November 2003 Archives
Gang of Four claims to be the number one card game in Asia. Well, that might or might not be the case, but it's origins do lie in the Oriental game Choh Dai Di, which is played on a regular deck.
I think Gang of Four is a good version of Choh Dai Di, because it makes the rules easier - Chinese people seem to like complicated rules, all sorts of tricky things like "finish the game playing twos and other players score double points". Mahjong is chock full with rules like this. Which is nice, but makes learning the game a real effort.
Also, Gang of Four deck is different enough from the standard deck (compare to Tichu, which has a standard deck + four special cards). Six cards of each number also causes more Gangs of Four, which means more fun!
As a side note, it was pleasant to see Pagat update after almost two years of silence. There seem to be more advertising now, but I can live with that. Pagat is such a quality resource it would be a shame to see it die.
As typical, we played Go. I played ten games, mostly pretty fast 13x13 which is the greatest fun in those surroundings. I won quite a few of them, too.
As our these days mandatory card game, we played Gang of Four. We played a six-round game with three players, and it was quite fun. Despite what some might say, the game works well with three. The switching of play direction is somewhat confusing and I might drop it from later plays. It's more confusing than interesting.
Also, we didn't quite figure out the values of the combinations. It isn't really obvious from the rulebook, which leaves out some crucial information. Or no, it is there, but not explicitly stated. More detailed examples of combination ordering would be useful. I'll definitely fix that with the Finnish rules.
I also picked up Kogge from Post office. It wasn't a completely free review copy, but a fairly good deal anyway. The game looks home-made, but interesting. Unfortunately, the rules are a bit of a muddle. The game seems to be rather complicated, but it might be only the rules. I'll try to work it out and see how the game plays. I'm interested, anyway, and it's always fun whenever Finland is mentioned in a game (one of the cities in game is Turku).
I tried Gang of Four today, at the game web site. It was pretty fun and as with Queen's Necklace the system worked well.
The game was pretty much as I expected: an easier version of Tichu. The problems are pretty much the same, how to empty your hand as fast as possible being the main idea, but the game is little less complex. There are fewer different combinations, no partnerships, easier special cards, simple scoring, all those things work to make Gang of Four easier to play and thus more accessible.
I like Tichu more than Gang of Four - it's nine versus eight on the Geek scale. Both are good games, and if you play irregularly or with random people, Gang of Four might just suit you better.
My game today started quite slowly, I lost few rounds in the beginning. Then I got it all working better, and managed to do pretty well. I didn't win a single hand, but usually ended up with just few cards. I think I took the multiplier two from holding more than seven cards only once or twice. So I'm quite satisfied with my first game. I came third, with a quite distinct point spread (something like 15-25-65-100).
It sure didn't take long before we played the two-player game of Queen's Necklace. I was a bit worried when Johanna got this look of slight terror when I explained the rules to her, but eventually it all turned out well (especially when she smoked me 340-160). I agree - the rules aren't the most elegant ones I've read. All the special cards make it a bit complicated to explain, but I think I just need some practise explaining them.
So, how was the two-player game like? Fun, as games with Johanna usually are. Still, I wouldn't recommend Queen's Necklace to someone looking for a game for two, unless they are really enthralled with the theme. There are better two-player games out there. But if you already have Queen's Necklace, you can definitely play it with two players. I thought about removing some cards, because we felt we had lots of cards and managing them was getting tricky, but I'm not yet sure about it. However, I'm sure we will play the game again.
I decided to try the online version of Queen's Necklace. Days of Wonder has these brilliant web sites for all their games, with forums and tips and extra stuff for the games. Queen's Necklace, Fist of Dragonstones and Gang of Four also have online versions. They aren't free (dollar a month for each game, it seems), but if you buy the game, you get a web card with a access code that let's you try the game for free for one year. You can also play without buying a game, but there's probably some limitations (I don't know what).
Anyway, I tried the system to try Queen's Necklace and found it pretty useful. It's not as good as Brettspielwelt, but the user interface is much, much easier. Of course, the game selection is more limited. But anyway, the system works well and I'm quite sure these games are not coming to BSW any time soon.
