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Thursday session: Race for the Galaxy and Canal Mania
We started the session with Race for the Galaxy. Our game took something like 40 minutes this time, so it’s getting faster, perhaps. I went with the novelty goods, as my start cards were bent that way. I got a pretty good engine going there, with Consume: Trade producing a hefty pile of cards and…
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Nooa and board games
Nooa is the cutest little gamer. He just loves to play with game boxes, trying to open them. His eyes just light up whenever he sees game boxes — particularly when I get some games in mail and there’s a bunch of games lying on the floor, he’ll go crazy. I’m wondering what’s going to…
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Thursday session: 1960 and Ubongo Extrem
Yesterday’s game session put quality over quantity. I spent two hours playing 1960 with Sami; this included the rules explanation (15 minutes of that, 1 hour 45 minutes of game). I took Nixon and campaigned against Sami’s JFK. I had told Sami that the endorsements were important and as a result, he beat me out…
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Agricola review
Maik Hennebach’s The two player game and a look under the hood is an excellent review of Agricola. It describes the game well and is entertaining to read; all in all, it’s one of the very best board game reviews I’ve ever read.
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First look at Ubongo Extrem
I picked up Ubongo Extrem from the post office today. It’s rather neat! The basic idea remains, but the puzzles are now much harder! The tiles are made of small hexagons, three to five per tile on most tiles. Three-tile puzzles are still fairly simple, but the four-tile puzzles are now downright fiendish. Even the…
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Just 4 Fun
A review in Finnish of Just 4 Fun. Just 4 Fun by Jürgen P. Grunau is a spin on classic Connect 4. Players try to create a line of their tokens on the board by playing cards whose sum matches a square on the board. It takes quite a bit of counting to get through…
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Shopping for a farm
I don’t think I can help it: I can’t wait for the English edition of Agricola to come out. All the talk of expensive euros and uncertain schedules, and all that time I could be happily playing the game with a German edition. After all, it is an excellent game and right now I have…
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Thursday session: Race for the Galaxy
Good games today: three rounds of Race for the Galaxy and one Fairy Tale. That was all we could manage: it’s slow going with new players. Our games took 45 minutes, 45 minutes and 30 minutes. Based on that, I’d say 20 minutes is doable with experienced players. It’s good, it’s darn good and without…
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New games in the collection
I got my copy of Race for the Galaxy yesterday. It looks pretty nifty, though the art is perhaps a bit dark. Then again, I suppose it is dark in space… I’m glad the cards are of decent size, so they work well with card protectors — I’m hoping to play the game that much.…
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Tower of Babel
Review of Tower of Babel in Finnish. Tower of Babel is a clever area majority game designed by Reiner Knizia. Players try to complete the eight wonders of the world, including the Tower of Babel from the title. Alas, not all of them will be done by the end. Players try to get the majority…