Welcome to the 8th annual Board Game Grow Board Game Awards. Each year we take some time to honor the best and most creative new tabletop games from the previous years. For those wondering, we usually wait until spring to announce our nominees to give us time to play games that came out late in the winter.
As usual, we have a total of 11 award categories this year, with 5 nominees in each. Even with the crazy year that was 2020, our editorial staff was able to play a ton of games and have chosen some stand-out titles that we would like to nominate. It’s from among these nominations that we will choose a winner. However, since we wouldn’t be doing this without you, our awesome readers, you get a vote as well!
Below is a poll for each of the 11 categories to allow you to cast a vote for which games you think should win. Our readers here will collectively get one vote, and along with each member of our editorial staff, the winner will be chosen. The voting will be open until April 10th, 2021 and the winners will be announced shortly thereafter.
Congratulations to all of this year’s nominees!
2020 Board Game Award Nominees
Best Cooperative Game
Project Elite
Designer: Konstantinos Kokkinis, Marco Portugal, Sotirios Tsantilas
CMON Games
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Scooby-Doo: Escape from the Haunted Mansion
Designer: Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim, Kami Mandell
The Op
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Best Tactical/Combat Game
Unmatched: Cobble and Fog
Designer: Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson, Chris Leder
Restoration Games
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Project Elite
Designer: Konstantinos Kokkinis, Marco Portugal, Sotirios Tsantilas
CMON Games
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures: Change is Constant
Designer: Daniel Lansdown, Pete Walsh, Kevin Wilson
IDW Games
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Best Digital Board Game
Best Game Expansion
Unmatched: Cobble and Fog
Designer: Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson, Chris Leder
Restoration Games
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Marvel Champions: Rise of the Red Skull
Designers: Michael Boggs, Nate French, Caleb Grace
Fantasy Flight Games
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Best Production Values
Rococo: Deluxe Edition
Designer: Matthias Cramer, Stefan Malz, Louis Malz
Eagle-Gryphon Games
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Best Thematic Game
Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game: Season One
Designer: Ignacy Trzewiczek, Merry Trzewiczek, Weronika Spyra
Portal Games
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Best Game from a Small Publisher
Best Two Player Game
Best Strategy/Euro Game
Best Family Game
Oceans
Designer: Nick Bentley, Dominic Crapuchettes, Ben Goldman, Brian O’Neill
Northstar Games
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Game of the Year
Note: Whichever game wins Game of the Year will automatically be removed from any of the above categories except Best Production Values. Our reasoning is if a game wins Game of the Year, chances are it should win any of the other categories by default. That just seemed a bit redundant. If a game wins Game of the Year, you know it is really good.
Disclosure: An employee for Petersen Games also writes for Board Game Grow. He will be abstaining from voting for in the Best Two Player Game and Best Production Values categories.
And where is Dune Imperium? That’s a glaring omission. Futhermore, and perhaps most egregious, is the fact that there’s no category for Best Solo Board Game. Are you kidding me? You’ve got Best Two Player and Best Cooperative, but no Best Solo? Very discriminatory. Your selections need serious revision STAT.
Dune Imperium was actually considered in the Best Strategy Game Category, but didn’t make it out of our first wave of nominations as the other five games we chose were all stronger candidates in our opinion.
Usually it’s a solo gamer feeling offended and entitled because a game lacks a solo mode. Now it’s “discriminatory” because a website isn’t catering to them. Definitely the Karens of the board game community.
Ommiting Dune Imperium is a travesty. What a great game all around. It even got better reviews on BGG than its competitors.
BGG has a reputation for giving positive opinions on most every game. Even games that are universally panned such as Seafall have an average score of 6.3, which by BGG’s scoring metric is saying that reviewers would play it if in the mood. So BGG’s average score has little-to-no weight on how good a game is, based on what I know of the writing staff.
As for omitting it, you have to recognize that we cannot get every game played from the year. Dune Imperium released incredibly late in the year for starters, and just because it didn’t win an award doesn’t mean you can’t think that it’s a good game. It’s the same with the fans of Gloomhaven. Any time we neglect to mention it in a category, the comments are flooded with “Where is Gloomhaven? This is a travesty.” So we continually have to mention that we as a staff can appreciate Gloomhaven, but are not fans.