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If you're a Finnish board gamer or a board gamer living in Finland, make sure you vote in the yearly best board game voting. The Vuosiäänestys is running for the seventh time this year. The voting is open for all Finnish board gamers, so unfortunately you foreigners have to pass this one.

This year the winner is hardly a surprise -- well, I'm really surprised if Dominion doesn't win. What's interesting is to see how the dynamic duo from last year does: will Agricola and Race for the Galaxy claim the next spots or will they fade like Caylus did.

Voting form is here.

Finnish Game of the Year ("Vuoden peli") awards have been given. The finalists were chosen August 5th and the winners the next day, but for some reason both weren't published until today. Bizarre.

The adult game category was won by the official prize winner of the season, Dominion. The finalists were Pandemic and Stone Age. All three are published in Finland by Lautapelit.fi.

The family game category went to Zack & Pack. It's my translation, so I score something this year too. Finalists were Epäillyt (by Competo, as is the winner) and Livingstone by Lautapelit.fi.

The best children's game was Quoridor Kid, another Lautapelit.fi game. Finalists were Moomin Alias by Tactic and World of Cars: Race O'Rama, about which I know absolutely nothing.

In Finnish, you can read Vuoden peli 2009 -voittajat.

Oops, looks like I forgot to publish the Finnish Players' Picks results for 2008. Well, better late than never! To see the top 28, see Finnish Players' Picks 2008 GeekList. For complete list (in Finnish, but the data speaks math), see the official results page. You might also be interested in the collected results for 2003-2008 (yes, I've been doing this voting that long!).

Few helpful tips: "Sija" is "rank", "Äänet" means "votes" and "Peli" is "game".

The winner? Do you need to ask? Finland is no island in the board game world. We, too, love Agricola a lot, and are not afraid of the German language. Race for the Galaxy ended up two votes behind and could've been a winner, but after that, there was a gap of 13 votes before the next game.

I've opened the voting for the Finnish Players' Picks 2008 awards. If you're a Finnish board gamer or a foreign board gamer living in Finland, go and vote for your favourite games.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the The Finnish Players' Picks 2007 GeekList. See the full list at Lautapelaaja.net. This year we had more voters, more hardcore gamers voting and lots of interesting games on the list. A good year, and another proof the hobby is indeed growing!

The winner? Puerto Rico.

Last year was a disaster, now things look much better! The Finnish Adult Game of the Year for 2007 is Thurn und Taxis, the Finnish Family Game of the Year is Ubongo and the Finnish Kids Game of the Year is Piikkisiili.

The list of finalists was very impressive, too, but I think they chose very good winners (well, Piikkisiili doesn't seem that hot, but the kids game list is a different thing altogether). This has been another good year for board games in Finland!

Finnish gamers, head to Finnish Players' Picks 2007 voting page to tell me which games you enjoyed the most during the last year.

Finnish Players' Picks have been chosen for 2006! The winner is Caylus. Nice surprise, I'd say. I wonder how much the fast release of the Finnish edition helped...

A GeekList of top 25 games is once again available, as are the complete results.

Finnish Game of the Year awards for 2006 are out now, and what a huge disappointment they are! Best children's game is Build-a-Burger (I would've given the award to Das kleine Gespenst, but I don't know anything about Build-a-Burger). Best family game is Quackle, which seems to be a clone of Snorta!, or at least the idea is similar. Best game for adults is Pentago, which is ridiculous! An old abstract game with a single new idea and nice bits, and the jury goes drooling over it.

What about Samurai? Elasund? Pingwin? Pirate's Cove? Bloody amazing.

Here's the information in Finnish.

Finnish Players' Picks 2006 voting is now open and remains so until end of September. If you are Finnish or live in Finland, feel free to list five to seven of your favourite games from the last year (1.9.2005 - 31.8.2006). Remember: the voting isn't about your all-time favourites or the best games released in the last year, but the best games you've played during that period.

The voting form is the way to go. If you have any problems (for example you can't read enough Finnish to understand the form), contact me.