August 2004 Archives

This blog is two years old now. It's a fairly long time in the world of blogging, I think I read somewhere most blogs will fold in much shorter time. Hopefully Gameblog will continue for a long time.

I wanted to compile some kind of list about the best entries I've written. I had some suggestions.

Mikko, the King of Scotland is an account of one game of Hammer of the Scots. It's a rare kind of session report. I usually describe games more in terms of mechanics, this is more in the story-telling vein.

Die Macher - at last! is another interesting session report and probably the most-hyped entry ever in this blog.

Lahti games weekend, Saturday and Sunday and Helcon II - Saturday are both similar session reports from cons. Richard Huzzey called the latter epic. Both were fun events, especially the Helcon. I'm unfortunately going to miss the next Lahti weekend, but this year's Helcon is a must.

Bingo! was a bit lighter session report. It was fun, though. For the record, my beginner's luck didn't last: I've been there once or twice since and have won nothing decent.

There isn't much about game design, Game idea is one of the few posts. I never tried the idea, which Richard Huzzey nonetheless found fascinating.

My Die Macher is coming to me is certainly in the lighter end of the scale, but it's a fun entry, in a style I like doing every once in a while. It's that kind of chatty style which sets this blog apart from my other, more formal games page.

Happiness is a strange idea. I'd like to add Game stat maths, which documents similar madness. That's the really geeky part of the blog.

Iain wanted to point out my experience with Who wants to be a millionaire? Quiz shows, part two is probably the best starting point for those affairs (see related entries for more).

And of course, A new beginning, the first entry of the blog.

I suppose these sum up what's been going on. If anybody has more suggestions from the first 500 entries, I'll update the list.

First: this is entry #500. Now that's something.

I dropped by Brettspielwelt today to play some games. My main interest was to try StreetSoccer in realtime after playing so much of it in Little Golem. It was fun, though I don't like the BSW interface. I'd like to have a neat and clear 2d board instead of 3d board and nifty animations. Nice sound effects, sure, and the animations finally made it clear how the game works (in PBW games you only see the states of the game, not the transitions and thus some things may remain unclear). It's a fun game, nonetheless. Will I buy - no, I don't think so, unless a cheap copy comes my way, but I'll keep on playing it online.

After two games (I lost both - I have lost every game so far) I moved on to play Power Grid. Only one player answered my call, so we played a two-player game. Unlike last time, the game was great fun. It was close and exciting until the last round. As an interesting curiosity, we both played so slowly, trying to stay on the second place that we didn't actually get stage 2, we jumped straight to stage 3. In the end, I lost to the tiebreaker: 247-208. The ultimate reason for my loss must've been one auction, where I paid almost 100 electros for a very good nuclear power plant. Right after I buy it, my opponent got the fusion plant with the list price. That pretty much makes up the difference in our wallets in the end of the game.

It was an exciting match and really made me appreciate the two-player game more. It's better than I expected after the first game. Another reason to enjoy Power Grid, which is indeed one of the better new games.

I have few Gmail invites to hand out. If someone is interested, send a request to my Gmail account (msaari at Gmail) and tell me why you should have one. You're guaranteed to get one if you have a boardgame-related blog. Invites I can send are limited, get yours while they are available.

Edit: they're gone for now.

Edit 2: and then I get another five invites to hand out.

Edit 3: I haven't got any, so please stop begging. It makes you look a bit sad, too. Go to invite spooler to get an invite.

I recently registered at Little Golem. It's a play-by-web site featuring a selection of games. StreetSoccer should be of interest to some (looks like Iain tried it), I'm there mostly to play Go. The interface is inferior to my regular haunt, Dragon Go Server, but Little Golem has something Dragon still hasn't: well-organised tournaments. Little Golem has a clever, computer-operated tournament system. There are rating tournaments for players of equal rank, monthly tournaments for players of any rank and championship leagues to determine the true masters.

The system is fun and the tournaments spice up things. I'll probably keep single games of Go to Dragon, but I think I'll reduce those even more and focus a bit on the tournaments. I even joined a Chess tournament!