The game! It's about making jewels for the French court in the time before the Great Revolution. Alexandre Dumas and all that. Courtiers, kings and queens, musketeers... All the ingredients for great stories. The game looks good and rather refreshing. The pink and white colour scheme is rather girlish, but in a good way. I can see this game appealing to non-gamer girls - at least Johanna thought the game looked interesting. The components are great, as it seems to be with all Days of Wonder games. The cards (110 of them) are tarot-sized, that is very large. As with other Days of Wonder games, they include blanks you can use to make your own stuff. There are some tiles, which are very thick (3 mm!), some golden rings to use as markers and what's best, a necklace! The necklace is pretty meager - leather string and a fake crystal, but still, it's a nice detail.
Players collect gems and other useful cards, until a merchant card arrives. There are three merchants in the deck, evenly placed so that there are three sales during the game. When a sale comes up, players choose how many gems to display. All gems are revealed at the same time and the player with the most of each gem type (there are four types) scores those gems. The score depends on two things: fashion and rarity. Before the game begins, fashion is randomly chosen. Most fashionable gems get +30, the second most fashionable gems get +20 and so on. The same kind of process is done after gems are revealed, but then the amounts of gems are counted. The rarest gems get +30, second rarest +20 and so on. Value of gems can thus be 0-60. Players try to display the most fashionable gems and as little as is necessary to get the majority. Display too much, and the rarity suffers, display too little and you can't sell.
Gems are sold and each player scores the value of the gems they can sell. Game ends after third sale, and the winner is the player with most money. Cards are acquired with different money. Each player has ten ducats to use each turn and five objects (gems, utility cards) to choose from. Each item has a price range. When the card comes into play, a ring marker is placed on the highest price. Whenever someone declines to buy the card, the price is lowered. If nobody buys the item, after four or five rounds it's removed. The system is rather clever and forces some tough decisions, mostly whether to buy to get something or to prevent your left-hand neighbour from getting something even better.
The utility cards are an interesting bunch and will take some practise to figure out. There are musketeers, thiefs, forgers, alchemists, cardinals, King and Queen and so on. I already mentioned the rings, which allow players to sell more gems. King can prevent a sale of one gem type (King doesn't pay), Queen allows players to take cards before nobody else has an opportunity to buy them. Musketeers protect from forgers and thiefs. If you get three, you can also steal the Queen's Necklace from it's current owner. Yes, the famous necklace... It's a card, and it works against the King. Player with the necklace card must wear the necklace so everybody knows who has it. It will cancel the King's effect and the player of King card must pay 50 point tribute to the holder of Queen's Necklace. That's quite heavy, considering I won the game I played having about 250-300 points.
The game was rather entertaining, even though I wasn't completely sure of what I was doing. There's a certain learning curve, but it's about one game, I'd say. So don't play Queen's Necklace hoping you'd figure it out the first time you play it. Second game should be better, at least I think I'll know better next time. I will definitely try the game again, it was short (about 15 minutes with three players, probably bit more played off-line - box says 30-45 minutes) and fun.
It's for two to four players. I have now tried the game with three, and I think it will work with four as well. How it works with two remains a mystery. I'll probably play it with Johanna sooner or later, considering how she liked the looks of the game so I'll let you know. If the other Days of Wonder games I got are this good, they're doing well.
I did my first live TV bit today. It was fun, we talked about board games. It was quite light, just five-ten minutes or so and therefore didn't delve deep into the subject, but still, I had a good time and I think board games got a bit of good publicity.
Then I visited Safe Haven to pick up some Days of Wonder games. So, now I have Pirate's Cove, Mystery of the Abbey, Queen's Necklace, Fist of Dragonstones and Gang of Four - that should be all their games. My task is to review them and translate the rules.
I have opened the boxes and leafed through the rules of every game. I don't have much to say about the games yet (well, I've played the earlier DIY version of Mystery at the Abbey, which was fun), but one thing I can say: the games look absolutely gorgeous. They all have very beautiful components, Pirate's Cove stood out especially. We'll see about the game play, but I definitely have a good feeling about the games and that's always a good thing.
I'm especially curious about Gang of Four and how it relates to Tichu. After reading the rules, I'd say Gang of Four is a bit easier, which I think is both good and bad. Well, we'll see about that!
Here's what I wrote about Flaschenteufel on Spielfrieks. It provoked a reply from Joe Huber, the author of the original Games Journal review. He told that the new edition changes aren't just cosmetic - some cards have changed colour and their scoring values have changed as well. It's not a huge change, but something you might want to notice.
I noticed Plenary Games is distributing the beautiful new edition of The Bottle Imp in the States. I just played the game yesterday, for the second time and first time with the proper scoring rules and I thought I'd share my opinion of the game with you, since despite being reviewed in Games Journal some time ago, many of you might not know this gem.
