July 2003 Archives
We had another pleasant game session Yesterday. I started with Erkka, trying out a prototype I've been thinking about lately. My aim is to create a card-driven two-player tile-laying game that feels like Go. Not an easy task and the current version of the game simply sucks. Too bad. I'll try to fix it a bit and try again next week.
That was, unfortunately, the only game Erkka had time to play. He's now gone for good, as his vacation is over and he'll be working next Wednesday. I taught Olli and Ilari to play Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. Both liked it a lot, Ilari even borrowed the game from me to play it more.
As I had bought the Poker dice, I though we should try them. Appropriate game to try them was Liar Dice (not Liar's Dice!), as described in Dice Games Properly Explained. That is, a player rolls the dice and claims a Poker hand. Next player can accept or challenge. If there's a challenge, the dice are revealed and whoever was wrong, loses a chip. Each player has three chips, once they are gone the player is out.
If the player, however, accepts the claim, they get the dice. Now they can re-roll any number of them and then must claim a higher hand. That's a bit nasty, if someone lies to you and you happen to get a really poor hand of dice with a high claim to beat. Tough luck. Moving the dice around was a bit complicated, but the game itself was ok. Ilari was the first one out, then it came down to a duel between me and Olli for the last dice - and I won!
It's a fun game, but I think Liar's Dice is much better. Of course, if you only have five (or even three) dice, it's not a huge problem to choose which game to play...
Ilari wanted to try Mü and I was curious to see how it works with just three players (last time we played it with five, which is supposedly the best amount). I thought it would work, the chief against the other two players sounds like a good match-up. With only three suits to the deck, it was an interesting experience.
I thought it was good fun, actually, but then again, I won the game hands down (final scores: 153-26-19). You see, I got a bit lucky... The game lasted only three rounds (thanks to the variable ending - it's nice, but I think I'll raise the lower limit a bit). I was Chief twice and won both rounds, gathering 24 and 25 triangle points and 40 and 50 points in bonuses. First time I had five sevens and second time four - and there's only six of them in the deck! Sevens made thus an obvious trump choice, as they guaranteed I won at least five or four tricks and would get lots of points, too.
So, the luck of draw can be heavy in the three-player game, but in the other hand it's fun - I never got good hands in the two five-player games we played. Being Chief was fun and winning the hands was even more fun! I'll definitely play three-player Mü again.
Even though Ilari didn't like Mü much (he seems to dislike most trick-taking games), we then played Wimmüln. It's a simple trick-taking game played with the Mü deck. The twist is that players make two predictions about how many tricks they will collect and if the predictions are correct, bonus points are scored. It was fun and a close game, too. I was in the lead the whole game, but on the last round, Olli came from behind and beat me by one point! How frustrating!
As the last game of the day, we played a game of Bohnanza (well, 2/3 of a game to be honest). I thought I was winning, I played a very strong game on the first pass of the deck. However, on the second "round" I obviously fell behind and lost the game. Oops. It was a fun game, anyway.
Next week we're going to play Go. I'm going to teach Ilari to play and anyone who's interested to learn to play the best game there is can join us!
I went and ordered Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper from Leisure Games. I've wanted it for long, but finally got around to actually buy it. I could've ordered it from Fantasiapelit, but I didn't. Compare this: the game costs about 12 euros at Leisure Games and about 14 euros at Fantasiapelit. If I lived in Helsinki, I'd march into Fantasiapelit and buy it (they have a branch here, as well, but they don't seem to be able to get stuff from the Helsinki main store).
The postage costs from Leisure Games (UK) to Tampere (Finland) are 1.60 pounds. The postage costs from Helsinki (Finland) to Tampere (Finland) are 9 euros... Ok, the prices are really not comparable (credit card vs cash on delivery), but still - the total price is, and I'm definitely buying the cheaper one. Especially as Leisure Games will probably deliver the game to me in few days. Fantasiapelit would probably take few weeks...
So, anyway, I'm looking forward to getting the game. I'm interested in Jack the Ripper myth (mostly because of From Hell comics), as is Johanna.
But, now, food - a very lovely mixture of macaroni, minced meat, tomato puré and ketchup. Almost tasty but rather cheap.
Tactic has new tin can games. These games are small travel games, and the set includes Poker dice, Yahtzee, Dominoes, Rummy and Bingo. The Rummy tiles look bizarre and Yahtzee is totally useless, but I went and bought the Poker dice set, mostly because of Dice Games Properly Explained and the way it mentions how many games are better when played with proper Poker dice.
