March 2004 Archives

Today mail brought me two 3rd edition Mesomorph piecepacks. Thanks to Chris Brooks for providing me with the games.

I also got the new Adam spielt catalog, but I'm not sure if I want to open it - it's full of temptations anyway. The cover features Das Spiel by Reinhold Wittig. Check it out, it's a curious game system that is made of 281 dice and a base so you can make a pyramid of the dice.

Even though I don't have any money to buy games, I keep getting them by other means. Looks like I'll get a copy of Alan Moon's Ticket to Ride to translate. That'll be interesting, because I'm intrigued about the game. It's the comments that say "this is what TransAmerica should've been" - I was badly disappointed by TransAmerica.

Now if I can only figure out a way to get Memoir '44, the single coolest new game this year for free...

Oh, and one more thing: today, I'll be mailing the bill for my translation of Settlers of Catan. For the first time in my life, someone is actually going to pay me proper money for doing something related to board games!

Another Monday session. This time I played seven games of Go with Juho. In the first five games, I played white and Juho black without any handicap. For the last two games, I gave Juho white stones. I won three out of seven, so it's official now: Juho is probably as good as I am or maybe even better.

Ari joined at then and we played Huutopussi or Auction Marjapussi. Marjapussi ("berrybag", but it's probably twisted form of "marriage") is a trick-taking game, which is part of the Marriage group of Ace-Ten -games, which in turn are point-trick games. You're still with me? This means: certain cards are worth points, the goal of the game is to collect those; card ranking goes A, T, K, Q, J, 9 and so on; pairs of kings and queens of same suit have special meaning.

Round of Huutopussi begins with an auction. Players promise to get points. Highest promise wins the right to begin the round and to take a look at the devil's pack, three cards that weren't dealt (game is played using cut deck, which has no cards under six). Those cards can be used to replace weaker cards from the winner's hand.

Then a game of trick-taking is played. Using David Parlett's notation system, rule for following suit is F,T,r. Suit must be followed; if that's not possible, trump must be played. Only if he or she has no correct cards or no trumps, can player renege. One must also always beat the previous card, if possible.

Trumps can be declared after player wins a trick. To declare a trump, player must hold a king and queen of the same suit. That suit can be declared as trumps. Trumps are important scoring-wise: trump of spades is worth 100 points, hearts 80, diamonds 60 and clubs 40. Aces are worth 11 points, tens are 10, kings 4, queens 3 and jacks 2. Last trick is worth 10 points. Therefore, the deck has 130 points plus the trumps.

In the end of the hand, the winner of the auction checks if he or she has as many points as promised. If not, promised points are scored in negative. If the score was reached, it's scored. Winner of the auction can't get any more points, no matter how many cards they collect! The can, however, raise their promise after they review the cards in the devil's pack. Other players score normally. If someone is left without any tricks at all, they must go to Porvoo (to find out how much a kilo of salted herrings costs at the marketplace!) - they lose the amount of the promise. If the auction winner goes to Porvoo (which is a city in Southern Finland, by the way; it's an old city and pretty nice place), he or she loses the amount doubled. However, that's very unlikely.

It's a fun game, I liked it a lot. Trick-taking fans should definitely try it. It works with three players - I'm not so sure how well it works with four. It's partners game with four. Three is probably better, original non-auction Marjapussi might make for a better four-player game. Our game today was close and exciting. After seven rounds the scores were 395-370-370, with Juho in the lead. He collected 120 points in the last round, making up for the 60 points he lost in the previous round when he went to Porvoo. I had the honour of playing the best round - I promised 130 points with my two trumps and collected about 160 or 170. Too bad, I only got the 130 I promised.

This is a game I have to play more!

Googlism Geeklist is one of the best I've seen in ages. It's just hilarious.

I wrote a a review of Finstere Flure.

Finstere Flure is a very good game. The escape from the monster-infested dungeon of Fürst Fieso is simple, but exciting fun for two to seven players - and what's best, the game really works with the whole range! The best number of players is, however, four to five or six.

