Gameblog

First impression of Dominion: Intrigue

2009-07-08T17:10:46Z

My brother came to visit and I got a chance to try the new Dominion: Intrigue, the stand-alone expansion for Dominion. We played through the three default setups listed in the rule book, which gave us a pretty good idea of the different cards in the expansion.

There's lots of new stuff in the expansion. There are for example victory point cards that actually do something, like offer actions and money. My brother used Great Hall (1 VP, +1 card, +1 action) to good effect and Harem (2 VP, +2 money) is another attractive card.

Many cards offer extra choices, like the Pawn, which gives you the choice of two from one money, one card, one action or one buy. There's actual decision-making in the cards, gasp! Some of the new attack cards I don't like that much, like Saboteur, but some are really nice (like Swindler: opponent destroys a card from top of the deck, you replace it with another card of the same price).

All in all, this is a great expansion. As a stand-alone game, not quite as elegant as the basic Dominion, but if you like the basic game, this is a must buy expansion, no doubt about it.

First impression of Fits, some Steam

2009-06-25T17:31:51Z

I got myself a copy of FITS, the Tetris-like game from Ravensburger. It's a fun little puzzler, where players must fill up the space with polyominoes - like Tetris bits, but this game also includes those with three or five squares. Each tile will appear exactly once in a random order and the rules are slightly stricter than in Tetris, since there's no moving sideways. Badly placed tile will block a lot.

There are four rounds, each with a different scoring rule. In each round, every empty spot is one negative point. In the first round, extra points are awarded for completed rows. In the second, for spaces with point values. In the third, there are positive spaces and very negative spaces. In the last one there are pairs of symbols: if both are showing, it's points, but if only one is out, it's negative.

It's very simple and plays relatively quickly. It's very multiplayer solitaire, the number of players doesn't matter a bit. The rule book includes a scoring scale for solo play. However, I don't find the solo game that interesting - the game is more fun with other people. It's not brilliant, but so far I like it. What's even better, Nooa liked it a lot and had great fun playing with the (sturdy plastic) tiles. That might be the reason to keep the game.

Yesterday I played a game of Steam. Again we had three players on the US board, but this time using Basic rules. Those are actually pretty good! Of course, they remove quite a bit of the tension, as the auction is gone and the money is a lot easier (no loan-taking in advance, just go down on the income track when - and only when - you need cash). The basic game is still the same, though: get a good engine, build flexible track, secure cubes for future deliveries.

So, in some ways the basic game makes things easier - new players will need to do less challenging forward planning - while keeping the game interesting. It's not a bad mix, and I wouldn't mind playing the Basic game again. My preference is still the Advanced game.

In our game experience paid off. I built a gorgeous network - a large ring of about 4-5 cities and 4-5 towns, then urbanized another city outside the circle and connected it several times to my ring and for the final touch built a route across the ring. In the end, I would've had six-link deliveries for two or three turns more. It was very pleasing to build. Final scores were about 79, 73, 59 or so, so it wasn't a slaughter or even a particularly obvious victory in the end, thanks to the split income and VP tracks. In Age of Steam, this would've been brutal.

Lautapeliopas opened!

2009-06-20T10:31:49Z

The new version of my board game web site is now open. Lautapelaaja.net is gone, welcome Lautapeliopas, more modern - some might say Web 2.0 - version. Just about everything from the old site is present on the new and I've also added the contents of my board game book, updated and refreshed. I've also recruited more people to write content and added some stuff to make participating more interesting - visitors can now rate games and comment everything, for example.

First impressions of Steam

2009-06-12T02:38:29Z

Steam is an interesting variant of Age of Steam. It won't make AoS obsolete, but it seems to stand quite well in comparison.

Things I like about Steam: the new income system where income can be changed into cash creates a whole new financial environment in the game. It's not quite as strict as in AoS, but interesting, definitely. New maps are always a new challenge. I've tried the US map, and the terrain there is quite challenging. It's good to have two different ways to play; I haven't tried the Basic game, but I think it's interesting.

Things I don't like: the graphic design is occasionally quite ugly. The game looks nice, but I prefer the clarity of Age of Steam. With three players the game seems a tad too loose.

