This year’s nominees for France’s biggest board gaming award highlights breadth of country’s publishers

The variety of France’s board game publishing industry has been underscored by the newly-announced nominees of this year’s As d’Or, the country’s highest-profile board game prize.

Captain Flip, designed by Paolo Mori and Remo Conzadori, Maxime Rambourg’s deckbuilder For A Crown, and Odin from design trio Yohan Goh, Hope Hwang and Gary Kim are battling it out for this year’s general Game of the Year prize, which is focused on the best games accessible to the greatest number of people.

Kennerspiel des Jahres winner Daybreak, citybuilding eurogame Kutná Hora and Sankoré – themed around the prestigious 14th-century university in Timbuktu – go head to head in the Expert Game category, while the nominees for the “Initié” category, which targets regular board games players ready for more challenging mechanisms, comprise Behind, Harmonies and Kronologic.

Across those titles and the three nominees in the children’s game category, Super Meeple and board game giant Asmodee are the only publishers that were nominated last year to appear in the 2025 awards.

French board game publishing major Hachette, the publisher of 2024’s Initié category winner Faraway through its Catch Up Games subsidiary, picked up no nominations this year, and there was also no space for well-known publishers in the country such as Matagot, Blue Orange and Iello – although the latter is the French distributor of two of the nominees.

Super Meeple’s nomination for Sankoré in this year’s awards follows its win for La Famiglia last year, while Asmodee picked up two nods through its Repos Productions and Libellud studios for For A Crown and Harmonies respectively.

PlayPunk, the publisher launched in 2023 by 7 Wonders and Takenoko designer Antoine Bauza and Repos Productions co-founder Thomas Provoost, adds to its Spiel des Jahres nomination for Captain Flip last year with the As d’Or game of the year nomination.

Other French publishers to pick up nominations in this year’s awards include KYF Edition, Origames, LOKI and Auzou.

Last year’s As d’Or game of the year prize was won by light card game Trio, designed by Kaya Miyano.

This year’s winners are set to be announced on February 27, the day before France’s biggest board game festival, the Festival International des Jeux in Cannes.

Earlier this month BoardGameWire reported that Super Meeple plans to step up its own direct sales this year after struggling to get individual retailers to stock more than a handful of copies of each of its heavier games through 2024.

Super Meeple said that although it scored early success last year with deduction game Kronologic: Paris 1920 and lighter euro World Wonders, some of its more complex titles such as Bardwood Grove and Kraftwagen “did not conquer”, adding that “often cautious” retail stores “limit their expert game orders due to their high cost and competition of lighter games and TCGs”.

The 2025 As d’Or nominees

Game of the Year

  • Captain Flip – by Remo Conzadori and Paolo Mori (published by PlayPunk)
  • For A Crown – Maxime Rambourg (Repos Productions)
  • Odin – Gary Kim, Hope Hwang, Yohan Goh (Helvetiq)

Expert Game of the Year

  • Daybreak – Matt Leacock, Matteo Menapace (CMYK)
  • Kutná Hora: The City of Silver – Ondřej Bystroň, Petr Čáslava, Pavel Jarosch (Czech Games Edition)
  • Sankoré: The Pride of Mansa Musa – Mandela Fernandez-Grandon, Fabio Lopiano (Super Meeple)

Initié Game of the Year

  • Behind – Cédric Millet (KYF Edition)
  • Harmonies – Johan Benvenuto (Libellud)
  • Kronologic: Paris 1920 – Fabien Gridel, Yoann Levet (Origames)

Children’s Game of the Year

  • Spotlight – Hjalmar Hach, Lorenzo Silva (LOKI)
  • Mimose & Sam et le Voleur de Fruits – Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance (Locomuse)
  • Operation Noisettes – Jerome Soleil, Emilie Soleil (Auzou)

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