September 2007 Archives

I wrote a review of Fairy Tale in Finnish.

Fairy Tale is a drafting game with a very superficial fantasy theme. There are four rounds: in the beginning of each, five cards are dealt to the players. Each player takes one card and passes the rest to the next player. Of the four cards they receive, players keep one and pass the rest, and so on, until all players have five cards selected and none left in hand.

Then comes the second part of the round: players play three cards, one by one, revealing their cards simultaneously. The two extra cards are discarded. This is repeated four times, leaving the players with twelve cards played . The player with the most points win. So far so good!

Card tricks

Of course, it's not that simple. The cards have more than points. There are four suits, three of which are practically identical. The cards build up on each other: each suit, for example, has a card that has a value of n, where n is the number of those cards you have in play. There are cards with the value of n*3, where n is the number of certain other card.

Advanced cards bring even more options in the form of conditional cards. With those, you can score large amounts of points, if you can fulfill certain conditions: have most cards in a suit, have certain cards on the table and so on.

It's not that simple, however. You are not guaranteed to keep all your cards! Some cards close other cards: a closed card doesn't score any points, unless you can open it somehow. The fourth suit, shadows, is particularly full of cards that close cards from each player. These cards bring some player interaction to a game that is otherwise fairly solitaire-ish.

Quick and fun

Fairy Tale is a reliable game: unless the players are really, really slow, a game's over in 15 minutes. There's a fairly hefty dose of luck involved and some of the decisions are pretty trivial, I'd say, but it doesn't really matter. There's at least an illusion of control and it's enough. I always have a good time playing the game and choosing my cards. I don't care about the lack of interaction: I'm happy when I'm able to keep an useful card from an opponent every now and then.

I haven't yet tried the game with two players, but the game definitely works with three, four or five players. Many people prefer the partnership game, which is good, but I like the game both ways. Fairy Tale is a perfect opening game while you're waiting for more players to arrive and a perfect end for a session when you have only fifteen minutes left.

It has been a good quarter. With the new Thursday sessions I've had time to play more games, which is always good. I even made it to the Board Game Club.

Previous quarter was a good one, too.

Fairy Tale is definitely the hottest game, with 13 games played and thoroughly enjoyed. It's certainly my number one filler right now. What a great, great game. I still suck in it, though, I have won exactly one non-partnership game.

Slovenian Tarok is another hot newcomer. I've fallen in love with the Tarot games, and the Slovenian is my favourite so far. There's room for skillful play, interesting fluid partnerships and - I have to admit - the cards add some extra charm as well. If you're looking for a skillful trick-taking game that works with both three and four players and is fairly easy to learn, this is a good choice.

Portobello Market is pretty neat and quite a good choice for a light family game. I did enjoy it, and I like the way it plays real fast, but I'm also pretty much done with it.

Age of Steam got few plays, which means I have few less unplayed expansions. This just tickles me right: the combination of familiar and very enjoyable mechanics with the new expansions satisfy both my need to play the same good games again and again and my need to try new games.

Yspahan became a board game for me: I haven't really played the PC version, now my wife got a new laptop and I've been able to use our old PowerBook all the time. It's very good that way, too, and definitely one of the highlights of the year.

Phoenicia is another highlight. I like this one a lot, I do! The balance seems pretty good, and I like how you can do pretty well without having the best income.

After the mandatory Fairy Tale rounds (which prove that I can only win when paired up with someone), I got a group playing Ottocento or Tarocco Bolognese. The Bologne Tarot is a curious game, played with a special pack of 62 cards. The trumps are a bit different: there are, for example, four moors, which are of equal (low) value.

It's a partnership game for four. The scoring is based on combinations of cards: either sets of same-rank court cards or high-scoring tarots, or sequences of court cards or trumps. These combinations can be declared before the first trick and they are also counted from the won cards. Cards also score by the traditional Tarot scoring system.

