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Einfach Genial with Johanna
Johanna wanted to play something, so I offered Einfach Genial. I know she doesn’t like abstracts, but instead prefers more imaginative, theme-rich games, but I thought this could work… and it did! It’s not one of her favourites, but she enjoyed it. Of course, Einfach Genial is far from the world of serious high-skill abstracts,…
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Hacienda at SpielByWeb
We played a game of Hacienda at SpielByWeb. It was a pleasantly quick match, just a week. You can see the final results. I won, but it was a bit of a surprise. I was the only player to try the massive land chain -strategy, so perhaps that was it? I made a mistake, though:…
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Pacific Memoir and rats
My last board game session this summer involved me, Olli and Memoir ’44: Pacific Theatre. The latest Memoir ’44 expansion turned out to be a blast. We played two scenarios. Japanese counter-attack on Guam was faster thing, while playing through the Iwo Jima Meat Grinder took almost an hour. Both were interesting, well-developed scenarios. The…
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Elasund and Farlander — final sessions
I met the two Ollis and Antti from Board Game Society forums (he was picking up the Power Grid he bought from me) for games last Thursday. Little I knew that our peaceful off-season university cafe would be overrun by the attendents of a psychology conference… Well, we had a table for ourselves nonetheless, so…
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Elasund, Elasund, Elasund
Met Olli today. The dish of the day was Elasund, the latest Settlers spin-off. The Settlers element is pretty much resource production roll to start the turn, 10 victory points to gather and… well, that’s about it. The game is about building a city. Smaller buildings produce influence and money, both of which are needed…
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New game session: Farlander, Terra Nova
Once again I met Olli for games, this time focusing on new material. We started with Farlander, since Olli had just bumped into it in a shop. The game looks nice, and inside the pretty box lies a simple war game. It’s so simple and minimalistic that I’m having a hard time calling it a…
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Magical crystals
Another children’s game tested: Mago Magino goes in the closet towait for Nooa to grow up. The game is clever and fun, but offers little to adults. It’s just roll-and-move, with some risk assessment and some scope for tactics (how to use the wizard, how to use the two pawns each player has). The game…
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Battles in the east
I met Olli for a session of Memoir ’44. We ended up exploring the Eastern Front expansion. Both scenarios we played — Gates of Moscow and Breakout to Lisyanka — were excellent. Add the excellent Suomussalmi scenario to that and the expansion pack starts to feel like a pretty good purchase. The scenarios are great.…
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Mice and a cat
I got this year’s Marektoy children’s games lineup. It’s a nice bunch of games from Drei Magier and Selecta, mostly. Selecta games impressed me: like Haba, Selecta is a producer of wooden toys and the games have great components. I played two rounds of Viva Topo! with Johanna yesterday. The game is the Kinderspiel des…
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Small two-player session
My games with Olli continued on Friday. We started with Kahuna — it was the final test. Olli lost big time; he got the first scoring, but then my defensive island network made it quite clear there was no way he could beat me. Final score was 6-1. Not good. He didn’t like the game,…