August 2008 Archives

I've opened the voting for the Finnish Players' Picks 2008 awards. If you're a Finnish board gamer or a foreign board gamer living in Finland, go and vote for your favourite games.

We met yesterday for a session of Mahjong using the Chinese Official rules. Since the skill level in our table was very low - some Mahjong experience, but no COIR experience - we didn't use the minimum point rule, which is a pain if you don't know the scoring elements well.

It was a fun game and reminded me of why Mahjong is such a good game. We played at a pretty good speed, too - we had three hours and we managed to play 10 deals. Not bad, though by competition standards you should be able to run the whole 16-deal game in 2,5 hours. Obviously that's going to take some experience! But we had few rather swift hands there and overall I was pretty happy with the pace of the game. Mahjong can drag, if players aren't paying attention, and that's painful.

Most of our hands were pretty awful, typically 5-8 points, including flowers. I think we had just two or three winning hands over the eight-point minimum. The best hand of the evening was my Greater honours and knitted tiles for over 25 points. That was sweet, and a beautiful hand too (one of each dragons and winds, then seven tiles from knitted series, that is 1-4-7 in one suit, 2-5-8 in other and 3-6-9 in the third). I was a nervous wreck, though, because I got the hand ready quite soon and waited for the last tile, anxious to go out before someone finishes a cheap hand.

Thanks to that big hand, I won. The won hands went 3-3-3-1, and Riku who got just one lost. I discarded at least four winning tiles, but since we had such a cheap hands, that didn't really hurt.

I've been contemplating another set of tiles. That's madness, because the last time I played Mahjong was in 2004, so it's not like my current set is getting too much action. It's just that I've been looking at the Mahjong set auction page at Board Game auctions too much... I'm a bit wary about ordering from the Chinese sellers in eBay, though - probably it's fine, but if there are any problems, solving them is going to be tricky.

Besides, I'd like to have something like this black Japanese Riichi set. It's rather expensive, about 80 euros shipped to Finland (and possibly 22% VAT, too), but then again, that's about the same or even slightly less than what a basic set costs in Finland.

I came up with this idea of creating a site for board game related eBay auctions. It took me quite a while to get the thing up and running, busy as I am these days, but finally - after some pruning of unnecessary stuff - I got to a point where I can just publish the whole thing: Board Game Auctions.

It's basically a bunch of categories for eBay auctions. The site also has some nifty RSS feeds, for example if you want to see the auctions of Rio Grande Games board games, just subscribe to the Rio Grande Games auctions RSS feed. Very simple.

There aren't that many categories yet, particularly for individual board games, but if this sort of stuff interests you, just grab the RSS feed and you'll remain updated whenever I add new categories.

Chinese Official International Mahjong rules is an interesting rule set to Mahjong, sanctioned by Chinese authorities. Seems like a well-rounded set of rules, with a minimum winning score and some rather interesting scoring hands (shifted chows and knitted sets, particularly).

Few relevant links:

• Chinese Official Mahjong rules, a rulebook in PDF
• World-Class Mahjong with World Champion Mai Hatsune is a good strategy guide to the game.

Playing Mahjong might be nice, it's been a while since I've heard the clicking of the tiles. I played few games at MahjongTime yesterday, that seems like a fun site. However, there doesn't seem to be many players playing when I would like to play, that's the problem with sites with lots of US players. Give me Brettspielwelt and European players...

I'm a bit busy with all sorts of stuff, and my blog writing tends to suffer. I finally got the playing-card review posted - I scanned the pictures in June and the blog entry was created more than a week ago... but now it's up, and next is our board game session from last Tuesday (yes, Tuesday, I just call these Thursday games because that's what they used to be and will be from September on).

We started with Chinatown - the new French edition was published in Finnish (I did the translation) and I just got my copy. There was some enthusiasm to get the game on table, so that's what we did. We had five players, with exactly one player with previous experience.

It was fun, for a trading game. The initial trades are hazy and the final trades are perhaps too easy to calculate, but in the middle there's some fun trading action. There are enough options to make for interesting dealing and negotiating, as what you want may well be distributed among many different players. Getting that three-way deal done can be a nice challenge.

