Gameblog http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/ Mikko Saari on board games. en Copyright 2008 Thu, 08 May 2008 20:21:30 +0200 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Thursday session: Thief of Baghdad, Strohmann-Tarock Arkadia was moving slowly, so Hannu suggested playing Strohmann-Tarock on the side. Suits me! There's a very good page on Strohmandeln, with rules and strategy. It's a two-player Tarock variant, where players have 15-card hands and three four-card draw piles. The top cards are visible and part of player's hand. Very clever, and it works well. Part of your hand is a mystery, but you see part of opponent's hand and can use that information. Suit cards are much more important than in most Tarot games. We played three rounds. Hannu won the first as declarer, I got the second and in the third one, Hannu declared and made Uhu (won second-to-last trick with trump 2), but I got the game, so I won 7-4. It was fun, and Hannu enjoyed it as well. I'm fairly sure we'll get the cards out in a second next time we're playing something with just the two of us... Thief of Baghdad box panorama Next up was Thief of Baghdad. Players move their thieves between palaces to collect treasure chests. To get in, you must have your own bribed guard in front of the palace and an opponent's guard (to take the blame for the thieves, of course!). There's some pretty nice maneuvering, but also plenty of luck with the cards - getting stuck with bad cards can hurt you a lot. Occasionally the game was fun, when you were able to pull off some neat move. Most of the time it wasn't very interesting, rather boring really. The game looks pretty cool, but it is one of those rather spiritless euro games, with nifty mechanics but very little attraction otherwise. I would play again, but the situation would have to be fairly desperate... We played twice, with the new Dutch guy Pieter winning both games. The first one was a massacre, but the second was good and exciting, with everybody having three chests when you need four to win. That was nice. Die Dolmengötter box We finished off the evening with two games of Die Dolmengötter. We played with three and four players, and after these games I'd say four is better. The game is based on player interaction and providing incentives to other players and I feel it loses something when there are just three players. That doesn't mean five would be even better - I haven't tried it, but the game is short that with five it would probably be way too short. In any case, I love the game, it's a gem. ]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/05/thursday_session_thief_of_bagh.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/05/thursday_session_thief_of_bagh.html Session reports Die Dolmengötter Strohmann-Tarock Tarot Thief of Baghdad Thu, 08 May 2008 20:21:30 +0200 Russian Preference Russian Ace of Diamonds My mother and Ismo were visiting to see Nooa. Well, Nooa didn't want to sleep before they arrived and we had to put him to bed while they were here, so we entertained ourselves with games while Nooa was napping. I got to clear one game from my "I need to play this list", that is Russian Preference. I even had Russian cards to play it with. Preference is a three-player card game where one player is a declarer and the other two play against him. The defenders also have a trick quota to make. In most variations of the game the declarer's quota is six tricks (out of ten) and the declarer only chooses the trumps, but in Russian Preference the number of tricks to make is a part of the bidding. If declarer bids more than six tricks, the quote for the defenders is smaller. That's simple enough. Everybody who has ever played a trick-taking game with bidding will understand Russian Preference right away, and even if bidding is a strange concept, it still is fairly easy. The scoring is slightly complicated, though: in three-player game every player has four different scores. Pulja (bullet) points are scored for making declared games, heap points are scored when player fails to make a contract (or a defender's quota) and whist points are scored when defending. Whist points are counted separately against both opponents. So, if you make a contract, you score 2-10 pulja points depending on the contract. Number of tricks made doesn't matter once you make the limit, so one needs to choose a high enough contract to ensure the maximum number of points. If you fail, you gain the same number of heap points for each missing trick. That's very painful, if you miss more than one trick in a valuable contract. Russian Jack of Hearts If the defenders make their trick quota, they get whist points against the declarer, once again the same amount as the declarer would get pulja points for each trick made. If declarer is missing tricks, the defenders get more points for those. If defenders fail, they too score heap points - but only the defender who made less