Mik Svellov (of brilliant Brett'n'Board) announced the Austrian Spiel des Spiele awards for this year. There's a list of award winners either at his SDS page or my GeekList.

While I don't really care about the award (it has very short history and none of the effect of Spiel des Jahres awards), there's something quite worth mentioning. In addition of the one winner (which was Knizia's Einfach Genial), they hand out recommendations. This year they note the best games in following categories: for experts, for friends, for families, for children, for large groups of people and for two players. Those picks contain some good games.

As you might guess, I strongly agree with recommending St. Petersburg for experts. I also consider San Juan to be an interesting choice for a two-player game recommendation. And yeah, Cranium is a good game for lots of people.

So, while the main award means little to me, I'll continue to keep my eyes open for the side recommendations.

I spent some quality time in Brettspielwelt playing Power Grid. I hadn't tried it there before, but the interface turned out to be rather obvious. I had only one problem: the message window was only one row tall when I expanded the window to full-screen size (a must when playing Power Grid).

I played three games, twice with three players and once with two players. All games stressed the importance of the limited fuel supply. In the first game, I was frankly screwed - I was buying last and the other players wouldn't let me have enough fuel. That was bad. I managed to hang along and finally placed second. In the second game, in the other hand, I managed to reach the second place, when in the last round I bought out the coal supply, dropping the second-place player to merely 12 cities. Nasty move!

The two-player game, in the other hand, was totally ridiculous. I had a strong lead, I got much better income going on and was sure to win the game easily. Well, it wasn't that easy, when I ran out of fuel at the time I had 20 cities and could connect to 21 anytime. The other guy just kept buying all fuel and connecting cities. I replaced my power plants and finally won the game when he forgot to buy some uranium for his nuclear power plants. Had he done that, he might have actually won the game. That was annoying, but it taught me a lesson, I suppose. I don't think the two-player game is particularly fun, really and I would never play it outside BSW. In BSW, I might be persuaded to try it.

The three-player games, in the other hand, were great fun. I like Power Grid very much. In the economic games front, Age of Steam reigns supreme (because I like cruel), but with only a slightly higher than Power Grid. Besides, Power Grid is available at the Brettspielwelt and Age of Steam isn't... Both are brilliant games, and the BSW conversion of Power Grid is well done. The interface is mostly quite obvious and easy to manage.

On 26th, this blog turns two. Amazing. This is entry number 495; looking back a year, I've written about 30 entries less this year than last year, but hey, who's counting. 500 entries in two years is pretty good pace, I'd say.

Well, anyway. I thought I'd ask a favour from you, my dear readers. Since two years is quite a period in the volatile world of Internet and blogs. After all, most blogs fold pretty fast. The thing I'm asking is for you to go through the archives (or your memories) and tell me, if I ever wrote a good entry. I'd like to pick some of my better entries and perhaps put a link to them in the front page. Have I written something worth highlighting?

Gameblog's birthday is 26th and I'd like to post the entries then. That means you have ten days. Anybody up for a challenge? If you find something, either drop me an e-mail or post a comment with either title, link or id number of any number of decent entries.

It's time for International Gamers Awards again. You can find the nominees for 2004 awards in multiplayer and two-player categories (historical simulation was awarded earlier) at the IGA nominee page or at the Geek in the IGA nominee GeekList I made.

The lists are impressive and picking the winners will be difficult. I'm rooting for St. Petersburg, of course, but I'm quite certain it won't win. In the two-player category Memoir '44 is certainly a strong contender.

Anyway, the GeekList is probably the best place to comment the nominees, so head that way and say what you think.

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, Finnish Game of the Year awards are very interesting this year as both Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan are competing for the award. Well, looks like that competition is already done: Catan didn't make it to the final four. Carcassonne did, and is competing against Yundao, Triominds and Monumento. Never heard of those. I sure hope Carcassonne wins!