So, overall a positive experience. I rated the game as 9 in Geek: not quite as good as Age of Steam (which I rate a full 10), but very good. They haven't ruined the solid foundation.

We played a three-player game yesterday and as I said, it feels a bit too loose. SInce they've made Urbanization and City Growth (used to be Production) better, there are more good actions. Of course, nothing beats Locomotive, but still. I think the first expansion should include a map for six players and a map and perhaps some changes to rules for three players.

In our game, I dominated the early game. By the time the other two were running two-link engines, I was already at five with a network that can use such an engine. At that point a first-time player expressed his frustration and I offered to swap places with him. That we did, and I proceeded to win the game from his hopeless position...

Well, not quite. We had to quit two turns early (having played for two hours at that point), at which point he won 45-35 or something like that. I'm not sure if I could've won, since while we all had six-link engines at that point and I had built a very good network, he had perhaps slightly more cubes to run. Hard to say what would've happened, I didn't count how many six-link runs I had left. With enough of those I might've won.

In any case it was an interesting experience and it made the game much more interesting, as I would've won the game quite easily without the swap, I think. Incidentally Petri didn't complain as much, but his position was much worse and I'm not sure if I could've done much if I had swapped with him.

It seems to me that it's slightly easier to succeed in Steam, as the financial system is more merciful. I was behind when we swapped, but I took plenty of money out, worked hard, paid back the debts and was fighting for the win by the end of our game, I'm not sure if it would've worked out that well in Age of Steam.

Miksi juuri Mäntsälä...?

2009-06-06T02:43:28Z

I asked for a review copy of Fits, but Amo provided me with a copy of Miksi juuri Mäntsälä...? instead. Well, that's an interesting game, too. It's the Finnish version of Ausgerechnet Buxtehude.

These games owe their existence to Anno Domini. In Anno Domini, players must put events in correct chronological order. These games add another dimension: cities and locations must be put in correct geographical order. There's a starting city and the rest will be played on the north-south or east-west axis related to that city.

So, let's say you start with Tampere. I then get a city, and must place it north, south, east or west of Tampere. If someone thinks I've made a mistake, they can turn over the cards and check. The player who's wrong pays a point to the one who's correct, and wrongly played cards are removed. Then it's next player, who gets a card and must place it on the board. Again, it must be placed relative to Tampere so that all cards form a cross on the board (not a matrix, that would be unnecessarily complicated), but of course the new card can be placed between two cards already in play.

This goes on for 15 cards, then there's a "Intermezzo" phase where everybody must guess how many cards are placed incorrectly. Guess right and you'll earn two points, otherwise the closest guess will get one point. The game is reset and new starting city is chosen. This is repeated three times and then it's game over.

It's all very simple and entertaining. This is a family game, so player without points isn't eliminated, they just don't pay (recipient gets the points from the pool in that case). The whole ordeal takes about 20 minutes or so. The game uses 45 cards each time and there are about 200 cards included in the game, so it's not likely to get repetitive soon.

We played the game last Thursday and while everybody wasn't quite as eager to play, I dare say we all had fun. The whole "I doubt you" element is of course familiar and definitely a good one, as it encourages bluffing and table talk. It also encourages interesting play, as often one axis is trickier than the other - everybody knows that Kolari is north from Helsinki, way north, but how about the east-west direction? It's far less obvious.

There are obvious problems with the game, as it's a fairly pure trivia game. If one player is worse than others, the player sitting on his left will triumph as she gets the first call on his mistakes. If one players is much better than the others, victory should be easy.

The first problem can be fixed, sort of, by replacing the rigid turn order with free order to doubt - the first to call it gets it - but large disparities in skill will cause the game to fail in any case. The game is certainly much better when everybody is equally skilled in Finnish geography (of course, if the players know different parts of Finland well - as is often the case in university circles where I play most of my games - that just makes the game better).

Miksi juuri Mäntsälä...? is an educational, yet entertaining game. It has an instant charm I like, the game is easy to play and fun. It is also very good choice to offer for casual gamers and I think the game is more captivating than many people might think - the game is more fun than it sounds like.

