Gameblog

Category: Session reports

  • Helcon 2008 review, part 2: Preußische Ostbahn

    Continuing my Helcon review, see part 1 here, there’s also part 3 and part 4. Preußische Ostbahn. Another Historic Railroads System game from Winsome, fairly closely related to Wabash Cannonball. However, this one’s billed as “German family game”. Indeed, the game is a lot more gentle — yet still quite a challenge. This time the…

  • Helcon 2008 review, part 1

    Helcon came and went. It’s by far my favourite board game event, and once again proved to be excellent. It’s small enough, about hundred people or so, yet offers plenty of good board game action. I travelled to Helsinki with Sami, Olli and Robert and five bags of stuff, mostly games I sold or wanted…

  • Thursday session: Tier auf Tier, Attika

    Actually, I’ll start with another session report first. Wednesday we went to see some of our playground friends. The kids — 5 and 7 years — don’t mind Nooa much, but they are all over me. Well, Nooa had great fun playing with their toys (Bob the Builder Duplos, a guaranteed hit) and I played…

  • Thursday session: Erie Railroad, Secret Blueprints

    When I arrived, the guys were waiting and hungry: it was Wabash Cannonball time. Hannu and Petri, the two main Wabash fans in our group wanted to give the new Erie Railroad expansion a go. KJ and Tapani, both newbies to Wabash, joined us for another five-player game. The Erie is a small expansion. It’s…

  • Thursday session: Age of Steam, Dominion, Le Truc

    It’s been too long from my last game of Age of Steam. Today I got some railroad action in the form of the Scotland scenario. So still no Secret Blueprints, unfortunately, but at least something! I played against Hannu, who has played one game of Age of Steam, about year ago. He was a bit…

  • Thursday session: Dominion, Container

    After a quick hand of Le Truc with Hannu, Petri arrived and Container hit the table. Petri is interested in modern-day business games and Container hits that niche pretty well. After all, the setting is definitely contemporary and the game is all about buying and selling. This time I managed to avoid embarrassing blunders and…

  • Board game club: Dominion, Container

    Last Sunday I visited the board game club and instead of the quick visit last time, I was able to play games for few hours. We started with a quick round of Halli Galli Extreme for warm-up. It’s a nice little game, quick and entertaining. Some won’t like the extra difficulty from the animals, but…

  • Games at Jyväskylä: Mahjong, Agricola

    I went to Jyväskylä with Nooa for the weekend and as usual, it means some games too. Their collection has grown enough that I don’t really have to bring any games with anymore, so this time I just brought a pack of mahjong cards with me. So that’s what we started with, six hands of…

  • Thursday session: Riichi again

    After a quick round of Da Vinci Code, it wasn’t hard to get a Mahjong table going. There were more than four interested players. We used the new set I had bought. It’s a cheap set, made in China but Japanese in style. That means it’s small (the tiles seemed very small the first time…

  • Back to New England

    I visited board game club today for a while. I had to leave early, but I did have time for a round of New England Railways. We got five players and this time, since I was carrying Age of Steam as well, we replaced the cardboard chits with actual wooden cubes. It was much better.…