It's been a while since I last played Tichu (about 50 weeks, actually). I played a game at BSW and sucked. No wonder. It was fun, anyway. We were down something like 800-0, but my partner pulled a Grand Tichu and then we won another round but after that was quickly over. I'd say my skills are rusty, but I don't have any to start with. Ha! Anyway, this game just reinforces my view that Gang of Four is the better game of the two. Not deeper, perhaps, but certainly more fun to play. Choose Tichu over Gang of Four only if you have a fairly regular group interested to play the game a lot. For more casual play, Gang of Four is much better.

As usual, I also played St. Petersburg. The four-player game was won by a player who got a first-turn Mistress of Ceremonies. I'm quite sure that was the root of his victory. Repeating Alex Rockwell's rule of thumb: always make sure you have 18 roubles in the first aristocrat phase, especially if you're the first to player to pick. If you can't buy the Mistress if she comes up, you'll be bloody annoyed. Good first-round aristocrat kicks butt. Unfortunately, I got none this time and lost the game. 'Nuff said.

I had planned a game of Die Macher today, but that was cancelled due to lack of players (too much effort to play a three-player game, really - I would've wanted at least four). However, I had to meet Manu, our wedding photographer. He dropped by and I introduced him to Memoir '44 - I was quite certain he would appreciate.

I was correct. We fought two battles: Saint Mère-Eglise and Sword Beach. I played the Allied forces in both of them and promptly lost both. So far I haven't won a single game of Memoir or Battle Cry. One day, one day. The battle of Saint Mère-Eglise should've been mine: I did a good paradrop, all four units survived. I dropped them behind the village and captured it, but then kind of lost momentum. In the end I lost 4-2.

On Sword Beach I did some good fighting, destroying a unit of tanks and captured the town of Riva Bella with my commandos, emptying the bunker on that side. Unfortunately I could do little progress elsewhere and the artillery in the center bunker slowly chewed my forces. I lost 5-4.

Well, it doesn't really matter, because Memoir '44 is such a blast to play. It's genuinely fun game to play. The plastic figures are one important reason for that. The game has so much luck involved that you never know what you can do and what you don't - had I received more right flank cards on Sword Beach I could've done wonders. I didn't get a single one, so I was kind of hindered by that.

By the way, as with Battle Cry, some people are going to extraordinary lengths to get a neat set. Brummbar's Memoir '44 Fan Site has some scenarios, but the best content is under painting. The figures are gorgeous, of course, and they have also made some very neat bunkers and 3-d hills. I'd love to get some of those hills...

I just played four two-player games of St. Petersburg at Brettspielwelt. Longest game took almost 14 minutes, fastest was over under eight minutes! That's more like it!

I managed to win only one game. In two-player games it's easy to see when one player starts to get more and more workers and then you can say it's already over. Of course, income gained in other phases will balance it a bit, but usually you use the worker money to get the other income. Two games were such obvious cases today - I won one, lost the other. The other two games were closer. In one of them, the game was tied before the aristocrat bonuses. Very close, then, unfortunately I had two aristocrats less than my opponent.

Moritz Eggert wrote an article he humbly titled A winning strategy for St. Petersburg. Looks interesting - the strategy is focused on acquiring upgrades - but as could be expected, Alex Rockwell and Jim Campbell tear the strategy down. Interesting. Alex Rockwell has only 15 games of St. Pete at BSW, that's surprisingly little. Not much more at the Geek, either. Still, he seems to know what he's talking about. In the other hand, Eggert at least plays with the people who've written the massive German St. Pete analysis.

Who knows, the strategy seems interesting but I'm not swaying from mine (which is probably pretty close to what Alex Rockwell is doing). I usually do pretty well, today I noticed I made some mistakes so there's some room for development. But hey, at least I notice when I make a bad move - now I'll just have to figure out how to see all the mistakes before I do them.

St. Petersburg is a bit tricky game - a good player will beat newbies hands down, even with the crucial strategy lessons (well, a lesson: buy every worker you can, unless you're you won't make profit). If all players are good, luck of the draw will decide the winner. Or would, if nobody made mistakes and most people do, so I suppose that's what makes the game work.

