-
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…
-
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…
-
First impressions: Scout
Japanese Scout was designed by Kei Kajino and published by Oink Games in 2019. It’s a small box card game with a good reputation: it was a nominee for the Spiel des Jahres award in 2022, and several friends have praised it. Since my game group likes tricky card games, I thought Scout might be…
-
Unlock! Game Adventures
I was two Unlock! games behind. Fortunately, both of the sets are available in the local library. The first one to arrive was the later one; this one had fewer reservations. Unlock! Game Adventures uses other Asmodee titles as source material. There are scenarios for Ticket to Ride, Mysterium and Pandemic. It’s a pretty good…
-
Slices of the colour pie
I was wondering: which are my favourite colours and colour combinations in Magic: The Gathering? Mono-colour decks My favourite mono-colour deck is crystal clear: green. The basic archetype of creature-based aggression works for me, and this is one of my most successful archetypes. It’s fun to play. Mono blue is my least favourite single-colour deck.…
-
Top 100 list, 2022 edition
My annual top 100 list is now out on BoardGameGeek: Mikko’s top 100 — 2022 edition. Making this year’s list was a slightly sad process. I have a two-year rule for my list: this year, I’ll consider games that I’ve played in 2022, 2021 or 2020. This meant a list of 146 titles. I’ve last…
-
A history of fads
A thought hit me while I was compiling my latest top 100 list. I could take each quarter in my game records and look for the hottest game of that quarter. That would show the fads and the flashes in the pan and be a nice snapshot of my gaming history. For each quarter, I’ve…
-
Mythic Boros Aggro, now with Alchemy
Last month I made it to Mythic on Magic: The Gathering Arena with a Boros Aggro deck. Well, that deck still works, as this month, I repeated the achievement (my sixth Mythic rating). However, I used an Alchemy variant of the deck for some variety this time. As before, the deck is from DoggertQBones, who…
-
Mathias Wigge interview
Mathis Wigge is the designer of Ark Nova, a tremendously popular board game about zookeeping. What makes it even more impressive is the fact that it’s his first released board game. I interviewed Wigge by email to find out more about where Ark Nova came from. This interview was originally published in Finnish at Lautapeliopas.…
-
Mythic Boros Aggro
This is the fifth time I reached Mythic in Magic: The Gathering Arena. This time I did it with a new deck type: I was running the currently very popular Boros Aggro deck. Boros Legion is a guild from Ravnica and has given the name for red and white decks in Magic. Here’s the deck…