The game is very easy to learn and to play, but offers excitement and even some tactical depth. The graphics are very good and the DIY-monster kit is a brilliant idea. Finstere Flure looks much better than Funkenschlag, for example.

Finstere Flure can be recommended to just about everyone. It's easy enough for less-dedicated gamers and children and fun enough for more dedicated gamers to enjoy as well. It's exciting and full of tension ("I'll survive, if the monster only moves seven steps..." is a typical situation).

Iain linked to Jacob Davenport's article on game design to illustrate a point about petty diplomacy in games. I was planning to link to that article, because I found it interesting, but then happened to take a look at the page above it, Jacob Davenport's home page. It's an interesting collection of game-related stuff, definitely worth checking out.

I got a copy of The Kookaburra Game yesterday. I'm supposed to translate the rules in Finnish. That won't be a heavy task, because they're just one A4.

We also tried the game yesterday. It turned out to be pretty much what I expected from the rules: a Pachisi variant. Players try to race around the board to return to their home base. This time, players have five different pieces. Crocodiles are the only piece who can eat other pieces, koalas can only move in multiples of three, kangaroos can carry other pieces, platypus can shortcut using water on the board and kookaburra can move anywhere on board. Kookaburra can be used to protect other pieces, because crocodile can only eat solitary pieces.

It's slightly more interesting than Pachisi, but only slightly. It's still plain old roll-and-move and thus can't hold the interest of an adult gamer. That's why I rated the game as 4 in the Geek. However, had I children, I'd probably appreciate the game a bit more. So, I'll probably forget it in some remote corner of my game collection until that day comes.

The game looks pretty nice: the pieces are large, plastic depictions of the animals. The board isn't that good, but it's double-sided and while one side is boring and even ugly, the other side is rather psychedelic and actually pretty cool.

I've had A House Divided for several months now (well, since October) and today I finally got to play it. I was slightly curious about the length of the game, as the box says 60 minutes, someone wrote somewhere it takes two hours and somebody said four to six hours... The four hours turned out to be the correct time level. We played for three hours and ended the game in the end of 1864 (the war ends in 1865 when played properly).

There was also the confusion over optional rules, advanced rules and advanced optional rules. Chris Farrell recommended some rules in his Geek article and Mark Ma made also suggestions in another Geek thread. I chose command tables and advanced battles (mandatory, says Chris), leaders (looked like fun), capture of Washington (seemed like a reasonable rule), Northern rail movement (easy and probably useful), like battlefield targets (reasonable) and that's it. I didn't use supply, but I should've. I avoided it, because Chris said the supply rules are flawed, but they certainly are necessary. Other than that, I was pretty happy with the rule set.

I drew South and started the game fighting. I finally reminded North that I will win the game if he doesn't start attacking. After he figured out naval moves, I was in trouble. He kept pouring troops to Pensacola (mental note: block Pensacola immediately when playing South next time) and composed huge piles of units there. His generals and a large stack of units went on around Jackson, Mobile, Memphis and New Orleans. Having to care about supply lines would've slowed him a bit.

In the east, the line around Washington was pretty stable. Juho caused me some trouble with his landing in Wilmington, but he didn't move from there. In general my central cities were pretty safe. In the end, I found some holes in Juho's defense lines and moved in to conquer some of his cities. I actually managed to bring his army size to mine - one more point and I would've won! When we decided to end the game early in the end of 1864, we had the final battles (Juho attacked Richmond and lost, I attacked Washington and lost) and checked the rule book for result. Turns out South would win with army size difference of 13 or less, and I had just three less than Juho. Victory for me, that is.

If the game had gone further, Juho might've won. His superior army (the Southern lack of men certainly became very concrete to me) meant he could've pushed in my territory and conquer my cities. I did lots of escaping from battles, which is nice except he can promote a unit each time so soon his armies were full of crack infantry... Tricky. I think I might've won, because I'm not sure if he would've had enough time in the end.

