January 2006 Archives

I'm proud to tell you, my dear readers, that Gameblog has won an award! Gone Gaming Board Game Internet Awards jury gave Gameblog the best session report award for my Essen 2005 coverage. That's not all! Gameblog also got an honorable mention for the award of the best game blog (winner was Chris Farrell's blog, so it's indeed honorary to be mentioned by such an excellent blog).

Thanks for those who nominated me, thanks to the jury for choosing me and thanks for all my readers!

By the way, I appreciate the way they chose Gamefest's GameWire as the best board game news service instead of Boardgame News (which won the best new site award anyway). After all, GameWire started the high-quality board game news reporting.

Larry Levy had a column in Boardgame News called Rating the designers. He wrote about two different approaches to rating the designers, Knizia approach (counting a sum-based score from ratings given to designer's games) and Seyfarth approach (counting an average). First approach favours someone like Knizia, who has a wide repertoire of games with varying quality (but lots of very good games), the second someone like Seyfarth or Tresham, with just few very good games.

As Levy wasn't satisfied with either approach, he came up with some middle ground. His approach takes averages, but adds 12 dummy games rated as 5 for every designer. That balances out the scores. It's a good way to rate the designers, I think, though the padding takes some adjustment. Well, anyway, here's my top ten based on this method:

1. Reiner Knizia (6.76)
2. Traditional (6.42)
3. Friedemann Friese (6.21)
4. Jeroen Doumen ja Joris Wiersinga (6.09)
5. Kris Burm (6.07)
6. Stefan Dorra (6.07)
7. Michael Schacht (6.06)
8. Wolfgang Kramer (6)
9. Wolfgang Kramer ja Michael Kiesling (6)
10. Richard Borg (5.92)

I have rated 34 Knizia games with an average of 7.2, so it's no surprise he tops this list. Traditional games take a solid second place, which might seem surprising, but once you realise that those games include Go, Crokinole and Mhing - that is, 3/4 of my 10-rated games - it's not a surprise.

Doumen and Wiersinga are my Francis Tresham's: three games rated as nine and nothing else. Not bad. Except my stats apparatus misses Bus (as I don't count play-by-web games), which I've rated lower.

All other designers are definitely top 10 material, but I wouldn't have included Richard Borg on the list myself. After all, his output is fairly minor, mostly Memoir '44. Just after him there's Goslar brothers, Andreas Seyfarth and Moon & Weissblum, which I would feel a bit more happy with. Kris Burm is slightly surprising name as well.

Places 30-50 on my list are mostly one-hit wonders: there's Bernd Brunnhofer, Thomas Stapelfeldt, Karl-Heinz Schmiel, Don Bone, William Attia, Frank Branham & Sandi West, Niek Neuwahl, Mac Gerdts... List goes on: all are very good designers, based on one game. If I ever come up with another game from them I really like, they should jump up on the list. Meanwhile I really can't see myself calling any of them my favourite designers, really.

Anyway, it's an interesting way to rate the designers and I'm happy with the results. This will definitely join my bag of board game stats analysis tools.

A review of Gargon is up on my site.

Gargon by Rüdiger Dorn is a small card game from Amigo. Gargon is one of those kind of traditional, yet quirky games. The idea is basically a trick-taking game, but it would stretch the definition of trick-taking to fully include Gargon in that lot.

Weird ideas

The first weirdness you notice is, however, not mechanical one but the fact that the cards advertise their suits on the backs. That adds an interesting twist, as you can see which colors you are drawing from the deck and what your opponents hold.

The game is about collecting amulets. In each suit, lowest cards hold most amulets, while winning "tricks" is of course easiest with bigger cards. Unlike in most trick-taking games, winner of the "trick" doesn't collect all the cards, just his or her own card, which makes collecting the small numbers even harder.

Resolving the battle

Here's why I keep quoting the word trick: the leading player plays up to three cards of up to three different suits to the table, face down. Other players can pass or play, but if they play, they must follow the suit distribution. Colours don't matter, but the distribution must be the same. The last player to play is an exception: he or she can't introduce new suits.

After everyone has passed or played, players resolve the "trick". Leading player starts and chooses a colour. Everyone who has played that colours shows their highest card in that colour. Whoever shows the highest card, gets to keep it, others discard. This continues, until every card is resolved.

In case you're lucky enough to be the only player to hold cards of certain colour (either by being the only one to play them or playing most of them, so some are left over) you get to keep them without fighting. So, of course if you're the only one to have two cards in a colour, you lead them as a pair and nothing else, and that should score you lots of points.

