We sortied out to the local game convention for a load of photos, and more ~
Brant Guillory, 26 February 2017
Raleigh, NC has a pretty thriving game community – 2 local colleges have digital game design programs, there are at least 4 pretty active game clubs, and all three major game stores are packed most nights for any combination of D&D Encounters, minis warfare, Friday Night .\\agic, or general board gaming. The Triangle Simulation Society runs 2 minis-focused conventions each year, but this year the Playthrough Gaming Convention took over one of the exhibit halls at the Raleigh Convention for a weekend of digital, tabletop, and live-action gaming, as well as seminars, tournaments, and a costume contest.
Looking over the gaming hall. Booths in the front, video games on the right, and tabletops in the back.
The nominations came in throughout 2016. After our annual January voting, we bring your the Readers’ Choice Award Winners for game-year 2016 ~
Congrats to our winners! OVERALL TABLETOP GAME – Star Wars: Rebellion OVERALL DIGITAL GAME – Twilight Struggle, digital edition Digital Wargame – Twilight Struggle, digital edition Digital RTS – Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak Digital RPG – Uncharted 4 Digital FPS – Battlefield 1 Digital Family / Sports Game – FIFA 17 Digital 4X Game- Civilization 6 Digital Expansion / DLC – Order of Battle: US Marines Tabletop Wargame – Wing Leader: Supremacy Tabletop Strategy Game – Star Wars: Rebellion Tabletop RPG – Star Wars: Force Awakens Tabletop Euro / Family Game – Terraforming Mars Tabletop Reprint – Silver Bayonet 25th Ed AAR of the Year – War in the Pacific AE – KyzBP & UCG
At GrogHeads, we give our readers the final say on the best games of the year, and here are the 2016 Readers’ Choice Awards…
We try to be as responsive as we can to our readers, and include every nomination, checking only for only one criteria: released in the correct year. We open the threads at the start of the year (2017 threads are already open!) and leave them up even into the first week of the next year. Somehow, even with an entire year to nominate games, we still get hate-mail from around the web asking “why wasn’t _____ on the list?” The answer is the same every time: no one nominated it! It’s your award, and you dear reader, get to pick your own choices.
This year’s winners? Here they go. And remember, all of them were selected by you!
GrogHeads Readers’ Choice Overall 2016 Tabletop Game of the Year was Star Wars: Rebellion, a game we discussed at length on the GrogCast last fall. Falling Sky, the latest in the COIN series, finished second. Ventonuovo’s visually stunning Moscow ’41 took third.
The GrogHeads Readers’ Choice Overall 2016 Digital Game of the Year was the adaptation of the excellent Twilight Struggle tabletop game. Second place was claimed by Strategic Command: WWII in Europe, and third overall was XCom 2.
In response to reader inquiries, we also added a new feature this year to recognize excellent After-Action Reports from games. Although we did not limit the category to those AARs that appeared on our site, it’s interesting to note that all three of the top finishers were in our forums, rather than on our front page, indicating that we clearly have to some talented writers in our forums. The overall winner of the inaugural AAR of the Year for 2016 was War in the Pacific AE, authored by KyzBP & Undercovergeekin the GrogHeads forums.
Your local convention… and plenty of national ones! ~
GrogHeads Staff, 25 January 2017
A few of these have already passed… sorry – we were trying to get the later-in-the-year dates together, but some of them have yet to be announced. We’ll update this all year long, so keep it bookmarked for reference!
If we missed your favorite – leave us a comment with the link at the bottom, and we’ll get it added.
It’s time to get your votes in for the Readers’ Choice Awards for game-year 2016.
The only required items are the overall digital / tabletop games, at the end of each of those categories.
This year we’ve made a few changes:
We’ve consolidated the overall number of categories within the tabletop/digital divisions, to try to keep them as consistent as possible year-to-year
We’ve added an “AAR of the Year” category, at the request of the readers and members of our forums
We received no nominations for miniatures rules/expansions, so we’re not doing away with them as a category, but we can’t give you what you don’t nominate!
