Gameblog

Tag: Reiner Knizia

  • Helcon 2008 review, part 3

    Let’s see what I didn’t cover in part 1 or part 2… see also part 4. GemBlo Pyramid. This dice-pyramid game is apparently good, if played with the expert rules. Well, we couldn’t figure them out, so we tried the basic game. That one isn’t good, since making the pyramids isn’t particularly interesting and the…

  • 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…

  • Working on the book

    Almost two weeks of work done on the book, half days basically (I’m working in the mornings and during the day when the baby sleeps, few hours a day most days) and I’ve already covered over 80 games (these are not full-fledged reviews, but fairly short descriptions in most cases, page or so). The manuscript…

  • Knizia games: Blue Moon City, Tower of Babel, Through the Desert

    I met Gargoyle and Laura for a session of Knizia games, as it turned out. We started the games with Blue Moon City, which turned out to be quite a sweet game. 40 minutes of fairly intense hand management stuff, with room for clever moves. We played twice in a row, and in the second…

  • Through the Desert

    New review up on the Finnish site: Through the Desert. Through the Desert is in Reiner Knizia’s top ten by any measure. The pastel camel game must be one of his best-recognised games and according to the BoardGameGeek ranking, the game is the seventh best Knizia title. That’s a well-deserved ranking, if you ask me.…

  • My favourite designers

    Larry Levy had a column in Boardgame News called Rating the designers. He wrote about two different approaches to rating the designers, Knizia approach (counting a sum-based score from ratings given to designer’s games) and Seyfarth approach (counting an average). First approach favours someone like Knizia, who has a wide repertoire of games with varying…

  • Friday, day three: Games, games, games

    Here’s what happened yesterday: Today was the day! I went downstairs to use the hotel laptop to send my reports, which I did, and then headed back to the room. I glanced towards the dining room, and who did I see? Reiner Knizia, of course, and he was just leaving. As he wasn’t eating, I…

  • Thursday, day two: Shopping for games

    The morning started off quite well. We were having breakfast, when I suddenly noticed a familiar-looking gentleman in a salmon-coloured shirt: herr Knizia! I wasn’t quite brave enough to go talk to him, but maybe I’ll ask for his signature tomorrow, as I now have a game to ask it to. It would be neat…

  • Einfach Genial

    Another review I wrote: Einfach Genial aka Ingenious aka Mensa Connections. Einfach Genial is a clever game by master Knizia. It’s an abstract game, a rare thing from Knizia whose games are often fairly thinly themed, but still have at least some theme. Some have questioned if Einfach Genial would’ve won the Spiel des Jahres…

  • Amun-Re

    I wrote a review of Amun-Re. It was kind of a request, really — I implemented a search box on my game review site and someone had searched for it. Amun-Re kind of puzzles me. I find it’s mechanics interesting and while the Egyptian theme is a bit boring, it is woven well with the…