March 2006 Archives

Saturday was a full day of games, though curiously we didn't play as many games as on Friday night. The games were longer, though. Stefu joined us for Saturday, and Tommy's brother Miikka did a guest appearance as well. The games were disturbed by an excellent meal of braised reindeer (nope, it wasn't Rudolph), which is one of the good things you get by having friends from Lapland.

Packeis am Pol. Quick filler to start a day while waiting for Stefu to arrive. I was no good in this, Tommy was an experienced player and Ari an old tournament Chess player. It was decent fun, and it's probably something I'll try in BSW one of these days.

Fairy Tale. Stefu didn't come yet, so another filler took place. Fairy Tale was much better for me, though I was somewhat surprised by my last place after a game I thought I'd played well. Oh well, it was a learning experience. Fairy Tale is definitely a game I should think about getting for myself: the drafting action was fun. I'd like to try the team game.

Antiquity. Stefu arrived, so it was time for the main course. Stefu and Ari were new to the game. It was Christoforo against Barbara - Ari and Tommy played Barbara, me and Stefu Christoforo (though I was planning to switch later- that strategy didn't work). I played my best game so far, it was just beautiful. I kept harvesting lots of resources through Forced Labour and used them well. A big bunch of fountains built by everybody kept the famine in check through the game, we had a total of ten graves or less during the whole game.

Ari played a spectacular game for a newbie. I don't feel bad losing to him at all, since his play was just superb. What a smart guy. I do know something: San Christoforo's time is up. I'm not using that strategy again, I'm done with it. I'll have to come up with something else the next time I play.

California. Here Tommy's brother joined us. Tommy seems to like Schacht's work for Abacus, thus California was a must-buy for him. For me, California is a Paris Paris, not a Web of Power - that is, one of the Schacht's worse games. I felt the game was awfully dry and boring. The mechanics are clever (for example the way the items on sale get cheaper every time someone takes more money), but it just didn't click the way it should. The game wasn't exciting or fun.

Manila. Now here's an interesting game. It was definitely fun and excitement, but also a bit lucky. I played a really terrible game. After a decent start it just went down the drain. Still, I was third, with a small margin. Why? I had two jade shares (got one, bought one) and the winner of the game, Tommy, was also pushing jade. That's why I did well. I didn't think my performance and placement in the end correlated much, but hey, it's a light game so I don't mind. I did drop my rating from eight to seven, though.

Klondike. Another game of Klondike, to show the new boys the game. This time we used the four-nugget rule, which was much better. I also played my best game so far, scoring three points. I'm miserably bad in this game.

Africa. Last game with Tommy's brother. A pleasant romp through Africa, this was a fairly balanced game all the way through. Good fun.

VOC!. Then it was time for real action. We tried to play VOC!, to found the Dutch East Indies Company, but that was pretty awful. Tommy hadn't figured out the rules properly, but it turned out that wasn't too easy. We were baffled by the fact that the rulebook says the game starts in 1590, even though the components start from 1585. That's what we did (and it turned out to be correct). However, after few rounds of jolly sailing, we aborted the game. It just wasn't fun, it was all too confusing.

The basic mechanic of sailing by drawing blind on maps was fun, but it also seemed fairly out-of-place in otherwise quite serious game. The game seemed long and dreary outside the sailing, and the confusion we had with the rules certainly did not help. We spent an hour or so scrambling through the first two rounds and quit after that. I might try it again, but it's unlikely. I can't understand why Doumen and Wiersinga could've done this...

Das Zepter von Zavandor. Next up was a fantastic optimization challenge. In Zepter von Zavandor players invest in gems that provide money to invest in new gems and finally you'll want to end up with artifacts and sentinels that provide points. Players also advance on tracks which give them special abilities. Very typical optimization stuff, and should be exactly the thing I like. But it isn't.

