BSW session: Diamant, Attribute (finally!)

I did two BrettSpielWelt sessions today. I tried to recruit folks from Boardgame Society forums, but with no luck. I got some general interest, but nobody joined me.

On my first visit I played seven games of Diamant. It's a new filler game from Alan Moon and Bruno Faidutti. It's a push-your-luck game: players are treasure hunters looking for gems in dangerous caves. Caves are resolved one card at a time; card may contain either diamonds or dangers. There are 15 diamond cards and 3 of each 5 dangers. When a second copy of a danger card shows up, the players must leave the cave without their treasures. Wimping out is always an alternative, of course.

There's also an added bonus for chickening out: if the diamonds on a card can't be divided equally amongst the explorers, the remainder is left on the card. When someone leaves, they get to pick up the leftover gems on their path. Clever, and makes for some tough decisions.

The game takes about five minutes or less in BSW, which is perfect timeframe for a game like it. I'm not so sure about it in real life, when it takes more time.

Next time around I tried some Web of Power. It's been awhile and it shows, I had lost all my touch.

However, I did win a game of Power Grid. It was just great. I was a little behind when I expected the game to end. With some luck in the power plant market (I got a cheap seven-city power plant I needed) I managed to connect 17 cities (with just 3 electros in my pocket after that), expecting my opponents to do the same. You can imagine my relief and excitement when the first opponent got stuck in 16 cities and it got even better when the same happened to the second opponent, too. I won!

I tried King Lui, too - decent implementation, slightly ho-hum game. Bluff was much better with five players, but still not as good as in real life. I lost a quick two-player St. Petersburg game; it was all about aristocrats, once again.

I've wanted to try Attribute after I read Ilari's GeekList about essential games. Finally I got a chance, and got into a seven-player game. I played against six German guys, with a bilingual word set. Guess who was clueless? It was fun, nonetheless, and I had some good moments. I was surprised, when the late Pope wasn't "sinister" like I guessed, but even more surprised when someone described Finland as "Italian" and other player chose that card (a secret card dictates whether you need to match the topic with your attribute or not; you try to pick the cards that match the topic)! What a great game. I created a Finnish version of the game for myself. I'll probably buy the English edition at some point, but a game like this needs to be played in Finnish to be properly enjoyed.