Hi guys, it’s me again. I counted, and since the last update, I’ve played 112 games of over 50 titles. That’s pretty spiffy. I’ve also been rather busy, as you may have guessed. Time to start clearing out the backlog…

• The City is the cleanest and easiest game in the San Juan / Race for the Galaxy family. The game is simplified to no end: no phases, roles or anything. Most cards don’t have effects, just income and points value. On each turn, you build one building and that’s it. It’s very simple and fast: the game is over in couple of rounds once the snowballs start rolling. One game shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. There’s no English edition, but the German version is easy enough to handle. A top-notch filler! Enthusiastic.
• Volldampf voraus! is hardly a game, but it has a nice train theme and my three-year old daughter can play the game. That’s a winner in my books. Suggest.
• Village won both Kennerspiel des Jahres and Deutscher Spiele Preis. It’s a solid euro game, with cubes to convert and all the bells and whistles. There’s a neat time effect, where the family members age and die – and score major points, if they die right. Worthy winner for the awards, and certainly something worth trying, if you don’t mind bland euro games and worker placement. Suggest.
• The Great Zimbabwe is the new Splotter, and obviously a must-buy. It’s a surprisingly fast game, it plays in 90 minutes or less. So, I’ve already played five games so far. I love it. It’s a great game, with interesting twists and turns. It’s also unusual and opaque. Not to everybody’s liking, but the game seems to already gather some good buzz on BGG, so I’m not alone enjoying it. Quite a bit of depth in this one! Enthusiastic.
• Famous 500 is a tiny racing game. It uses just nine cards. The game is very simple, as you may guess, but actually works rather fine for what it is. Indifferent.

More to come… I’ll rather keep the updates small and try to post them a bit more often.