June 2003 Archives

Unfortunately I got ill today, which means I'm not going to be able to participate on the Wednesday café games... It's a pity, but I'll just have to figure out something else to tell you about instead of that!

I got a starter pack of Dragonball Z collectible card game - I'm to write a Finnish translation of the rules. The game seems rather daft: the players attack each other until one drops. Or until one player collects enough anger or a complete set of Dragonballs.

Still, the about C5-sized rule book has about 60 pages. Lots of pictures, advertising and whatnot, but still. The rules seem overly complicated for the game. Especially as the target group is probably kids from eleven to, say, fifteen. Hard to imagine someone older playing this... It's for the kids, who used to play Pokemon and have grown up a bit.

And the theme... I've watched perhaps a half an episode of the tv series (it's shown just before the Late Night with Conan O'Brien, so I've seen several ends) and it seems rather pointless: strange-looking people beat each other senseless. I'm not even sure who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. It's just pointless violence. Let me quote from the game rules: "Remember. this is a fantasy game. Don't act out the events portrayed on the cards in real life. Someone could get hurt, and when that happens, everyone loses." and "Anger: A power in the DBZ™ Universe that allows personalities to advance to higher levels." So if you're angry enough, you'll advance to a higher level? If the rules need to spell out warnings like the first quote, I'd say something is seriously wrong...

And while I think intellectual property is a good thing and so on, the amount of ™'s and ®'s in the rule book is rather ridiculous at the times.

Yesterday we had another pleasant session of Wednesday games. I made a slight change this time: instead of just card games, I took Age of Steam with me. I was too anxious to play it, after reading just about everything about it I could find Tuesday.

But before anybody else arrived, I played a game of Battle Line with Olli. He had played perhaps once before and commented that this time he actually had some clue about what he was supposed to do. It sure seemed like it - the final score was 5-4 to me. I won, but it was close.

More people arrived, but we decided to wait a bit before starting the long game. I wanted to play Land Unter and that's what we did. Last time I got heavy beating, this time I did much better. Final scores were 10, 10, 6, 4 - and I had 10! I got eliminated once, but got the best score with the only six-point hand. My biggest pride was, however, scoring four points and the lowest card bonus with Ilari's hand. With that hand, Ilari got two points and Olli and Vesa only one. Curious though, everyone but Olli got the lowest card bonus with that hand. But it really was no surprise: the hand was heavy with cards valued over 50, which means a lot of collecting, but in a controlled fashion. I've come to notice that that's the best possible hand for me. I will collect lots of cards, but with a hand like that, I can choose which cards I want.

Then we played the big one. Age of Steam. I took 20 minutes to explain the rules, but I think I could've been a bit more thorough. Next time I'm teaching the game, I'm going to show more examples of track building. Well, at least I demonstrated a very effective use of urbanization action on the first round, making me a two-link route that produced my initial income. I had played a practise game with myself earlier and that was easy to see. I think most of the time it was rather obvious who would win the game. My railroad network was the most extensive, which was proved in the end of game, when I counted score. I had built 26 tracks, while Ilari had 18, Olli 14 and Vesa only 13.

About tracks... After my initial link between two cities on the middle western side of the board I started expanding my routes. Ilari and Olli had started on the Pittsburgh side and built a mess of tracks around Cincinnati. They had lots of doubled connections and a rather complicated mess of tracks. I joined that fray, making a rather long route - almost from one board edge to the other. Vesa kept on the sides a bit, making his own routes on the NW corner. My routes were the best, I guess - Vesa's routes were a bit smallish and Ilari and Olli didn't have long distances either. But then again, I knew what I was doing from the beginning, which advantage the other guys didn't have.

In the end, I had 27 income and seven shares out. My total score was thus 86 points. Vesa was second with 58, then Ilari with 54 and finally Olli with 47. Olli had least shares out, only six, but perhaps he should've used more money. He had the most money for a while and in the end commented that the money didn't feel too tight... I guess if he had used more money, he would've scored more income. Eventually everyone got their companies on the positive side, making money - I think it took about four-five turns. I issued shares four or five times (I think I issued two shares once and one share on the other turns) and on the last time I had about balanced accounts and I was just taking money to build even more. Nobody was even close to going bankrupt. Well, Vesa didn't have much money most of the time, but even he could build track. I had warned everyone to be careful with their money and they did budget their funds. I think that if you are careful and nobody plays evil tricks on you, staying in the game isn't difficult. I used to set aside the money I knew I would need in the end of the turn and adjust that amount if it would look like I would get more income.

