June 2005 Archives

We played our third Lost Valley match today. Johanna did the impossible: she won with river gold only! It's the only thing she could've done, too, because she didn't get a single mountain on her side of the river.

It was pretty neat, but also quite close. She had just 15 pieces of gold on her nuggets, while my three mountain gold nuggets had 11 pieces - next one I would've drawn would've been a four, making it an even game.

Johanna's success kind of proves the point of how pure river gold sucks. Here we have a fairly optimal situation: she had bunch of river gold tiles near each other, the sieve and good food reserves. She was very fast and while I had some issues with food, I wasn't too slow either. Sure, she won, but she played extremely well and it was still very close.

However, I think river gold just might work as a speed boost, but it needs some mountain gold to back it up. And of course, there's one caveat: these are two-player game results, with no competition for resources. Competition should slow mountaineers more than river gold collectors.

We were thinking about an expansion, too. It would be neat, especially if it had some new way of getting gold, to widen the options a bit. Now we're a bit afraid the game might get old sooner or later. Some incentives to explore the wilderness would be nice - I came up with an idea of slightly better tiles you could only place at certain distance from the river. That would encourage exploring the wilderness a bit. I wouldn't mind having more tiles in general.

Anyway, playing Lost Valley sure is fun, even if the Goslars don't approve the two-player version. There's just a small shadow of doubt hanging over the game...

I met the Ollis for the last time for now - I'm moving in the end of July and just don't have enough time for games right now. Too bad, but that's life.

Anyway, we started our games with Cluedo Card Game. It's a simple deduction game and quite clearly too simple for gamers. As a family game it's probably pretty good (and since it lacks the die-rolling, it's probably a lot better than the board game). Olli H. didn't like it, but I got the idea he has played the original Cluedo to death.

I wouldn't mind playing the card game version again. It's certainly nothing like Black Vienna, but it's still a fairly pleasant distraction.

Second on the list was Amazonas, second time for me. This time I knew how the tiles scored before the game started, which was probably the biggest reason for my loss.

Amazonas is decent fun, but slightly on the grey "don't know" area. I kind of like it, but right now wouldn't buy it for me. It's easy and fun to play, but something clicks. The game is also probably better with four players than the three we now had.

Next up was a sweet treat: Cosmic Eidex. Man, now here's a good game. Definitely THE bright spot this year so far (this and the fact that Johanna loves Lost Valley).

This time we all had special powers that work before the hand is played. Olli M. had Differenzler. Differenzler guesses how many points he gets in the round, correct guess scores two game points. What's even better, Olli pulled off a good guess (32 points, I reckon) once in the game.

Olli H. had Guggitaler, which changes the game a lot. Instead of regular points, hearts are worth one point each and king of stars is 4, making for total of 13 points in the deck. Playing Guggitaler was fun, too bad Olli wanted to play just few Guggitaler rounds.

I had Fledderer, the grave robber. I could lay down a second card in the beginning of the round and use it to take a discarded card from another player. That was nifty, but has limited usability. Probably the better use is to give a certain card to the other player.

The game started well, as I pulled off a two-pointer. I got all the tricks, even though I tried to give some away in the end. They didn't want to take the tricks, so I just had to keep them all. Unfortunately Olli M. did the same later in the game. I could've stopped him, but didn't, as it would've made me lose a point and the same went with Olli H. - a nasty situation! Our selfishness allowed Olli M. to score two points while he was already in substantial lead. Taking one for the team isn't easy.

Thanks to two two-point rounds, Olli M. waltzed to an easy 7-3-2 victory. Pathetic play from Olli H. and me, but fun nevertheless.

Rest of the afternoon consisted of poorly played game of Samurai I lost and an interesting match of Industrial Waste. There's another gem, I like that one more every time I play it. I did surprisingly well this time, considering how I felt during the game. I didn't produce much, but sold some raw materials in the early game. In the end my money-making started to fall down, so I lost to Olli H., who was a bit more consistent. Olli M. proved that having three accidents in one game isn't a good thing...

Niagara wins the coveted Spiel des Jahres 2005 award. Hooray for Zoch; this is their second win in few years (previous award was 2002 for Villa Paletti).

My first guess for winner was Around the World in 80 Days, since Kosmos hasn't recieved the award in ten years (last time was 1995 with, of course, Settlers of Catan). Niagara was my second candidate, so I think they did a pretty good job at selecting the winner. It's a good family game, after all.