Zepter, as far as I see, has few pretty serious problems. First of all, it's very long. We played for two hours, which felt too long for me, particularly combined with a flaw of run-away leader: it was obvious for a long time that Ari would probably lose and Tommy and Stefu would fight for the victory. It's a fairly complicated game to figure out the feedback loop that provides most money (compared to say, St. Petersburg, where it's very simple - and for the length, imagine if St. Pete took two hours or more!).

The game looks like it would need some editing. Stefu particularly spent a lot of time counting money. Money in this game comes in a complicated form of different currencies that make it hard to count and you'll have to figure out the best way to pay things, as you can't get change without restrictions. There's also a hand limit, which will force you to spent some money instead of saving everything you can for the next turn. It all makes the game very math-heavy; if you're not good at mental maths or don't like it, stay clear of this game. I'm sure there's a way to make this game easier on one's mind by removing this stuff. I'd like to hear from Zavandor experts: why is the hand-limit stuff important? The way I see it saving money in an investment game like this is bound to be a bad strategy compared to just investing it, thus why the need for restriction against saving money?

I'll play the game again (and I'll be much wiser the next time), but with these problems, Zepter von Zavandor will not grace my shelves.

Die Nacht der Magier. Here's a tip: make sure you slide your wizard on the board, not on top of the discs. I won the first round, but after lights were turned on, it was obvious I had cheated: none of the discs in front of me had really moved. Oops. Better watch out the next time. I also noticed that while you can't see all the pieces in the dark, you can always hear Tommy.

Antike. My first game with correct rules... It was a good, close fight, with different approaches seen around the table. My arabs tried to build lots of temples and advance know-how, which turned out to be a pretty good thing to do. However, everybody else was doing well. The game turned out to be very close, actually. So close, we ended up calling it a draw after we had played 90 minutes and it was becoming obvious it would take a while to end it.

In the end, Stefu and Tommy were fighting for fleets in the Mediterranean, Ari was huddled in his corner and I tried to attack him or get 14 fleets on the Red Sea - all pretty far-fetched ideas. When we ended the game, I was in a position to destroy Ari's temple, but Tommy could've stopped me from doing that... Maybe playing to eight points would've made the game end in a more interesting phase; none of us really enjoyed this aspect of the game. It was a very good match and I'm happy to call it a draw, really.

San Juan. Final game of the evening was a San Juan match. Me and Stefu played the city building game, Ari had plantations and a Guild Hall, Tommy some kind of hybrid. In the end, the final scores were 32-31-30-30 to city builders' triumph. Too bad it was Stefu who won, leaving me without victories on Saturday.

All in all, it was an excellent weekend. Lots of good games, interesting new Nürnberg titles, some other stuff I was interested in trying and good older games. And of course, excellent company! Hopefully the tradition will continue next year.

We're having another game weekend at Tommy's. Tommy prepared for the weekend by buying some of the more interesting Nürnburg games, so we've had plenty of interesting games to try. Friday was an effective evening of games, from 18:30 to 1:30, with some interference from sauna and eating. Yesterday's line-up was me, Tommy and Ari from Tampere (who drove us to Vantaa, thanks for that!) and occasionally Tommy's wife Laura. Here's the games:

Mauerbauer. An interesting Colovini game. Clever mechanisms involve building walls with random houses and towers placed around them. Players try to form cities that'll match their target cards to score points. It's all very indirect. I enjoyed it. It's a bit lucky, but plays fast and offers some interesting challenges. I think I'd like to get this one. It's the best Colovini game I've played.

Ticket to Ride: Märklin Edition. Ticket to Ride goes Germany. The game is basic TtR, except for passengers. Those are placed on the map, after which they travel through your network collecting points from cities. First one takes the highest points, thus there's added time pressure. Märklin is the best Ticket to Ride, if you ask me, but it's still just a Ticket to Ride. That is, it's fun, but nothing spectacular.

