First: this is entry #500. Now that’s something.
I dropped by Brettspielwelt today to play some games. My main interest was to try StreetSoccer in realtime after playing so much of it in Little Golem. It was fun, though I don’t like the BSW interface. I’d like to have a neat and clear 2d board instead of 3d board and nifty animations. Nice sound effects, sure, and the animations finally made it clear how the game works (in PBW games you only see the states of the game, not the transitions and thus some things may remain unclear). It’s a fun game, nonetheless. Will I buy — no, I don’t think so, unless a cheap copy comes my way, but I’ll keep on playing it online.
After two games (I lost both — I have lost every game so far) I moved on to play Power Grid. Only one player answered my call, so we played a two-player game. Unlike last time, the game was great fun. It was close and exciting until the last round. As an interesting curiosity, we both played so slowly, trying to stay on the second place that we didn’t actually get stage 2, we jumped straight to stage 3. In the end, I lost to the tiebreaker: 247-208. The ultimate reason for my loss must’ve been one auction, where I paid almost 100 electros for a very good nuclear power plant. Right after I buy it, my opponent got the fusion plant with the list price. That pretty much makes up the difference in our wallets in the end of the game.
It was an exciting match and really made me appreciate the two-player game more. It’s better than I expected after the first game. Another reason to enjoy Power Grid, which is indeed one of the better new games.