It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this for almost 2 years. Back in 2012, I had the crazy idea to start a site about board games. Since that time, hundreds of thousands of you have stopped by to see what we have to say and even offer commentary of your own. And we appreciate each and every one of you. So with our 2 year anniversary coming up in July, we decided that, once again, the presents are for you!
Come July, we’ll be doing another anniversary give away. But what to give? We can’t give you just any old game. No, it needs to be the best! So who decides what is best? Why you do of course. Enter the Board Game Designer Tournament.
We have selected 8 different designers to face off in a tournament-like bracket challenge. After much researching, debating and a few fist fights, we decided on final list of 8 designers. The only requirement was they all had to have at least 8 noteworthy games (the minimum we needed from each). We then seeded each of them in traditional tournament style bracket.
We used a lot of in-depth calculations, mathematically formula,s and polled hundreds of experts to come up with our scientifically based seeding. OK, actually we just grabbed some beers and hashed it out, but the first statement sounds much better. Each designer will have their own games pitted against each other until the best from each of the eight designers emerges. Those 8 games will then face off to find out whose game reigns supreme. At the end of the tournament, we’ll even give away some games from the winning designer!
I know this is far from a scientific challenge, it’s really just meant to be fun. So don’t take offense if your favorite designer or game got left out. If you want to play along, you can download a full bracket here. Fill it out and see how close you get. Keep us updated on your progress in the comment below. Hope everyone has fun and may the best designer win!
UPDATE: I realized there was a small error in the seeding. I’ve replaced the PDF with a new one. If you are playing along at home, make sure to grab the updated file.
Voting is closed for this part of round 1. The voting will open for the second half of round 1 on Thursday!
Round 1 – Part 1: Rosenberg/Knizia & Feld/Lang Regions
The voting for the left half of the bracket will take place now through Tuesday, June 24th. After that, we’ll do the voting for the right side of the bracket. One vote per person please, but feel free to lobby for your favorite games and designers in the comments below.
Uwe Rosenberg
Reiner Knizia
Stefan Feld
Eric Lang
Great format! Pit the designers best games against their other games and then against each other! Brilliant!
Of the designers listed my vote is for Uwe
Burgundy, not Burgandy – just sayin’
Darn. I knew i’d spell at least one game wrong. I’ll get that fixed with the next update this week when Part 2 begins.
thanks!
I dont get how this tournament is supposed to be anything special. Its just “whats the best game out there? but dont count games made by people that didnt make more than a few games cause they dont count as real game designers”, isnt it?
You could take the result from the last march madness on board game geek and declare Agricola the real winner cause Netrunner doesnt count.
What i would find more interesting:
Sort those 8 games per author by what people think are their best games and then pit one author against another. Their best games against each other, then their second best game against each other and so on. 4-4 would be decided by whos best game is decided as the better game, else the author wins who has more games voted the better game. That would be something new und unique.
Thanks for your input Bastian, we’ll take that under consideration if we do this again in the future. This is just supposed to be a fun thing to do, not a scientific study to find the “best” game.