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Board game club: Fjorde, Neuland, Havoc
The olympic ice hockey final didn’t affect the participants in the board game club yesterday, we had good attendance. I got to play everything I had planned to, which was nice. While waiting for others to arrive, I played a round of Fjorde with Ilari. It was my first game, but it was a breeze…
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Online games
I thought I had ran out of time at the Days of Wonder web games a long time ago, but it turned out I still have over a year or so. Woo-hoo. After all, I have had several of their games and they used to give out one year for each game and it’s all…
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Preview of Tempus
I got to take a look at the rules of Tempus, and it sure looks pretty good. My first impression is Vinci with just one civilization for each player, but that’s a very brutal approximation. The game is mostly about Lebensraum, building up your empire, one people token at the time. The citizens procreate and…
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Just an idea…
Last night I came up with a brilliant idea. Since curling is the second most popular sport in the Winter olympics in Finland (can’t beat ice hockey), here’s a game idea to take advantage of that: Curling Crokinole! It’s simple: Crokinole on a board shaped after a curling field. Players try to flick their disks…
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New releases in Finnish
Marektoy releases for 2006 are now public. I’m personally fond of Cluzzle being published, as I’ve translated it and because it was picked from my suggestion. So Dominic, sending me a review copy was a good move. I’m glad it’s out in Finnish, as it’s definitely one of the better party games out there. Also…
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Scotland Yard
Here’s Scotland Yard reviewed in Finnish. I was two years old when Scotland Yard won it’s Spiel des Jahres award in 1983. The game was one of my favourites when I was younger and since it’s still around, over 20 years later, it must have something going for it. Darker tones I played it again…
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Weekend games: Scotland Yard, Duel Masters, St. Petersburg
We were visiting my mother at Jyväskylä this weekend and of course, I ended up playing some games. The most interesting game this weekend was Scotland Yard, the very first Spiel des Jahres game I’ve ever played. It was a big hit when I was younger and now my brother had bought it so of…
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Essence of Euro-style games
Lewis Pulsipher’s article The Essence of Euro-style Games was published in The Game Journal. It describes what makes Euro games, particularly in opposition to war games. I don’t think the article is that great — there’s little new in it — but it had one interesting point: Euro games are very pacific. At PowWow04 Stephen…
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Jim’s San Juan
If you like San Juan and have a Mac, go get Jim’s San Juan (zip packet, almost five megs). It’s a very good computer version of the card game. The user interface is very smooth and easy to use. The AI is fairly good, but not superb. I’ve only lost once to any of the…
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BSW games: team Genial, Verflixxt, San Juan
I’ve been playing in BrettSpielWelt. It’s fun, particularly as I had to skip a game session yesterday because I had surprise surgery (tonsillectomy and uvulectomy; I’ve been waiting the operation for, like, nine months and then they book me with a week’s warning). Today’s highlight was a team game of Einfach Genial, first one for…