Overview

I think Gargon is definitely an interesting game and worth the low price, if you're interested in strange card games. My interest waned quickly, though, and after just two games and lots of idle shelftime I sold the game. It just wasn't that interesting to play in the end.

The game also has some small usability problems, mostly in form of very close purple and red. The backs of those two suits are very hard to tell apart in even slightly dim light. Printing some sort of a symbol on the backs of the card would've been nice.

So, anyway: if you're looking for a quirky card game, Gargon might be worth checking out, but there are better games floating around. As I'm writing this, the highest rating anyone has given for Gargon in the Geek is 8.5, which I think is telling - nobody really loves this game.

I must say Spiele-Offensive gets a nod from me. I recently placed a big order (almost 600 euros) there, driven by their selection (Neuland being the biggest incentive, I mean, I thought the game was firmly in the unavailable, you'll-never-ever-get-it category). Ordering and paying (with credit card through PayPal) was easy and their shipping costs are moderate (just 12 euros for the huge order).

Well, then I got a note saying that they had run out of Caylus and they would send the games about a week later. That would've been fine with me, after all even with their good availability information, things like that happen and it wasn't a long delay, but then I get a message from the owner explaining the situation and he says that since the order was way past 20 kilos and he'd have to ship it in two parcels anyway, he'll send the first 20 kilos now and the rest when they get Caylus, with no extra costs to me. That's some seriously good service, if you ask me.

Blue Moon is a fantasy world developed by Reiner Knizia and at the same time the first game set in that world. A board game is on the way, so it won't remain the only Blue Moon game for a long time.

Gotta get them all

Blue Moon is about eight different peoples, all mixed up in a war against each other. The game is a semi-collectable card game (extendable card game might be the term): the basic set (which is sold in a Kosmos two-player game box) has the first two peoples, the rest can be bought as expansion sets.

There's no collecting as such, all cards are of equal rarity so it's not a black hole for money like CCGs tend to be. However, it isn't cheap, either: if one buys all the sets, that's about 100 euros, at least in Finland. The game can be played with just the basic set, but lot of its replayability comes from having the different decks.

So, it's a fairly big investment. However, I think it's worth it, if you like the game and the basic set is enough to find out if that's the case.

Battles

The game's basically about fighting. Players pit their characters against each other. One starts and declares an attack. The other player must match or exceed the power played by the first player, then the first player must play a new character and so on. This continues until one of the players either can't or doesn't want to play. The winner claims a dragon; three dragons wins the match.

Of course, the power tends to ramp up slowly, making playing new cards harder. The characters have different strengths and there are cards to boost them up. Boosters increase the power of the current character, supports power up all the characters during the whole battle.

That's all fairly simple and straightforward. There are finer touches, however. For example, when a player has six cards in front of him or her (played characters, boosters, supports), the battle is worth two dragons. If you're losing, you might want to back out before your opponent plays six cards.

Special powers

Some cards have special abilities. Do not think of CCGs here; there are plenty of cards that only increase power with no special text and those that have text are usually fairly subtle. There are some combinations that work well together, but the game is not as centered on powerful combos as most CCGs are.

I think a good balance has been achieved. The special powers give each people a different flavour (people are likely to have favourite decks) and spice up the game, but at the same time the preconstructed decks are fairly easy to pick up and play. You don't have to know the power combos to succeed. Sure, knowing your strenghts and opponent's weaknesses is good, but Blue Moon is fairly easy to play without that information.

With CCGs I've always found finding new opponents the hardest part. Blue Moon should be easier to introduce to people. That increases the opportunities to play the game, which is very important from my perspective.

Looks

What's best, Blue Moon looks pretty nifty. The game website has all the card art, it's worth checking out. Each people has a different artist, which helps to separate them. Some are great, some are good, the Flit are horrible...

The oversized cards prevent use of plastic sleeves, which is a shame, but hey, at least the cards look great. The basic set has a board, which is kind of useless but still nice to have and some plastic dragons for score-keeping. The dragons look nice.

Deckbuilding

Blue Moon has preconstructed and balanced decks (from my experience the balance seems pretty good), but also an option for deckbuilding. The system is simple. You can use as many cards as you want from one people and up to ten moons from other peoples. Each card has zero to four moons, depending on its strength.