I don't know - it's certainly pretty interesting and I could have another go at it some day. However, the four hours means it's not going to happen any time soon. If I play the game again, it's going to be one of the scenarios. Playing from beginning of 1863 or 1864 to the end might be an option. The early game is less interesting anyway and that would squeeze the game length to a more reasonable two to three hours. The biggest problem with A House Divided is without a doubt the existance of Liberty and Hammer of the Scots, both of which are shorter and more interesting games.

Chris Brooks has also played Union Pacific and enjoyed it. That reminded me: has anyone tried to play the game without using the board? I think you could just play the trains on the table without placing them on the board. The board is quite large and has little significance in the game - at least when we played last Sunday, everyone was always able to build whatever they wanted. There was no blocking.

Perhaps one could also get rid of the track cards, while being at it? Not having the right track card happens more often than getting blocked, but I for one didn't suffer from it once in our game. It would be interesting to play Union Pacific using only the stock cards and the trains. It would make the game a lot smaller! I'd definitely like to hear if someone has tried the game that way.

Musings, Ramblings, and Things Left Unsaid seems like an interesting blog. It covers boardgames and books, basically, and - it certainly doesn't hurt - links to me.

This I found through Iain's blog.

Once again I play Go and get my ass kicked by lower-ranked opponents. Of course it only means my rating is still too high... Rating players is certainly an interesting and fuzzy subject. I doubt there can be a totally satisfied rating system, if the ratings are only deduced from the played games. It doesn't really reflect your skill properly. But I guess it gets better when the system gets more material to work on, when the players involved play more games against more opponents.

I wrote a review of Anathema. It's in Finnish as usual.

Anathema is interesting game for me, mostly because of it's art. Drew Tucker is one of my favourite artists and Anathema offers a deck full of his art! What a catch! The game is actually less interesting. It's a very slightly changed version of traditional card game Casino. The game's a bit luck-heavy, but makes for good light-weight entertainment. Anathema is at it's best when played with just two players. Played that way it's actually quite good. With more players, it's less interesting.

Whether or not someone should buy it, depends on several issues. After all, it's just a standard deck of cards with new (absolutely gorgeous) art and some game-specific information. You could well play Casino with a standard deck of cards. The experience won't be the same, but the game is just as good.

Then again, if you haven't heard of Casino before, it's certainly worth checking out. At least I've found I play commercial card games much more than standard deck cards - having a specific deck makes me consider the games more often. If you are different and actually play lots of standard deck games, Anathema won't be a good choice for you.

Last, if you're a Drew Tucker fan, you should already own the game.

Andreas Steding has published a solo variant for his excellent game Kogge. I haven't tried it yet, I'll let you know what I think about it if I do.

I've also taken interest to Piecepack. If anyone wants to send me a set, I'd be more than happy... I'm currently poor as a beggar and can't afford one. Making my own using the printable set at the web site is of course possible, but it's rather complicated as I don't have a colour printer and the result will be so damn ugly I know I'll have trouble getting people to try it...

Two more games of Go at KGS. Lost both of them. In the first one I just played badly, second one was more close. It was rather exciting match for interesting reasons: when we started the game, server was going to shut down in 30 minutes. We finished a minute before the server shutdown... The end game was pretty hectic!

Board game club gathered yesterday to play some games. I was actually rather satisfied with the games I played, I managed to play just about everything I set out to play.

We started with San Marco. I'd like to try the game with three players, but once again we had four. It doesn't matter, because despite what people say, I think San Marco is a pretty good four-player game. I like it a lot, anyway. I didn't win (I placed third), but at least I managed to improve my standing in the end a bit. San Marco seems to be quite close and exciting until the end, which of course makes it a tad random but also nicely tense. I like it.

However, I don't like Aquarius. Ilari got us to play this hippie game from Looney Labs. It was horrible experience. The cards look very good, I like the bold graphical style of them, but the game is a boring sequence of meaningless action. I felt the actions possible were insignificant because of the game's randomness. If you're close to winning, it's likely someone will switch or shuffle goals and oops, you're way back again. It was such a relief when Ilari finally won the game.