tricks. The defenders don't have to play - they can pass. If both pass, the declarer wins automatically. If one passes, the other can either play alone against the declarer or request the other player to play too. In that case the forced player has no risk, he or she won't get any heap points if they fail - but no whist points either, if there's a success. The game is over when everybody has ten pulja points. That's the maximum one can have. If the points flow over, the extra points are given to the player with the second most pulja points. In exchange, the giver gets ten whist points against that player for each pulja point given. This is a nice mechanism, as it makes sure the game actually ends, even when someone can't play. The game can be as short as three deals (if each deal is bid to ten and made), but if the players can't make contracts, the game can take longer. In practise our game took something between 60 and 90 minutes. In the end the points are counted. Pulja points don't count, because everybody has ten anyway. Heap points are converted to whist points. They're each worth ten whist points (as are pulja points). If someone has lots of heap points, everybody else will get plenty of whist points against him, that's the basic idea. Russian Queen of Spades Then you just compare the whist points. In our game Ismo had 209 whist points against me, while I had 68 whist points against him. The difference is 141, so Ismo scored 141 whist points while I lost the same amount. This is done for each pair of players and finally the scores are summed. It's a complicated process, but once you get the hang of it, it's not that hard, and it works pretty well. In our game Ismo dominated, he made many contracts, one at nine tricks, even. Of the 30 pulja points in the game, I think he made about 25. This meant, of course, plenty of whist points. Unfortunately I experiented with collecting heap points: I made a whopping 34 them, giving both my mother and Ismo 93 whist points against me in the end. My mother didn't make any contracts, but she didn't fail many, either. So, in the end, Ismo scored 193 points, my mother got 87 and I paid it all by scoring -280. I think I need some practise... But I liked the game. It's simple, challenging and fun. It's no Skat, but then again, it's much easier to learn and enjoy. There's enough challenge in the bidding and the play to keep things interesting. (The pictures for this entry are from Piatnik's Great Russia Standard Playing Cards pack, catalog number 1133. Pretty standard pack, just with Russian indices.)]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/05/russian_preference.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/05/russian_preference.html Session reports Preference Skat Sat, 03 May 2008 15:26:54 +0200 Playing-card review 2: Modiano Tarocco Siciliano, Noblet Tarot de Marseille Modiano Tarocco Siciliano back Modiano Tarocco Siciliano. The first thing one notices is the small size. The cards are as wide as typical Bridge cards, but even shorter. Thus, they are a lot smaller than Tarot cards usually are. The pack has just 64 cards. The suits (Italian symbols, but the card design bears signs of the Portuguese pattern - according to Dummett and McLeod this pack is the sole remaining representative of the Portuguese pattern in Europe) have cards 5-10 and the four court cards with coins having also 4 and ace. The jacks are female. Pip cards have indexes, while court cards are fairly easy to tell apart. There are numbered trumps from 1-20 and two unnumbered trumps, Miseria and Fool. Miseria depicts a beggar with the text Miseria on top. The trumps have fairly typical pictures, but in unusual order and with some curiosities. For some reason I found the Hanged Man card rather disturbing: usually he is hanged from the foot, but in this pack he's hanged from his neck with his back turned to the watcher. The Sun shines over a fight, too - the art is beautiful, but rather strange at times. There's apparently some remains from Minchiate influences as well. For most people this pack will be a curiosity only. There are several games known from Sicily, where it seems they play a different kind of Tarot in the different villages. Dummett and McLeod document several games in their book (A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack), but none of those descriptions are available on Pagat. I'm going to make some effort to try at least one of the games, the pack is curious enough to guarantee that, but for most people that's not an option. So, while the pack is perfectly functional for playing - the cards are clear enough, the material good and so on - for most people the value of this pack is in the art. I would recommend the pack for that use as well, as the cards are beautiful and the trumps are curious and fairly unusual. Also, if you want a pack of Tarocco Sicialiano cards, this is your only option, nobody else makes these cards anymore.
