Each year since 1980, GAMES Magazine has published a Buyer's Guide to Games in their year-end holiday issue. The article lists and reviews one hundred games each year, and is therefore known as the "Games 100". The list features the very best games published in the last year.
This is a list of the games selected by Games Magazine for the year 2009, courtesy of Funagain Games:
Game of the Year: TZAAR
TZAAR is a game about making choices. Both players have 30 pieces, divided in three types: 6 Tzaars, 9 Tzarras and 15 Totts. The 3 types of pieces form a trinity: They cannot exist without each other. The aim is either to make the opponent run out of one of the three types of pieces or to put him in a position in which he cannot capture anymore.
The tricky question the players will have to ask themselves on each of their turns is: "Shall I make myself stronger or my opponent weaker?" Meaning: will you capture an opponent's piece and make him weaker, or will you jump on top of one of your own pieces and make yourself stronger? If you choose to jump on top of your own pieces too often, you will probably leave your opponent with too many pieces on the board. On the other hand, if you capture too often, you may end up with pieces that are not strong enough at the end of the game. What to do? It's up to you to decide!
Best Abstract Strategy Game: Ponte del Diavolo
With Ponte del Diavolo, Martin Ebel honors Alex Randolph's most famous game, Twixt, by bringing new elements to this excellent game. In this game, the players build stone bridges over the many canals of Venice. Players score for each successful bridging and for each connected island. Alternative move options and modified target conditions give Ponte del Diavolo its own character, which serves only to remind us more of Twixt.
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Best Advanced Strategy Game: Key Harvest
The object of the game in Key Harvest is to score the most points. Players score points by placing tiles on their own country board. One point is scored for each field tile in the player's largest group of connected field tiles and two points for each tile in their second largest connected group.
Points are also scored for the worker tiles a player places on their country board. The number of points scored for each worker is equal to the number on the worker tile. Worker tiles do not count as connecting tiles when calculating the largest group of tiles. When played, a worker enables a player to take a special action. Each player has their own team of six workers, known as farmhands. There are also six townsfolk who can be acquired by any player.
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Best Family Game: Pandemic
Four diseases have broken out in the world and it is up to a team of specialists in various fields to find cures for these diseases before mankind is wiped out.
Players must work together, playing to their characters' strengths and planning their strategy of eradication before the diseases overwhelm the world with ever-increasing outbreaks.
A truly cooperative game where you all win or you all lose.
Best Family Card Game: Palastgeflüster
There's discontent in the courtyard of the king, and intrigue abounds: The courtyard marshal has vanished with the treasurer, and the maid is whispering with the magician. Whoever remains will be rewarded with the favor of the king. Rules in English, German, French, Italian.
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Best Family Strategy Game: Stone Age
The times were hard indeed. Our ancestors worked with their legs and backs straining against wooden plows in the stony earth. Of course, progress did not stop with the wooden plow. People always searched for better tools and more productive plants to make their work more effective.
In Stone Age, the players live in this time, just as our ancestors did. They collect wood, break stone and wash their gold from the river. They trade freely, expand their village, and so achieve new levels of civilization. With a balance of luck and planning, the players compete for food in this pre-historic time.
Risk and grow as your ancestors did. Only then the victory ring sings to you!
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Best Party Game: Go Nuts!
Take your cheeky chances on this quick playing dice game of nut gathering nuttiness. Pile up points by rolling the dice and adding up acorns, while avoiding any cars along the way. If you roll all squirrels, scurry to score as many nuts as you can before your opponents’ dogs chase you away! The player with the most points wins.
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Best Puzzle: Doris
This totally amazing set of 24 octagonal tiles with all combinations of 3 colors on their edges has millions of solutions! Or only 2, or 8, depending on what you attempt.
Notice how the centers are sometimes squares, sometimes diamonds. Such mixed solutions are much more challenging. Many ways to match edges: single edges, double-color edges, hybrids, even corners. A huge repertoire of cool figures will keep you enthralled, plus rules for two games of space ships on rescue missions -- Space Tow and Space Crossing -- played on a 3-part sectional engraved vinyl game grid.
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Best Word Game: Jumbulaya
Jumbulaya is an addictive, multi-faceted word strategy game in which each player works with five letter tiles on his/her tray and all the letters on the board, rearranging, adding, and trading them, building and claiming longer and longer words each turn.
Simultaneously, as players build words horizontally, they also look for a Jumbulaya. A Jumbulaya is a seven-, eight-, or nine-tile word that can be spelled vertically on the board. Players strategize and plan multiple moves ahead to create longer and longer words. A player earns points for all lines he/she claims, bonus points for using "letter-combo" tiles, and even more points for being the first to find a Jumbulaya. The player who earns the most points, wins!
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Best Historical Simulation Game: Pacific Typhoon
Pacific Typhoon is a strategy card game for 4-6 players, ages 10 to adult. The game uses the same system that first appeared in the popular 1998 Avalon Hill card game Atlantic Storm.
The game setting is the naval and air war in the Pacific theatre during World War II. Pacific Typhoon depicts the history of the air-naval battles of the Pacific War with 40 battle cards, each of which represents an historical naval or air battle such as Pearl Harbor, Midway, Surigao Strait, etc. Players compete by fighting a non-sequential series of twenty of these battles. A battle lasts for one round of play, so each player gets to play once per battle. The round-leader starts by picking one of two battle cards (he discards the unpicked one). The chosen battle card determines the year of battle. The battle card is also worth a certain number of victory points and resources to whoever wins it. The round-leader alternates after each battle, and the game ends after 20 battles (when the Battle Card deck is exhausted).
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See Also: Other Award-Winning Board Games, Games 100 Winners for Other Years
