2021 Award Judges

Curt Covert is the owner of Smirk & Dagger Games. A veteran of 13 years, his designs include Cutthroat Caverns, Nevermore, and Hex Hex. He is also the inventor behind Crayola 3-D Outdoor Sidewalk Chalk, which won Game Of The Year at NY Toy Fair in 2009.

TAM is an artist, engineer, entrepreneur, and an award-winning game maker. He has been creating digital and tabletop games since age 10, and also designs custom interactive play spaces for museums. He is the co-founder of Neuronic Games, a New York City based EdTech company that uses games to facilitate learning. When he is not playing or thinking about games, he also enjoys taking photos, training in mixed martial arts, and dancing the tango.

Sydney Engelstein is the head of game development at Indie Game Studios, and has designed seven published games with three more in production. She is also the head of new game acquisitions for Stronghold Games and Indie Boards and Cards, and has a variety of experience with evaluating prototypes.

Eric is currently the project manager/developer for Talon Strikes Studios. He is the designer of Talon Strikes Studios' Vinyl and the producer of Cardboard Edison’s Cobras. He lives in Oyster Bay, N.Y., with his wife, Meredith, and two sons, Ari and Eli.

Daniel is a game designer from Brooklyn, N.Y. You may know him from such games as Dead Man's Cabal, Rolled West, and Ahead in the Clouds. He is very active on Twitter, where his username is his full name without vowels. Like, super active. Like...maybe-he-should-spend-less-time-on-Twitter active. Turn-ons include skulls, gears, and tentacles. Turn-offs are social-deduction games and global thermonuclear war. His prototypes may look better than yours, but that's only because he went to art school and has too much time on his hands.

Chris Kirkman is the founder of Dice Hate Me Games, and is currently the Game Development Director at Greater Than Games where he finds awesome games and makes them awesomer.

Volko Ruhnke is a retired U.S. intelligence analyst, hobby board wargamer since childhood, and designer of numerous history-based games for GMT Games. His designs routinely sell out and have won numerous industry awards including two Golden Geeks. He is the creator of the COIN Series, and his other published designs include Labyrinth: The War on Terror, Wilderness War, and Nevsky. He is one of the founders of the Zenobia Award historical game design contest.

Matt primarily does freelance design and development as the Creative Director and founder of Forever Stoked. They also own a game shop/library (Elm City Games), are an adjunct instructor of game design, publish indie weirdness with killjoy and Prettiest Princess, are a Creative Director at Sex+, founded the New Haven Game Makers Guild, organize Fantasticon, and do consulting for corporate, NGO, and institutional clients like Netflix and Yale.

Ronali Fernando is the founder of Board Gamers Sri Lanka YouTube Channel. This is the one and only board game YouTube channel in the Sinhala language. This was created to introduce modern board games to Sri Lankans and make board games popular among Sri Lankans, especially among Sri Lankan children and youth. Our mission is to give a chance for every Sri Lankan child to play an international board game at least once in their lives, to lay a foundation to create Sri Lankan board games, and also give a hand to Sri Lankan board game designers. Instagram: boardgamers_sl. Twitter: BoardgamersSriLanka.

Alex Cutler is a game designer and developer whose published titles include Expancity, Team 3, and Before there were Stars. He lives in Cary, N.C., with his wife Nicole, son Jack, and their dog Eevee. He enjoys good beer, bad puns, and moderate success.

Diane Sauer owns a business restoring old pinball machines and is a game designer and co-owner of Shoot Again Games. Her games include Conspiracy!, Pinball Showdown, and Bigfoot vs. Yeti.

Nick Sauer is a scientist and game designer and has a collection of close to 3,000 games. He is co-owner of Shoot Again Games. His games include Mystery Rummy Al Capone, Conspiracy!, and Looting Atlantis.

Beneeta Kaur is Maryland-based tabletop games industry content creator and freelancer. She loves Animal Crossing, tear-inducingly spicy food, and talking about the importance of good sunscreen. You can find Beneeta on Twitch, Twitter, and TikTok at @beneeta_k.

Matthew Dunstan is an Australian scientist and board game designer, based in Prague, Czech Republic. To date, Matthew has over 25 published games and expansions, the best known being Elysium (nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2015), Monumental, and the Adventure Games series. He also designs game experiences for education, including board games for synchrotrons, pop-up escape rooms for festivals, and card games for a film museum, and started a design blog, the Design 100, bringing together expertise from over 30 designers from all around the world.

