We are extremely proud of the impressive array of individuals who have agreed to serve on the various International Gamers Awards committees.  All are extremely qualified, knowledgeable and respected within the gaming hobby.  Each and everyone have extensive experience in the playing, reviewing and critiquing of games.  

The members of the General Strategy committee are charged with the task of recognizing the outstanding games that are commonly referred to as "Euro Games" or "Family Strategy Games", and they present awards in both multi-player and 2-player categories.

FERDINAND DE CASSAN

Ferdinand de Cassan is well known and respected throughout Europe as an avid gamer and is Chairman of the "Austrian Games Festival (Spielefest) in Vienna", which is the second largest public game-event in Europe with 62.000 visitors each year. Ferdinand was born in Mistelbach, Austria in 1949.  From childhood his leisure-time-activity has been logical/mathematical puzzles and/or games and boardgames.  He began writing about games with an article in "Games & Puzzles" in September 1976 and the first issue of "WIN Spiele Magazine", of which he was a major contributor, was published in 1977.  He was also a contributor of logical puzzles to a Business-Journal in the 1980's. Ferdinand started the collection of games in the mid-70's and now has a collection that is approaching 14,000 games.  He has many personal contacts to early European gamers and was involved in many European games events.  He was a friend of many European gaming pioneers, including Walter Luc Haas.  In the mid 80's to early 90's, Ferdinand was the originator and organizer of the "Game Collectors Meetings" and the organizer of the "Intergame" at the huge "Spiel" convention in Essen, Germany.  From the mid 90's, these games activities were concentrated in Austria. Ferdinand earned a degree in Ecomoics from the University of Vienna and is the CEO of the family tree nursery "Grumer Rosen", which specializes in rose bushes.  He is married to his wife Dagmar since 1982 and has 2 children, Philipp (1983) and Simone (1986).

MIKE CLIFFORD

Mike Clifford is a renown author, having scribed innumerable articles on general boardgames, wargames and sports games for a variety of magazines.  Mike was a  regular contributor to Sumo throughout its run.  When Sumo folded, he was the moving spirit behind the launch of Counter. His interest in boardgames goes back to early childhood and they became the hobby he never grew out of, with the area of interest gradually broadening as he discovered wargames, sportsgames and the British classics that Intellect Games produced in the early and mid seventies.  By the late eighties he had become aware of the games being produced in Germany and around ten years ago his first trip to Essen turned him into a serious enthusiast. Married with four children, he is a writer and businessman, who was born in London in 1948 and now lives with his family in Sussex, on the South Coast of England.

HAN HEIDEMA

Han Heidema is editor-in-chief of Spel!, the Dutch games magazine issued by games club Ducosim. He is one of the founder-members of the ESG (Eurpean Society for Games-collectors), honorary member of the Wiener Spiele-Akademie, jury member of the Nederlandse Spellenprijs and designer of various railway games, most of which have been published by Winsome Games. About 500 of his collection of 3500 games have a railway-related subject.   Han was born in wartime 1943 in Almelo, close to the German border. He spent his youth mainly in Dordrecht. He graduated from Chemistry at Utrecht University in 1961, after which he joined Unilever Research. After various jobs, including Scientific Editing and Food Evaluation, he was asked to join the Statistical Department in the mid-seventies and remainend Statistical Consultant until his early retirement in 2001. He now lives with his wife Mieke in Wolfheze, a small village close to Arnhem. They have two daughters, Carolijn (1971) and Jojanneke (1974).   In his university years Han became a reasonably strong chess player, but in the seventies he became more and more interested in general strategy games. This interest was severely boosted when he discovered  the legendary magazine Games & Puzzles and Games Centre, London’s famous games shop of those days.

RONALD HOEKSTRA

Ronald Hoekstra maintains one of the most popular gaming sites on the net, the Spelmagazijn (which means Game Storehouse in English).  He is an avid collector and player of games of all types, boasting a collection of over 1,600 titles. Ronald has been playing games since he was a small child, starting with cardgames with his parents and grandparents.  Later, Risk and Diplomacy appeared.  Eventually he was introduced to 1830 and other Avalon Hill games.   He began collecting games and puzzles, with his interest in puzzles being attributed to the appearance of Rubik's Cube.   All attention shifted to boardgaming again when he first attended Spiel in Essen.  Now he has 1,600+ games. His interest (one could say 'obsession'!) in gaming led to his designing of the webpage Spelmagazijn, which has grown to over 1,000 pages and recently celebrated its 10th anniversary.  He is also a jury member of the Nederlandse Spellenprijs (Dutch Game of the Year). Born in Amsterdam in 1965, Ronald studied computer science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and has been working in the insurance industry for 15 years.

ALAN HOW

Together with Stuart Dagger and Mike Clifford, Alan How formed Counter magazine in February 1998, having been involved with Sumo for some years.   Counter is now recognized as a most worthy successor to Sumo and has quickly gained acclaim as one of the finest gaming journal in the hobby today. Alan was born in 1957 and is a Chartered Accountant and Finance Director of a consumer organisation in the UK.  He has been playing games for over 35 years.  The  collecting bug started when he was age 11 when he realised that his games would last longer than his friends' visits to the pub.  To date this has meant accumulating over 2500 games. Amongst his favourite games are Cosmic Encounter, the 18xx series and Civilization, though the last 13 years of German visits has made him re-consider these as being the top three.  Alan enjoys playing most board games, and while he only rarely plays wargames now, he finds very few games that disagree with him.  This leads to his positive and refreshing outlook on games, which is to look for the best aspects of a game rather than the weak issues.  Alan enjoys game systems as much as playing games, with particular admiration for interactive game systems, such as the treasury/marker tokens in Civilization.