Two of the expansion decks, the Emissaries & Inquisitors decks, are targeted to deckbuilders (if you don't plan to do deckbuilding, skipping these two is possible) and add more options to the game.

I haven't tried deckbuilding yet, but it seems like an interesting idea and a way to develop the themes of the preconstructed decks further.

Overview

I really like Blue Moon. I'm an ex-CCG player and this game scratches the same itch, while being easier for newbies. I'm glad I have the full set. However, I don't think the game will please everyone. Trying before buying is probably the best course of action with Blue Moon, at least play the basic set before buying every expansion.

In the Shadow of the Emperor seemed pretty cool when it came out. It was touted as a real gamer's game with clever new mechanics. However, for some reason I played it twice and forgot about it afterwards. What happened?

Setting

In the Shadow of the Emperor is set in Germany in the late middle age. Players represent powerful dynasties fighting over the title of the emperor. To be an emperor, you need the power of the electors, who decide who gets to be the emperor. To become an elector, you need to control the electorates: the kingdoms, counties and the archdioceses of Germany. Thus, your task is set.

The dynasties are made of barons. Barons hold positions of power and hopefully advance in the ranks, up to becoming the emperor. They also behave like humans do: they age and eventually die, marry, have kids... The players are managing a family. This is definitely the most interesting side to the game.

Mechanics

The game is essentially an area-control game. Each turn players perform actions, trying to get power points in the different regions. The player with the most power points gets to be the elector of that region. If someone wishes to challenge the emperor, there is a vote and the electors choose, who will be the emperor.

The game tries to represent an environment of fluctuating power. Therefore holding power doesn't score. Gaining power in a region is worth points, but not keeping it. As the different electors get useful powers, keeping a seat might be good, but pointwise it's best to move on and take over someone else's seat. Being emperor is, of course, highly beneficiary.

The game is played with action cards. They offer lots of different actions: lots of meddling with barons (moving them, getting new ones, marrying them) and the emperor elections (influence from the Pope, excommunication, things like that). One of the interesting mechanics in the game is how the action cards affect the gender of the offspring.

Each turn players get one free child in their dynasty. If most of the action cards the player played last turn were blue, it's a boy. In case of tie or more pink cards, it's a girl. Boys are a bit more useful, as you get a new baron piece. Girls get married to someone else's baron or sent to a convent. However, getting a boy requires either spending lots of money to play more blue cards or avoiding pink cards - that's not easy, as the pink cards are very good. This is one of the game's highlights, I think.

Overview

So, why I don't like the game? Well, I do. It's a good game, and serious gamers should check it out. It's a bit dry, though, and definitely shines with experience. Played occasionally it simply isn't at it's best. The game feels like a four-player game - I haven't tried it with three, but I don't think it's that good. People seem to be praising it as a very Chess-like two-player game. Don't know about that.

Anyway, as far as area control games go, In the Shadow of the Emperor is one of the better ones. It's a clever game and just a bit too complicated for my needs.

I wrote a review of Blockster (in Finnish and sorry, no naked ladies on the marginals).

Blockster is a small dexterity game, where players are trying to stack small plastic pieces according to cards. There's a timer to add pressure! When someone fails, everybody else scores a point.

The basic idea is nice, but the game fails on few fronts. The timer is bad: if time runs out, the player in turn fails. Hmm... what if I wait on my turn and play my piece when the timer is just about to run out? The next player gets about two seconds and will fail. It's an ugly tactic, which nobody will use with their friends, but it gives lots of potential for arguments. Where's the border between slow play and deliberate stalling?

The blocks are very light and flimsy. That's not good, as it makes the game unpleasant to touch (compared to big wooden blocks of Make'n'Break, for example) and the towers wobbly. Well, that sure increases the difficulty!

Even if you forget the problem with the timer, Blockster is not a good game. It's just not fun to play and I can't think of a situation where I wouldn't prefer Make'n'Break. The game feels like something simply thrown together, without proper playtesting.

Rüdiger Dorn’s Louis XIV started Alea’s new mid-size series. It’s not a big board game, but not a card-game either, but something in between. There’s no actual board, though there is something quite like it: a grid made of cardboard tiles, functioning as a board. The game definitely plays like a board game.

Palace intrigue

The theme is certainly intriguing. If a game is about influence and power, a court is a good environment to set it in. What’s the greatest court in the history of all courts? I don’t know, but the one Louis XIV, The Sun King, set up in Versailles can’t be a bad guess.

