I got new games today! Turbo Taxi was a must for me, I knew it from the description. After all, I love Ricochet Robot and this one’s right at the same league.
Players must assemble a city road network using nine of their twelve pieces (everybody has the same set). There are few limits: the network must connect two taxis to two houses, the road must form a tidy network and the center piece of the 3×3 grid is predetermined. The task is fairly simple, at least judged by two different setups I tried myself, but should be fun to work at under pressure.
Of course, this is a game you either really get or don’t get at all. You can see that on Geek ratings, the standard deviation is fairly high 1.48. I’m somewhat afraid I can’t play this much (which is what has happened to RIcochet Robot and Sunda to Sahul), but I don’t really mind.
The artwork, by the way, features a handsome green-haired guy on the front. Nice detail!
I also got Dvonn. I’ve never played it live, just at the Little Golem. I’m not at all good at it, but after playing it 50 or so times, I thought I should get it for me. It’s one of those games I expect to enjoy after decades, it has that depth and fun in it. What comes to the project, I’ve also my eyes on Yinsh, which I enjoyed the one time I tried it.
Pünct looks pretty interesting, too, but it’s a connection game… I don’t really like connection games, after experiencing Twixt and Hex — I can’t stand them, they are so.. brutal. No room for mistakes, I can’t understand how to play them. They are not fun to play.
Well, I’ll be able to try Pünct at Essen, it’s certainly on my list of games to try. If it’s good, it’ll be a part of my Gipf collection and if it isn’t, I don’t mind; I’m not pursuing a complete Gipf collection anyway.
3 responses to “New acquisitions: Turbo Taxi and Dvonn”
I thought Turbo Taxi was weak. Nowhere near the caliber of Robot.
Well, if anything, Turbo Taxi seems a bit too easy. But few bits more, and you can have a two-player game using two sets of tiles, doing a 6×3 grid.
Yinsh is superb. I love Dvonn as well, but find it even harder to play well than Yinsh. These games have to be some of the best game bargains around — potentially years of rich strategic play for pocket money.