There was an article in a sport magazine or newspaper in 2014 about the Green Bay Packers having a Settlers of Catan game that got together routinely. Pro football players playing a board game. That is something I would have never imagined. Pretty cool. Now I need to play Catan at some point. lol.
I'm glad to hear Tom's thoughts on Settlers and knowing that's how he views it. Sam and I had a big back and fourth about a year ago regarding Settlers and its impact on the overall gaming community. I just recently learned about a couple more of my friends who still say today after all of these years and all of the games they've played that Settlers is still their favorite tabletop game of all time! Mind blown!!
+The Dice Tower Who cares if it was popular before? It changed card games fundamentally in the past 8 years and has a lot of expansions and is still incredibly popular. Not as popular as 2 to 3 years ago, but it is still huge. Also, as a game, very very solid with lots of replayability.
+Ross Gustafson. I agree. I don't get the 'it was popular before' explanation. It seems like overthinking things. It's like leaving Titanic off a list of best Oscar pictures because it made a ton of money without it.
+Ross Gustafson Who cares? Tom made his own list. He states at 1:45 his qualifications for the list include if it gave the game a boost or not. He made his list based on that, and Dominion did not fit in. Feel free to make your own list based on your own qualifiers.
I was first introduced to board gaming a few years ago by watching Tabletop, and I remember Catan fondly. It was not the first game I bought however, but it was the Star Trek version that got me interested in seeking out the original. I now have a collection of a measly 110 games but it's growing. I thank Tom and the Dice Tower for teaching me terms and things I never knew about gaming and hopefully the hobby will be always be a part of my life. I watch as many videos (not just the Dice Tower) as I can, and I hope to attend a convention in the future.. Keep on gaming all! :D
I have very good memories about Hase und Igel (Hare and Tortoise?), which was the first game with a "Spiel des Jahres" award (1979) and was probably the first more complex board game I played. I remember being impressed by the fact that you were moving around without using dice. I probably doesn't deserve making the list, but just wanted to share these memories ;-) However, I think Dominion should have made the list, it just make Deckbuilding games popular and probably paved the way to many good new games in that category.
Hoity Toity (1990) introduced simultaneous action selection. Although it's not that popular anymore, it still works very well. I would put it on 6, instead of Zooloretto, which I never liked and which clearly didn't change the gaming world at all. And although I see the importance of Catan, I don't see its influence as being as big as Carcassonne's influence. Tile-placement became such a huge thing and just never gets old. So for me, Carcassonne is clearly number 1.
Great list. Would've helped to put the name of the game in subtitles or at least mention its name again before moving on. Listening to this at work, and kept having to rewind.
We can thank Catan for my family's board game addiction. It introduced us to a whole new world of board games that we didn't even know existed! Now we own a small fortune of board games.
Did you guys ever play the 1985 Sherlock Holmes - Criminal Cabinet? We just found out about it and were basically not able to put it away since then. The experience and the game itself is really brilliant in our opinion.
Great list, Tom, but don't you think Rummikub is one of those few games that past the test of time? It's not really my cup of tea, nevertheless it was in consistently in print since it won Spiel des Jahres in 1980.
Rummikub is a game that virtually can't age. The orginal card game already passed the test of time, so why wound't Rummikub, it's just a nicer version.
+Jan-Dirk Kohlmann I didn't. Dominion was popular without winning the award. I don't think it was the "best" choice, but I don't think it was bad either.
Zee García and Sam Healey should do this too. This could had been a very nice Top 10 Tom!!! You should have done it together T_T Know i really want to know the other guys ones too :3 And maybe Jasons KennerSpiel des Jahres
Even though I was also expecting Dominion to be one of the top5 for how it catapulted deckbuilding, one can argue that since it went against pandemic, it wasn't that obvious of a choice
A lot of "Spiel des Jahres" games are really great, I own several of them, like Scotland Yard, Catan, El Grande and so on, but every few years, the jury chooses a game that is not so great, but the decision is really bad, considering what other games were published in that year. HANABI is one of such cases. I bought it because it was Spiel des Jahres, but the games is rather meh... We played it a few times and now it rests in my games closet....
I have Never ever played Hanabi with someone who didn’t like it afterwards and I’ve taught this game to a looot of people. Definitely deserved Spiel des Jahres IMO. Also, one of the nominees was rise of Augustus, which is one of the worst games I‘ve ever played.
Hey Tom, how about a "Top 10 games that SHOULD have won the Spiel des Jahres" list? You could require that the games had to have been nominated or not. I'd think games like Spendor and Pandemic would be high on the charts as games that were nominated but didn't win. Looking at 2012 the nominated games were horrible (especially for such a solid year overall) and a game like Love Letter, Seasons, Smash Up, or Tokaido would have been better than Kingdom Builder.
