January 2003 Archives

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Last night my lovely girlfriend Johanna requested a game while we were waiting for a TV-show to start. She wanted to play something new, so after a moment of browsing my collection, I chose Manhattan. I thought it was suitable: easy, entertaining, would probably work well with two, not too mean and playable in an hour.

It turned out to be a good choice. I know Manhattan can be quite mean, but the way we played it, it was relaxed enough. It wasn't really a tight match: Johanna was in the lead from the first scoring and I never caught her again. That was fun and I'm quite sure we will play the game again later.

I should probably play the game a bit more - last year it got only one play. It's perhaps a bit too mediocre, people rarely want to play. They'll play, if someone suggests, but nobody usually does. Perhaps I should bring it out more often. At least I have fun whenever I play it.

I'm playing Diplomacy again. For the last two years or so I have mostly focused on GMing and I haven't had a real need to play the game. It just doesn't fit my personality, I think... Well, now I'm playing again. I've been running games of Necromancer, which is a Diplomacy variant set in the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien.

After few games there rose a need for some balancing actions. The various powers of the game are not balanced enough. We discussed a bit and agreed upon some changes and now were are testing them. As one of the players wasn't interested to play but was able to GM, we changed roles. I'm playing Saruman and the game is called Olorin. Website includes the rule changes, maps and results.

I got myself a new Go opponent: GNU Go with Jago user interface. I have an installation of older GNU Go on one of my Unix shell accounts, but for some reason I hadn't thought of getting it on my home PC. Well, now I have it so I can play real 19x19 Go against my computer. Earlier I have played against Igowin which is a good learning tool and has a nice handicap system, but only supports 9x9 board - still, get it if you're learning Go and play hundreds of games against it. First it will beat you hands down, but soon you'll learn. You'll definitely appreciate when you win the game without a handicap for the first time.

Unfortunately Jago caused some nasty graphical glitches, but hopefully they were just temporary troubles. Still, I prefer using a real goban (a Go board) and playing against a human. I was just reminded of how beautiful even my humble and cheap goban is when the stones form their intricate patterns on it when I played Gomoku (aka 5-in-a-row) with Johanna on it.

I've also started more games on Dragon Go Server to establish a some sort of rating for myself. The system works well and looks definitely nicer than the pure e-mail of PBEM Server. No offense to the old faithful e-mail, which works quite well and without any extra software, but I've found the board is easier to understand with neater graphics. All of the computers I frequent have web browsers, after all.

The server documentation is still mostly missing, but the user interface is simple enough. If you're interested to play, I'm always ready for challenges!

I got e-mail from a radio journalist, who wants to interview me about board games. She had found my website and is quite interested about board games and why people don't play them anymore. So, another opportunity for me to preach the gospel. It's not the first time (second, to be accurate) I find myself talking about games in radio... Last time we had a half-hour chat with myself and the CEO of the Finnish game company Peliko. That was fun and I'm more than willing to do it again. I'll tell you more, later, when I know the details.

For the last few days, I've been thinking about an auction game idea. It just might have something to do with the fact that I played Ra Friday and enjoyed it a lot... Anyway, I'm eager to test my ideas. If it works out, I'll publish the game on my web site.

The game is going to be played with Mahjong tiles. I started thinking about the tokens the game would use and I thought about tiles. Then I thought about Mahjong tiles. I just love Mahjong tiles and would definitely like to have more use for them. They look neat and are interesting variety from regular playing cards, for example. So, I don't have to worry about components. Of course, using Mahjong tiles places some restrictions on the game mechanics (for example, set collection comes quite naturally with them), but in the other hand, restrictions can be a good thing.

Why auction game? Because I've noticed that auction games are fun. I like the auctions in Princes of Florence and also some pure auction games, most notably Ra. Auction usually have lots of good tension about them. I hate waiting, and auction games have usually no downtime as all players are involved most of the time. Auction games are probably easier to playtest, as well, as auctions tend to balance themselves. Of course, adjusting the values of the different goals needs a lot of playtesting, but I think (not that I have any experience) the task is easier than testing a complicated board game.

Well, we'll see what happens.

I like TV quiz shows and have always wanted to participate myself. Well, I got lucky. I sent in my registration for the Guillotine show in the Internet and after a month or two got a phone call. I answered some questions and got an invite to the show. Guillotine (or Giljotiini in Finnish) is a local format, and it's about eliminating your opponents. Players may take the questions and choose who must answer it. If the challenged player answers correctly, you're out, if not, he or she is out. The winner gets the prize money from the loser (everyone starts with 250 euros). When two players (out of five) are left, they have a best two out of three final.