Age of Steam: Texas, Oklahoma & New Mexico

2009-05-19T05:51:12Z

Last Sunday's board game club was an excellent opportunity to get some Age of Steam action. I had heard a tip that Winsome's cow expansion Age of Steam: Texas, Oklahoma & New Mexico is good, so that's what we tried. I enjoyed it.

The expansion has cattle. In the first round, 32 cattle cubes are spread around the map. On the northern and eastern edges of the map, there are cattle demand cities that accept cattle cubes. If you build track across a hex where a cattle cube resides, the cube is put on the track and you can move it as any other good.

The game also has two special actions related to cattle. Ranching allows you to place up to two cattle cubes on the board, while Cattle Drive lets you move a cattle cube step or two from open land to your tracks so you can ship it to the slaughterhouse.

There's an abundance of cubes (all cattle demand cities start with four cubes), so Production has very little value. It's an easy, relaxed map and works well with new players. We had five players and there was enough room for all of us, a nice amount of competition really. Our game took two hours, which was pretty good for the amount of newbies around the board. At least it was faster than the game of Pillars of the Earth on the next table...

Thursday session: Gulf, Mobile & Ohio and Frantic Frankfurt

2009-04-26T09:56:10Z

Gulf, Mobile & Ohio was requested, and I was happy to provide the game, especially as I had finally got the new board made by Sampo Sikiö printed. So, now we had new board and new shares, the same gorgeous style as the other Winsome Games Sampo has remade.

I played with Petri, Hannu and Robert. Petri and Hannu were also playing in the first session in November (which, it seems, I've forgotten to blog about), Robert was a newbie. The final results tell something about this game: Robert was dead last with 12 points, while Petri had 21, Hannu 23 and I won with 25.

Funny thing, about the result... At one point during the game, I scored two points for ridiculously low price of four dollars, as everybody else missed an obvious scoring opportunity. Those points would've belonged to Petri, I think, which would've meant a three-way tie at 23 points. Cool.

Hannu was swimming with money, but as he had mostly purchased cheap common shares, he didn't have plenty of points. I got an early lead, which I was able to maintain. In the end, Hannu made a mistake. GEO started in Atlanta, I bought it for a large pile of money and scored a lot. Hannu could've bought it, but decided to save money for the next company. Unfortunately it wasn't nearly as good and Hannu wasn't able to catch me, not with all his money. Unlike Wabash and other similar games, GMO is only about points in the end, so you need to convert your money to points, while controlling cash flow to ensure future competitiveness. I had excellent efficiency in converting dollars to points, while Hannu had great cash flow but not enough points.

This time we had a clue and the game was a lot more meaningful than the last time. Robert lost badly, which kind of proves the point that you need that one game under your belt to grok this game. I like this one, another good railroad game from Winsome.

After GMO, we only had time for a short game. So, we played Frantic Frankfurt. Robert didn't want to play Flix Mix, because he wanted to spare his brains, but agreed to join Frantic Frankfurt - which is of course at least four time as taxing. Classy move.

Frantic Frankfurt is a speed game, where players try to play their cards on common piles. There are only two rules. Cards have colours and numbers. You can either put a larger card over a smaller card of different colour, or you can put a smaller odd card over a larger even card of same colour.

Simple, isn't it? Well, actually it's everything but, especially as you have to play as fast as possible. I completely screwed up the first round. Which leads us to the main problem with the game: noticing mistakes -- not to mention correcting them -- is really, really hard.

If you don't mind that and play with people who aren't likely to cheat, Frantic Frankfurt is a fun challenge. I did really bad in the beginning, but then caught on and eventually won the game. Not a bad experience at all, quite an adrenaline rush actually.

Thursday session: Greentown, Corner Lot

2009-04-17T11:04:32Z

During yesterday's game session, I was able to play the two games I most wanted. First we played Greentown, a rather excellent route-building game. Players develop the board to make the most beneficial tourist routes. Route cards specify the length of the route and the mandatory and optional locations to visit. Visiting places makes you money, but if you visit opponent's location, they get the money.

So, you want to both keep your own routes private while placing your buildings so that your opponents must use them on their routes. Rather delightful. The route-building is taken from 18xx games. You can either build new tiles or replace old ones to change the routes.