I do understand the common complaints against Chinatown, but after one play I'd still say it's an entertaining game. Taken really seriously it might go flat and I'm not sure it's a keeper for me, but I do expect to play it again.

We also played a five-player game of Wabash Cannonball - for some reason, I've avoided playing Wabash with five, but I was pleasantly surprised: five-player Wabash is a good game. We had two newbies and three experienced players... Hannu was left without a share in the initial auctions, but he almost managed to grab two shares in the first round. That would've been nice for him, but it was fairly easy to prevent.

Hannu did win the game in the end, and with a surprisingly small portfolio. He did get some luck with the Wabash, as the game run longer than I expected. It was a good game, anyway, and reminded me of why I enjoy the game as much as I do.

Wilhelm Tell cards are fairly common in the Central and Eastern Europe: Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, western Romania and southern Tyrol. It is a rather beautiful pattern, full of interesting details. The pack has the German suits: hearts, acorns, leaves and bells. Generally, as far as I know, the packs have 32 or 36 cards: 2 (functioning as an ace), king, over, under, 10, 9, 8 and 7 in each suit.

The overs and unders are characters from the William Tell legend (particularly the William Tell play by Friedrich Schiller), hence the name. The over of acorns is Wilhelm Tell himself. The kings are anonymous. The aces feature the four seasons, which is why this pattern is also known as Four Seasons.

The pack was invented by Schneider József, a master card painter from Pest, in 1837. Hungarian Schneider chose the Swiss revolutionary Tell, because using Hungarian characters in the pack would've drawn too much attention from the government censors. Funny enough, this pack is not used at all in Switzerland, even though Tell is a Swiss character.

At least Piatnik sells these cards as Doppeldeutsche (Schnapskarten and others), magyar kártya, Mariáš Dvojhlavý or dvouhlavý and with other names, in various pack sizes (24, 32, 33).

Wilhelm Tell Wilmoś (no. 2867) from Piatnik Editions is a reproduction pack. The box attributes it to Salamon Antal, Keczkemet. Keczkemet is in Hungary, near Budapest. There are no dates in the cards or the box, so I have no idea how old this pack is. I would appreciate even short historical notes in these historical reproductions, because there's very little information available in the Internet.

Anyhow, it is a neat pack. The cards look very old: the colours are unprecise, the background is brown and spotty, but the pictures have some character and style. Of course the material of the cards is excellent, they just look old and worn.

It's fun to compare the cards to the newer versions: obviously they are in the same tradition. The court cards are different, but the smaller pictures in the number cards are more alike in the old and new packs. The new packs are better for playing, but for artistic reasons this pack is well worth having (and it's possible to play games with it, too, no problem about that).

The name, by the way, is cleverly German-Hungarian: William Tell is Wilhelm Tell in German (and in Finnish, too) and Tell Wilmoś in Hungarian, as Hungarian names are written with last name first and first name last.

Piatnik magyar kártya (No. 1812 for blue, 1813 for red and 1816 for mini version) is a modern Hungarian version of the pack with 32 cards. Magyar kártya means "Hungarian cards". The cards have texts in Hungarian, so Spring is Tavasz, Summer is Nyár, Autumn is Ösz and Winter is Tél. All the names have their Hungarian forms, as well.

The pictures have mostly the same topics as in the old version, but these are different pictures. Funny detail: in the seven of Hearts, there's a rider wounded by an arrow. There are two bushes in the bottom corners of the card. In the old version above and in the modern pack with German texts, there's a small dude in one of the bushes looking guilty. In this version the dude is missing.

It's interesting, these small details, how the pack has certain standard topics: 8 of Hearts shows a man standing in a small boat, 8 of Bells is the Tell family, 9 of Bells has a wooden fence and a stick with a hat and so on. It's a standard pattern, but with individual variations. The pictures are detailed and rather lovely. (Actually, Richard Heli's Customs: Card Games of the Donauschwaben in 18th- and 19th-century Hungary has explanations for the different scenes.)

