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  • Hart an der Grenze

    I’ve written a review in Finnish of Tiukka tilanne rajalla. Here’s the same in English — this’ll be my 99th review on Geek, one more to go before the magical Golden Reviewer badge! Hart an der Grenze is a game of bluffing, lying, haggling and negotiating. Players are crossing a border and taking turns acting…

    October 4, 2007
    Reviews

    Hart an der Grenze, review
  • Finnish PitchCar Championships

    Finnish PitchCar fans: Lautapelit.fi, the publisher of the Finnish edition of the game, is organizing the first Finnish PitchCar Championships. The races are driven in their store in Helsinki Saturday October 20th. Winner will go home with a trophy and either a game or a gift certificate, second place will get the other. There’s a…

    October 3, 2007
    Outside world

    PitchCar, tournaments
  • Finnish Players’ Picks 2007

    Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the The Finnish Players’ Picks 2007 GeekList. See the full list at Lautapelaaja.net. This year we had more voters, more hardcore gamers voting and lots of interesting games on the list. A good year, and another proof the hobby is indeed growing! The winner? Puerto Rico.

    October 1, 2007
    Game awards

    awards, Finland, Finnish Players’ Picks, Puerto Rico
  • Fairy Tale

    I wrote a review of Fairy Tale in Finnish. Fairy Tale is a drafting game with a very superficial fantasy theme. There are four rounds: in the beginning of each, five cards are dealt to the players. Each player takes one card and passes the rest to the next player. Of the four cards they…

    September 29, 2007
    Reviews

    drafting, Fairy Tale, fillers, review
  • Hot games for Q3/2007

    It has been a good quarter. With the new Thursday sessions I’ve had time to play more games, which is always good. I even made it to the Board Game Club. Previous quarter was a good one, too. Fairy Tale is definitely the hottest game, with 13 games played and thoroughly enjoyed. It’s certainly my…

    September 29, 2007
    Statistical lunacy

    Age of Steam, Fairy Tale, hot games, Phoenicia, Portobello Market, Slovenian Tarok, Tarot, Yspahan
  • Thursday session: Ottocento, Dobbm

    After the mandatory Fairy Tale rounds (which prove that I can only win when paired up with someone), I got a group playing Ottocento or Tarocco Bolognese. The Bologne Tarot is a curious game, played with a special pack of 62 cards. The trumps are a bit different: there are, for example, four moors, which…

    September 27, 2007
    Session reports

    Dobbm, Fairy Tale, Modern Art, Ottocento, Tarot
  • Board game club: Age of Steam, End of the Triumvirate

    It’s been a while since my last visit to the board game club. Yesterday I was able to go, and had enough time, too, to play some heavier games. We started with Age of Steam: Mississippi Steamboats, one of Ted Alspach’s expansions. It’s a long and narrow board, split by the big river. Urbanization doesn’t…

    September 24, 2007
    Seurapelikerho

    Age of Steam, Age of Steam Mississippi Steamboats map, Briscola, Coloretto, End of the Triumvirate, Seurapelikerho, Ubongo
  • Thursday session: camels and cards

    Another Thursday session, this time with plenty of people: we had three games running at the same time. It was good, because that meant I was able to skip Bang!. Instead I played Yspahan. The game included two newbies and Olli, who has played about 500 games of the PC version. Now, guess the order?…

    September 20, 2007
    Session reports

    Bang!, Briscola, card games, Slovenian Tarok, Tarot, Yspahan
  • Second book!

    Today’s mail brought me a publishing contract to sign: I’m writing another book! Well, I’m already 75 pages in, so getting the contract was a bit of a relief… My topic is, as some of you might’ve already guessed, traditional (and less traditional) card games. I’m covering both history of the games and the cards,…

    September 19, 2007
    Less about games

    books
  • Thursday session: Hart an der Grenze, Funny Fishing, cards

    The second Thursday session drew six players, then two latecomers. We could use more, but this was certainly enough to get games going. It was nice to see some new faces. We warmed up with a quick round of Ubongo Mini, which is indeed a rather good for that purpose. My dear friends at Marektoy…

    September 14, 2007
    Session reports

    Briscola, card games, Funny Fishing, Hart an der Grenze, Sueca, Ubongo Mini
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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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