My opinion goes something like this: buy it! It's a trick-taking game with a clever, literary theme that actually works. That's rare enough to warrant a purchase, but it's also a very good game.
That's all I'm going to tell you about the story. Read the rest yourself - it's an entertaining little story. What I wrote above is the part you must know to enjoy the game. The game is played with a deck of 36 cards, numbered 1-18 and 20-37. There's also 19 card, which starts as the price of the bottle (there's a beautiful small wooden bottle included). The cards are distributed to three suits - reds are the highest, blues are in the middle and yellows are the smallest cards. There's a player aid included which shows the distribution, so that's not too complicated. Each card also has a point value from 1-6 (typically larger cards are more valuable).
So, then it's just basic trick-taking. Suit must be followed, highest card wins dependless of suit. The trumps are the twist. Bottle is the source for the trumps, so every card with a number *below* the current price of the bottle is trumps. In the beginning that means cards 1-18. If trumps are present, highest trump wins. If trumps were used, the player with the highest trump wins the trick and gains the bottle. The winning card goes to show the new price of the bottle, so as in the story, the price of the bottle falls slowly (or not so slowly) down.
In the end of the hand, each player scores the number of points in his or her cards, typically something from few points to fifty points. Using trumps well helps to gain points, obviously. However, the player who got the bottle doesn't score any points from his or her cards. Instead they score negative points from the Imp's Trick. Imp's Trick is formed when each player discards a card in the beginning of the hand (this also helps to hinder card-counters). That's usually under ten negative points, but that's quite a lot still when the loss of positive points is taken into account.
If you are dealt the lowest card of the deck, you're doomed? No. There's the Imp's Trick, as I mentioned, but you also get to pass one card to each of your neighbours. Holding a low card like 1 or 2 makes you nervous, I can guarantee that. You'll be looking for the first possible opportunity to play the card under someone else's higher trump. Those situations can be hard to come by, especially when you have the 1 card in your hand. I think this part of the game works especially well with the story.
The game is for three or four players and seems to work pretty well with both. There are also two different two-player variants, one with an imaginary player and one with both players playing two hands, one open and one closed. I haven't tried those, but I suppose there are better two-player games around. With three or four, Flaschenteufel is great fun.
I've rated the game as 9 at Geek, with a possible raise to 10 coming it's way one day. I think it's the best trick-taking game out there and especially one with the best theme. I recommend you check it out, now the new edition is out and the game is easy to find.
We had another Go session yesterday. I did play few games of Go, certainly, but the main theme was Flaschenteufel. We played a rather pleasant four-player game. Flaschenteufel is fast becoming my favourite trick-taking game. The theme works well - I felt certain anxiety when I realised that I was never going to get rid of the 1 card I held in my hand without taking the bottle. While my immortal soul was in no danger, I did lose some points, which is kind of nasty too.
I wrote a lengthy bit of text on Spielfrieks about the game. I'll post it here, sooner or later.
I had a pleasant afternoon playing Go and Where's Bob's Hat? at the University.
I played Go against Juho, I think he's rather pleasant opponent. We played fast 13x13 games, 11 of them. I won six. We started with a handicap of three stones (I gave handicap and played white all the time) and ended up with one-stone handicap (no handicap stones, no komi). With no extra handicap stones, I won most games. With more stones, the games were pretty even unless Juho made a bigger mistake.
When there were three of us, we played Where's Bob's Hat? - I had brought it because I hadn't tried it yet. We were starting when a fourth player turned up, so four-player game it became. While we were playing, a fifth player came and then we played a five-player game after that. Both games were pretty fast, four and five hands respectively. I think Where's Bob's Hat? is a decent game, but doesn't really stand out from other trick-taking games. It's definitely on the more chaotic and lighter side (especially with four or five). I rated it as solid seven at Geek. Fun, but there are better games. However, I still have to try it with three players. Also, it would probably benefit from playing longer than just few hands.
I do like the cards, the hats look very neat. It's just a bit random, that's all. One reason for the randomness is the fact that the whole deck is not in the play. Anyway, I think I'm playing the game in the future as well, but it's not my first choice of trick-taking games.
I got two copies of the Kotiliesi with my article in it. The article is mentioned in the cover ("The best family games") and it's four pages long. Pictures are mostly about classics like Monopoly, Scrabble and Afrikan tähti. There's a picture of yours truly with a pile of better games (Puerto Rico, Amun-Re, Alhambra, Mü & Mehr, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Gargon and Sticheln). There are also big pictures of some new and interesting games. The article looks pretty good, I think! Every reader should be able to recognise Monopoly or Afrikan tähti, that should give a sense of familiarity.