So... my verdict is that Age of Steam is a brilliant game. I think it's the best new game this year. It's a bit longish, our four-player game took a bit over 2.5 hours with the rules explanation. That's not a huge problem and I could think of playing it in our board game club (but perhaps not with certain people). I'm definitely looking forward to playing it again.

Vesa had to leave after that, but fortunately Juho came to replace him. We had four players again, which was the perfect amount to test one of the unplayed games: Dia de los Muertos. It's a tricky game, and it turned out to be perhaps the most difficult card game to explain I've ever played. It's so much unlike anything else. The card mix is untypical and the rules quirky. Yet, it turned out to be a rather entertaining game. The first game was definitely practise. I made some mistakes with the rules (well, I knew the rules, but we just forgot to act on them). Me and Juho lost, when both teams got three Muertos+food pairs. Ilari and Olli just had three food cards extra... Well, we played another game right away and that went smoother - I don't think we forgot the gift exchange once! This time me and Juho won 4-3. Dia de los Muertos is a clever game and it definitely feels like a deep game. I think there's much to learn and I like the game enough so that I want to learn it. This one will see more play, I'm sure of that.

So, that's it. I had to rush to meet Johanna in time when she got from her work (she's interning in the university library, same place where I was last Summer - though she's on different department doing different things). Oh, and I think I saw rock legend Wayne Kramer, who had played last night at the very place where we were playing now. He just played guitar, not games... Still. Neat.

Until the next week! Then I'll bring Amun-Re - people liked Age of Steam but felt it was a bit too long and heavy for that environment. I agree.

I played Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective yesterday and had great fun with it. The case wasn't obvious - after an hour of reading clues I still had no decisive ideas who did the case. Re-reading some of the first entries finally produced the small detail I had missed which solved the case. Ok, now let's count the score: of the four quiz questions, I had three right. Of the bonus questions, also three (and the one I didn't know was rather obscure). That gives me 95 points. Which is nice. Then comes the minus points for taking more time than Sherlock Holmes. Ok, it took me 43 moves to figure it out (and that doesn't have some re-reading old clues), Sherlock took ... WHAT?! ... FOUR bloody moves! Ok, so that's -39 - times five! So, my final score was -100 against Sherlock's 100. Well, I guess that goes to show who of us is the master detective and who isn't...

Still, it was rather brilliant way to spend some time. Hunting for clues in the newspapers was fun, as was moving around London in search of the murderer. One thing I learnt was to make even better notes. Write everything down! That's the only way to find out the essential, case-solving clues amongs all the rubble. Anyway, it's a wonderful game. Unfortunately it has rather limited replay value. Well, I'll just have to hunt down the expansions when I'm finished with these cases...

First issue of Spielboy is out. The site is a strange parody of Playboy, with articles about board games. And yeah, there's some (semi) nudity - with games, of course. Strange.

I don't care much for the nudity (I read it for the articles), but it seems like a funny idea. We'll see how the future issues turn out. Even if the idea doesn't turn you on (ahem), check out Spielboy Cribs. Frank Branham (designer of Dia de los Muertos and apparently a rather creepy guy) presents his home, which is full of rather interesting decorations. It's definitely a must see for goths!

I went and placed an order for Dice Games Properly Explained by Reiner Knizia at Amazon. It should hopefully hit my mailbox later this week.

Spiel des Jahres 2003 award winners have been chosen! Winner of the main award is Alhambra by Dirk Henn. Best children's game is Viva Topo! by Manfred Ludwig. Congratulations to the winners!

Finnish visitors can go read my Finnish review of Coloretto. English visitors can just read on.

Coloretto is a rather nice little game. It's a very simple game, one of those one-minute rules games. You can teach the rules in a minute and once you've heard them, you can throw away the rules - they are useless. It's really that simple.

One of the most obvious comparisons is 6 Nimmt!. Both games are relatively quick to play, easy to teach and offer surprisingly tough decisions. Coloretto is quicker to play (but of course you can always play only one hand of 6 Nimmt! if you want to) and perhaps a bit less random.

So, what's it about? Playing colour cards in rows. There's a row for each player and each row has room for three cards. Players must either add a card or take a row. If you take a row, you're out of the game until everyone has taken one. Then the play starts again with everyone in the game. This goes on until a "last round"-card comes up. It's placed as the 16th card from the bottom of the deck, so it's a bit of a surprise when it comes up.

