Gameblog

Category: More about games

  • Sudden moment of embarrassing truth

    It seems I’ve always played Space Beans wrong. I am quite sure we’ve always given the cards to the player on one’s left, ie. the next player. However, the cards should be given to the previous player, the one on your right. Oops.

  • Bridge

    While visiting the library, I studied other books than the Hanafuda already mentioned. Few of them were about Bridge, the king of the trick-taking games (and perhaps card games in general, as well). I have really no interest to play Bridge, as it seems to be a terribly deep and complex game. That’s fine, but…

  • Hanafuda

    I bumped into a mention of Hanafuda, the Japanese flower cards in Pagat. I didn’t react until Yesterday, when I saw a book about it in a local library. I borrowed it and now I’m definitely fascinated. Hanafuda cards are quite beautiful, small cards. They don’t have numbers like the western playing cards. Instead, the…

  • Sunda to Sahul arrived

    I picked up the Sunda to Sahul from the post office the first thing today. I just opened the box and I must say I’m impressed! Neat little box (about the size of A4, perhaps 5 cm high) and talk about nice bits! Game consists mostly of about 100 or so jigsaw pieces, and they…

  • Sunda to Sahul

    A guy called Don Bone was looking for playtesters for his new game Sunda to Sahul on the Spielfrieks list. I got interested without even checking the web site — come on, he was offering me a free board game! Now I’ve actually studied the game a bit from the web site, browsed through the…

  • Diplomacy

    I’m playing Diplomacy again. For the last two years or so I have mostly focused on GMing and I haven’t had a real need to play the game. It just doesn’t fit my personality, I think… Well, now I’m playing again. I’ve been running games of Necromancer, which is a Diplomacy variant set in the…

  • Go

    I got myself a new Go opponent: GNU Go with Jago user interface. I have an installation of older GNU Go on one of my Unix shell accounts, but for some reason I hadn’t thought of getting it on my home PC. Well, now I have it so I can play real 19×19 Go against…

  • Game idea

    For the last few days, I’ve been thinking about an auction game idea. It just might have something to do with the fact that I played Ra Friday and enjoyed it a lot… Anyway, I’m eager to test my ideas. If it works out, I’ll publish the game on my web site. The game is…

  • Wildlife preview

    As mentioned before, I bought Wildlife Friday and managed to play it the same night. Here’s my preview, based on that one game. The main reason why I bought Wildlife was the cheap price. Reason why I chose Wildlife instead of other cheap games was mostly the name of Wolfgang Kramer on the cover. I…

  • Of handicaps and silence

    My blog has been a bit silent, but it’s been a slow start for this game year. First game sessions are coming next week: I’m planning a Tichu session next Tuesday, Friday I’m going to a meeting of the Finnish Diplomacy Association board, there’ll be fun and games, then the Sunday is board game club…