Modiano Tarocco Siciliano 10 of coins Modiano Tarocco Siciliano Hanged man Modiano Tarocco Siciliano Miseria

Jean Noblet Tarot back Jean Noblet Tarot de Marseille. Tarot of Marseilles is one of the major styles in Tarot cards, and the source where most occult Tarot traditions draw from. The pack designed by Jean Noblet in 1650 is a fine example of the style. There is one remaining copy of the pack in Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Fortunately it is nearly complete, missing only few pip cards from the swords. This reproduction by Jean-Claude Fornoy is based on the original cards, faithful to the original line drawings and with new, bright colours. Fornoy has done well. The cards are beautiful, real works of art. The trumps are particularly pretty. They are Fornoy's favourite, as well. From his boutique, you can buy either a full 78-card pack or just 22 trumps, hand-coloured. I have the full pack, but I believe the hand-coloured trumps are quite a wonderful piece of work, as even the full pack is very beautiful. I wouldn't recommend these cards for playing the game. The pip cards are somewhat confusing, as is usual with the older designs. There are small indices in the cards and the court cards have names on them, so it's not impossible to use this pack for games - after all, that was the original purpose why it was made in the first place. A bigger problem is the sharp corners of the cards and even though the material seems sturdy, I have a feeling the cards might get scuffed fairly easily and frankly, this is a pack I'd rather keep in fine shape and enjoy as a piece of art, not as an object in use. Included with the pack is a small leaflet with few pages of information on Tarot and Jean Noblet and 60 pages of fairly pointless psychobabble. Those into card-reading might find that interesting; I got nothing out of it. I would've preferred to have more historical information, as that is always interesting.
Jean Noblet Tarot queen of cups Jean Noblet Tarot Trump 1 Jean Noblet Tarot Trump 13
(My scanner isn't doing justice to these cards; the colours are much better on the actual cards.)]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/05/playingcard_review_2_modiano_t.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/05/playingcard_review_2_modiano_t.html Playing-card reviews playing cards Tarot Fri, 02 May 2008 20:25:00 +0200 Playing-card review 1: Piatnik 1935, Carta Mundi Versailles Piatnik Nr. 1935 card back Piatnik Tarock 54 Blatt Nr. 1935. This is an Austrian-style 54-card Tarock pack. That is, 22 trumps and 32 other cards. As usual, there are king, queen, knight and jack in each suit and 7-10 in black suits and 1-4 in red suits. Cards have no indices, but the court cards are easy to tell from each other and with pip cards, the lack of indices is only problem for the black cards. In most games the pip cards are almost completely insignificant, so it often makes no difference whatsoever whether you hold eight or nine of clubs. The trumps have Roman numerals. To me this seems more authentic for some reason than just numbers. The pictures show vaguely Eastern European countryside life. The cards are printed well and pictures have beautiful colours. The cards are slightly oversized compared to regular Bridge or Poker cards and of typical Piatnik quality. This pack is identical to pack number 1936 except for the backs. 1936 has a subtle line pattern, this has baroque ornaments in blue and white. 1936 is my current favourite pack for 54 card games, and for all practical reasons 1935 is just as good.
Piatnik Nr. 1935 pip card Piatnik Nr. 1935 king of spades Piatnik Nr. 1935 trump 2

Carta Mundi Versailles Tarot card back Carta Mundi Jeu de Tarot - 78 Cartes. This pack has no identification number or other details, but the back pattern is called Versailles so if you search for that, you should be able to find a whole family of backs with the same design. The pattern is blue and gold floral design, but apparently there is also a red and gold variation available. I'm not sure if there's a red and gold tarot pack, though. In any case, this is a full 78 card pack, that is 22 trumps and 56 cards otherwise. All cards bear indices in four corners; court cards have French indices (R, D, C and V). The trumps have what is apparently a French standard pictures, but here the pictures look better than in the other French tarot pack I have. The colours are better. The trumps are numbered with Arabic numerals. Included with the pack are the rules and a scoring card for French Tarot. The card quality is excellent. This is a very good pack for playing almost any Tarot game and my standard suggestion to people who wish to buy exactly one Tarot pack and thus want maximum versatility.