It was time for some good games now. Four players, let's see: oh yeah, it's Crokinole time! What's even better, we won 100-0. That was comforting after the horrible horrible Aquarius experience.

Union Pacific was one of those games I longed to play - it's been such a long time since I last played it. It got a rather good reception and I certainly had a good time playing it. It's not completely unlike Alhambra, but I think UP is better of the two. The board is a bit useless, perhaps, but I think the trains add good theme element to the game. The hook of the game (to invest or to build) is very delicious.

After Union Pacific it was Poker. I got four other players to play some Texas Hold'em with me. We weren't playing for real money, which of course makes the game a bit flat. However, to make the play money more significant, I created a new currency for our club. Everyone gets 1000 credits, which can be used for gambling. In the end of the year, the player with the most credits left wins a prize. It's going to be interesting to see how it catches on. Our Poker game went well, at least for me. Thanks to two lucky hands (two pairs and a four fives), I managed to gather about 100 credits from the other players. Texas Hold'em is an interesting game worth trying, I think it's the best version of Poker I've played.

After Poker one of us left and four remained. We were already sitting by the round table designated for Crokinole, so what can you do? It was time for my second Croke victory that afternoon!

My final game in the club was a four-player Flaschenteufel. It was probably my worst game ever. We played seven rounds and I got -4 points! I got the bottle four times and once I didn't take a single trick. I had only two positive rounds, making total of 43 points. Others feasted on points, the final scores were 188, 143, 121 and -4. Now that's boring...

Ok, so I go online at KGS to play some Go, and who I meet? Juho! My regular Monday games opponent!

It was certainly interesting... Juho has a KGS ranking of 21k, I was 12k. When we play face-to-face, I give one stone handicap, not nine... We're both ranked wrong there. I gave Juho six stones twice, four stones and three stones once. I actually won the first six-stone game, Juho gave up after some pretty horrible mistakes.

He got his game together and won the next three games, of course. One of them was closer, two were pretty obvious victories. My rating dropped immediately to 15 kyu, which is much closer to my real level. I also got a stable ranking, removing an awkward question mark from my ranking. Hopefully Juho's ranking got a boost, too.

It's funny to play online against someone you know and play against in real world. But it's certainly much faster, we played four games in about an hour. Well, not so much as we would've probably played two or three games in that time, maybe.

Shannon Applecline has written an interesting article about auction mechanisms in games. It should be of interest, especially if you're a game designer interested in using an auction mechanism in your game.

I played three games of Go today at the KGS. I won all three, but my satisfaction is dimmed by the nature of my victories. All three were resignations. The first two were kind of ok, because I was winning. Especially in the second I had just created a large living group inside my opponent's territory and it looked like I was winning. The third game was very much unresolved by the time my opponent resigned.

So, my KGS rank just keeps on climbing. Now it's about 12k, which I think is a bit too much...

After a badly slept night a new morning dawned. While waiting for the breakfast, I played a game of 6 Nimmt!. We played it differently, using (almost) the Terminal City Gamers variant. Instead of several rounds, we played just two, without shuffling the deck or the cards on the table between them. It was a good variant, too. It makes the game faster and better suited as a filler (as played properly the game can take quite a while sometimes). I recommend you try it.

While we were playing, Munter brought out a hellish device called Lightning Reaction. Despite watching the guys play a round, I gave it a go. It's ... interesting. Each player (from two to four) is given a handle. Each handle has a button. When a round is started, a light starts to flash and a terrible wailing noise is played. When the noise ends and the light turns from red to green, players rush to push their buttons. The last one to react gets an electrical shock. You will also be shocked if you push the button before the light changes. Three shocks and you're out.

It's an exciting game. The shock is unpleasant enough to make losing unattractive. The noise is horrible, if you're not playing, but adds to the tension of the game while you're waiting for the light to change. It's quite a game. One round was enough for me... I'm quite sure that the game could be quite a craze with the right people.

