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  • 1825 notes
  • Playing-card review 6: Piatnik Tarocks

    Piatnik makes some very beautiful 54-card Austrian-style Tarock packs with French suits . The first of my playing-card reviews covered one of them; here are the rest. Start with that review, because the packs are actually all exactly the same on the front. What differs is the back and the presentation. Two of the packs…

    June 29, 2008
    Playing-card reviews

    playing cards, Tarot
  • Thursday session: Dolmengötter, Pampas Railroads

    Our latest game session (actually on Tuesday) got a good start with Die Dolmengötter. It’s a favourite of me and Hannu, and the others were happy to play the game as well. Mika was the only newbie around. Petri had devised a rather clever strategy: avoid Mikko. I certainly did fairly well, pretty much thanks…

    June 26, 2008
    Session reports

    Die Dolmengötter, Pampas Railroads, Wabash Cannonball
  • Playing-card review 5: Tarock and Schafkopf

    ASS Tarock Schafkopf Club and Piatnik Schafkopf Tarock (no. 182211). These packs (ASS on left, Piatnik on right) have the same Bayerisches Bild pattern with 36 cards. The Bavarian pattern has suits of acorns (Eichel), leaves (Graß), hearts (Herz) and bells (Schellen). The face cards have a king and two officers, Ober and Unter. While…

    June 18, 2008
    Playing-card reviews

    Bavarian Tarock, playing cards, Schafkopf
  • Thursday session: Glory to Rome, Preference, Tarock

    Our Thursday session was on Monday this week. That’s summer for you… I would prefer a fixed date, but sure, it’s pretty hard to fix when people have fluctuating schedules. I started games with a two-player game of Glory to Rome. I’ve now played with two, three, four and five players — that’s fairly rare!…

    June 17, 2008
    Session reports

    Bavarian Tarock, Glory to Rome, Preference, Skat
  • Thursday session: Dutch InterCity, Modern Art

    As my order from Northumbria Games arrived in just two days, we started our games with Dutch InterCity. We had four players, but fifth arrived just when we were about to start. Five, then. Dutch InterCity is an older title from Winsome Games and a progenitor for the Riding series. It is somewhat similar to…

    June 13, 2008
    Session reports

    Dutch Intercity, Modern Art, Riding Series, Wabash Cannonball
  • Canal Mania back in favour

    My opinion of Canal Mania seems to shift after every game. Now I like the game again! We played the game yesterday with the four of us (my mother, Ismo and Severi). With three newbies, we were still able to finish the game in 90 minutes after I broke the 50 points. It was a…

    June 8, 2008
    Session reports

    Age of Steam, Canal Mania, Dutch Intercity, New England Railways, West Riding
  • Bondtolva in the park

    Yesterday’s session was a disaster: Mari arrived at 16.20 or so, I arrived at 17.00 and Make arrived at 17.30 — none of us stayed long enough to meet each other. Way to go! However, today was much better. You see, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time outside in the Kaukajärvi parks with…

    June 6, 2008
    Session reports

    Bondtolva, Schnapsen, Strohmann-Tarock
  • Jonathan Schaeffer and Duplicate Poker

    I was scouring the web for interesting Poker news (that’s what I do for living these days) and I bumped into a familiar name. There’s a Man vs Machine Poker Championship coming, where two human Poker pros will play against Polaris, a Poker computer program. In the end of the article I read, they interview…

    June 3, 2008
    Less about games

    AI, Bridge, Checkers, Duplicate Poker, Poker, Texas Hold’em
  • Co-operative Settlers of Catan

    Settlers of Catan meets M.U.L.E. in Seize Life! describes a M.U.L.E.-inspired variant of Catan where players must co-operate and win together: In M.U.L.E. the player are all in coopertition, cooperative competition. They are colonists trying to make good for themselves but also must help their fellow players. At a certain time “those in charge” return…

    June 1, 2008
    Outside world

    co-operative games, Settlers of Catan
  • Return to Scotland: 1825 Unit 3

    I organized another train game session at the local library. Once again, only Olli was able and willing to join me, so it was again time for 1825 Unit 3 (I know we could’ve played Unit 2 as well, but I thought having another go at Unit 3 was better). Our previous game is documented…

    June 1, 2008
    Session reports

    1825, 1825 Unit 3, 18xx, Strohmann-Tarock, Tarot
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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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