June 2007 Archives

I visited the Finnish Board Game Championships yesterday. It was a smallish event, just seven four-player teams participating. However, the whole thing was put together quite quickly and with no previous experience, so no wonder it wasn't larger.

I wasn't playing, just went to present my book and take a look. I did visit Lautapelit.fi to get a review copy of Caylus Magna Carta, though, and ended up playing a game with Stefu to try it out. I like it, it was a good thing I sold my copy of Caylus, as it's now quite obsolete.

Magna Carta offers most of what Caylus does - it's missing the royal favours, mostly, and some other stuff - and is a lot quicker. I didn't like the favours too much anyway, I found the building track simply too strong to ignore and thus detrimental to the variety of the game. Magna Carta, in the other hand, offers a lot more variety with the cards. It's really well done. The only problem is that it only plays with up to four players, but I believe that's solvable with an extra set of cards and some extra castle tokens, if need be. I rarely play with five anyway.

We had a good game, though Stefu beat me hands down. More resources, that's the way to win.

I finally got around downloading Westpark Gamers PC version of Yspahan. It's from the same guy who did the St. Petersburg PC version.

It's a good game. It took me few games to figure it out - since I was too lazy to read the rules properly - but after few rounds I got it. It's a good game, too. For each action, you have to make plenty of choices: which dice to take, what to do with them, which strategy to pursue? It's quite a devious game, if you ask me. The PC version works well, offers pretty good opposition (I got three wins out of five games, but I started with easy opponents).

Yspahan is definitely a good game, I wouldn't mind owning a copy myself, and this PC version is worth downloading for Windows-equipped board gamers looking for quick solitaire games.

Our game session dwindled up to just two players, me and Olli, but I saw no need to change the main course. I've heard Blue Moon City is good with just two, so of course I had to try it. Turns it out works just fine. Both our games were quite exciting enough.

Some folks complain about the photo finish feature of Blue Moon City, and sure, both our games ended 6-5 (Olli won the first one, I got the second). I don't mind. It is possible to lose badly in Blue Moon City, but it's also fairly easy to do well. At least it keeps the games exciting. With a short game like this, I don't mind the occasional lucky victory or a kingmaker situation, as I enjoy the process and the game doesn't feel like a luckfest.

Good game, and I'm definitely looking forward to playing this one more.

Last time I was pruning my game collection I had to stop and think about Attika. I like it, I've played it a lot (25 games is a lot to me), but will I play it in the future? I decided to keep it, and to reinforce that decision, I made some effort to actually play the game.

I like the two-player game, it's close, tense and doesn't have the blocking problem (when someone is about to win, someone has to block, but who'll do the sacrifice?) of the multi-player game. Ours was a good game, with enough wheeling and dealing. I almost got a temple chain - one turn, and I would've won - which Olli blocked, but eventually my experience and efficiency overrun Olli and I was able to finish the game as my victory.

It's been a while since I last played the game, but I hope the next session will be sooner. I do like the game.