At the Mensa Mind Games this past weekend in the Virginia suburbs outside Washington, DC, member judges played through and selected the following games as 2017 Mensa Select winners:

Amalgam from Simply Fun—A game in which the players, as wizards, try to collect sets of potion ingredients but have to rely on their memories of the ingredients they’ve already collected.

Around the World in 80 Days from Iello Games—A Spiel des Jahres winner from years ago (Hare & Tortoise), reproduced based on the Jules Verne novel. Players race around the board, moving forward and back as they wish. However, they must carefully plan to arrive back in London with the least amount of cash left in hand.

Clank! from Renegade Game Studio—A dungeon delve fantasy adventure game built on deck-building mechanisms.

Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle from USAopoly—Another deck-building game, this one follows the novels with a series of cooperative games that get more complex and more difficult to beat as they progress.

Imagine from Gamewright—A party game where the giver-of-clues chooses an item from a card and then tries to illustrate the item by combining images and symbols with an overlay of transparent cards.

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For those who don’t know, Mensa Mind Games is an annual tabletop competition open to games that are new to market within the last two years. Today they’ve announced the winners for 2016.

• New York 1901, Blue Orange Games
• Circular Reasoning, Breaking Games
• World’s Fair 1893, Renegade Game Studios
• Favor of the Pharaoh, Bezier Games, Inc.
• The Last Spike, Columbia Games

Sadly, the only game I’ve only played on the list The Last Spike, though I’ve heard good things about the rest.

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The annual Mensa Mind Games took place this weekend in San Diego. There, 325 judges played through 60 different games to choose the following Mensa Select Winners:

Dragonwood—A push-your-luck game of rolling dice and capturing fantastic creatures. Players may also along the way attempt to grab enhancements but when the two dragons are gone the game is over. [Published by Gamewright.]

Lanterns: The Harvest Festival—Which pairs set-collecting and tile-laying as players build floating displays of paper lanterns for the emperor of China. [Designed by Christopher Chung. Published by Renegade Game Studios and Foxtrot Games.]

Castles of Mad King Ludwig—Another tile-laying game, in which players attempt to build the most extravagant castle for the king. [Designed by Ted Alspach. Published by Bezier Games.]

Letter Tycoon—A word game in which players can also purchase letters and then charge other players to use them. [Designed by Brad Brooks. Published by Breaking Games.]

Trekking the National Parks—Which combines card play, a national map to track movement, and details specific to each of the 59 U.S. national parks. [Designed by Charlie Bink.]

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Get ready publishers! The 2014 Mensa Mind Games, scheduled for April in Austin, has opened submissions with two significant change from previous years.

New rules allow games longer in the market to be submitted. For the 2014 event, games released between June 1, 2012 and June 1, 2014 are eligible.

At the 2014 Mensa Mind Games, player judges will also choose a secondary tier of “recommended” games, in addition to the regular Mensa Select winners.

The final deadline for submitting games is March 28th.

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