Re: 2017 Meeples Choice Awards - Final Results

I will have to check out El Dorado.  I hadn't heard much about it.

I don't understand the appeal of Azul.  It's pretty but I didn't find it
very interesting.

I've only played about 7 of these (sadly).  The only one that has really
excited me is Charterstone.

On Sat, Jun 23, 2018 at 3:42 AM, Christopher Dearlove
[email protected] [spielfrieks] <[email protected]>
wrote:

>
>
> I should have voted, I might have given El Dorado it's extra vote.
>
> El Dorado is, for me, Reiner's best game of the last ten years. That's not
> a random comment, I did a Geek search for possible competitors and decided
> it beat them all. You wouldn't have to increase ten years by much for that
> not to be true, but at ten years it had it for me.
>
> Of course always hPpy to hear which other Knizias of the last ten years
> you think beat it.
>
> --
> Christopher Dearlove
> [email protected]
> [email protected] is dead
>
> On 23 Jun 2018, at 06:48, Jacob Lee [email protected] [spielfrieks] <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> I really pushed for #4 and #5, but I have to admit I'm not very familiar
> with The Gaia Project.  I have to check it out now!
>
> Thanks again for running a super fun vote!  I can understand why you want
> the user count to grow (better than the alternative) and I'm sure someday
> it will grow big, but for now I enjoy having a vote that's worth so much.
>
> Jacob
>
> On 22 June 2018 at 13:25, [email protected] [spielfrieks] <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Stop pushing those electrons, everybody—the voting for the 2017 Meeples
>> Choice Awards is over!  You known, one of the great things about the MCA’s
>> is that they’ve been around long enough to have established a history.
>> After all, we began the process in 2001 and have voted on years going back
>> to 1995.  That means it’s significant when someone accomplishes something
>> for only the second time.  It’s also of interest when a formerly dominant
>> award winner barely misses a return to the winner’s circle.  To make these
>> ramblings clear, let me cut to the chase and announce that the winners of
>> this year’s Meeples Choice Awards are:
>>
>>
>>
>> AZUL
>>
>> HEAVEN & ALE
>>
>> GAIA PROJECT
>>
>>
>>
>> Before we delve into history, let’s look at the expectations for this
>> year’s awards.  As usual, there were plenty of candidates from last year,
>> with no fewer than 10 games in the Geek’s top 100.  The top candidate had
>> to be Gloomhaven, the #1 game on the site.  But Spielfriek voters have
>> shown in the past that they march to their own drummer and this year was no
>> exception.  Gloomhaven got off to a very slow start during the nomination
>> process and there was real possibility that it might not even make the
>> final cut.  However, it did rally late, although it still didn’t make the
>> top 10, making its chances for victory pretty unlikely.
>>
>>
>>
>> Instead, the two leading vote getters during the first round, by a fairly
>> significant margin, were a couple of Michael Kiesling designs, Heaven & Ale
>> and Azul.  The former was something of a surprise, since, even though it is
>> well regarded, it didn’t have the stratospheric ratings of many of last
>> year’s other titles.  After those came the two Terra Mystica “spinoffs”,
>> Clans of Caledonia and Gaia Project, along with Reiner Knizia’s El Dorado
>> and Tom Lehmann’s Jump Drive.  It figured to be a spirited battle for the
>> three top spots.
>>
>>
>>
>> And that’s just how it turned out.  Azul zoomed to the top of the voting
>> fairly early and by the end of the weekend, it had garnered twice as many
>> votes as any other game, virtually guaranteeing it’s victory.  But there
>> was a real scramble for the remaining two positions.  At one point, El
>> Dorado and Nusfjord were looking good.  But then Gaia Project wedged its
>> way into the top three.  Then, Heaven & Ale, which had been hanging back in
>> the voting, despite its excellent showing during the first round, had a
>> late surge on Tuesday and zoomed up to second place.  El Dorado still
>> threatened, only one vote behind Gaia.  But that last vote never came.
>> Five other games (Altiplano, Clans of Cledonia, Jump Drive, Nusfjord, and
>> The 7th Continent) were only one vote further back.  Lisboa rounded out the
>> top ten.  Gloomhaven, which is clearly not a favorite of the group,
>> finished in a tie for 11th.
>>
>>
>>
