September 2002 Archives

Another game of Puerto Rico at BSW - it seems quite easy to pick up PR games there, like it used to be easiest to get Carcassonne games earlier.

And yet again, I did not win. I got a really bad start - I did buy Hospice on the first round, but failed to get my production started. Eventually it did work out nice - I got lots of quarries, Office and Large Market. That meant I got enough money to buy Fortress (goes well with the Hospice) and also Residence.

It was quite even - 40, 41, 45 (me) and 53. The winner got a large building (I think he took Customs House) and probably shipped a lot. It's hard to keep track of it, as you won't see how many VP chits your opponents have.

I've now played 16 games of Puerto Rico (half of them 3-player, 6 with four and twice with five - four is the best, I think, with five I'd rather play Princes of Florence or El Grande). I've won it seven times, but those seven times were probably the seven first games when my opponents were total newbies.

It's no doubt the most played "bigger" game this year this far, only Go, Zértz and Carcassonne are ahead of it and most of the Go games are fast online games on small board. It beats Tigris & Euphrates from the last year (I bought it in May and played it 14 times) and by far Princes of Florence, which I've only played seven times this year and last combined. I'm surprised - did I only play Princes three times last year and four times this year? That's sad, because I like it very much. I must play it more, obviously.

Less stats, more games!

I wrote about inappropriate game themes few days ago. I've been thinking about it a bit, and have something more to say. I drew comparisons to books, but I think it's not a good comparison at all.

There's a huge difference between games and books. In books, no matter how evil and disgusting the main character or narrator is, there's always one meta level above where the narrator can be condemned (the level is either extradiegetic narrator or if that narrator is to be judged, the inner author - I suppose, I've read some Literature at the uni). I don't see that happening in games.

If we take the example I think I used, Nabokov's Lolita. The actions of the main character cannot be defended. I don't remember for sure if he regretted them or not, but there's definitely one level above him condemning him. The book doesn't say you should molest little children, even though that's what the main character does.

Imagine a game about child abuse. That's a bit far-fetched, but I think one could make a game in which players would hunt down child abusers and that would be ok. However, place the players as the child molesters and the result is far from ok. If the game was such that the players could only lose, it would be "correct", but it would make a bad game and one that I would not want to play.

I'm fine with violence to some extent, macabre themes and so on, but there are things I don't want to pretend to be. Playing child abuser is one of those things, I also disliked the suggestion that players of Lunch Money describe in graphic details how they beat up their opponents. I don't want to.

A new game review on my Finnish site: En Garde.

What I think of it?

Well, for a such an abstract game (it is indeed very simple), it captivates the feel of fencing quite well. Herr Knizia has done wonderful job, it's perhaps his most successful theme ever.

The game is basically an exercise of card counting (easy, the deck has only 25 cards, five of each of numbers 1-5) and some psychology - the psychology aspect is familiar from real fencing.

It's fast to play (few minutes per round, usually played as best of nine) and easy to teach. Somewhat luck-oriented, but still fun and doesn't tax your brain too much. Too bad it's out-of-print and hard to get, but on the lighter side, it's very easy to make yourself. Just create the 25 cards and a fencing piste of 23 steps and there you go! You've made yourself a fun little fencing game.

A must for fencers and people interested in the sport, great 2-player filler for all of you.

Here we go! Last week it looked a bit like there wasn't going to be a game at all, but at the last moment I got some players. Unfortunately there was one cancellation, but we got three-player game going and that was good enough for me.

I started to explain the rules at about 2 pm. I started with the typical The purpose of the game is to win. Then I explained how the winner was determined and was going to talk about the turn phases, but decided it would be best to explain all the stuff in the box before.

As a word of warning I should mention that the game takes lots of space. My round table with a radius of half a meter was enough, but the fourth player wouldn't have had any room. So it's good we had only three!

After 40 minutes of explanations, the game was ready to start. I skipped some of the smallest details and didn't have a demonstration round. I did visualize some details. I didn't miss anything, as I had spent lots of time studying the rules (more than ever, I think), but I wasn't quite clear on some parts.

The line-up was: Ville Morkki (Grüne), Manu Humppi (SPD), Mikko Saari (PDS). I usually always play the red - this time I took blue, but I think the PDS is the reddest party... And I feel sympathy towards them, they only got two seats of the six hundred in the elections.

First target was Thüringen, with it's 26 seats. I had decided to take it - winning the first election seemed like a good idea and their opinions matched as well. I loaded my startup stuff there (votes, trend, meetings, media). Other players put theirs mostly in Bayern, which was coming up next. I paid 7000 DM to choose the beginning player. Manu showed some righteous attitude when he refused to take 50000 DM donation. Unfortunately the dice didn't bless him with many new party members.

Mikko - 26
Manu - 14
Ville - 0

Next up was the biggest state of our game, Bayern with 60 seats. I expected Grüne to win them because they had put some effort there earlier, but to my surprise I was the winner and with only 27 seats. Amazing! SPD was already looking forward to the next election, really.

Mikko - 27
Ville - 22
Manu - 12

My situation looked good - two won elections, two media markers on the national board, some good opinions too. I was ahead!

