March 2003 Archives

There are three big games I'd really, really like to get right now:

Amun-Re, the new Knizia game. Akke Monasso's first impressions -article sounds very good. Seems promising!

Age of Steam is long and complicated, but still it tempts me. Heavy decision-making with severely limited resources is always a good combination.

Löwenherz / Domaine - I've played Löwenherz, but Domaine seems to be more easily available. Also, some trimming might be a good idea, but in the other hand I liked the bidding competitions in L. Domaine looks better.

The first two are definite musts, and I enjoyed Löwenherz thoroughly... Now I'm just waiting for the decision to come: will I get a job for the summer. If I don't, I can say goodbye for these plans, but if I get it, I'm looking for a game order from Germany in the June, I suppose.

I did some Go problem time trials at Go Problems. I got to the 10k time trial, which I couldn't finish before Johanna came home. But it's good practise, to repeat the same problems again and again. I think that I'm a better Go player in theory than in practise...

I took some pictures of Sunda to Sahul, they are available at my photo site. If you haven't seen the game, go take a look because it's pretty! No doubt it's the best self-published game I've ever seen. Though, I noticed the scoring board had warped quite badly in a short time. That's a minor consern, as all scoring happens in the end of the game and thus the board isn't really necessary.

I've been trying to form an opinion about the game. I love the puzzles, that's for sure! I did two of the easiest puzzles yesterday (and two of the pictures are actually the solutions) and tried the harder puzzles. Those take a lot more work, I noticed...

I haven't been able to play it much, however. I'd like to try the simultaneous game, I'm expecting quite a lot from it. I'm trying to assemble some sort of meeting for Thursday. I'm also going to take the game with me next time I go visit my parents. My mother and her partner like jig-saw puzzles, Carcassonne and Tantrix so I'm quite sure they'll enjoy Sunda to Sahul as well.

I played a fairly interesting game of Go at Kiseido. My opponent was ranked one kyu lower than me, but I started the game pretty badly. However, at one point he didn't kill a large group of my stones (which he could've done and at which point I would've resigned) and I was able to get about a dozen of his stones, my luck turned.

However, even though I got 21 captures, I lost the game by 19,5 points and I still don't have a stable rank at Kiseido. I'm sure it'd be much easier to find opponents if I had a stable ranking (and preferably a bit higher rank, too). Still, it was a very exciting game and another brialliant example of why Go is such a wonderful game.

I've been reading books about games lately. Mostly books describing the rules to various card games, including the classic of classics: Hoyle's Games. It's not the original version from the 18th century, but a modern version from the 50's. Still, it's a neat book. Now I'd really love to play Piquet and other fine and interesting card games.

I'm currently reading perhaps the best novel about games: Iain M. Banks' The Player of Games. It is highly recommended for every literary gamer, as is Iain Banks' (without the M) Walking on Glass. Banks often has his characters play games, I've noticed. Today I also found a childhood favourite of mine: Interstellar Pig by William Sleator. The Finnish title Avaruuspeli (Space Game in English) sounds a bit more appropriate, perhaps. We'll see how it turns out now, about ten years later. There's also the La Tabla de Flandes (The Flanders Panel) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, which has a strong Chess flavour in it. Any other good books with games in them?

Strange, though - I was very fascinated by the book, I even designed my own space game (I even forced my parents to play it once with me - of course it was really, really terrible) inspired by it. When I told about it to Johanna, it turned out it was one of her favourites too. She had also made her own space game! That's so cool.

(Amazon.co.uk links: Hoyle's Games,
The Player of Games, Walking on Glass, Interstellar Pig, The Flanders Panel)

Board game club had a meeting Yesterday. There were plans to play Die Macher, since it was the election day and all that, but it was cancelled because I couldn't find the rule book... Well, I suppose most people had a good afternoon and evening of enjoyment nevertheless.

I got to play just about every game I wanted. I started with two rounds of Sticheln, first time with the real cards and real people! It was fun, even though I didn't win. It's obviously a game people don't get that easily, especially as one of the players wasn't that familiar with card games and didn't know such concepts as trick or trump... But after the two rounds, they seemed to grasp the tactics a bit, too. However, we didn't finish the game as more people had arrived and we wanted to play something bigger.

Well, we did. We played a six-player game of Union Pacific. It was a blast, and got good ratings after the game. Results were split: there were three players with about 90 points (including yours truly, but unfortunately on the second place) and three players with about 60 points. One trio had most of the Union Pacific shares, other didn't. Guess which one was which... One more round and I would've won, but I guess that's how it always goes in Union Pacific.

