Gameblog

Tag: Age of Steam

  • Sense of achievement

    I was writing about Cuba on the Finnish Board Game Society forums after my latest experience with the game and I think my friend Tommy hit the nail on the head on what I don’t like about the game. It’s the lack of snowballing. Valerie Putnam wrote about Snowballs and Princess Brides on Boardgame News…

  • Thursday session: Set, Age of Steam

    For some reason I hadn’t played Set before. After all, as a pattern recognition game it’s right up my alley. I had tried it in some Helcon or other, but there was a mess and nobody knew how to play and it just fizzled. Now I had better luck, as Olli introduced us to the…

  • Year metric

    I’ve been a fan of Matthew Gray’s month metric. Now I happened unto his Every year 2007 update, focusing on the year metric. I haven’t been bothering with that, believing I wouldn’t have many high-scoring games. Well, I thought, why not — it’s a simple thing to add to my game stats package. I was…

  • Gaming year 2007

    Another year of games is soon over. Gaming year 2006 was good, but I think this one was even better! At least in quality, not necessarily in quantity… Good new games (2006-2007 games) Agricola — This year brought two very good games, worthy of top-10 or even top-5 spot on my personal ratings. Agricola is…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Austrian rails

    Stefu made a surprise visit. He charmed Nooa, we talked about kids a lot (he’s got a daughter himself) and in the end played some games as well. Stefu suggested something heavier and we ended up playing Age of Steam on John Bohrer’s Austria map. It’s a strange map, very small and constricted. There are…

  • New blogs

    There’s a new Age of Steam blog, run by Alban Viard and Michael Webb. The initial entries are mostly about the designs of their expansions, which is always interesting. There’s an RSS feed, too. I’ve started a new blog myself: Mikko reads has short book reviews in English.

  • Railroads in Scotland (with insects)

    I met Ilari today for games. Finally I was able to get Age of Steam Scotland — the free print-and-play two-player expansion — on table. Age of Steam in general doesn’t seem like a brilliant two-player game, but with a good map, it turned out be a rather pleasant experience. The thing about the Scotland…

  • Age of Steam in Northern California

    We played a game of Northern Californian Age of Steam today. It’s a harsh map. You can notice it on the first round, when you survey the map for possible starting locations and find — nothing. There’s a distinct lack of good starting positions. San Jose is of course tempting — it’s a huge three-hex…