Then, Schleswig-Holstein and 32 seats. Lots of party meetings were bought. SPD's strongest theme was opposing the healthcare reform. PSD's favourite was supporting the grammar reform. Grüne was giving up the green values as fast as they could. Those bastards! Polls gave both good and bad results, and lots of money was paid for both. Both my PSD and SPD got 50 votes, unfortunately Gr?ne had chosen me as the starting player and therefore I lost by the nose. I got, however, my third media marker on the national board.

Manu - 32
Mikko - 32
Ville - 10

Fourth election was Sachsen-Anhalt, 36 seats. I was looking forward to them, as it looked like a good spot to score some points, but as my lead was clear, Grüne and SPD joined forces and started a coalition against me. I was already seeing the shadows of my success - I had only two media markers left and thus no media control. I paid lots of money for the polls, 16000 DM for a poll that gave me five members more. However, had someone else bought that, they would've lowered my trend by one, and that would've cost me a lot of money, too, so I thought that 16k was well spent. In the donation game Grüne got whopping 15 party members. One rules was missed here - I hadn't explained well enough how the media markers worked and while the Grüne-SPD-coalition won, SPD didn't have a media marker available to place on the national board. My mistake, but it didn't lose the game for SPD.

Ville - 28
Manu - 24
Mikko - 17

I had planned to pretty much skip the fifth election, Mecklenburg-Vorpommer and it's 24 seats. However, I got so excited at the poll auction that I paid a ton of money for the poll... I got something out of it and placed second in the election. The opinion polls are just like jesters in Princes of Florence - I want them all and then everybody laughs at me when I pay over 1000 florins for them many times a game... SPD got about gazillion votes and they had already 48 votes from the previous round.

Manu - 24
Mikko - 11
Ville - 0

End was close. Sixth campaign was about Hamburg and very humble 22 seats. I paid 0 DM to choose the starting player, Ville offered a bit more: 7000 DM. I happily joined the Euro club. I had spent all the game opposing Euro, but when my anti-Euro opinion was reversed on the national board and both Grüne and SPD were pro-Euro, I decided it would be best to join them. It was the last chance to change opinions and the luck of the draw was on my side - I got the necessary Euro card and changed it immediately. Polls were sold with the highest prices in the game, 30k DM and 32k DM. Both were sort of useless, but this was the last time you needed money in the game, so what the heck. We were all quite rich from the last turn membership payments anyway. Hamburg was all green.

Ville - 22
Manu - 5
Mikko - 10

Last election, Sachsen, had 46 seats out for grabs. Both me and Manu offered 15000 DM for the round start bids. Manu won, after two die rolls. Grüne took us both by surprise and grabbed 50 votes. National opinion was already badly bent for Grüne after the success in Hamburg so this was starting to look bad. Both PDS and SPD were far from the max votes, so Grüne won nicely and matched the national opinion board with his party program. This resulted in a huge load of points, of course.

Ville - 46
Manu - 21
Mikko - 13

It was starting to be clear now. Here's the total mandate:

Mikko - 136
Manu - 130
Ville - 128

I got the most seats, but the difference wasn't as big as I would've hoped. I won seats in every election, as did SPD. Grüne got zero seats twice.

I still got the national media points with a comfortable margin:

Mikko - 65
Ville - 37
Manu - 35

Party membership count had been a race between me and Ville, but in the end I was left far behind.

Ville - 74 + 10 bonus
Mikko - 60 + 6 bonus
Manu - 58

The matching opinions was all Grüne. It was a nice sight, a perfect row of matching opinions. Fortunately there were no secured cards.

Ville - 82
Manu - 37
Mikko - 25

So, here's the final results:

Ville - 331
Mikko - 292
Manu - 260

What I learned from this first game of mine: winning the first election is cool. Winning the first three elections is bad. Winning the last elections is good. Winning the last two elections is a good way to secure your victory.

Only one quite meaningless coalition was seen. With more players, they should be a bit more dominant. We had quite good control every now and then, that should lessen as well as the player count grows. The game took, by the way, only 3 hours and 40 minutes. I would've expected more, but then again, we had only three players.

Money was less of a restriction as I thought. I spent lots of money, but never ran out of it, I always could buy whatever I wanted. Media markers ran out quick, and I would've wanted to have more meetings. Shadow cabinet cards are easy to spend, I ran through them faster than the other guys.

I've seen people complain about the randomness of opinion polls. I don't think it's a bad problem, really. Sure, they're random and especially with three players rarely useful, but they are also important to buy to protect oneself. Perhaps a little more reliability with the party membership increase would be nice. Now it's a shame to pay a large pile of money and then get zero new members.

So, is it any good? Yes, it is. Very very good. 10 points right away. Worth all the hype. Lots of tough decisions, fulltime involvement (the turn structure is similar to Puerto Rico - otherwise the game reminds me mostly of Princes of Florence). You have to keep on reacting to the situation. It's not a very strategic game, but very heavy on tactics. It's among the very best games. It was nice with three, but is probably better with more players. I would play it again with three, anyway. I will play it again, as soon as possible!

I play at BrettSpielWelt every now and then (my name there is Mikko) and today was one of those occasions. I played two games of Puerto Rico and a game of TransAmerica.

Both of the Puerto Rico games were three-player games. First one ended before I noticed - I was a victim of the confusing user interface. I though one of the opponents still had two spaces left in his city, but it turned out he had two large buildings and the game ended. I lost six points as my Customs House was left without a colonist. However, that would've moved me three points below the winner and I had enough points already to be second, so actually it didn't matter at all.