You should have put Focus on this list instead of the Worst 10 ;) When you're talking about games that had impact, that changed the hobby, you can't have the '90s Eurogame invasion without the classic games of Sid Sackson, such as Acquire, Can't Stop, and even Focus. The shame is that Focus is the only game that he actually won the Spiel des Jahres for.
Another game that changed gaming forever was Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. Granted, it is a different type of gaming than card and board games, but it is a biggie. :-)
KabukiKid if spiel was around then, it might have won it despite not being tabletop. Perhaps the Gygax estate will get some sort of lifetime achievement in the future.
Another game that changed gaming forever was Maniac Mansion in 1987. Granted, it is a different type of gaming than card and board games, but it is a biggie. :-)
To all Dominion defenders- Ticket to ride or Catan is like Monopoly- known even by non gamers. Ask them about Dominion and i bet most of them havent heard about it. And so what is was first in genre, it doesnt mean its great game or best in this category. I found it very boring, ugly and themeless. It gave an idea other games popularized and used in actually fun way. It made them better games. Kudos for this Dominion but thats about it.
Oh how I dislike Settlers of Catan. The dice in that game hate me. "You need to choose 6 or 8, there's the best chance, you'll hafe resources". When I do that, I get 2 resources in first 5 rounds. Suddenly even 12 rolls more than 6. But it changed gaming, it brought gaming to new hights and that's great. But I won't ever play the game ever again. Funny is that cards don't hate me as much as dice. Oh well...
My list (I've not played Dampfross, Wacky Wacky West, or Mississippi Queen) El Grande Hoity Toity Elfenland Ticket to Ride Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Heimlich & Co. Carcassonne Dixit Manhattan Scotland Yard Torres Liar's Dice Tikal Catan Cafe International Um Reifenbreite Niagara Camel Up Rummikub Alhambra Hare & Tortoise Dominion Zooloretto Thurn and Taxis Qwirkle Domination Villa Paletti Kingdom Builder Colt Express Hanabi Keltis Enchanted Forest
I love Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. But it really was an odd choice for Spiel des Jahres... Heimlich & Co was a great winner indeed. I also miss "Hoity Toity" on this list. Simultaneous Action Selection was revolutionary and changed gaming quite a bit.
You don't consider Dungeons & Dragons as changing gaming forever? Like Magic the Gathering it created a new genre of gaming and like the other two it brought gaming to many new people.
"Best" is not the same as "most important". Catan is absolutely THE most important game to the board gaming hobby, but it is far from the best. In fact, it's boring and repetitve af!
I was so focused on Dominion "obviously" being on this list, that when Tom said #1 is a surprise to no one I thought Dominion and forgot about Catan.
Same thing for me. I was totally expecting the Top 3 to be Catan, Dominion, Ticket to Ride in some order.
+Jason Grubiak I expected Catan to be #1, & I don't even care for the game that much.
I would totally watch a top 10 best and top 10 worst games in the BGG top 100 :)
Azul won today, and the critics got it 100% right. I'll be interested in seeing how high Azul ranks in a future SDJ list.
There was an article in a sport magazine or newspaper in 2014 about the Green Bay Packers having a Settlers of Catan game that got together routinely. Pro football players playing a board game. That is something I would have never imagined. Pretty cool. Now I need to play Catan at some point. lol.
As others have mentioned, Dominion (2009) seems like a big omission.
Hanabi deserves some love for giving it to a very innovative and small card game
Derek Thompson naahh it's not that good
Scotland Yard is amazing. In Brazil it was called Interpol. I'm currently looking for it to my collection.
I'm glad to hear Tom's thoughts on Settlers and knowing that's how he views it. Sam and I had a big back and fourth about a year ago regarding Settlers and its impact on the overall gaming community. I just recently learned about a couple more of my friends who still say today after all of these years and all of the games they've played that Settlers is still their favorite tabletop game of all time! Mind blown!!
Please do this video again with updated awards
I'm quite surprised that Dominion was absent from the list.
+Greg Prosch, exactly what I thought.
It wasn't a winner. Thus not mentioned.
@@jimmarble1425 Just for the record, Dominion won the SdJ in 2009.
@@grapefruitcorporation2112 oops!
Whoa!! Dominion not on the list? It changed things more than Liar's Dice, or Carcassonne, or basically anything other than your Top 2
+Ben Lott Maybe, but not because it won the award. It was popular before that.
+The Dice Tower Who cares if it was popular before? It changed card games fundamentally in the past 8 years and has a lot of expansions and is still incredibly popular. Not as popular as 2 to 3 years ago, but it is still huge. Also, as a game, very very solid with lots of replayability.