What this means is huge swings. If a team gets at least three combinations of same general category, the scores are doubled. So, win plenty of court cards and a wild card (trump number one or the fool) and you'll hit the jackpot. In the first deal, our team did exactly that and ended up with 300 points to our opponents' 95. Unfortunately Hannu, my ever faithful Tarot co-explorer, had to leave so we had only time for two hands. Another succesfull hand took my team to 496 points to our opponents 203 - the game is played to 800, like the title says, and it looks like that won't necessarily take whole evening...

It's a neat game. I think I do prefer the Slovenian game, but this is good as well. It's certainly different! However, the requirement for the special pack makes it harder to play, and I'm not sure it's really worth the extra effort if you can't get the pack easily (it's certainly worth getting, because it's a piece of art by itself, definitely one of the prettier packs I've seen so far).

Then it was Modern Art - it's been a while! Two newbies were in the game, guess what happened... The new guys bought like crazy. Harri who won, bought maybe one painting during the whole game. I was second, mostly because one of the new guys paid whopping 127 for a pair of paintings... that were worth, I think, 140. So, not too much, but perhaps still too much.

Well, you live and learn, but I do understand the people who hate playing Modern Art with newbies. It's a different game (and with all experienced players, the game is probably ruined in different ways).

We finished the evening with some... cards! Dobbm is a rare game from the valleys of Austria, but it's also a rather good introduction to ace-ten games. No tricky rules: just standard 120 points in pack, the declarer plays against other three trying to get more than half. Whatever happens, the difference between 60 points and the points scored are paid to the winning side.

There are two contracts: normal game (declarer gets four talon cards to exchange) or solo (no exchange). Solo beats normal game. Hearts are always trumps. Defenders may double the value of the game (Dobbm is usually played for money). It's a fairly easy-going game, and will definitely be a part of my standard game set, as I know the rules and need no rules or cheat sheets to play.

The trumps avoided me - I got one good hand, which I played with great success and failed only one hand and that not that much... However, Olli played two good hands, which was enough to beat me by four points.

One thing I learned: if you don't play for money, forget the hard scoring. Soft scoring works just as well and is much easier to do. I recounted our scores and noticed I had made some counting mistakes, but it's just too hard to count something that involves multiples and negative numbers and all that...

It's been a while since my last visit to the board game club. Yesterday I was able to go, and had enough time, too, to play some heavier games. We started with Age of Steam: Mississippi Steamboats, one of Ted Alspach's expansions. It's a long and narrow board, split by the big river. Urbanization doesn't turn towns to cities, but adds new cities to the river as steamboats. Goods can be moved to the boats, from the boats and cross the river through the boats. On the banks, distances between cities are fairly long.

It's a strange expansion. It was fun, but the boats are quite random (they move 2d6 hexes each turn), so you can't really count on them - which was, sort of, the point of my strategy. I did a marvellous move on the last turn, though: I carried a blue cube from a city to the steamboat next to the city - but took the cube for a ride, passing it first south by the river, then across the river on a different steamboat, then up the river on the other bank and from there to the waiting steamboat, for six links. Pretty neat!

So, not a bad expansion, but not one of my favourites, either. Mississippi Steamboats doesn't make my "this one needs to be played again" list right now.

I played the big Ubongo - actually first time with the correct rules. Last time I played, we picked up the gems after the timer had run out, in a peaceful and ordered fashion. I prefer the more hectic version. The guys who I played with deserve some credit: they hadn't played before, but opted for the more difficult version straight away.

After some quick card games (Coloretto, good fun after a long break and Briscola, which was pretty good with just two), it was time for The End of the Triumvirate, which I bought from Tommy last Spring. Now I got it on the table!

It's a three-player semiwargame set in the ancient Rome, where Caesar, Pompeius and Crassus duke it out, fighting for the ultimate power in Rome. There are three paths to victory: military dominance, political power and gaining superior competence. The players move their character, leading legions and collecting money. Battles are simple affairs: one-for-one attrition battles with a small random element included to spice things up.

It's a clean, neat game and rather well done. It's just that I don't really like the genre... The whole concept of preventing other players from winning the game as the main purpose of the game just doesn't work for me. Here it's almost ok, as the game is forced to progress and end fairly soon (it can't just go on forever, which would make it really, really bad), so yeah, I could see myself playing this again - it was sort of fun. However, this one goes to the trade pile. Good game, sure, but not for me.

