March 2005 Archives

I attempted the first Doom scenario against Johanna's invaders. I got killed in a horrible way, after reaching the red key. Too bad, but it was still quite fun. I know I played pretty bad, forgetting damage bonuses and slowing down too much (should've run through the place much faster), but then again, I don't mind Johanna winning the game - at least she was quite happy with the result!

The mechanics of the game are quite clunky, even though there are good parts to it, too. I like the battle dice, that's a clever system (the way the blue dice add damage but not range, while yellow and green dice give more range and less damage, allowing for several different attack profiles), but there are too much bonuses and other stuff to mind. It'll take a game or two to get one's head around them.

I got some extra time, so as a result, you'll get another review on the Finnish site: Fifth Avenue.´

I haven't played Fifth Avenue much, but I think I have it pretty well nailed down. It's certainly not bad as some have claimed - there are interesting decisions and good tension. However, for various reasons (bland looks, fragility with the shops and who knows what), it fails to deliver top tier gameplay. It's almost there, it's a good game without a doubt, but something's missing.

Even though most of the mechanisms in the game are fairly simple, they interact in rather complex ways. Fifth Avenue is one of those games I really don't enjoy explaining. Considering how often I'll have to explain the rules to each and every game I play, that's a big negative.

Next up in my Finnish review site: Niagara.

While Zoch is well-known for games with good presentation, Niagara is an extremely pretty game. From the first pictures I saw from the Essen fair 2004 I knew I had to see this game in action. I was not disappointed: the clever board (go see the pictures at the Geek, words will not do justice to it), shiny gems and wooden canoes work well to provide theme and excitement.

However, the game beneath all this flash is decent, but not extraordinary. Players move their canoes by playing movement chits numbered from 1-6. The chits are used once and returned to play after all have been used. Players choose their chits simultaneously and then play clockwise around the table - last players have an advantage, as they can react to players before them.

It's a pretty tactical game. Players try to fetch gems from the river banks and set themselves up so that they can bring the gems back to land. There are two threats to that: the flow of the river that pushes the canoes towards the waterfall (and thanks to the setup of the board, the canoes will actually fall) and other players, who can steal gems.

The river consists of transparent plastic discs, which are the "squares" players use when moving in the river. After everybody has moved, the river flows a certain amount of steps, determined by the smallest numbered chit played. There's also a small modifier (from -1 to +2), which the players can meddle with. New discs are pushed to the river from upstream, causing discs to move down the river and eventually over the waterfall.

The neat river mechanism and the simultaneous action selection make Niagara quite interesting. However, I'm not quite sure the game will last repeated play for experienced gamers. While there are certainly tactics involved, it's still a bit light. Thanks to the pretty bits, the price is steep for such a simple game.

However, as a family game, it's top of the line in my opinion and I would recommend it without a shadow of a doubt.

I came across two new games I haven't heard about yet. Verflixxt is a new game from Kramer and Kiesling, but far from their earlier work together. The board of this roll and move game is made of cards with number values from -10 to +10. The last piece to leave each card (each player has several pieces) must take the card. In the end, the player with most point (or least negative points) wins the game. The game has very few rules and lots of luck. Very basic family game, that is, but hopefully with enough twist in it.

Labyrinth - Die Schatzjagd is already in the Geek. The latest addition to the Amazing Labyrinth family is a surprisingly interesting game. Here's what I wrote in Geek:

It's a speed game. A labyrinth card is turned up. Players start making their way through the labyrinth to find out how many treasure chests they can reach. Some are behind closed doors, some are behind deadly traps - those must not be counted.

When someone gets the total, they say it out loud and then check behind the card if they got it right. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that correct guesses are rewarded with keys, which open doors on the maps - players with keys must look for more treasures, balancing the game a little. I'd guess that once someone has all three keys and finds another treasure, the game is over.

I'm intrigued. Die Schatzjagd is similar to Ricochet Robot, only easier. It's fairly small and short, so it'll probably make a pretty good filler for those who like Ricochet Robot. I'm certainly looking forward to get this one!

I also took a look at Australia - looks nice, but I sure wish it had the Franz Vohwinkel art the mask trilogy has. It's probably a good idea to have low expectations here - it's not a heavy thinker, but a lighter family game. Perhaps something like Knizia's Africa. We'll see.

Monumento was the last game I reviewed on the old site and High Society is the first one on the new.

Monumento (or Make'n'Break) is a very simple dexterity game. The player in turn takes ten large colourful wooden blocks and a deck of cards. When the timer is started, he or she turns up a card from the deck and must then build the monument depicted in the card. The player continues building monuments until the timer runs out (it's less than minute, I think).

It's all very simple, except some of the monuments. There are two varities: either with colours set or free. Three levels of difficulty with varying rewards (one, two or three points per card) ensure variety within the designs. Some are very easy, some are tricky with balancing. The two-pointers are best, in my opinion: more points, less trouble.

Building the monuments is great fun. The annoying sound of the mechanical timer adds to the tension as the player in turn sweats through the cards. Watching is almost as fun as building.

