July 2004 Archives

St. Petersburg is available on Brettspielwelt. It was predictable: it's such an obvious BSW game.

I played my first game today, just to try it out. There's no English version yet, but that's hardly necessary as only the card names are different. The interface is fairly good, though it was hard to notice whose turn it was. Anyway, I got it sorted out during the first game. I thought I wouldn't win, because one of the players made the worst mistake one can do: he took only one worker on the first round. He lost the game, that was obvious. Had it been face-to-face game, I wouldn't had let him do a mistake that grave, no way.

Unfortunately, too, I wasn't the one to benefit from the mistake. I thought that player would win the game, but turned out he wasn't that good either. Probably newbie... He was eventually third. I had a nice little competition with the other guy. He got slightly better income, but I played my cards well and finally secured my victory with a larger array of aristocrats. He had only played once and I believe he didn't quite know the significance of aristocrats.

I thought it would've been a short game - I estimated at most 20 minutes (after all, it's a 45 minute game with all the shuffling of money and points). I was so wrong. The game took 53 bloody minutes! I was furious. I consider myself very polite and good-tempered guy, but slow players annoy me and players that slow just plain piss me off. How can someone take more than two seconds to click pass after he's already once passed? Grr. Paying attention shouldn't be that hard.

Of course, when you play online, you never know who the other players are. Maybe they have a broken arm or some other handicap or have to take care of a baby (that has happened before) - who knows? Still, it was super-annoying. Hopefully my further StP (old Diplomacy acronyms are surprisingly useful!) games will be faster at the BSW. I'm aiming for 50 games of StP this year!

(Source: Gameblogger)

I played a quick test game of Maharaja today so I could explain the game more easily on Saturday, when we have a games meet. It was an interesting experience that presented some of the games interesting attributes. It's an intriguing game, though I'm not quite sure if I like it or not. I'm afraid it might be annoyingly short, while in the other hand the small amount of actions makes it tense. The end, at least, is somewhat abrupt and it was easy to predict early on which of the players would win.

It'll be interesting to try out. I also found out that most of the issues covered in the FAQ are very obvious. I'm wondering what all the fuzz is about... Anyway. it's a curious game that I could see myself ending up enjoying or selling. It's certainly nothing like my precious St. Petersburg...

I was in Jyväskylä this weekend and it sure was an interesting weekend games-wise.

I thought my mother would like San Juan, because she likes Puerto Rico but it's a bit too deep for her. She isn't that into devising strategies and I think kind of plays to keep me and Ismo happy - we're bigger fans of Puerto Rico than she is. But, I thought San Juan might be just the game for her.

Turned out I was right. After the initial game or two she got the hang of the game as she learnt the cards and she actually won me on her second game. It was nice to see her enjoy the game. We played two games on Friday and another two games on Saturday. We also played one game with Ismo and two with Ismo and the older (he's 11) of the two boys. Ismo didn't like the game nearly as much, he thought it was annoying to refer to the card list all the time (I had made a list with Finnish translations, so that the boys could play and for reference purposes). I think he would like the game more after he'd learnt the cards, but right now his response was lukewarm.

But that certainly wasn't the case with St. Petersburg. They were somewhat terrified after my explanation of rules, but once we got the game going, it was a smooth ride. Back in February, we played nine games of Attika during one weekend, but now I recorded 13 games of St. Petersburg.

Everybody was addicted. The boys got it too. Oskari, 11, could play the game by himself pretty well. He didn't win, but managed to place well several times. Severi, who's 9 I think, played initially with my mother and after that played few games by himself won one of those games. They made lots of silly plays, but improved while we played. They were really excited about the game, constantly talking about workers and aristocrats and whatnot. Me too; I couldn't get sleep Saturday night, because I just kept thinking about the game. That's one of the signs of really good games.

St. Petersburg is a very good game, you see. My initial rating at the Geek is a definite 10, because I haven't been this enthusiastic about a game since Puerto Rico. Like Age of Steam or Funkenschlag St. Petersburg would be a nine, but it's a 45-minute game while the others take much longer to play. It's like Web of Power: short, condensed piece of gaming bliss, except St. Petersburg is even better.

I'll rave about it a bit more later on. During the weekend, we also played one game of both Ristikontra and Huutopussi. One reason for playing the games was the pack of Invisible Cards (by Kikkerland, see under Games) I got from my mother (their company uses them as business gifts). The cards are mostly transparent PVC, but of course you can't see the symbols from the back side. They look very neat, look rather durable but are a bit unpractical to use because they're so thin. Still, they are really useful as playing cards and not just as eye toy. Anyway, Ristikontra is an interesting and quite rare game - it's a trick-taking game, but there aren't many like it. Tricks are won by the card that lead them, so if you lead with five, the only way to capture the trick is to play another five. It's a partnership game for four players. It has nice twists, like cleaning (if you capture a Queen, you must clean it by capturing a King in the last five tricks, otherwise you won't score) but still it feels like a bit too lucky game for me.