Players try to collect sets of same-coloured cards. If you have one card, it's worth one point. Second card gives two more points, two cards of the same colour are worth three points. Third card gives three more points and so on up to six cards, which is worth 21 points. There are seven colours, nine cards of each colour, three wild cards and a bunch of +2 cards which are simply worth two points.

The game is pretty much about being nasty to your opponents. If Player X collects pink cards and there's a row with a pink card, you basically want to add a card of a colour Player X hasn't yet collected. Why is that - because you score points for three colours only. Rest of the cards give negative points. So, you'd want to focus your cards on three colours only. Of course, other players being rather nasty creatures, you usually end up with cards of at least five colours.

And this is what makes the game fun. If there's a row with one good card, what do you do? Take it and accept the lower score? Or perhaps draw one more card and hope you get something good to add on your row - of course, if you get something useless, you will use it to poison a row that's good for someone else. But then again, you're probably going to be a victim of similar tactic yourself. Unless, of course, your opponents draw a card that's good for you!

It's complicated and you'll have to think about it a bit. I've found out that wild cards are usually worth taking. If there's an wild card on an empty row, it will be taken immediately. Rest of it less obvious, and that's why Coloretto is such a good game. It's very accessible, but makes even non-gamers analyse a bit what they are doing. Despite that, it's very quick to play: after players are familiar with the game, 10-15 minutes is enough for a single round. Of course, usually one round is not enough...

Bruno Faidutti has selected his games of the year. Winners this year are Coloretto and Age of Steam. I still haven't tried Age of Steam myself, but I'd say these were quite good choices. At least Coloretto is a wonderful game.

It was a bit quiet day today, as we only had three players. Well, we still played many delightful games.

I was eager to try even some of the Mü & mehr games. So, we tried The Last Panther, which turned out to be a nice little trick-taking game. It is also rather nasty game, as in each deal (with three players), 190 negative points are distributed and only 95 positive points. The game ends, when a player gets more than 200 negative points. We played twice, the games took about 20 minutes each. I'm still eager to play Mü, but at least I got to try the deck. I'm a bit unsure if I like the illustrations or not... Some are fine, some are less ok.

Manu had bought himself 6 Nimmt!, and we played so he could learn the rules better. We played half-tactical variant - that is, using 34 cards that are dealt randomly. Picking up cards sounds boring. This way it was far from boring. I managed to gather loads and loads of cards, which wasn't nice.

Mamma mia! is also a good game and also a game Manu had bought. It was great fun, once again. Manu won with six pizzas, while I got four and Ville just two. I also got one of the pizzas very easily: I was the starting player of round two, the pile had already 12 ingredients and I had the 15+ pizza in my hand...

Two games of King Lui were played next, reinforcing my opinion of the game. It's rather hilarious little filler. The games took about ten minutes and were reasonably even. I lost the first game to Manu by four points and the second game by five points. Which was rather annoying...

And if we played King Lui, then surely we played also Coloretto. This time I was able to win the first game, while the second game ended up as a three-way tie. Funky.

The afternoon was finished with a game of Sticheln - how could we not play it? Manu was rather good at this, it turned out - rarely a beginner is able to compete from the start. After three rounds he was in the lead. Fourth round was +8 for me and -2 for Manu and we started the fifth and final round with me in five-point lead. It was rather exciting. We both made some mistakes and I had already given up the hope, but with the last trick Manu got his misery 8 and the game ended as a draw: me and Manu had +26, while Ville had -26. Which wasn't fair, but that's life.

Sticheln is still my favourite three-player card game, but The Last Panther isn't that far. They are rather similar, which of course tempts me to compare the games. The Last Panther feels a lot more chaotic; it's easier to keep control in Sticheln (at least with three players). Or it means I don't know how to play the panther game... But the following of suits gives more opportunities to throw the big -50 hitters on other players while keeping them in your hand is also more dangerous than keeping big misery cards in Sticheln.

But, I'm still rather anxious to try Mü and Dia de los Muertos. Maybe next time! I'm waiting for five players (or at least four) to try Mü and four for Muertos. I'd rather have a good impression of the game on the first time.

For the Finnish readers: I've been writing lots of translations lately (that is, all the card games in the order, except Mü). Here are the links:

Coloretto, Dia de los Muertos, King Lui, Land Unter, Mamma Mia!, 6 Nimmt!.