The game works well thanks to its simplicity. It's fun for families or for gamers looking for quick, physical fun. And forget the four-player limit - we had great time with five, we just dropped one round from the game to keep it shorter. More players should be fine, though downtime might be too much with more than five.

High Society is such a classic that I don't feel great need to review it. I think it's one of better games in it's genre. The combination of simple, elegant auction game with few clever twists makes High Society a very interesting game that's short, but not that light - there's real strategic depth in the game. Few games can offer that much bang in such a small form. High Society (or Einfach Tierisch) deserves a place in most collections.

I've been thinking about getting a domain for my board game site for a while now. Now, I've went and done it: Lautapelaaja.net ("lautapelaaja" is Finnish for "board gamer") is open. The old page is gone, but the links aren't dead - they redirect to the new site. If you're linking to my site, please update your links.

I'm happy now.

Last month we had a record-breaking crowd, now just few players. Such is fortune, waxing and waning. Perhaps the international film festival had something to do with the smaller attendance.

We had enough people to play games, and that's quite enough. We started the games with Bug Bluff. A deck of 64 bug cards (eight cards each of the eight bugs) is distributed between the players. Goal of the game is to accumulate four identical cards to one player - that player loses, everyone else wins.

Bug Bluff is, as the name reveals, a bluffing game. Cards are given face down, with a claim about the bug depicted. If recipient wants to face the card, they'll have to say whether the the giver of the card lies or not. If they're right, the card goes to the giver, otherwise they'll take it. Received cards are kept face up. Instead of facing the card, players can pass them on to other players.

It's decent fun, all right, but not quite my cup of tea. I could see it working with non-gamers, though. There's a very popular Finnish card game called Paskahousu, which is also often played face down, giving the game a strong bluffing element. Anybody who likes Paskahousu should enjoy Bug Bluff. Both games also have a single loser, which works in more relaxed environment (for example loser pays the next round or so).

Anyway, I didn't like it much, but I'll have to give it another go some day. I certainly adore the cards, the art is just fantastic.

Next up was High Society, a new game for most of the players. I like it a lot, it's Knizia's best auction game, probably, and one of the better auction games all together. I tried to keep my eye on who's the loser, and got it right even though I lost track at some point. I also tried to use the big cards more freely, because that's what they're for - if you're going to pay over 25k for a card, why not start with the big one? I took the -5 card, though, which pretty much ruined my game. Still, it was a blast. High Society is a brilliant little game, and the Überplay edition is very nicely done. I'm looking forward for their rendition of For Sale.

Ville was eyeing Mogul, so that's what we played next. Another small auction game, another favourite of mine. This time I played real bad - I dropped out of the shares too early and spent a too large portion of the game collecting money, afraid to buy shares because of the nearing crash. Antti took the game by storm (33 points, I was second with 19) because of a large array of shares, most of which he sold. I'm proud, though - in the end I had 21 money when there was a total of 30 money in the game. That was enough to beat everyone else but the super mogul Antti.

Monumento was one of the games I really wanted to try. We had one player too much, but that didn't matter - there's nothing in the game that limits it to four players, really. To shorten it up, we played only three rounds instead of four. It was great fun! Arranging the blocks is surprisingly entertaining, when you have such limited time to do it. We had some colour troubles, the colours of the blocks on the cards don't match the blocks completely, but that's fairly minor.

It's a fun party game, and I'm certainly going to bring it to our club again. After all, it's even fun to watch, and that's something.

Ari joined us when we were starting a game of Cluzzle, so we had a full compliment of six players. Lots of neat sculptures were seen - Erkka was probably the best, his Oidipus was both very beautifully detailed and quite disturbing. Too bad nobody figured it out... Ville won with an amazing score, but not because of his sculptures. He just guessed lots of other people's work.

My final game yesterday was Doom. Ville and Antti were the brave marines, who had to clear their way through maintenance base in Blood in the Shadows. They actually made it! I killed Antti twice and Ville once and the deck ran out for the fourth frag, but they got out before the critical fifth frag.

Lessons learned as the invader: save up the monster cards, there aren't too many of them. I basically wasted two mancubuses and a hell knight, because I played them too early and they couldn't follow the marines through the narrow corridors. I didn't use my other cards enough, either.

We got one rule badly wrong, which made the game a bit easier for marines: we didn't check for range when throwing grenades. That was a bit unclear in the rules. Now I know better. Anyway, it was a fun ride, but a bit too long (about two hours, maybe a little under) to be played regularly in the board game club.

A bunch of games played recently:

I played a game of Gone Fishing! with Johanna on Friday. She proved to be a superior fisher. Of 31 possible fish points, she got 26. I fished after her, so I could tally my score against hers, but woe, I ended up eight points short. I was rather pleased with the game, it's a light game but fun to play.

Yesterday I was playing games with Marektoy buys, who wanted me to teach them the games they sell. We didn't play most of the games, but instead went through the rules and the most interesting aspects of them.

