Gameblog

Category: More about games

  • 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…

  • Viva Topo!

    Finnish edition of this review It’s easy to dismiss Viva Topo! as a simple game for kids. That’s what it is, but it’s also more! It’s become the current favourite of me and my wife. We play it together, as our son is still way too young for board games. Viva Topo! is a simple…

  • BGG ratings correlation

    I miss the ratings correlation tool from BoardGameGeek. Actually, I miss it so much, I went and built my own: BGG ratings correlation. Type in two usernames and you’ll get the correlation between the ratings. The tool will cache the collections to reduce the strain to Geek servers (not that it’s a huge problem), and…

  • Finnish Players’ Picks 2006

    Finnish Players’ Picks have been chosen for 2006! The winner is Caylus. Nice surprise, I’d say. I wonder how much the fast release of the Finnish edition helped… A GeekList of top 25 games is once again available, as are the complete results.

  • Terra Nova

    Review of Terra Nova in Finnish. Terra Nova is a fairly abstract game of fence-building. Players try to move their men on the board and fence off as much land for themselves as possible. If the land features just one landscape, it’s even better. The game reminds me a lot of Amazonas, but there are…