Now it only remains to see how the Finnish game of the year awards will turn up; after all, both Niagara and Around the World in 80 Days are competing.

Next day after our Lost Valley game, Johanna wanted a rematch. That's remarkable! I was more than pleased to play the game again. It was fun - this time we explored the whole of the valley. In the end Johanna won with a healthy margin - I wasted my time with river gold.

After the game, Johanna voiced some concerns - will the game be pretty much the same each time? After all, there's not that much variety in the tactics. I think the river gold is, indeed, bit problematic. It's basically waste of time, especially in the two-player game. However, some fast river gold with some mountain gold might do the trick. Well, I don't care, really - the game is fun to play no matter what.

Johanna left for a picnic with her friends (unfortunately the weather was rainy, so they had to stay indoors), while Olli H. popped by to play some games.

We started with StreetSoccer. Olli had designed some cards to even out the dice luck in the game. We tried two different card distribution variants (four cards, no new cards during the game and three cards, new card every five turns; the latter one was better).

The cards could do beneficial stuff (automatic die roll of six, +4 to die for kicking the ball, two extra moves) or harm the opponent (halve the die roll, only straight kicks allowed). They were fun, if a bit unnecessary in my opinion. Still, it was an interesting idea worth developing further.

Olli hadn't tried Memoir '44 yet, so it was about time. We started with the intro scenario Pegasus Bridge, where I (playing Axis) got three kills before losing 4-3. What a sorry result. The scenario is pretty interesting, if a bit small. However, it works pretty well as an introduction to the game.

Our second battle was Vassieux, Vercors, where I fought Olli's French resistance troops. My forces ran out of steam too soon, leaving me with another bitter 3-4 loss. The scenario has a rather heavy Axis win percentage, too - it's one of the few scenarios in the book which the Germans actually won in the war. It's also a slightly boring scenario, two-star material - decent, but nothing too exciting.

Even though I've been losing a lot (thanks to playing the Axis), I like Memoir a lot. The battle system is simply brilliant, it's all very exciting. I'm really looking forward to the expansion that is coming. I wonder what's in it - new scenarios, I hope, since I'm now three scenarios from playing all the sixteen that come in the book.

I met the Ollis Thursday for some games. It was a fairly monotonous event, with only two different games played. It's not a big deal, since the games were excellent.

I'm really growing fond of Industrial Waste. We played three games, once with just Olli M. and me, twice with three players. It's fast, too - we were able to finish it in 30 minutes.

It's funny how it goes, really. When we played our first three-player game, Olli M. commented how the raw material use was the least interesting front of advancement - and of course, that was the area we all pushed to maximum in that game.

I also came up with a clever idea of holding to advisors. In an ideal situation one would always have an advisor in hand for special purposes, but I tended to use the advisors I held for double innovation.

Not many loans were seen in our games. That's still quite unattractive. We all seem to agree that taking loans for investments is a good idea, but the right opportunity just doesn't come up that often - you usually have the money without loaning.

My wishlist item number one was Cosmic Eidex, which we also played. We got hang of it fairly quickly. It's almost an easy game for me, after playing other Ace-ten games. Indeed, I wasn't actually confused by the special value of tens, but the lack of it! In typical Ace-ten games tens are second in both the ranking and the value, but in Cosmic Eidex it's just the value.

Of course, teaching Cosmic Eidex to someone whose trick-taking experience means playing Last trick as a kid or Hearts on the computer is going to be very tricky.

Anyway, it was an interesting game and the special abilities spiced it up nicely. I got Jiu-jitsu, which I used to my advantage, usually to lose a trick (Jiu-jitsu can choose once a hand to have a lower card beat a card one rank better) I didn't want to get. Olli H. had Fahnder, the cop, which allows one to request a certain card. He used it twice, I think, to call big cards, once to win (he played B of trumps and asked for the nine), once to lose (similar scenario, but reversed). Olli M. used his ability the most: Trumphator can reject the trump suit determined in the deal.

The end was particularly exciting. The game is played to seven game points; two are dealt out each game (typically to lowest scorer and the highest scorer). After eight rounds, the game was 6-5-5 for Olli M. Of course, this meant me and Olli H. had to work together to beat a common foe to get an even chance, 6-6-6 (which would've made the game even more interesting). Unfortunately, I blew it. First we wanted to pile up tricks to Olli M. (if a player scores more than 100 of the 157 points, he loses), but when he avoided tricks, I started to collect. In the end, I managed to take a lot of cards in the end, but scored 105 - over the limit, and no points for me! Thus Olli M. won 7-6-5.

