The Pearple's Choice Awards 2021

Boardgames Shut Up and Sit Down
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The Pearple’s Choice (as begun by clg6000 on the old forums) is still here! Please send your nominations by private message to @RogerBW; you may nominate in as many categories as you like, up to five items per category. (We’re using the Hugo voting rules which I can explain in more detail if you like.)

Here are the categories and a quick guide to eligibility:

  • Best game of 2021 (should have a BGG publication year of 2021+) BGG
  • Best [type] game of 2021, where BGG pub year is 2021 and [type] is each of:
    • Cooperative (even if it has a competitive mode too) BGG
    • Heavy (probably BGG weight >3) BGG
    • Light (probably BGG weight ≤3) BGG
    • Soloable (including unofficially) BGG
    • Thematic (no formal definition, but what Roger means by this is something that immerses you in its world so that the mechanical decisions you’re making feel like the decisions that your entity in the game’s world would be making; examples include Firefly, ST:A, Flash Point, Spirit Island)
  • Best game artwork (BGG pub year is 2021)
  • Best expansion (BGG pub year is 2021; can be an expandalone but must be combinable with another game)
  • Erik Tengblad award for best game from an earlier year I only played for the first time in 2021 (BGG pub year is earlier than 2021)
  • Best game review (first published in 2021) (not necessarily by SU&SD)

I’ll be bringing back a couple of categories from last year:

  • Minutewalt award: Best socially distanced game (any game is eligible)
  • pillbox award: Game you’re anticipating but haven’t had a chance to get enough players over yet (any game is eligible)

and as a trial run

  • Roger’s anti-pillbox award: Game you have finally had a chance to get the table, and it was worth the wait (any game is eligible).
  • Mature Pearple: best game from 2016.

Note that while most of these categories are for games published this year, I’m aware that there are game which were technically published earlier but that didn’t actually reach people until now. So if you want to nominate something that isn’t formally “published in 2021”, just put in a note to say why it should be allowed anyway. Similarly, if your favourite light game has been given a BGG weight of 3.01…

Nominations will close on 2022-01-07T00:00:00Z; voting will run until 2022-02-04T00:00:00Z.

Please feel free to tell other SU&SD fans and game players in general about this thread. (I don’t do Discord/Disqus for example.)

The easiest way to send a direct message to RogerBW for nominations is to click his name at the top of this thread and then select “:email: Message”.

If you are a new forum member just joining us, the forum software may prevent you from sending direct messages. If this is the case, please reply to this thread and one of the moderator staff will make the necessary changes to allow you to submit your votes via direct message.

Alternatively, feel free to look around and check out our subforums and read some of the threads posted by our wonderful community; by spending at least 10 minutes reading 5 or more topics/threads, you can automatically earn Trust Level 1, which is the minimum priviledge level required to send PMs.

In addition: welcome to the site!

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Gah, Regicide is 2020

I think I’ve played 3 games on that release list, and non in person. Own 2 more but not played.

I’ll be nominating for the @RogerBW award though

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Do we need a quasi-tengblad award for games marked specifically as 2020 but not played until 2021?

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Hmmm, I think I’ll hold off on my nominations so I can see if my pool of played 2021 games can go from 2 (Bullet :blue_heart: and Codex Naturalis) to 4 (possibly playing Nanga Parbat and potentially getting Brian Boru as a gift and somehow managing to get it played …).

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Can I only nominate a game for the Tengblad award and nothing else? I have played no game published in 2021…

Also, my wife’s not on here, can I submit on her behalf? :slight_smile:

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Sure. Nominate in as many or as few categories as you like. And the Minutewalt, pillbox and anti-pillbox awards aren’t tied to publicatoin date.

Sure, I’ll just assign her a virtual username.

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I’ve notified the SUSD BGG Guild, the SUSD Reddit as well as asking Zylo on the SUSD Discord to announce the link

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Thank you!

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Thank you! We’ll get to thinking about what game(s) we’ll nominate.

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Bah, I haven’t played anything from 2021, either! Seems to happen every year.

Guess I’ll just have to nominate in the other categories then, as usual.

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I not only have played almost nothing that came out this year, but I only started being able to play games from 2020 in August of this year. With a couple notable TTSable exceptions.

Also almost all my 2021 delivered games were either early this year when I couldn’t play, or in the last month, where I mostly haven’t been able to play because one of our group got COVID (and also holidays etc).

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I never buy/play enough brand new games to be comfortable voting for anything. Chances are that if I’ve played any at all, I’ve played no more than one or two nominated games in any category, have no idea how they compare to any of the things I haven’t played, and so I have no basis on which to cast any votes.

BGG tells me that the only two 2021 titles that I’ve purchased are a six card expansion to Skulls of Sedlec, and Wildlands: The Ancients (which hasn’t arrived yet).

I sometimes think it would be good if these things spanned about 5 years : )

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I’m a proponent for voting for the best game of 5 years ago. Only reviewers and @lalunaverde seem to be able to play enough games to have a nuanced opinion on the current year.

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If we ended up only awarding the Tengblad, Minutewalt, pillbox and anti-pillbox awards I wouldn’t have any problem with that.

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Even I am at my limits as a board game plebian. But the two clubs I go to have restarted again this Summer/Autumn.

There’s also the weird thing where the only games I really liked this year are mostly reprints or remakes. It’s very disappointing.

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I think Oath is the only game I’ve played that was released this year.

Otherwise lords of Vegas and Troyes are the only other new to me games.

I feel very under-qualified to nominate.

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Nobody is under-qualified to have an opinion on what they like.

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Oh yeah, I did play Oath via PBF, so I have played something from this year.

At the same time, I did not really care for it, so…

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I’d love to see this happen.

Call it The Ripe Pearple’s Choice Awards 2016 for games which have now ripened sufficiently for people to have opinions!

  • Best game of 2016 (should have a BGG publication year of 2016+) BGG
  • Best [type] game of 2016, where BGG pub year is 2016 and [type] is each of:
    • Cooperative (even if it has a competitive mode too) BGG
    • Heavy (probably BGG weight >3) BGG
    • Light (probably BGG weight ≤3) BGG
    • Soloable (including unofficially) BGG
    • Thematic (no formal definition)
  • Best game artwork (BGG pub year is 2016)
  • Best expansion (BGG pub year is 2016; can be an expandalone but must be combinable with another game)

Lots of us were already thinking about such things for Your games of the year (by publication date) so we’re already a step ahead!

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