Go "vote" on the À La Carte card game award

I've always enjoyed reading through the results of the best card game award given in Germany, the À La Carte. Kind of like the Spiel des Jahres or International Gamers Awards, this award is given by an editorial board. However, this year they've opened up an online poll--not to decide or change the outcome of the award, just as a fun check between what the game-buying public thinks is the best game, compared to that editorial board thinks.

http://fairplay-online.blogspot.com/2009/09/la-carte-2009.html

Gamewright euros (and testing Twitterfeed)

Gamewright is mostly known for mass market kids' games that are notably better than what you usually find on the shelf at Toys R Us or Target. They also do an amazing job at sneaking a little educational value into some of the titles (often math), while others are just silly fun.
Another sneaky move they pull off is bring eurogames by award-winning designers to America by skillful retheming of the games. That's how we got Turn the Tide (aka Zum Kuckuck by Stefan Dorra/FX Schmid), Loot (aka Pirat by Reiner Knizia/Amigo), and Ka-Ching (aka Combit by Palesch & Rösner/Winning Moves). That's fantastic! Our only quibble might be that they keep the designers of these games almost a secret, putting their credit in small print at the end of the rules, and on the back of the box.

I just received a batch of new & old Gamewright games, many of which I hope to try soon and discuss along with previously played Gamewright titles in an upcoming podcast. While reading the rules to one, I thought how the mechanics sounded similar to Circus Flohcati or Cheeky Monkey. Sure enough, I looked hard and found it was designed by Knizia. Another one is an American version of the newest game in the Schmidt Spiele EasyPlay line.

Has someone made a Geeklist of these clandestine eurogames brought over by Gamewright? I didn't find one.

(With this post I'm also testing my new Twitterfeed linkage. Could be the best of both worlds if I can do a "full" blog post here and have it picked up on twitter.)

-Mark