Thurn und Taxis. The golden boy Seyfarth teamed up with his wife to create this game based on a post office family. Players play cards to buil routes and can then place post offices on the routes to collect points. The catch is that you can only place post offices one each in each country you visit or in every city in one country. Makes for tough decisions. Very good SdJ material, and a light but tough game.

Nacht der Magier. The glow-in-the-dark game. This is to be played in pitch black. The idea is that you can see some of the pieces, but not all. Not that many games have invisible pieces! The game's fairly simple, as you try to push your cauldrons to the center of the board. Your turn's over if you drop a piece from the board - when that happens is a bit of a mystery, as most of the pieces are invisible in the dark. It's a clever idea and well-executed, too, thus making this the highlight (or the high dark?) of our evening for me. A must-buy.

Ubongo. The newbie won, mostly because I didn't get suitable diamonds in the end. I would've been a contender. Well, I played a good game, I can be satisfied - sometimes even the best play on the puzzles doesn't guarantee a victory, which is good (see next game for reason why). Ubongo is always fun, that's what matters.

Turbo Taxi. Continuing the speed game theme. Here I dominated: final scores were 10-0-0. Tommy was often one or two pieces behind me. Without handicapping, the guys wouldn't stand a chance to me, which is why Ubongo's semirandom scoring is a good idea.

Isis & Osiris. Haven't played this in a while. It was good, fast, innocent fun. Nothing spectacular, thus I'm nudging down the rating from 8 to 7. I haven't really felt the need to play the game recently, and that didn't change now.

Klondike. Another game of Klondike I simply sucked. In the end I had zero, again. So had Laura, so the race was between Ari and Tommy. Tommy had Laura's claims, Ari had mine, but Tommy won the game by two nuggets. We played the three-nugget game for simplicity's sake, but that turned out to be a boring idea: we had something like three to five 3-gold draws. Not good! Thus, I'm sticking with four nuggets. I just wish the game had bidding cards up to three to make it easier.

Big City. Another Delonge game, and a bit of an obscure classic, I think. The game sure looks good with all the plastic buildings. It was also fun to play (well, I won with a healthy margin), but I'm not sure how good it really is. Nice, but not great, that's how I felt. But it sure looks cool!

Diabolo. The English translation at the Geek doesn't really answer all the questions. We managed to scramble through a game, and after first round got it. Diabolo turned out to be a pretty good filler game. I'm not sure if I need to have it, but I wouldn't mind playing it again.

We had a rather pleasant board game club meeting yesterday. First up was Fettnapf - I wanted to try the correct rules. You see, I was taught it wrong in Essen and as I never even looked at the rules, I never got it right, until a friend of mine did a Finnish translation. Oops.

In my version, the island cards were never shown to anybody. They should be: everytime someone gets one, it's shown to everyone. That makes the game considerably less lucky. Now I was able to see that all numbers from 14 to 20 were mined from get go (because I forgot the rule that with five, you use only one island card - not a problem, because having two made the game harder and thus faster which is good).

So, I do like the correct rules better, though I wouldn't mind playing with my variant either. A little surprise is fun, too.

I had brought Havoc: The Hundred Years War, since it was well-received the last time we played. Well, Erkka requested it so we played it, with five players this time. I had a better strategy this time, collecting same numbers, not straights.

Unfortunately my plan was foiled. Olli beat my five-of-a-kind at Agincourt with his six card straight flush. Thanks to that and a rather cardless endgame (in the final battle my best hand was a high card 14), I ended up on fifth place.

I had my copy of Klondike with me and it sure wasn't hard to get people panning for gold. It turned out to be a good game, too, one I would certainly recommend to gamers as well as for people with kids. I mean, there's not that much to do, but as a late-night game for conventions or other lighter gaming, it's a must. It also looks very good and is sure to attract an audience.

What comes to technique, Robert was the master of the riddle. He had a perfect technique, spinning the pebbles out of the riddle. It was beautiful to watch. Olli, in the other hand, had the best skills in betting and when the game ended as my loss (I had seven nuggets left and lost them all as payments for bets), Olli had amassed 30 nuggets, including five land claims. Nice work.