They are quite neat. The dice cup that came in the box is totally ridiculous and the game rules are useless - they describe only the very basic and boring version of the Poker dice game. Also there's a small notebook for recording scores. But the dice are ok. The price is fair (6,90 EUR), though I'd like to buy just a bunch (say 30) of dice without the extra fluff...
I'm thinking about buying the dominoes, too. They're better-looking than the other Tactic dominoes (these are black with white dots and the others are white with black dots). But are they too small, that's the question...
Olli came by to trade Mythos cards. We also played a game, which I lost. Good for Olli, as it was his first attempt at deck building. I have to say my deck was easy on him - my Great War veteran tried to join the Black Pharaoh Brotherhood and then travel to R'Lyeh to summon Cthulhu and that takes a long time...
Another very pleasant session, anyway. It'd be better with more players, but two-player Mythos is decent fun and definitely amongs the better CCGs. We also placed an eBay bid on a display box of boosters for the game. The price is low, but the shipping can be fierce. We'll see about that, if we win. I'd expect the price for 18 boosters to be fairly nice after the shipping.
Cheapass Games website has a page full of interesting Kill Doctor Lucky variants. There's the one I've been thinking about - the one in which players can kill each other. I should try some of them one of these days...
(via nimrods)
Another pleasant session of Wednesday games! I started with a game of Balloon Cup with Erkka, who was first to arrive. He also won that game... While we were at it, Olli and Vesa arrived. They played a game of East-West while waiting for us to finish.
Olli had to leave for a while, but before that we managed to squeeze in a game of Coloretto. The first victory of the day for me! I got clean collection - six, five, three and two single cards, covered by a +2 card. I definitely like the wild card variant (colour of the wild cards is decided immediately), it balances the game.
While Olli was away, we broke into pairs of two (Ville had arrived) and played Balloon Cup and Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. I won the Confrontation against Vesa, a newbie. I played good side and managed to sneak Frodo past the guards. Mostly because of Vesa's lack of understanding of the game - I believe my next game against him would be more difficult. This one was already close.
Then we played something I have wanted to play the whole summer: Mü. After the initial confusion we got the game going smoothly. First game was won by Ville, who got 121 points and got lucky with the end-of-game card draw (we used the variant by Frank Nestel, where game ends if someone has more than 110+card drawn * 10 points). Second game was more close. Erkka won with 175 points - scoring 74 points on the last turn.
I was never a Chief and perhaps once the partner. I just didn't have good enough cards most of the time. Thus, my success was low during the whole affair. Seems like a difficult game to play well, really - scoring many tricks is very difficult unless you have very good cards. I'm satisfied with the game, but not enthusiastic about it. Still, I guess it's the best trick-taking game there is for five players.
After the two games of Mü Erkka left and we played another game I've been meaning to play every time: Tichu. Olli and Ville had played before, while Vesa was a newbie. I got Olli as my pair.
One of the reasons I like Tichu is the pleasure I get when I manage to make a particularly good play. This game offered that pleasure again. My best play was on the last round, when Vesa opened with seven card straight. Ville beat it with another and was already smug about it, when I blasted the only bomb during the game and got that huge pile of cards. I went on to actually win the round, thus spoiling Tichu call from Ville.
So, Olli and I either won or lost. Counting score as usual, we won 360-340 (we ended the game on time). Using Richard Garfield's trimmed scoring, which puts the emphasis on placement, we lost 32-40. I don't know which one is better, I'll have to keep on trying them both. I think Garfield's scoring is focused on the most important part of the game, but ditching all the card scoring feels a bit odd too. Can't make up my mind about it!
The trimmed scoring is definitely better when teaching new players, as it's less fiddly. And I don't really care about the scoring cards when I play, I just try to get out as fast as I can - that would justify the trimmed scoring, too. Dunno. Opinions, anyone?
I took some pictures. My photo gallery now has new pictures of Balloon Cup, Time Control and Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation.
Terminal City Gamers have posted an interesting interview of Don Bone, the designer of Sunda to Sahul, on their web site.
I've written a Finnish review of Time Control. For you English-reading folks, here's what I wrote in my BoardGameGeek review:
I got a review copy of Time Control and I was really looking forward to play it. The concept sounds great: time travel is an exciting theme and I like real time games. Sunda to Sahul, for example, is a daft game in the turns mode but one of my favourites when played real time.
Unfortunately Time Control didn't deliver what it promised. There are lots of problems. First, let's start with what can be seen. The components. While they look pretty good, they are very flimsy and of poor quality. I don't believe they last repeated playings well. However, they are functional enough and that's good enough for me. I won't whine about poor components, if they get the job done and the game is good.