I'm definitely translating the Mü games as well. Let's see if I bother to do Amun-Re or Age of Steam. I guess the need isn't that dramatic (but in the other hand, who needs Dia de los Muertos rules, mine being probably the only copy in Finland), and it means a lot more work and effort. But I like rules translations...

Anyway, some reviews (both in Finnish and English) are coming. I'm probably writing something about Coloretto sooner or later, with King Lui coming right after that.

I had a pleasant almost-weekend at Jyväskylä (from Thursday to Saturday) and as usual, games were played. I took with me the games my mother had bought (Africa, 6 Nimmt! and Vom Kap bis Kairo) and some of my new games (Coloretto, King Lui and Amun-Re).

Coloretto was a huge success! We played 14 games and had lots of fun! I'm assured it's a great game and definitely one of the best games released this year. It's definitely on my DSP vote list. Everybody liked it, it was easy to teach and fun to play. It's the perfect little filler game.

King Lui got a bit less enthusiastic reception - we played only eight games. But I like it too. It's not as good as Coloretto, that's easy to see. Coloretto is much more tactical, the decisions in King Lui are less interesting - many times the games were effectively won or lost on the last round by big, random point swings. Some of which, of course, might be removed by experienced players. Still, Coloretto is a more elegant game than King Lui, while King Lui might just be a bit more "fun" with it's colourful theme. Both are certainly games I'd introduce to non-gamers.

Two games of Amun-Re were played and those were the most interesting games of the weekend. I was really curious what the game would be like. I had a good impression of it - I like the components (even though the board could be better) and the theme. The game turned out to be rather good as well. The system is logical and elegant. The rules left some unanswered questions, but when we played our second game we had little problems with them.

I won both games and I think there's definitely some strategic depth to the game. The good doctor has designed an interesting composition of mechanics. I especially liked the idea of two kingdoms and the partial board reset. I even used it to my advantage in the second game. Getting lots of money seems to be essential, as buying lots of pyramids (which is the easiest way to get money) is very expensive, thanks to the escalating prices.

I have heard complaints that the power cards are unbalancing, but it wasn't a problem in our games. Some are better than others, sure, but I think everybody could get as many cards as they wanted most of the time. Of course there's the luck of draw, but I don't think it's too random.

So, I like the game and I want to play it more to find out if that holds. Our first four-player game took two hours and the second game with only three players just an hour. The box says 90 minutes, which might be just about it with five players. I want to try the five player game, but at least four players was better than three (which wasn't bad). Looks like another good game from herr Knizia!

First: I'm now a proud owner of Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective. I got my game from the post office yesterday and I'm really looking forward to an opportunity to try it - it looks absolutely brilliant.

Then: we had a very nice game session yesterday. Six players were there, but not at the same time. Most of the time we had four or five players, which was nice.

Zèrtz - while waiting for more people to arrive, I taught Zèrtz to the first one to arrive, Vesa. We played three games and as expected, they were total slaughter. Hopefully the game felt intriguing even though Vesa didn't stand a chance. At least I felt the game was charming even when I got beaten...

Land Unter - then it was time to check out the new games. We started with Land Unter, and played two games. First game ended with very even scores: 5, 5, 5 and 6. We did forget the bonus for the player with lowest water level... Next game was a bit more interesting, scoring-wise: -1, 10, 11, 12 - and guess who had the -1! I was eliminated three times! I suck! No matter which hand I played, I was collecting water level cards all the time. I don't get it. It really left me wanting for more. I'm not a glutton for punishment, but I'm sure I could do better with more practice. I do like the game. The decisions feel similar to 6 Nimmt!, but the game is a bit more complex. Of course that means it isn't as elegant and thus I think it is inferior game, but it's good fun nonetheless. The theme is quite useless, but I do like the sheep. They're cute.

Coloretto was the next game we tried. It turned out to be a rather excellent game. It seems like a trivial game, but actually it's rather subtle. Make no mistake, it's not a serious or difficult game, but as a filler it's brilliant. I also like the cards, they're quite pretty. The pink chameleon card reminds me of the latest album by Kuusumun Profeetta. That's nice.

King Lui - because of Bruno Faidutti's review I was expecting something similar to Coloretto. Yes, the connection is there, but they are clearly distinct games. King Lui isn't as brialliant as Coloretto, but still rather entertaining filler. The theme is great, it inspires funny remarks about how King seems to enjoy his wine perhaps a bit too much... It's a fun filler game, which I can recommend to friends of simple card games.