I really like Cosmic Eidex. It's an exciting game, where you can indeed do whatever your cards are good for. Usually it's misère, because you can't blow that. Going for the points is a tricky challenge, but just counting the aces, tens and B and 9 of the trump suit covers most of the points in the deck, so counting the scores during the game shouldn't be too daunting task.

The cosmic powers spice up the game. Some are better than others, and some are downright annoying. I first drew Quizmaster and we quickly decided that I get a re-draw. Quizmaster gets to ask a yes/no question from another player after each trick - that's pretty good, but very annoying and slows down the game a lot.

Anyway, the current number one three-player game is clear now.

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Johanna wanted to play a game with me today. I chose Lost Valley. It was a good choice - Johanna rated the game a full 10 after just one play!

Then again, it's her kind of game, really. Micromanagement, fun projects to build up, clear and concrete goals - she just doesn't like the artificial and constructed nature of many games.

Lost Valley is also peaceful - we played so that each one of us had a different side of the river to explore, so there were no conflicts. Some might call it boring, but Johanna loved it and I thought it was good fun, too. I wonder why the box says 3-4 players, as the two-player game is this good?

Johanna won our game. We both mined the mountains for gold. When she had her ten nuggets and 35 gold pieces, I got seven and 22. I blame the valley: on her side the valley was heavily forested, on my side there was one forest deep in the valley and another one nearer the store, which I found in the very end of the game. I was heavily handicapped by the lack of wood. Johanna had some troubles getting food in large quantities, but those were minor compared to my problems.

Well, I'm used to losing in Lost Valley, so no big deal, and I know how much Johanna likes to win. It was all good fun, and I'm quite sure this won't be the last game of Lost Valley we play. I don't think Johanna has ever been this excited about a board game (well, maybe Antiquity, but that's all very theoretical at this point).

Since I now have a Cosmic Eidex deck, I thought perhaps I should take a look at Swiss Jass, the game behind Cosmic Eidex.

It turns out Cosmic Eidex is a rather complicated mixture of different Jass games. It's basically Swiss Jass, alright, but there's something else, too. The basic structure of avoiding to be the middle player of the round comes from Mittlere or Plus-Minus. In the original version players collect sticks (good) and potatoes (bad), which cancel each other out. Cosmic Eidex is derived from Plus-Minus Jass, where the potatoes are forgotten and players strive to get seven sticks.

10 of stars, Wisdom or Weisheit, comes from Weis rule in Swiss Jass. Everybody has the option to display Weis sets, but only the best Weis scores.

Guggitaler (7 of hearts) is another Jass variant. I couldn't find a description anywhere online, but it probably goes pretty much like in Cosmic Eidex, ie. the card points change.

Differenzler (10 of lizards) is one more Jass variant. Trying to guess the amount of tricks one makes is pretty obvious variant to any trick-taking game.

Skater (B of lizards) is one of my favourites: the card ranks in the game are Skat ranks instead of Jass ranks.

There are of course several card powers, which are clearly inspired by Cosmic Encounter: Laser and Zombie are the most obvious titles.

I played a quick round of Mhing with Johanna while we waited for food to cook. We played just four rounds, which is probably the best explanation for my victory, which was first of it's kind.

I visited the Sunday's board game club swiftly to pick up my copy of Cosmic Eidex (first thoughts: the cards are very pretty!) and stayed for two games.

First I taught Flaschenteufel to Atro and Inari. They both had a one huge round and collected both around 80 points during our three-round match. I, in the other hand, demonstrated a good ability to avoid tricks, playing two zero-round hands. Unfortunately, the third one, a healthy 60-pointer, was spoiled by the bottle. -5.

I'm starting to realize I'm not that good in Flaschenteufel. I can avoid tricks and the bottle, most of the time, but scoring good points is beyond me.

I then hopped into a game of Bongo, which I've been wanting to try for a while now. It was fun, though very difficult. I'm usually pretty good in these pattern recognition games, now my mind drew blanks. Nothing. I made a single guess during the game and that was wrong, too. It's very difficult game, but perhaps the others just had more practise. Well, I'm still intrigued.

Tom Vasel has set up a website called The Dice Tower. It has links and the description of all the Dice Tower episodes (The Dice Tower is his podcast he does with Joe Steadman).

There's also TomVasel.com, which turns out to be a also hosted at the The Dice Tower site. There you can find links to all Tom's work: his reviews, interviews, musings on... articles, his blog and also stuff like his mission letters.

