Interesting list…

2008 - Puerto Rico
2007 - Neuroshima Hex and Funkenschlag
2006 - no award
2005 - Settlers of Catan
2004 - Drakon

It’s weird to see games that I would consider classics coming up as award winners.... I’ll make my prediction for 2009 already:  Acquire :)

Dale

In Poland there’s no buzz about the slavery references - political corectness is still less popular here. And the edition with pictures is far more beautiful than RGG edition.

It’s also worth mentioning that Puerto Rico has claimed both main award (jury’s choice) and people’s choice award.

Pictures are nice, political correctness is not

I don’t know, Dale, I think it’s a terrific list.  We see a lot of other countries who have national awards also select older games, but in those cases it’s games like Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne that are the winners.  Poland is obviously playing catch-up with the rest of the gaming world, but I still have to applaud their tastes in games, particularly since they’re moving towards the heavyweights.  This could be another expanding market in the game world.

Larry, I’m not saying it’s a bad list at all.  It’s just interesting to see which games won in which years because they don’t follow the same gaming timeline that I’m accustomed to…

Looking at the nominees (or what I believe are the nominees as my knowledge of the Polish language starts and ends at Pączki) - there are a number of wargamish titles in there as well.  Yet, the Euro-style titles have won every year…

Dale

I have no problem with games that make honest historical references to slavery--I think pretending the activity never existed does more damage.  But in this case, the one building I can see that makes direct reference to slavery is the expansion building Black Market.  Given the way that building works (reduce the cost of a building by sacrificing a VP, good, or colonist), it’s not clear why slavery would be a better thematic fit than the original structure.  Is it possible that this comes from a literal, but inaccurate interpretation of the phrase “black market”?  Stranger things have happened when games get translated.  I can’t be sure, but rather than a healthy lack of political correctness, this may represent either an honest misunderstanding (which is my guess) or a somewhat gratuitous inclusion of a controversial topic.

The picture with hands bound with chains is “Black market” tile. I think it must not mean slavery, it means that someone making illegal business may be punished for such dealings :)

The list of winners depict the development of Polish boardgames market. When it started to grow back from nothing, one of the first popular games published in Polish was Drakan. Then we got Settlers and market readied for more advanced titles.

The Gra Roku award has no gap, but two first editions were marked with year number in which awarded game was published, now the game from last year gets the award with current year number.