Yesterday was the big day. I went there early and saw two recordings before it was my turn. After the first one the game showed it's ugly side - the winner of the episode can continue to the next, and he did. So, one of the guys had to go home. Fortunately the winner (who won that one too) was happy with his prize money (1250 euros) so I was safe.

My opponents were mostly older than me. I wasn't nervous; I was going to be careful. That's what I did. The questions seemed easy and I didn't challenge anyone. Nobody challenged me. Once the host of the show caught me lying (I'm sure!) when I explained that I know the answer to the question in hand - I had no clue. Fortunately, nobody took the question and we moved along (the host questions each player, so if you don't know something, you'll have to lie - usually, when someone says they don't know the answer, they know and would love it if you challenged them - unless they are bluffing, that is).

Finally my fellow co-competitors were gone. It was me against the only female participant. She had 1000 euros, I had 250. Unfortunately I wasn't going to get her money anymore... We got in to the final and passed first few questions as too easy. Then came a question: what is called the ringing of ears, that buzz and beep noise? I knew it - I have personal experience (fortunately only temporary) from all the gigs I've been to. She said she didn't know, in a very nervous manner. I had more than a faint feeling she didn't really know, challenged and caught her. 1-0 for me. Next question. "This is about sports, what does a pugilist do?" She took the question immediately. She obviously didn't know much about sports and didn't feel like taking the risk of being asked the question.

I don't know much about sports, either, but I know fancy words. I tried to stay cool as I lied that I have perhaps a tiny, small idea about it, I might remember, or not, hard to say. She could have backed up, but she didn't. My answer came without thinking: a pugilist is a boxer. 2-0 and victory for me!

So, I won. That's quite cool. The money is not much, especially as one third goes for taxes. Still I didn't continue - the effort of going back next morning and the risk of losing all I got already were too much. I'm happy with my money and my experience. It was definitely interesting to see how the TV show was made. There's a lot more stuff in the recording, more questions (most of the questions nobody takes are edited out of the aired show). Also the show seems very bare without the sounds and the music, most notably I was missing the sound of the blade when it comes down...

A great experience and one I'll recommend to anybody! Quiz shows are much better when you're participating yourself!

I had a very pleasant board game club meeting last Sunday. Few new games, old favourites and nice people! What more can you wish for?

While waiting for more players, I forced Ville to teach me Falling, the crazy Cheapass real-time card game where you try to be the last player to hit the ground. It was fun, even though it definitely needs more than the two players we had.

Then we started the first major game. I had two early registrations for an introductory game of Princes of Florence and got two more newbies to join us. It was sort of fun - my goal is to play more PoF this year, remember - but the game took a bit too long to be really enjoyable. Princes is a good game, but not if it takes over two hours. Those crazy mathematicians, always calculating everything... Notable is that I, for the first time in my life, did not buy a single Jester. Well, I lost, even though I built my city almost full. One work and two good Prestige cards simply isn't enough.

Next I got five players to join me for a game of Wildlife. Six-player game was good - a bit too much downtime, but I felt like I had some control in the game, which was nice. I'll definitely play the game again with six players, even though I might prefer it with less.

After that I didn't have time for longer games (so no Goldland this time, either), but I played my latest short-game favourite Isis & Osiris which was, yet again, excellent fun. Finally, I tried a new game and played Cartagena. That was also a pleasant experience, a race game without dice is always good news.

As mentioned before, I bought Wildlife Friday and managed to play it the same night. Here's my preview, based on that one game.

The main reason why I bought Wildlife was the cheap price. Reason why I chose Wildlife instead of other cheap games was mostly the name of Wolfgang Kramer on the cover. I had done my research and thought that it was probably going to be at least a fairly good game.

One negative thing I had read was the lower production standards. I agree - Clementoni isn't exactly on the same league as Hans im Glück, Goldsieber, Alea or other major publishers. The component quality is a bit low: tokens are difficult to separate, player cheat sheets are on paper and the card material is strange flimsy and thin plastic.