+Ross Gustafson. I agree. I don't get the 'it was popular before' explanation. It seems like overthinking things. It's like leaving Titanic off a list of best Oscar pictures because it made a ton of money without it.
+Ross Gustafson Who cares? Tom made his own list. He states at 1:45 his qualifications for the list include if it gave the game a boost or not. He made his list based on that, and Dominion did not fit in. Feel free to make your own list based on your own qualifiers.
+Ben Lott maybe because its a tedious game?
Excellent list, well thought out, as always. But yeah, Dominion would have at least been in the top five on my list.
I was first introduced to board gaming a few years ago by watching Tabletop, and I remember Catan fondly. It was not the first game I bought however, but it was the Star Trek version that got me interested in seeking out the original. I now have a collection of a measly 110 games but it's growing. I thank Tom and the Dice Tower for teaching me terms and things I never knew about gaming and hopefully the hobby will be always be a part of my life. I watch as many videos (not just the Dice Tower) as I can, and I hope to attend a convention in the future.. Keep on gaming all! :D
I have very good memories about Hase und Igel (Hare and Tortoise?), which was the first game with a "Spiel des Jahres" award (1979) and was probably the first more complex board game I played. I remember being impressed by the fact that you were moving around without using dice. I probably doesn't deserve making the list, but just wanted to share these memories ;-)
However, I think Dominion should have made the list, it just make Deckbuilding games popular and probably paved the way to many good new games in that category.
Hoity Toity (1990) introduced simultaneous action selection. Although it's not that popular anymore, it still works very well. I would put it on 6, instead of Zooloretto, which I never liked and which clearly didn't change the gaming world at all. And although I see the importance of Catan, I don't see its influence as being as big as Carcassonne's influence. Tile-placement became such a huge thing and just never gets old. So for me, Carcassonne is clearly number 1.
Great list. Would've helped to put the name of the game in subtitles or at least mention its name again before moving on. Listening to this at work, and kept having to rewind.
It would be interesting to hear Sam's and Zee's own list.
We can thank Catan for my family's board game addiction. It introduced us to a whole new world of board games that we didn't even know existed! Now we own a small fortune of board games.
I don't know if Alhambra should have made the list. The exact change bonus is neat, but I don't see many games borrowing this mechanism.
aww cmon tom, youre gonna get so much hate for not even mentioning why you did not include dominion.
Did you guys ever play the 1985 Sherlock Holmes - Criminal Cabinet? We just found out about it and were basically not able to put it away since then. The experience and the game itself is really brilliant in our opinion.
Tom, I think the time is right to redo the list, I would be interested with including the Kennerspiel winners;)
Now I'm sad that Magic the Gathering didn't win a Spiel Des Jahres
When will we get a reprint of Manhattan? It's pas the "10 Yr. Anniversary" mark!
Tom, what do you think about elfenland?
Catan being mainstream... LOL every time I see the Big Bang episode where Sheldon needs "more wood". ;)
+ryverwynd I was laughing as hard as Howard and Raj the first time I saw those scenes. "Who has wood for my sheep?"
Very informative video! Thanks Tom!
You guys should do a Top 10 Spiel de Jahres Runner-Ups!
Great list, Tom, but don't you think Rummikub is one of those few games that past the test of time? It's not really my cup of tea, nevertheless it was in consistently in print since it won Spiel des Jahres in 1980.
Rummikub is a game that virtually can't age. The orginal card game already passed the test of time, so why wound't Rummikub, it's just a nicer version.
Has the Dice Tower done a top 10 roll and move? That sounds challenging.
Heimlich & Co definitely would be on that list. :-)
What about Um Reifenbreite? It still holds its place in your collection after all :)
I think Tom just forgot Dominion
+Jan-Dirk Kohlmann I didn't. Dominion was popular without winning the award. I don't think it was the "best" choice, but I don't think it was bad either.
+The Dice Tower Ok, thanks for the clarification. I was just confused to not have it mentioned there.
+The Dice Tower And What about Dixit?
+Jan-Dirk Kohlmann He didn't mention it in the other video?
+kdhlkjhdlk No
Enjoyed this vid. Very useful for me in finding new games.
Zee García and Sam Healey should do this too. This could had been a very nice Top 10 Tom!!! You should have done it together T_T
Know i really want to know the other guys ones too :3
And maybe Jasons KennerSpiel des Jahres
Even though I was also expecting Dominion to be one of the top5 for how it catapulted deckbuilding, one can argue that since it went against pandemic, it wasn't that obvious of a choice
Wait, so Catan movie isn't a thing anymore????? :/
A lot of "Spiel des Jahres" games are really great, I own several of them, like Scotland Yard, Catan, El Grande and so on, but every few years, the jury chooses a game that is not so great, but the decision is really bad, considering what other games were published in that year. HANABI is one of such cases. I bought it because it was Spiel des Jahres, but the games is rather meh... We played it a few times and now it rests in my games closet....