Second I managed to be second too, with a total opposite strategy (indigo shipper vs builder). Both games were really badly played by me, my game stalled badly. I must practise more. Puerto Rico is, by the way, moving slowly to become the most played game this year, beating even shorter games like Zértz or Carcassonne.

Trans America, in the other hand - I lost 9 points on the first round but managed to win the second game. A newbie player lost on the second round so the game was over. I was third. This was already sixth game of TA for me I think and it only made my opinion stronger - it's a really boring game, complete waste of time. And it was close to winning Spiel des Jahres this year! I don't get it. I wouldn't even play it with non-gamers, even they deserve better games like Africa or Carcassonne.

Here's something I wrote on Spielfrieks list in response to a discussion about inappropriate game themes. (See the start of the thread.)

Daniel Karp wrote:

The question is, are their subjects which are inappropriate for games under all circumstances? What does it mean if someone likes such a game, and does it matter for what reason they like it?

I have a game about one of the most horrid subjects and I consider it one of the gems in my collection: Charnel Houses of the Europe: The Shoah, which is a Wraith RPG source book about the Holocaust.

I've yet to face such a piece of game art. The author writes in preface about the prejudice his project faced, but I think it's magnificent. Of course, it treats the victims of the Holocaust with most respect. Players can take various roles, but most of the characters presented in the book are "good"; jews and other people oppressed by the Nazis.

I don't think Holocaust is unsuitable material for games. There's definite need to remember these things. If games can keep the issue in people's minds and prevent it from happening again, that's good. I wouldn't like to see a game that makes fun of the Holocaust or denies it ever happened, however.

But I don't think there's any way to really say what's appropriate or not. I know I would consider many subjects suitable that more conservative people might consider taboo. If you say that something is inappropriate, you're going to tread on a fine line. This issue is perhaps unfamiliar when it comes to games - but think about books. It's Banned Books Week now, you know. Many people consider Harry Potter inappropriate - the series topped the Most challenged books of 2001 list. Are Harry Potter games suitable for children? As ridiculous as it sounds to me, some people are going to say no!.

Is a game about homosexuality acceptable? Most of the books on the most challenged books list are there because their content is considered sexually explicit. I don't think it's that much about subject matter alone - one should also consider the audience. I don't think sexuality (straight, gay or whatever) is appropriate for children's games. For consenting adults, anything goes.

So, to make a point, what I'm saying is that everyone should pretty much decide themselves what's appropriate. I will not take someone else's opinions about what's appropriate for me. I understand it was necessary when I was a child and I do thank my parents for at least trying to be strict. But now I can and will choose for myself. In the other hand, I am not going to press my opinions on someone else. Not about religion, not about appropriate subject matter for books, games, tv or whatever, not about my political opinions.

Of course, one will always have to take in account the environment they live in. The Finnish state is an authority I have respect for, and I have chosen to live by the standards set in the Finnish law. I will disagree with the general opinion where necessary, but I will agree with the laws (except those, which don't make any sense at all).

To condense my long ramblings:
* Let me play games about whatever subjects I think are appropriate and I will let you play whatever you think is appropriate, as long as we both respect the local laws and so on.
* Let people vote with their feet - if something is inappropriate enough, no one will want to play or buy it.

I returned the sidebar to it's rightful place - I think it can be useful. However, now it's done with a very traditional table instead of the uncomfortably unreliable CSS stuff.

Tell me what you think, if you care.

A new game review on my website: Africa - again in Finnish, sorry.

Here's what I think about the game:

Recently Africa has received some praise from notable members of the Spielfrieks community and I think it deserves it.

I think many were disappointed when it turned out that dr. Knizia had designed a light, easy game which seems to play itself. That isn't true, not at all, but it has to be said that Africa is no gamer's game, it's light and simple family game.

However, as a Knizia game, there's something beyond the obvious. Sure, turning over counters isn't very challenging and luck does have a strong effect, but there's more to it. There's some strategic decisions in it, how to set up your camps and how to move around. It's not a difficult or challenging game, but I'm saying there's few interesting decisions there.

So, my verdict is: Africa is a good game, fills nicely a slot similar to Carcassonne. It's easy, fun, looks gorgeous, can be played with anyone, works with 2-5 players, takes under an hour to finish. What else you want from a light game? Don't expect too much from Africa, and I'm sure you too can enjoy it for what is is, a light exploration game (and particulary good match of theme and mechanics for Knizia, too!) for the whole family and gamers who want to relax a bit.

Another game of Go, another loss to Janne. This time the numbers were more to my favour, 62-75. It was quite an interesting game, actually - Janne started killing one of my groups right away and actually managed to do it - when he did it, the group was about 20 stones. However, I got lots of influence on the other side of the board. I would've won, but suboptimal moves on my side caused some loss of territory. If I had made even slightly better decisions on some moves, I would've won.

Too bad I can't play with Janne anymore. He's a great opponent - with 9 stone handicap we're almost on equal level, he doesn't make fun of my bad moves and he even lets me undo really catastrophically bad moves. That's very nice.

As another friend of mine dropped by and returned my Alcatraz, we played that too. It's an ok game, nothing really special, but works as a light 2-player abstract. With more players, it gets too crowded and chaotic.