Mamma Mia! - after another game of Coloretto, we played Mamma Mia! With three people who hadn't played the game, we made a wise decision to play a demo round. Mamma Mia! is a difficult game to figure out, but I think the demo round made it clearer. It was the second time I played and I already did much better, having clearly figured out the game. Unfortunately I didn't win... It was fun, still.

Sticheln - two guys left and there were only three of us. When you're playing card games with me, that usually means Sticheln and this time was no different. First round was rather typical: I had 7 points, Ville (who had played once, I think) had -9 and Juho (playing his first game) had -13. The final scores were, in same order, 47, 30, 17. It's always a pleasure to see people score big minuses in the first round but then during the later rounds figure out the game and end up with positive scores. Sticheln has the right depth. There are tactics that are rather subtle, but most of it can be learnt during the first game.

It's definitely my favourite three-player card game right now. My only worry is that soon my Sticheln deck is unusable with more than three players: I'm wearing out the 0-8 cards while the other cards have no use at all. Goes to show I should've used card protectors!

Oh, something I forgot from the previous entry: plastic sleeves. I'm faced with the problem again. Do I want to keep the nice boxes or do I want to put the cards in plastic sleeves? It's always rather annoying. It would be great to keep the games in their boxes, but then I'll worry about wearing out the cards. I guess I can't help myself: next time I visit a game store, I'll be buying 500 card protectors for my new games...

Points go to Mü & Mehr - the box is big enough so the cards fit in even with the card protectors on.

Our Adam Spielt order arrived today! It was a bloody hard work, hauling that 13.9 kilos of games in a fairly large box all the way from the post office (what, it was at least 500 meters or so!). It took exactly a week for the package to arrive, which is what I expected.

They seem to be quite thorough. When I opened the package, I found another, smaller package and lots of paper. It's like those Russian dolls, you know... However, there wasn't another, even smaller package inside the second package (well, there was, but there were plenty of them ;-)

And there was everything. All the lovely games we ordered... I quickly went through the contents to see that everything was included and then started to open my games. I opened them, looked at the cards (as most of them were card games) and then did what was necessary for the big box games: ziploc bags!

Both Amun-Re and Age of Steam needed few ziploc bags. I punched out counters and enjoyed them for a while. Amun-Re looks neat! Age of Steam is more in the let's say functional school of design, but I think the board looks quite good.

Then I started printing out rules and player aids. All games except Age of Steam, King Lui and Dia de los Muertos needed rules and Age of Steam got, among most others, player aids. But I'm missing lots of rules for Mü & Mehr - I only have Mü. I hear the others games aren't as good, but I'd like to judge them myself. If you have an English or Finnish translation of the rules, send it to me. There's also Geekgold available...

So, now I'll just have to play all these. Fortunately, tomorrow is Wednesday and I'm heading to Klubi to play games and then Thursday I go to Jyväskylä and there I'll be able to play some more games. That means I'll be able to try at least the card games pretty soon, I hope. I must find out if Amun-Re is suitable to play with my mother (I've played meatier games with them, so I guess it's fine), but Age of Steam will have to wait for later opportunities.

I'll let you know what I think of the games as soon as I get to play them!

Because I'm trying to spend my time doing something else than studying, I got this idea of weekly game afternoon. I chose afternoon, because Johanna is lucky and has a job and thus isn't home and I can then be back home when she is. The first of these Wednesday meetings was today and it was attended by two other lazy gamers (and fourth came for a quick visit).

After testing the Prototype Game we played Fluxx. It's fun when played occasionally and this time wasn't different. The game was over soon enough and I won (we had Draw 4, Play 1 for a while and then came Draw 5 - well, I drew "at least 10 cards wins" Goal and won). Which was nice. Fluxx isn't a bad game, but it is a strange game.

Three of us playing, only card games available. The obvious choice was Sticheln which is probably my favourite three-player card game. Olli caught up the twists of the game pretty quickly, Vesa was a bit slower. I played the last two rounds really badly, thus losing the game to Olli. Vesa was way behind us, but he did take -15 on the first turn before he figured out how the game works.

Bohnanza was a bit more even. When the scores were counted, Olli and Vesa had 18 and I had 17. Darn. Bohnanza really isn't the best possible three-player game, I think. More players means more trading opportunities means more fun.