A game of Taj Mahal was starting and I rushed to join it. It's a great game I don't own, so I'll try to use all the chances I get to play it. At some point around round six or seven I got the idea to collect lots of cards as my game started to look pretty bad. Well, I did. In the end of the game, I had 17 yellow cards and 2 white cards. Thus, I scored 19 bonus points. I thought I had a chance to be third, but other players had so many cards (Stefu had collected cards to win crucial last two rounds, but then won the temples he needed with just two cards or so) I came fourth. Still, it was an interesting tactic.

I was eager to try some of the games from Knizia's Dice Games Properly Explained. We got seven players for a game of Mice or men, which I instantly renamed as Men or berrypickers. The idea of the game is that all players roll three dice under a cup and then betting starts. Players must either fold, scoring 1-10 penalty points (depends on the number of the round) or stay with the men. Men can either accept current penalty point stake or raise it. After everyone accepts the same number of penalty points, it's time for showdown. The player with the weakest dice scores the penalty points.

In the first round, the loser had to collect 16 points. In the second round it was 20. Then it got up to 60. Then again 60. Next round it crept up to 80. Suddenly it was 150. On the following round we were satisfied with just 70. Then testosterone started really going and Stefu had to collect 1000 penalty points. After that there was no stopping it - I scored 2000 penalty points. In the final round, there was 2500 points at the stake. If a player had folded every round, their 55 points would've gained them the third place as the final scores were 20-46-60-269-1178-2089-2523. It was certainly fun, but the explosion of penalty scores kind of ruined the game. I think there needs to be some kind of fix. Perhaps a limit of some kind, or perhaps the penalty for folding could be related to the current penalty number or something like that. Of course, a good solution would be to play for real money or something else that's concrete, as that would limit the bets in a natural way.

After that, we tried another bluffing game from the book, Little Max. There was some confusion with the rules, making it a slightly flat experience.

Then it was time for a pre-arranged match between me and Reko. We had agreed to play a game of Hammer of the Scots. Luck of the draw awarded the English forces for me to command. It was an interesting game. The score shifted during the game, I think I was in the lead for most of the game. Reko certainly had his moments. Wallace roamed the land free (well, I was once very close to finishing him off, but he escaped) killing my armies and at one point, Galloway and Bruce (who I converted very early in the game) turned to blue and Scots armies were unpleasantly close to England. I suffered slightly from bad cards, especially when Edward was on board. Then again, I had some luck on my side. The most memorable moment was when Moray and an army tried to convert Comyn. I rolled four dice for Comyn, scoring four hits. Both Moray and his supporting army were defeated. In the end, the game was close but on the last turn, I once again managed to push deep in to the Scottish territory and the game ended with England controlling ten nobles. It was an excellent game.

I had traded my Die Händler for San Marco with Phil and Stefu had agreed to arrange the swapping to save postage costs. There were three of us, so I thought San Marco would be a good game to try. Fourth player joined us before we could start, but we played it anyway. It was an interesting experience, as I hadn't so much as glanced the rules before we started. I pulled it off well, I don't think we made any big mistakes. At least I was familiar with the splitting mechanism from Canal Grande.

It was a good game and I enjoyed it immensely. It has certain elegance and tactical richness to it. Some say it doesn't work with four players, but I didn't find any problems with it. It's certainly not the most original game, being a prime example of territory dominance. Still, I like it. I can see it being a very slow game with certain players, but with players who don't analyse it to death, it should be good fun. I expect to enjoy it much more than Die Händler, so it certainly was a good trade for me.

After that it was the time for a grand declaration of war: A Game of Thrones was to start. I had missed a game on Friday, so I was more than glad to participate in this second round. I'm currently working through the first book of the series and I'm not completely satisfied with it, it hasn't grabbed my attention properly yet (and I'm few hundred pages in the book!) - however, the background makes for a good game world.

