Steerpike said: 

A little surprising that Valdora didn't make the cut (although personally I'm not that enthused by the game) but maybe I just don't have my dates right. Actually I'm not a big fan of awards. Too many loop holes.

 This year's nominee list certainly points out how confusing figuring out the selection window for the Spiel des Jahres can be! Four of the games have been out for at least two years. In the case of three of them (Portrayal/Identik, Roll Through the Ages, Dixit), it took that long for a German language edition to hit the market. The fourth involves a reissue of an older title that saw limited distribution originally, with the new edition also being substantially redesigned (A la Carte). While it is confusing, it is also sort of neat to see the German market having to play catch up with the designs that are being put out in other markets as much as we are having to play catch up with the releases outside of the English-speaking world.

 Valdora was a recommended game last year. Like The Golden City, it was a Nuremberg 2009 show title that shipped very close to the show - it just took a while to get to a US publisher to agree to pick it up.

 I would have to think that a Zombie-themed Identik might appeal to me a bit more than the original, but only a little bit more. Portrayal is an interesting design and it is innovative, it's just not a game that I find enjoyable. I feel the same way about PIctionary, so it must be something about drawing games. Since Dixit sold out almost as soon as it was released in the US, I have not gotten a chance to play it. It's been unavailable so long that I am starting to wonder if Asmodee is hanging on to their supply so that they can slap the SdJ award on it if they should happen to win... but then that is starting to make me sound like a conspiracy nut!

Occasionally, an artist I have avidly followed for years suddenly breaks a new level of success with a piece that leaves me colder than earlier more obscure stuff. The comic artist Chris Ware, for example, wowed Time Magazine and the NYT with Jimmy Corrigan, which I found a bit tedious compared to his more cogent ACME work. Martin is edging in this direction for me as well. While the first Stark book whipped along like a rocket to a terrific cliffhanger, the pace in the subsequent books, especially the second, flags so badly that I began to suspect that Martin, realizing he had a cash cow by the udder, was trying to pad out the series by a whole extra novel- maybe two. (This is one of the big reasons I stopped reading fantasy as a kid, in the days of the umpteenth chronicles of Amber, the Overinflated Spare Tire of Time and the oh-my-goodness-yet-another-chronicle-of-Thomas-Covenant-we-found-down-the-back-of-the-sofa. I like the idea that the story I’m reading will eventually have an ending, preferably before the author in question dies.) Your experience may vary and I very much hope it does but if these books are working for you, I urge you to seek out Martin’s incandescent earlier work including Sandkings, an exemplary collection of horror stories, Tuf Voyaging, a tongue-in-cheek science fiction epic and especially a nasty little piece of work called "Meathouse Man", one of the most emotionally disturbing short stories I’ve ever read. No really. You have been warned.