So, players are plotting in the Sun King’s court, trying to fulfil their missions by asking for favours from the members of court. Basic area influence, that is. Well, there’s actually a twist or two to make it more interesting.

The different members of the court are laid down as a four by four diagonal grid. That is, each tile is adjacent to four other. This layout feels a bit messy, but is necessary because the tiles are flipped over every now and then - the two sides are slightly different. I’m not quite satisfied with it; I’d prefer a proper board.

Dropping influence

Players are dealt a bunch of cards depicting the people of the court. To play influence, one plays a card and places up to three influence markers on that tile. From there, they can be moved to another
adjacent tile, as long as at least one marker is left behind. From the new tile, the third marker may lead to another adjacent tile. The mechanism is the same as in Dorn’s Raub Ritter.

That way the choices of players’ are limited, but not too much. If you insist on gaining influence over certain tile, you probably can manage it somehow. There are also wild cards to make things even easier.

Bribes and rewards

The different members of the court require different bribes. Some give the benefits only to the player using most influence. Some are more generous and give the reward free for the highest influencer and with a cost to the others. Either way, the tile is then flipped over and the behaviour changes.

The player with the number one reward loses his or her influence tokens to the common pool, where they must be bought back. The price is just some actions, but that can be annoying.

The rewards are mostly mission chips, which are used to complete the missions. There are other rewards, too: money, new cards, influence on other tiles, things like that. There's also the Louis XIV himself, appearing on one tile each round, handing out extra bonuses.

Scoring

Scoring is based on missions. Each mission is worth five points. There are also coats-of-arms, which are each worth one point. Those can be collected during the game. In the end, players check out their coats-of-arms and score more for majorities in different types of them. This is a small luck element in the game, as the coats-of-arms you receive during the game are random.

It's not complete luck-shot, though: by focusing on coats-of-arms during the game you are likely to get more majorities in them, thus collecting few extra points for your efforts. This element tends to set off people who hate luck elements in their games, but I don't think it's that bad.

The game takes a while to play: I'd say 100 minutes is a pretty good estimate. It can be played in an hour, but that takes seriously fast players. What comes to the amount of players, well, I've only tried with four. That works. Can't really say about three or two.

Overview

I think Louis XIV is definitely interesting area-control game. I like how the decisions are restricted by cards. The lack of decent board is not good, and I don't like to explain the rules to the game - it's a bit complicated, I guess. I wasn't too thrilled about, I ended up selling it after two games, but if you're looking for an interesting area control game (particularly if you're a bit burned on area control games), check this one out.

Around the World in 80 Days by Michael Rieneck is based on Jules Verne's book. Players are sent from London to circumnavigate the globe, hoping to make it back to London in 80 days. A race has begun!

Race around the world

So, it's a race game. Race games have generally two problems, I think: if someone gets ahead, the winner might be obvious before the game ends and second, most race games rely on dice or other luck-based mechanics. Fortunately, Around the World in 80 Days avoids both of these.

To move, players play train and ship cards. Cards are drafted on the board, which reduces luck. The cards have different values, some are faster than others. However, even weaker cards can be useful: playing doubles counts only as one card, so if you play two cards worth eight days each, you'll only spend eight days, not sixteen. This removes lots of luck from the movement.

To avoid obvious leaders, the game uses fairly clever scoring. Players count the days the spend on their trip. Majority will be from travel cards, but there are also some hazards on the way (the detective, for example, or bad weather) that slow the players down. The winner isn't the first player in London, but the one who spent the smallest number of days on the trip.

Gameplay

Each turn, a bunch of cards is displayed for the players to choose from. With cards they also choose a special power. Sometimes it's easy, when the best card is matched with a good power, but sometimes you have to choose between a good power and a good card.

Powers are generally quite helpful. Hot air balloon makes travel faster, for example. The turn starts from the player who took the starting player action last turn - that's a good one to take, particularly if you're sitting right from the starting player. Moving the detective can add pressure to other players, and so on. The decisions are fairly simple, yet interesting.

Once you've chosen your power, you may move if you wish. It might be worth it to wait, gather some strength before you move on. There's a catch, though: you may only move one step each turn. You'll have to keep with the others, because the last player to arrive in London is automatically eliminated from the race. That gives a good incentive to move along.

Components

The game comes in the standard Kosmos big box. There's a board depicting the map of the world (a bit drab, but ok), large wooden playing pieces, small cards and bunch of cardboard coins and markers. All in all it's a well done game, but I didn't find the art that exciting. It works, though, and that's the important part.