This is a very analytical game, where you can really get stuck on planning those routes. We played 21 turns in almost 60 minutes, so on average we took almost three minutes per turn. Kind of slow, and the players weren't that slow. I would avoid the game like plague with very AP prone players. With swift enough players, Greentown is excellent.

The other game we played was also an 18xx derivative, JC Lawrence's prototype Corner Lot, which is based on the private company auction phase of 18xx, made into a full game.

It's all about auctions and set collecting, and a rather clever game, too. I liked it, but I played it with the wrong people, as just about everybody else hated it... Too much calculating, wrong kind of calculating and too much information, too. I liked it, however, it's an interesting challenge and requires some thinking, as money soon becomes scarce and you have to both collect good cards for yourself and prevent opponents from making too good sets.

If you're interested, check out the short rules (a PDF file) and playtest kits are also available. The game is just 45 cards and poker chips, so it's easy to assemble and a fairly complete game.

Thursday session: Wabash Cannonball and Dolmengötter

2009-03-27T13:10:45Z

Yesterday's session started with an interesting game of Wabash Cannonball. We only had three players, so it was a different game to start with.

I managed to lose the game on the first round. I got shares of PRR and C&O (red and yellow), probably the two weakest choices, while Sami got NYC and B&O. Hannu was left without shares. I obviously made an empty capitalization, but Sami chose to expand. Hannu bought a share with his superior finances, then I did another empty capitalization to stop him from getting two shares.

Here was my mistake: I persuaded Hannu to buy a share from Sami's company. In the hindsight, I should've had him buy one of mine. The rest of the game was pure misery, less said about it the better. Still, Wabash Cannonball is a great game, can't help it.

Hannu won, 142-120-84. Sami was second and probably handed Hannu the victory by driving B&O to Chicago, giving Hannu free option to Wabash Cannonball. I could've bought it, but Hannu had a turn before me, so Hannu would've diluted the company immediately, so I couldn't afford to bid too much. Hannu got it and made a nice profit. Of course, Sami had only played once before and that's advanced strategy.

We had time for something short, so we played two games of Die Dolmengötter. My rating of 10 is so correct for this game, it's definitely one of the very best. Of course I won both matches, the second one was particularly sweet as I beat Hannu with the tie-breaker. Sweet. This is an amazingly good game.

Thursday games: Steel Driver

2009-03-20T15:49:00Z

An opportunity presented itself... We decided to put Nooa in temporary day care so Johanna could get a break and I could get some board game time. There's a nice private day care center next to the university where we play, you can drop your kids there for an hour or few. That worked out well, Nooa had fun, and I was able to play games for two hours.

I presented a list of options and Hannu and Petri chose Steel Driver, since they hadn't played it before. I was curious to try the game with three.

Turns out three isn't the optimal player count for this game. The auction loses some tension, as it's obvious that each player will buy two shares each turn. I can't see many possibilities to upset that balance, unless someone spends a lot to buy a single share or a company becomes too weak to buy. I really liked trying to figure out how to gain an advantage in shares, that was a fun part of the five-player game.

In the end, it was very balanced. I had 520 cash, Petri had 620 and Hannu had 640. Our stock portfolios were even more even: me and Petri had 1160, Hannu had 1130. So, I lost with 1680, Hannu was second with 1770 and Petri won with 1780 - and during the game I once told Petri not to fuss about a single build, as whether he gained $20 or $30 doesn't really matter in the end...

Interested in new games

2009-03-11T06:39:23Z

I've been living in a gaming void... Excluding the play-by-web games, the Bezique match is the only game I've played since Anni was born. It's still a bit hectic to go out and play, but it doesn't stop me from thinking about games.

I've found Günter Cornett's Greentown and I'm seriously thinking about buying it. The game is generally described as the track-building aspect of 18xx games and nothing else - sounds pretty sweet. The BGG reception is not very good, but also may be a slightly confused. I don't know, but the game does sound fascinating.

I'm also thinking about buying Tzaar to complete my Gipf collection (I still don't have and will not have Pünct, but that doesn't count). I think the Gipf brand is good, because I'm not very keen on abstract games in general, but Gipf games manage to capture my attention and get me interested.

