Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 11:23PM

This week Boardgamegeek posted its nomination form for the 14th Annual Golden Geek Awards for the best games of 2019. I have an active game group with multiple members who buy and bring new games each week, so I'd had a chance to play enough games this year that I felt pretty confident about my votes.

Here were my votes:

No, these games aren't clickable, sorry--just captured a screenshot of my voting page

It was a pretty good year for games. I enjoyed a lot more than the ten that I voted for. Of these ten, I expect Res Arcana is the game I will still be playing years from now, but The Crew, Unmatched, Call to Adventure, and Horrified all provided some great experiences this year. I'm also a bit obsessed with The Crew right now, but that is a 2020 game for me--having just imported from Germany a month ago. I couldn't not nominate it, but it has the unfair advantage of not having been fully explored like some of the other games.

Most of the remaining categories include a mix of these games, so I'll just point out the exceptions in each of the other categories.

The two games here that weren't on my overall Game of the Year list are Combo Fighter and Funkoverse Strategy Game. Funkoverse, along with Unmatched, is a tactical miniatures game featuring a variety of anachronistic gladiators. Of the two games, I prefer Unmatched for its interesting card play. Funkoverse, however, is much better than it has any right to be, and if I ever get a chance to game with my group again, I look forward to getting Kool Aid Man to the table--I could do it at home, but my daughter is resistant to having Kool Aid Man enter into the Potterverse.

Combo Fighter is a wonderful, quick 2-player card game that attempts to simulate fighting videogames. Fighting-game card games are a weird subgenre of board games that I really love--having Yomi, Exceed, Combo Fighter and Battlecon all in my collection (and also Knizia's fencing game En Garde which I rethemed as a homebrew back in the day). Combo Fighter is my favorite currently because of the speed of play and the easy teach. Yomi and Battlecon are deeper games that I appreciate, but I'm never going to get them to the table with my family or as quick filler on board game nights with my group.

Unmatched would be my vote here. Mondo did an amazing job with art and graphic design and the minis are gorgeous.

Corinth (Family Game), Medium, Obscurio, and Wavelength (Party Games) are the new ones here. Corinth is a roll and write reimagining of Yspahan, one of my favorite games of all time. I love the Caravan element of Yspahan, which is removed here, but Corinth is still a joy--and Days of Wonder has been nice enough to release free print and play files for people to play in their isolation tanks.

I really feel like party games get short shrift among "hardcore" board gamers (on Reddit and BGG certainly), but here I am not putting either of the three really good party games in my overall top 10 games of the year. Of these three, Wavelength is the one that was closest to making it. Unfortunately, as much as I love it, neither my family or my primary game group likes it as much.

I'll probably go back and expand my nominations in these two categories. I just think Strategy Game is poorly definined--nearly every game could be a strategy game and this list would end up just being the same as my Game of the Year list, so I only nominated the three games that I choose a long-term strategy at the beginning and pursue for the length of the game. Res Arcana, however, is the one that stands out. I love getting that opening hand, looking at what sides of the boards are available, and deciding how I'm going to get to ten points before anyone else.

These are my games that either had mechanics that tied directly to their theme or had themes that appealed to me--another pretty loose category. Outer Rim, Jaws and Detective are new here. All are very thematic, have themes that appeal to me, and are pretty solid games. Of the three, I only own Jaws and it is likely just a Halloween game going forward, but it was fun for a few plays.

All these expansion are good--only Lux et Tenebrae and Wingspan: European are essential. I will be hitting Name of the Wind hard as Call to Adventure is one of the solo games I plan on playing when my work schedule eases up. Left off from the possible nominations were all of the 7th Continent curses because I just mixed everything in and can't think of them as separate things.

All in all, 2019 was a good year for games and a great year for me as a gamer. Having a regular game night with gamers that will attempt anything (well, nearly--I really need a second group for 18xx, Age of Steam, and Winsome Games) is a real blessing and this Safe at Home isolation is really killing me. Still, I hate to complain when so many people have either lost their jobs or have to continue to do jobs in the face of danger. My board game woes are minor in the long run--and I know we will marathon like mad men (and women) when we can get back together.