Gameblog

Author: Mikko

  • Elasund

    Finnish review of Elasund. Elasund is the latest Catan spinoff. Players are building the first city in Catan, trying to reap glory by getting their buildings to fill the city. The game has surface similarities to Catan — the resource-producing die roll, the ten victory points, using resources to build buildings that produce new resources,…

  • The Apples Project

    Mark Jackson has resurrected The Apples Project for a new run after a four-year break (here’s the original Apples Project). The idea is to get a group of experienced gamers to list their favourite games in certain genres or by certain designers. That is, to compare apples to apples (as opposed to comparing wildly different…

  • Elasund, Elasund, Elasund

    Met Olli today. The dish of the day was Elasund, the latest Settlers spin-off. The Settlers element is pretty much resource production roll to start the turn, 10 victory points to gather and… well, that’s about it. The game is about building a city. Smaller buildings produce influence and money, both of which are needed…

  • 18xx

    Thanks, Alfred. After reading that, I’m not sure I can hold off from getting a 18xx game anymore.

  • New game session: Farlander, Terra Nova

    Once again I met Olli for games, this time focusing on new material. We started with Farlander, since Olli had just bumped into it in a shop. The game looks nice, and inside the pretty box lies a simple war game. It’s so simple and minimalistic that I’m having a hard time calling it a…

  • New games

    Got Elasund and Farlander from Tactic. Both are interesting games in their own way. Elasund is, of course, the latest game in the Catan franchise. The Catan basics are there (die roll for resource production, building to ten victory points), but outside that it’s something fairly new compared to other Catan games. There’s one aspect…

  • Rat Hot

    Rat Hot reviewed in Finnish. Rat Hot is a small two-player tile-laying game from Michael Schacht. It was previously web-published as Dschunke: das Legespiel, but this edition is from Queen Games and Rio Grande Games. The game is about merchants storing goods in a storage; they try to pack similar goods together for easy access.…

  • Margin for Error preview

    I got a copy of Margin for Error, the first game from Sagely Games, to test. Unfortunately I can’t see myself having an opportunity to test the game in near future, so I thought I’d write a bit of a preview based on the rules. The game is familiar enough, so I’m quite confident of…

  • Magical crystals

    Another children’s game tested: Mago Magino goes in the closet towait for Nooa to grow up. The game is clever and fun, but offers little to adults. It’s just roll-and-move, with some risk assessment and some scope for tactics (how to use the wizard, how to use the two pawns each player has). The game…

  • Battles in the east

    I met Olli for a session of Memoir ’44. We ended up exploring the Eastern Front expansion. Both scenarios we played — Gates of Moscow and Breakout to Lisyanka — were excellent. Add the excellent Suomussalmi scenario to that and the expansion pack starts to feel like a pretty good purchase. The scenarios are great.…