Robert from the boardgame club was very kind and gave me and Johanna a wedding gift. We couldn't wait until our wedding! The large box turned out to be Goldland. It was a very good choice - I like the game and it was a good game for Johanna. It has a strong, interesting theme and gorgeous bits. Johanna isn't too keen on different mechanics or such technical details: she likes games that are fun and look interesting. Goldland is exactly that kind of game.<--

Goldland

So, yesterday we started exploring the land. Johanna focused on doing adventures and collected most of them. She also made it to the temple first. Well, after that, it was fairly obvious she would win the game and yeah, she smoked me 36-16. But hey, I don't mind losing to her and she loves to win - we both had a good time with the game. Thanks Robert!

I wrote some new reviews. The St. Petersburg review has been up for a week, while the Tom Tube review went just up. Both are in Finnish.

You've heard me rave about St. Petersburg quite enough, and I'll continue that whenever I happen to play the game.

In the other hand, Tom Tube is perhaps less known. It has just 64 reviews at the Geek and I certainly think it would deserve more publicity. Of course, Mitchell Thomashow's excellent review in The Games Journal has probably worked wonders. If you want to know more about the game, I suggest you read that. And if you want to only know about the game, skip until you see pictures.

Anyway, it's a fun game. I like it a lot. There's a big dose of luck of the draw, but some tiles are good for you, some tiles are useful for disturbing your opponent and only a small amount of tiles are really useless. The tiles are all weird, though, and often point at totally wrong directions. But that's a feature of the game - you should forget right away any plans of making nice, straight paths. Thanks to the rhomboid tiles, that's practically impossible. Your paths will twist and turn, that's how the game works. And hey, that's what's fun in the game...

It's also very pretty. My only gripe is the pointy edges of the tiles, they have a tendency to stick into my fingertips. Ouch. Not suitable for small children, this game. The tiles are colourful, though, the yellow and red pipes look smashing against the dark background of the deep space.

You see I'm addicted? Another session of St. Petersburg at the BSW. This time it was much better: all games clocked in below 30 minutes and best took just 20 minutes. Very good!

The first game was absurd. In the end of the game, I was producing 141 rubles each turn (60 in worker phase, 5 with buildings and 76 with aristocrats). Meanwhile I racked in 62 points each turn. I had 13 different aristocrats... The final score was 253-110. It was very silly and had it been a real game, it would've been terminated long before it was over. The other guy didn't quite understand the finer details of the game.

However, he picked up pretty fast. In our next game with a third player, he went and won the game. I came second, with a low margin. He got a lead in workers at the right time and didn't make any major mistakes after that. After that game he left, having convinced himself that St. Petersburg is a stupid game. Can't please everyone, I suppose. Gameblogger dropped by, too, sharing the same sentiment.

Anyway, the games continued with a two-player game I lost (and that was, once again, clearly visible before the game ended - the key to my loss was building phase income by my opponent - that's a strong tool) and three-player game I won. It was an exciting game. I ended that game with whopping 96 rubles in my hand - now that was some bad play! Still, victory for me, mostly thanks to 10 different aristocrats I had.

St. Petersburg has it's shortcomings and I think it's within the realm of possibility that my rating will drop down to nine after the initial enthusiasm wears off, but right now the 10 rating is spot on.

I played another game of St. Petersburg at Brettspielwelt. Once again I'm surprised by the slowness of it: 43 minutes this time. That's more in line with the real games, but still way too slow for BSW. People take too much time when they pass, that's it.

While the waiting kept me bored, the game was quite exciting. Final results were 77-75-73-6?. The last guy was out of the race early on - he had lots of buildings but not enough money. It was a close race between the rest of us and my second place was finally caused by only having four aristocrats. The winner got seven, so my success was quite good considering the circumstances.

Another month, another issue of The Games Journal. This time it's a rather fine issue, too. Greg Aleknevicus writes an interesting piece on game themes called German Games are Fraudulent!. Reviews feature Memoir '44 and others. Check it out!