Another Thursday session, this time with plenty of people: we had three games running at the same time. It was good, because that meant I was able to skip Bang!. Instead I played Yspahan. The game included two newbies and Olli, who has played about 500 games of the PC version. Now, guess the order? Indeed Olli won (with over 120 points), I was second and the newbies were left in the end.

Olli did play well - he screwed me out of caravan points in the end of the game in a particularly beautiful way. There was nothing I could do. Well played, indeed. Yspahan continues to please me - it's a fine game.

Slovenian Tarok was played next, for few rounds. Tero made history by scoring positive points in the end, whopping four points. So, at least some of us are improving. It's definitely one of my favourite trick-taking games, even if I can't play it well. One day, one day...

In the end, we had five, which called for Briscola Bastardo. A 40-card pack is distributed to the players, who bid to become a declarer. Declarer promises to score points (out of 120 possible, it's an ace-ten game), gets to name trumps and calls for a partner.

What makes the game completely whacky is the freedom of play: by Parlett's code, Briscola is ftr - no restrictions at all. For a scientific sort of game it's way too chaotic. I didn't like it - the free play works well and is a fresh way to play, when you have the three-card hands of basic Briscola, but this - well, at least now I know why most games have at least the requirement to follow suit.

So, five-player Briscola is out - I'd still play the three-player game, I'm willing to try the two-player game when an opportunity comes and I definitely want to try the four-player version.

Today's mail brought me a publishing contract to sign: I'm writing another book! Well, I'm already 75 pages in, so getting the contract was a bit of a relief... My topic is, as some of you might've already guessed, traditional (and less traditional) card games. I'm covering both history of the games and the cards, describing different kinds of cards and games, explaining rules to interesting and different games and, unlike most other card game books, I'm also going to cover commercial card games from Uno to Magic: The Gathering.

So, this'll make me a proper author. I'm expected to hand over the manuscript at some point during 2008 - the contract is pleasantly vague about it - but I'd expect to get it done by early next year, so hopefully the book'll be out in Spring. That'd be nice.

Oh, and today's mail also included a copy of Sid Sackson's A Gamut of Games, which I got from BookMooch - that was a nice catch.

The second Thursday session drew six players, then two latecomers. We could use more, but this was certainly enough to get games going. It was nice to see some new faces. We warmed up with a quick round of Ubongo Mini, which is indeed a rather good for that purpose.

My dear friends at Marektoy had sent me a shipment of their new releases, so it was time for some new games. Funny Fishing is a fishing-themed game for kids. The game consists of 20 strings, with a fish in one end and a fishing rod in the other. The strings are jumbled on the board to make a mess.

A tile depicting one of the fish is turned up. Each player tries to locate the fish (there are two of each), then follow the string to the rod and point to it. When everybody is either pointing to a rod or has given up, people pull their rods and see what they caught. Catching the correct fish can be rather difficult in the early game!

Fishing was fun and I was rather unbeatable, but I think the game's going in the pile I have stored for later use - it's just not fun enough with just adults. I do think Funny Fishing is pretty good for mixed groups with both adults and children, and I'm definitely keeping this for Nooa.

Hart an der Grenze got a beating from the Leppävaara game club folks earlier - they claimed the game was practically broken. I must say disagree! While I'm not a huge fan of bluffing and guessing and thus not a big fan of this game, I still think it works well enough.

The basic idea is to stuff your luggage with 1-5 cards and then claim to sheriff, one of the players, that your luggage contains only legitimate imports: sombreros, maracases or jugs. Sheriff chooses one player to inspect. If the contents of the luggage don't match the declaration, the player will be fined. Of course, it's possible to bribe the sheriff and keep the contents...

The game's designed so that the optimal solution for both players is to bribe - that way the smuggler gets to keep the goods and avoid fines, while the sheriff can get money (sheriff won't get the fines). Of course, the question is how much should the bribe be? If the bribe's too small, sheriff may get annoyed and the smuggler will suffer a loss of goods and a fine, but if the bribe's too large, the sheriff will be left without any income.

