Gameblog

Category: Session reports

  • Thursday session: Dolmengötter, Vegas Showdown, Tarot

    Die Dolmengötter is an ugly game. The theme is also silly: the game is abstract as heck, and while I understand that theming it must’ve been a real struggle, one wonders if this is a game that should simply be an abstract without any attempt at theme. Thomas Odenhoven’s other game, Portobello Market, works better…

  • Thursday session: Through the Ages

    I was planning to play something else (my new copy of Die Dolmengötter, to be exact), but I got Through the Ages and it was requested, so that’s what we played. And that was indeed all we played. We started about 16.45, I took perhaps 30 minutes explaining the rules and about 17.20 we got…

  • Tracon III

    I spent most of my yesterday attending Tracon. Tracon is a yearly convention here in Tampere, this was the third time it was organized. Tracon is mostly about anime, manga and role-playing games. In the first two Tracon’s, I don’t think there was any board game presence, but this time the Finnish Board Game Society…

  • Memoir with Air Pack

    I met Sami for some Memoir ’44 with the Air Pack. We had time for two scenarios, both from the Western front. We played Carentan Causeway and the Battle for Arracourt. The first one was a quick one, because of my careless playing. The second was more interesting and in the end, I won 6-5,…

  • Agricola, Xiangqi and video games

    I visited Jyväskylä last weekend. Agricola was a must after last time. This time the boys were out of town, so it was just me, my mother and Ismo. We managed to play two games, first one taking 60 minutes and second one just 50 minutes. That’s very nice efficiency and certainly reinforces Chris Farrell’s…

  • Thursday session: Golden Compass, Halli Galli Extreme

    After clobbering Hannu in Sunda to Sahul, it was time for Golden Compass. We had full table, four players, and off we went, on our trip to the other universe. The card playing mechanism was definitely more interesting with four players: you really had to think a bit when choosing which cards to take. However,…

  • Settlers of Catan Junior

    I tried Settlers of Catan Junior with Johanna yesterday. The game is a simplified version of Catan with an age recommendation of 6+. It has all the basic elements of Catan: production rolls, trading and building. Everything is just simplified. Production rolls are just d6, building rules are easier (players must build villages next to…

  • Two-player Golden Compass

    Golden Compass is an excellent book (and a fairly mediocre movie), and of course it has spawned a bunch of board games. Most of them are based on the movie, but Der goldene Kompass by Kosmos is based on the books. It’s a race game: players try to go through the board as fast as…

  • Thursday session: Qwirkle, Antike

    Another good session, this time with more shorter games. That’s nice balance. We hit off with Flix Mix, a favourite of mine I hadn’t played in a while. It’s a small Adlung card game, those just get stuck somewhere and then you forget about them. We played a practise round, which I didn’t win and…

  • Board game club: Antiquity

    It’s been a while since I last visited the board game club. Bad timing and busy weekends… It was a real pleasure to go and to celebrate, I decided to play something heavier that doesn’t quite work with our Thursday evening sessions. First game of the afternoon was something lighter, though: we played Verflixxt! with…