I agree that there is a trend toward repackaging and republication (which doesn't really bother me, as it keeps what are usually good games in print). But in the case of the nominated games this year, for the most part this is hardly anything new.

Abenteuer Menschheit - Anyone who *hasn't* been living in the Stone Age knows that Teuber has done a great and enthusiastic job of taking the basic Settlers mechanic and designing new games around it. He's been successfully doing it for years, it's just that AM may be the most popular version of it.

Age of Steam - Wallace has always designed his train games in families, with the later games building on the earlier ones. There are five "Prairie Railroads" games, published from 1997 to 2003, all similar, but each one featuring new, and usually improved mechanics. Similarly, Age of Steam builds upon the system first introduced in 1998's Lancashire Railways (the same game that was the basis for Volldampf). Again, this is a designer doing what he has always done; it's just that the end result this time is an excellent game of very wide appeal.

Alhambra - Again, Dirk Henn has frequently reissued his designs over the years. The biggest reason for that is that the games are usually initially produced by his own company (db Spiele), then are released with more luxurious components by a larger firm (which, in recent years, has been Queen). Thus, Texas became Rosenkonig, Iron Horse became Metro, and Premiere begat Showmanager, which begat Atlantic Star. Stimmt So! itself is a retheming of Henn's 1992 design of Al Capone. There is one major difference this time, since Alhambra does feature additional mechanics and more involved game play. But Henn redesigns are nothing new.

Domaine & Edel, Stein & Reich - Unline the cases I cited above, there's no real precedent for the redesigns of these games. But I still think these are less like the Knizia republications and more like what Alan Moon has done over the years with designs like Elfenroads and Freight Train, which he simplified and streamlined to come up with the more family-friendly Elfenland and Reibach & Co.

It *is* kind of weird that so many of the notable games this year have been redesigns and I agree that there is a trend towards republications. But I'm just not sure that the two facts are related. Probably just some kind of karmic coincidence.