December 2006 Archives
Here's a list of hottest games for the fourth quarter of 2006 for me. This is based on number of plays, my enjoyment of the game and the novelty value, so new games tend to show up higher on the list.
You can also check the previous quarter, with completely different games.
Celtica - Surprise, perhaps? It really was this good, both two-player and four-player. It's a really good light game.
18VA - This shouldn't be a surprise. Just one play, but it's long, heavy and extremely pleasing. One of the games I most want to play in 2007, but also one of the hardest to get on the table.
Age of Steam: 1830's Pennsylvania and London - Two AoS expansions tied here. Both were great, offering new challenges to one of my favourite games. I could play a lot more Age of Steam, you know.
Blue Moon - Great fun, the new Buka expansion spiced up things nicely.
Tower of Babel and Blue Moon City - Two Knizia building games, both clever, quick and fun. I'm hoping these see more action next year (and I think I should just go and buy Blue Moon City).
Gipf - Bought this on a whim, turned out to be a good game, much better than I originally thought. Needs perhaps a bit more effort than I can give to it, but hey, who cares...
I met Gargoyle and Laura for a session of Knizia games, as it turned out. We started the games with Blue Moon City, which turned out to be quite a sweet game. 40 minutes of fairly intense hand management stuff, with room for clever moves. We played twice in a row, and in the second game, I collected a huge pile of crystals and made four contributions to the obelisk on one move. That was fun, too bad I lost momentum and in the end lost, because I was one step too far on my last move...
It's a cool game, and has the sign of Knizia all over it. It's well designed, seems balanced and exciting. The need to help others (Laura lost the first game when she wandered a lot on her own, and didn't get involved in our buildings - that's a strategy lesson learnt), the need to keep certain cards for the end game, while there's the temptation to just burn through the cards right away... Excellent stuff. That makes it almost too good - I think I might have to get it. I like the Blue Moon world, so why not... Damn Knizia, too many good games.
Tower of Babel made a second appearance, this time with three players. I won hands down, thanks to previous experience, but it was still good. It's a clever game, indeed, and starting to look like a keeper.
In the other hand, I finally decided I don't want to keep Through the Desert. It's great in theory, but not that great in practise. Playing it isn't simply as much fun as it should be. Strange game, but I think I'll rather sell it and get, say, Blue Moon City instead. The fact that the setup takes almost longer than a two-player game is somewhat annoying.
Yesterday I had a small "welcome to Tampere" games session with Mikko, also known as Gargoyle (you might remember him from Gone Gaming). We met in the Konttori bar for some two-player games.
First up was Yinsh, which we both have played little. Our skill levels seem to match, as the game was quite enjoyable. After my first ring, Mikko got 2-1 lead, but I managed to tie the game and then found a beautiful win-win situation later (which I think was set up by Mikko, not my excellent plays), where I could force a victory. Corners rock, ti seems. It was a good game, now that I had some idea what to do. I was still dazzled by the early game, the setup. I need to play more - I wish they had this on Little Golem.
Mikko is a fan of Dungeon Twister and I was willing to give it a go. The game has an interesting relationship with Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation . Both have similar goals and share the combat mechanism (character value + modifier card), but in some respects they are polar opposites. While The Confrontation is tight, constricted and constrained, Dungeon Twister is wide open and full of options. There's just so much to do!
It was fun. There were interesting challenges, optimizing the actions and using the characters to support each other. Mikko was much better, with his experience and all, but I believe I offered at least some resistance. I enjoyed the game, but don't have much need to play it more - I found the strictness of The Confrontation more enjoyable. Still, I'll definitely play Dungeon Twister again should an opportunity arise.
To finish it up, we played three rounds of Blue Moon. First two saw the Buka Invasion in action. I like them! The character-filled deck is fun to play. There isn't many boosters or supports, but every character doubles as a 2/2 support. The bluffing mechanism is interesting, and offers lots of flexibility for the Buka. The ships are also interesting. I'm very satisfied with the Buka, and looking forward to putting their abilities to test.
Got some games, on a whim. Despite my cool initial feelings towards Hive, I couldn't resist the new bakelite edition. Just too cool, you can't beat big, chunky pieces of plastic when it comes to board game pieces.
I also bought the new edition of Looping Louie. I'm not sure if I would've bought it without Nooa - now I'm sure he will love the game, and while I'm waiting for him to grow up a bit (three years or so), I can have fun with the game with my friends. It's just so charming for such a stupid game.
I customized my game a bit, by the way. I still had the extra Friedemann and Maura stickers from my copy of Finstere Flure - now they're running with the chickens. The stickers were a perfect match.
Ah, BattleLore. I've read the reports, the blog entries, the praise. How I wish you were mine, and how I must fight this temptation...
I really like Memoir '44, and while I prefer the military theme to the fantasy (medieval warfare isn't bad - I just get an allergic reaction when in contact with standard dwarves and elves), I do like all the new additions to the system and would appreciate a more complex game because Memoir is, in the end, a fairly simple system. But how I can justify the price, when I haven't even played all the Memoir scenarios in the expansions I have?
And it wouldn't be the end of it, really - I suppose there are new Memoir expansions coming (at least the carrying case!) and BattleLore, well, BattleLore will be an endless mire of expansion material. So, I suppose I must say no to BattleLore, at least until I'm clearly more wealthy...
Of course, there's Commands & Colors: Ancients, with similar promises. That one is easier to turn down, though. The idea of putting hundreds of stickers to wooden blocks utterly terrifies me. The first expansion set, while interesting, is very, very expensive and has hundreds of more blocks and stickers. No thanks! Besides, it seems that BattleLore handles the various unit types in a way that's a much more elegant.
I still can't help to be tempted, though, and I'm afraid I might fall..