The rule book is totally useless. Not only it is poorly organized, it has lots of errors. There's a revised rule book available from the company website and it's much better. However, it's also rather confusing. If an organized rule book can't make the game easy to understand, the problem must be in the game, not the rule book.
So, what's it all about? Players control a bunch of time agents, who run around in the past trying to create timewaves that cause problems for other players and remove timewaves that cause problems for their owners. All action happens in real time and any action can be interrupt. The interrupt can be interrupted with the original action, which means a time control duel is needed.
Both players choose a token (each player has a set of 1-21 and a special token) and higher number wins. Both players have the opportunity to demand a re-duel once, so it's really the highest token on the third round that wins. Winner gets to perform their action. This is also the way how fights between agents are resolved.
It's a bit confusing, really. Each player has 12 agents, all of which can perform multiple actions, so there's lots of stuff going on. It takes a long time, too. But that's not the biggest problem. You see, when your agent leaves home to wreak havoc somewhere else, you leave a gap in your defenses. The agent can't come back to defend the home base. So the player who takes the initiative in attacking is in the worst position, as other players can now attack him or her.
The best tactic for each player is to defend their own time zone. Stay home and wait for the other players to fight it out, then attack the weakened opponents. The problem with this approach is obvious. If all players follow it, nothing happens. I find this to be a huge problem. I don't mind avoiding certain way to play if it breaks the game, but surely it can't be the best way to play the game?
Another issue:
So, to tell you the truth: I'm writing this review after one turn of one game. That's all I've played. Surely, that isn't much. However, what can I do - my friends didn't want to play another round and neither did I. I think that tells us something about the quality of the game. I do believe my opinion is quite valid even though I haven't played the game many times, as I never want to play the game again. Thus, it can't be a good game. Thus, my rating of 2.
It's a pity, because the theme of the game is neat and I like real time games. This one just doesn't do it for me without lots of fixes to the game. It doesn't really inspire me to try and fix it, either.
I've done my duty and voted for the Deutscher SpielePreis awards. My final list of five candidates were Age of Steam, Amun-Re, Coloretto, Balloon Cup and New England.
This time we had a much smaller attendance. I arrived at 11.30 am and met Erkka, who had also just arrived. Fortunately I had planned to play two-player games! We started with Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. We played two games, and both of us won one game. We both won with the good side, which is strange. Last time I played, dark side won both games. It was a good thing, though, I was feeling the game was leaning a bit on the dark side.
I was reminded how good the game was, but Erkka wasn't excited and thought it was a bit dry. Next we played a game of Balloon Cup, which Erkka liked more. I think it's a very good two-player game, definitely.
While we played Balloon Cup, Juho arrived. It was time to play Time Control. The idea is neat: real-time time travel action! Unfortunately the game is practically unplayable. We played one round, which took us over half an hour. After that nobody wanted to continue the game - it was that bad. I'll probably write a review of it today. I've rated it as 2 in the Geek...
Time to play something more entertaining: Sticheln. Which probably wasn't hard to guess... In the end it was a competition between Juho and Erkka for the second place. Juho got it with two point lead. I had almost 30 points more than both of them.
Then Erkka left. Juho seemed to interested in The Confrontation, so we play it. Seven games of it, actually. After dark side won the first four games, we gave the good side the handicap cards. Even after that I managed to win one game as dark player. To balance it out a bit, we both managed to win one game with the good side, using the handicap cards.
I think the dark side is easier to win. The good side takes more tactical eye, as their resources are weaker. One thing that is interesting about The Confrontation is how the tactics evolve after repeated playings. After both of us had played Pippin several times in the front line to scout the mountains, I made a Pippin trap by playing the Warg in Moria. Oops, there goes Pippin.
It's a clever game, which just gets better the more you play it. There's a nice element of bluffing and logical thinking. And it's fast to play! My games with Erkka took about 15 minutes each, with Juho I played seven games in about 75 minutes.
It's been a while since I played Go at the Kiseido Go Server. Well, I did today. For some reason my rating has crept up while I haven't played, so I found out I was rated as a 17 kyu player. Which is kind of funny, as I'm 28 kyu at Dragon Go Server and probably somewhere in between in real life.
My first opponent played a better game than I, but resigned after a tactical mistake lost him something like seven stones. I bet he would've won the game, had we played it through.