I have Never ever played Hanabi with someone who didn’t like it afterwards and I’ve taught this game to a looot of people. Definitely deserved Spiel des Jahres IMO. Also, one of the nominees was rise of Augustus, which is one of the worst games I‘ve ever played.
Surprised you left out Dominion Tom :P But I'm sure you had your reasons.
Hare & Tortoise, the first SdJ , and the best one for about 20 years, is missing
Well compiled
How about a five or ten game list of games that should have won a Spiel des Jahres but didn't?
I should have waited until I watched the second video..
Hey Tom, how about a "Top 10 games that SHOULD have won the Spiel des Jahres" list? You could require that the games had to have been nominated or not. I'd think games like Spendor and Pandemic would be high on the charts as games that were nominated but didn't win. Looking at 2012 the nominated games were horrible (especially for such a solid year overall) and a game like Love Letter, Seasons, Smash Up, or Tokaido would have been better than Kingdom Builder.
Go watch the 10 worst winners videos, for every game he lists an alternative game he thinks should have won instead.
No Dominion?
No Dominion? it created a new very very popular mechanic...
You should have put Focus on this list instead of the Worst 10 ;) When you're talking about games that had impact, that changed the hobby, you can't have the '90s Eurogame invasion without the classic games of Sid Sackson, such as Acquire, Can't Stop, and even Focus. The shame is that Focus is the only game that he actually won the Spiel des Jahres for.
+Jeremiah Rose If the SdJ had existed when Sleuth was designed, I sure hope it would have won
Definitely agree with settlers and ttr
would be interesting to see such a video about "Deutscher Spielepreis" (which is a better award in germany in my opinion)
Kai Joneleit The SDJ is undoubtedly more popular though. Plus DSP is a community kind of award, where "anyone" can vote for it.
Surprised not to see either Hanabi or Dominion.
Wow, I have 9 of them!
Another game that changed gaming forever was Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. Granted, it is a different type of gaming than card and board games, but it is a biggie. :-)
KabukiKid if spiel was around then, it might have won it despite not being tabletop. Perhaps the Gygax estate will get some sort of lifetime achievement in the future.
Another game that changed gaming forever was Maniac Mansion in 1987. Granted, it is a different type of gaming than card and board games, but it is a biggie. :-)
To all Dominion defenders- Ticket to ride or Catan is like Monopoly- known even by non gamers. Ask them about Dominion and i bet most of them havent heard about it.
And so what is was first in genre, it doesnt mean its great game or best in this category. I found it very boring, ugly and themeless. It gave an idea other games popularized and used in actually fun way. It made them better games. Kudos for this Dominion but thats about it.
Oh how I dislike Settlers of Catan. The dice in that game hate me. "You need to choose 6 or 8, there's the best chance, you'll hafe resources". When I do that, I get 2 resources in first 5 rounds. Suddenly even 12 rolls more than 6. But it changed gaming, it brought gaming to new hights and that's great. But I won't ever play the game ever again.
Funny is that cards don't hate me as much as dice. Oh well...
Would have added Dominion to the list.
thanks!
My list (I've not played Dampfross, Wacky Wacky West, or Mississippi Queen)
El Grande
Hoity Toity
Elfenland
Ticket to Ride
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
Heimlich & Co.
Carcassonne
Dixit
Manhattan
Scotland Yard
Torres
Liar's Dice
Tikal
Catan
Cafe International
Um Reifenbreite
Niagara
Camel Up
Rummikub
Alhambra
Hare & Tortoise
Dominion
Zooloretto
Thurn and Taxis
Qwirkle
Domination
Villa Paletti
Kingdom Builder
Colt Express
Hanabi
Keltis
Enchanted Forest
So, all winners ever...
Tikal is getting reprinted????...............mmmmmm
Magic came out in 1993 :P
Now to the fun part (10 worst)!:)))
No love for Heimlich & Co. or Sherlock Holmes? ^^
I love Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. But it really was an odd choice for Spiel des Jahres... Heimlich & Co was a great winner indeed. I also miss "Hoity Toity" on this list. Simultaneous Action Selection was revolutionary and changed gaming quite a bit.
You don't consider Dungeons & Dragons as changing gaming forever? Like Magic the Gathering it created a new genre of gaming and like the other two it brought gaming to many new people.
Phil Heaton DnD never won spiel
Scotland Yard is a great game, but good lord, the rule book is the worst written I have ever read...and I have a massive collection.
"Best" is not the same as "most important". Catan is absolutely THE most important game to the board gaming hobby, but it is far from the best. In fact, it's boring and repetitve af!
No Dominion?