While we were playing, a reporter from a local university newspaper came. He watched us play and then interviewed me and Ville. It was nice and fairly informal, and I'm quite curious to see how it turns out. He's doing an article on escapist geeks, including us, the roleplaying club and speculative fiction hobbyists.

I wanted to play Bohnanza and it seemed like a good game to play with the reporter (we couldn't let him leave without playing at least one game!). It was fun, I didn't remember Bohnanza was such a good game. I came second, with the reporter taking the win. Good for him! Mostly newbie players (everyone but me and Ville playing for the first time) felt the game was a bit confusing, but they understood it fine while we played. One of them even figured out the fairly clever tactic of two players with the same beans on their fields trading 1:1 those beans from their hands. I had just recently read about it from the 'Geek.

Last game I played was something I have wanted to play and buy for a long time, but haven't done so: Löwenherz. I loved it! The battle for the territory reminds me of Go, which is always a good thing. Unfortunately I had to leave about 10 minutes before the game finished, so I don't know what happened - I think I didn't win. But it was exciting and entertaining. I definitely feel like I should buy the game...

For the Finnish readership, there's an rules translation for Bohnanza available at my web site.

I think I mentioned an Adam Spielt order two weeks ago... Well, I got the games yesterday: Sticheln and Bohnanza. So no Wizard for me!

Reason for that is the simple fact that Wizard is easily played with the Sticheln deck as it only adds four Wizards and four Jesters to the standard deck - thus Sticheln's zeroes can replace the Jesters and 15s can replace the Wizards. Also, the Wizard is horribly ugly. So, I got Bohnanza, as it is a true classic game and a very good bargain at 4,95 euros.

I must say the Sticheln deck looks wonderful. The cards are really good looking, very simple and clear design. So, it wasn't a huge surprise when I noticed who did it: who else but Franz Vohwinkel, the guru of the German game graphic design. Great work.

I'm closing the poll now as there haven't been any votes during the last few days. Here are the results:

Option	Fr.	Pr.
No	2	11 %
No opinion	6	32 %
Yes	8	42 %
Yes, me!	3	16 %
Total	19	100 %

It turns out that second author would be a welcome improvement for this blog. So... You three who chose the "Yes, me!" option (and anybody else who might be interested), please contact me by e-mail (msaari@iki.fi), and perhaps I'll be able to find someone who's suitable for the job. Thanks for participation!

Recently I've been working on a dear project of mine: boardgame club stats service. It's in Finnish, unfortunately. Still, go see it and try clicking the link "Lista peleistä", for example to see how it works. That's the list of games. "Lista pelaajista" is a list of players.

It began with the very basics: a web interface for game results. Since then, I've integrated other stuff in it: two other web sites and some Excel worksheets I've had. So, besides showing the games played, you can find the reviews people have given for the games, you can get recommendations of games based on the reviews you've done, and there are tons of different little statistics about games and players. There are also descriptions of most games.

Next I'm planning to add a feature so that each club member can mark which games they own. Then anyone could go and browse the lists, perhaps use the recommendation service and the descriptions to find an interesting game, then click a link and a notification would be sent out to the owners of the game so they'd know to bring it with them to the next meeting of the club.

Now I'll just have to get people to use the system... But I like it and I think the stats and the recommendations and all that is fun, that's the most important thing. I've also learned a lot about PHP programming while I've been doing it, that might prove to be valuable some day. Or even if it doesn't, it has been entertaining.

It seems I've always played Space Beans wrong. I am quite sure we've always given the cards to the player on one's left, ie. the next player. However, the cards should be given to the previous player, the one on your right. Oops.

Here's a small poll for you! It has two purposes: first, I'm trying to get an idea of how many people read this blog. If you're a regular reader, please vote. I know I have some readers, but if you haven't commented on anything or made yourself known in some other way, voting here would be a nice thing to do. Second, there's the question and I'd like to hear your thoughts about that.

There's no control or anything, but please vote only once.

So, the question is: I've been thinking about getting a second author for the blog. What do you think about it?

Voting time ends when the poll leaves the front page. I'll publish the results then. If you have more to say about the topic, please send me e-mail.