Joseph Z Chen is a board game designer, publisher, and artist. Together with Justin Faulkner, he co-founded Metafactory Games to self-publish Fantastic Factories, which was supported by over 4,000 backers on Kickstarter in 2018 and again with the expansions with over 5,000 backers in 2020. Joseph lives in Seattle, Wash., where he works as a software engineer by day but as a designer/publisher on nights and weekends.

Eric Yurko is a writer and reviewer for What’s Eric Playing?, a board game review and photography website, as well as a member of the American Tabletop Awards Committee. When not talking about, writing about, playing, photographing, or thinking about board games, you can usually find him watching superhero movies or asleep. Find him on Twitter @whatseplaying, or on Instagram @whatsericplaying.

Ian Zang is the owner of Gravitation Games, a new publisher focused on games that pull you in! He has a wide range of designs, from family-friendly fare with Constellations or Please Fix the Teleporter, to more gamerly games like Kingdoms of the Deep and Curio. He lives in Michigan with his wife and African grey parrot, where they all enjoy popcorn a little too much. Especially the bird.

Ben Begeal is not a game designer. He came up with the idea for Say What Again, but a bunch of real designers helped make it good. He is the Mayor of Unpub. He is no one of consequence.

Heather O'Neill is a Philadelphia-based board game designer and freelance consultant focusing on the business of games. She is also the CEO of 9th Level Games, a small tabletop publisher of board game and roleplaying games. Heather is also on the board of Unpub and a lead member of the Game Makers Guild of Philadelphia. You can find Heather on Twitter @catphysicist and 9th Level Games @9thlevelgames on Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch.

Tim is a local to Boston and has been involved in the tabletop game design community for some time. In addition to running and designing for Gameworthy Labs, he is the vice president for BostonFIG, New England’s largest Indie Game Festival, where he runs the tabletop showcase. Tim is also the president of the Boston Game Makers Guild, as well as a judge for IndieCade. Tim is active in the game design community and has spoken on a number of panels, appeared on podcasts, and written a number of articles, all pertaining to game design.

Glen Dresser has been designing board games since 2013 and is the winner of the Canadian Game Design Award (The Transcontinental), The Saltcon Ion Award (Palooka Precinct), and is a two-time Cardboard Edison finalist (both games). In addition to game design, he's also an avid illustrator. Prior to game design, his creative outlet was literary fiction, with his novel Correction Road coming out from Oberon Press in 2007. He lives in Alberta, Canada, with his wife, their son, and a cardigan corgi.

Our Family Plays Games is on a mission to bring more people of color in particular and families in general to this ever-growing board game hobby. We love discussing board games and sharing our passion for hobby with the rest of the world.

Matthew Legault is the Gaming Handyman at Montreal-based board game publisher Scorpion Masqué. His primary duty is translation and editing (rulebooks, game components, marketing, web-content, etc.), but he also works in game development, playtest coordinating, social media, and communications.

Before becoming a Scorpion, Matthew worked in international distribution with F2Z Entertainment, and then Canada-wide distribution with Asmodee Canada. He holds a post-graduate diploma in Game Design from the Université de Montréal, speaks fluent French, and has played a one-hour live online music session every Saturday since mid-May 2020.

Maisy Hatchard (@maisykuv) is a Japanese-English board game translator and language tinkerer based in Tokyo. She also writes about indie Japanese board games on her site, Japanalogue, and generally aims to link indie designers to overseas shops and publishers. When she isn't making awful puns, she's probably doing contortion or finding ways to consume more sugar. Or glitter. Or both.

Dr. Wictz has written academic-inspired articles disguised as practical advice for board game design since 2012. Designers of You Fool. Learn more at dr.wictz.com.

Tim is a game designer and publisher as part of Galileo Games. He’s got a special fondness for two-player games and terrible puns. He spends his spare time making dice birds to torment Chris Kirkman.

Adrienne Ezell has a passion for gaming and over a decade of marketing and design experience, resulting in playing every day *for* work! Board games are Adrienne's favorite sandbox, the reward is bringing people together for fun, in a box. Getting to do it every day for work? THE. BEST. She is passionate about bringing games to life with graphics. Known for details that make each card and page special, Adrienne's nuanced touches immerse players in the game. She focuses on the gaming experience – how we want players to feel when they play a game.

Geoff Engelstein is an award-winning tabletop game designer, whose titles include Space Cadets, The Fog of War, Pit Crew, and The Expanse. He also teaches Board Game Design at the NYU Game Center.

