More on the Hippodice contest

The Hippodice contest is one of the best from a designer's point of view - it's widely known, run by serious game enthusiasts, has a relatively low entry fee, and is open to all.  There are English rules here, and then there's a detailed entry description (English on the second page).

They wisely review these descriptions and then solicit entries from those, so they don't get a bajillion games submitted.  I think that's a recent development - I think they used to just take all entries and then wade through them, but that probably got too tiresome.

If your game is selected, it's 5 Euros plus a copy of the game sent to Germany, plus return postage if you want it back, although setting up a prepaid return and customs forms through German mail is probably pretty difficult and not worth the hassle and expense unless your game has lots of expensive components or is hand-crafted or something.

One tricky bit - if you get selected, because Germany has VAT, and because you're sending them goods, you'll have to do a customs form that describes the contents appropriately to avoid there being tax due when it gets there.  I had a variety of different experiences that way in Munich when getting sent stuff from the United States last year.  Most of it came through fine, but a couple items got held up for a while because the documentation wasn't in order, and it wasn't always clear why one thing made it quickly and another didn't.  It might be worth ponying up for one of the international shipping companies (DHL is affiliated with the German postal system) if you're nervous about regular mail.