Fun for four or more

Around the World in 80 Days is good fun. It's a fairly light game, but still offers meaningful decisions. It's not much of a gamer's game, but with kids and inexperienced gamers who know and enjoy the book or the cartoon, it should work well.

The game seats three to six, but is best with four to six. Five is probably the sweet spot. The game moves on pretty swiftly, there's no waiting for other players to move (except when you've made it to London first, but that's happy, exciting waiting).

For me, Antike was definitely one of the brighter hits from Essen 2005. I had reordered the game, mostly tempted by the theme and having some faith in Eggert-Spiele thanks to Neuland, which was excellent. Lower price I got didn't hurt, either.

I wasn't disappointed. While Antike isn't the Civ Lite some people would probably like it to be, it is an interesting exercise in logistics with an empire-building theme. As a Civ game it lacks trading and historical theme: the nations are identical in this game and even the Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern maps are hex grids in disguise.

Components

Antike's components have been panned a bit, but I think they're ok. The board is perhaps a bit pale, but at least it's two-sided! As I said, one side is the basic Mediterranean map, the other side has more of the Middle-Eastern area, like the whole of Arabian peninsula and so. One side has texts in German, one in English. The game is language-independent enough that after your first game it really doesn't matter.

There's a lot of wood in the game: each player has bunch of legions (meeples), fleets (small ships) and cities (small discs). I like the meeples, they look friendly. I don't mind if my legions look friendly.

Other than that there's cards for victory points and bunch of cardboard coins for resources. Those are generally ok. The artwork has a slight clip art feel, but is ok. The biggest problem from my perspective is the box, which is far too shallow. The game doesn't really fit inside, even after you throw away the cardboard tray.

Goal of the game

Goal of the game is to score victory points. You're not building a big empire. That's something you do while you collect victory points. This is important to understand. One way to score victory points is to build new cities - every five cities scores you a victory point.

There are other ways, too. You can build temples, which are all-around boosters: they add production, increase defense and allow more troops to be built. Every three temples is a victory point. Players can also buy civilization advances: faster troops, more productive cities, better defense. Each of those gives a victory point to the nation that discovers it first (the rest get a cheaper price).

Controlling the seas is important. If you have fleets in seven different areas, you score a victory point. If you get 14 areas, there's another one. Finally, the last way to score victory points is to raze enemy temples. Each temple razed is a victory point earned. The ratio is low, but it's hard work.

Keeping an eye in the victory conditions is very important. The victory points can run out: each category provides only so many victory points. When they're gone, there's nothing you can do. Expanding after all city victory points are gone is almost pointless.

The victory points earned remain for the rest of the game. Each card represents a historical person, whose old glory is written in the history books. Even if the civilization declines, the past glories remain. Thus, you keep your points, even if you lose the cities, for example. This is a very good thing, as it makes sure the game actually goes forward all the time. You can't go backwards.

Gameplay

Turns in Antike are fast. Take a coin (a wild card resource), choose your action, do it, build cities, take victory points, done. That's usually over in about 10 seconds, particularly if the only thing you're doing is resource collection. I bet Antike would be a 15-minute game in BrettSpielWelt.

Actions are chosen on the Rondel, which is one of the game's oft-mentioned features. Rondel is a circular track, where all the different options are available. On each turn, you must take one to three steps on the track; if you want to go further, you must pay for each step.

The different options are production (one for each of marble, iron and gold), use of resources (temple building, army building and knowhow discovery) and two maneuvers for military action. The matching options (say, temple building and marble production) are on the opposing sides of the Rondel. If you want to keep on doing the same thing over and over again, you'll have to pay extra cost every turn.

I also find it pretty hard to focus on one thing. You'd want to hurry along to do something important, but then you're tempted: should I produce some gold? If I don't do it now, the next chance will be far away. I know I should hurry with something else, but maybe I should still produce some gold... There's few interesting decisions there.

As I said, turns are often very quick and you can often move on without waiting for other players too much. Military action, however, halts the game and takes a lot of time compared to anything else. It's fairly rare, fortunately.

Acts of war

War is expensive in Antike. Units move on the board and when two enemy units meet, either player may choose to fight. If there's a fight, both sides lose an equal amount of units. War is expensive, as I said.

Most often it's a threat. When someone builds units, neighbours follow suit. A single army can conquer an undefended city, so some defense is needed. The regular units are slow, though - when the unit moves to the province to conquer the city, it must wait until next maneuver to actually do it. That gives an opportunity for the defender to raise more troops. When someone gets wheel or sails and thus faster units, things change.