Last, we had to play a quick game. 6 nimmt! was an obvious choice. I hardly explained the rules and off we went. We had time to play four rounds, after which I had almost the 66 points needed. I was in the lead after three rounds, but the last round went really badly and I lost. Darn again. Olli won yet again.

That's it. I would've hoped for more people (to play Tichu, mostly), but three was fine. Maybe we'll have more next time - at least there are several people who are interested and who might have free time. Next week we'll be hopefully playing my new games...

That's it: I'm not a rpg gamer anymore. I finally sold my Wraith books, thus removing most of my rpg collection. I'm left with Kult 2nd edition rule book, which I'm selling as soon as possible (so if you're interested in buying it for, say, 15 euros + postage, contact me). EDIT: It sold immediately, so there's no use asking for it anymore.

I guess I just finally figured out I'm not a roleplayer (I gave up live action games already years ago). Roleplaying games can be fun, but they take tremendous amount of effort and compared to that, board games are easier to organize and more fun to play, really.

(Later addition: this is entry #200! Neat!)

I just noticed I didn't play a single real-time game during the whole May! Well, June started well: yesterday was the last meeting of board game club this Spring. Unfortunately I played only two games.

First thing I played was Mare Nostrum. It almost was the only thing I played: the game took about five hours! That's ridiculous. The group of players did include Suvi, one of the more thorough thinkers of the club (legends mention a game of Princes of Florence that took over three hours). Still, faster players wouldn't have made a big difference.

End game. That's the problem. Of the five hours, at least three were end game. You know, the bloody fight. More than once Egypt was just about to win the game next turn, unless someone prevents it. That happened few times by military action and few times by economic blocking. Repeat that with my Carthage and Rome. Greece was never that close to winning. Babylon wasn't either, except on the last round. Previous round had seen a surprise attack on Greece, taking over Athens/Sparta region. Babylon drew over 20 cards that round and was actually able to build either two other wonders or the Pyramids. Unfortunately Rome was able to win too and Egypt had the political leader card, thus by our agreement the game was declared a tie between Rome and Babylon.

The game was mostly reasonably entertaining before the end game battles began. Still, my previous game with Johanna was a much better experience. After that it really wasn't worth it. If the game took two or three hours, it'd be great. Now I'm more than reluctant to play it. Perhaps some kind of time limit and a scoring mechanism could be devised: if the game isn't over in three hours, it ends and the situation is scored to determine a winner.

That may sound like extreme measures, but if there's something I hate in games, that's games that go on and on without a definite end. That's why I don't like Cults Across America, which seems like such a charming game. It just doesn't end when it should, but instead goes on for another few hours. That's why I can't love Mare Nostrum, even though I somehow want to. A game that takes that long a time to play cannot be played in the board game club and other than that, I have few opportunities to play long games and I have other long games to play (Die Macher being the best example).

So - I'll try it again, hopefully with better results. If it still takes too long, I'll either develop a time limit system or try to trade the game away for something better.

Then I played a game of Space Beans - the game I had always played wrong (circulating cards to left, when they should go right). Turns out it really isn't any better if it's played correctly. So, it's a good game, when played real fast, but about 45 minutes our game took were a bit too much.

Reading what I've written, it seems like I'd like to whine about how long games take. I'm really not that impatient... Or what the heck, I am. Guilty as charged, but I want to play lots of games and only way to do that is to play fast.

1. Sunda to Sahul (1)
2. Go (10)
3. Sticheln (6)
4. Zértz (-)
5. Tichu (4)
6. Taj Mahal (2)
7. Mexica (-)
8. Samurai (-)
9. Bohnanza (8)
10. New England (5)

The latest issue of The Games Journal is out. There's an interesting article on objectively rating games and another about control vs luck/chaos in games. Go take a look!

You can find ilmaisia porno kuvia (free porn pictures, that is) that way. Or not, actually it's just an experiment among the Finnish weblogs - how well will that blog rank for "ilmaisia porno kuvia" on Google after a month.

To keep this even marginally game-related: I played Mare Nostrum today. I'll explain it all tomorrow, today I'll just say Mare Monstrum is quite a good name for it...

Blake Haber contacted me and sent a link to his web site about Go. It is highly recommended; he has some very interesting and untraditional Goban designs. There's also some information about Go books and a nifty movie clip, which is very much worth looking through.