Of course, the game's indeed pretty bad if everybody is constantly stuffing their bags with five cards (and thus obviously smuggling something illegal) - that way the sheriff has no particular reason to doubt anybody as everybody's definitely cheating. There's less decision-making and more luck. The problem is worse with more players - with five players importing goods, the chance of being inspected is fairly small.

We had six players, but none of that automatic five card behaviour. In our game, had someone played five cards in their luggage, it would've been an automatic inspection. Typically people played only three cards, four if they were adventurous. Everything worked well. Of course, the game should be able to manage all sorts of behaviour from the players, but as Hart an der Grenze is definitely an experience game, I don't think it's not too much to ask from the players... Of course, if everybody feels playing five cards each turn is the best strategy, then they should probably be playing something else.

Enough rambling! The game looks splendid - players each get a beautiful, colourful tin box for their luggage - and is definitely fun. If one's looking for light entertainment with bluffing and haggling, I'm not sure I can come up with a better game.

Then it was time for some traditional card games. We played Briscola (Geek's pretty inconsistent with card games: adding new ones is against the rules, yet there are plenty of standard pack card games in the database), which is apparently one of the more popular games in Italy. We played with three players, which isn't the most popular way to play it, though...

Briscola is an ace-ten trick-taking game with no tens, basically. Aces and threes are high and worth 11 and 10 points, court cards are worth few points each. There's a trump suit, but no need to follow suit or other obligations. What's most different about the game is the three-card hand, which makes the game really stand out from the trick-taking games where the whole pack is distributed to the players initially.

Briscola was rather fluid, I enjoyed it. It's not the deepest game (though the five-player Briscola Bastardo is deeper; but it's almost a different game), but rather good for quick matches. As the game plays with any number of players from two to six, it's a useful game to know. I'll definitely play it again.

Sueca is another ace-ten game without tens. This one's a partnership game for four. Winning the hand scores one, two or four game points. The game is played to four points, so it's a quick one. It's also rather simple, with not many thrills. It was nice, but as there's nothing really outstanding about it, I probably won't play the game again.

Last year was a disaster, now things look much better! The Finnish Adult Game of the Year for 2007 is Thurn und Taxis, the Finnish Family Game of the Year is Ubongo and the Finnish Kids Game of the Year is Piikkisiili.

The list of finalists was very impressive, too, but I think they chose very good winners (well, Piikkisiili doesn't seem that hot, but the kids game list is a different thing altogether). This has been another good year for board games in Finland!

I've started a new weekly game night. My wife wants me to see other people than her and Nooa, basically. That's perfectly fine with me! Our first night had a good turnout of seven people, so we got two games going. The other table played Web of Power, Geschenkt and Phoenicia, while our table played cards.

First up was the new Ubongo Mini, though. This is very much reduced version of the basic game. This has a small deck of cards and bunch of tiles. The box is small, and if you ditch the box, you can make the game downright tiny. Good points for portability!

The problems are easier: one side has two pieces, the other three. The two-tile problems are silly and not worth playing. In the basic game, the first player to finish counts to 20 and everybody who finishes, keeps their card. In the pro version, first one to finish gets the card, others are out of luck. Either way, the player with the most cards wins.

So, obviously we played the pro game with three-tile puzzles. Everybody would've completed their puzzles in 20 seconds! This reduces the game to pure skill, so the fastest player will win. This is the typical downside of speed games the original Ubongo avoided so well. Worry not! What saves Ubongo Mini is the simple fact that our game took, what, five minutes? So, let's count: the game is tiny, the rules are very straightforward, the game plays in five minutes and isn't completely stupid. Yes sir, that does add up to a rather splendid quickie filler. Worth owning, I'd say!

Then, cards. First up the basic staple of Fairy Tale. Nothing special about that, except Tero's active shadow playing made the game really low on scores - winner had 39 (and it still wasn't me!).