But really it isn't that bad. The tokens look fairly good when separated. I wouldn't use the German cheat sheets anyway. Cards are ok when put in protective plastic sleeves - for Wildlife, I got some new mini sleeves which are also heavier than the cheap sleeves I usually use. And the cards look great, I like the pictures a lot. The board isn't that great, it's a bit plain (and I don't want mountains to look like plains, ha) - Franz Vohwinkel and Doris Matthaus won't need to be afraid quite yet...

But, what about the game, then? It's about evolution. Players control their species in the dawn of time, when mammoths, bears, humans, eagles, snakes and crocodiles fight for survival. Basically, the game is a area majority game like El Grande. However, here's the catch: each species has a level of adaptation for each area type. Snakes, for example, can do anything in the desert. In savanna and forests they can't do anything and in other area types something in between. They can, however, adapt. It only takes one card to give the snakes the ability to move in savanna. Adapt most and you will have best shot to victory.

There are also abilities to buy. Intelligence allows the player to play an extra card each turn, defense, attack and mobility are basically combat skills while food ability gives steady income of victory points. Unfortunately, there aren't enough abilities for all. There's a nice balancing factor: if you want, say, intelligence and there's none in stock, you take one from the player with most points.

Each turn, players play three card actions (and more with intelligence). These cards are what drives the game. Fortunately each player has a hand of ten cards, so the luck factor isn't huge. One of the cards must be auctioned each turn, more can be sold if there's a need. There are few different types of cards. Terrain cards are the basic stuff. There's some for each terrain type and playing one allows you to do something you can do in that terrain. You migrate, expand or attack. Migrate is simple movement of tokens on board, expand means taking a tile from your supply and placing it on the board. Attack is the same as expand, but instead of empty place, you'll place your tile to replace your opponents tile. That can only be done in a full area - if there's a single empty space, you can't attack. You can't kill for fun in this game, at least not all the time.

Other cards include adaptation, abilities and events. Adaptation cards lets you evolve one step and ability cards lets you take an ability. Event cards either harm your opponents or help you. Finally, there are wild cards which can replace anything but an event card.

Players can also use their abilities. Intelligence gives extra actions (which are effective on the same turn, so there's usually no reason to grab one if you can, especially if you're behind in score track), food gives you two victory points each turn, defense lets you stop an attack on each opponent turn, mobility lets you exchange the places of two tiles, one of which must be yours and attack gives you an extra attack each turn - without the restriction of full area. There's only one attack ability available, two defense abilities, three mobilities, four intelligences and five foods.

Finally, each player has a free migration and the possibility to convert food tokens to points. Food tokens are the money used in the card auctions and can be converted to points with a ratio of 3 food to 1 point. In auctions, you can overbid and convert score to food to pay your bids with the same ratio. All these actions can be done in any order.

Then the scoring. There are 12 areas on the board and when an area is filled, comes a small scoring. A scoring token is placed on the area and player who placed the last tile gets the number of points (3-5) that was revealed under the scoring token. If that number is marked (areas 4, 8 and 11), a big scoring is done. In big scoring, first each area is scored. Monopoly gets 5 or 4 points depending on if the area is full or not, shared areas give 3/2/1 points. Then biggest herds score, 10/7/5/3/1 points. There's some potential for heavy points! Most adaptations, abilities and food tokens score 4 for the most, 2 for the second most. The game ends either after the 11th area is filled or when one player places their last tile.

The game supports two to six players. I have only played it with four, once, so I can't say much about that. It was fun with four players and I suppose more players won't hurt it. With two players the game might be a bit boring. There's a downtime problem, but it's not as bad as it could be. There are auctions each turn so there's something for each player each turn. Still, watch out if your group is prone to analysis paralysis and you hate downtime.

After one game Wildlife seems like a fun game. It's similar to El Grande in mechanics, but feels a bit less serious and dry. The length (might well take two hours with six players) means it won't hit the table every time, but I'm sure I will enjoy it in the future - I expect it to reach at least my five games played list by the end of the year, possibly even ten playings.

After a very long board meeting (2½ hours, but lots of good discussion, too) we started the games. We played Space Beans, Wildlife, Medina, Samurai, Ra and Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers.

Space Beans started the evening - it wasn't quite on top of my list of games I had wanted to play, but well, we needed a quick game while we were waiting for other players. And besides, Space Beans can be quite fun, if played fast enough. We played, and it was fun. I won, too.