>> So what’s the history I was talking about earlier?  Kiesling becomes only
>> the second designer to have two MCA-winning games in the same calendar
>> year.  The only other instance is Knizia, who, remarkably, did it in
>> back-to-back years (1998 and 1999).  Kiesling, who has created so many
>> great games with Wolfgang Kramer over the years, but who consequently has
>> lived in his considerable shadow over the last two decades, had a fabulous
>> year last year and this just puts an exclamation point on it.
>>
>>
>>
>> The other big story is how close Knizia came to winning another award.
>> No one has had more MCA success than Reiner—10 of his games have won and no
>> other designer has more than 4 victories—but his last win was for Blue Moon
>> City, way back in 2006.  Since then, none of his games has made a serious
>> bid for an MCA award until this year.  El Dorado fell just one vote short.
>> Instead, Gaia Project, which figured to be one of the favorites to finish
>> in the top 3, beat it out.
>>
>>
>>
>> So congratulations to designers Michael Kiesling, Andreas Schmidt (the
>> co-designer of Heaven & Ale), Jens Drogemuller, and Helge Ostertag.
>> Remarkably, these are the first MCA wins for Kiesling (his best shot among
>> his previous 7 nominations was for Tikal in 1999, but it finished fourth,
>> beaten out by Knizia’s second MCA winner that year, Lost Cities)..  It’s
>> also Schmidt’s first win, while Drogemuller and Ostertag won previously for
>> Terra Mystica back in 2012.  Congratulations as well to the publishers,
>> Plan B Games, eggertspiele, and Feuerland Spiele.
>>
>>
>>
>> 68 people voted in the final round, which is just about as many as voted
>> last year.  I’d like to see that number grow a bit, but it’s large enough
>> to yield significant results, so I can live with it.  We only had 59 voters
>> during the first round, which is a bit low.  I don’t know if more people
>> vote during the last round, because the choices are easier, or if the word
>> doesn’t get out soon enough that the voting has begun.  I do post things on
>> the Geek and the Opinionated Gamers websites about both rounds, so I’m not
>> sure how to publicize the beginning of the voting better.  Geeklists
>> undoubtedly attract more attention than Forum posts do, so maybe next year,
>> I’ll put together a “Predict the Meeples Choice Award Winners” Geeklist or
>> something, just to get some notice and remind Spielfriek voters that the
>> voting has begun.
>>
>>
>>
>> I’ve listed the results for the final round at the end of this note.  The
>> games are shown in the order of the votes they received during the final
>> election, with the number of votes received during the first round shown in
>> parentheses.  If you’ll go to meepleschoice.win and click on the “See
>> Results” button, you’ll be able to see the results of both rounds of voting
>> this year.  If you click on a specific election, you can see all the
>> results on one page.  If you click on a game title for a particular
>> election, you can see all the public votes for that game, so you can check
>> out how your buddies voted.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks to everyone who participated in the elections.  The Meeples Choice
>> Awards are one of the highlights of my gaming year and I look forward to
>> conducting them next year and for many years to come.
>>
>>
>>
>> Here are the final results of the 2017 MCA’s:
>>
>>
>>
>>   1.  Azul – 21  (25)
>>
>>   2.  Heaven & Ale – 13  (26)
>>
>>   3.  Gaia Project – 12  (16)
>>
>>   4.  The Quest for El Dorado – 11  (17)
>>
>>   5.  Clans of Caledonia – 10  (19)
>>
>>   5.  Jump Drive – 10  (15)
>>
>>   5.  Nusfjord – 10  (13)
>>
>>   5.  Altiplano – 10  (12)
>>
>>   5.  The 7th Continent – 10  (7)
>>
>> 10.  Lisboa – 8  (11)
>>
>> 11.  Magic Maze – 7  (12)
>>
>> 11.  Rajas of the Ganges – 7  (12)
>>
>> 11.  Gloomhaven – 7  (11)
>>
>> 11.  Photosynthesis – 7  (8)
>>
>> 15.  Gentes – 6  (12)
>>
>> 15.  Sagrada – 6  (9)
>>
>> 15.  Charterstone – 6  (8)
>>
>> 18.  Pulsar 2849 – 5  (13)
>>
>> 18.  Keyper – 5  (10)
>>
>> 18.  Barenpark – 5  (8)
>>
>> 18.  Dinosaur Island – 5  (7)
>>
>> 22.  Codenames Duet – 4  (13)
>>
>> 22.  NMBR 9 – 4  (9)
>>
>> 22.  Ethnos – 4  (8)
>>
>> 22.  Sidereal Confluence – 4  (7)
>>
>> 26.  Riverboat – 3  (8)
>>
>> 27.  Santa Maria – 2  (7)
>>
>>
>
>
> 
>



-- 
Clay Blankenship                     [email protected]
"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."  --Helen Keller