I notice my blog is leaking readers. Too bad. Well, it might help actually post something every now and then. Here’s notes from the last couple of weeks. Mostly games with kids, as my son has been taking swimming lessons at the same time as our Thursday-evening game session is. I’m happy to report the swimming lessons are over, and the boy does better in water than I do (well, I still swim better than him, but I can’t dive nearly as well as he can; I mean, push him under the water, and he’ll be fine; push me under the water, I’ll immediately breathe in water and drown).

• Indigo was an honest impulse purchase. I had just considered it, based on discussions on a recent GCL Amoeba list, and then I bumped into it. It was discounted to 20 €, which was a bit much, but I ended up buying it anyway. Turns out it’s just as decent as I expected. Probably not worth taking to Thursday games, but very much worth playing with the kids. Suggest.
• Timeline. I had the game sitting at four plays, so I needed to play it once to get it to five plays (for some silly contest on who has the most games played 5+ times). I took it to circus school one Monday and we played 16 games at one sitting, in about 30 minutes. It’s a quick game… I then played some more with my son and my wife. This is one of the few games my wife tolerates, it’s so obvious, transparent and simple. The game is badly missing Finnish dates, though, so I’m currently working on a 54-card set of Finnish events, and once I’ve got that done, I’m going to create couple of more sets (based on famous inventors, art and historical games), because that too is fun. Suggest.
• Lord of the Rings is an old classic I used to own. It seems I traded it away even before I even started this blog (and that’s more than ten years ago!), looks like most mentions of Lord of the Rings in this blog are about Confrontation (a game I got ten years ago, in 2003, and which is now making a comeback now that my son absolutely loves it). I bought a new copy of the game, because it’s such an obvious game to play with my son: co-op, in Finnish, and foremost about Lord of the Rings. My son is such a Lord of the Rings fan… We’re currently reading the book, and have already reached Lothlórien. It’ll be interesting to see how he takes Boromir’s betrayal… Anyway, I’m not sure if I’m still particularly fond of the game, but I’ll definitely play this with my son. With him, it’s Suggest, otherwise I’m Indifferent. But it’s so great to see him being so enthusiastic about something this cool (compared to the garbage that is Lego Ninjago, for example).

Here’s some photos of the DIY set I built for New York Central after I played it for the second time. It’s a good game, but I want better components to make selling the game to other people easier. I’m still waiting for the cards to arrive from Artscow to see how it actually turned out, but I’m really fond of the cards. I think games could in general use more photographs as illustration.