My second opponent was 14 kyu player and I was expecting a loss from the start. Well, I lost, but it was only 3,5 points. Had I played a certain situation better, I could've won. So that was close, and now I feel like a good player. Yippee. Now I just have to work on my Dragon rating to make it represent my skills better... I'm definitely better than 28 kyu.
I wrote a review of Fluxx. Finnish readers can go and read it.
Fluxx is a very simple game to teach. The rules are "Draw one card from the deck, play one card from your hand". That's it. No victory conditions or anything useless like that.
The point is that almost every card changes the rules in some way. Players draw more cards, play more cards, have a hand size limit, whatever. Cards also introduce victory conditions, called Goals. Goals usually require a certain combination of Keepers, cards which are kept in front of the player. For example, there's a goal of making toast. Thus, the player with Toaster and a Toast wins. Or the mind's eye - the player, who was The Brain and The Eye wins.
That's all very simple. It's also very chaotic. Players have no control over it. There's no way to do any long-term strategic planning or even a short-term tactical planning. You just play whatever you can and try not to play Goals your opponents can fill. Games can take anything from two minutes to two hours.
Some people hate the game. It has one of the highest standard deviations in the BoardGameGeek database. That's no surprise. People who take games lightly like it, those who are more serious about their games hate it. Fluxx certainly requires a good crowd. I wouldn't play it with anybody. With good opponents, it's a fun pastime - there's really little matter who wins the game.
But it's not a good game. I tend to dislike games that are more pastimes than games (for example The Great Dalmuti, I'm not the only one who prefers Tichu, which is similar except that it's an actual game), so there Fluxx scores negative points. However, even though I wouldn't suggest it, I'll certainly play a game of it with the right people and I'll even have fun while doing it.
I managed to try the Balloon Cup for the first time yesterday. The rules were easy to figure out and teach. The game reminds me a lot of Battle Line - players play cards on flags or hops to claim them. The differences are that in Battle Line, claiming the flags is enough - in Balloon Cup, the hops are just a means to an end. Also, in Balloon Cup you can play your cards on the opponent's side of the hops...
That makes the choices non-trivial. Basically it's very simple: low cards on your plains and opponent's mountains, high cards on your mountains and opponent's plains. But there's usually more than one place to play the cards and deciding the priorities makes for some tough decisions. Still, it's a light game and you can have problems with bad luck of draw. I expect to play this one a lot.
My game collection has grown with two new games. I picked up Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation and Balloon Cup from the post office today. They were my reward for translating the Dragon Ball Z card game rules. I'm looking forward to trying Balloon Cup as soon as possible, it seems like a rather interesting game. Confrontation I already know. Both will probably get played Wednesday.
Oh - one thing: you know the new car smell, which is such a delight and an essential part of buying a new car. Well, new game smell isn't. Most games, which have a distinct smell, smell disgusting. German card games tend to smell bad when they are new. Balloon Cup makes a new record - I know of no other game that smelled so vile.
I've written reviews of King Lui and Sunda to Sahul in Finnish. I also redesigned the games front page. But that's all in Finnish.
You English-reading users can read reviews of King Lui and Sunda to Sahul I wrote for BoardGameGeek. I also wrote a review of Battle Line, mostly because I wanted to reach the BoardGameGeek Top 10 Most Active Reviewers list. There I am, on rank eight with my ten reviews!
Ilari organized a board game club meeting yesterday and I dropped by to play a game of Age of Steam. Ilari, Aaro, Robert and Tuukka joined me. Ilari had played one game with few weeks ago, the rest were newbies.
This time the game was very different from the previous game. Last time I won the game easily - this time it was a bloody struggle, which I eventually lost. First, the five player game felt like a real conflict. Our previous game was a perhaps bit too easy for me, but still it hit me as a surprise - my plans were foiled many times by aggressive moves from other players. They are nasty people!
I kept some records during the game, that is the balance of every player each turn. This time the economical side was tougher. Of the seven turns, I spent the first four on negative balance and then managed to get two turns of +1 and on the last turn ended the game with +4 balance. Most players had four or five turns of not making profit - except Aaro. For some reason he managed to play the game in a completely different way from the rest of us.
You see, in the end Robert and I had 10 issued shares, while Ilari and Tuukka had issued 12 shares. Aaro had only 6 issued shares. Needless to say, he won the game. I think the main point here was that he spent the least money on auctions. Ok, so he didn't urbanize or use any of the highly desired actions - I think he used production three-four times and had turn order once or twice. He built a fairly extensive track network - more than me and Robert, but less than Ilari or Tuukka.