I ordered Attika and Finstere Flure today (from Spielenet, I got an offer to join an order so large there are no shipping costs). Attika was a must-buy, while deciding over FF took a while. It's cool theme and neat mechanics combined with a reasonably low price made the decision quite easy in the end.
I posted some HelCon II pictures at my gallery.
There are also some pictures of Finstere Flure, Attika, Amun-Re, Age of Steam and Tigris & Euphrates, all taken at HelCon.
I wrote a Finnish translation for Flaschenteufel. It's available in HTML and PDF formats.
Oops! I just figured out (thanks to Mark Blanco's geeklist) that I've got an essential rule wrong. Players do not score all the points they gathered as negative points, just the Imp's Trick. Now that's a mistake...
I've found the perfect card game box: Drahtseilakt box (the game's published by ASS) is exactly large enough to hold the cards with protectors and the scoring sticks. Brilliant.
Bambus Spieleverlag boxes are also pretty good, they hold at least two games (especially as Bambus games I have have so few cards). So I can couple, say, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde with Dia de los Muertos and something else.
On a related note, I got Where's Bob's Hat today. Looks good, at least. I should know the rules - I translated them for Safe Haven earlier. I got the game from them, too, as a pay for my services. Which is nice.
I wrote a review of Top Speed (in Finnish). Here's what I wrote in Boardgamegeek:
Top Speed is a brilliant little game. It's somewhat of a sequel to Staupe's earlier Speed, which I haven't played. Can't say which one is faster, but at least Top Speed is really fast.
The concept is simple. Players have identical small decks with cards bearing colourful symbols. Players play these cards to eight rows, trying to place the last card in each row. Each row can have each colour and symbol exactly once, so you'll have to be pretty careful. Of course, at the same time you'll have to be really fast to beat your opponent. Game ends, when one of the players runs out of cards, so if you're faster than your opponent, you get an edge over him.
After the game is over, each row is checked for mistakes. If there aren't any, the last card is turned face down so the player who played is shown (players' decks have different backs). Each row has a score (from 1 to 5 points) that is awarded now. If there are mistakes in the row, the first mistake card is turned face down and crosswise. If the card is black, white scores this row and vice versa.
The game takes about two minutes to play. Maybe three. Understanding the Adlung English rules took much longer. Hopefully this review will make it easier for others. For it's low price, Top Speed is an excellent catch.
Sunday began with a game of Tom Tube against Ville, who hadn't played before. I won the game with a single point - it was very exciting and close match. I like the game, definitely.
During that game, more people arrived and Mikko K. joined us. I wanted to try Flaschenteufel (one of the Essen games I got), so that's what we played. It's a great game! It's also a rather good conversion of the Robert Louis Stevenson story The Bottle Imp. It's a trick-taking game. There are three suits, with cards numbered from 1-37 (except 19). The card mix is complicated, with red suit focused on high cards, yellow on low cards and blue in the middle. Fortunately there's a player aid included. Highest card wins. All cards below the current price of the imp bottle are trumps (it begins at 19). If you win a trick with trumps, the price of the bottle drops to that level (you can only sell the bottle with a lower price than you paid for it) and you get the bottle. If you die with the bottle in your hands, the price is your immortal soul. In the game, you don't have to go to Hell - you only score negative points. It was brilliant fun and the game went straight up my favourite trick-taking games list.
Then something heavier! Amun-Re, that is. We got us a five-player game of the pyramid-building and it was a blast. It was also a rather curious game, in which I learned that I've been playing the game wrong (limiting the power cards a bit too much), were temple level was four for the whole New Kingdom (and I was the only player without farmers) and the winner got four (4!) bonus cards in the last scoring. Crazy, but entertaining. Didn't mind my fourth place, it was entertaining enough.
Next up was the last scheduled game I was about to participate: Michael Schacht's Industria. It was rather interesting, even though it turned out we played one rule wrong (sold three tiles each turn, not four). I did fairly well, because I got some nice technology working for my favour. It's a good game, but doesn't reach the instant-buy list. I'd like to play it more, though.
Then it was time to pack for me. Well - we did squeeze in a two-round game of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde which my team unfortunately lost. Still, it's one of my favourites when it comes to trick-taking. It's certainly tricky.
