Gameblog

Category: More about games

  • Impulsive shopping — Hive and Looping Louie

    Got some games, on a whim. Despite my cool initial feelings towards Hive, I couldn’t resist the new bakelite edition. Just too cool, you can’t beat big, chunky pieces of plastic when it comes to board game pieces. I also bought the new edition of Looping Louie. I’m not sure if I would’ve bought it…

  • Resisting the temptation

    Ah, BattleLore. I’ve read the reports, the blog entries, the praise. How I wish you were mine, and how I must fight this temptation… I really like Memoir ’44, and while I prefer the military theme to the fantasy (medieval warfare isn’t bad — I just get an allergic reaction when in contact with standard…

  • Crystal Code

    Review of Crystal Code in Finnish. Crystal Code is designed by Grzegorz Rejchtman, the designer of Ubongo. The two games are similar: in both games, players race against time and each other to solve pattern recognition problems for rewards. What’s most important, both games manage to avoid the most common pitfall of speed games. Often…

  • Aqua Romana

    Review of Aqua Romana in Finnish. Aqua Romana is a tile-laying game where players build Roman aqueducts. Theme doesn’t make much sense, as usual — the players score points for the length of aqueducts, so efficiency flies out of the window. However, the Roman theme is used well in the art, and the board is…

  • Celtica

    Review of Celtica in Finnish Celtica, a game by well-known designer duo Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling was published recently in Finland. I was curious to try the game; for background, I had read the less-than-favourable comments from the Geek, combined with Bruno Faidutti’s recommendation. The game certainly looks delicious, from the beautiful box cover…

  • On The Spot Games

    Yesterday I got a bunch of games from On The Spot Games. All the games are designed by James Ernest and Mike Selinker, and aimed towards somewhat mass-market crowd, I’d say — they are very simple games, some definitely aimed for the party game audience, others for couples or families. I already tried Kotsuku, which…

  • Memoir ’44: Pacific Theater

    Review in Finnish. Pacific Theater is the latest expansion for Memoir ’44. Like Eastern Front, it adds new figures, new rules and new scenarios to the basic game. This time the fighting is between the Japanese and the US Marine Corps. Japanese forces never surrender (that is, always ignore the first retreat flag), attack with…

  • Essen bounty

    I’ve been following the Essen discussion on the Board Game Society message, and here’s my list of the new stuff I want: Der Elefant im Porzellanladen — Mandatory Amigo card game. A friend will bring this to me to pay back a favour. Null & Nichtig was also on my list, but the same friend…

  • Da Vinci’s Challenge

    Review in Finnish here DaVinci’s Challenge is yet another game trying to milk the popularity of Dan Brown’s books. Once again, any connection between this game and Leonardo Da Vinci is fairly thin and based on art alone (and even the art is mangled: let’s just say the Vitruvian Man is less of a man…

  • Pentago

    This review in Finnish Pentago, the Finnish Adult Game of the year for 2006, is a twist on good old naughts and crosses. Players try to form five in a row on a 6×6 grid. That’s fairly boring, but fortunately that’s not all. The twist is in the board, which is divided into quadrants of…