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When I started Meeple Mountain 4 years ago I was looking up to other media outlets like The Dice Tower, BoardGameGeek, and GeekDad. In addition to producing compelling content, and having a great community of supporters, each of them had a singular board game award related to their brand. Dice Tower had the Dice Tower award, BoardGameGeek had the Golden Geek. and GeekDad had the Golden Bot.

I wanted the same thing for Meeple Mountain…without realizing just how much time and effort goes into playing the games, reviewing the games, compiling lists of nominees, removing titles from the list that just didn’t make the cut, and more. Now that Meeple Mountain has nearly 30 writers, we’re finally in a place where we can produce a relevant, meaningful, and diverse set of winners in 12 different categories.

So without further ado please join me in congratulating the winners of the inaugural 2018 Diamond Climber board game awards.

Best Reprint

Best Artwork

Best Coop Game

Best Filler Game

Best Kickstarter

Best Family Game

Best Expansion

Best RPG

Best Euro Game

Best Thematic Game

Best Gateway Game

Game of the Year

Best Reprint

Meeple Mountain Winner Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar Fan Favorite Winner Brass: Lancashire Best Reprint Nominees Container

The Estates

Brass: Lancashire

Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small – Big Box

Dominant Species

Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar

Best Artwork

Meeple Mountain Winner Root Fan Favorite Winner Root Best Artwork Nominees Brass: Lancashire/Birmingham

Treasure Island

Root

Sunset Over Water

Everdell

Best Coop Game

Best Filler Game

Best Kickstarter

Best Family Game

Best Expansion

Meeple Mountain Winner Root: The Riverfolk Expansion Fan Favorite Winner Scythe: The Rise of Fenris Best Expansion Nominees T.I.M.E. Stories: Brotherhood of the Coast

Vikings Gone Wild: Masters of Elements

Roll Player: Monsters and Minions

King’s Forge: Gold

Root: The Riverfolk Expansion

Best RPG

Meeple Mountain Winner Kids on Bikes Fan Favorite Winner Overlight Best RPG Nominees Weave

Overlight

Invisible Sun

Star Crossed

Kids on Bikes

Best Euro Game

Meeple Mountain Winner Coimbra Fan Favorite Winner Coimbra Best Euro Game Nominees Key Flow

Architects of the West Kingdom

Newton

Carpe Diem

Coimbra

Best Thematic Game

Meeple Mountain Winner Who Goes There? Fan Favorite Winner Scythe: Rise of Fenris Best Thematic Game Nominees Detective: Modern Crime

Who Goes There?

Nyctophobia

Shadows in the Forest

Best Gateway Game

Game of the Year

Congratulations again to all the winners. Join us again in 2020 where we’ll cover the best board games that 2019 produced! Thanks to everyone in the Meeple Mountain writing team that contributed input and votes (especially Andrew Plassard), and all of you who took part in our open voting. Finally, a huge thank you to Than Gibson for contributing the illustration which at the very core of our award graphic, the Diamond Climber himself.

We’ll be publishing an article soon which discusses the approach we took to running the awards, voting, and data collection. If you’re interested in the data itself, here are the 2018 staff votes and the 2018 fan votes.