July 2009 Archives

Johanna went shopping today and to my great surprise, bought a board game! She had found a copy of Piikkisiili (aka Polly the Porcupine), a children's game that has an age recommendation of 3+ and won the Finnish award for the best children's game in 2007. Since Nooa turned three a month ago, this was pretty much ideal.

Nooa was really excited about the game. He first noticed the box when we were out playing in the park and wanted to immediately go home and start playing. Well, we had to eat first and it took us parents a little longer, with Anni needing food and all that, so Nooa was really anxious - he wanted to play real bad, right now. A real gamer there!

Well, eventually we got to play. It was fun, too. We played two rounds today and Nooa actually won both. The game is super simple: a porcupine is filled with spines of five different lengths. A die is rolled and everybody picks a spine. Depending on the die roll, the player who took the longest or the shortest spine wins.

Winner keeps the spine, while the other players put their spines back to the porcupine. That way there's a memory aspect, too, as you can try to remember the spines you've seen. I did my best, but still Nooa, who I'm fairly sure didn't care a bit about memorizing anything, won twice.

It's very simple and I can understand why some were bothered when Piikkisiili won the award (considering that for example Funny Fishing and Mago Magino were nominated). However, it's really good for three-year-olds. It's pretty much as complicated as Nooa can handle, as even now he had some difficulties understanding every detail. But he had fun, and playing Piikkisiili with him is fun, so I'm happy.

This week's game session started with Toledo, as I had just received a review copy of the game (it's been published in Finnish by Lautapelit.fi). This Martin Wallace game is about the steel and swords of Toledo: players must collect materials, make swords and present them to the emperor.

There's a road, which the players will cover with tiles that provide steel, jewels, sword-making and fencing lessons. Each player has five pawns moving on the road. You move by playing movement cards that make you go 1-6 steps, and you can only play one kind of card each turn: just ones, twos, threes and so on.

Once you step on a tile - it seems players spend the first turns by filling the whole road with their tiles, at least that seems the only sensible way to play, but it's not mandatory - you can use it. If it's your own, it's free, otherwise you'll have to pay to the owner. If the tile is occupied, you can try to push the occupant away, but you must win a duel to do so. Duels are simple affairs where good luck is the key, but learning fencing skills will improve your odds.

Swords cost steel and gems. Once you have a sword, you must take a pawn the whole way to Alcazar to present the sword, otherwise you'll only score half of the value. Once somebody gets three pawns in, the game is just about over. Other than swords, you can score points for collecting paintings by El Greco and by few other minor ways. Best swords win, pretty much.

It's very simple and takes at most 45 minutes to play. Our reaction was lukewarm. It's fun, but perhaps a tad too harmless. It's very much a game of effective actions. I lost the game, because even though I think I was the first one to collect enough stones and jewels to make the finest sword in the game, somebody beat me to it and another player took the second-best sword before I could take that. So, I was stuck with a weaker sword and lost the game.

This is a family game from Kosmos, which explains a lot. Gamers might enjoy it, sure, but I think most seasoned gamers will find Toledo less than hot. I wouldn't mind playing the game if an opportunity presented itself, but I don't see myself actually wanting to play the game.

I built myself a new box for Dominion. I found the plans in Geek, but had to fix them a bit - for one, the suggested length of 285 mm is huge, my box is slightly too short at 210 mm, correct length with Ultra Pro soft sleeves should be something like 230 mm to fit in Black Market and Envoy.

Here's a comparison with the Intrigue box. I can't fit both basic Dominion and Intrigue in my backpack, but two of these small boxes - no problem.

Here's a closeup, so you can see the simple dividers in the boxes. The cards are all sorted in alphabetical orders, but with the score and money cards in the beginning, since they'll be used always.

My brother came to visit and I got a chance to try the new Dominion: Intrigue, the stand-alone expansion for Dominion. We played through the three default setups listed in the rule book, which gave us a pretty good idea of the different cards in the expansion.

There's lots of new stuff in the expansion. There are for example victory point cards that actually do something, like offer actions and money. My brother used Great Hall (1 VP, +1 card, +1 action) to good effect and Harem (2 VP, +2 money) is another attractive card.

Many cards offer extra choices, like the Pawn, which gives you the choice of two from one money, one card, one action or one buy. There's actual decision-making in the cards, gasp! Some of the new attack cards I don't like that much, like Saboteur, but some are really nice (like Swindler: opponent destroys a card from top of the deck, you replace it with another card of the same price).

All in all, this is a great expansion. As a stand-alone game, not quite as elegant as the basic Dominion, but if you like the basic game, this is a must buy expansion, no doubt about it.