October 2003 Archives
I played a solo test game of Funkenschlag today and found out the following:
* The game is quite fun. It's a bit like Age of Steam, but without the mandatory expenses. Gaining money is also easier. If you don't get money, you can't expand, but it isn't a slow fall towards bankruptcy.
* I don't think you can win in the early game, but you can definitely lose the game in few turns. The game doesn't allow for mistakes and I think some kind of beginner handicapping system like the backup share issues of Age of Steam could be useful.
* I was thinking about playing a short game Sunday, but I think normal game might be better. At least in my test game the winner was very obvious very soon. In the longer game, there's better chance of catching up: someone might get eight cities quickly and then struggle to get more.
* I might add a second end condition: the game ends when someone gets 20 cities or in three hours, or something like that. It can be done with a alarm clock so that nobody sees how much time is left. When the clock (ie. the cell phone) beeps, current turn is finished and then winner is declared. That way the game can't last forever.
* My new map was quite neat. It was great to be able to drop out the useless pieces and only use the necessary parts. The pens worked great and it was very easy to wipe the board clean after the game.
So: I'm very much looking forward to play the game Sunday. It should be a blast.
I uploaded some Crokinole pictures.
Here's a bonus picture of my Crokinole board for the readers of this blog.
I wrote a review of PitchCar in Finnish. I also wrote a review in the Geek, but that's not yet available. See the PitchCar Geek page, maybe it's there when you read this.
Anyway, I think it's a brilliant game. It looks spectacular and is great fun to play. It should work with just about any crowd - the car theme might turn someone off, but try to coerce those people to try the game. It's simply so much fun to flick the discs. The rules are very easy, too, the game can be taught in about thirty seconds.
PitchCar is a game of accuracy. Brute force is not needed - brute force tends to make the discs fly out of the track. Accuracy and the skill of using the rails to your advantage are what makes you succeed in this game. It's not too serious though. The worse you play, the more fun you'll have. There's always lots of cheering and fun involved.
I definitely encourage everyone to try it. PitchCar, or Crokinole, which is basically a more serious and strategic version of the same thing. Review is coming later.
I played some more Attika today on BSW. This time it was a three-player game, which I managed to win by building my 30 buildings first. It was a much longer game than the two before - 70 minutes as compared to the 20 minutes games I played earlier. One of my opponents played for the first time and was rather slow, so it could've been faster. I'm very slowly starting to figure out possible tactics and strategies, which is nice.
I also played two games of Go on KGS. First I won a Finnish player, then lost to a Russian guy with a very aggressive style. My style didn't work with his style, which I should've probably figured out faster than I did. After these two games, my rank graph still doesn't make much sense. But it looks like I might be settling near the 20k mark.
First: entry #300! Yea!
I've got a new Funkenschlag board now. I printed out the tiled map from Geek, glued it on cardboard and then covered it with plastic. Johanna was a great help in that process, she did the difficult part of getting the plastic on the cardboard without air bubbles... Thanks to her, I now have a much better board for the game.
I'm really looking forward to play the game next Sunday, when the board game club meets.
I played two games of Attika at the Brettspielwelt a moment ago.
Let's start with BSW - it's changed a lot since I was there last time. For the better, I think. It seems slightly easier to use now, the menus are more understandable. Attika user interface was easy enough to use. Having a big screen sure helped, on a smaller screen the scrolling would probably be very annoying.
And the game, then. I had no clue how to play before the first game and I must say I'm not much wiser now. Players compete in placing building tiles on a slowly expanding hex board. The board features resources, which help building. Players can also toss in resource cards from their hands, but replenishing them is slow. Another thing to take care of is building chains. If you have a stone-cutter, you can build fortress for free. If you have fortress, you'll get towers. You just have to build then adjacent to each other. Which might be difficult.
The building chain thing is the most interesting part of the game, I think. Also the expanding board (players get to place a new board section after they go through one of their four piles of tokens) is an interesting twist. The goal of the game is to connect two shrines (difficult) or place all buildings (easier).
The rules are fairly simple. I read through a condensed one-page rules which I found from Geek and that was enough. Learning the BSW user interface was another easy obstacle. Figuring out the proper way to play the game will remain a challenge for a while, because that isn't obvious. Watching how my opponent played, the building chains seem to play a big role.
I'm not super enthusiastic yet (some have flashed the Spiel des Jahres possibility already!), but I'm quite sure I'm buying Attika at some point. I'll try to get some more plays at BSW and I'll also be able to test the real game at HelCon as my Essen-visiting friends have both bought the game, I hear.
