Nominee Games 2025

Dear All,

at SPIEL we already started looking around for interesting titles for the 2025 Europe Masters event. But there are so many games and publishers out there, we certainly missed some gems.

Feel free to share any interesting titles, suitable for the EC, with us. These could be games you have spotted in Essen or other new releases of this year. We will use it as input for our nomination list.

From all the candidates these games made it to our list of nominees for the 2025 European championship (alphabetical order):

Nominee List 2025

The games on the list of nominees are games that we have shortlisted as very suitable tournament games for the European Championship.

• 7 Empires – PD-Verlag
• Black Forest – Feuerland
• Botanicus – Hans im Glück
• Cities – Devir
• Forest Shuffle + Alpine expansion – Lookout Games
• Middle Ages – Studio H
• Resafa – Delicious Games

Tournament Games 2025

These four games were taken from the Nominee list and will be played at the European Championship.

• 7 Empires – PD-Verlag
• Botanicus – Hans im Glück
• Cities – Devir
• Forest Shuffle + Alpine expansion – Lookout Games

Disclaimer: Please note that the final selection of the tournament games is not based on single titles. We have to take into account total overall playing time, different gaming mechanisms, etc, etc. So we opt for a best possible mix.

Games from the Nominee list 2024

Author: Mac Gerdts	7 Empires In 18th century Europe, seven old Empires vie for supremacy. Exert your influence on them to manipulate their policies to your personal favour. The destiny of the continent is in your hands. But beware: Your impact on any individual empire can slip away from you in a heartbeat as other players make their own plans and forge alliances leading to a fascinating interplay. 7 Empires is a game with compact rules but a multitude of challenging decisions. Strategic foresight is key to winning. Only those who can correctly assess the plans of others can emerge victorious!
Author: Tido Lorenz Uwe Rosenberg	BLACK FOREST In Black Forest, you start out with a small domain in need of new buildings and livestock. You’ll travel from village to village, to enlist the aid of the best specialists. Exploiting the abilities of these specialists lets you collect resources, lay out new landscape tiles (e.g. ponds and fields), and build a variety of buildings, which come in four types. Choose the right buildings, place landscapes, fire up your glass production, and expand your domain. Uwe Rosenberg’s resource wheels, made famous in Glass Road (2013), return in Black Forest. Two resource wheels on your tableau help you keep track of your resources and production. Black Forest continues the story – as the name suggests — in the Black Forest. Among others, the main difference between the two games is the use of worker placement in Black Forest instead of simultaneous action selection. A wide selection of buildings and their different effects offer many different paths to victory.
Author: Samuele Tabellin Vieri Masseini	BOTANICUS In the expert game Botanicus with simple tactical aspects, you compete with your fellow players for the best yield for your botanical garden using a new action mechanism. You want to get the right plants and water them at the right time, take care of your gardener and, of course, don’t neglect your finances. In the end, it all depends on how many visitors are happy with their visit and how beautiful your garden is. Will you manage to overshadow your competitors’ gardens?
Author: Steve Finn Phil Walker-Harding	CITIES You’ve been tasked by the city council to put together a plan to transform a whole neighborhood in the city. You have the opportunity to build new housing, office buildings, parks, and leisure areas near the waterfront. It is in your hands to make the city a better place. Cities is a city-building game in which you draft the best projects and arrange them in your own playing area. Designed by Steve Finn and Phil Walker Harding and illustrated by Jorge Tabanera, it allows games for groups of 2 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, lasting about 40 minutes. With action and resource draft mechanisms, it will give you the opportunity to visit the cities of Sydney, Venice, New York, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Lisbon, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. Can you design the most magnificent neighborhood? The game is played over eight rounds (or four rounds in a two-player game). Each round, players use their workers to collect 1 scoring card, 1 city tile, 1-2 feature tiles, and 2-4 building pieces. City tiles are made up of park spaces, water spaces, and building spaces. Building pieces are placed on building spaces of the same color to form buildings, which can be 1-4 stories high. Whenever a player fulfills an achievement, they place one of their discs on the achievement board. At the end of the game, players add up the points they have gained from all of their scoring cards and achievements.
Author: Kosch	FOREST SHUFFLE A smart card game for nature lovers: Experience the miracles of the forest in this clever card game. In Forest Shuffle, 2-5 players compete in gathering the most valuable trees and attract species, thus creating an ecological balanced habitat for flora and fauna. Life is bustling in the local forest: Animals scurry around the clearings looking for edible plants and insects. Some prefer the dense treetops, others the lush undergrowth and only feel comfortable in the shelter of the trees. It all starts with a single tree: Each turn you play cards from your hand. You want to gather more trees in your very own forest. To help attract wildlife, you try to combine plants and animals for extra points or bonus actions. Consider the different preferences of these creatures: Some animals feel only comfortable in the presence of their fellow species, others prefer certain tree types to live in. This card game for 2-5 players comes with: * simple rules * beautiful illustrations * multifunctional playing cards * manufactured eco friendly: FSC certified material Bonus: This family friendly card game works with all player counts! Explore the growth of your forests in a nice game with 3-5 players. Fight a tight 2 player ‘battle’ to attract the most prestigous species for your very own forest. Are you able to establish an ideal balance and create the most beautiful forest? FOREST SHUFFLE – ALPINE Here it is, the first expansion of Forest Shuffle! Put on your hiking boots and off we go: The mountain forest in the Alps is home to numerous animals, plants and fungi right up to the tree line. Gentians, eagles, marmots, chamois, Swiss stone pines – their habitats are different, but here too, there are synergies and valuable partnerships that score you points. New cards are shuffled into the base game for even more diversity in Forest Shuffle adding even more variety to your gaming tables. Will you manage to lure the most valuable species into your forest? Because the following also applies above the tree line: depending on the number of players, cards are removed from the game before it begins. The first expansion of the tactical card game about the animals and the forest by designer Kosch scores with: * simple rules * beautiful illustrations * 36 new multifunctional cards * introduces 2 new tree species * is part of the eco friendly Lookout Greenline * the box fits perfectly into the box of the base game! Will we see you in the forest?
Authors: Marc André	MIDDLE AGES You are the head of a fiefdom and its future is in your hands. Will you develop agriculture with fields and mills? Or will you become a pious church-builder or prefer to feast in your sumptuous palaces? Develop your lands in your image and become the most influential lord in the kingdom. In Middle Ages, you explore the economics of medieval urban life through eight distinct tiles: fields, farms, villages, forts, markets, barracks, churches, and palaces. Each tile features its own scoring system, yet it’s linked to others, offering an immersive gaming experience. Unleash strategic maneuvers, from daring assaults on rival fiefdoms to reserving tiles for future use. Harness the power of tactical combinations to amplify your income and pave your way to triumph! With an ever changing tile board, you need to be able to plan ahead but adapt to changing circumstances to make the best moves. The richest player at the end of the 16th round wins.
Authors: Vladimír Suchý	RESAFA The game Resafa takes place during the 3rd century AD in the area of today’s Middle East. Resafa now lies in ruins in modern-day Syria, but at this time it was a fortified desert  outpost that flourished as a stop along important caravan routes. In the game, players represent merchants who travel on business trips and buy and sell goods in the various cities in the region. Resafa had no local sources of water, so it depended heavily on large cisterns to collect the spring and winter rainwater to make the area habitable. Players build water tanks and canals to distribute that water where it is needed. In the cities, they build workshops to help their businesses grow, which will allow them to collect resources and camels. They also construct gardens between the businesses, generating more resources and also victory points. The game is played over six rounds. In each round, a player takes only three actions, playing action cards in this tight and exciting game.

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