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SpellBook
SpellBook by Phil Walker-Harding and Space Cowboys. I received a review copy from Asmodee Nordics. Elevator pitch: SpellBook is a race of collecting magical resources, using them to unlock spells and then using those spells to unlock more spells. What’s in the box? There’s a bunch of spell cards and a familiar board for each…
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Top 100 list, the 2023 edition
I did another edition of my Top 100 list. This was the first list with the new BGG GeekList sorting system, where I can assign a rank for each item and have BGG rank them in descending order. That’s very nice for these top 100 lists. The number of comments the list received has been…
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Xiangqi, Shogi, Riichi and Brass: Birmingham
Here are some random notes on games I’ve played recently. Xiangqi and Shogi. Thanks to a book project, I’ve returned to Chinese and Japanese chess. I tried both about 15 years ago, but those were just single attempts. Now I’ve delved slightly deeper, thanks to a son who is keen to explore these games with…
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Earth and Space Base
I’m usually not interested in new games, but apparently, I can be persuaded. Something in Earth attracted me; I’m not sure what it was. I checked the rule book, which seemed complicated at first sight, and then went and learnt the game. It’s not that tricky, really. It’s a game of many cards, tableau building…
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Texas Showdown with Seas of Strife rules
Texas Showdown is a very good trick-taking game for five or six players. The point is to avoid taking tricks. The main twist in the game is the suit-following rules: you have to follow suit, but if you can’t, you play anything, and other players can then follow your suit. The trick is won by…
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Lautapelaamaan 2023
Thanks to Covid-19, Lautapelaamaan was last organized in 2019. Now it returned unusually: it was held in February and in Tampere. Like in 2019, the event was held in a mall: the Ratina mall in Tampere had suitable empty space we could use. Thus the Lautapelaamaan was held for the first time outside Helsinki. As…
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One game per BGG page
Michael Debije listed his favourite games, one per BGG page, on BGG: A Curmudgeon chooses one game per page… going deep. A friend made his own list on a forum, prompting me to make mine. It’s simple: browse the BGG ranking list and pick one game from each page. Here’s my list: 1-100: A Feast…
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Gaming Year 2022
Winding down. The number of games I played dropped again. A few years ago, I played over 700–800 games per year with over 350 hours clocked. Now, 384 games and just 227 hours played. The last time I had a year this slow was 2010, and then I had a baby and a toddler. I…
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Drawing tube lines in London
Next Station: London by Matthew Dunstan is another game in the X-and-write genre; in this case, a flip-and-write (I prefer the Finnish catch-all term “coupon-filler”). Each player has a fairly abstract map of London in front of them and must draw four underground lines to generate as many points as possible. The tube lines are…
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Unlock! Legendary Adventures
Another Unlock! box arrived from the library. This one has three adventures loosely themed with legends. Action Story starts with a chase scene where the players must reach a fleeing criminal. The mood takes a swift turn soon. This is the easiest adventure in the box and relatively straightforward to solve, but it’s fun for…