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  • Gaming Year 2022
  • 1825 notes
  • Trains on an island: 1860

    Trains on an island: 1860

    We started the gaming year 2022 with a game of 1860: Railways on the Isle of Wight. When doing my 2021 review, I noticed I didn’t play any 18xx games in 2021, which I wanted to fix in 2022. Better get started with it, then! My game of choice was 1860 because it’s my favourite […]

    January 4, 2022
    Session reports

    1860: Railways on the Isle of Wight
  • Gaming Year 2021

    Covid-19. The pandemic got better, and I got the vaccine shots. I returned to the board game cafe meetings in June. Things have become much better. The number of games I played dropped significantly from 2020: from 753 to 481. In hours, I went from 339 to 266. The main reason for this is Nooa, […]

    January 2, 2022
    Statistical lunacy

    A Feast for Odin, Abandon All Artichokes, Altiplano, Anno 1800, Attika, Beyond the Sun, Blue Skies, Coconuts, De Vulgari Eloquentia, Decrypto, Europa Tour, Everdell, Fields of Arle, Fort, Hallertau, Hansa Teutonica, Innovation, Just One, Krass Kariert, L.L.A.M.A., Lands of Galzyr, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Love Letter, Machi Koro, Magic: The Gathering, Maglev Metro, Mahjong, Merchant of Venus, Monikers, Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile, Pax Pamir, Pictures, Res Arcana, Second Chance, Similo, Smartphone Inc., So Clover!, Spirit Island, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, The City, The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, The Great Zimbabwe, The Mind, Twin It!, Underwater Cities, UNO, Westphalia
  • First impressions: Lost Ruins of Arnak

    First impressions: Lost Ruins of Arnak

    I’ve been aware of Lost Ruins of Arnak being popular. A friend even offered his copy on loan at one point. I said no, because I wasn’t keen on learning new games, and we were busy playing Anno 1800 and Hallertau anyway. Now, another long-time gaming buddy showered praise on Arnak on an online forum, […]

    December 30, 2021
    More about games

    Lost Ruins of Arnak
  • Great Western Trail, expanded

    Alexander Pfister’s masterpiece Great Western Trail is still a rather good game. Last Wednesday, we played it with four players, which was a rare treat for me – I usually only play it as a two-player game. The four-player game is a good experience; the game flows so fast with experienced players, there’s hardly any […]

    December 18, 2021
    More about games

    Great Western Trail
  • Uwe Rosenberg farming games

    Uwe Rosenberg farming games

    Uwe Rosenberg is a German board game designer with several highly respected titles in his ludography. If there’s a designer whose work I adore, Rosenberg is that. He has designed many games, but I’m particularly interested in his work around the farming theme and worker placement mechanism, starting from Agricola in 2007. This ignores his […]

    December 15, 2021
    More about games

    A Feast for Odin, Agricola, Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, At the Gates of Loyang, Caverna, Caverna: Cave vs Cave, Fields of Arle, Glass Road, Hallertau, Le Havre, Le Havre: Inland Port, Merkator, Ora et Labora, Reykholt
  • The best teas to drink with Fields of Arle: Tea & Trade

    Fields of Arle Fields of Arle is one of the best titles in the Uwe Rosenberg ludography. I’ve found Rosenberg’s games are often best with two players; in many cases, extra players just lengthen the game without offering much. Here, the player count is capped at two. Fields of Arle isn’t a tricky game. It […]

    December 5, 2021
    More about games

    Fields of Arle
  • Monikers and Oath

    I’d call yesterday’s game night a success. After a couple of hands of The Crew: Mission Deep Sea – a failure, and then success at the same mission – we played a six-player game of Monikers. This is the best party game, in my opinion: a perfect mixture of roaring laughter and quick thinking. The […]

    December 2, 2021
    Session reports

    Monikers, Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile
  • Mono White Mythic

    I made it to the Mythic rank, the best rank in Magic: The Gathering Arena. I’ve reached Mythic twice before: two months in a row last year when I started playing Magic online, and again last May. Earlier I’ve always made it to Mythic with a Mono Green Aggro deck (2021 variant, 2020 variant), but […]

    November 29, 2021
    Magic: The Gathering

    Magic: The Gathering
  • So Clover!

    So Clover! by François Romain, published Repos Production in 2021. I received a review copy from Asmodee Nordics. Elevator pitch: Come up with clues for four two-word pairs and hope your friends can figure out your clues in this cooperative word puzzling game. What’s in the box? This game sure has eye-catching components. Each player […]

    November 25, 2021
    Reviews

    review, So Clover
  • Altiplano and The City

    Altiplano and The City

    While my daughter is cheerleading, I’ve spent the time walking. Now that it’s cold and dark outside, walking isn’t as much fun, so I ended up spending the time in the local library, reading books or doing crossword puzzles. Then we realized my son could join me and we could spend the time playing games! […]

    November 24, 2021
    Session reports

    Altiplano, The City
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Rating scale

Here’s the rating scale I use, and how it corresponds to BGG ratings:

  • Enthusiastic: I love the game and want to play it. (9, 10)
  • Suggest: Good game, I want to play it and will usually suggest it. (7, 8)
  • Indifferent: I’ll play the game, if necessary, but won’t suggest it. (5, 6)
  • Avoid: I don’t want to play this game. (1-4)

(Thanks to Brian Bankler)


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Of green

The green colour of the sidebar is the Brunswick Green used by Nationalised British Railways – Western Region:

“A different color, also called “Brunswick green”, was the colour for passenger locomotives of the Grouping and then the nationalized British Railways. There were three shades of these colours and they are defined under British Standard BS381C – 225, BS381C – 226, and BS381C – 227 (ordered from lightest to darkest). The Brunswick Green used by the Nationalised British Railways – Western Region for passenger Locomotives was BS381C – 227 (rgb(30:62:46)). RAL6005 is a close substitute to BS381C – 227. A characteristic of these colours was the ease for various railway locations to mix them by using whole pots of primary colours – hence the ability to get reasonably consistent colours with manual mixing half a century and more ago.”

Wikipedia: Shades of green


There is a difference from play with dice, because the latter is open, whereas play with cards takes place from ambush, because they are concealed.

– Girolamo Cardano: Liber de ludo aleae (1564), translated by Sydney Gould as The Book on Games of Chance (Princeton University, 1953)

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