He is also a noted podcaster. Since 2007 he has been a contributor to the Dice Tower, the leading tabletop-game podcast, with a series on the math, science, and psychology of games. He previously hosted Ludology, a podcast on game design, and published “Game Production: Prototyping and Producing Your Board Game” and “The Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design” with CRC Press, and “Achievement Relocked” with MIT Press.

3rd Generation Nerd. Long-time board game enthusiast, board game designer.

Hello! My name is Federic Benito, but you can call me Fed. I am one the three owners and founders of Diner State Games. I attended Rider University, where I majored in Communications Radio TV and English Writing. In 2007, I moved to California to study film and graduated with a BA in Commercial Film. I have always been a creative type, and creating board games is one way that I have been able to use my degrees. I have played board games most of life and started to get into the hobby around 2006 during the introduction of the new classics. It was not until 2010 that I played board games on a regular basis. While in California I was a member of LAGS (Los Angeles Gayming Society), this organization helped me become more comfortable in myself and embrace my geek side. I came up with my first idea while my roommate who is also member of LAGS was helping a friend with airport codes; this idea evolved into the unpublished game, All Round Trip. Currently, I am working on two games tilted County Fair and Shadecasters. County Fair is a roll-and-write about designing the best layout of a County Fair. Shadecasters is an engine-building, work replacement, set collection game set in the world of Pageant Elemental Drag Queens. It is an honor to judge other fellow gamers’ work, and I look forward to meeting and networking with all of you. Cheers!

After discovering that game designers have more fun, Scott Rogers embarked on a 25+ year career in games. He helped design top-selling video games including: Pac-Man World, the Maximo series, God of War, Drawn to Life series, Darksiders, and Warhammer 40K. A former Disney Imagineer, Scott designed board games (Pantone the Game, Rayguns and Rocketships), authored books (Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design and Swipe This! The Guide to Touchscreen Game Design) and is featured in the documentary film Gamemaster (2020). He teaches at USC's prestigious school of interactive media and the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles where he hosts/produces their popular Masters of Game Design speaker series. Scott lives just outside Los Angeles with his family and many, many board games.

Chidi Paige has a heavy interest in cognitive application of games in learning experiences, which is often seen in her work with youth and families over the years. Consequently, Chidi created her first tabletop game, Birdwiser Classic, in 2013, collaborating with illustrator Emily Willoughby. Paige self-published the now sold-out first edition of the game in 2018. She is currently working on a Bird Migration board game scheduled to launch on Kickstarter in spring of 2021.

Kristy and Jared have been playtesters for over 10 years, having tested games by hundreds of designers including many of their other fellow judges. And as to date, they have been thanked by more designers than they have left crying.

I am Matteo and I am the manager of Volpe Giocosa.

We have been managing this blog with the other guys on the team since 2016, with the aim of spreading the game in all its forms.

We are interested both in the aggregating aspect and in the educational one, passing through mathematical, social and historical considerations, up to the use of the game in difficult contexts.

From the inexperienced player to the more addicted ones, we believe there is a gamer for every box: He or she just needs to be correctly addressed.

Nate Murray publishes board games, graphic novels, and puzzles. Murray has spent a decade in the gaming industry. Murray has survived the madness of 2020 by carefully constructing a perfectly to scale tiny model of Schenectady, N.Y., in his living room, and he now spends his days watching the tiny townspeople go about their day in fresh air with no worries. He is fine, everything is fine, this is fine.

Mac McAnally lives in NYC and designs games and plays games and knits and plays games and dances and plays games and makes things and plays games.

Steven Aramini is a game designer with several published designs including Sprawlopolis, Agropolis, Circle the Wagons, Groves, Tricky Tides, Yardmaster, and more. His game Animal Kingdoms was the 2018 Cardboard Edison Award winner.

Dave Chalker is the award-winning game designer of Get Bit! and the Sentinel Comics RPG, as well as games including Heat, Thief's Market, and That Snow Moon. He has nearly 20 years of game industry experience, during which time he's playtested for dozens of companies, and has a Master's degree in publications. He lives in Maryland with his partner and three cocker spaniels.

Aaron Lim is a designer of board games and RPGs based in Malaysia. He has been involved in game design and playtest communities both locally and internationally, and self publishes RPGs and other games on itch.io.

Precious Eria Wonah is a board game enthusiast from Nigeria.

Eric Buscemi is one of the co-founders of Punchboard Media, the writer behind the Cardboard Hoard, one half of the Patrick and Eric in the Morning podcast, and a member of the Tabletop Writers Guild.

Lauren is a professor of astronomy and physics at Grand Rapids Community College. In the recent past, she has served as co-host of the Playability Podcast, acted as a judge in several competitions including past Cardboard Edison Awards, playtested with local designer groups and at game conventions, and has designed games of her own (for more info, see cgsunit.com/games).

