[XaspR8d]

Kingdomino is perfectly fine, but I felt the SdJ nominees this year were all pretty safe choices. If anything, I would've preferred Magic Maze, which seems to be the most unique of the SdJ nominees. Plus, Honshu, which also came out this year, is a much better bid-and-build-domino-cities game than Kingdomino, but I understand it's a little more complex than the average SdJ winner.

Meanwhile, Exit winning the Kennerspiel frustrates me. It's a solid design, and the escape-room-in-a-box can be quite fun, but it's hardly a gamer's game and the other nominees were incredible.

I guess my takeaway is that the SdJ is built up too much and doesn't reflect my segment of the hobby very well.

[cableshaft]

Honshu is good, but I actually prefer Kingdomino myself. The bidding for turn order with the cards that form the pool of cards you get to choose from is a little hard for people to wrap their heads around, and seems a bit arbitrary, although it does work.

Magic Maze has the whole no-communicating bit going against it, although it does look interesting and I would like to play it. I'm surprised it got the nomination, and the nomination alone will bring a lot more attention to that game, so that's cool.

[XaspR8d]

Funny, that is exactly what makes the game delightful for me: the dual-use of evaluating whether I want to use a card for its bid or try to hang onto it (or both). But yes, Kingdomino admittedly has a much simpler flow to it there, and hence is better for a broader audience that the committee is targetting. Also strictly speaking I don't know if Honshu had a German release this year anyway?

I totally agree that non-communication is a disappointing game mechanic; it almost always ends up being quite... impure design-wise? It still ended up feeling like the most dynamic of the 3 games for me, though admittedly my opinion of El Dorado is only from one play and word of mouth.