Janne won the game, as I made some tactical blunders. I managed to get one of my four pawns to escape, while Janne got all three that are required for a win.

I was getting ready to face the truth: I wouldn't play Die Macher this weekend. But no, I will! I sent a sms to my friend, who had been interested but said his weekends were busy. I checked the situation and he said he might be going home for the weekend, or might not. And it didn't take long before I got another message from him, saying he's coming to play and will even bring a friend! So now we have four players together for my first game of Die Macher. Session report should come here after we finish the game on Saturday.

We played another game of Go yesterday. This time the stones weren't on my side: Janne beat me 76 to 51 (I was black, he gave me again 9 stones handicap). I managed to build a very nice and large territory in the middle of the board, but that was pretty much all I got. Janne, in the other hand, had the two rows on his side of the board pretty much completely and another large area on one side. Add to that two areas of ten points in my end of the board and it was clear I didn't win.

I gave him too much territory on the sides, he built nice walls which I couldn't breach. That's something I should work on, how to fight for the sides better. Despite my handicap stones, or perhaps because of them, Janne built very nice walls on the side. He'll try it again today, I'm sure, when we play the last game of our three-game serie. It's a pity I'm leaving my job today, just as it was getting interesting...

Well, in the other hand, I'm most happy to leave. Working 15-19 each weekday through the September hasn't been very pleasant, even though the job was great: nothing to do, so I could work on my projects (as you might have noticed, the Game Profiler wouldn't exist without this job). And I got paid pretty well, too. But now, it's over. I'll just have to move on...

Well, I did play a game of Go yesterday. We played on a 19x19 board and Janne gave me handicap of nine stones (he's about 15k, I'm about 25k). It was an interesting and pretty close match, which I eventually won by 4 points. I had more separate batches of territory, but he had about 40 points in two large areas on the sides of the board.

My cheap (20 € or so) Go board proved out to be quite nice. The stones are a bit too small, perhaps, and the board gets slightly crowded sometimes, but when you consider the price of the board, it's not bad at all.

Oops, my Die Macher game player count looks bad. I currently have only one player; one who was coming maybe confirmed he can't make it. I've started a bit more aggressive advertising, using every channel I know. Let's hope I can get at least one more player, so we can play the game.

On the lighter side of the news, I'm most probably playing some Go tonight with my friend Janne, who happens to work at the same place I do (we're actually doing the same job, but in the other hand, I'll be quitting in three days).

I got very good and constructive feedback from Iain Cheyne and have now started to implement his ideas to the Game Profiler. At the moment they are concentrated on the users' side. It's now possible to leave fields empty. As a default, the system gives results from the top 100 list only. If you want, you can get results from the whole list, but the top 100 games have some sort of objective quality in them, which I think is good.

So, that's it for now, I'll figure out something new to implement when I have time. I should do lots of changes on the rater side of it, perhaps something will be done next weekend. Or not.

I'm planning to do an article, interviewing the members of the Finnish Game of the Year jury. I've already received their contact information, now I'm thinking about questions to ask. I'm hoping I'll be able to send out the questions by e-mail today. Let's see how it goes. It'd be interesting to know how they perceive the boardgame hobby.

Don't expect much links from me, this is not that kind of weblog. Still, I'll occasionally bump into really good games-related content in the web and will mention it here as well.

Dan Bosley has written a very good Die Macher review on the Terminal City Gamers web site (or read it from Boardgamegeek). It describes the game in great detail, showing how the various resources interlock and mix together.

For Finnish users, there's a new review at my web site: Web of Power.

I've played lots of this lately and as you might notice from my Top 10 list, I value the game very highly. It works nicely from any number of players from three to five (I like it best with four, then three, then five and will be glad to play with any number, really).

Why? First, it looks gorgeous (Franz Vohwinkel is one of my favourite artists). It plays fast (under 30 minutes) and offers tough decisions to make. There are two scarce resources, advisors and empty space on the board. It's a hard struggle and you're not allowed to make many mistakes.

I don't think it's too luck oriented. It's definitely skill-oriented - in my experience, newbies usually lose. The advisor scoring is probably the issue there - it's hard to understand before you see it in action. If you know how to draw right (and the technique isn't complicated), you can pretty much manage to hold a pair in your hand throughout the game. Sometimes you'll be screwed, but that's rare.

All in all, it's a game I love. It packs a lot of punch to a tight little package.

Second part in the series "what makes a good game" the tough decisions can be found at my web site.

Unfortunately, it's in Finnish, but here's an English summary:

The article is about what makes good games stand out. The issue I'm pointing at is the tough decisions you have to make. Average roll-and-move game might have such simple decisions as "which direction I'm moving from this crossing", but not much more. If the game is directed to kids or families, that's ok. I think better games can be made, but family games should be luck-heavy so the kids have a chance.

However, in games made for adult audience, I want more. Of course, there's always time and place for easier, more relaxed games, but mental challenge is what makes the games interesting to me.

I go through two recent examples, Princes of Florence and Puerto Rico and point out the tough decisions in them.

Princes of Florence has plenty of them, and most arise from the fact that players get to make 21 choices during the whole game: 7 purchases in the auctions and 14 actions during the turns. When such ingredients are added as the limited availability of various items, competing for them against the other players and money, which you're always running out of, the result is very tense and exciting.