That's nice, because his work tends to be spread around a lot. It's nice there's a central point to all of it. However, the reviews have a problem: they are in Word format. That's not nice. I hope it's a temporary solution, as the interviews are in HTML format. The easiest way to solve this problem would probably be to add links to the Geek reviews.

Anyway, it's nice to see Tom has his own website; he certainly has produced a lot of material related to board games.

I must say I'm quite enamored by Industrial Waste. It was a good acquisition, as it is certainly a game for my liking. Thanks Tommy!

What's better, my opinion of the game has improved with every game. Yesterday's game certainly opened my eyes regarding the loans. I wouldn't avoid a loan anymore, if I needed the money urgently. You can always pay it back and even if you don't, being disadvantaged by one loan isn't that bad if the loan gives you the extra oomph it can.

I think money is of utmost importance in the game. Getting as many innovations as other players and focusing them well is important, but I believe it is the money that usually makes or breaks the game. You're going to be pretty close to the other players if you've played well enough.

I'm not too keen to fix the raw materials auction card, either. The problem, some claim, is that after you advance your raw materials use, the auction cards became less useful. I don't see it as a problem, yet. However, I might want to fix the bribery card. It just feels so useless... After all, losing one step of the factory growth is just one point in the end and few million euros during the game. Maybe bribery should prevent the money loss, too - you pay one million to the right guy to avoid paying five millions in penalties to the government, that makes sense.

For something completely different, see Rick Thornquist's weird Industrial Waste session. Now that's bizarre. It's a good example of trouble: take a loan without really getting anything out of it. If you have to take a loan to survive, that's bad - taking a loan to expand is a much better thing. Also, I think the guys were paying way too much for raw materials. There are very few situations where a bunch of raw materials is worth ten or so.

Anyway, Industrial Waste is an interesting game. I'm looking forward to see how they take it in Jyväskylä. After all, they like Puerto Rico a lot and St. Petersburg even more - Industrial Waste should be a sure thing.

Once again I met with the Ollis to play games. We started with Australia, requested by Olli M-K., who had also played it once before. Olli H. was new to the game.

It started to look bad, but turned out rather well. The final scores were 225-186-166, a decisive victory once again. I don't know what it is, but I've won every game and usually with a healthy margin. I don't know what I'm doing, I'll just score and score and score. In this game, I did a four-way scoring move once and even a five-area scoring once. I also scored some good points from the windmill.

Of course I like the game - how can I hate a game which I win every time?

We also played Hansa. It's one of the Schact games I don't like (Paris Paris is other example) too much. Sure, I'll play it, but it feels uncomfortably unintuitive. The rules weren't that difficult, but still - it's a bit too bizarre for me.

Who Stole Ed's Pants? is my latest acquisition. It's a funny little game about passing blame. There are facts about the theft of Ed's pants (the facts change all the time, of course) and evidence you can plant on your opponents. The most guilty player loses.

It's an odd little game and sure to confuse at first. However, the game is actually quite simple and has quite entertaining and funny theme. I'm not so sure if it's actually worth getting, but if you come across it, give it a go: there are enough clever mechanics in the game.

I was anxious to get back to Industrial Waste. Have you ever learnt strategy from game components? As the game has 16 loan cards, I thought it might be a good idea to actually take some loans. In the end of the game, I had one loan, Olli had two and Outi, who had replaced the other Olli, had none. I won, despite my loans.

It all came down to money, and while I've though little about the money in the game (after all, you only get one point for two million euros), it's really the crucial point. The factory level means only one or two points and the innovation is usually quite even, too. Like now: I ended up scoring 19 points for money in the last turn with two contracts, while Outi had to discard two contracts because she didn't have any resources.

I'm not sure if my loans did much, but at least I could buy one step of innovation with it. That would justify it (the innovation was worth five points and the loan cost me five), even if I didn't do profit. Anyway, I'm not sure one should be afraid of taking loans. If everybody has one, the points don't mean a thing.

Exciting news, everybody: I've gone podcast! My first podcast is up at the Lautapelaaja.net podcast page. It's 9,3 megabyte mp3 file, I think I managed to balance sound quality and file size pretty well. Unfortunately, there's a small catch: it's in Finnish.

I spend about 30 minutes talking about Industrial Waste and play two songs, too. It was easier than I expected and quite fun, too.

I'm thinking about doing it in English, as well - actually, that's what I started with. I soon realised doing it in English is going to be very difficult (my English attempts have taken a lot more editing than the Finnish, which I got right at the first go), so I'll probably practise in Finnish and move on to English podcasting when I'm feeling more secure.