My final game was a quick match of Indonesia that took just three hours. That's pretty good for four newbies and one experienced player. It might've been a turn longer (and actually should've been considering the companies acquired on the last turn), but we cut it short because I had to go. I'd say it was a learning experience for everybody.

The lesson we learned was the importance of shipping lines. Guess who won, when in the end, Robert controlled every ship on the board? On the final doubled round, he made more on shipping than everybody else during the whole game. The final scores were something like 1780-1000-650-570-380, which was different from the previous game where the scores were more balanced. I was second this time, which is an improvement.

I had my bright moments. One was merging my rice company (five goods, no room to grow) with neighbouring spice company (three goods, more room) as a siap faji company in a situation where nobody else was able to buy it, so I got it at the minimum price. Having a bigger rice company in a siap faji merger seems like a good thing in any case and this was particularly sweet. The best thing I could do with that rice company, really.

I also kept in charge, being high in turn order all the time. That was something I learned from my first game. Initiative is important. Having the turn order bid tech helped. I had only two slots; third would've been useful, there were times when I would've wanted a company, but couldn't get one. Researching expansion was good, that got me lots of money in the end. Having one step of mergers was useful too, otherwise that siap faji merger wouldn't have happened.

I really like Indonesia, it's a good game and as seen, can be played pretty fast - relatively fast, at least. I just wish I could get it played more often, it's definitely one of those games where experience makes everything smooth and nice.

Today is the first Board Game Society BrettSpielWelt event. It started at noon, I had an hour or two to spend there. There was already about dozen people online, and more will come later, I'm sure.

It's a nice idea. Most of the face-to-face events have been in Helsinki, which is far from most places in Finland. This kind of event works well with a national society, I think, as the geographic distances fade out. I'm sure this won't be the last event of this kind.

We played some Diamant and Attribute, both excellent games for larger groups. My excellent track record in Attribute was tarnished a bit, as I placed third in the big challenge match. What can you say - aftger a bad start it's hard to catch up with someone who plays solid game, and you can't always control your own destiny. It was fun, though.

Maybe next time I'll have more time to participate. There are some interesting games going on tonight, I'm sure, and particularly if you're Finnish, check them out. The games continue until tomorrow 12 am.

I played few games of Einfach Genial at BSW today. Once again I was playing against a true pro: this guy had almost 1600 games played with an 81% wins. Even if most of his games were two-player, it's still very respectable percentage.

But, guess what! I managed to win him once! I did lose twice, but both games (well, all three games) were very close. Two were resolved by second-weakest color and in the last one, which was a bit of a disaster, he won by one point. Not bad! I thought I played a pretty good game, but I guess this also tells something of the learning curve in the game: 1600 games doesn't mean an absolute superiority over 24 games.

Nestori was interested to try Antiquity and of course, I'm always interested to play the game, so we arranged a match while he was in Tampere. It was a two-player game, fresh change from the four-player games I've played.

It was the most controlled game I've seen so far. We didn't have any problems with famine - it was kept in check with fountains, granary, hospital and St. Cristofori cathedrals. Pollution was something for a while, then we both got second cities with dumps and it just disappeared. We also blasted used land with alchemy faculties - no problems.

So, what happens when two St. Cristofori -worshipping villages meet? Obviously the one with forced labour wins. Here's a hint: I've never used forced labour. I know I will, in future. Even though Nestori didn't use it as efficiently as he could've, he still smoked me.

Well - it wasn't that obvius victory! He got it almost together after a few forced labour rounds, but needed the market to make the last arrangements. That meant an extra turn, where I almost reached the goal. I had no dyes in the start of the turn, but if I would've built a market and a fisherman, I would've been one good short of reaching the goal. One good, so I could've made the last trade to reach the victory condition. Very close! Of course, Nestori's wider network of inns meant he would've won anyway.

