Category: Less about games

  • Alastair Reynolds and Puerto Rico

    This post contains affiliate links to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate links are marked with a €.If you’re into science fiction (with a hard emphasis on science, not just any speculative fiction), you should be aware of Alastair Reynolds’ work. Particularly the trilogy of Revolution Space, Redemption Ark and…

  • Visit to Tactic

    Yesterday we (meaning a group of active Board Game Society members) visited the Tactic head office and factory in Pori. It was an interesting and educational visit; it was nice to see a real board game factory. Too bad it wasn’t running at the time we visited it. They’ve got a pretty impressive production line…

  • Storage solutions for Splotter games

    I’ve been happy with my ziploc bag arrangement for Antiquity, but seeing Tommy’s solution made me instantly jealous. So, since I was armed with a car yesterday, we drove to the Hong Kong junk paradise on the outskirts of the city and got me some Shakespeare equipment. I’ve got two different utility boxes. Antiquity uses…

  • Hot games for Q1/2006

    Here’s a list of hottest games for first quarter of 2006 for me. This is based on number of plays, my enjoyment of the game and the novelty value, so new games tend to show up higher on the list. Einfach Genial — I played quite a lot of this in BSW, where it’s a…

  • My game of the year

    I’ll play brave and throw a guess: my game of the year this year will be San Juan. So far I’ve played 30 games of it (plus dozens of games with Jim’s San Juan, which is fun now the AI is harder to beat), which is a lot! Most of the play is in BSW,…

  • The most important release in 2006

    Despite all the interesting games lined up for a release this year (and there are plenty of good ones, particularly in Finnish), there’s still one which is more than head and shoulders above the rest. Well, I’m not actually sure if it’s a completely new one; I think it’s more like an expansion. However, it’s…

  • Just an idea…

    Last night I came up with a brilliant idea. Since curling is the second most popular sport in the Winter olympics in Finland (can’t beat ice hockey), here’s a game idea to take advantage of that: Curling Crokinole! It’s simple: Crokinole on a board shaped after a curling field. Players try to flick their disks…

  • My favourite designers

    Larry Levy had a column in Boardgame News called Rating the designers. He wrote about two different approaches to rating the designers, Knizia approach (counting a sum-based score from ratings given to designer’s games) and Seyfarth approach (counting an average). First approach favours someone like Knizia, who has a wide repertoire of games with varying…

  • Good service from Spiele-Offensive

    I must say Spiele-Offensive gets a nod from me. I recently placed a big order (almost 600 euros) there, driven by their selection (Neuland being the biggest incentive, I mean, I thought the game was firmly in the unavailable, you’ll-never-ever-get-it category). Ordering and paying (with credit card through PayPal) was easy and their shipping costs…

  • Gaming year 2005

    Here’s my traditional year end review. However, I’ve worked the format a bit, hopefully so it’s more interesting for other people to read. I was inspired by Mark Johnson’s post back in 2004, so thanks to Mark! Here’s the deal: first I’ll list the 2005 publications I enjoyed. Then come older games I played for…