Yesterday we had our weekly meeting, and I’m raporting it today! How fast is that!
While waiting for another player to arrive, the other Mikko and I played a quick match of 13×13 Go on his iPad. It was nice! I’ve been thinking about getting an iPad, mostly for gaming, but I’ve had some reservations about it: I don’t like the unethical production conditions, I don’t think I’d have much time for it and I can foresee kids fighting over it.
All good reasons not to get one, but man, that Go app was sweet… Perhaps I could actually play some real-time Go if I had an iPad… Of course, nothing except KGS’s annoying way to close accounts after a period of inactivity stops me from using my laptop to play Go online, so this is essentially a combination of gadget lust and wishful thinking.
Two rounds of Forbidden Island left me quite satisfied — I’ve had enough of this game for a while now. Kind of interesting, but… Well, it’s a nice puzzle, but not my favourite thing in the world.
Nooa will want to play this and I’ll play with Nooa, but you won’t catch me taking this to our game meetups. Then again, I’m not that keen on co-ops in general… But in the genre, this is certainly one of my favourites.
Glen More is a popular game (five copies available in our game group), so it’s about time I gave it a go. Not bad! I like the Neuland mechanic where players go around on a track and the player who’s last on the track gets a turn. Here the turns are used to collect tiles that produce cubes and score points.
There are interesting restrictions all around the game, money’s tight and so on — charming little game. Nothing particularly exciting, but still, a strong contender in the genre. Lots of lovely little details. Hoarding tiles, for example, is a bad idea, because in the end everybody who has more tiles than the player with the least tiles gets negative points.
Clever. No need for me to buy this, as just about everybody else has it, but if I found a really cheap copy or a math trade possibility, I’d grab it to play in Jyväskylä, I guess, I think they’d like this.
John Silver is a card game, where cards are played in a matrix of three rows and four columns (one per player in four player game). Once a row is complete, the player whose column has the highest card takes the two highest cards, while the player with the lowest card takes the two lowest cards.
In the end, coins on cards are points, apples are points but the cards are passed left and black spots are negative points for the two players with most of them.
It’s a clever, subtle game. Unfortunately it’s also fairly chaotic, at least without experience, and looks really, really ugly. Not very charming case. Not a bad game, and with more play I’m sure it would reveal more depth. Not bad catch for a small price, but then again, there are tons of clever little card games.
One response to “Glen More and John Silver”
One thing about Glen More. You might even end up in a situation where hoarding a lot of tiles becomes a good idea. All you need is a tavern and Loch Ness…