Man, it's a good game. Taxing, but good. Nestori played well for a newbie, even if I allowed him some takebacks after some blunders. Of course, that all made the playing experience much better for both of us (even though I lost), so why not. Good game, indeed, but I'm still feeling the pull of St. Christofori too tempting. This time I did think of using St. Christofori to build up a stockpile then switching saints to build a bunch of houses for St. Nicolo. That's something I ought to try one day.

Here's a review of Fjords in Finnish.

Fjords (or Fjorde) is a nice little two-player game about the vikings - however, this time the vikings are not burning and pillaging, they are farming and exploring!

The game is divided in two phases. First players lay tiles to build a map and place farms on the newly-formed meadows, then they start occupying the land starting from the farms. As is often said, the first phase is like Carcassonne, second like Go.

In the first phase, players lay down hexagon tiles. There's meadows, mountains and seas to match; each tile must touch at least two previously placed tiles. Unusable tiles are left for further use. Huts can be placed, like in Carcassonne, to tiles just layed down. There's a bit of a risk, as you don't know how the map will develop.

There's a bit of juggling on who gets to play the last tile. That's not an advantage: the one who doesn't place the last tile gets to start the second phase and that position might be worth points. Using the tiles on board (discarded as unusable before) makes it possible to "skip" turns.

The second phase is very straightforward: players place their markers on meadows, starting from their farms (four farms each). There's some blocking and a concept of timing, as some spots can seal the opponent of from a large area. Other than that, it's very fast and simple and doesn't take much time.

And that's it - players count the markers they've placed, that's their score. Rules say play three rounds, I don't see why. One round takes about ten to fifteen minutes and is a nice snack. If you have time and will, playing best two out of three or something like that is certainly a possibility.

Fjords is a small, simple game. Nothing larger-than-life, nothing spectacular, but bit of fun and bit of depth. It won't be completely obvious the first time you play it, but I'm not sure if playing ten games or hundred games makes a big difference on skill. If you're looking for a fast filler for two to play every now and then, Fjords is a good call.

I met Ilari yesterday for some games. The main attraction was the brand new Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation Deluxe. Ilari, a big fan of the original game, was eager to try the new characters.

We played two double matches. In first we used variant characters but no special cards, in second we took a random set of characters and all the special cards. Both were great fun! Good guys won every match, but it was pretty close nonetheless. I lost both my games with Sauron's forces simply because I couldn't get it that keeping people in Mordor is not a defense! Frodo that steps in wins the game and that's it.

The first game was particularly exciting. In the end Ilari marched his Uruk-hais from somewhere like Dagorlad to The Shire for a three-guys-in-Shire victory, when I remarked that Uruk-hais can only move to an empty region - giving me the one turn I needed to Sam the Ringbearer to Mordor. That's close!

Randomizing the characters worked well. It's basically like drafting, except it takes less time... We didn't reveal our characters to each other, I'd say that ruins the suspense of having a mixed set. It worked really well, trying to develop something clever from the people you got was interesting.

So, my verdict is: the new stuff really improves the game. The new characters are great, and the new cards are interesting, too. However, I wish someone would create nice smaller versions of the new characters I could paste on the back side of the old, small Confrontation pieces. The new stands aren't as good: they tip over easily and the top of the stand kind of covers the strength of each character.

Ilari had brought Fjorde. After the game in board game club I was interested to play again. Playing more definitely opened up some tactical depth of the game; I think I used more thought on the hut placement than before. The games were good, one in particular, where the right to start the land claim became critical - first player to claim land would win.

So, my opinion of Fjorde clearly improved. It's a small, harmless kind of game, but quite good one for something like that. I think it might be worth getting, actually. Maybe. Having it on BSW would be the best, especially since a lot of the time is spent checking where a tile will fit. Having a slick interface that would highlight the possible spots for tiles would be great.