One of the finer points of the game is the balance between victory points and money. When completing a work, you get to choose how much money and how much Prestige you take. What makes the situation uncomfortable is that you really don't know how much money you will need - only after you've already done it, you get to know if your choice was good or bad. If you have extra money, you could've taken more victory points - if you run out of money on a critical moment, you are in trouble.

And that's what makes Princes of Florence a good game. Few games offer such tense decisions.

Puerto Rico, in the other hand, is a bit more relaxed. You get to make more choices and each weighs less. Recovering from mistakes is possible. However, the decisions are still very important for your success.

Choosing the role card is of course the main decision each turn. It's easy, if you always take the one that benefits you most. However, things get complicated when you start to think about how your choices affect other players. Choosing the Craftsman might net you many barrels of goods, but will you get any victory points if the next player chooses the Captain? Craftsman is the most critical role - choosing it often means good times for the other players.

I think the second toughest decision comes when you build. Will you buy a cheaper building and get some benefit, or wait until you have more money so you can build a more expensive building, which benefits you more. When will you have the next opportunity to build? Will you get money before that? As the money is often the resource you don't have, the decisions are tough. And even if you had the money, there's always the one building per turn limit, which forces you to prioritise. Oh, and did I mention that there's not enough buildings for everyone? Wait until the next turn and the building you wanted might be gone already.

These tough decisions are what makes many games so enjoyable to me. When reviewing serious games, it is one of the most important factors to me: does the game offer tough decisions, will I get the kicks I'm looking for? Perhaps I don't get to make enough decisions that matter in my real life (I wonder if business executives who have to make tight decisions all the time would like to play Princes of Florence on their free time) and thus I crave for them in games?

Another shameless plug aimed for the Finnish readers:

If you haven't done so already, join Pelilista, which is basically the Finnish version of the almighty Spielfrieks, which is the best and most useful mailing list I'm on.

Pelilista isn't nearly as good or useful, but hey, there's about 1000 Spielfrieks and about 30 Pelilista members... I started Pelilista almost a year ago and it's still a bit quiet. There aren't simply enough proactive, posting members to keep up constant conversation. So, if you read and write Finnish and like games (excluding video games), subscribe and participate!

I think I'm going to make some flyers to distribute in HelCon, to promote both Pelilista and my game content. I'd love to get some more subscribers on the list, and few extra visitors on the website wouldn't be bad at all. I get tons of visits from Google, I'm very highly ranked there but unfortunately very small part of those visitors actually read the site - they see "Games", click that, then realize that my site isn't about computer games.

All Finnish readers, make sure you're coming to HelCon, a board game event organised by Finnish Diplomacy Association and Safe Haven. It's in Helsinki 26.-27.10.2002 (for more details, see the web site and/or ask Tommy). Tournaments include Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Magic: The Gathering PTQ, and other board games are played non-stop.

Of course, I'll be there as well (I'm indirectly connected, I'm the secretary of the FDA). I don't think I'll participate in the tournaments, but I know I will be playing Die Macher on Saturday.

Finnish Game of the Year awards have been given out. The winners this year are:

Best Children's Game: Ali Baba (Ravensburger)
Best Family Game: Bakari (Tactic)
Best Adult Game: Fits (Ravensburger)

Spiel des Jahres winner Villa Paletti was in the family game final three, but didn't make it.

This is your brain - This is your brain on Go

Ko Fight Club has some of the best Go-related comics I've seen. Also, it's not a bad idea at all to check out the RussCon session reports.

Finally I have it. I left work earlier Friday so I could run to the post office and get it. I couldn't wait and opened the game already at the railway station. I couldn't believe my eyes, I finally had it...

I haven't played it yet, but I think I'll say a word or two about it anyway. I bagged it, sorting out all the components and I must say they are very good looking. Not in a flashy, beautiful kind of way (like Tikal, for example), but instead very practical and clear. I like the use of symbols, you can easily understand everything if you learn to recognise few symbols. I'm not sure how practical the regional boards are, but the rest of components are good.

I especially like the cube-shaped tomatoes with bar codes already grown in ;-)

I've been studying the rules and they seem like very logical and elegant. They're complicated, but not in a bad exception-to-exception-style. I'm definitely looking forward to playing Die Macher, as soon as possible! I've even been following the news of German politics a bit more closely in the last few weeks...

This weekend I visited my parents and played games with them. I also tested my new game recording system: I bought a small notebook which I dedicated to making notes on my games. Before I've made notes in my calendar, this way they are a bit more permanent and I can have more room to make better notes. But now, to the games:

First we tried out Africa. As the smaller boys were too busy playing Heroes of Might and Magic, they didn't join us so it was the four of us: me, my mother Raija, Ismo and Ismo's oldest son, Ilari (he's 13). I tried a new way to teach the game: I didn't explain the rules. Only the barest essentials, like how to move and what is the purpose of the game. Whenever there was new type of tile drawn, I explained how those worked. I think it was success - we got to play soon and it wasn't too big an effort to learn the rules at once.

Africa was well received. We played three games right away. First game was quite even - after 40 minutes, the game was over and Raija won with 57 points. Diamonds were the key to the victory. In the second game, Ismo led throughout the game, but in the end, Ilari ran past him because of the items collected. In the last game, I got tons of base camps, but had no good opportunities to place them. As a result, I came last for the second time in row while Raija won again.

