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Out of Mine!
Out of Mine! is a tile-laying game from HUCH! & Friends. I did the Finnish translation and got a free copy because of that. The game: Out of Mine! by Martin Nedergaard Andersen, published by HUCH! & Friends in 2014. Elevator pitch: A tile-laying game like Ubongo where you must fill your board with tiles as fast as possible. What’s in the…
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Ubongo Duel first impressions
My brother was visiting, so of course I got him to play something with me. Ubongo Duel was an excellent choice, as I hadn’t played it before. Always a good idea to shorten the list of “owned, not played”. My brother had never played any Ubongo, but got the gist of it very quickly. It…
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First look at Ubongo Extrem
I picked up Ubongo Extrem from the post office today. It’s rather neat! The basic idea remains, but the puzzles are now much harder! The tiles are made of small hexagons, three to five per tile on most tiles. Three-tile puzzles are still fairly simple, but the four-tile puzzles are now downright fiendish. Even the…
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Thursday session: Tarot, Ubongo
Yesterday’s session started with a quick round of Larry Levy’s WYSIWYG. It’s an advanced version of German Whist, a trick-taking game for two players. Players bid for the right to become a declarer and choose trumps. In the first phase players collect new cards to fill their hands with (two cards are shown, winner of…
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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…
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Finnish Game of the Year winners 2007
Last year was a disaster, now things look much better! The Finnish Adult Game of the Year for 2007 is Thurn und Taxis, the Finnish Family Game of the Year is Ubongo and the Finnish Kids Game of the Year is Piikkisiili. The list of finalists was very impressive, too, but I think they chose…
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First Thursday session: Ubongo Mini, cards
I’ve started a new weekly game night. My wife wants me to see other people than her and Nooa, basically. That’s perfectly fine with me! Our first night had a good turnout of seven people, so we got two games going. The other table played Web of Power, Geschenkt and Phoenicia, while our table played…
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Crystal Code
Review of Crystal Code in Finnish. Crystal Code is designed by Grzegorz Rejchtman, the designer of Ubongo. The two games are similar: in both games, players race against time and each other to solve pattern recognition problems for rewards. What’s most important, both games manage to avoid the most common pitfall of speed games. Often…
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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…
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Game weekend at Tommy’s, day one
We’re having another game weekend at Tommy’s. Tommy prepared for the weekend by buying some of the more interesting Nürnburg games, so we’ve had plenty of interesting games to try. Friday was an effective evening of games, from 18:30 to 1:30, with some interference from sauna and eating. Yesterday’s line-up was me, Tommy and Ari…