While visiting the library, I studied other books than the Hanafuda already mentioned. Few of them were about Bridge, the king of the trick-taking games (and perhaps card games in general, as well). I have really no interest to play Bridge, as it seems to be a terribly deep and complex game. That's fine, but it also means it takes lots of devotion and an interested partner.

However, as I hold the game in fairly high regard, I thought it was appropriate for me to know how it works. I was actually a bit surprised - at the core, Bridge is a surprisingly simple trick-taking game. Of course, on top of it is the bidding and the bidding conventions are what makes it so complicated, but I think I understood the basic concepts of that too. Perhaps I should try Bridge sometimes, with other beginners like me...

I bumped into a mention of Hanafuda, the Japanese flower cards in Pagat. I didn't react until Yesterday, when I saw a book about it in a local library. I borrowed it and now I'm definitely fascinated.

Hanafuda cards are quite beautiful, small cards. They don't have numbers like the western playing cards. Instead, the 48-card deck consists of twelve suits, one for each month. The cards have pictures of flowers related to the different months: January has pine, March has cherry and so on. The cards have different values so that each suit has a high card (20 or 10 points), another high card (10 or 5 points) and low cards (one point). It takes some practise to remember the cards!

Games played on these cards are mostly fishing games. Hachi-hachi (eighty-eight) is said to be the best. I don't know, I haven't tried. It seems a bit like Mahjong as it has lots of special hands and special combinations you must know. Seems a bit luck-heavy, but that's probably just fine.

Now I only have to find myself some Hanafuda cards. So, if anyone has a clue where I could get myself a pack or two (preferably in Finland or in EU), drop me an e-mail or place a comment here.

1. Tichu (1)
2. Sticheln (-)
3. Union Pacific (-)
4. Go (-)
5. Taj Mahal (-)
6. Mahjong (7)
7. Goldland (-)
8. Wildlife (-)
9. Princes of Florence (3)
10. Isis & Osiris (10)

A new issue of The Games Journal is out. Check it out, I especially recommend the player interaction article by Greg Aleknevicus.

I played few more games at the Brettspielwelt. First, I played two games of Web of Power - my first games this year! I lost first one (badly), then managed to win the other.

I also tried Medina. The way they've done it is much better than most of the games there, the user interface looks pretty much like the real thing (but, of course, with less wood). But I've come to realize that Medina is not for me. I don't know why. It's dry, that's true, but I do like abstract games. There's something in the waiting game that it is that turns me off. It's a pity, because I'd like to enjoy it.

Then I played a quick game of Ra - nothing special there, except that I did fairly well. Then came the main treat: I got to play Sticheln. My friend placed an order at Adam Spielt and I joined in, buying Sticheln and Wizard, mostly because they were cheap. The order hasn't been sent yet, so I tried to see if I could get to play at least Sticheln before it's confirmed.

Well, at least Sticheln will stay on the order. It's basically a fairly simple trick-taking game, played with a deck consisting of six suits with numbers from 0-15 (reduced if needed so that every player will get 15 cards). Every suit except the one led is trump. Highest card takes the trick (except zeros - zero can only take a trick when all players play zeros). Each card you take is worth one point.

But there's a twist! Each player chooses, secretly, a pain or misery suit after cards are dealt but before the play begins. Each card in this suit is worth its face value - in negative points! Thus, a misery 12 will negate quite a few tricks if it ends to you. Of course, other players, such friendly people as they are, will use every opportunity to force you take high misery cards. Simple but nasty.

So, I played a game, consisting of five hands. I think every hand except the first had the same order of players, I was in the middle each time. Thus, I ended up being in the middle. Or perhaps I was last, can't remember for sure - I do remember I took a heavy beating in the last round, even though I wasn't in the lead. That's unfair.

The tactics aren't obvious, but still easy enough. Simple and familiar game with a clever twist. That's what I'd expect from a cheap card game and that's what you get with Sticheln. Not to mention getting a highly useful deck of cards! It can be used as a standard deck for most games, you can play Battle Line or Lost Cities with it...

But now I'm going to take a good book and a well-earned bottle of apple cider and retire to my bedroom. See you later!

Well - I played some Go on Kiseido, but not enough to get me a stable rating. I think I'm missing a win... Today's scores were a resign victory against a weaker player who quit when I killed a largish group from him. Then I played a faster game against a stronger player and, as expected, lost.

There was this Finnish player, who has played since last April and is 1 kyu now. I've played since June, and I'm about 25 kyu. That's not fair ;-)