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Guàn Dàn or throwing eggs (or bombs)
We played Guàn Dàn yesterday. John McLeod (of Pagat.com) was visiting Tampere recently and recommended this Chinese climbing card game to me. According to him, it’s very popular in China right now. It has a couple of outstanding features among climbing games. It’s a fixed partnership game like Tichu, and instead of counting points, it’s…
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A good week
This has been a good week of games. We started with afternoon games on Monday. One player dropped out, so the original plan of a four-player game of Imperial turned into a three-player game of Indonesia. I had not played Indonesia with three before, so I was curious to find out how it works. Turns…
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18GB with two and Indonesia
This week has been good for board games. On Tuesday, I met a friend for a two-player game of 18GB: The Railways of Great Britain, and yesterday we played another game of Indonesia. Two-player 18GB is a fine 18xx experience for two. We played the E-W setup this time, cutting the board north of York.…
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Chicago & NorthWestern redraw
I wanted to do a redraw of the Chicago & NorthWestern board. I own the original Winsome Games edition. The Rio Grande version has a nicer board, though it’s a bit plain and doesn’t include the most obvious usability fix I wanted to include in my version. Let’s start with the original version. It’s usable,…
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Return to Indonesia
We had a great game session yesterday. We played Indonesia! The appearance of the new third edition made me realize Indonesia would be a great match for my current game group, so I quickly reacquired a copy. I got the first edition, from a friend who upgraded to the third. We had full five players.…
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Return to Chicago & NorthWestern
A friend suggested playing Wabash Cannonball, but when digging through my Winsome crate, I found Chicago & NorthWestern. This John Bohrer design from 2016 was released by Rio Grande in 2023, so it’s more widely available. It’s a funny game. This is a cube rails game where railroad companies spread out west from Chicago. Everybody…
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Gaming Year 2025
18XX. This trend continued strong, with 16 plays of various 18XX titles. I was very happy with this. Now that we have over 30 plays with this group, I did some stats of the results. The most active players in our group (me, Aapo and Ville), do equally well: our average scores are 83-84% of…
18 BosWash, 18 India, 1822: The Railways of Great Britain, 1822CA, 18Korea, Antike II, Botanicus, Cabanga!, Crime Scene: Moscow 1989, De Vulgari Eloquentia, Dune: Imperium, Faraway, Fishing, Forest Shuffle, Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor, Galileo Galilei, Go, Great Western Trail: Argentina, Haggis, Herd Mentality, Innovation Ultimate, Luz, Piles!, Sanctuary, SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game, The Gang, The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth, Tichu, Tichu: Booster, Troyes, Underwater Cities, Vantage, Wandering Towers -
Tools for Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor and 18 BosWash
Thoughts on Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor, 18 BosWash and Ruben’s Mini-Chips.
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Spring 2025 notes
Thoughts on Innovation Ultimate, Fellowship of the Ring: The Trick-taking Game, Faraway and Black Forest.
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Gaming Year 2024
18XX. This has been a year of 18XX games. Things started slowly in the Spring, but then 18 India hit us by a storm. I ended up playing various 18XX titles over 20 times this year; that’s more than a third of my all-time 18XX plays since 2006. Forest Shuffle. I still played a ton…
12 Chip Trick, 18 BosWash, 18 India, 1829 Mainline, 1882: Assiniboia, 18GB: The Railways of Great Britain, 18Ireland, CuBirds, Daybreak, Dune: Imperium, Dune: Imperium – Uprising, First Rat, Fishing, Forest Shuffle, Gimme That!, Go, Hamlet: The Village Building Game, Harmonies, Lucky Numbers, Mahjong, Medical Mysteries, MLEM: Space Agency, Oranienburger Kanal, Ricochet Robot, Schadenfreude, SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Smart10, Taj Mahal, Tea Garden, The Castles of Burgundy, The Gang, The White Castle, Trekking Through History, Troyes, World Wonders