Some notes on recent games. First some new games I’ve tried.

• Schatz der Drachen (Knizia / Winning Moves) is a nice twist on a memory game. Works well and I enjoyed it. My son didn’t enjoy it quite as much, though.
• Excape (Knizia / Filosofia) is a horrible, frustrating game. It’s a simple die game and offers little. Some say it’s a good push-your-luck filler, but I don’t know, not much pushing in it and lots of being frustrated by bad die rolls.
• SNCF: Iberia Expansion (David V.H. Peters / Winsome Games) is an expansion to SNCF, taking the rails to Iberia. The map has international borders in it (between Spain and Portugal, Gibraltar and Andorra), crossing the borders takes a whole turn but gives a 5-point bonus to the company. Other than that the rules are same as the basic game, so this doesn’t complicate things much. SNCF is still a top-notch game.

What else…

• I took my son to circus school and met a friend there. I had games with me, so we played String Railway while waiting for the kids to do their circus stuff. It’s a good two-player game and a good way to draw attention. I’d say it’s a pretty good pull-in game to play in a public place, it gets an immediate “what’s that?” reaction.
• It would be neat to make a, say, five times larger version of String Railway, with 1.5 meter ropes for strings and so on, and play outdoors.
• Nile Deluxor got very positive response, and was good fun with four players.
• I too got the bunch of games from Russian RightGames. Kingdom of Crusaders looks like a decent Battle Line variant, Evolution and Potion-Making are also rather intriguing. The Enigma of Leonardo less so.
• Those Russians have been very effective in spreading their games around. They must’ve sent lots of review copies around. A friend mine was offered the games, and all he’s done is a bunch of YouTube board game review videos in Finnish. Very good videos, sure, but still, not exactly the most high-profile board game stuff in the web. Perhaps it helps that we’re living right next to Russia here.
• We played Glory to Rome, first time in years for me. Five players was a bit too much for our table (and perhaps a bit too much otherwise as well). Lots of “wow look at this card” and “wow look the art is disgusting”. Heh. Good game.

Mandatory photo: