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  • Gaming Year 2025
  • 1825 notes
  • Pub session: Tower of Babel, Aqua Romana, Celtica, Elefant

    I’ve been on vacation this week, and took the opportunity to have a small game session in a local pub. It was a decent environment for games, though there was exactly two tables on the non-smoking side that were lit well enough. Not an ideal environment, and if possible, I’ll still prefer places where you…

    November 23, 2006
    Session reports

    Aqua Romana, Celtica, Der Elefant im Porzellanladen, Tower of Babel
  • Games with Olli: Gipf, Zèrtz, Crystal Code, Celtica

    Olli made a quick visit yesterday for some games. We started with Gipf. Now, played face-to-face with a real board and the correct rules, I think the game’s actually pretty good. My play-by-email experiences didn’t do the game justice, I suppose. Now it was definitely fun. I think I’ll be playing more of this, especially…

    November 21, 2006
    Session reports

    Celtica, Crystal Code, Gipf, speed games, Ubongo, Zèrtz
  • On The Spot Games

    Yesterday I got a bunch of games from On The Spot Games. All the games are designed by James Ernest and Mike Selinker, and aimed towards somewhat mass-market crowd, I’d say — they are very simple games, some definitely aimed for the party game audience, others for couples or families. I already tried Kotsuku, which…

    November 8, 2006
    More about games

    bad games, card games, Kotsuku, Letter Hold’em, On The Spot Games, party games, Poker, Trendsetters, word games, Zero In
  • Helcon 2006

    Helcon 2006 was a blast, and the most successful event of the Board Game Society history with almost 100 participants. I was there for the Saturday (limitation caused by being a parent; unfortunate for the gaming, but rewarding in other ways). I didn’t play that many games, but as you will see, sometimes (well, often)…

    November 7, 2006
    Event reports

    18VA, Age of Steam, Age of Steam London map, Battle Line, Blue Moon, Gang of Four, Gipf, Mauerbauer, Project Gipf, Reibach & Co, San Juan, Turbo Taxi, Um Reifenbreite, Union Pacific, Werewolf, Zèrtz
  • Die Säulen der Erde first thoughts

    Played a game of Die Säulen der Erde with Johanna yesterday, while the baby was sleeping. It was reasonably enjoyable. Nothing special — I’ve rated the game as 8 right now. As many of you have heard, there’s more than a passing resemblance to Caylus, but I think the comparison doesn’t hold too far. At…

    October 30, 2006
    Session reports

    BrettSpielWelt, Caylus, Die Säulen der Erde, Johanna, two-player games
  • Catan World Championships

    The Catan World Championships were played in Essen last week. The new world champion of Settlers of Catan is Markus Nuopponen from Finland. Markus won three out of the four games in the first rounds and kicked butt in the semifinal and the final. Go Finland! I’ve had the pleasure to play with Markus, who…

    October 27, 2006
    Outside world

    Catan, Catan World Championships, Settlers of Catan, tournaments
  • Memoir ’44: Pacific Theater

    Review in Finnish. Pacific Theater is the latest expansion for Memoir ’44. Like Eastern Front, it adds new figures, new rules and new scenarios to the basic game. This time the fighting is between the Japanese and the US Marine Corps. Japanese forces never surrender (that is, always ignore the first retreat flag), attack with…

    October 25, 2006
    Reviews

    expansions, Memoir ’44, Memoir ’44: Eastern Front, Memoir ’44: Pacific Theatre, review, war games
  • Essen bounty

    I’ve been following the Essen discussion on the Board Game Society message, and here’s my list of the new stuff I want: Der Elefant im Porzellanladen — Mandatory Amigo card game. A friend will bring this to me to pay back a favour. Null & Nichtig was also on my list, but the same friend…

    October 22, 2006
    More about games

    18VA, Amigo, Antike, Civilization, Der Elefant im Porzellanladen, Die Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg, Die Säulen der Erde, Essen, Factory Fun, Imperial, Leonardo da Vinci, Mac Gerdts, Neuland, Null & Nichtig, shopping, Space Dealer, Tobias Stapelfeldt
  • Game comics

    I’m not sure if Larry Leadhead is a good webcomic or not, but this one kind of hit home…

    October 20, 2006
    Outside world

    humour
  • Da Vinci’s Challenge

    Review in Finnish here DaVinci’s Challenge is yet another game trying to milk the popularity of Dan Brown’s books. Once again, any connection between this game and Leonardo Da Vinci is fairly thin and based on art alone (and even the art is mangled: let’s just say the Vitruvian Man is less of a man…

    October 18, 2006
    Reviews

    abstracts, bad games, Da Vinci’s Challenge, review, Ta Yü, tile-laying
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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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