The combat system is pretty good: it's simple and makes fighting unprofitable. That's the way I like it. Negotiating peace deals is easy, as war usually benefits only those who don't participate. Grabbing a city without a temple isn't usually useful, unless you score a city victory point with it (and usually there's still neutral cities to grab). Of course, in some situation defense or resources might ask for an attack on enemy cities.

Overview

I like Antike a lot. This has to do with the speed of the game, I know that. It's just so effective: lots of action in small time. The game system has fresh, interesting features and it simply works well. What's even better, the game works really well with six players. Sure, the board gets a bit crowded, but that makes it all the more interesting. It's good with four, too, but the three-player has some problems, I hear. There are fixes, too.

Antike is an interesting game of logistics set in the world of Civ games. If you like building empires and don't mind a bit of abstractness, Antike is for you.

I've written few reviews recently. These are all in Finnish, I'll write the English reviews here at some point: Antike, Around the World in 80 Days, In the Shadow of the Emperor, Louis XIV.

Has anybody who doesn't understand Finnish actually checked any of my Finnish reviews? Like, could I just claim to write like dozen reviews every week and you'd be all impressed of my hard work as nobody actually checks the links? Just curious...

Board game club met last Sunday. It was a good meeting, with lots of people, some new faces and active gaming. After a warm-up game of Flix Mix (I'm still unbeaten in this game), we started a six-player Antike. That was one of my main wishes for the meeting, trying Antike with five or six.

It was very good. The game flew by and was over in about an hour. The six-player game was crowded, that's for sure. I played the Arabs and failed to expand fast enough, being constricted to six cities for the most of the game. I was still fighting for victory, but was no match to Robert. I could've scored my sixth point with three more temples, but the seventh point would've been impossible.

Still, it was exciting and I really really enjoyed the game. It works really well with six, I wouldn't hesitate to play it again. Later; I played a four-player game that featured temple sacking, which was interesting. Too bad we had to finish that one quite abruptly, as I had to hurry to catch a bus (which I missed). Antike is definitely the hottest game right now.

Another one I wanted to try was St. Petersburg with The Banquet expansion. The small expansion came with Spielbox magazine, which I simply had to order.

The expansion features few new cards. First of all, there are two more Potemkin villages (a cheaper one and more expensive one) and a worker upgrade, which upgrades only the Czar. The new Czar Superstar reduces the price of both buildings and aristocrats, which is quite nice an advantage.

Rest of the new cards are action cards. Some are in building deck, some are in the aristocrat deck and the rest are in the upgrade deck. You draw them and play on a later round. They're free to play and don't cost points in the end, but they do take one slot in hand. The cards have interesting effects and some of them are fairly strong.

Black market, for example, allows the player take a card from the discard pile. Thief gets to take the first turn on one round and Banquet doubles the rubles and victory points on a card for one round. So, pretty good, right? Of course you miss a chance to take another card, so they aren't without a price.

I like the expansion. It gives some new life to the game. I don't think I'll play the game without the expansion anymore. Our match was quite interesting, but Erkka's superior aristocrat collection was the key to victory this time, despite mine and Atro's efforts.

Next up was Around the World in 80 Days, the clever little race game. I got left behind when we started from London, but caught up with the rest and then blazed ahead for the rest of the trip. Thanks to some good pairs, I didn't even have to play bad cards to stay in the front of the pack. In the end I was first in London with just 69 days spent. Inari made it in 71 days, so there was some competition.

I think it's a good game, but perhaps little light on decisions. I sold my copy yesterday, now I got to play it the third time. If my needs were different and more leaned towards light games, I'd be happy to keep it for further play, but in the other hand, I don't think the game is special enough to keep on waiting until I have a kid that's old enough to play it, but too young for meatier games.

It was already too long since my last game of Attribute. Once again I won, this time with a wide 6-point margin. I don't know what's with me and Attribute, but I've won all games but one, and that was in BSW with some German guys. If the match is in Finnish, I rule. Kick-ass game, that's all I say!

I'm somewhat hooked on Travian. It's a German multi-user online game you can play using just a browser. Let's see if it sounds familiar: players farm their hexagon-shaped fields, producing a variety of resources: wood, bricks, iron and wheat. These are used to build new buildings and improve the fields, but also to create units to wage a war.