I hope all Finnish readers check it out and send me some feedback on it. It's very important to tell me if it's any good, because that's the only way to secure I'll ever make another one.

You English readers can at least check what I sound like, if you're curious...

I just finished a game of Ticket to Ride at the Finnish game site Voitta.net. The game is called Wanderer there, but it's Ticket to Ride. The game mode is turn-based play-by-web.

The site is Finnish and English and I think you can play the game without knowing any Finnish - the rules are available only in Finnish, but that's hardly a problem. The system is fairly ugly, but if you want to play Ticket to Ride as a turn-based play by web game, there you go. One note though: the wild cards are black. That's why there are no black tracks on the board.

My first finished game was a bit of a slaughter: I built a continuous track from New York to Seattle, from there down to Los Angeles and in the end reached El Paso and added an extraneous six-track bit. My tickets were from NY to Seattle and from NY to LA. Devious end-game block also caused my opponent to miss one ticket.

They also have a version of Risk called FISK.

Johanna wanted to play games, which is always nice. I still don't have Antiquity, which we both lust for, so we had to settle with Mhing. After playing the game twice without any regard to scoring, we now counted score.

Maybe we shouldn't have. After all, losing 8-6 isn't that bad, but losing 136-68 sounds worse. And that's only after I won the last round with the best score so far, 32 points. Johanna had regular five- or six-credit hands.

But hey, that's nothing. I like playing Mhing, whether I lose or not.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday on a cruise to Stockholm with the other writers from Enter magazine. There was some official programme, but the evenings were reserved for games. I was asked to bring games, as was Hanna, the other board gamer in Enter writers.

I had underestimated the size of the group, so we ended up playing the two games mentioned in the entry title. Not that I mind, though: Werewolf, which I've had for a long time but have never played, turned out to be real riot. In most games, we had 12 players and a moderator, which was obviously too much for anything else.

Hanna had some home-made cards (which looked nice). We used the standard lineup of werewolves, villagers and seer, and in some games used the anonymous informer. He or she blames someone in the night - with absolutely no good reason for it, but hey, even a random accusation helps to push the daytime blaming along.

How good time a game of Werewolf is depends a lot of the players. We had good players, I think: both the silent types and the loud-mouthed meddlers. Some people had a bent for psychology and analysis, others complained and whined a lot. For some reason, I was often considered highly suspicious, even though most of the time I was a mere villager. Life's not fair, I guess, and fortunately the games were fun to watch, as well.

I've had a Lupus in Tabula set a long time, but perhaps it'll see some use now. Werewolf is certainly an entertaining game and my number one choice with 9+ players.

Attribute was another favourite. The first time I explained the rules, it got some blank looks and doubt, but when we got the game moving, it rolled along just fine. It also got some converts from people who watched, figured out the rules and wanted to play.

I can also confirm that eight players, which is listed as a maximum, is bollocks: the game works just fine with 10 players. Most of the time we had seven or eight, though. Unlike Werewolf, Attribute does have somewhat strict limits for the number of players, as there's only so many people you can fit around one table, but not being able to reach the cards at the other end of the table is a smaller problem than you'd expect.

I don't know why, but I'm pretty good at the game. Once again I won every game, but as usual with just small margin to the second best player. Some people get it and others don't, but everybody has fun.

Other games played: I won a Samurai tournament played using the Klear Games computer version. I thought the computer version was pretty nifty, even though I didn't quite think the graphics matched the elegance of the board game version.

We played so that everybody could see the pieces other players had collected (the games were displayed on a big screen with a projector). Peeking at other players' tiles wasn't a problem at all, but the information about pieces added an extra level of analysis which I didn't like too much.

Still, it wasn't a big deal - I won, after all! Despite everyone's expectations (everyone though I would win hands down, like I did win in the first round), the final was an exciting game I wasn't at all sure I'd win. Samurai scoring is pure genius and in a very large part responsible for the enjoyment I get from the game. Winning the tournament was extra sweet, as I collected over 20 euros worth of ship company money, which was right away spent in a bottle of very nice wine (after all, the main reason to go on a cruise in Finland is to buy cheap alcohol).

I also played few games of Fluxx. It's not a bad game, but it's a very silly game. The first game we played ended on the first round, before one player had her turn. Oops.