The Sumo Counter Hall of Fame is a hall of fame for modern classic boardgames. Modern means anything younger than 50 years. Current list is indeed quite impressive.
Anyway, they're voting in two new games this year. Everyone is invited to participate - the more voters they have, the better are the results. Voting form is online. There's a list of games and you can choose ten, which you'll then have to put in order of preference. You can also suggest new games for the next year's vote.
I haven't even played Funkenschlag yet, but I'm determined to create a better map for it. The plastic map and the crayons are just too annoying.
Today I did some tests to figure out how to make a better map. To be more precise, what material to use to cover the printed map which I will mount to a thick cardboard.
I bought some self-adhesive plastic roll ("kontaktimuovi" for Finnish speakers), which seems to be the best material to coat the map with. The problem was to find a suitable pen that would leave an impression and would be easy to remove. I bought two overhead projector pens, permanent and non-permanent and tried them.
The non-permanent is perfect, it seems. It doesn't wear off with light rubbing (so touching it is ok unless you sweat a lot), unless you add water and then it comes off easily. Which makes it a rather good solution. Pack of four pens in correct colours (the typical black, red, green and blue - finding yellow and brown will be harder but I've heard the game is best with four) with fine tip is relatively cheap, too.
Now I'm just wondering if I should do all this before I play my first game or after. If the game is bad, I've lost some money and lots of effort (but then again, I can sell the game and the new equipment helps to raise the price a bit so my loss would probably be just the effort). In any case the better components should make the experience better - it could be easier to "sell" the game to other players if it has nicer components.
I played two games of Korsar (also known as Pirat) today. According to Boardgamegeek, it's one of the oldest Knizia games available. It was quite fun, very simple and light. Still, good fun, mostly because it went so fast (one round in about 10 minutes). There's some tough decisions to make, and a nice but paper-thin pirate theme. What else is needed?
I've been playing computer games recently. The reason is my new computer and it's better performance. I've been enjoying Silent Hill 2 (very scary), Neverwinter Nights (very Dungeons & Dragons) and watched Johanna play The Longest Journey. All are rather entertaining, but still - I like board games better. Of course, no board game is as scary as Silent Hill, so there computer games snatch a small victory.
I've also played Combat Mission 2: Barbarossa to Berlin. Now there's a genre where computer games are far superior. I don't mean war games - there are plenty of good war games like Hammer of the Scots. I mean simulations.
Combat Mission is very accurate. If you, for example, shoot at a tank, there are plenty of factors involved. Of course the basic stuff as the angle of the armor plates and the hit angle and their effect to the armor penetration. Then if you hit and penetrate the armor, the effect of the different ammunition. Is it explosive or just armor piercing? If it's just armor piercing, does the shot hit a crew member? Maybe an explosion will break the armor a bit, making a piece of armor plating inside the tank fall apart, again killing a crew member. There's a ton of detail like that.
Grognards will love such detail, of course, but I doubt few of them would have the patience and the time to do all those calculations by hand. Computers by the virtue of their nature compute all that easily. And if you don't mind it, you don't have to. Proper fog of war sure beats Columbia blocks. It's great how you can save the game and continue later. You can play against computer, if you don't have an opponent - you can also find opponents all around the world for e-mail play. And so on - the benefits of computer simulations should be obvious.
I find there's need for both types: high-detail simulation played with computer and simpler board games. I think board game war games should focus on easy and streamlined rules and smooth game play first and leave detailed simulation for computers.
I played some Go both yesterday and today. Yesterday it was another game against Ilari, today I played against Olli who is ranked 8 kyu. We had a large crowd, five people! While I played my game, first Ilari and Juho played a 13x13 game and then Juho and Ari played some 9x9 (Ari was a complete newbie, Juho was new to the larger boards).
My game against Olli was rather interesting. Not knowing his ranking, I took four stones of handicap. The game was rather exciting and ended 61-63 for Olli. A final mistake cost me the victory, when a smallish area ended as a seki - I'm glad I got even seki, I was in danger of losing many stones there. It definitely showed I'm not expert with tesuji (ie. killer moves), but overall I'm very happy with my performance. The result was much better than I would have expected knowing Olli's ranking.
Could it be I'm improving?
The board game club season opened well yesterday. We had about 15 attendees, which is a good amount considering our premises.
It wasn't completely ordinary event, though. There was a photographer from the Finnish home journal Kotiliesi, taking pictures for an article that they are doing. It'll be a great article! He took some pictures of me with games and then photographed us playing games. It was quite neat, especially as he brought some proper lights and for once we had good lighting!
I went at the club early to set up PitchCar. It definitely attracted people and many games were played during the afternoon. Lots of shouting and fun, it seems. I guess I should bring it next time, as well.