I got the Lannisters, who are the Borgias of the book. The characteristics of the different houses have no effect in the game, they only affect the initial setup. I like the way the combat system is based on Diplomacy - fortunately our game had less negotiations and thus finished in good time. The mechanism of assigning orders to units for simultaneous resolution was interesting and the limited supply of order tokens caused some trouble. I never had huge armies, so I could usually do what I wanted to.

The peaceful expansion phase of the game was over relatively quickly. I soon attacked the Greyjoys by boat, aided by the Tyrells. They avenged by taking the Riverrun. However, as Starks came from the north, Greyjoys were soon on the brink of extinction. I added an insult over the injury by taking over their capital, Pyke. For the last hour or so of the game, Greyjoys had little to do and that is a problem with the game, really - something bad the game has inherited from Diplomacy. There's little to help it, however, it's such a natural consequence of the rules and the mechanics. Still, especially in a con or game club environment, getting stuck on a hopeless game for hour or more is much worse than getting eliminated early.

Starks and Tyrells were the powerhouses of the game. I was at five castles at one point but failed to gather more. My trouble was the supply - when the only supply event game, I was at my weakest. There were few musters when I simply couldn't fulfill my potential because I didn't have enough supply. That stopped me from winning. Starks had pretty pleasant times in the north, nobody tried to invade their homes or anything. It was an interesting game and while I could certainly play it again, I would not buy it. It has too many problems and I don't see it getting played very much. It's nice, but not quite nice enough.

Our game was interrupted by a very good meal. Rice, pita bread, French fries, salad and kebab meat. It was a very heavy and tasty meal and combined with heavy breakfasts well worth the ten euros I had to shell out for the weekend. Munter has lots of experience organising LARPs, so perhaps feeding 30 people is no big deal for him, but still, it was well done, considering the time it takes to prepare the meals and clean out afterwards.

Last game of the evening (this time eleven-ish, after some well-needed time in sauna) was Kogge. I played with Reko and Stefu, but I'm afraid the game was a bit too complicated for the moment. It's not the easiest game to figure out and thus it probably should be played when all players are fully awake and focused. At least Reko seemed to have trouble concentrating... Stefu managed to storm to a victory by raiding and buying bonus chits when the game was close to its end.

It was a much better night, I slept for almost eight hours. Sunday morning was lazy, I ate a lot and packed my gear. I managed to get a ride to the train station and caught an early train with Olli. I also found out how long it takes to go from Riihimäki to Tampere by train: four rounds of Anathema and a round of Lost Cities. Anathema (or Casino) turned out to be a rather nice two-player game and, thanks to the small space it requires, a good game for limited space, like in trains. Lost Cities takes just about as much as space as the train has to offer.

And that's it. I'm quite happy it's over and I'm back home, but I guess I'm heading back next time, if there's nothing more important going on the same weekend.

Another Lahti gaming weekend is over now. Organised by Peter Munter of Puolenkuun Pelit, the event is rather merry occasion. The participants were all-male invite-only group of friends and friends of friends. The average age of the players is probably a tad higher than what I'm used to and there's a certain bloke mentality involved. The mood of the event is thus rather different from what I'm used to in Seurapelikerho.

Friday games began at home. Olli from the local gamer base was coming with me, so we met at my place to wait for our ride to Lahti. While we were waiting, we played a game of Go.

After about two hours of driving, we finally arrived to Lahti, where a gaming extravaganza was already in full blaze. It was hard to find a space for games, but we managed to find an empty table and got a game of Attika. The four of us included the probably most notable Finnish roleplaying game designer Ville Vuorela alias Burger of Burger Games. Attika was well received by the others, all new to the game. It was a curious game for me too, being the first game I've played on the English edition. I managed to win the game, too. It looked grim, but then I got a chance for a surprise shrine link in the very end of the game. I pulled it through and won the game, leaving other players astonished. Neat.

Next entry in my notebook is for Bang!. I've been wanting to play it for a while now and this was a good chance. Unfortunately, my game didn't go too well. I was inprisoned and promptly executed. Well, then again, I was both an Mexican and an outlaw, so I guess that's what they should've done anyway. I left at that point, but it turned out the Sheriff did win the game. Bang! was one of the most played games of the weekend, I'd guess.

