There are many awards given out each year for games, and while I don’t take any of them as definitive, I do find that they each have something to offer. The Dice Tower podcast has been organizing its own awards program for the last few years with the help of a number of other podcasts and blogs. This one offers the perspective of dedicated hobby board gamers, who nevertheless enjoy various types of games. As the group of judges is small, they also wait a while after the end of the year to give everyone some time to experience the range of games.

The winners of the 2009 Dice Tower Gaming Awards are:

Personally, I’d been staying away from Small World as I did not particularly enjoy its predecessor, Vinci. But the positive talk about this game has kept pretty steady; I probably should give it a try.