Voting is open
I’ve actually played some. I wonder if Earthborne Rangers will do a Wingspan after all the positive press?
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I’ve played a grand total of one nominee (Point City). It didn’t really strike me as GOTY material
I’ve played Earth and Forest Shuffle, and I like them both, but I wouldn’t have thought of nominating either for best-art-of-the-year.
I like Faraway a lot better than the Big Reviewers do, but if it was the most innovative game of the year we’re in trouble.
And the only other one I’ve played is Dune colon Imperium dash Uprising.
Ah well, I shall squat on my existing collection like a particularly antosocial hobbit.
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I’ve played one! (Much to my surprise).
I’ve played The A.R.T. Project. It’s good. And as it’s the only one of the whole lot I have played, I hope it wins!
I’m surprised it’s not up for its art though, which is excellent.
I‘ve played a bunch
- Daybreak: GOTY material for 2024 for me. (got it this year)
- Earthborne Rangers: pretty good but 4 games in not as great as some reviewers say IMO
- Forest Shuffle: Point Salad the Forever Counting. Nice game but scoring is terrible.
- Earth: okay solitaire game
- Oranienburger Kanal: awesomest Uwe solitaire with very nice spatial puzzle and card play as befits a good Uwe.
- Star Wars Deck Building Game: Star Realms Wars. I think I might prefer the original as much as I love Star Wars. The OG is so nice and simple. But we defo need to play this more.
- Lacuna (well more or less, I showed it to my partner who then evaded my request for a game by cooking dinner)
- Sail: Innovative attempt at making 2 player trick taking good. But but but not a game I will play often.
- Darwin‘s Journey: I dismissed this after my initial learning games… recently decided I might give it another chance
- Septima: very pretty. Didn‘t go beyond learning the game. Has some potential
- Voidfall: so much stuff in that box. I wish it was all a little less that would make it more accessible. For all the complexity and stuff and forever setup the rules retention for this one is very good. I really like the resource management. So yes it‘s a Euro that dresses itself up as a 4x.
- Stationfall: also never got beyond a 3 player learning game but I want to. It seems like a very cool game if I could get it to the table twice in a row.
- Distilled: looked quite promising and thematic but the recipe fulfillment with push your luck was very hard to teach and I never went back to the solo after an abysmal teaching experience. It‘s halfway to the sell pile…
- TTR Legacy; after my partner lost twice in a row we‘re stilll stuck but recently our gaming at home has been nonexistent we didnt even finish the Dorfromantik campaign
- That‘s not a hat: great fun, screaming guests… what more need a party game deliver?
- Trailblazers; finally a Ryan Courtney game that is only pipes. I love it.
- GWT New Zealand: learning solo was pretty good. After that…
- Nucleum: I enjoyed my game of this. It came together pretty well. Setup and teardown is pretty bad though. I‘ll say it is less cohesive than the Brass‘s so if you like those this may not be quite for you.If Brass is too tight for your table maybe this one is for you?
- Nekojima: a dexterity game I played at SPIEL and have since been waiting for the German copies from HUCH! to make it to a shop near me. Awesome.
- Naturopolis: I love this one nearly as much as Sprawlopolis
- Waypoints: lovely little game that I can play on my tablet (because it has a pen)
- Hoplomachus Victorum: still waiting for enough time to play a full campaign. It was fun but I found the rules a little fiddly with many things I needed to look up initially
- Legacy of Yu: great solo campaign game that reminds me a lot of Paladins of the WK
- Witchcraft: I gave up on this one after losing quickly and decisively 3 times in a row and having no idea how to do better beyond „just a little more luck of the draw“
2023 was the year my pandemic driven kickstarter splurge began clearing out the backlog by finally delivering. That is the main reason I have played so many of these games. I have since mostly stopped backing that many campaigns. I am up to 2 for this year.
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I won’t vote as I’ve not played enough but I hope Nature Incarnate the Spirit Island expansion wins as it’s excellent. Both it and Jagged Earth have been exemplars of expansions that are useful and add to the game in a way that doesn’t add pressure or make the game more difficult to play. It really hits the right form of variety.
As to the rest of them 
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Stationfall gets my vote as the only one that interests me.
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Played a few, namely:
The Witcher: Old World, which I own, and it is probably my favourite of what I have played from that year. A tad long, but definitely one I keep wanting to play more.
Forest Shuffle, which was cute but I don’t think it is anything out of this world,
Archeos Society, which I found interesting and replayable, but the art was quite meh,
Cabanga!, only a couple of weekends ago, which was simple but fun,
The Fox Experiment, which was an interesting euro, definitely a very original theme,
Life of the Amazonia, which was a Cascadia on steroids, quite good, but a tad too long; super cute meeples, though,
Passt Nicht!, a trick taking game that can be nasty, but fun.
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Played a couple:
Apiary is fantastic, varied and filled with decisions. We love it. Front-runner for our game of the year.
Great Western Trail New Zealand is a great re-implementation of the original. Also a very positive experience, though not quite as enthusiastic.
Ark Nova Marine Worlds slots seamlessly in the base game and feels like it was always there. Nothing bad to say about it.
We own Earth but haven’t played it yet.
I’ve heard of some of the others but have played nothing.
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