I met the two Ollis for games today. We played San Juan, where I did the rare choice of pursuing producing as a career. That backfired, especially when I didn't get a large building. At least I won my first game with Olli M., using a more old-fashioned purple strategy.

Our bigger board game this time was San Marco, which I've really ached for to try with three players. It was better than with four. It was also a very balanced match: the final scores were 56-55-53. I though Olli H. would take it thanks to his awesome board presence (over ten cubes more than me and Olli M. had), but we managed to foil his majorities in the end. It was quite exciting. I was also reminded of the immense beauty of San marco art. The board is a real gem.

We also expanded our minds with Black Vienna, my favourite deduction game. We played a timed game and when the chips ran out, nobody knew it for sure. Olli H., however, guessed correctly (he had a 33% chance). Me and Olli M. had the same two right and the same one wrong.

Our two playings of Don demonstrated a reason to keep the possibility of selling of owned cards in the game: I was completely locked out of the game. With merely four chips, I couldn't get anything, while the Ollis kept throwing money at each other. That was nasty, fortunately the game was fairly short. The second game was more interesting and eventually came down to a tie-breaker, first for me.

Here's the rest of the games of the great weekend:

Mit List und Tücke was brought by Robert, who had noticed the game on my want list in the Geek. It's a Klaus Palesch trick-taking game and not that far from Sticheln. According to Rick Heli's Mit List und Tücke page it's a redevelopment of an earlier game, Palle, which is apparently the ancestor for Sticheln as well.

Anyway, it was pretty neat. Like in Sticheln, the leading suit is trump. Trick is won by highest trump, who takes two cards from the trick (at least in the four-player game). Lowest non-trump gets the rest and leads the next trick. Scores are calculated using a simple formula: the amount of cards in the most numerous suite times the amount of cards in the second numerous suite divided by the amount of other cards.

That means you want to develop two suits and avoid two. That's a simple goal that sometimes can be hard to achieve. It was quite fun, as the strategies are far from obvious and the things you can do can sometimes be a bit indirect. I'm not sure if four was the best amount of players (the game scales from four to six), more would probably be better. Still, it's decent fun and another good game you can play with the Sticheln deck.

Logistico is a fairly simple delivery game, where players move cubes around the board using a truck, a boat and a plane. I thought it was pretty good fun, but certainly not a masterpiece in the end.

The basic idea of the game is very simple and works well, but the game is perhaps a bit too long for it's own good. Doing the deliveries was fun, but only so-so. We played with two - with four, it would probably be pain to play, as the board situation would change a lot faster.

I think what sums it up was the fact that I was interested in getting the game before I tried it, but now I've played it, well, I might trade for it, maybe.

Skat is a game I've been wanting to try for a while. Reading Sid Sackson's book Card Games Around the World gave me the push I needed to study the rules. They aren't terribly difficult, really, especially if you're already familiar with things like Ace-ten card values and like.

It's a tough game to figure out, like games with bidding often are. I'm still determined to give it a go, even though I suffered a humiliating loss this time. Maybe next time I'll do better.

Kahuna - I played two games with Robert, and they demonstrated well what's my problem with the game. First one was a really flat experience. I lost all three rounds, with absolutely no chance to improve my situation. Taking over well-defended islands is just impossible. The second game was, in the other hand, very dynamic, with swift manouvers and takeovers. That was fun; the first game wasn't.

Kahuna is simply too erratic. It can be fun, but it can be very boring, and you never know which one you'll get. I think the first game might have been like it was thanks to my mistakes, but still - that's not good. Kahuna has proven to be pretty hard to evaluate, but it's fun enough to keep me going at it every now and then.

Geistertreppe is a funny little children's game, a winner of the last year's Spiel des Jahres for kids. It's a simple roll-and-move game with a memory element. Players must move their pawns to the end of the stairs. If they roll a ghost, they must cover a pawn with a ghost, so that the colour is not seen. Eventually all pawns are covered by ghosts and might switch places, too, so it takes memory to remember who is where.

If a kid doesn't understand magnetism, it should be quite magical to see how the ghosts stick to the pawns. The game board is also very pretty and the game looks good in general. I also think it's a pretty fun game, though it takes four players to really shine. I'll definitely keep it in case I'll have a kid to play it with one day.

Dos Rios was on Tommy's list of games to try. We played a two-player game, which I won by having four buildings on the river. Dos Rios is fun, nothing too special, a bit too tactical but still, fun. Looking at the Geek comments, Tommy likes it even more than I do, thanks to the river system which he fancies a lot. The rivers are super cool, obviously.