ANDREAS KEIRAT

Andreas Keirat is a prolific reviewer of games, being one of the primary contributors of reviews to the Luding database.  The number of reviews penned by Andreas now tops 4000 and together with his wife Claudia Schlee is one of the most respected and recognized gamers / authors throughout Europe and, indeed, the world.   Andreas was born on in Bremerhaven, Germany, which is located at the North Sea in Northern Germany.  He is a dedicated collector of games, with his current collection approaching 2000 titles.  Andreas haunts the halls of the Essen Game Fair, where he discovers, plays and reviews the very latest of European board games and also helped to get many prototypes of friends into the pipelines of publishers.   Andreas is currently working as a security guard and helps to organize and protect shows, objects and vessels. He also works as a departement store detective sometimes.

LARRY LEVY

Larry Levy is a prolific writer about gaming and the gaming scene.  He has written articles and game reviews for Boardgame News, Counter, Gamers Alliance Report, The Games Journal, The Game Report, and other gaming periodicals.  He is an active participant in online gaming web sites, user groups, and blogs and has administered the Meeples Choice Awards for the Spielfrieks user group since 2003.   Larry's love of games began soon after his birth in 1956.  At various times, he has enthusiastically embraced traditional boardgames, card games, roleplaying games, Chess, sports simulations, and even a little wargaming.  In 1998, an article in Games Magazine led him to Ken Tidwell's wonderful Game Cabinet website, which exposed him to the amazing world of German Gaming.  They have been his principal love ever since.   Larry lives in Manassas, Virginia and works as a systems engineer.  His wife Sheryl happily tolerates his gaming excesses and they share their home with their two rambunctious dogs Kinsey and Charlie.  Larry is an active member of the DC Gamers.

ANDREA LIGABUE

Andrea Ligabue was born in Modena, Italy in 1972.  Since childhood, he enjoyed inventing games to play with his school mates – sometimes even during the lessons!  When he was 16 he joined the TreEmme club, the largest game club in Italy. He began his game career as a RPG player, then as a Game Master for several years. He began playing wargames, Battletech and most of the old GW and AH games. It was a very nice experience because every week there was several new games to learn and play!   During a working period in Denmark he met Mik Svellov at the Viking Con and started to play German Games.  In 1999, almost no one in Italy knew about these games.  From that moment, he tried to "import" and play these games with as many people in Italy as possible! Since 2000, Andrea has organized the board games division of ModCon, Italy’s largest game convention.  He became involved in the Goblin's Lair project (www.goblins.net), the biggest gaming web site and community in Italy.  He has been a contributor to the Board Game News website since its inception, serving as an international columnist. Andrea works as a Theoretical Chemist at the University in Modena, and also works with the University’s IT group, programming and administrating the computer network. He and his wife Serena have one daughter, and are expecting their second child sometime in December.

W. ERIC MARTIN

A full-time freelance writer since 1999, W. Eric Martin's first publishing credit dates to 1997 when he wrote about international game shows for GAMES magazine. Over the years, he's moved away from writing about business, technology and nutrition to focus entirely on board and card games, both for newsstand publications such as Discover, Scuba Diving, The Bark, Chile Pepper, Coffee, Tropical Fish Hobbyist, and Sheep! – truly there's a magazine for every specialty – and as the principal writer for and editor of BoardgameNews.com. BGN, which is read by game designers and publishers worldwide, features game-related news, reviews, previews and interviews, as well as a game-release calendar and enormous previews of the annual Spiel and Nuremberg conventions.   Eric lives in Concord, New Hampshire with his wife Linda, son Traver and three big dopey cats.

MIKE SIGGINS

Mike Siggins' name is probably the most recognized within the gaming hobby.  For many years he edited and published the most revered journal within the hobby, Sumo, which pioneered in-depth coverage of European games.  He has  also written for Games International, Games Magazine, Interactive Fiction, Perfidious Albion and Strategy Plus. He served as a member of the editorial board of Games & Puzzles, and on the Daily Telegraph Game of the Year panel.  He is also a current contributor to Counter Magazine and the Game Cabinet. Mike has been playing all sorts of games for 25 years and writing about them for the last 15.  He works as a consultant in the fields of corporate treasury, motorsport and the Internet.  He also heads Æ´hereal Design, currently developing several boardgame titles and a PC simulation for  a major publisher. His main gaming interests are innovative systems, design, sports games and narrative atmosphere.  His other interests include books, history, cinema, baseball, computer graphics, cycling and Japanese gardens. Mike was born in 1961 and lives in West Essex, England.

KNUT-MICHAEL WOLF

Knut-Michael Wolf is widely recognized in Germany and throughout the world as an expert on games.  He is probably best known to gamers for his KMWs Spielpl@tz, which later became part of Spielbox magazine.  Folks who have been around before the internet became the way of communicating will also be familiar with Die Pöppel-Revue, Wolf’s Play-by-Mail magazine.  He has also helped develop over one hundred games, and has even designed a few of his own.  Several Spiel des Jahres winners have been directly influenced by his contributions, including Dampfross and Cafe International.