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Nile and Tzaar
I met my brother yesterday for some games. We started with Nile, the new set-collecting game from Minion Games. It’s actually pretty good! At least as a two-player filler, that is. The game is about farming. There are five crops to plant and harvest. Each turn starts with a new flood card, which displays the…
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Card games from Minion Games
Minion Games sent me some demo copies of their card games. Sturgeon is a fish-themed game, where players try to collect two sturgeons. To play sturgeons, you need to eat at least bass cards and to play bass cards, you need to eat two minnows. Minnows can be played straight to the table. You can…
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Casual games at Finncon
Finncon was in Jyväskylä this year. It’s a major Finnish science fiction con (biggest free SF con in Europe or something like that), but it also had some games, as local board gamers organized a game room. I was in Jyväskylä at my mother’s with the kids and was able to leave for the Saturday…
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Arvuutin and Toscana
Arvuutin is a new Finnish trivia game from Onni Games, the makers of Politix and Aether. This is a Finnish-only release, so I’ll keep this short: it’s a rather clever game, where everybody answers the questions simultaneously by playing number cards (all answers are numbers 1-100). Closest answer wins. Winner gets the question cards and…
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Dominion: Alchemy first impressions
I played few games of Dominion: Alchemy with my brother today, using couple of the suggested sets. I’m in the camp where more cards means more diversity means more fun, and from that point of view Alchemy is pretty cool. The set has several interesting cards. The new economy with the Potions is fairly elegant.…
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1846 quick notes
We played 1846 yesterday, but unfortunately had to abort the game. We had played about 3.5 hours and had plenty of game left, when the time ran out — I was expecting we’d finish in three hours or so. Well, two total newbies and so on, my bad. Here’s some thoughts about the game: Basically…
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RftG, San Juan, Blue Moon
I met Olli for a small session of card games. We played Race for the Galaxy, San Juan and Blue Moon. I dropped my Race for the Galaxy rating from 9 to 8 (as the Geek rating guidelines go, it’s certainly a very good game — but only in certain circumstances, and that’s one thing…
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Lessons in bankruptcy
We played Age of Steam today on Ted Alspach’s Oklahoma Land Rush map. It was a pretty rough match. Bankruptcies are pretty rare in Age of Steam, despite the reputation of the game. After today’s game, the amount of bankruptcies I’ve seen so far probably multiplied, as three out of four players went down. Let’s…