Author: Mikko

  • Thursday session: Erie Railroad, Secret Blueprints

    When I arrived, the guys were waiting and hungry: it was Wabash Cannonball time. Hannu and Petri, the two main Wabash fans in our group wanted to give the new Erie Railroad expansion a go. KJ and Tapani, both newbies to Wabash, joined us for another five-player game. The Erie is a small expansion. It’s…

  • Thursday session: Age of Steam, Dominion, Le Truc

    It’s been too long from my last game of Age of Steam. Today I got some railroad action in the form of the Scotland scenario. So still no Secret Blueprints, unfortunately, but at least something! I played against Hannu, who has played one game of Age of Steam, about year ago. He was a bit…

  • Thursday session: Dominion, Container

    After a quick hand of Le Truc with Hannu, Petri arrived and Container hit the table. Petri is interested in modern-day business games and Container hits that niche pretty well. After all, the setting is definitely contemporary and the game is all about buying and selling. This time I managed to avoid embarrassing blunders and…

  • Board game club: Dominion, Container

    Last Sunday I visited the board game club and instead of the quick visit last time, I was able to play games for few hours. We started with a quick round of Halli Galli Extreme for warm-up. It’s a nice little game, quick and entertaining. Some won’t like the extra difficulty from the animals, but…

  • Dominion and Gathering Storm

    I went to the Helsinki Book Fair yesterday. I was interviewed about my card game book, we did a quick 20-30 minute session, which went really well. I’m becoming a professional author, obviously, I can actually do public performances. I knew that Lautapelit.fi had a booth at the fair, so I arranged to pick up…

  • Finnish Players’ Picks 2008

    Oops, looks like I forgot to publish the Finnish Players’ Picks results for 2008. Well, better late than never! To see the top 28, see Finnish Players’ Picks 2008 GeekList. For complete list (in Finnish, but the data speaks math), see the official results page. You might also be interested in the collected results for…

  • Current affairs

    Boardgaming Finland has done their first podcast in English. It’s an interview of Jussi Autio from Tuonela Productions, the creators of The Club. I’m using Twitter these days, I’m msaari there. Actually, my priority feed is in Identi.ca (msaari there as well), I just automatically copy everything to Twitter as it’s the more popular service.…

  • It’s Essen time again

    The Christmas is coming, by which I mean Essen. There’s a pile of new games getting published, but I’m really not very interested in most of them. I mean, there’s plenty of nice stuff coming, but in the end, I don’t really care. I must say we’ve had excellent service on the Board Game Society…

  • Games at Jyväskylä: Mahjong, Agricola

    I went to Jyväskylä with Nooa for the weekend and as usual, it means some games too. Their collection has grown enough that I don’t really have to bring any games with anymore, so this time I just brought a pack of mahjong cards with me. So that’s what we started with, six hands of…

  • Definition of skill in games

    Dutch professor Ben van der Genugten has created a formula for calculating the skill level of a game. He has used it in Dutch courts to help determine that fantasy sports games are games of skill and now he’s using it to argue that poker is a game of skill, too. (See Leading Professor Rekindles…