What You Missed...

Thanks for joining us on another grand week here at Theology Of Games. Here's what you might have missed. After playing the DC Deck-Building game with Son The Elder, I wondered if anyone out there let their kids win. We got some great responses!

Then we brought you the news that the 4x game Eclipse is out on the iPad!

We interviewed Arctic Scavengers designer Kyle Gabhart.

The we had a Double Double-Take Review, of the cute games Pick-A-Pig and Pick-A-Dog.

And finally, Firestone took a look at the trick-taking game Little Devils.

That's it for this week. Stay tuned for more fun next week! (And we'll have a big Kickstarter Weekly tomorrow. Don't miss it!)

The Weirdness of the Origins Award Nominees

By Firestone

On Thursday we were excited to bring you the newly released list of nominees for the Origins Awards. But as I looked over the list, I couldn't help but wonder what in the world they were thinking...

Let's start with Best Board Game. We have understandable nominees, such as Kingdom Builder, Lords of Waterdeep, and Mage Knight. Then there's Hot Rod Creeps from Cryptozoic Entertainment. "That's weird," I thought. "I've never even heard of that game. Maybe it just flew under the radar." So I went to the Geek and saw that it had flown under everyone's radar. The game has only 57 ratings. It's ranked 3656. Why would that game make the short list of best of the year? And speaking of year: Kingdom Builder and Mage Knight are both from 2011. So are these the best games of...recent years?

And then we have Best Gaming Accessory, which includes things like Dungeon Tiles, miniatures, cool dice, and...The Wizard's Tower from Castle Panic? What?! It's not an accessory; it's an expansion. The Tower isn't even a...thing! It's a deck of cards. And it came out in 2011!

And there seem to be an inordinate number of Cryptozoic games. I'm not saying they're not good games, but where are games from some of the other publishers—like Rio Grande and Z-Man and Fantasy Flight? Does Origins only nominate games that were sent to them by the publishers? That seems like a crazy way to determine the best games of the year. Or of recent years...

What News From the Shire?

With last year's release of the first film installment of the Hobbit, the world of gaming rejoices—and of course cashes in! There have been several games released over the past several months, as well as a few upcoming that may scratch the itch you have for more Tolkien-based games; here's a short (if not completely inclusive) list of them:

The Lord of the Rings Living Card Game Saga expansions - Fantasy Flight released two Hobbit-centric additions to their smash hit LOTR-LCG: The Hobbit: Over Hill and Under Hill, and The Hobbit: On the Doorstep

The Lord of the Rings Dice Building Game

Wizkids, who brought you the unique spin of dice building vs. deck building in Quarriors, has released (it is available NOW!) The LOTR themed game, and we have it on good word it's more than just a re-theme of Quarriors!

The Hobbit Card Game - An inexpensive, trick-taking game with a Tolkien theme from Fantasy Flight Games and designer Martin Wallace—also available now!

Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring Deck Building Game -—Cryptozoic, publisher of the World of Warcraft TCG, has thrown their hat into the Tolkien "ring" (see what I did there?) with a deck builder of their own, which is just recently available!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Cryptozoic's second go at the genre, this time in board game form, this is expected sometime in the second quarter of 2013.

Sadly we have no review copies of any of these games, but as soon as we do we will post our reviews as soon as we can!

We know there are tons more of titles out there that take place in Middle Earth! We'd love to hear of any diamonds in the rough you've discovered!

Thanks for reading, and for those who were here yesterday, yes, that was an April Fool's day post; we hope you got a good laugh out of it, and if you came here today looking for the latest in crocheting news, we extend our apologies.

Give us a shout in the comments with your favorite Tolkien titles, and hit us up on Facebook and Twitter!