I took the first opportunity to play Alhambra. I played it twice during the meeting and after those two games I can see why it won the Spiel des Jahres this year. It's a good game. There's a healthy dose of luck, so some might dismiss it because of that, but it didn't spoil my enjoyment.
Alhambra reminded me of Union Pacific. You can either take money, getting more potential to buy something and get extra turns, or you can buy buildings, losing money and thus opportunities, but gaining points. If you build, the cost is obvious: you lose money. If you take money, there's also a cost: you spend a turn without getting points while the scorings and the end of the game get closer. You'll have to maintain a close balance there.
After Alhambra it was Crokinole time. It was my first game with four players and proper rules. I ended up playing five games (we played four rounds or to 100 points, whichever came first), all of which were brilliant fun. I think that's the best way to play the game, it was simply so much fun. The Crokinole board got less use than PitchCar, but PitchCar is easier. I'm sure Crokinole board will get more use when people know the game better.
Since we had four players already in two pairs, I wanted to try Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, the latest addition to my collection of weird trick-taking games. It was great fun! It's a tricky game and compares to Dia de los Muertos in weirdness (and in quality - both are very good games). Very weird, that is. The tactics take some getting used to. The scores can vary a lot from few points to hundreds of points so there's some luck involved, perhaps, but no more than card games usually have.
We got a fifth player after that and played Biberbande. It made it's first appearance in our club and got a good reception. It was well-liked and why not - it's a funny and entertaining game. Good entertainment for a low price, as usually with Amigo card games.
And that's it. I was quite happy with the games yesterday - Alhambra and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde were very positive experiences and four-player Crokinole was great fun.
My mother gave me A House Divided as a birthday gift (my birthday is today - I'm 23 now). It was on my wish list (AHD, Wallenstein and Battle Cry - a bit militaristic list), so it wasn't totally out of the blue.
And it sure looks good. Phalanx Games has done a great work on the new edition. The first edition looks a bit plain compared to the new edition. But Franz Vohwinkel is good, there's no doubt about it. The cardboard counters were very properly punched and rather gorgeous. The map is beautiful and sturdy. The rulebook is neatly divided into basic rules, advanced rules and optional rules. The dice are the final piece of evidence of quality: there's three blue dice and three grey dice. Beautiful.
Rules were quite easy to absord, I don't think there will be trouble playing the game as long as I forget the advanced rules. It's possible to make the game quite realistic and detailed by using all the extra rules. I'm glad they are optional.
Hopefully I'll be able to try it soon.
I wrote a review of Space Walk (in Finnish). I gave it two stars (mediocre), but found nothing wrong in it. It's a nice little Mancala variant with some neat twists and a rather solid basic movement mechanic, but how long it can entertain you is another thing. It's a good game for the whole family, so if you see it cheap somewhere, my recommendation is to buy it. I wouldn't, however, see the trouble of especially hunting it down.
I've been doing some updating on the Finnish side of my game stuff. I'm going to pick up my Adam order today and new games means new translations. I've already done Crokinole, PitchCar and Alhambra. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde is done, but not yet HTML-ized.
When I went to Jyväskylä last weekend, there was not one but two Crokinole boards waiting for me! Ismo had done great work, they were beautiful. One was a round board made of all birch veneer, other one was octagon-shaped with base of MDF board (which meant a nice two-colour look). I took the round board home with me, because the finish wasn't ready on the octagonal board (it hadn't been waxed - there was a nice shine from the lacquer, but it was a bit sticky).
So, now I have a Crokinole board. The other one I will sell so Ismo will get money for the materials (about 50-60 euros, if someone is interested). His work was a birthday gift for me. No wonder the boards sell for 150 euros! It had taken a lot of time spent in the garage working on the boards to get them done, I heard... So making 100 euros per board isn't probably enough in long run, if you think about the time it takes.
Of course, I have nothing to compare the board to, but the waxed surface (car wax!) is smooth and the discs slide well, so it feels alright. I'm just looking forward to get some more games on the board...
Finnish gamers have made their choice: Puerto Rico is the best game they have played during the last year. 125 voters, 222 games. Puerto Rico was listed by 47 voters, so it was quite a victory. Second spot went to Carcassonne with 37 votes.
See the best games as a geeklist. The Finnish result page has the whole 222-game list. It should be fairly readable to non-Finnish users.
A new issue of The Games Journal is out. The articles didn't impress me much, but this time the game reviews were the best part of the journal. I like the two-person dialogue of the Hellas review, it's something I could try myself, too. Mitchell Thomashow's review of Tom Tube has some quite interesting pondering in the beginning.
