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Finnish Game of the Year awards
Finnish Game of the Year (“Vuoden peli”) awards have been given. The finalists were chosen August 5th and the winners the next day, but for some reason both weren’t published until today. Bizarre. The adult game category was won by the official prize winner of the season, Dominion. The finalists were Pandemic and Stone Age.…
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First impression of Toledo
This week’s game session started with Toledo, as I had just received a review copy of the game (it’s been published in Finnish by Lautapelit.fi). This Martin Wallace game is about the steel and swords of Toledo: players must collect materials, make swords and present them to the emperor. There’s a road, which the players…
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First impression of Dominion: Intrigue
My brother came to visit and I got a chance to try the new Dominion: Intrigue, the stand-alone expansion for Dominion. We played through the three default setups listed in the rule book, which gave us a pretty good idea of the different cards in the expansion. There’s lots of new stuff in the expansion.…
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First impression of Fits, some Steam
I got myself a copy of FITS, the Tetris-like game from Ravensburger. It’s a fun little puzzler, where players must fill up the space with polyominoes — like Tetris bits, but this game also includes those with three or five squares. Each tile will appear exactly once in a random order and the rules are…
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Miksi juuri Mäntsälä…?
I asked for a review copy of Fits, but Amo provided me with a copy of Miksi juuri Mäntsälä…? instead. Well, that’s an interesting game, too. It’s the Finnish version of Ausgerechnet Buxtehude. These games owe their existence to Anno Domini. In Anno Domini, players must put events in correct chronological order. These games add…
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Interested in new games
I’ve been living in a gaming void… Excluding the play-by-web games, the Bezique match is the only game I’ve played since Anni was born. It’s still a bit hectic to go out and play, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking about games. I’ve found Günter Cornett’s Greentown and I’m seriously thinking about buying it.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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4 Winds Mah Jong again
Yesterday I re-installed 4 Winds Mah Jong, now that I have a Windows laptop in addition to my Mac. It’s still as good as it was in 2002 when I bought it. The game shines when practising new rule sets, particularly those with minimum scores — always pesky for new players. Having a computer opponent…