Dale holds a Master’s degree in digital game theory and design and has applied that knowledge to the field of tabletop gaming. He has developed games for Mythic Games and Thunderworks Games including Roll Player: Fiends and Familiars, Solomon Kane, Reichbusters: Project Vril and Hel: The Last Saga.

His movement from digital to analogue gaming could in part be due to his partner and primary gaming companion, who is blind. The greater tactility of tabletop games allows him to share his passion with greater accessibility. Or at least that’s what he tells himself as he orders an increasing volume of “deluxe” components.

In his spare time, he enjoys creating home-brew expansions as well as providing advice and feedback at his local playtest meetups; of which one published success is FlickFleet by Eurydice Games. He is based in the U.K. with his partner, two children and black Labrador guide dog who is the real brains behind his work.

Scott Martel is an avid tabletop gamer, long-time Magic: The Gathering player, variety Twitch streamer, and loves playtesting games. Having spent years as a youth worker, he enjoys tabletop for the way it brings people of all ages and backgrounds together. Catch him on Twitch weekdays @scottydeluxe.

Dan Cassar won the first Cardboard Edison Award with his game The Blood of an Englishman in 2016 and has participated as a judge every year since. His other design credits include the card games Arboretum and Cavemen: The Quest for Fire. When he's not making games, he's designing software. He lives in the Philadelphia area with his three kids.

Marcus Lehner lives in Boston, Mass., where he is a proud member of the Game Makers Guild. Marcus has been hooked on making games ever since he made his first one as a wedding gift for his sister (whose husband can be entirely blamed for introducing our family to Catan). Now he designs games to play with his family and friends that try and bring novel and exciting experiences to the kitchen table. When not making games, Marcus can be found working as an engineer, answering absurd hypothetical questions on his podcast, and laughing at his own terrible puns.

Sarah Ovenall is a board gamer, FM radio DJ, and contributor to The Five By podcast of board game reviews.

Mike Bonet is the host of the Who, What, Why game design podcast and the former co-host of the Ninja Vs Pirates Podcast. He's been podcasting off and on for 10 years between both shows. Mike also owns lots of games and generally plays them when he can. He frequently loses to keep things interesting in the game.

Ryan is the founding editor of The Cardboard Republic, a site with an analytical approach to game reviews and a soft spot for indie games.

Zach Connelly launched Royal N. Games back in 2015 focused on making small/light games with heavy interaction. Since then, he has published 3 titles under RNG (Main Event, DeathBot Derby, and LOTS) and has been published by Bicycle games (Fumbling Ferrets).

Tony Tran is an avid board game designer and overall gamer. He started making games in 2014, and it has become a permanent hobby in his life. In addition to his own designs, Tony has started a monthly design group called Game Makers Guild Nashville and the day-long design event Nashville Game Design Fair to foster new designers and grow a community in the Nashville area. Tony won the New Voices Scholarship for Tabletop Network in 2019.

Connor Wake is the designer of Umbra Via, the 2019 Cardboard Edison Award winner, which will be coming out in 2021. He lives in Berkeley with his partner, bearded dragon, and snake.

Andrew runs Knapsack Games and is the designer of Masters of Mutanite, Apotheca, and Knee Jerk. Andrew is also a Senior Game Designer at Jam City on Disney Emoji Blitz.

Rob and Sean Moore have been creating instructional/gameplay/review videos for a couple of years now, often focusing on bringing comprehensive coverage to otherwise overlooked games. They both have experience in playtesting prototype games such as The Butterfly Garden and Indulgence, and they have been judges for the Cardboard Edison Award since 2017. Outside of the gaming hobby, Rob is a historian/teacher and Sean is a filmmaker/musician.

Dustin is a freelance editor who has contributed to 150+ tabletop game projects. He prefers to play yellow and he enjoys learning games more than winning them.

Dave Simpson is a long-standing industry member, having worked with the likes of Mike Pondsmith and also creating Rampaging Jotunn, developed and published by Matthias Bonnici and Lost Cog. Currently, Dave contributes to the gaming industry by running the decade-old YouTube channel Gamers on Games (youtube.com/gamersongames) where he covers all manner of tabletop gaming and tabletop-adjacent creations.

LilyAnne is a member of the Cardboard Edison team. She is an experienced playtester and avid gamer.

Chris & Suzanne Zinsli are the founders of Cardboard Edison. Their published games include Ceylon, Cobras, and Tessen.