July 2006 Archives

My games with Olli continued on Friday. We started with Kahuna - it was the final test. Olli lost big time; he got the first scoring, but then my defensive island network made it quite clear there was no way he could beat me. Final score was 6-1. Not good.

He didn't like the game, I didn't like this match like I didn't enjoy most of the other matches I've played. It's clear now the game doesn't deserve a good rating or being a part of my collection. I'd still play it if someone wants to and there are no better alternatives, but I wouldn't suggest it.

Next up was Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation Deluxe. Once again I chose to select the characters randomly. The results were an interesting mix of old and new. The game got quite exciting: I had to use Recall to Mordor to stop Olli from sneaking Frodo to Mordor; fortunately, Saruman (new version; I happened to have him next to Fangorn when Olli regenerated Gandalf - oops!) was able to beat both Merry (who had killed Witch King earlier) and Sam (who became the Ringbearer when Mouth of Sauron finished Frodo). It was close and exciting.

Then it was back to Jambo. It's a great game, definitely the best thing Rüdiger Dorn has done. I'd like to have this one, actually. I won again, so I must be a natural talent in African trading.

We ended the proceedings with a quick match of Rat Hot. I won, when Olli was showing two rats on his last turn, he drew a rat and couldn't hide them. Three rats out, he lost. Otherwise it would've been close and he might've won. That's the luck effect some curse and feel is unfair; I'd say tough luck, he shouldn't have let those two rats out. Also if he had counted the rats, he might've seen trouble coming. And anyway, I don't care - it's such a small and fast game that I wouldn't want to change it a lot. A small fear element is just nice. Olli didn't seem too annoyed, either.

Review of Kahuna in Finnish.

Kahuna is a game that has bugged and frustrated me. I've found it hard to form my opinion of it, but now it's clear: I want to like it, but I can't.

The game is about building magic bridges between the islands in an archipelago. Whenever a player has the majority of the bridges to an island built, she gets to place a control marker on the island. This in turn causes the opponent's bridges to that island to disappear, which might mean a loss of control on an adjacent island.

A flat experience

I like the chain reactions and the competition for the control of the islands. At best, the game is an exciting challenge of bridge-building and timing. However, most of the time, it seems, the game falls flat. Instead of a dynamic competition, it's a stale experience of early winner.

Giving up when the game seems lost is not fun, but neither is suffering the rest of the 30-minute match with relatively few possibilities. If the game were 10-15 minutes long, the problem would be less significant, but now the game feels like a waste of time, really.

Good, but not good enough

It's sad, because I really want to like the game. First of all it's gorgeous: the box cover is probably top five material (I'd love to have it as a poster) and the components look great. The game has promise, but doesn't deliver. Maybe if both players had enough experience, the game would be better, but who wants to slug through a bunch of unpleasant matches to get that experience?

I've given Kahuna a chance, perhaps more than it deserved. Some people seem to enjoy the game a lot, so I guess the potential works out for some people. Thus, I recommend you do try this one out if game seems interesting - but try before you buy, preferable more than once.

I'm keeping my personal life out of this blog most of the time, but now I can't help myself: it's been fun living with a baby! Nooa is a sweet boy. He's a month and a day old today, and already starting to smile at us and support his head all by himself. Soon he'll be playing games with me!

If there's something he enjoys right now, that's carrying. Today's count so far is five hours of carrying in a sling, mostly sleeping. A good sling (I recommend Hug-a-Bub, it's great and easy to use for beginners) is all you need to transport a baby. I suppose it's needless to say I don't believe it's possible to spoil a baby by carrying too much. Carrying is natural and good.

Well, that's all I've got to say about parenting right now. I'll continue later on...

I met Olli for the first proper game session after Nooa's (that's the name of our boy) birth. It was fun, to have a small break from baby care and maintenance.

We started off with Memoir '44, since that was high on Olli's list. He had played Battle Cry before, so rules explanations were minimal. I chose my favourite scenario, Saverne Gap. It's just so good... I won, too! I have now won the scenario with both sides. It's a good scenario - the Germans are overwhelmed by Allied forces, yet the constricted nature of the corridors helps even out the game.

