Board game club had a meeting Yesterday. There were plans to play Die Macher, since it was the election day and all that, but it was cancelled because I couldn’t find the rule book… Well, I suppose most people had a good afternoon and evening of enjoyment nevertheless.

I got to play just about every game I wanted. I started with two rounds of Sticheln, first time with the real cards and real people! It was fun, even though I didn’t win. It’s obviously a game people don’t get that easily, especially as one of the players wasn’t that familiar with card games and didn’t know such concepts as trick or trump… But after the two rounds, they seemed to grasp the tactics a bit, too. However, we didn’t finish the game as more people had arrived and we wanted to play something bigger.

Well, we did. We played a six-player game of Union Pacific. It was a blast, and got good ratings after the game. Results were split: there were three players with about 90 points (including yours truly, but unfortunately on the second place) and three players with about 60 points. One trio had most of the Union Pacific shares, other didn’t. Guess which one was which… One more round and I would’ve won, but I guess that’s how it always goes in Union Pacific.

While we were playing, a reporter from a local university newspaper came. He watched us play and then interviewed me and Ville. It was nice and fairly informal, and I’m quite curious to see how it turns out. He’s doing an article on escapist geeks, including us, the roleplaying club and speculative fiction hobbyists.

I wanted to play Bohnanza and it seemed like a good game to play with the reporter (we couldn’t let him leave without playing at least one game!). It was fun, I didn’t remember Bohnanza was such a good game. I came second, with the reporter taking the win. Good for him! Mostly newbie players (everyone but me and Ville playing for the first time) felt the game was a bit confusing, but they understood it fine while we played. One of them even figured out the fairly clever tactic of two players with the same beans on their fields trading 1:1 those beans from their hands. I had just recently read about it from the ‘Geek.

Last game I played was something I have wanted to play and buy for a long time, but haven’t done so: Löwenherz. I loved it! The battle for the territory reminds me of Go, which is always a good thing. Unfortunately I had to leave about 10 minutes before the game finished, so I don’t know what happened — I think I didn’t win. But it was exciting and entertaining. I definitely feel like I should buy the game…