And that's it. It was a rather marvellous weekend. Time spent with Tommy and Laura before the event was great, as usual and the event was better than last year. It was, in general, one of the best gaming events I've ever been to. Thanks go to Tommy for organizing it and everyone I played games with.
Saturday was the first day of HelCon II. We got up early, packed the car and headed towards the location. Which was quite nice, really! For once the space was open and had windows and even the bathrooms were quite clean. Of course, there was the limitation that all gaming must end before the alarm goes on at 23.00, but I think that was mostly a good thing.
Among the first three games I played were two four-player Crokinole matches. The Crokinole board got lots of use during the weekend, many people seemed to enjoy the game. I'm quite sure there'd be market for Crokinole boards in Finland. Selling perhaps dozen boards wouldn't be impossible - after that it would require very aggressive marketing.
While we played the first Crokinole match, people drifted in and I recruited a bunch of them to play Alhambra. It turned out we got a full game, with six players. Which was pretty good, really. There are few decent six-player games and Alhambra is definitely one of them. Sure, there's some downtime and the luck is stronger, but then again, if that's a large concern, dividing into two groups of three is always a better option. I though six-player Alhambra was fun, even though I didn't come close to winning the game.
I then had a moment to waste while waiting for a scheduled game to start - Top Speed time! I played three games with Tommy and won them all! I love the game!
Then it was Kniziathon time! We had a large pile of Knizia games to play (29 different titles) and lots of interested people. I thought the Kniziathon was a brilliant idea. I usually don't like to "waste" time playing the same games again and again when I can spend the time playing many different games, but Kniziathon solves that problem handsomely. I could play many different and interesting games!
The first one I played was Wapi, a re-working of Knizia's Goldrausch. The game was very quick and light, it took about five minutes for a five-player game. There's little control, but I thought the game was quite fun, really. Not Knizia's best work, by far, but enjoyable family fare surely.
A friend of mine had brought me some games from Essen and Drahtseilakt was one of them. I was eager to try it out and it fit the Kniziathon theme perfectly. It's a good trick-taking game, where both the player with the highest and the lowest card win points - red points for low, blue points for high. The catch is that for a perfect score, you don't want to win any points - points are bad. But if you do get points, then you can remove them with other points. Each blue point you get cancels one red point. So if you can keep your balance perfectly without taking any points - excellent! But if you make one mistake, you'll have to balance it. Of course, you can't probably get the exact amount you need, so you'll be needing more balancing after that - if that's not a good simulation of ropewalking, what is? There's an extra catch - if you're able to score zero points, you can erase your negative points from an earlier round. The game was fun, everybody seemed to enjoy it well. We played the strategic variant, which plays like a regular trick-taking game. Then there's the other way, which plays simultaneously, like 6 Nimmt...
We were six after that game, so the next game we played was Royal Turf. It's a delightfully light little game, which is one of the better six-player games in my opinion. The usual cheering and advising made the game a loud and fun affair, but unfortunately my success ended after the first race. But then again - I wasn't really looking forward to win the Kniziathon...
One of the Knizia games I was really looking forward to play was Tigris & Euphrates. I hadn't played it in ages after being a bit bored with it so it was a great pleasure to play the game again. Our game had one complete newbie and two players with little experience and then me with perhaps most experience, but all of that definitely rusty. It was an interesting game! Lots of fights and no monuments at all. So when the game ended, it wasn't really a huge surprise that the scores were low. However, I wouldn't have expected it to be that tight... The final scores were 6-5-5-5. Unfortunately I was one of the fives. Still, it was great fun to play the old classic again.
After that I decided my Kniziathon efforts were pretty much over. It was time to get some food. I got Tommy and Laura join me for a pizza. More energy would be needed to finish the day of gaming.
After returning from the pizzeria we found a game of Finstere Flure about to start with two players missing... Me and Tommy joined in. I got the Addams family pieces, which was neat! The game has a great idea - players have to run out of a dungeon as fast as possible. That would be easy, but there's a monster who's trying to eat you. The monster moves according to certain rules. It's always moving towards the nearest piece it can see. With careful planning, you can lure the monster towards opponent's pieces! It's great fun and the bits are totally cool. However, I wasn't completely thrilled. It's not a must buy, but a game I'll think about buying. Perfect solution would be if somebody I know would buy it.
