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Thursday session: Race for the Galaxy
Good games today: three rounds of Race for the Galaxy and one Fairy Tale. That was all we could manage: it’s slow going with new players. Our games took 45 minutes, 45 minutes and 30 minutes. Based on that, I’d say 20 minutes is doable with experienced players. It’s good, it’s darn good and without…
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Back from Helcon!
Another Helcon is gone (well, they’re still playing, but I’m already back home) and boy, it was a good one! We started games on the train to Helsinki. Robert managed to get himself to the wrong train (for some reason there were to trains to Helsinki within three minutes), but I had Olli and Sami…
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Thursday session: Catan, Modern Art
Our Thursday sessions continue to be quiet. Well, three is enough! We started with Fairy Tale, as usual, but this game was unusual! I was doing well, I got all three of those eight-point “get two of the other suits” cards and got them fulfilled, too. Well, Sami did close down my critical cards, but…
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Thursday session: Tower of Babel, Razzia!
We had a slow Thursday session, just four players — the university Autumn break is probably slowing things down a bit. Last week was quiet as well, I hear. Maybe next week’ll be better? Tower of Babel… Well, it’s a good game. My play sucked, I thought I was doing well but I wasn’t, but…
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Two-player card games: Schnapsen, WYSIWYG
I made a return to Schnapsen — I had tried it once before, about five years ago. It’s an extremely tight two-handed trick-taker. It’s an ace-ten game, played with a 20-card pack with all the non-scoring cards removed. It seems to be a game of memory: you must remember your own points and it certainly…
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Thursday session: Tarot, Ubongo
Yesterday’s session started with a quick round of Larry Levy’s WYSIWYG. It’s an advanced version of German Whist, a trick-taking game for two players. Players bid for the right to become a declarer and choose trumps. In the first phase players collect new cards to fill their hands with (two cards are shown, winner of…
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Thursday session: Tarot, Jass
First game today was Jass. Since there are at least 70 variations of Jass, it’s probably best to be more precise: we played Molotow Jass. Molotow is the four-player variant of Mittlere Jass. Plus-Minus Jass is another variant of Mittlere Jass and Cosmic Eidex is a variant of Plus-Minus Jass. Still with me? So, it’s…
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Thursday session: Ottocento, Dobbm
After the mandatory Fairy Tale rounds (which prove that I can only win when paired up with someone), I got a group playing Ottocento or Tarocco Bolognese. The Bologne Tarot is a curious game, played with a special pack of 62 cards. The trumps are a bit different: there are, for example, four moors, which…
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Board game club: Age of Steam, End of the Triumvirate
It’s been a while since my last visit to the board game club. Yesterday I was able to go, and had enough time, too, to play some heavier games. We started with Age of Steam: Mississippi Steamboats, one of Ted Alspach’s expansions. It’s a long and narrow board, split by the big river. Urbanization doesn’t…
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Thursday session: camels and cards
Another Thursday session, this time with plenty of people: we had three games running at the same time. It was good, because that meant I was able to skip Bang!. Instead I played Yspahan. The game included two newbies and Olli, who has played about 500 games of the PC version. Now, guess the order?…