Then we played Puerto Rico. I had played with Ismo and Raija before, and they did like it. Now it was my turn to win: I played corn shipper strategy and did it well. In the end I won Ismo with only one victory point (I had 53, Ismo 52, Ilari 36 and Raija 32). The game took 90 minutes - next one took 75, then the next one only 60 minutes.

Saturday's games started with Vom Kap bis Kairo, which was also familiar from earlier visits. However, it was the first four-player game I played. Ismo and Ilari played for the first time and Ismo definitely figured out how the game works: for a long time, he paid nothing in the auctions. I think he had about five landscapes in front of his train before he did anything. But then he just whizzed past us and eventually won the game easily. Bummer. I was second with 7 landscapes built. I think it's a very strong strategy to save your money as much as possible. I'll have to study it a bit more and definitely I'll have to play more 4-player VKbK.

The only game of 6 Nimmt we played was next. The boys were very much into HoMM! Five players, and I got very very bad cards and got over 20 points in the first hand, which ensured I placed second to the last.

After that, it was time for some more Puerto Rico. This time I tried to build buildings. I did manage to build my city full and I even got the City Hall to support my strategy, but I got perhaps four victory points during the game, so actually I lost the game. Ismo won, I think he shipped a lot and built a lot.

Sunday started with two games of Africa. First one was won by Ismo, who didn't find any base camps during the game! Still, he won by one point, managing to gather 60 points. In the second game, I got 63 - and placed second after Ismo's 66 points. That man is a machine! In these games, we started moving tokens around - that's a tactic I haven't used at all, but it looks like a good way to get more points in the end game.

Guess what's next - more Puerto Rico, of course. We played two games. In the first one, I played a strong indigo shipper strategy, shipping tons of indigo. The game ended when the victory points ran out. I counted my score - 48, a good score, I thought. Well, yes, it was, the best score in game. The negative side of it was that Ismo had 48 points as well and he had more goods and money. So, I didn't win and Ismo got his fifth win in a row. We played another game right after this one (Ilari dropped out, however - the call of PlayStation and Tony Hawk was too much to resist). I played indigo shipper again, this time much worse. Ismo shipped a lot, built a lot and finished with 49 points, securing his sixth win in a row. I must try to use his Puerto Rico tactics from now on, somehow he always ships a lot and gets a ton of money too...

To finish off the games this weekend, I played two games of Battle Line against my mother and, in the general fashion of the weekend lost both of them easily. Next time I go to Jyväskylä, I'm taking something I will win... Perhaps Princes of Florence or something else they've never tried and I'm good at.

I'm going to visit my parents who live in another city for the weekend and of course, I'm taking games with me.

The main attractions I'll be taking are Africa and Puerto Rico. Africa for the kids, Puerto Rico for the adults. Of course, I'm planning to enjoy mightily the games of Africa I'll play. As minor treatments, I've taken Vom Kap bis Kairo, Battle Line and 6 Nimmt. VKbK was specifically requested by my mother, Battle Line is an older favourite of ours and the kids simply love 6 Nimmt.

The people I'm playing with are my mother, her new companion Ismo and his children (three boys aged 7, 9 and 13 if I remember correctly). I've played many different games with my mother and Ismo: El Grande, Settlers of Catan, Tigris & Euphrates, Puerto Rico, Tikal (actually, it was Ismo who discovered Tikal first!) and Mahjong to name a few.

The kids are always eager to play, they are very excited whenever I come to visit them (I initially charmed the younger boys as I was pretty much the only one who was interested about their Pokemon cards). 6 Nimmt or "the bull game" as they call it is their latest favourite. Let's see how they like Africa.

We've played Puerto Rico before; I think we played four games during the weekend, which is a good sign. It was well received as it was easy and elegant enough. I won every game, but the gap was smaller every time. I guess they'll crush me this time ;-)

We've always had games in our household, but they were usually played by just me and my brother. With the whole family we played mostly Trivial Pursuit and some card games. My father has never been that keen on games, but I've played lots of games with my mother. Earlier it was mostly Chess and then German games when I got into that. I've played lots of two-player Carolus Magnus with her, she's pretty much the only one I know who likes it.

Expect sessions reports Monday!

OOooh! What great news! My new Best Friend And Friendly Credit Card Owner(tm) Tommy just called me and told me the games we ordered from Germany (Spielenet, if you're curious - and I suggest you all use Adam Spielt instead, we had some problems with the order) have arrived and he'll send me my Die Macher tomorrow! Party on!

Too bad I won't probably be able to lay my hands on it before Monday (I'm going to visit my parents for the weekend - that means gaming; I'll write about it later this week) but it's good to know it's coming my way... I'm so excited! (And, as you can see, <singing>I just can't hide it...</singing>)

New season, new exchange students. I sent an ad for our board game club to the exchange student mailing list at the University yesterday. The results are good! I have already received about five or six interested e-mails. None have yet replied to my follow-up questions about their gaming experience - I'm curious about the two Germans who have contacted me.

I made some research amongs the people who visit the club, did an online form. As a result, we've adding a second meeting each month. Let's see what happens... Unfortunately I can still attend only one meeting, because the other meeting is on Saturdays. I'd rather spend my Saturdays with my girlfriend - gaming is more suitable on Sunday afternoons.