Wildlife was next. I had just bought it and I was eager to try it. We had four players and got the game running quite smoothly. We had a few mistakes with the rules, but nothing too disturbing. I got extra seven VP's in the early game, oops, but I am quite sure I lost enough many turns because of that so it would even out. Anyway, my quite well-adapted snakes won the game in the end. It was fun, and a more detailed preview is on it's way.

Medina was next. Ville had to go and Vanessa, our replacement player, didn't like Samurai so we played Medina instead. I had only played it once before, so it was fine with me. Especially as I won the game! It was fun... but I still think Medina is sort of dry. The chicken race mechanic isn't my favourite, either.

Samurai was also on my most-wanted games list. It's been too long since I last played it. It's an excellent game, very intense and I think in someway more satisfying than Tigris & Euphrates. I didn't play that good, so it was no surprise in the end that I didn't win.

Ra - another Knizia title - was next. I was very interested to try it, as I hadn't played it before and I had heard lots of good things said about it. It was really good, definitely the best of the Knizia auction games. Very neat mechanisms, works like a Swiss clock.

Carcassonne: H&G was the last game we played, a nice closer for the evening. We played a three-player game. I was sharing a field and a river system with one other player in a three-player game, both scoring quite nicely, and then I was able to grab them both for myself in the end. Now that's a satisfying way to end the evening (or night) of games! It was close to 3 am by then and time to go to sleep, dreaming happy dreams of victory (four out of seven, yippee!)

So, here goes: I'm leaving soon for Helsinki, there I'm going to Safe Haven to pick up my Wildlife. Then comes the meeting of Finnish Diplomacy Association with which comes some gaming, naturally.

Then I'll be back home for Saturday. I'll miss the board game day at Safe Haven, but that's not too bad, as we have our own board game day Sunday.

So, expect session raports early next week!

A long PBEM game of Britannia is finally over. The first Roman assault was launched 29.11.2001 and today, I finally published the last results on the game website.

Sure, it was insane. We had too long delays while we were playing; I participated in the 2001 World E-mail Championship and those games had GMs to keep up the pace and they were over in what, three months. But still, it was a good game. Our Green was literally metaphorically green and hadn't played before. He scored 34 points. Rest of us were more experienced and thus the race was tight: 102.5 - 114.5 - 117. I played Red and came second. If I had killed William the Conqueror or held one more area in the end of the game, I would've won. Too bad. Well, each of us could've won in the beginning of turn 15. Purple had very little success with the Norwegians. Fortunately, Blue wasn't able to kill Harold, so my final leader survived to tell the story.

Fun game, but tighter turns would've made it better...

Tichu is the first game I played this year. Yesterday I met some of my friends and taught the game to them. Olli was especially interested in the game, as I had advertised how the game has more depth and learning potential than average German boardgame.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find a fourth player. That's pretty bad, as Tichu is a four player partnership game. Well, fortunately, there's an official three-player variant in which one of the players (the turn changes every deal) is dealer and plays with a mock player, the table. Table has an open hand.

Anyway, after the nine deals were over, it was obvious who won: Olli had acquired points in every single deal. As some of them were 200 point double wins, he had over double the score that me and Ville had. Also, on our last turn, when me and Ville played against Olli and table, I made a daring large Tichu call (nothing to lose, everything to win) and failed it. The final order was Olli, table, me and Ville. It's so pathetic to lose to a mock player...

Starting the year with Asian games seems to be a new tradition for me - last year started with Majiang.

I calculated some numbers from game stats. First, I joined my 2001 and 2002 stats in a single Excel table to get more data to work on... I had this idea: I should do a list of games I like and haven't played in a while. All I needed was a formula to get me a number to sort the games by.

Well, the formula is (10 * rating)*(0.4^games played 03)*(0.8^games played 02)*(0.95^games played 01) - so if I have a game that I've rated 10 and haven't played in 2003, 2002 or 2001, it'll get a score of 100. A game I've rated 8 and played twice in 2001 gets 72 and so on. So, here's my top ten games I really should play in the first quarter of 2003:

1. Adel verpflichtet, Through the Desert
2. Svea Rike
3. Rummikub, Samurai
4. Die Macher, Fabrik der Träume, Java, Linie 1, Medina, Skyrunner, Torres

Well, not exactly ten or so, but anyway. The problem is, of course, that I only own Svea Rike and Die Macher of these. So, I suppose many of these will stay on the list in the next quarter, too. But, I hope that I'll be able to play as many of these games as possible during this year.