After running through the sinister corridors, it was time for different kind of terrors. An Age of Steam session was planned and it was time to play this game of economical horror. Players were mostly newbies and none of us had lots of experience. I opted for the conservative money strategy and finished the game with least issued shares. That secured me the third place. With more money, I could have made more money, I suppose. Stefu, who studies economics and loves the game won. He had the best income (14-18-18-20-21), the average issued shares (5-6-7-8-9) and most track (14-15-16-17-21). Mika got on the slippery slope and had to issue more shares - I was rather glad I could avoid his destiny. Another Mikko, Mikko K. got a nice little transportation monopoly on the east edge of the board. He had lots of cubes to carry, but most of his business was only one or two links. He got second, though, and with longer connections would've won the game easily. Anyway, it was an excellent and very exciting way to spend about three hours. Everybody enjoyed the game and I for one wouldn't mind if Age of Steam would get played more.
The last game of the evening was a game of Attika. It was my first game with the real game and it was just great. Only thing I missed from BSW was the knowledge of which tiles I had used. Stefu had solved that on his game with black plastic discs, but I played with Tommy's game which didn't have those. When I buy Attika, I'll figure out something. It was fun and a close game. I lost, mostly because I was harassed by Mikko K. all the time...
And that was it for Saturday! We locked the place up at 22.30, only 30 minutes after the event was supposed to end and went to sleep around 00.30. That's quite good, if you ask me. Much better than playing until you're dead tired...
I started the HelCon II experience on Friday. The event began Saturday, but I since I was coming from a longer distance, arriving on Friday was a good idea so I could meet Tommy and Laura sooner. Evening was well spent at the Ryytty residence, filled with games, food, sauna and idle chatter.
They had bought the other Crokinole set made by Ismo from me and it was well placed on their living room table. Good placement. The first games I played were thus Crokinole matches against Laura and Tommy. Two games, one victory and one tie. What a nice way to start the weekend!
After dinner Laura left and me and Tommy started with two-player games. Two of them had been to Essen and Tommy had brought a ton of games with him, so there were many interesting games to try. We started with Hive. We played four games and Tommy won all of them. Once I was close to winning, but Tommy made a miracle recovery. The game is rather curious, and worth trying if you're into quick two-player abstracts. It's not a heavy game unless you make it a one, so it's quite good two-player filler if both players are familiar with the game.
Then we tried Tom Tube - after reading the Games Journal review, I just knew I'd like the game. Fortunately Tommy had bought it from Essen. It was as good as I expected. I also liked the race game aspect of it I didn't know of. You'll have to build a path and then race through it as fast as possible. We played three games and I won two of them - in my second victory, I made a good use of drifting through long lengths of tubes. Very good, and definitely on my "this game I want"-list. I'm not rushing to buy it, though, because I'm not sure if I'll have many opportunities to play it.
By then Laura was back and she wanted to play Constellation, another Essen oddity. Suits me. It turned out to be a good game, too. If you're good with IQ tests like the one Mensa uses, you'll do great in this one. Players try to find certain patterns in a 7x7 matrix of tiles. The tiles have three attributes (background colour, icon, icon colour) and each of the players uses one of those attributes to find patterns. So I'd be looking for patterns formed with tiles with the same icon and you'd be looking for patterns made by tiles with the same background colour, for example. Each turn you can swap two tiles, to make the patterns possible. I won the game, but then again I had probably the easiest attribute, the background colour. The game is a limited edition of 200 copies, so I'm not hoping to score a copy. Hopefully the game will be republished in greater numbers with better components - if that happens, I'm probably buying one.
Then it was time for sauna and after that, some more two-player games. I studied the rules of Top Speed and we tried that. Five games didn't take a long time - trying to understand the Adlung English rules took probably longer. It was a good game for me, as I'm pretty fast. I think I was faster to empty my hand in each game. I won three out of five. Top Speed is great fun and definitely worth the few euros it costs.
We also played a two-rounder of Isis & Osiris. Tommy hadn't played it before, I think, but I had - after all, it's the most-played game in our board game club this year! And for a good reason, too, because it's fast and fun. If it isn't fast, it isn't fun.
Metro was another new game for me. It was great fun, I like the complicated tile network that is created during the game. There's good amount of player interaction and luck involved. Metro isn't a great game, but good, solid fun nonetheless.
The evening was closed with a Crokinole match between me and Tommy. Keeping the board as the centerpiece of the living room surely creates a nice temptation to play just one more game...
Something quick before I start on the HelCon session reports: Greg Costikyan has written an excellent article on Chess and game design. All I can say is read it - it's worth the while.