I think it's fairly obvious these guys have played Catan. However, Travian is a completely different experience. There's some optimization: how do I best use my resources to grow fast (obvious answer is, of course, to invest the resources back in resource production), which buildings I need to build...

There are some bottlenecks, like limited resources and having just one builder, which mean you can't be active all the time. Thus it's an ideal game for people who don't like to spend a lot of time at once, but can pop over many times a day to see how their village is doing. You always see how much it takes to build something in minutes, so you'll know when you should check your village again.

Right now I'm researching better units and raiding neighbouring unused villages (whose owner has quit playing) for more resources. Next big goal is to create a second village, but that'll take lots and lots of time and resources... So far I've been lucky and no big fish have noticed me, and I very much hope that stays that way.

I met Olli for some Blue Moon. We played for few hours and hey, Blue Moon is already on my 5&10's list this year. We had time for exactly ten games.

Interesting enough, a first player to act won all games. That wasn't the case last time, but it sure is curious. There's an advantage in starting the fight, as you get to choose the element, but that shouldn't carry through the whole game. I'll put this down as a coincidence, but I'll have to keep an eye on statistics.

Anyway, lots of it has to do with the decks and how they interact. Also, our game is on a pretty low level still, I don't think there's much thought given to what the opponent can or will do. It's just relaxed playing, trying to do the best you can with the deck you have. That's fun and it's also good to know there's more to the game, more layers to discover when you play more.

I've now tried all the decks. My favourites so far are Mimix (fairly strong characters, some deck recycling), Aqua (protected characters, Water of Immortality) and Pillar (strong boosters, Caterpillars). There are no peoples I dislike; I'll be happy to play with any.

We also tried the Emissaries & Inquisitors cards I got. Those were an interesting addition to the game, but I think I probably won't use them much, at least yet. I'm having good enough time playing with the basic decks. Advanced deck building will have to wait for now.

I played a game of DVD Sudoku with Johanna yesterday (that's something only an exceptionally good wife would do for her husband!) and wrote a review in Finnish on the other site.

DVD Sudoku is one of the games featuring the biggest thing of 2005. This version adds another 2005 trend: a DVD. Can something this trendy work well? Well, no, and let me tell you why: the game is weak and the DVD doesn't work well.

Sudoku is a solo puzzle at heart and doesn't convert to an interesting multiplayer board game easily. Many games will be either solving a single puzzle taking turns or solving puzzles at the same time seeing who's the fastest. This one takes the first option: take turns, and when the puzzle is ready, the player who spent the least time thinking wins.

The DVD is used as a timer. Every turn you choose your player number to start the timer. Then you take your turn and end it by pressing Menu on your DVD remote. It's simple, yet quite annoying, as the DVD player will take some time to move between the menus.

The system is somewhat clumsy. There's Japanese background music, which unfortunately only plays during the thinking. If the turns are fast, the music cuts on and off in an annoying way. The timer only handles times less than 15 minutes; if you go over, you'll take a marker. Clumsy!

The game itself looks good. The pieces are two-sided: one side has plain black numbers on beige, the other side has colourful Japanese characters on black. Plain side works better, as the colours of the characters don't match 100% on cardboard and TV screen. That's not a big problem, though.

The game has two modes. One is simple sudoku solving. The DVD tells you the setup and you solve until it's complete. The other mode is more innovative: timed challenge. You start with one of each number placed randomly on the board and draw a random tile to place. The game is over when a tile cannot be placed or the board is full (which is unlikely).

The timed challenge is nice, but the swift turns (just few seconds early and not much more in the end) makes the DVD user interface seem even worse. So, that doesn't quite work.

In the end I'll have to say the game simply doesn't work that well. I'd much rather do sudoku puzzles alone and for that the game is completely unnecessary. Maybe if you have a group of sudoku lovers eager to play the game together - and you have a DVD player and TV on a convenient location! - then this game might work for you. But I think that's an unlikely scenario for most people.

I've been playing online Poker recently. It's one of those things I've been thinking about. I ended up not doing it originally - I would be happy to play play money games at one site, until I could make profit with that. Which didn't look like happening.

Well, then came Christmas and a 10 euro Christmas bonus from Pokerium, where I had registered earlier. That changed things! With no my money at the stake, I was more than happy to try the world of online Texas Hold'Em.

I've played for a while new, few quick sessions. It's been nice. I play 10/20 cent fixed tables, where playing tight is quite enough for doing well. After today's session my account shows €15.64, a whopping 56% profit on the original €10. Nice.