Carta Mundi Versailles Tarot trump 21 Carta Mundi Versailles Tarot trump 1 Carta Mundi Versailles Tarot King of Hearts
]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/playingcard_review_episode_1.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/playingcard_review_episode_1.html Playing-card reviews playing cards Tarot Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:43:12 +0200 Thursday session: Eketorp Eketorp box After a quick round of Coloretto we bit into Eketorp. Whether to play this or not was a bit of a question, since from reading the rules I knew I would not enjoy the game. However, I decided there is some value having played the game - at least I can now write a review of it, since it's coming out in Finnish. The reason why I don't like the game lies in the main mechanics: double-guessing and blind bidding. That's it. First players allocate their viking warriors on different fields. If you're lucky and choose fields nobody else is taking, you get good rewards. If you fail to do that, you'll have to fight and win to get anything. Fighting is done by playing battle cards with values from 1 to 6: bigger card wins, then players exchange cards. This is repeated for ten rounds. It's a long session of rather tedious repetition. The box says 45-60 minutes, our game took 90 minutes. I could tolerate a game like this for 30 minutes. It'll take some convincing to get me play this one again. It's not a bad game if you like this sort of thing: one person in our game enjoyed it a lot. Die Dolmengötter box After Eketorp we played one quick round of Die Dolmengötter, this time with all newbies except me. The Ollis offered tough opposition: the top three had scores of 73, 72 and 70. Tapani took the fourth place 20 points behind... Dolmengötter gets better every time. This time I made some blunders, didn't play my druids well, but managed to survive anyhow. I did one teleport jump without leaving a stone, that was a critical move which ensured my win even though I had to pay a point there. Interesting, interesting... ]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/thursday_session_eketorp.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/thursday_session_eketorp.html Session reports Die Dolmengötter Eketorp Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:05:36 +0200 Game timer Zumba Gametimer was online. Check it out, if you need a multi-player timer. ]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/game_timer.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/game_timer.html Outside world Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:10:07 +0200 A word on video games - Mario Kart Wii rocks! Mario Kart Wii - it's one of my favourite series, I've enjoyed it on both GameCube and particularly on DS. The Wii version is the best, however, for several reasons. Wii has been on our "to buy" list since it came out, it was obvious we would buy it at some point. It's the only console I'm at all interested in. PS3 and Xbox 360 have simply nothing at all to offer me, yet I've been quite intrigued by Wii. I don't care about flashy graphics or most games, I want clever gameplay and few choice hits I'm going to play a lot. Mario Kart Wii fits the bill, and I expect Wii Sports (bowling in particular but also tennis) to entertain me for quite a while as well. Mario Kart Wii is a very good game. The gimmick is the Wheel, where you insert the Wii remote and then go driving. It's funny, it'll change your driving style a bit, but it works. It takes some getting used to, but I like it. It's not a cheap gimmick, but actually a rather pleasant way of driving. There's some other new stuff as well. There are now bikes as well: 100 cc class is at first bikes only and 150 cc is bikes or karts. A local game critic didn't like the bikes, but I love them - right now if I have a choice, I'm riding a bike. They just work very well with my driving style. The new tracks are fun, there are several rather clever and funny tracks in the new set and the recycled set is well chosen. Many favourites are back, with some new twists. The new tracks remind me of F-Zero GX at several places... There's plenty of speed and some pretty tough challenges. The latest version of Rainbow Road is just fiendish. There's a ton of chaos in the game, it's much worse than before if you don't like it. There's 12 karts or bikes in each race and some new and nasty objects (POW blocks and the thunderclouds in particular), so there's trouble ahead! Winning races is hard at 150 cc, because someone's blasting you with shells or something all the time. Skip this game if you can't stand the chaos or are easily frustrated... What really works is the online play. I tried online matches with DS, but that wasn't very good. There's little point in running four race competitions when your opponents are going to drop out as soon as they figure out you're better. Here it's just one race at a time, with up to 12 players. Players have rankings, and if you suck, you don't have to win to improve your rating (right now, I think if I only could make it fifth or so, I would improve my rating in most cases). That makes sure everybody has motivation to do their best all the time. One feature I really like is ghost races. You can get a ghost run that's slightly better than your current record and try to beat that. That gives the game so much extra mileage. I used to do something similar with Tommy in F-Zero GX: we had an online leaderboard where we recorded our times. That competition kept me playing F-Zero GX for a long time after I had unlocked all the cups. Here it is built in the system. You can compete with your friends, find random opponents at your level, challenge the continental or world champion, race against staff ghosts, see how your times compare to other people... All very cool stuff, and everything works without any trouble at all. So, I expect to play Mario Kart Wii for a long time, because the regular cups will offer more challenge than before and the online play will add to that. This all means the game is well worth the money and almost alone enough of a reason to get Wii.]