We did play Settlers of Catan. I'm a bit shocked, actually - last time I played Catan was almost three years ago, when I tried Cities & Knights, which left me mentally bruised. The strange bit: I actually enjoyed the game. It was exciting, and fun. I won, which certainly helps, but it wasn't that straightforward. My final turn, when I plonked down a road to steal back the longest road and upgraded a town was a great moment. Perhaps I should punch out my new Finnish copy and actually play the game once in a while?

Niagara was another game we tried. Second time I played with the correct rules (well, almost - I forgot the bit about using only seven jewels, but it didn't matter in this game), second time I won. Again I managed to collect five different jewels. It's fun, and works well with three players.

I got review copies of new Marektoy releases. Torakkapokeri aka Bug Bluff aka Kakerlaken-Poker is a very simple game of bluffing. Players give cards to other players face down, claiming them to be something - the player in the receiving end can either take and believe, take and doubt or pass on. Correct guess means the giver keeps the card, otherwise the receiving player must keep it. First person to collect four identical cards loses the game (unlike the current description in Geek claims - I've already submitted a correction).

The game is probably pretty good fun, we'll see, but at least it looks spectacular. The card art is amazing. It reminds me of Aquarius, actually: strong colours with heavy black borders. It's beautiful and all the cards have unique art, which makes it even better. It's very pretty.

I also got Koukussa aka Petri Heil! aka Gone Fishing!. It's such a new release, I was first to comment it in the Geek. Finnish edition was published at the same time with German and English editions - it's great to live in such a fore-running country! The game looks actually better than I expected. It's an asymmetrical game: one player controls two fishermen, who try to catch valuable fish from the pond, while the other player controls the fish, trying to make the fisherman catch old boots and other rubbish.

There's bluffing involved and perhaps a small dose of deduction as well. It's a light game, but it looks like it might be an interesting one. We'll see, I'll try to actually play the game one of these days.

Now I'll just wonder which name I should use of these games. It's weary to list all three names each time I write about the games. Finnish names would be natural for me, but uncomprehensible for most readers. Should I use original German names or English names? Any opinions?

I got my hands on Doom: The Boardgame today. Oh my, it's neat! I can't help being a parakeet. The bits are gorgeous! The figures suffer a bit from silly colours (I'd like to see them painted well), but they are still rather impressive. The amount of cardboard is also stunning - the game is screaming for a ton of ziploc bags, which is a shame because I don't have any right now. The box - a large one, too, it's not wide like Twilight Imperium, but it sure is high - is a mess now I've punched out all the counters.

I'm looking forward to trying the game - with Johanna! She was intrigued by the game. She enjoyed watching me play Doom and other shooters on computer, so the idea of Doom: The Boardgame was fine with her. She's probably going to play the invaders and try to kill me. Sounds fun.

I scored a review copy of Monumento (also known as Make'n'Break). It's a Ravensburger release with a rather simple idea. Players have 10 large colourful wooden blocks and a deck of cards. A card is turned from the deck and the player with the blocks must build the pile of blocks described in the card. Some cards have colours, some just specify the shape. There are three levels of difficulty.

There's also a timer, with three different time settings. That's how much time the player in question has to make his monuments. I haven't measured the time, but it's somewhere around 30-45 seconds, I'd guess. Players score points for the cards they manage to build. It's so simple, that a review based on reading the rules would probably hit the spot quite well: the game is simple, fun and good entertainment for the whole family, perhaps a bit too simple for gamers, except those who enjoy light fluff every now and then. Rating seven, or three stars.

Here's the curious design decision: the selection of timer level is done by a die roll. Now that's just stupid. I don't mind dice and random elements that bring uncertainty and a bit of chaos into a game, but here the die only brings unfairness. If somebody rolls consistent ones and other gets twos and threes, blaming the die for the loss would be fair in my opinion.

We'll ditch the die, that's it. Geek comments suggested using 3, 2, 1, 1 for the four rounds of the game. Sounds good.

I wrote a lengthy review of Memoir '44, in Finnish, as usual.

I don't think there's much need for me to write a review of Memoir '44 - just go and read the 20 or so reviews the Geek already has. The game has pretty good ratings and a ranking of 8th in the Geek list. The critical comments are quite similar: too random, too much like Battle Cry, too luck-driven...

Well, yeah, it is a luck-driven game. There's cards and there's dice, what do you expect? I think it's all right for what it's trying to be. Does it deserve the 8th place in the ranking? I don't think so, but hey, many people seem to like it a lot.

For me the level of complexity and luck is fine. I already enjoyed Battle Cry, but Memoir '44 is a big improvement on that: more interesting theme, refined mechanisms, much smaller box - all things that make it better than it's predecessor. It's probably the best tabletop war game for me, really (Pathway to Glory for N-Gage is the best overall wargame right now).

The latest issue of The Games Journal is out. Check out the article on Ambition, Mike Church's card game. I enjoyed the article very much and I'm certainly looking forward to reading the next installment.

My friend Stefu has also created a nice Black Vienna puzzle. I solved it, so it can't be very difficult, but it was fun to solve.