The San Diego Historical Games Convention (SDHist) is proud to announce the four finalists for the third annual Summit Award. The Summit Award aims to recognize a historical board game published in the preceding year that most broadened the hobby through the ease of teaching and/or play, uniqueness of topic, or novel approach. The inaugural winner in 2022 was Red Flag Over Paris, and in 2023, the winner was Votes For Women.

The four finalists for the 2024 Summit Award (for games published in 2023) are (in alphabetical order, with The British Way under B):

The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire. Designed by Stephen Rangazas, published by GMT Games.

Halls of Hegra. Designed by Petter Schanke Olsen, published by Tompet Games.

Land and Freedom: The Spanish Revolution and Civil War. Designed by Alex Knight, published by Blue Panther LLC.

We Are Coming, Nineveh. Designed by Harrison Brewer, Rex Brynen, Juliette Le Ménahèze, and Brian Train, published by Nuts! Publishing.

Each of these four games will be demoed at the Nov. 8-11 SDHist Summit 2024 Convention. Following that event, board members, advisors and other invited judges will vote on which game will win the 2024 Summit Award. The winner will be announced to the public by the end of 2024. Here are short descriptions of these games, based on their BoardGameGeek pages (with box images from those pages as well): 

The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire is a 60-120 minute game (individual scenarios) for two players. It is the first multipack in GMT Games’ COIN (counterinsurgency) Series, featuring four separate games exploring thematically related insurgencies around British decolonization in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus. In addition to the individual games, a booklet is included for a linked “End of Empire” campaign involving playing the four conflicts in historical order, with the games’ individual outcomes and campaign events having effects on what’s ahead. The games adapt core COIN Series mechanics for shorter games and an approachable introduction to the series, while still providing challenging games for experienced series players to explore.

Halls of Hegra is a 70-90 minute solitaire game depicting a group of Norwegian volunteers fighting numerically-superior German forces in the early days of World War II. It uses worker placement, bag-building, and area-control/tower defense mechanisms over three stages: exploring and preparing an abandoned mountain fortress, trying to defend the village below the fortress as it comes under attack while finishing fortification preparations, and then defending the fortress itself from a siege.

Land and Freedom: The Spanish Revolution and Civil War is a 60-90 minute game for one to three players. It portrays three factions (Anarchists, Communists, and Moderates) fighting back against a 1930s rebellion against the Spanish Republic from right-wing generals with German and Italian backing. This semi-cooperative game sees players having to work together to repel fascist attacks on different fronts, with a goal of holding three of the four fronts by the end of the game, but only the faction with the most glory (based on tokens drawn from a seeded bag at the end of each year) will win. Without enough teamwork, though, everyone can lose together.

We Are Coming, Nineveh is a 90-minute game for one to two players based on the Iraqi government campaign to liberate the western part of Mosul from Daesh forces in 2017, one of the largest-scale post-WWII urban operations. The game features low complexity but a detailed treatment of both operational and tactical elements of the campaign, assessing it in three key areas: the speed at which the operation is completed, the casualties suffered by Iraqi government forces, and the collateral damage done to Mosul. 

In addition to the four finalists, SDHist would like to recognize two honorable mentions for the 2024 Summit Award. These are (in alphabetical order), Match of the Century, designed by Paolo Mori and published by Deep Print Games, and Rising Waters, designed by Scout Blum and published by the Center for Learning Through Games and Simulations, Central Michigan University Press.

Match of the Century is a 30-45 minute game for one to two players, focusing on the final of the 1972 World Chess Championship in Reykjavik, Iceland. The game sees players take on the roles of American champion Bobby Fischer or Soviet champion Boris Spassky and use asymmetrical decks to play a series of games, with both the outcomes of individual games and the effects on players’ mental endurance taking effect. 

Rising Waters is a 60-90 minute cooperative game for two to four players, focusing on the Mississippi River floods in the spring of 1927. With area control, set collection, and variable player power mechanisms, players represent members of the local community around Vicksburg, Mississippi. They have to work together against both nature and the racism of white landowners.

The creation of the Summit Award was announced in Issue 1 of SDHist’s free Conflicts of Interest web magazine in June 2022. As with the 2022 and 2023 Summit Awards, nominations for the 2024 Summit Award were collected from the public over a period of months, with The British Way selected based on public nominations. Based on a random draw of those who submitted nominations, Russ Wetlir will receive a free game.  The SDHist Board and Advisory Board met to determine the other three finalists, with public nominations also considered there.

In addition to the Summit Award, SDHist has a Bobby Nunes Memorial Award that is new for 2024. That award, in memory of our former colleague and board member, Robert “Bobby Factor” Nunes, will recognize an exceptional piece of gaming media published in 2023. Public submissions have been taken for that award, and a list of finalists will be announced in the days to come.

About The Summit Award: The Summit Award is an opportunity for the SDHist team to recognize the positive impact of a game that broadens the historical gaming hobby by drawing in more players or by introducing a new and unique subject or perspective. Our ultimate hope is that the Summit Award helps foster a discussion amongst players, designers and publishers about new ways to broaden the hobby through teaching, play, topic, and approach. Games are judged on five criteria: Ease of Teaching, Ease of Play, Novelty/Uniqueness of Topic, Novelty of Approach, Effectiveness as a historical game. More details on the award and eligibility guidelines can be found here.

About SDHist: The mission of SDHist is to create a diverse and supportive gaming community dedicated to playing, discussing, designing, and promoting historically-based board games. Through this commitment, SDHist seeks to serve both the existing historical board gaming community as well as grow it through the addition of new voices and perspectives. This is done through physical conventions (including SDHistCon Summit 2024), online conventions, the Conflicts of Interest Online web magazine, the Summit Award, and more. SDHist is run by a volunteer board, and also has an advisory board comprised of prominent members of the gaming industry.

 For more info on the Summit Award, please contact SDHist board member Andrew Bucholtz here.