I met Olli for a small session of card games. We played Race for the Galaxy, San Juan and Blue Moon. I dropped my Race for the Galaxy rating from 9 to 8 (as the Geek rating guidelines go, it’s certainly a very good game — but only in certain circumstances, and that’s one thing…
…What’s to like? The core loop is straightforward and solid. The basic question of which spells to learn, in which order and at which levels is interesting. The game has three sets of spells; you can randomize them for over 2,100 combinations. Figuring out the best approaches to the random sets is the best way…
…almost two years ago). It was a blast! Combine four pretty clueless players and you’ll get lots of action! It took us 13 hands to actually finish the game… not many successful Tichu calls. However, I did use the positive scoring variant where failed Tichu call gives 100 points to the other team, which shortened…
I finally got around reading Lewis Pulsipher’s (designer of Britannia) article on changes in the boardgame hobby. It’s a good read and has some pretty good points, too. Many people who prefer complex games have moved to computer games is an obvious one in my opinion: I can’t see why I should waste time crunching…
…had about 60 points from the home board, and both exceeded 100 points. I got 126, possibly my highest score ever! Some games promote stereotypical play and get boring quick. I’ve played Fields of Arle 30 times and still find it fascinating. Mennonitenkirche Norden By Matthias Süßen – Own work, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons…
…ship. Moon is a pick-and-pass drafting game: players rotate the hands of cards, building one card every turn to their lunar base. Cards produce resources, compete in majority schemes and gain victory points. There are many common goal cards to claim when you fulfil the requirements. Here are three elements I don’t particularly like: I’m…
I wrote a more detailed entry about coming back from HelCon, but managed to destroy it with accidental backspacing… Oops. Well, anyway, I’m back, had a great time, played many good games, took almost 100 photos and so on. A detailed session report (including Battle Cry, Die Macher, Die Händler, Stephenson’s Rocket and Villa Paletti…
Some of the pictures I took at HelCon (those with people — most of the pictures concentrated 100% on the games) are available at my picture gallery. Captions are in Finnish, sorry for foreign readers. You wouldn’t know the people anyway… Game pictures and session reports will come as soon as possible, but it’ll take…
…main idea, but the game is little less complex. There are fewer different combinations, no partnerships, easier special cards, simple scoring, all those things work to make Gang of Four easier to play and thus more accessible. I like Tichu more than Gang of Four — it’s nine versus eight on the Geek scale. Both…
…decks of buildings, each with their personal flavour, and expansions have since offered two more. Hopefully, more will come because Nusfjord is a very attractive game of coming up with combos of buildings and more variety is always good in a game like this. Caverna: Cave vs Cave (2017) This is the small-box version of…