My game website is a journalist magnet. During the last month or so, I've been interviewed twice for a magazine (Kotiliesi and ET-lehti - first is probably a bit like Ladies Home Journal and ET is not about extraterrestrials; it's targeted mostly for older (say 50+) women) and yesterday I was contacted by someone from TV. They want me on their Saturday morning magazine show (Lauantaivekkari) to talk about board games.
The Kotiliesi article is written by a journalist who's part of the Finnish Game of the Year jury, so she has a personal interest in games. It's very good article, mentioning designers like Knizia, Kramer and Teuber, the German game awards, Spielfrieks, Brettspielwelt, Carcassonne, Puerto Rico... It should also have pictures of me and games - they sent a photographer to our boardgame club meeting. The issue with my article is out 22.11.
The ET-lehti article focuses on giving parents and grandparents tips on giving Christmas presents to the kids. It has a strong family emphasis - I strongly recommend parents to play games with their kids. It doesn't mention designer games as such, but that would've been too complicated. I do suggest Villa Paletti, Lord of the Rings and Die Neuen Entdecker, all of which have been published in Finland. I also recommend games published by Tactic and Ravensburger in general. It's a very positive article, really. The issue's out in December.
The TV thing is related to the computer game exhibit currently in Helsinki. They wanted to find out, if boardgames are still being played despite the prominence of video games and surprise, surprise, they found my web site and got interested. I'm not yet sure what we'll be talking about, but at least they wanted me to bring some games. It should be great, too - even though I'm not going to be on my best, as I'll be spending the previous night in a rock concert. I won't be home before 1 AM, I'm afraid, and I'll have to take the 5.55 train to Helsinki to make it. You'll have to make sacrifices for your ideals, I suppose. Might be actually the first time I'll really seriously think about sleeping in the train... I'll let you know more, when I know more.
New issue of The Games Journal. This issue features untypical Essen raport from Mark Johnson, continuation from previous articles (Jonathan Degann's second installment in his series of game theory is particularly sweet), letters and reviews of Mystery of the Abbey and Isis & Osiris.
Our board game club had a meeting yesterday. Lots of games were played, which was good.
I started the afternoon with Web of Power. It's one of my favourites, but I haven't played it often this year. I should, I should... The game was rather exciting in the end. My score depended a lot from advisors and I needed to get one in Schwaben to score a lot. The problem was I also needed to get a cloister in Schwaben to play an advisor. Getting that Schwaben card was the tricky bit. In my last turn I did get it and played a move worth approximately 15-20 points. How very satisfying. Unfortunately, even though I darted from the last place to the very top, I couldn't beat Robert who had amassed lots of points from both cloisters and advisors. Still, the game was very good, full of excitement.
Then we tried Canyon, which was a total Robert-fest. He made correct predictions turn after turn, winning the game easily. I didn't do that good and was last. Canyon is an interesting game... the trick-taking bit of it is very plain and almost boring, but the score board game makes it better. However, there are better trick-taking games, especially from a gamer's point of view.
Next we played Crokinole , which proved to be a good idea. Two four-player games went quickly. I was told the board was faster than last time, which is good because I did wax it last week. I was curious if it did anything, but it seems it worked.
While we were waiting for other table of gamers to finish, we played a game Jari had devised. The rules (in Finnish) can be found in his blog. It's basically a negative-sum game, where everybody loses. Each player has five points to use each round and five point reserve (your right hand fingers and your left hand fingers) that can be used to fill your use points. It was interesting experiment, but the game needs more development.
Then it was time for the main event (at least for me), Funkenschlag. Warnings of three hour length and theme of power economics did scare some away, but I got three victims to try the game with me. It was a blast. First of all - my three hour game end trigger wasn't needed. The game took just two hours to finish. I think we did a good job on multi-tasking in the resource shopping and building phases. We didn't remove the lowest power plants each turn in the second step and that seemed to work well as written in the rules.
The game itself was rather entertaining. It feels very much like a merciful version of Age of Steam. At least you'll have some income each turn. Our game was pretty close. Ville reached 20 cities, me and Jarno had 17 and Juha got 16... I think Juha and Jarno were in the lead after step one. Everybody seemed to enjoy the game and I'm quite glad I took the effort to create the better map before I tried it. Only problem was that blue and black were a bit difficult to tell apart. That was pretty minor issue.
Players reorganized and I was left alone with Ville. Fortunately I had brought Ta Yü with me. It was fun, even though Ville won me 70-54. The tiles are so pretty I don't care about the results. We also played two two-player games of Crokinole, which went 1-1.