After that we played Finstere Flure, which was a success as well. It was so well received we played two games in a row. Because the board game weekend had a meta game, where all games are scored to find out the king of the weekend, we played a variant which produced a nice ranking of players. We played the game until the very end and then scored the escapees. The first token out got n points, where n is the number of escaped tokens, second one got n-1 and so on. It worked well and the game was good fun, even though I didn't win.

Friday's theme was me introducing new games to people. It continued with Domaine. At last I got a victory for me! I didn't do particularly well in the game, but managed to grab some heavy points in the end (including the Royal City, which I conquered from my worst enemy). Most interesting thing was probably the mountain of money Burger had in the end, leaving no doubt on who would get the bonus for most money.

Then we played a half-succesful game of Nodwick. The concept of real-time play didn't quite get the appreciation it deserves and there wasn't quite enough trading going on. I like Nodwick a lot, but how enjoyable the game is is quite dependent on the players. With the right players, it's a blast.

My last game that evening (played at around 2 am) was Tigris & Euphrates. It was one of my most balanced games ever. In the end, I had score of 7-6-6-6. I thought I had a chance to win the game, as others hadn't collected large cubes on all colours and the game was pretty low-scoring. However, I lost to a score of 8-6-6-6! What a pity.

At that point it was time to go to bed. It was also way past the time I should've gone to bed, resulting in a night of very little sleep. I think I got four or five hours of interrupted sleep, disturbed by some heavy-duty snoring and people entering the sleeping quarters.

I'm going to Lahti to play lots of games this weekend. It was reasonably good fun last time (in September - you can read the reports from Friday and Saturday). One of the best parts of the weekend was the good food, which is a rare thing indeed in game events. Our generous host told yesterday about his shopping for the weekend: 2 kg of cooked ham, 8 kg of various kinds of sausage, 5 kg of bacon, 270 eggs, 4 kg of kebab meat, 2 kg of chicken, 4 kg of pitabread, 4,5 kg of rice, 15 kg of French fries and so on... Talk about meaty games!

My favourite board game artist, Franz Vohwinkel, has a website. It's a bit too artistically designed for my tastes, but I don't mind - the art that's displayed there is absolutely fabulous.

(via Brett & Board)

I don't really want new games right now. I'm somewhat unaware of the new Nürnberg titles - I know names, but little else. I know I want San Juan (and I have already made plans to get it without paying) and Hansa certainly seems to combine many positive aspects in one game, but that's it.

And guess what - I'm quite happy about it. I wouldn't have the money to buy games (my summer income is still a bit undecided and even if I'll get a job, there's a wedding to pay - yes, I'm getting married!) so it's much better to not want stuff... Besides, I'm starting to feel I own too many games, as many good games are left unplayed for long periods.

Also, I don't feel the need to get all the classics, like I used to feel. I don't think I need to own games like Samurai or Taj Mahal or Ra - these days, I get enough chances to play good games I don't own as many more people have games. I'm not the sole provider anymore and I'm rather glad about it.

This Monday our session began with two games of Go against Juho. Juho had been playing elsewhere, where he was approximated as 18 kyu player. That would make me 17 or 16 kyu. That sounds pretty good. This time I gave him just one stone handicap and won two games. First was an fairly early resign, after I tricked Juho and got a large group from him. Other game was finished properly - I won with about 30 points.

After that I made Juho and Ari test my design again. I'm still not satisfied.

We finished the afternoon with Gang of Four. We played just one round with the three of us, before Nestori joined us. We played nine rounds and I emerged as a winner. I had two weaker rounds (eight and ten cards left), but generally did pretty well. Ari came second, with three bad rounds. Juho had only one really bad round, but still came third. Nestori lost, as he once had an 80-point round... Gang of Four is less about winning than losing, it seems. Winning is less essential than losing little. If you lose only little, just small hands, it doesn't really matter how many hands you win.