Lost Valley is always a good suggestion when Tommy is around. River gold is useless, that's what I found out once again. Especially when there are big mountains right next to the starting place! However, exploring the valley is simply so much fun so I don't really care if I win or lose. Lost Valley is definitely an atmosphere game, where theme matters the most.

Domaine was another game on Tommy's list. It makes a pretty good two-player game. Our game had a healthy dose of expanding and conquering - I won in the end, thanks to better income, I think.

Ticket to Ride - losing the game is pretty darn hard, when you build all your train cars in a continuous network, fulfill two fairly big tickets you got on the first draw and do some six-car connections.

San Juan - a game best played swiftly. With two experienced players, the game flows really fast, even with cards. It's a bliss to play that way.

St. Petersburg - let's see: I got the first turn Mistress, Tommy made some blunders like forgetting to take money or so. Guess who won?

Gone Fishing! has a tempting theme to Tommy, who is a devout fisherman, but the mechanics aren't probably to his liking. I kind of like it, but it's a bit too irrelevant to get played. I'm interested to see how Tommy will rate it.

Battle Line was a good reminder of how I should play this game more often. It's a harrowing game, committing to the flags can be a pain. One of the best two-player game, no doubt about it.

Ta Yü - now here's a classic, pretty much. I just upped my rating to nine, because while Ta Yü isn't a hot game I'd like to play all the time, it's a deep game I expect to be playing for decades. It's so timeless and elegant. Like Tommy said: he doesn't really know how to play it well, but it's just too much fun to play despite that.

Crokinole - my board gets little action at home, so it was fun to play a quick match.

We had a really good games weekend last weekend. Tommy came over Friday afternoon with a bunch of interesting games to try. We were joined on Saturday by Manu and Robert. After dinner Manu left, but was later replaced by Tommy's wife Laura, who also happened to be in town.

Even though our flat turns to a sweaty hellhole during the Summer, it was fun for once to have a game weekend at our place instead of going somewhere else.

It was a pleasant weekend. I had a list of games I wanted to try, but most of those didn't happen. In the other hand, I tried several new and interesting games and played many old favourites.

Instead of doing a chronological list, here's some kind of overview of the weekend, in a descending order of interest. It's such a big list and it takes too much time to write at once, so you'll get several smaller installments.

Roads & Boats was the ultimate main even of the weekend. Tommy bought the game from Essen last year and finally we got around actually playing the game. It went surprisingly smooth: we had the pieces sorted in 15 minutes, Tommy explained the rules in 30 minutes and off we went. The game was over in under three hours, even though there were four of us and only Tommy had tried solitaire play before.

We had some mistakes, though. The worst was mixing up mountains and rocks (the rulebook doesn't say which one is which explicitly), so instead of just doing quarries to get bricks, we had to make clay pits and stone factories. I also thought mining was impossible, until I realised our error. After that we got into mining, but we had already lost a lot of time.

That probably explains the fastness of our game. We built the wonder a lot. When the game ended, Manu and Robert had two pieces of gold, I had one and Tommy had just built his mine. Robert won the game with just 53 points. I was just few turns away from a mint, so without the initial mix-up with the terrain types, it would've been different.

It was fun, even though the game was over a bit prematurely. Tommy lost bad, despite his experience. I think that was because of his lack of respect for logistics. He was the only one to end the game with only donkeys (and a raft), while the rest of us had three wagons. Robert was the first one to breed donkeys, while I was the first one to build roads and wagons. They make a huge difference - even roads with donkeys help moving stuff a lot.

There are many things I would do differently the second time and that's the unpleasant thing with this game - next game is probably in October. I want to play again now! What a game; despite its length, Roads & Boats is solid fun. It's a bit hard to get these days, but I think I'm getting Antiquity instead. I guess it's similar enough in scope and mechanics; it should be even faster and it's definitely more easy to find. I'll probably buy one at Essen.

Manila was a real surprise hit. I didn't have great expectations, but found the game very pleasant. Sure, there are dice and they have a large role, but it's not a luck-fest in my opinion. There's room for probabilities and taking risks, which load a lot of good excitement in the die rolls.

I enjoy it, and will probably get it. I'm not sure how long it'll last, but it should provide good entertainment for a while. I also like the bits, especially the coins. What a great idea to make them that dark, instead of bright colours - now the coins actually look like they've been in use for a long time. Neat effect.

We did use the game-shortening variant where the markers start one step further. Even though Franz-Benno Delonge doesn't like that, I think it's probably a good thing, as Manila doesn't get any better if it's longer.