This Hungarian pack, apparently the traditional standard pack used in Hungary. It's a practical pack; even though it's pretty, it's also good for games. Of course, it'll take some getting used to, since there are no corner indices. Number cards have Roman numerals. In the court cards, Over and Under are indicated by the location of their suit symbol (top for Over, bottom for Under). Kings have crowns and horses, and no names. It's slightly confusing at first, but it's easy to learn.

The Hungarians use these cards for Ulti (one of the most complicated versions of Marriage games), Zsírozás (interesting variant of Finnish Ristikontra), Preferansz (the local variation of Preference) and many others.

Piatnik Doppeldeutsche (No. 1883 for red Blitz back, 1884 for Karo back pictured here, 1846 for the extra-large Kaffeehaus version and 1808 for Ornament back pictured above; 1885 for Blitz with 36 cards and 1886 for Karo with 36 cards), Doppeldeutsche Schnapskarten (No. 1756 for red Blitz back, 1760 for Karo back and 1730 for Ornament back), Mariáš dvouhlavý (No. 1848) or Mariáš dvojhlavý (No. 1809) - whew! So this is a fairly common pattern! This is the German version, with all the names and seasons in their German form. It is used in Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic and probably other places as well.

The Doppeldeutsche packs have 32 cards (A, K, O, U, 10, 9, 8, 7), except for the ones with 36 cards (adding sixes). Doppeldeutsche Schnapskarten has 24 cards (just A, K, O, U, 10, 9), even though Schnapsen is, as far as I know, these days usually played with just 20 cards. Mariáš packs have 33 cards: the regular 32-card pack and the six of bells with acorn and heart symbols and the text "WELI". This is generally an Austrian feature, I believe, but apparently it is used elsewhere as well.

One would think that the Hungarian and German versions of the pattern are the same except for the texts, but that is not correct. As I said above, the patterns differ. They look the same, but they are different - the devil is in the details, there are subtle differences. Otherwise this is the same, all the basic features of the packs are the same.

I have the Slovakian Mariáš pack and the Schnapskarten pack (and two copies of the Hungarian pack - accidentally - and the historical reproduction pack), which gives me a nice selection of these Wilhelm Tell packs. I've found these packs intriguing and interesting: the way the cards tell a story and feature named characters is very charming. These are also very good playing-cards once you get to know them.

I was photographed yesterday in the board game club:

Left is Hannu, right is me - we're playing Le Truc. In the picture you can see my refined shuffling technique (and the beautiful wall decor of our board game dungeon; thank heavens the picture is in black-and-white).

I've been too busy to write a session report from Finncon. Well, now I have time. I'll combine reports, as I just returned from our board game club, where I had a rather splendid little session. So, watch out for another blog entry of epic proportions... I played Steam over Holland in both sessions, so that'll get some extra attention.

Let's start with that. In Finncon we had five players: me, Olli, Robert, Ansi and Tombad. All were new. There was some fumbling with the rules, but generally Steam over Holland is pretty simple game - all of us were familiar with other 18xx titles. One of my biggest problems was to remember the 60 % holding limit - common rule in 18xx, but critically missing from my favourite, 1825.

That first game took about four hours. It was slow going a lot of the time... Olli for one is notoriously slow in 18xx (but not in other games), but the others took their time as well. Steam over Holland shouldn't be very long - after all, it's just five stock rounds and ten operating rounds, and that's it. The second game, with four players (me, Olli and two newbies), was just two hours 45 minutes, which was much better.

In both games one thing was clear: there isn't a lot of money going round. The first two or three stock rounds were pretty quiet, with not much trading going on. People simply didn't have money to buy shares. That meant that in the first game we played most of the game with five companies and in the second we used four railroads. Steam over Holland has an interesting rule where starting a railroad requires a purchase of N shares, where N is the phase number. That makes starting companies very expensive, so in the late game when you might have the money, it just isn't profitable anymore.