The progressive scoring raised some whining, but I think it works fairly well. Of course, there's the alternative of gambling scoring (losers pay their penalty points to the winner). Had we used that, I would've still won, even though I won only two hands (I won the round when Nestori scored the 80 points). Juho, close number three, would've been the loser, because he won just one round and got only four points. Despite winning only two hands, Ari would've been second, because he would've scored 91 points on the first hand.

Our scores now: Me 48, Ari 66, Juho 71, Nestori 124.
Won rounds: Nestori 4, Me 2, Ari 2, Juho 1
"Gambling" scores: Me 119, Ari 101, Nestori 85, Juho 4

Interesting. It certainly shows that if you manage to get your hand below eight cards every time, you'll do well.

I wrote a review of Flaschenteufel. It's in Finnish, as usual.

To sum it up: I gave Flaschenteufel five stars out of five. I think it's one of the very best card games around. It's good for gamers and non-gamers - both groups will probably enjoy the strong and exciting theme. Gamers will appreciate the tension you feel when you have the bottle and some small cards in your hand and the deal is moving towards the end and you'd have to get rid of the small cards and the bottle and if you fail, your hard-earned points will be lost and... It's just great, really.

The whole last year passed without a single game of Mahjong! To fix the error, I got a group of people together to play a proper, long game. Ville, Laura, Robert and Ari heeded the call. I think five is a good number of players, even though Mahjong is very much of a four-player game. We used a system where the East player leaves the game to make room for the new player. That way everybody gets to play four rounds and then must rest one. It's good to have a break every now and then, because the game lasts for several hours.

We didn't play a full game of four times four rounds. I didn't count, but I think we played something like ten rounds. When we counted points in the end, Ari emerged as a winner. I was 270 points or so below what I started with, so it was rather good we didn't play for money (we talked about that when planning the game). It was good fun and a very social game event.

Before Ville and Laura arrived, I had another go with my new design. I'm still not completely satisfied with it... Next time, I'll try something different. It's quick to play and fairly entertaining, but something's missing. When I get something satisfying out of it, I'll let you know more.

After Ville and Laura left, Robert and Ari stayed for some more games. We started with Web of Power which I like a lot but haven't played much recently. It was about time! I won, too, with my fairly thin but extensive advisor network.

For the last game of the evening, we played another sleeper. My previous game of Mexica was in July 2002! Since then it's been in my closet, unplayed! What a pity, because it's a really good game I enjoy thoroughly. Fortunately Robert had played just the other day and was able to teach the rules to Ari much faster than I could've. It was a pretty fast game, too: about 45 minutes. Robert won, hands down. He got a heavy lead in the first scoring and made it even larger, even though both me and Ari attacked his areas in the second round. Strange. Mexica must see more action, really! I like it a lot and it has been a shame I haven't played it more.

Yet another Monday games session! This one started with a game of Go against Juho. Yet again I lost giving two stone handicap, so obviously that's too much (or then I just play sloppy). The most interesting part of this game was the fact that I counted the score using Chinese scoring. That was fun.

Then we tried my new game idea. It's called Median right now and it's a three-player trick-taker. The idea of the game is to be the middle one of three players after ten tricks have been played. Other players score negative points for each trick they have over or under the median. It's nice, compact (only 30 cards in the deck), fun to play and pretty elegant design, I think. The only problem right now is that the game feels a bit tame because the scoring is fairly low. I need to figure something out for that, but in general, I think it was a raging success for the first playtest.

Then we played a game of Sticheln, this time with four players. It was a nasty game, Juho got over thirty negative points in one round. Ouch.

That was it, then. Next gaming event will probably be a game of Mahjong scheduled for the Saturday evening. It'll be my first ever proper long game of Mahjong, with enough time for it. It's about time, huh!

Finally, after few hours of waiting, new The Games Journal is out (being in an early time zone can be annoying). Except my two excellent articles, it features reviews of Attika and Magna Grecia and some other articles, which I haven't had time to read yet. Anyway, it's much thicker issue than the February one, for which I'm glad.