Funny thing - as something like Kamisado just didn't attract me at all, even though I think it has similar depth as the Gipf games have. Part of it is the style, as I really like the black-and-white aesthetics of Gipf and find the colourful mess of Kamisado disgusting, but still... part of it must be the successfull Gipf brand.

Then there's the question of Canal Mania - I have the first edition, I like to play it and now I'm wondering if I should buy the second edition or not. Is the second edition essentially better than the first? I think I like the concept of junction contracts and the possibilities they allow, but is that worth the money switching editions costs? If I can sell the first edition for a good price, then buying the second would be easy, but... I don't know. Any suggestions?

Hobby Games: The 100 Best

2009-03-01T17:27:31Z

I'm a tad late with this, I know, but I just finished reading Hobby Games: The 100 Best, which I liked a lot. It's a collection of hundred short essays on games.

The authors are a variety of games industry notables: designers, publishers, authors and so on. There's Steve Jackson (both of them, actually), Martin Wallace, Tom Wham, Warren Spector, Richard Garfield, R.A. Salvatore, Larry Harris, Gary Gygax and so on. The contributors are mostly from US or UK, with few exceptions, but even more dominantly they're male: I counted just a single woman among the hundred contributors.

The list of games is interesting. It's all hobby games, which means board games, collectible card games, role-playing games, war games and miniature games. No video games, classic board games or mass-market board games, that is. There aren't that many euro games, but plenty of board games in general.

The contributors had a fairly free choice of what to cover, as long as it was something they really loved. That's an interesting way to compile a list of 100 best games, and a successful, too. I think the list is very good and particularly for the euro games has all the necessary games and perhaps one or two interesting surprises.

Of course, discussing games that didn't made the cut or shouldn't have made the cut is an interesting pastime in itself - I think the list is missing either 1829 or (more likely) 1830.

I would've probably chosen Age of Steam myself, that's another game that could've been on the list. The game does have a pretty intense following, seven years after the initial release.

All in all, this is a wonderful book and a good read for any gamer. All sorts of single-genre gamers, particularly video gamers, would do well to read this book and learn about the world of games there is. Many of the essays pass the most important test for something like this: they really make you want to play the game they describe. That's what really makes a good game essay in my books.

Bezique

2009-02-19T18:05:42Z

Breaking the silence... Yesterday I had my first game session since the birth of our #2, Anni. Olli came to visit in the evening for hour or so. I recently bought a copy of David Parlett's The Penguin Book of Card Games. The new 2008 edition is a really great book, the best card game book there is in my opinion. Highly recommended!

Anyway, so I wanted to play a traditional card game and Olli shared that wish, so we tried Bezique, a classic two-hander from the 19th century. It was fashionable during the 20th century, too, and Winston Churchill apparently loved the six-pack version. We played two games of the basic two-pack Bezique.

It's a trick-taking game, where trick-taking is almost pointless. However, when you win a trick, you can declare a meld from your hand. Melds start with lowly marriages, then there are pretty nice four jacks, queens, kings and aces, the really hot trump sequence and the best, the double bezique worth 500 points when 1000 wins the whole game.

There's plenty of luck involved, as you get half of the pack and if your half doesn't contain the cards required for the double bezique, it's tough luck. There are some interesting decisions to make, but many of those depend on data you don't have (ie. what's coming in the pack), so in the end they are fairly random - but nevertheless they are fun to make.

That's my verdict: Bezique is fun. It was a good way to spend an hour (about 30 minutes for the first game, 40 minutes for the second) and captivating enough. There's enough depth to make things interesting. The combination of trick-taking and melding is interesting, though the game definitely feels more like rummy than trick-taking.

So, we played two games, and I lost both. The first one was quite an obvious one, as Olli got a double bezique for 500 points in the first hand and after that I was basically struggling to cross the Rubicon (get 500 points) before he got to 1000. I did, scoring 520 points in the end. Close! The second one was much closer and we didn't finish in three deals, like the first. It took a part of the fourth deal before Olli could secure his victory. I was close, though, missing just one card from a trump sequence that would've taken me over the 1000 point line.

I think I would like to try other variations, at least the four-pack Rubicon Bezique (and perhaps Fildinski or Polish Bezique, where melds are not made from hand cards but from cards won in tricks, which would emphasize the trick-taking aspect of it all). And, of course, try some Pinochle, especially the three-player auction variety.