Last Spring we had quite steady attendance, about 15-20 gamers each time. The True Gamer segment of the crowd has grown a bit, perhaps. At least I'm not the only one who has games - actually I have been beaten by the dual personality known as the Kajaste brothers who have (or one of them has; I'm not completely sure about that) a ton of games. But I'm not jealous - I'm just happy to play all those new games without having to pay for them!

1. Web of Power
2. Princes of Florence
3. Mahjong
4. Puerto Rico
5. Tigris & Euphrates
6. El Grande
7. Go
8. Zèrtz
9. Battle Line
10. 6 Nimmt

A beta version of the game profiler is available. Try it out and tell me what you think about it. New additions include ability to choose whether something is more or less important to you, making it weigh more or less, respectively, in the final results. I think the user interface looks nice, but tell me if you disagree.

One feature I'd like to add is actually mirror to what the program does now: give user a list of games, ask their opinions about them and then form a profile which could then be used to find new games. Very useful, but a bit more complicated. If you have any ideas how to make that work, I'd love to know.

Here's the session report I promised. Three of my friends (Laura, Ville and Olli) showed up and we had some tea (Chinese Gunpowder, didn't like it), soft drinks (Dr. Pepper, I loved it) and card games at a local café. The café was a pretty good environment - it was very quiet (but a bit cold) and had almost reasonable prices. We started at about 14.30 and when I left, it was 18.45 so it was quite a nice session.

First, we played Castle, a Faidutti-Laget cooperation released by Eurogames in their Blue Box series. I found it quite enjoyable. With four players, it was reasonably short and definitely exciting. One could criticize the game for being a bit luck-heavy, especially in the end game. But it's a chaotic game and you shouldn't play it if you don't like a little bit of chaos. We saw some nice manoeuvres when the cards combined well, that was fun. I think Ville won, but it certainly was close. I got stuck with really bad cards in the end for a long time. I'd give it, after this first playing, a 7. Nice, but I wouldn't buy it myself.

I haven't played my few Cheapass for a long time, not since I bought several "real" board games. However, I took Give Me The Brain with me and Laura wanted to play it, so it was next. If possible, it was even more chaotic than Castle. In the end, I won, but only because Ville switched hands between Laura and me - I got Laura's winning card and Laura got my two useless cards. Too bad. Reminded me why I haven't played it for a while - it simply isn't that good a game. However, the zombies are nice. I love those cute little monsters...

Then, I dug out my regular playing cards (a rare sight) and we started a game of Liverpool. Usually, I wouldn't try to convince people to play something so regular, but this time I had decided it beforehand and advertised accordingly. No annoying muttering was heard, so we started melding and playing. After first three hands we decided that we had playing wrong and corrected the rules on fly. It took us two hours to play through the seven phases, and even though Ville had looked like a winner for a long time, he collected lots of points in the sixth contract and I won with a safe margin, even though Ville managed to win the last contract. That was very satisfying.

I was about to suggest Vom Kap bis Kairo, but Laura wanted to leave. She went for a quick visit to the University computer class before she and Ville left, so that gave us a window of opportunity to play a quick match of 6 Nimmt. We played the tactical variant. I hadn't tried it before, but from now on I'll play it every time when we have three or four players. It was a fun, close game. What's the best, I won.

After that it was time to go home. I was quite satisfied with the games played. I would've liked to try 4-player Vom Kap bis Kairo, but there'll be other opportunities. 4-player Liverpool is a rarer treat, I'm very happy for that.

Instead of just working on the profiler (which I haven't touched today - I've decided to wait for some feedback and perhaps some registered raters, and won't do anything, at least for few days), I've been doing something to get to play games!

So, I've invited some friends to a cafe to play some card games next Sunday. I'm hoping to play four-player Vom Kap bis Kairo (which I've played mostly 2-player and once or twice 3-player - I've heard it's much better with four) and Liverpool (Contract Rummy, one of my favourite traditional card games).

This one's a bit sad entry (whee, I'm planning to play some games!), but perhaps a better entry will be seen on Sunday or Monday, with my thoughts on what we played.

Have a nice weekend!

Another day at work coming to an end and some more work done on the project (my job is mostly waiting for someone to call me and ask me to help them - happens maybe once every two days or so). It's starting to shape up. And the project has attracted some interest (as you all can see using the TrackBack function).

First, I got this great idea: Aaron has the game list available also sorted by the rank on Top 100 list. If I use that list, most popular games will appear first and will be rated faster. Also, as mentioned in the comments, seven-step scale is probably the best.

I've done most of the basic functionality now: registering new users, game rating, password reminder system and basic matching. Now I'm basically tidying everything up and adding more functionality. And of course, ratings are needed. I think it's probably safe to start rating, if you wish. After all, the seven-step scale is definitely the one I'll be using and the categories are good too. Of course, there's some work to be done on the descriptions, but 7 is a 7, no matter how it's described.

So, if you're interested, go to the editing page, get an username and a password and start rating. If you can figure the system out without any help, that's great. If you can't, ask me, here or by e-mail.

Quick descriptions of the non-obvious categories (these will be shown on the site too, as soon as I get them there):

Fun: how fun/serious and richly themed/dry the game is. If the game is dead serious but richly themed, the seriousness is more important. For example, Go and most other abstract games are on the low end, fun games like Chez Geek or many Cheapass Games are on the high end.