Olli introduced me to Jambo, which had intrigued me before. I enjoyed it, which seems fairly rare for a Rüdiger Dorn game - I just don't seem to click with his designs. Jambo is my hands-down favourite of his work. The game casts players as African traders, buying and selling stuff. The difficulty is to get suitable wares together. There are lots of special cards that help, but limited actions each turn.

It was quite pleasant. I think it's a fairly lucky game, the cards you get affect how you do, but I enjoyed the process nonetheless. Winning the game didn't hinder my enjoyment a bit, of course. I'd definitely play it again, and I'm also curious to see if Johanna likes the game.

To wrap the session up, we played two rounds of Rat Hot, a small two-player tile-laying game from Michael Schacht. Players try to connect their items while avoiding rats - if three rats of your colour are visible in the end of your turn, you lose.

The game is good - laying the tiles has enough twists and turns to keep things interesting, and the rats are a beautiful final touch. The result is a quick and a fresh game. I'm not sure it's interesting enough to buy, but if I played more two-player games, I think I could buy this (and sell, when I got bored with it - I doubt it's a keeper).

I notice I have reviewed Frank's Zoo a long time ago on my Finnish site, yet a review hasn't appeared here. Let's fix that.

Frank's Zoo (aka Zoff im Zoo) is a climbing game with a twist. The animal theme is obvious, considering the authors: the Frank in the title is the game designer Frank Nestel, while the game is decorated by his artist wife Doris Matthäus (who also shares a design credit), a master drawer of cutesy animals.

So, it's a climbing game. That means the goal of the game is to get rid of one's cards. The cards are played on "tricks", and to play one must play a better combination than the previous player (same animal, but more; same number of better animals). The value of the animals climbs up, thus the name.

Twisting hierarchies

However, there are twists. The hierarchy is based on animals and is far from simple. Each animal beats certain smaller animals (but not all) and is in turn beaten by other, bigger animals. There are two overlapping series, water animals and land animals (some are both). While the water animals end in unbeatable orca, in land animals the tiny mouse beats the mighty elephant and the hierarchy can loop again.

It takes a while to get used to all this. Each card shows which animals it can beat, but not which animals beat it. Fortunately there are helpful player aids in Geek, and it only takes few games to get familiar with the cards.

Good fun for large groups

The scoring is based on the order of getting rid of one's cards, plus few other things. There's a dynamic partnership system: after each round, players at certain ranks are paired together. The game ends when two players reach certain score, which doesn't usually take many rounds.

Frank's Zoo is a good game for larger groups - with five, six or seven players, it would be my choice of climbing games. With three or four Gang of Four and Tichu are hard to beat. In any case, Frank's Zoo is a somewhat lighter game than those two (but not as light and easy as the cute animals could lead one to think).

I installed a new version of Movable Type, which features tags. So, I've started tagging my entries. I think the tags are a good addition: they work a bit like categories, but are a lot more specific and thus can be a lot more useful in some situations.

Clicking the tags will show you all entries tagged with the same tag. That's a not a big list, yet, but I expect to tag all my entries in Autumn, when I'm bored at work... If you click a tag, you'll also notice that you can subscribe to a RSS feed for a tag, so if there's a topic you're particularly interested in - say, TradeResolver - you can grab the feed and get all the new stuff on that topic delivered to you.

I also have a tag cloud (which is the hip thing right now, it seems).

I must confess. The guys at the Board Game Society forums have been talking about Advanced Squad Leader a lot, particularly the starter kits. Despite what I've said earlier about preferring these detailed strategy games on computer, I'm feeling a small pining for something like that.

EastFront is another example of games that have been discussed that I would actually like to try. I know I won't - before I might've bought the games, drooled over them and yearn to play them. Now I realize I don't have the money to buy them or the time or company to play them. Were my surroundings different - if there was no child, if I was single or living with someone who'd enjoy the games as well - I would be at them right away.

Now, I am satisfied with the situation as it is. I have enough big games waiting to be played (that and 30 euros made me sell Power Grid, even though I like it a lot - of course, there's also the fact that in any situation where I'd be able to play my Power Grid, I'd probably prefer Age of Steam), and I'm getting Roads and Boats anyway, whether I get to play it or not (and it's bloody expensive, too, considering my current financial situation).