Industrial Waste is a relatively little-known game, and after playing, I can see why. I enjoyed it myself, but then again, I expect anyone who likes St. Petersburg to enjoy it.

Developing the factories is fun, but there's one catch: the game really requires focusing in one aspect, and that sucks a bit of fun out of it. I'd like to do more balanced development, but that's a sure way to lose the game. Perhaps some kind of bonus for more balanced development would allow for more diverse strategies - now, after the dismal failure in the first game I just ended up pushing the pollution levels down each game and that's it.

So, as the game is in that little interaction camp some people don't like and as the game's also a bit bland, I can see why it hasn't garnered more following. I do think it's a pleasant little game and I'll probably get it, too, so I can show it to the folks at Jyväskylä, who should enjoy it as well.

Memoir '44 was the two-player game favourite of the weekend. I haven't played it much, and neither had Tommy. Well, now we fixed that problem with five games. We played five different scenarios, too, to get a better picture of what the scenario book can offer.

The best scenario so far is the last one, Saverne Gap, Vosges. It's a really exciting match-up, with rather clever terrain effects. Overall, I found the scenarios interesting - there's lots of good design there. For example the Mont Mouchet, which might look like a clear case for Axis: they have Tigers against the French Resistance. However, the heavily forested terrain turns the tables as the French troops can move around with no troubles, while the tanks are nearly useless as the French forces keep to the woods.

It's all very exciting and I'm not at all bothered by the luck element. I know I had some really good luck with the dice, and then some worse, but it all pans out pretty well in the long run and it really adds to the excitement of the game.

Finnish Game of the Year candidates haven't been published yet, but I happen to have inside contacts and thus knowledge. Finnish readers can check the list of the candidates for the best adult and family games from the Boardgame Society forum, here's a quick overview:

Best kids' game: the most interesting entrants are Geistertreppe, the 2004 SdJ for the best kids' game and two Knizia titles, Schildkrötenrennen and Schatz der Drachen.

Best family game: here the competition heats up. First of all, we have the three most eligible SdJ candidates this year: Niagara, Around the World in 80 Days and Verflixxt. Then there's the last year's winner, Ticket to Ride. There's also Australia, Einfach Genial, Metro and Dawn Under. Metro is an interesting one: I didn't know Nelospelit had a deal with Queen Games.

Best adult game: another interesting list. Once again Nelospelit and Queen team up with Alhambra, then there's Bohnanza, Da Vinci Code, Lost Cities, Karibik and Spinergy. Neat list!

Last year's Game of the Year competition was interesting, but this year is even better as there are two categories full of interesting titles. One thing is for sure: the Finnish game hobby is the ultimate winner here, no matter which games take the title.

Congratulations are due to Greg Aleknevicus and The Games Journal! The latest issue, featuring several interesting articles, marks the fifth anniversary of the journal.

It's been a long time, and I've been reading it for years already. That's quite an achievement and I really want to say thanks to Greg for pushing on with the journal despite few thinner issues along the way.

Great work, and hopefully we'll see another five years' worth of The Games Journal!

The second Liberty match was fought yesterday. We swapped sides, so this time I played the British oppression while Olli tried to liberate the innocent Americans.

Laws of karma worked: my previous luck with the French entry in 1776 was repeated this time as well. However, I kept on plodding on and managed to actually do quite well. My notes show a sudden jump from 21 supply points to 28 (for victory the Brits need 30) in 1779, the middle point of the war.

However, I ran out of steam the next turn and Olli managed to push me back a bit, dropping me down to 22 supply points - I think he took one of the West Indies and Charleston. Next year was another good year for me: with a cards like that (3-3-3-2-2), you can conquer the world.

Well, almost. In the end of the year, I was left with 29 supply points. Next turn Olli pushed me back and when in the final year I was set back heavily and punished with a miserable card set (3-2-1-supply-supply), I was out of luck.

However, it was very close. One movement point more in 1781 and it would've been there. One movement point more in 1783 and I would've had a chance. And this with the earliest possible French entry!

We used the optional rule of forced prisoner exchange with a supply card. I think I used it twice, each time to rescue a captured general. That was all prisoner exchange we did - perhaps I should've done more, because in the end the lack of cheap loyalist troops to keep control over American cities was a real problem.

Anyway, I like the game and currently would probably play this before Hammer of the Scots. The scenario is interesting, and I would very much like to see how the Brits can do if the French don't intervene right away.