Then we played the oldest game around. Really! Karnöffel is probably the oldest card game that is recorded in the western history with rules available. It's a chaotic trick-taking game: two teams of two players fight for five tricks. No need to follow suit, feel free to trump whenever you want and hey, not all cards of the trump suit are actually trumps. Also, even if you have a trump, it just might lose to a sufficiently high non-trump.

The rules are bizarre. Partners can discuss strategy with each other openly, though we didn't use that much. Me and Olli H. lost our best-of-five match brutally 3-0. It's an odd game, but once you get past the initial shock of the strange trumping rules, I suppose this could be decent entertainment. I'd rate this about six - will play, but probably won't suggest. Worth one play, for the historical aspect.

Next up: All Fours, an English game from the 17th century, these days the national game of Trinidad. It's another partnership game (or two-player game, as the original English version goes), and another rather chaotic game.

The trump selection is interesting: after dealing six cards to each player, dealer turns up trump card. The forehand either accepts and plays or asks for another trump. If dealer declines, it's one point for the forehand's team (you're playing for 14 points, so one point is good). If dealer accepts, he deals three more and turns another card and repeats this until a new suit is found - that's trump.

However, whenever an ace, a jack or a six comes up, dealer's team scores 1-3 points. We lucked out and scored four points in the last hand, by turning up two sixes. Sweet, but lucky. The game play is follow
suit or trump. Each hand awards four points: one for highest trump dealt, one for lowest trump dealt, one for trick with the trump jack, one for the most card points collected. So, two out of for points are based on pure luck and the actual play of the hand is just one point, basically. You'd better be lucky!

Despite being a complete luckfest, All Fours is actually a pretty nice game. Another six, likely - would play again, if I needed a game that's light and different. Perhaps this would be worth trying with just two? Not a must-try, however.

Then the main course: Slovenian Tarok. We had four players for the first two rounds, then lost one. Hannu had played before, while Harri and Tero were new to the game. They picked up the basic idea pretty swiftly, suggesting earlier trick-taking experience. We all sucked - Tero actually got positive points, before his one remaining radli pushed him to -78... I was in a deep hole of -238 points, but I played a tremendously good last round, scoring 160 points and losing a radli to tie the game with Tero.

It's a great game. If you're looking for a good trick-taking game for either three or four players, I strongly suggest trying Slovenian Tarok. The three-player game is slightly harder, and I think I prefer the four-player game with its surprising partnerships and wider selection of contracts. I'm going to play this game until I learn enough to be able to remain in positive points! I'm fairly sure I'll find willing partners for this endeavour...

Next session is next Thursday at the university, starting at five. Everybody's welcome! Expect Fairy Tale, Ubongo Mini, oddball card games, Tarot and other great games.

I'm in Jyväskylä now with Nooa, I took the boy to see his grandparents. It's been a double vacation - Johanna gets some time off as she stayed home, while it's been pretty lazy for me too, as Nooa has been quite beguiled by Raija and Ismo.

No visit without games, right? After we got Nooa to be last night, we cracked open Caylus Magna Carta - I had decided that was the perfect choice for the occasion. After all, it was with Raija and Ismo I first played Caylus back in Essen 2005. Back then they enjoyed the game, but found it tad too long for their purposes and didn't buy it - so Magna Carta should be just about perfect, right?

We played twice in a row, so yes, I'd say it was a success! Ismo got the first game by the virtue of buildings castle a lot. I might've won, but the game ended one turn early and I didn't get one more ten-point building. In the next game I focused on building resource-producing buildings and building the castle, which got me the game. So, the castle is certainly good, but not a sure winner, the balance between buildings and castle needs to be maintained.

I'll have to adjust my earlier comments on the game length a bit. Our first game was 75 minutes, or 25 minutes per player, the second was 20 minutes... So, I'd say that 15 minutes per player is probably pretty swift game, 20 minutes is decent and more than that is slow - but our first game was slow, as Raija and Ismo had pretty much forgot Caylus. I can see how some people can definitely take 30 minutes per player, but then again, those people won't probably play Caylus in 30 minutes per player, so there's still some speed-up effect...