{"id":2250,"date":"2024-05-28T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-28T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/?p=2250"},"modified":"2024-05-28T21:17:56","modified_gmt":"2024-05-28T20:17:56","slug":"this-years-cardboard-edison-award-winner-simulates-pioneers-staking-land-claims-in-the-rush-for-the-american-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/28\/this-years-cardboard-edison-award-winner-simulates-pioneers-staking-land-claims-in-the-rush-for-the-american-west\/","title":{"rendered":"This year&#8217;s Cardboard Edison Award winner simulates pioneers staking land claims in the rush for the American West"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Crowded Frontier has won this year&#8217;s Cardboard Edison Award, which aims to highlight the best in currently unpublished board games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The game, designed by Myles Wallace, sees players using worker placement, area control and resource management to outdo other pioneers travelling west to stake claims on prime real estate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"858\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Myles-Wallace-designer-of-Crowded-Frontier-858x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2254\" style=\"width:280px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Myles-Wallace-designer-of-Crowded-Frontier-858x1024.jpg 858w, https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Myles-Wallace-designer-of-Crowded-Frontier-251x300.jpg 251w, https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Myles-Wallace-designer-of-Crowded-Frontier-768x916.jpg 768w, https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Myles-Wallace-designer-of-Crowded-Frontier-1287x1536.jpg 1287w, https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Myles-Wallace-designer-of-Crowded-Frontier.jpg 1609w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 858px) 100vw, 858px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Crowded Frontier designer Myles Wallace<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>One award judge described Crowded Frontier&#8217;s resource collection system as &#8220;some kind of magic trick&#8221;, while others praised its puzzle of having to weigh placing workers to get resources while also lining them up with where you want to build houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Crowded Frontier <a href=\"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/02\/cardboard-edison-begins-the-hunt-for-2024s-best-unpublished-board-game\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">fought off competition from more than 330 other entries<\/a> to win this year&#8217;s award in what is an increasingly crowded field, with the number of entries up more than 35% <a href=\"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/22\/making-microscopic-mosaics-from-algae-is-this-years-cardboard-edison-unpublished-game-of-the-year\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">compared to 2023&#8217;s competition<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fourteen finalists competed for the prize, with two runners-up awards going to Snowy Peaks, designed by Yuri Morroni &amp; Gabriel Toschi, and Cart\u2019nage, designed by Lo\u00efc Lamy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Snowy Peaks tasks two players with playing cards to co-operatively get their climbers to a mountain summit, while Cart&#8217;nage has players use dominoes to construct buildings and then activate them to throw or flick tokens in an attempt to destroy other players&#8217; constructions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This year&#8217;s winner Wallace <a href=\"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/22\/making-microscopic-mosaics-from-algae-is-this-years-cardboard-edison-unpublished-game-of-the-year\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"was a runner-up in the 2023 Cardboard Edison Award\">was a runner-up in the 2023 Cardboard Edison Award<\/a> with Swords Over Scotland, which sees players competing to unite Scottish clans in the 14th century via the combination of area control and bingo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cardboardedison.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Cardboard Edison<\/a> was launched in 2012 as a board game design studio and hub, which has expanded from a well-read industry blog into a vast repository of information for board game designers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The award was launched by Suzanne Zinsli in 2016, with the help of fellow Cardboard Edison founder Chris Zinsli.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Previous winners have included Octopus Scramble, which was signed up by Sit Down!, Winter, which has been published by Devir, and Umbra Via, which has been published by Pandasaurus Games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/22\/making-microscopic-mosaics-from-algae-is-this-years-cardboard-edison-unpublished-game-of-the-year\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Last year&#8217;s winner Diatoms<\/a>, in which players take on the role of Victorian naturalists growing microscopic mosaics from algae, went on to raise more than $63,000 from over 1,400 backers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/ludoliminal\/diatoms\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">in a Kickstarter campaign last September<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost 60 board game industry professionals were part of this year&#8217;s panel, including UNPUB managing director and 9th Level Games CEO Heather O&#8217;Neill, Flamecraft designer Manny Vega, and Paverson Games CEO and Distilled designer Dave Beck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link has-black-color has-text-color has-background wp-element-button\" href=\"https:\/\/buttondown.com\/boardgamewire\" style=\"background-color:#f6bf00\">For more stories like this direct to your email inbox, click here to sign up for BoardGameWire&#8217;s free email newsletter. \n\nAnd if you&#8217;ve found our reporting interesting or useful, please consider a paid subscription to help support our journalism!<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Crowded Frontier has won this year&#8217;s Cardboard Edison Award, which aims to highlight the best in currently unpublished board games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,140,982,977,980,981,141,109],"class_list":["post-2250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-board-game","tag-cardboard-edison","tag-cartnage","tag-crowded-frontier","tag-myles-wallace","tag-snowy-peaks","tag-unpublished","tag-winner"],"blocksy_meta":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2250"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2261,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250\/revisions\/2261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}