Aaro was already making profit on turn three. In the end he made nine dollars with an income of 19. The final scores were Mikko 33, Robert 36, Tuukka 37, Ilari 45 and Aaro 53. So perhaps the conservative approach on spending money is a good approach... The incomes in the end of the game were from 17 (me) to 21 (Ilari), so no big difference there. In such a situation, issuing half of the shares other players have issued is a huge advantage.
I think I slightly prefer the four-player game at the moment. The five-player game is a ruthless beast. I'm not sure if I want to try the game with six players... Talk about the board being crowded! The game took about 2.5 hours, which I think is reasonable. Ilari complained about downtime, which seems to be a rather big issue with him. Generally the game was liked, I think. Well, I like it, at least... It's definitely my favourite new game right now, much more tempting than Amun-Re for example.
I played a game of Mythos. It's one of my favourite multi-player collectible card games. Olli had bought some cards and we played a game so I could teach him the rules to the game. We used two of my decks, as he had no decks of his own built yet.
My Mad German Inventor faced his Proud Prussian Submariner. I played The Great Epidemic deck with lots of undead and typhoid epidemies. Proud Prussian Submariner worked with Innsmouth folk and Deep Ones, trying to Stand Against the Order. The game ended when I was close to winning it as Olli's Submariner lost his marbles under an attack by a bunch of undead.
It's a fun game and I'm looking forward to face the decks made by Olli. New challenges! The two-player game is decent fun, but requires certain deck building style. Loading deck with monsters is an easy way to win, just blast your opponent insane, but that's not fun. Moderate use of monsters means better games.
It's already the fifth session of our Wednesday games (would be six, except I missed the previous meeting). This time we started with a game of The Last Panther from the Mü games. Well, we actually played just one hand, because then Olli joined us.
We started on the main treat, then. It was, of course, Amun-Re. Everybody was rather enthusiastic and we got a good start. After the Old Kingdom I was in the lead with 17 points, thanks to most pyramids on one side of the Nile and both of the temples in our game. During the Old Kingdom I was rather farmer-heavy, but felt like no farmers would be a better strategy in the New Kingdom - especially as the heavy farmer provinces didn't appear on the first round. It worked, except my camel money failed me almost every turn. I was still able to build lots of pyramids. Unfortunately, so was Ilari. Ilari had three pyramids in every province, I had four in one and two in the others. In the end we were tied and Ilari won the game, because he had one pyramid more.
It was a splendid experience. The game took 90 minutes and I'm quite sure that it will be less with experienced players. The guys thought it was rather good, even though the game seemed confusing at first. We played with open power cards, which I think is a good idea. It doesn't spoil the game and it makes it a lot easier. I don't have to explain every power card, I can explain them when they come up. When buying cards, it's enough to know in general what kind of effects there are. And they are all good in the right situation, so there's no risk of bad cards (useless cards, maybe, but all are good in the right situation).
Anyway, I like the game. I don't love it yet, but I believe my rating (currently 8) will go up when I play the game more.
Then we played a new game to me, Clans. In the first game I revealed my identity immediately (they said), but I was able to win the second game. The game seems nifty, but it's abstract in a wrong way. The game is simply a bit boring, perhaps. I rated it as seven at the Geek. The secret identity deal makes it more interesting, though, and I can definitely imagine myself playing the game more. I could even ask for it, but I wouldn't buy it for myself. Anyway, it was fun.
Then we played a game of everybody's favourite twisted little trick-taking game, Dia de los Muertos. This time Erkka was only one who hadn't played it before. Fortunately the rest of us didn't have too much advantage - we're all total newbies in this very difficult but rather pleasing game. I played with Olli and we lost. We got more souls, but couldn't get enough food. Erkka and Ilari won the game 3+3 - 3. Bloody tie-breaker wins... I'm thinking there's lots of those in Dia de los Muertos, as one side seems to usually gather lots of Food cards.
Olli left and the three of us played Vom Kap bis Kairo. I haven't played it much with my gamer friends and I wanted to introduce it to Erkka and Ilari. It's a difficult game for a newbie, there's little clue what you should do. They got it fairly well, but I managed to win it nevertheless. I don't know, they didn't seem too enthusiastic. But I agree, that is the game seems to lack something.
Olli came back, but Erkka and Ilari left. Since we had played Battle Line last time, I thought it would be appropriate to try East-West, which is a dice version of Battle Line. It can be found in the Dice Games Properly Explained book. Basically there's just three flags and the players create competing five die Poker hands. I had 30 dice with me, which is the best way to play the game, you can just roll the dice and place them on the table, no need to write the results down. We also used a doubling die, as suggested by the good doctor in the book.
