Here are the finalists for 2019’s “Board game of the year” award

Enlarge (credit: Spiel des Jahres)

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.quickbitetech.com.

The nominees for board gaming’s biggest award, the German “Spiel des Jahres” trophy, were announced this week and feature a total absence of entries from designers Wolfgang Warsch and Michael Kiesling. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, those two absolutely dominated last year’s awards).

This year, the jury of German critics went with light, easy-to-teach games for the family-friendly “Spiel des Jahres” award. Just One and Werwörter (Werewords in English) are word-based party games, while L.A.M.A. is a card-shedding game from design legend Reiner Knizia. All three play in under 20 minutes (!).