My last game was another new trick-taking game, Gargon. It's higher on the weirdness scale, oddest aspect of it being probably the fact that you can see card suits from their backsides. There was a problem though - the red and the purple cards were really difficult to tell apart in the poor light we played in. That's more than a minor annoyance. Still, it was great fun, I enjoyed the game and I think I grasped some tactics as well. At least I was able to share the victory with Ville. We had 80 points, Robert got 61 and Atro 50, so we were doing something right there...
And that's it. Next big game event is next weekend, HelCon II which should be a blast!
I bought Discovery on an impulse few days ago - it was there in front of me at the right moment. I had heard good things about it (well, one recommendation was from a Tactic employee, but still) and it definitely looked interesting - so why not.
It sure is interesting. The components are neat: two maps of an island, over 200 hexagon tiles depicting various landscapes, some cards, two white board pens to draw with and a treasure detector slash clue giver gizmo. A box full of material!
The idea of the game is this: players (only two) are dropped on an island and set to find a treasure hidden there. First catch is they don't know their own location. Players choose where their opponents start and track their movements on the maps. Thus, in the beginning you know where your opponent is but don't have a clue of your own location.
Movement is simple. Players say which direction they wish to move to and the opponent turns over a landscape tile that matches the terrain type. After some travel, players can start to figure out their whereabouts. Players can travel only so far - each tile has a number under it. Each turn players have 12 hours to use, so new tiles can be drawn as long as the numbers are less than 12.
There are eight clue locations on the map. Six of them each tell what's in one hex neighbouring the treasure. One tells the type of treasure hex - they are special hexes, and there are about five different types. Last clue is useless. There are 28 possible treasure locations and only one of them holds the treasure. Using the clues, players can deduce which one is the correct. As only one player can visit each clue location, players can't know everything, but one or two clues help to limit the locations considerably.
The clue and treasure system uses a neat little gizmo. There's a plastic apparatus which has a six by six matrix. Those are covered with plastic bars and players can look at the individual cells by pulling the bars. If you want to see cell B-6, for example, you draw the B bar and 6 bar out so you can see what's inside. Eight of the 36 cells are used for the clues and the rest are empty - except the one with the treasure. The game comes with plenty of cards to use so if you choose one randomly, you'll have no clue what's coming. I'd guess there are 14 two-sided cards, but it feels like there's more of them. But there can't be, really as there are only 28 different treasure locations.
There's also trouble ahead. Some tiles contain problems, either stops or getting lost. If you're stopped, you'll have to miss certain amount of turns (one to four). If you're lost, your opponent will move you secretly to another hex within four-hex radius. Clever. In the beginning, players get to choose a selection of equipment which can help with these problems.
And that's just about it - the first one to the treasure wins the game.
I rated is as seven, which seems to be the current general opinion at the Geek. The game is interesting and has good components. If you like to fiddle with things or draw on game boards, you'll like Discovery. And the game certainly is different from your average euro board game. That's one of it's best merits - it doesn't feel like any other game.
However - it's only seven. There's something missing, some extra development that could've been done to make it even better. The equipment part was a bit of a disappointment. I only used my equipment twice, Johanna didn't have any use for her equipment. We both faced situations were we run into trouble that couldn't be solved with any equipment or needed something we didn't have. The first kind was particularly annoying. You choose loads of equipment and then it doesn't help! Frustrating.
Well, that was my biggest problem with the game. There are some minor problems, but in general the game works fairly well, it just feels like it could use some more polish. I loved the deduction bits of it, it was actually quite fun to be completely lost. The beginning of the game was interesting and fresh. Getting lost wasn't that annoying, since it brought excitement to the game.
Johanna won our game quite easily. She found her location soon (I placed her on an easy location in the middle - that's something that's not going to happen again) and got four clues pretty quickly. Then she just chose the right one of her two options, while I was plodding my way to find some clues.
The game took an hour and was fun, even though parts of it were disappointing. We'll be playing again, that's for sure. Maybe we'll do something with the equipment rules, maybe not. Anyway, while it's not perfect, it's at least very different from anything else you've played. In the world of games recycling mechanics from each other, that's always refreshing.
I think it's fairly hard to come by outside Scandinavia or France, but if you see it, I suggest you pick it up and try it. If anybody is interested to getting a copy, the game is easily available here. It costs about 30 euros and the shipping will be about the same. English translation is available in the Geek, the components are language independent... Trading is also possible.