It was fun! Almost as good a game as Battle Line, but perhaps a bit more relaxed. It took five minutes per round, and we played five. I won four and because of good doubling, the final results were 14-4. My proudest moment was an idiotic double in a situation where I was rolling my last die and I needed a five to win the game, otherwise I would lose it. Olli accepted the double, of course - and then I rolled the five and won the game. Which was so neat! Dice can be random, but randomness can be a lot of fun sometimes.
I think East-West could be an entertaining game when played for money. Say, 10 or 20 cents for a point... Anyway, it's a game I will play again.
It's also well written and a delightful, easy read. Highly recommended for anyone interested in dice games. The only other dice game book I've read pales in comparison to this masterpiece. (Dice Games Properly Explained
I got a copy of Time Control by Thompson Industries. Looks nice, except the tokens, which are very flimsy and thin. And the rulebook, which is plain (and needs errata desperately, I hear - fortunately there's a new rulebook available at the Geek). But I'm ready to forgive the quality of the components if the quality of the game itself is good... Time Control seems interesting. It's a real-time game about time travelling. I guess we'll just have to try it next Wednesday, then...
I wrote a post about my June games to the Spielfrieks list and Doug Orleans replied to it about Sticheln. I wrote a lengthy reply and thought I'd post it here as well.
Doug wrote:
I played this with 4, and liked it a lot, but then tried it with 3 and it fell pretty flat. With 5 suits in the deck and only 3 players, there are always going to be at least 2 (sometimes 3) suits that no one cares about, which kind of bothers me. Do you remove one suit, or do you think this isn't an issue? It actually seems like it would be best with 5, but I haven't tried it.
I don't think there's an issue. Yes, there can be three neutral suits, but why is that a problem? I don't think it is. You can use those cards to take tricks and save the misery cards of other players for those moments when you can slip in the poison so it hurts. Well, actually, I think in a way it's rather boring when two players choose the same misery colours, but in the other hand those situations require slightly different tactics and that's always refreshing.
I guess it's just that the first time I played, it was a three-player game and I liked it. Then I played a four-player game. It was more chaotic. With only nine cards to a suit in the three-player game, it's easy to count the cards in your misery colour (which, I think, is the minimum demand for playing Sticheln well - counting other colours isn't that necessary, but if you want to avoid misery, count them). I like the control I have over the game. I rarely collect any misery cards except the one I start with. If I do, it's usually a risk I've taken and which has backfired on me or then I get stuck with bad cards in the end of the hand.
With more players, that sweet control is gone. There are more cards in your misery colour, so it's harder to keep a count on them (in general I don't like counting the cards, it takes too much concentration). I guess the game becomes more "fun", when players are more easily forced to take misery cards. But I really shouldn't dwell on this issue too long, because I've only played that one game with more than three players. Still, they way I feel is that Sticheln with more than three players is probably a good and fun game, but Sticheln with three players is a delicate exercise in tactics. It gets interesting and tight when the players learn how to not take misery cards.
Doug again:
Please contradict me if you have more experience with these games.
I haven't played Hattrick or the other Sticheln games. I'm interested to try Hattrick, but then again, I've got other games that offer tough competition for my rather limited time.
I usually profile games according to the best player amount. "Let's see, we have X players. What's a good game for X players?". Sticheln is the three-player card game. With four players, I'm looking forward to a game of Tichu or Dia de los Muertos. Next time I have five players for a card game, I'm definitely trying Mü. There aren't that many competitors in the three-player card game category... Many games can be played with three players but are clearly better with more players.
BoardGameGeek keeps getting better and better. Latest new gadget is a list of game rating correlations with other users. That way you can know who other users enjoy similar games as you do, so you can perhaps value their opinions more. That's rather neat and pretty useful. You can also get a list of recommended games to play with someone. That's less useful, but neat anyway.
There's this guy with something like -0.35 correlation with me - but his taste in games is, indeed, horrible...
- Age of Steam (-)
- Amun-Re (-)
- Tichu (5)
- Sunda to Sahul (1)
- Dia de los Muertos (-)
- Go (2)
- Sticheln (3)
- Taj Mahal (6)
- Land Unter (-)
- Samurai (8)
A new issue of The Games Journal is out. As usual, the articles are top-notch. The best article in my opinion is the review of Age of Steam.
Spielboy has also received some small updates.