Rick Heli (A Spotlight on Games!) interviewed yours truly for his series of interviews of gamers around the world. Thanks to his frames, I can't provide a direct link, but it should open directly on the front page.

We had a pleasant little boardgame club session yesterday. Only few people came to play, but hey - that's enough. One table of gamers is all I need. Our first game was St. Petersburg. While I explained the rules, I joked that since it's a four-player game, a fifth player will walk in after I've finished with the rules. That was indeed the case, but we played nonetheless. As was appropriate, I won the game hands down, thanks to a large bunch of aristocrats. When explaining the rules I emphasised the value of workers but didn't say much about aristocrats.

That's something you learn on your first game, I suppose. After all, I don't think it's necessarily a good thing to describe the value of everything before the first game, since that's basically what's being good in St. Petersburg is about. Even though that might cause one to lose the first game, one'll learn and in the next game function better. At least I've really enjoyed learning how to play the game. The more I play the less I'll be able to learn and that's a bit sad, really.

Later on I played a two-player game with Robert. That was very fast and furious game. Early in the game Robert made some small mistakes (buying too expensive things, basically, which caused him to lag behind me in money income) and it was fairly obvious I would win. I think the two-player game could use a doubling cube - in many occasions conceding the game earlier might be a good move.

Then we tried Maharaja. We got a full table of five players for it, which I think is a good thing. Thanks to the simultaneous action planning, downtime is reduced and the game took only 75 minutes. Without the simultaneous planning, it would probably be over two hours... Anyway, it's an interesting game. Lots of possibilities for tactical manoeuvres, less scope for strategic play. I think. That might change after more plays and I certainly want to play more. Next time I'll know some things better, how to operate the characters and Maharaja order and whatnot. Clever game, indeed, but perhaps a bit too chaotic for my tastes.

Something lighter next: High Society. I won, when Ville, who had most points, happened to have the least money. I just love that rule - it makes the game so nervous, trying to decide how much you can bid without losing too much money. My calculations have worked so far, in the three games I've played I've never been the one with least money. High Society is a lovely game I think I should get. It's so easy and accessible.

I met Robert on the field of battle in Memoir '44. We played Arracourt. I was the Axis and Robert was the Allies. Looking at the web site, the Allies have won 14 of the 16 battles reported (that includes ours) so it's no wonder I lost! I think next time I'll try Sword Beach - three-star rating from 21 raters and pretty balanced records (44/50). Here the only concern is that Axis might not have much to do except to stand and shoot. Anyway, Arracourt was an interesting battle even though I was overwhelmed by the Allied forces. It's a fun game, lose or not. With more time, a double match would be of course the best option to balance it out.

We tried another kind of war game, too: Victory & Honor. This one's a American Civil War -themed trick-taking game. It's an interesting game, where players play three tricks at the same time. Certain cards have special abilities and the order of the play depends on the cards played (basically each player can choose who plays next). It was very complicated to teach, mostly because I didn't know the rules and the rule book was very unclear. I think I'll write a clearer summary of the rules one day - I'm quite certain the rules can be expressed in clearer fashion, because the game isn't that difficult. However, playing it well is going to be a serious brain burner.

We played one practise phase, then a practise round. That latter was unintentional - I noticed after the round that allied players do not score together. Oops. We managed to play one proper round before we had to end the game. Tuomas and Olli won that, the scores were something like 18+6 - 12+15 or so. Pretty close, and I want to make it known that it was Robert who ruined our side's score... I'm looking forward to playing a proper four-round game at some point. Victory & Honor seems very promising.

To end the evening (at least for my part), we played a game of San Juan. My explanation of the rules was probably the shortest one possible but hey, Atro knows how to play Puerto Rico and he's a smart guy. He did quite well, too, so I guess my explanation was successful. I managed to win the game with 11-point City Hall, using Prefecture and Carpenter to score cards. Others had more production buildings, but they just weren't fast enough.