And hey, times might change. Maybe at some point I find myself having both time and the company to share something like ASL. After all, I'm raising a future gamer now. I'm trying very hard to avoid building up huge expectations - he might end up hating board games, and I have to love him anyway - but I can't help thinking about it. Maybe one day I will live with someone who's interested in exploring long and complicated games with me?

There's a PBW implementation of Roads and Boats! It's called Roads & Boats by Web and it's currently in early testing. I want to test, too!

I set up a two-player game for testing purposes. You can join the game; the password is "gameblog". Please only join if you plan to finish the game in steady and non-delayed manner and don't mind that it'll probably take a while.

Knizia's Drahtseilakt reviewed in Finnish.

Drahtseilakt is a Knizia trick-taking game from 1999, republished in 2004 as Relationship Tightrope by Überplay. This review is based on the original German edition. Based on pictures, the new edition looks great, but I find the new theme of relationship stereotypes slightly offending and a definite turn-off.

Balancing act

The original edition, however, has a great theme. Drahtseilakt means Tightrope and that's what you do: the game is constant balancing from one side to the other. In each trick, two players will score: the players with the lowest and the highest card. High card will get positive points, low card negative. You aim for zero.

Each hand is nine rounds and each round has different value between one and nine. Thus, if you happen to win the positive points on nine-point round, you better aim for the eight negative points to balance that off. Of course, you can try to avoid every trick, but when both low and high card will score, avoiding tricks altogether is very... tricky.

Good trick-taking

Drahtseilakt qualifies as a good trick-taking game, because there are relatively few bad hands. You can usually manage with any kind of hand, if you just play it right. Even if you're dealt a really bad hand, there's an escape: if you can score a zero on a later round, you can erase your score from an earlier round.

Drahtseilakt is a nice game. Not great, but as a casual trick-taking game that's easy to learn and to play, it works well. The old version has nice French-style comic art and red and blue wooden sticks (like Catan roads) for keeping the score. I recommend getting the original version if possible (it might be hard to find), but if you don't mind the theme, the Relationship Tightrope edition is a good choice as well.

A review of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective in Finnish is up.

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is a curious game unlike any other I've played. It's closest relatives are in the world of solo roleplaying books, you know, the one with numbered chapters you look up. "To go west, see chapter 123; to go east, see chapter 342".

However, Sherlock Holmes offers more. This Spiel des Jahres winner from 1985 is a strong-themed time leap to Holmes' era. The box contains a map of London, a newspaper and a directory of people in London. There are ten cases, with lots of back story.

Hunting for clues

Investigation is simple. You choose what you want to do - perhaps question a key witness, or visit a location. To locate a witness, check the people directory for their number. For a location, you'll find the number on the map. Armed with the number, you can then check the clue book to read what you find out.

If you run out of ideas (a common occurence for those of us with less wit than Mr. Holmes), browsing the newspaper might give you a lead, or then you can visit one of the standard sources (Scotland Yard, coroner and so on).

To measure success, you count the steps you've taken (reading a clue is one step) and compare to Holmes' score (typically ridiculously low). Well, it's a fun process, no matter how long you take with it.

The game is probably best played solo, but it can also be played in a group, either co-operating or competing. I'm not sure how good the game is as a competition, and I'd rather enjoy the process of investigation all alone, so it's a pure one-player game for me.

Good reading

The final verdict depends a lot on two things: how much you enjoy the theme and can you feel the theme oozing of the text. If you can't see yourself getting a kick from reading all the game material, this game is not for you. Those who love the Holmes stories will love this game.

Whether you like it or not, there's a big replayability issue. The ten cases are pointless once you've solved them (well, at least until you've forgotten them, so if your memory is really leaky, then it's less of a problem). There are expansions with new cases, but those cost extra. Still, if you think this game is for you, don't let this issue stop you. The game is worth getting. It's out of print, but copies are available on eBay and elsewhere.

Doug Adams was rather kind and chose me as his successor for the coveted Geek of the Week title. This is your chance to ask me the question you've always wanted to ask. Just visit my Geek of the Week thread. Thanks Doug!