I also invested in some proper playing-cards and bought four packs of Copag cards. These plastic cards are really well-liked and are indeed a pleasure to handle. They should last for ages without any damage and if they get dirty, they can be washed. Nice. I just don't like the style of the cards too much, the font used is quite heavy and block-like, I'd prefer something more elegant... Well, the quest for perfect cards goes on.

Baby #2 is out!

2009-01-17T19:20:51Z

The most-anticipated release of the year is now out! Baby number two turned out to be a girl (ok, so we knew it in advance, but didn't tell anybody!) and is doing fine. Johanna is also doing fine, much better than after the first time. This one was much quicker, so quick I almost missed it... But fortunately just almost.

I'll have to revisit this entry with the proper tag once we decide to go public with the name, that's another thing I know and you don't...

Board game club: Steel Driver, Torres

2009-01-11T18:42:49Z

I had a great time at today's board game club (yeah, the baby's still waiting for a nice day to be born -- perhaps next week?). I started with quick five-player game of Formissimo, which is a simple speed test pattern recognition puzzle.

Cards have images with different attributes. 30 cards are laid on the table and every player gets one. Then you just have to find a card with a picture that has at most one attribute different from the card you have. Continue finding new cards until you can't, then say stop. Everybody who hasn't made a mistake scores one point per card.

It's simple and really fast. A round can be over in seconds and a whole game is done in five minutes or so. With five players, it was perhaps too fast. The task is fairly simple, though it's also fairly easy to make mistakes. This won't replace Flix Mix or Set, but I'll play this again -- but preferably with just three or four players.

My Milan-Spiele order arrived last Friday after just two months of waiting. The delivery itself was very swift, as the parcel was posted on Monday. We just had to wait for Duck Dealer... Obviously worth the wait. That game seems interesting. I also got Formissimo and Steel Driver in that order, so it was time to get Steel Driver on the table again.

Last time I played Steel Driver was in Helcon. Again we had five players. The game is quite easy to teach, which is nice. We also played fast, finishing the game in just 60 minutes.

It was a good game, with players using interesting tactics. One of the players figured out that since he doesn't know much about the end game works except that it's huge, he tries to make as much money (points) during the game as possible. He pretty much always paid all his money to buy the share he wanted and then developed the railroads a lot.

In the end he was second to last, so it didn't quite work out, but I think there's some potential in that strategy. It's just that his shares weren't good enough in the end. I did well and bought a total of eight shares (the practical maximum in five-player games is ten). That included about four really good shares, which was enough to secure my victory.

I like Steel Driver. It's a refreshing change from Wabash & Co that you use a fixed income of cubes to bid and the shares produce different currency, that's what makes Steel Driver interesting and worth playing.

According to my stats, the last time I played Torres was in August 2002. Six and half years ago, that is. The game has lingered in my mind since and I often thought about buying it. I think somebody thought about publishing it in Finnish, which made me hopeful, but that didn't happen. Finally I got the game in a math trade, I traded Chinatown for it. I even got the old version, I prefer the Cimatoribus art of that version.

We had four players in our game, with fairly little experience. So, of course we had all the action cards available for everybody. That way nobody has to remember what the decks contain. To me, that seems like the best way to play the game anyway, though I could try the version where everybody has a personal deck and the cards are drawn -- now it seemed like people had few action points too much at times.

It was a fun game. I was slightly annoyed by the lack of interesting building options in the end -- why do anything less valuable when I could simply expand my main castle with two tower blocks for eight points? Everybody thought I would win, and I did have a great castle 11 blocks wide -- but I was on the fifth floor and Riku and Toni were on the fourth floor, so that was just 11 points for me. In the other hand, those guys got 51 and 42 points from the king's castle, while I got just 18 points -- a loss of 33 and 24 points for me.

That was enough, I didn't win but I did place second. In what I understand is typical for Torres, the final scores were 238, 236, 235 and 193 -- so the difference between 1st and 3rd is just over 1% of the total score. Can't feel too bad about a third place like that.

Hopefully I'll get to play Torres again before 2015...