By the way, on the bottom of the list, with value of 0 are Puerto Rico, Carcassonne and Lost Cities...

I'm playing in a Zèrtz+11 tournament on the PBeM Server. The first round started yesterday. Let's see how I'll do!

My blog has been a bit silent, but it's been a slow start for this game year. First game sessions are coming next week: I'm planning a Tichu session next Tuesday, Friday I'm going to a meeting of the Finnish Diplomacy Association board, there'll be fun and games, then the Sunday is board game club day and finally, I will go to Helsinki to participate in the Guillotine tv-show in Monday. So lots of games coming in a very short period of time!

Also, I've discovered (thanks to my Go mentor Chris) the beauty that is Dragon Go Server. My id there is msaari, as usual, feel free to challenge me any time.

And speaking of Go, it's curious that so few games have any handicap systems. Go has the best - players with even quite large difference in skill can play a fairly even match. Of course, there's some limits to the difference the system can handle, but it's totally something else than Chess which has no (at least no official) handicapping.

It's frustrating to play Chess against someone clearly better than you. Go game, in the other hand, can be a tough match and a much better learning experience.

Of course, many boardgames don't really have any need for handicapping, because there isn't that many skill levels. There's newbie, then someone with few games, then perhaps someone with 20 games. After that you just don't get any better. It's a shame, because there's only so much a game can give to you, but in the other hand, beginners can stand a chance against an experienced player.

But I wish more German games had that sort of depth that Go has. Meanwhile, fortunately, I can play Go to fulfill that need.

I've already written a review of Villa Paletti here, but here's for the Finnish readers: a Finnish review of Villa Paletti.

Afrikan tähti. I thought it was very inappropriate that the finest Finnish boardgame wasn't in BoardGameGeek. Now it is.

Finally the January 2003 The Games Journal is out. There's an article about Princes of Florence and Puerto Rico by yours truly, a very interesting article (based on a thesis) about combining electronics and board games and some witty comedy. There's also the solution for the last month's Confrontation puzzle, which I thought was unsolvable. Confrontation is also reviewed.

I also keep the statistics for our board game club. I think it's interesting to know what games are played (and by whom, but that is of minor interest). Of course, you can keep track of the stats in real time at the web site, but here's a review of the last year's numbers.

Number of meetings: 9 (10 last year)
Number of games played: 185 (139)
Number of different games played: 68 (43)
Number of players: 53 (33)
Number of players with 2+ visits: 23 (21)

Game most people played: Carcassonne (24 players, 45%)
Game of the year: Puerto Rico

10's:
Carcassonne (15)
Boomo (11)

5's:
Tigris & Euphrates (8)
Ohne Furcht und Adel (7)
El Grande (6)
Web of Power (6)
Metro (5)
Villa Paletti (5)
Igel Ärgern (5)
Isis & Osiris (5)

10's list is shorter than last year (4 games), but 5's list is longer (only 2 games last year). So, it looks like we had a lot more diversity than in 2001. We played 22 games of Spacewalk then, but it was played only once in 2002. But this is obvious - we've had a lot more games available, as other people than myself have started to buy them.

Session metrics:
Carcassonne (7)
Manhattan (4)
Ohne Furcht und Adel (4)
Tigris & Euphrates (4)
El Grande (3)
Guillotine (3)
Metro (3)
Princes of Florence (3)
Puerto Rico (3)
Spacebeans (3)
21 games with two sessions, 37 with one session.

This one's a fairly good measurement of popularity. Carcassonne is an easy game to play and often hits the table. Manhattan's popularity surprises me, but it only got one game in each session. All the other games were played more than once in each session it hit the table.

1. Tichu (1)
2. Die Macher (3)
3. Princes of Florence (6)
4. Puerto Rico (2)
5. Tigris & Euphrates (9)
6. Die Händler (7)
7. Mahjong (4)
8. Through the Desert (8)
9. Africa (5)
10. Isis & Osiris (-)

I love keeping the statistics for the games I play. I like toying around with the numbers, seeing how they go. Of course, the biggest rewards come when you can make deeper, more complete analysis. Changing of the year is a natural time for that. I can make a fairly complete review of the past year from my numbers (and compare it to the previous year). Here it is, enjoy!

These numbers include all multiplayer real-time board games I played. So, that excludes PBeM (Go, Zèrtz, Britannia, Tigris & Euphrates) and solo games, but includes anything played in Brettspielwelt (lots of Puerto Rico, some Carcassonne, mostly).

