The winners of the Meeples Choice Awards for the 2023 calendar year have been announced.  The voters’ four favorite games from last year are:

NUCLEUM
EARTH
SKY TEAM
THE WHITE CASTLE

The award is set up to honor the top three games in the voting, but this year, for the first time, there was a tie.  The other games to finish in the top 10 were Darwin’s Journey, Forest Shuffle, Faraway, Age of Innovation, Great Western Trail: New Zealand, Apiary, and Hooky.

Congratulations to the designers of the winning games:  Simone Luciani and David Turczi, Maxime Tardif, Luc Remond, and Israel Cendrero and Sheila Santos (aka Isra C. and Shei S.).  The fact that they hail from so many different countries (Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Canada, France, and Spain) has pretty much become the norm.  Santos becomes the fourth woman to design an MCA winning game.  Congratulations go as well to the games’ publishers:  Board&Dice, Inside Up Games, Scorpion Masque, and Devir.