Anyway, it was a very good weekend games-wise. Next Saturday is a boarg game club meeting, I hope to be able to try Maharaja then.

I got Maharaja and St. Petersburg yesterday.

As anybody who's followed Spielfrieks recently can tell, Maharaja rules have caused lots of discussion (Goa has been another hot topic, but since I don't care about it, I just skip those). It's a pity if a good game has bad rules. I've only leafed through the rules myself, I haven't even tried to learn them so it's hard to say.

It's often hard to say who's right: designer or publisher. Designer has designed the game, sure, but publisher might have made some changes to the design. I think I'll consider publisher's rules official, but I will pay notice to designer's comments if necessary. Like in this case: when Wolfgang Kramer says something (in this case splitting actions) is very important to the game, I believe it really is. Well, I'll just have to see how Maharaja works out. Oh, and doesn't the box have the most useless tray ever? I wonder what game it is designed for...

St. Petersburg, in the other hand, is pleasantly simple game. Goa comes up again: I didn't like the complexity of Goa. St. Petersburg looks like a very simple game that still offers agonizing decisions. I also like the theme, which is refreshingly different. It also has a Finnish dimension to it, because St. Petersburg (or Leningrad) has always been very important city for Finland, it's so close to us. I'll hopefully get to try the game this weekend. After reading the rules, I'm very excited and eager to try the game.

As last weeks game of Die Neuen Entdecker seemed a bit too heavy, I wanted to offer something lighter this time. I chose Ticket to Ride and it turned out to be a good selection.

It's a fun game and well worth the SdJ, I think. It works fine with three players, the removal of double routes is quite enough to make the game interesting. Erkka dominated the first game, the scores were 134-76-63 - thus, he almost had more than the two of us together. In that game I made a crucial mistake: I started a 20-point route as my last route. Oops. I didn't do that in the second game and won the game with even more points (but smaller margin).

My rating is still eight at the Geek - I think it's a good game, but it's not that special. Of recent games, I find Memoir '44 and San Juan more to my liking, for example. Still, Ticket to Ride is a game I want to own, it's such an useful game. It works with anyone, is easy to teach and fun to play. For a truly great game, I expect a bit more challenge. Ticket to Ride is exciting, but not challenging.

I noticed Chris Lohroff has a games-related blog. It's called Chris's Game Comments. It's a Blogger blog, so there's an Atom feed as well.

I quit roleplaying games earlier and now it's time for CCG's. After several years of silence, I finally got around to selling my Middle-Earth: CCG cards. It's an excellent game, but I never play it. Thus, the best parts of my collection are available at Chris' MECCG Home Page. The rest of it - a large pile of uncommons and commons, mostly of Lidless Eye and Against Shadows sets - remains and will be sold to someone at some point. If you're interested in obtaining a large pile of useful cards with a cheap price, contact me.

I also have a fairly large pile of Vampire: The Eternal Struggle cards, mostly commons and uncommons (I already sold my rares long time ago), available. Those can be purchased with a very humble price as well.

We had a small games meet today. I was joined by Inka (a new convert) and Erkka. As the main course, I decided we would play Die Neuen Entdecker. After all, I've had it for half a year now and I've only played it once before. It was about time I gave it a proper go.

It turned out to be a pretty mediocre game. It was decent fun and didn't last too long, just one hour. Inka, who's a total newbie, won the game with a healthy margin. But that's no wonder: even though me and Erkka played a more active role in the game, she was either first (once) or second (twice) on the three large islands in the game. Add to that her pretty good success with the bonus scoring and that's it.

Sure, it's a fun game to play, but I don't know - I really don't feel tempted to play the game again. Somehow the decisions aren't quite agonizing enough or something - it's hard to say, but I think the game is actually somewhat boring. That's a harsh judgment and the game will hit the trade pile sooner or later.

To round it up we played a game of Drahtseilakt. Now that's a fun game! I did well, but Erkka did better - he had a heavy score from one round, but managed to get a zero score on the last turn, thus taking the lead from me. Blast. It's a good fun, though, and I'm quite happy to own the game (and not the dreadful Relationship Tightrope edition).

A new blog was brought to my attention: Settling Catan. From the start it seems it's mostly about game reviews. That's nice. Go check it out!

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

Ta Yü is one of the most beautiful games in my collection. I just love the plastic tiles, which remind me of Mahjong. It's the same kind of heavy plastic. The game, which is an abstract game with German origins, does a pretty good job pretending to be a Chinese classic. The theme is about Chinese legendary hero Ta Yü who prevented a flood by creating rivers and thus diverting the water to the sea.

