Gameblog

Category: Session reports

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • War, trading and hot rats

    I met Olli for the first proper game session after Nooa’s (that’s the name of our boy) birth. It was fun, to have a small break from baby care and maintenance. We started off with Memoir ’44, since that was high on Olli’s list. He had played Battle Cry before, so rules explanations were minimal.…

  • Blue Moon

    Olli M. was interested in playing two-player games during the summer. Since our baby likes to keep us waiting, I had plenty of time to meet Olli for games. We played a hefty session of Blue Moon. In two and half hours we managed to play eight matches, so both of us could play through…

  • Cider gaming: Cosmic Eidex, Mhing

    Yesterday’s game session was motivated by cider. Some local pubs have cider weeks right now and being such a cider fan as I am, I wanted to check out their real cider — it was called Broadside or Broadwinds, don’t know for sure. It was good (though not superior to Weston’s Old Rosie), as were…