We also played few games of Blue Moon. The best match was Vulca vs Pillar, where we had this amazing bloodbath. After the battle, I counted that I had used 11 cards! Too bad Ilari won, especially as he got three dragons thanks to his support card. I lost, because he had a support that prevented me from drawing cards. Otherwise I might have lasted for few more rounds... It was a huge megabattle and while it probably wasn't the best play possible, it was great fun - and that's what counts, right?

I'll play brave and throw a guess: my game of the year this year will be San Juan. So far I've played 30 games of it (plus dozens of games with Jim's San Juan, which is fun now the AI is harder to beat), which is a lot! Most of the play is in BSW, where the game just whizzes by in six minutes or so, particularly as a two-player game. It's a big candidate for a 10 rating, too - it's just always so much fun.

I also think there's really a lot of skill involved. Yesterday I played a guy who had played over 1200 games at BSW. He beat me 5-2 in our seven matches. Most of the time he had just the cards he needed and played them a lot faster than I did. He definitely knew what he was doing. It took me really good play to beat him. His victory percentage was 49%, though, which isn't that good if he has played mostly two-player... But perhaps he has a history of multiplayer games and has later moved to two-player games.

Review of Labyrinth - Die Schatzjagd in Finnish.

Labyrinth - Die Schatzjagd is a new game under the Amazing Labyrinth banner. It's quite different from the other labyrints, though.

Treasures in a maze

This time players are tracing their way through small labyrinth cards, trying to find treasure chests. There are ten chests on each card, but not all can be reached: some are behind deadly traps and some behind locked doors. When you know how many chests you can reach, you shout out the number. If you're right, you collect the labyrinth card and a key.

When you have keys, you must also count the chests behind the locked doors. That makes the process a bit slower and thus balances out the game. That can be used as handicapping, too: if kids and adults play the game together, adults can start with some keys. Once someone wins fifth board, he or she is the winner.

Ricochet Robot junior

That sounds like Ricochet Robot to me, and that's what it is, to some extent. Die Schatzjadg is, basically, Ricochet Robot for kids. The labyrinths are a lot easier than Ricochet Robot boards. The result is a game that's too easy for adults, but probably just right for the kids.

There's also a bit of a guessing problem. There are 35 different labyrinth cards. However, as all have just ten treasures, there isn't that much variation in the counts. Calling four or five is right over half of the time if you don't have keys; particularly if someone says five and is wrong, four is likely the correct answer. That might or might not be a problem.

Despite that, Labyrinth - Die Schatzjagd is a nice little game. I like it, even though it's useless for adults. Play Ricochet Robot instead. However, I'm keeping it in case I one day have a little gamer interested in labyrinths hanging around, looking for games to play.

I got the new Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation Deluxe Edition yesterday. The original is one of the best two-player games I have, how does the new edition compare?

First thing you notice is the big box. It's a big box game now, which makes me a bit reluctant to sell the old edition, even though it's clearly obsolete now. The big box means there's a bigger board and the stands are now bigger, too - they're vertical and some people claim they tip over easily. Don't know about that, but I think they're really neat.

The art is new and really, really good. The game looks absolutely brilliant, even better than before (after all, it was a good-looking game to start with). The new tarot-sized cards aren't linen-finished, so they'll wear out, which is a shame, but at least the new art is absolutely fabulous.

The new elements in the game include 18 new characters to play and two new special cards for each side. The new characters are on the reverse side of the old characters. Some are new versions of old characters, some are completely new. Instead of following the Fellowship's progress, the new game paints a broader picture of the war of the ring.

Of course, mixing the old and new characters is possible, which should give the game more depth for a long time, as the different combinations explode. The new characters have few interesting ones, like Frodo who makes Sam the new ringbearer if he dies, a Witch-king who wins the game for Sauron if he reaches Shire and Wormtongue, who is -1 power but cannot be killed.

I'm itching to try the new game!