That's what players do. Players try to create outlets for the river network formed by the tiles. There are two players: one is working on the north-south and other has east-west-direction. The final score is the product of the river outlets on each side. So, if you get four on one side and six on the other, you get 24 points. Very clever!

The game is simple. Pick a tile, place a tile. Tiles have to continue the previous river network, obviously. It's all very intuitive and easy to teach. Game can be played with two players, of course, but also with two two-player teams. If you have a third player, that player plays the flood and tries to sabotage the other players. That should be interesting, but as it requires three players who are already familiar with the game, I haven't been able to try it yet.

It's a pretty game and a good gateway game for non-gamers. It's a bit dry, perhaps, but looks spectacular. Unfortunately the English version is out-of-print and if you can find it, it's very expensive because of the tiles. Still, I consider mine a good purchase - it's one of those games I really expect to enjoy for years to come. Thanks to the plastic tiles, it should last decades.

The Games Journal has been notable for it's steady schedule. This month it was late for the first time in a long time. That's a shame, but fortunately the delay wasn't long. The issue is a thin one, too. There's an interesting review of Coda, which piqued my interest. Here's Coda at Geek. I think I want to have that game - light and quick deduction game sounds just too much fun.

On the letters page there was a call for notation techniques for deduction games. My favourite deduction game is probably Black Vienna because - in my opinion - the game doesn't need a special notation technique. Just + for positive and - for the negative hits. If you only mark sure hits, you won't get confused. The rest of it is displayed on the investigation cards, which are left on the table.

My brother came by and, of course, we played some games. The first game we played was Memoir '44. We took the Operation Lüttich scenario; I was the allies, he was the axis. I lost 4-2, as his elite panzers managed to secure the village Axis needed to get and then killed three of my units. It was fun, but he wasn't ecstatic about it - too much luck, it seems. I thought the game was great fun. It was also very easy and intuitive to teach, that's always great.

He did enjoy Ta Yü. The tactile pleasure from the tiles was helpful, I suppose. There was more offensive play than ever, but I suppose that has something do with us being brothers...

Edit 2004-07-05: We played three more games on Sunday. Definite hit. You should've seen my board side in one of the games... Almost completely blocked! The games were very aggressive, with little mercy given. I think at times his tactic backfired, when he lost scoring opportunities when blocking mine, but most of the time it was quite effective.

Tom Tube was enjoyed quite a bit, we played three games. It's fun, I really like it. The games always seem to be quite close, usually victory is achieved with a rather small margin, just few points. The pipe-building is certainly tricky enough. All in all, I find Tom Tube really enjoyable.

Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation was even more successful: we played five games. Battle Line is an old staple of ours, and I thought he would like Balloon Cup as well. We played both twice. I think Battle Line is the better game of those two. Balloon Cup is too long, I think, and handling the tiles and cubes is in the long run rather annoying. Kind of makes me wish it was a computer game where it would be automated. That's not a good sign, I think. For equality's sake, Battle Line's width annoys me - it takes such a huge amount of space.

Lautapelit.fi (lautapelit is Finnish for board games), a new Finnish online game store opened it's web site yesterday. It's still bit unfinished, but it should work already. It's run by the folks behind Safe Haven.

I think it's pretty neat. Prices should be a bit lower than in Safe Haven (that's not the case right now, I think, but it's a goal) and the shipping costs are moderate. The web site has more functionality, there's a possibility to rate and comment games and there's more information about the games than before. There are also some game-related articles posted frequently (about weekly).

Those articles are the crux of the whole thing from my point of view - right now you should be able to guess who's the author. In addition to the articles, I've been writing extended game descriptions. It's fun, but takes a lot of work. It's a different thing to produce a one-paragraph commercial blurb than a long description of the game and it's components.

In the other hand, I have a permission to be honest now. The descriptions I've written earlier have been somewhat commercial, you know... Smooth. Now I can say out loud if the game sucks. We'll see. I've tried to keep a positive attitude, find something good about every game whether I like it or not.

One thing's for sure: it sure isn't easy to write a full-length description of a game you've never seen or played. Fortunately BoardGameGeek is a good source of information and pictures. So, if you've written a good review of some game there, there's a chance I'll be using you as my source material...

Safe Haven is actively working to develop Lautapelit.fi as their board game brand name. The Finnish edition of Carcassonne was released under the name, for example, and I'm quite sure it won't be the last game.

As a side note, the Finnish game of the year competition is very interesting this year: both Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan are nominated for the best family game. If one of them won't win, there will be no end to the ridicule!