So, I'm a little wary about that: I would prefer more action with the shares. I kind of miss the question of when to dump the first company and to move on... In both our games starting a new railroad wasn't really an option. In the first one I decided that my railroad wouldn't do much, so I dumped it and invested elsewhere (and played as a pure investor or spectator the last four operating rounds, which was somewhat boring). In the second game, I just invested more in my own company.

Robert was very close to going bankrupt in the first game. Had I had 10 guldens more, I could've bought a train that would've finished Robert off. Instead he survived and went on to win the game with a heavy margin (2264, I was second with 1850). The second game was closer: one of the newbies won with 2106, I was second with 2088 and Olli third with 2024. The other newbie had 1661.

But it's a good game. I would like to see more stock round action and perhaps more companies in play. I do appreciate the shiny looks and the generally excellent production. This game is a pleasure to play. I need to experient with it a bit more, I suppose... perhaps trying to start more companies earlier or something like that, though I don't know where the money would come. I'll have to see... Fun game, and a good intro 18xx in my opinion, except the game is darn expensive (the downside of shiny components).

We also played West Riding in Finncon. West Riding is an auction game: a player chooses a railroad share to auction, and the winner of the auction gets the share and uses the money bid to draw some track on the map. More track means more dividends for the company. Individual company shares can be traded for grouping company shares, which gain value during the game and are very powerful in the end.

The problem with this game was the sheer amount of auctions combined with the difficulty of appraising the value of a company. It's very hard to say how much a company is worth, which makes the auctions rather hazy. Also, the Riding series system where there is at least one auction per player and then the auctions continue until someone runs out of money is slightly problematic - I'm not sure I like it here.

Our game was a bit strange anyway, as the lower grouping managed to cut quite a bit of the map for themselves, making those companies much better. It didn't really show in the prices, though, because all shares were terribly expensive anyway.

West Riding is a game for accountants: there's ton of book-keeping and calculation. The value of the railroads must be constantly re-calculated. Our game took, what, three hours or so, and I'm sure a proper computer version would cut most of that time. That's the only way to get me to try this game again... I think there might be a good game here somewhere, but it's drowning under calculation and confusing auctions. As it is, playing West Riding would be a waste of time I could use for better games. Nobody I played with will play the game again - I suppose that says something. These are not weaklings, either, but hard-core euro gamers.

So, in case somebody is interested, my game is up for sale. It's currently listed in Geek for 30 euros plus shipping, but I'm open to offers. It's such a small game that the shipping to US isn't much.

Then fast-forward to today. Our club had a nice turn-out, with four or five games going on most of the time. Plenty of Agricola - we had three copies available, funny enough. I started with some light fillers (Set which I totally dominated, Diamant which I didn't and some Crokinole, too).

We did play five rounds of Sheepshead, which is the American version of German Schafkopf. It's a nice little trick-taking game, best for five players (which is what we had). It's one of those fairly tricky games, an Ace-Ten game with funny trumps. Queens are the highest trumps, then jacks, then diamonds. Each player gets six cards from a 32-card deck and the two remaining cards are a widow.

One of the players is a declarer (first willing player starting from forehand) and the player holding jack of diamonds is the declarer's partner. They try to score 61 points. It's simple, if you're familiar with the type, but in our game few were. Outi in particular got a headache. It was fun, though, and I would definitely play Sheepshead again if I needed a five-player trick-taker where everybody plays.

After Steam over Holland, I challenged Olli to a duel of Qwirkle. It was a close game, until Olli played some really nasty moves in the end ruining my game. Ok, so I did bump once or twice to my own nasty blocking moves, but that happens... It's a fun game, and I like playing it with just two players. We got an audience, too, which was fun - I suppose it would be nice to play in a tournament with people watching, that does give some extra boost to the game I guess.

One last game: I didn't have to ask Hannu twice to play some Le Truc. We played a proper three-game match, which I took home 2-1. The first game was a massacre, 12-2, I got good cards in just about every hand. Then I went and lost the second game 12-2 and finally won the last one 12-4. During the process we had some absolutely smashing hands, Hannu is a delightful opponent for Truc. This is a game I really, really recommend for two players looking for a fun game.