If I have time, I think I'll try some cheap one euro entrance fee tournaments, but that's tricky, as it might take an hour or two and finding that time isn't always simple. But even short sessions can be fun, as long as you play two tables at the same time (otherwise I might get bored and play bad hands and lose money).

The first European partnership Crokinole championship tournament will be fought on February 11th in Dresden, Germany. More information will be available at the Crokinole Companions web site at some point.

If I was anywhere near, I would definitely participate, but I'm afraid Crokinole isn't a reason good enough to spend the money on travel, even if the organisers promise to arrange a cheap place to stay.

Another review up: Flix Mix (in Finnish).

Flix Mix is one of my favourite speed games. Each player has an identical deck of 16 cards, all featuring six dots sporting different colours. The goal of the game is to get rid of cards by laying them on the table. There's just one limitation: each card must cover at least two dots already on the table with same-coloured dots on the same places.

That's quite a limitation, obviously. The cards are checked after the round, and mistakes are worth two negative points. The round ends when the first player plays their last card, others lose one point for each card they have in their hands. The rules are very simple and intuitive, which is always nice.

Flix Mix has a slower pace than most speed games, particularly with two players, as there aren't that many good spots. Players must think fast, but most of the time you're looking for spots, not playing cards, and that gives this game it's slower rhythm.

Make no mistake, though: Flix Mix is a speed game, and some people are a lot better in these than others. The game might not be fun for all, if one player dominates the playing field. That's a bit of a catch, but I don't think Flix Mix is the hardest speed game to learn.

Considering the game is both small and cheap, I find it very easy to recommend: buy it, if you come across it, particularly if you're into simultaneous action speed games.

There's a review of Caylus in Finnish up at the other site - it's been there for about a week now.

Caylus is, of course, the biggest thing since... well, last Essen. I went to Essen with an understanding that we're dealing with a quality game here, thanks to Rick Thornquist's raports. I wasn't originally planning to buy it, but bought it anyway, tempted by getting William Attia's signature on the box.

Components-wise Caylus is a mixed bag. Inside the big box you'll find a very pretty board, bunch of wooden cubes and other pieces, small and humble plastic coins and bunch of building tiles. The cubes are nice; some might detest the rolling cylinder pieces, but the cubes sport exciting colors. Pink and purple looks pretty together, too bad the purple and brown blend together when it gets darker.

The tiles are ok, thick enough and like the board, decorated with useful and meaningful icons. It's very simple to explain how the buildings work and the icons work well as reminders. That's good graphic design if you ask me.

The rulebook is decent. I found the game slightly terrifying when I first read the rules, but the first play made everything make sense. I suppose the rules could be better to reduce that shock, but it's not too bad for a seasoned gamer. Less experienced folks are unlikely to bump into this game unwarned.

The game is all about resource management. Money is used to place workers on buildings to produce cubes. Some buildings take cubes and give money, others might do the opposite. Some take cubes to build new buildings. Some transform money or cubes into victory points. There are plenty of interactions with the different resources.

There are also different approaches to gaining victory points. One route is to focus on building the castle (the background story of the game is one of castle-building), another is to build residential buildings and then turn them into monuments. The biggest monument is whopping 25 points, which is a lot in a game where winner has typically less than hundred points.

The game runs smoothly. There's lots of information to digest (everything is out there in open) and players can get stuck in their thoughts. The game definitely needs an experienced player brandishing the whip to keep it going at a snappy pace. The structure is pretty logical and easy to understand once you get the hang of it.

I like Caylus a lot. That's no wonder; I expect other people who enjoy games like Puerto Rico will enjoy Caylus as well. However, Caylus has one major drawback. It's too darn long. The box says 30 minutes per player (or 60-150 minutes) and that's pretty accurate. Novices or slow people will take more, fast players might be able to squeeze some off.

That means the game gets uncomfortably long with four or five players. Anything past the 90 minute mark is unpractical for me. Thus Caylus will probably be best for me as a three-player game. With five players, including even one slow player, I will probably get very cranky. Based on my experiences with two, three and five players, I think the game works equally well with three, four or five. Two-player game is not as good (I wouldn't recommend Caylus as a two-player game only), but playable.

Caylus is worth a lot of the praise it has got. I really like it, it's definitely one of my favourite games from 2005. Is it the second best game after Puerto Rico? I can't tell; probably not. In it's genre (that would be serious strategy games) it's probably in the top 10. So I think it's pretty good.