Kickstarter Project 2017 are:

My Best Kickstarter Project 2017 is…

I think this one will surprise a lot of folks out there. I’m going with Mint Works for this. A great, quick, pocket sized worker placement game that ran fairly smoothly.

Now for the main event…

Like last years inaugural game of the year award I will be picking my game of the year from the winners of this years game of the month awards. Which means that technically my game of the year is a game that may be new to me but not specifically out in 2017.

Here is the complete list of my game of the month winners:

As you can see this is a pretty strong list. However there were two months where I didn’t think any of the new games I played warranted the much coveted title of game of the month.

But a decision has to be made. And I think I know which game it’s going to be.

So my game of 2017 is…

Twilight Imperium: 4th Edition

It was close, very close. Xia, Rebellion and 7th Continent were a hairs width from claiming it themselves.

But what swung it for this space opera, was the politics side of the game. The making alliances, breaking them etc. It’s an important part of the game, that just lifts it above the others in the running. And is such fun.

This game truly defines the word epic. It is such fun to play. A worthy game to take the game of the year award.

So there you have my click bait awards. I hope they were of some interest.

The Worst Game of 2017…

annual awards

I’m posting this early because it won’t change. Ok I don’t foresee this changing at all. So I am pretty safe in posting this. My actual awards post for games I like will be posted later in the month.

Can you guess what the worst game of 2017 is? This post might give you a clue.

Yep it’s the over rated,  Barenpark.

This years winner came pretty close to knocking Nantucket off its throne of worst game ever.

I really do think that the designer of this game (who shall not be named) looked at games like Patchwork and Cottage Garden and thought “how can I remove the game and fun from this?”

So many people like and even love this big pile of steaming poo, it’s almost become a case of the Emperors new clothes. This game is really a race to complete your jigsaw puzzle first, with barely any interaction with others at the table.

There isn’t much more I can say about this glorified multi player jigsaw puzzle. It deserves this title more than any other game out this year.