Skill: how easy the game is to understand. Go is on the high end, Carcassonne in the low end.

Interaction: how much players' actions affect other players. It's not necessarily only negotiation or trading, but those are good examples of high interaction. Bohnanza and Diplomacy are high interaction games.

So, have fun rating games, and please, give me feedback about the system.

The profile project moves on. I got a list of game names from Aaron Fuegi's great Top 100 list, so that's one thing less to do. Thanks to Aaron!

First move is to get the games graded. I've been working on that today. The first version of the form is out there for you to take a look at. It doesn't work yet, but you'll see what it looks like.

What I need to know now is what you think about the categories and the descriptions. If you have suggestions to make them better (grammatically more correct, more clear, anything), please comment.

Everyone who wishes to describe the games will get a userid and the system will store the game profiles by username. When the system updates it's database, it will count an average (or take the mode) of the various profiles. That way corrupting the database is more difficult (not that I worry much about it) and people can change the profiles they've entered in case they make mistakes or change their minds.

So, what do you think? Are the descriptions good? Is having seven options ok? Is 20 a good amount of games to show on one page? Any comments are welcome.

Please note that Gameblog is also available as a RSS feed. The link ("Syndicate this site") is well hidden at the bottom of the page. But, as it really is a concept I want to embrace and support, here's the RSS feed link again.

I installed AmphetaDesk today (thanks to Iain for the tip and opening my eyes to the most revolutionary and most interesting web technique I've seen this far - I'm going to syndicate my whole web site sooner or later! I love RSS!), it's really neat piece of software if you spend your time checking out plenty of weblogs. Why go running around if you can check them all on one web site?

This, I feel in a completely unrelated to gaming way, is definitely Something. This is what I've always wanted to have but couldn't have imagined it. Or maybe not, but I'm awe-stricken.

I'm always trying to come up with new ideas to develop our gaming group. To help newcomers find their future favourite games, I've come up with this idea (actually, it's stolen from someone on the Spielfrieks list) of gamer profiles and matching games to gamers.

I've graded all the games on five categories: luck element, fun element, strategical depth, length and player interaction. Each category is graded from 1 to 5, with long, verbal descriptions. So, you choose your profile and then you're provided with the ten best matches for you.

At least for me, it works out fine. My profile is 2-2-4-3-3 (luck element is weak, the game should be pretty serious, I like games that require some learning effort, I prefer my games to be under 1½ hours and I like moderate player interaction). There's one exact match, El Grande. Web of Power is one off. Other close matches include Puerto Rico, Mahjong, Princes of Florence, Tigris & Euphrates, Samurai, Tikal and Mexica - all games I really like. Only mismatch is Medici.

Currently I'm testing the system with some more experienced players, if it matches them to their favourite games as well. I'll have to try it with some newbies as well. Hopefully, the system will give new players some idea on what kind of games would be good for them. Knowing a few names could make your first club meeting better - "Hey, I'd like to try Web of Power, it was recommended to me".

Or, they won't even understand the questions as they won't have enough experience with board games. We'll see.

If you want to, you can try the matching system. Unfortunately, it's in Finnish. To help you out a bit, the questions are in order: luck element (1 = no luck, 5 = all luck), fun element (1 = very serious/dry, 5 = a joke, very light), strategic depth (1 = very simple/totally chaotic, 5 = a lot of learning and study is required), game length (1 = 15 minutes, 2 = 30 minutes, 3 = 1½ hours, 4 = 2 hours, 5 = more) and interaction (1 = multiplayer solitaire, 5 = all trading/negotiation).

If you try it, please tell me how closely the suggestions match your profile (tell me your profile, if you send feedback), did the system recommend your favourite games to you. All feedback is welcome and appreciated!

Few words on some games I've played recently:

Two days ago I tried out Puerto Rico in the Brettspielwelt, the German online board game server. Puerto Rico must've been a tough conversion, but they've done reasonable job cramming all that information on such a small screen. The building menu is hidden well and can't be found without help, but otherwise it works well. I spent most of the game focusing on the user interface instead of my strategy, but managed to be second (lost five points to the winner). The game was pleasantly fast, four players and 45 minutes.

Today I played yet another game of Africa with my girlfriend. She's not much of a gamer, but seems to enjoy playing friendly games with me. I like playing Africa with her, it seems to be a good game for that. I don't want to play with a cut-throat style with her (I'll save that for my gamer friends) and Africa is well suited for happy, friendly playing. Also, our games are often quite even: today I lost by one point, last time we played I won by one or two points. I firmly recommend Africa, if you're looking for a nice, friendly game. The rules are easy and the bits look gorgeous. It's one of my favourite new games this year.

The Games Journal for September has been published! Go read it now, if you're interested in board games. It's simply the best webzine there is. I usually read it immediately after it comes out. It's always there, 1st of each month.

I also always send Greg Aleknevicus, the editor, few lines of encouragement after each issue. I like the zine, it's free, that's the least I can do. I also try to come up with some feedback on the articles; if you search through the archives (everything is archived, the web site is a wonderful resource of good board game articles) for the letters section, you'll find few letters to editor written by yours truly.

I've yet to write an article to the zine. I'd like to, and will do so some day. I promise... But in the other hand, the quality of the zine makes me hesitant. Am I worth The Games Journal? So, this far I've been enjoying the best free board game articles there are.