From Politiken, translated by Dane of War:

Board games are a solid and social feature in many families. But in Denmark, consumers are often lost when they have to find the best among the more than 40 new board games which are published annually in Denmark.

It will now be up to the newly formed, independent Danish board game prize, Guldbrikken (The Gold Brick), to identify the best games in three categories: children games, adult games and family games.

The nominees are as follows:

Children Games:

• Klickadoo, German
• Roqfort, German
• Road Block, Belgium

Family Games:

• A-Z, U.S.
• PIXO, Danish
• Bezzerwizzer +, Danish (Editor's note: This is an obscure term for "Know It All")

Adult Games:

• Wiseman, Danish
• Opus Dei, Danish (Editor's note: This is the only non-boardgame on the list)
• Kaleidoscope Classic, Australian

Play against the game developers
Komitteen has already nominated the top three in each of the three categories, and one from each will emerge as winner during Culture Night on October 9th, 2009 at Politikens Hus*.

Here as a guest, you can also try to play against both Guldbrikken jurors and the game developers themselves.

Besides the winners of the Guldbrikken awards, the jury will also award special prize for the year's most exceptional original and/or well-designed board games.

Away from the traditional overhead
'Guldbrikken was formed so that ordinary consumers could easily navigate around a giant board game market and discover new and better Danish and foreign board games, rather than the more traditional ones"said jury chairman Thomas Vigild, games editor at Politiken.

"We believed that Denmark lacked a board game prize that was decided by an impartial jury and not by the industry or the dealers themselves."

Guldbrikken is an annual board game prize decided by an independent and impartial jury composed of six games critics from Danmarks Radio, Urban, Politiken, PC Player, and Denmark's two largest gaming unions: Consim and the Copenhagen Boardgame Club.

*JP/Politikens Hus A/S (House of JP/Politiken) is a Danish media company. It was established on January 1, 2003 as a merger of the publishing companies of the major broadsheet newspapers Jyllands-Posten and Politiken as well as Politiken's tabloid Ekstra Bladet. A free daily, 24timer, was added in 2006.

In addition to publishing these newspapers, JP/Politikens Hus' businesses also include book publishing, printing, local newspapers in Denmark and Sweden, as well as a number of multi-media concerns.

The merger between the publishing companies was administrative, and editorial independence was retained. The conservative-leaning Jyllands-Posten and the social liberal Politiken have often been in opposition to each other. The former's Muhammed cartoons were heavily criticised by the latter.