Total number of games played: 351 (343 last year)
Different games played: 79 (66)
Games I played first time this year: 44 (43)
Games won: 140.5, 40% (144.5, 42.1%)

Best game released in 2002:
Puerto Rico - no doubt about it!
Best new game in 2002:
Three-way tie between Die Macher, Puerto Rico and Go.
Exactly what I was waiting for:
Die Macher had the greatest expectations, and it was all I expected and more.
Biggest disappointment:
TransAmerica - I expected more, but the game was too shallow for me.

Stars mark games that were new this year. There are lots of them!

10's:
Lost Cities (34)
Puerto Rico* (30) - lots of BSW play, but also ftf
Carcassonne (24) - last year I got 33 games in two months
Zèrtz* (22) - plus at least 30 games PBeM
Web of Power* (18)
Go* (17) - mostly 9x9, some 19x19, plus lots of PBeM
Africa* (16)
Battle Line (14) - includes one game of Schotten-Totten
6 Nimmt (11)
Villa Paletti* (10) - best (and only) dex game of the year

5's:
Ricochet Robot (9) - plus the daily on-line puzzles!
Majiang* (8) - all short one-round games (about 4-8 deals)
Vom Kap bis Kairo* (7)
Mexica* (6) - Mexica won both Java and Tikal (1 game each) hands down
TransAmerica* (6) - of those games I like the least I played this most
Bluff* (6)
Princes of Florence (5) - I will (again) promise to play more next year
Trivial Pursuit (5)
Canal Grande* (5)

One time games: 34

There was very much recycling in the lists, lots of new games came in and lots of old games were played only once or twice if at all. Bigger losers included Dragon's Gold (from 15 to 0), Tigris & Euphrates (from 14 to 2), Fluxx (from 14 to 0) and Alcatraz (from 10 to 1). Lost Cities kept it's appeal, as did Carcassonne and Battle Line. Lots of newcomers in the 10's list, which is nice. Ricochet Robot improved most of the old games (from 3 to 9).

There was more games available for me to play, as some of my friends started to buy games too. I had approximately same amount of time to play games, so that explains the recycling effect. And of course, some of the new games (Puerto Rico!) were so good I played them many, many times.

Then, some newer measurements. I did better stats this year (I really enjoy it, it's almost as much fun as playing games), making these possible.

Happiness product (games x rating x length):
1. Puerto Rico* (100)
2. Majiang* (60)
3. Die Macher* (40)
4. Web of Power* (36)
5. Africa* (32)
5. Carcassonne (32)
5. Go* (32)
8. Mexica* (30)
8. Princes of Florence (30)
10. Ricochet Robot (18)
10. El Grande (18)

Puerto Rico is the definite winner here. Longish (I used 40 minutes, as many BSW games go real fast), many games, rating 10. Most notable is the appearance of Die Macher, which I only played two times. But it should be on the top of the list, as I enjoyed those two games very much.

Matthew Gray's month metric (unique months):
1. Carcassonne (10)
2. Puerto Rico* (8)
3. Web of Power* (6)
3. Africa* (6)
3. Lost Cities (6)
3. 6 Nimmt (6)
3. Battle Line (6)
8. Majiang* (4)
8. Go* (4)
8. Princes of Florence (4)
8. Ricochet Robot (4)
8. Zèrtz* (4)
8. Trivial Pursuit (4)

Carcassonne seems to be the winner, but in the other hand, I had it two months more than I had Puerto Rico. I think this is a fairly good measurement, it gives some idea how often the games hit the table without favouring shorter games too much. Unfortunately I don't have the numbers from the last year, as my statistics were less complete then.

2 players:
1. Lost Cities (34)
2. Zèrtz* (22)
3. Go* (17)
4. Battle Line (14)
5. Carcassonne (9)

3 players:
1. Puerto Rico* (17)
2. Carcassonne, Web of Power* (10)
4. Ricochet Robot (7)
5. Vom Kap bis Kairo*, TransAmerica* (3)

4 players:
1. Africa* (10)
2. Puerto Rico*, Villa Paletti* (9)
4. Majiang* (8)
5. Carcassonne, Web of Power*, Bluff* (3)

5 players:
1. 6 Nimmt (6)
2. Web of Power*, Princes of Florence (5)
4. Puerto Rico* (4)
5. El Grande (3)