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/a_word_on_video_games_mario_ka.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/a_word_on_video_games_mario_ka.html Less about games video games Wii Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:57:06 +0200 Two nice GeekLists The Generic GeekList - The only GeekList you'll ever need. Images for Desktop Wallpaper - Need desktop wallpapers? Sorry, the Generic GeekList won't help, but this one will! ]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/two_nice_geeklists.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/two_nice_geeklists.html Outside world GeekLists Sun, 27 Apr 2008 07:48:50 +0200 Chess Timer JavaScript Chess Timer. It's easy to use, looks neat and seems to work pretty well (haven't tried it in action, though).]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/chess_timer.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/chess_timer.html Outside world Chess Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:21:13 +0200 The International Playing-Card Society The International Playing-Card Society recently. I have little interest in participating the activities, but I was curious about Playing-Card, their journal. I received the three back issues of this subscription season yesterday and I'd say they're worth the money. I mean, I haven't subscribed to Counter, because I can read board game stuff online more than enough. However, The Playing-Card has material that isn't as easily available online. There's tarot reviews in each issue. One of them pointed me to Tarot History, which is a web site about French Marseille tarot. They've recently published a beautiful new edition of Jean Noblet's Marseille tarot pack from 1650. It looks really great: it has the original line drawings and new, bright and beautiful colours. You can get a hand-made edition of the trumps as well (there are neat pictures of the colouring process). ]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/the_international_playingcard.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/the_international_playingcard.html Less about games International Playing-Card Society Tarot Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:24:49 +0200 Two-player 1825 1825 Unit 3 box I organized a game of 1825 Unit 3 today at the local library. We ended up playing Unit 3, because Olli was the only one who came... Rest were busy or not willing to travel all the way to the suburbs. It's not a big deal, though, as Unit 3 is made for two players. Unit 3 covers Scotland and Northern England, from Maryport in South to Aberdeen in North (a regional kit covering the Highlands was planned, but hasn't been published yet - I wonder if it's ever coming). Glasgow stands in the middle and is a central point, as all three major railroads (Caledonian, Northern British and Glasgow and South West) start there. Of the three minors, two (Highlands and Great North of Scotland) start in the northern edge and one (Maryport & Carlisle) starts in the south. In the beginning one of the players will take NBR and the other takes CR, so Olli got NBR and I got CR. NBR started heading north, while CR aimed towards Edinburgh. NBR didn't pay dividends like CR, so eventually NBR's share value dropped while CR climbed to 100 pounds per share. I was able to sell few shares to invest in GSWR, the third major. In retrospect, that's something the NBR player probably shouldn't allow, as CR and GSWR can play really well together. They have excellent synergy. So, CR and GSWR built the south and east side of Glasgow full of cities. Very effective! Meanwhile NBR connected to Aberdeen, where GNS started, operated by Olli alone. GNS was pretty good for Olli: it has very little room for expansion, because it can only run one train (Olli would've bought a train from NBR otherwise), but it kept running constant dividends to Olli, raising the share value while doing that. In the end CR and GSWR were running few trains each. CR made 320 £ and GSWR 440 £ per run - not bad at all. NBR was very mediocre (losing the 2 trains hurt it pretty bad, even though it bought a 3 train for 200 £ from GSWR - thus helping GSWR to get a 5 train). Olli started the M&C in the south, but it didn't do much as the game was soon over. So, in the end, I won. We thought that was obvious, but the final scores were 5294 - 4993, much closer than we expected. While I had the two heavy hitters, Olli had shares for both of them. I had no shares of GNS, which was pretty effective money-maker for Olli. In retrospect few mistakes were obvious. Of course Olli should've started HR instead of M&C - he would've won had he done that. Then again, I should've built more stations with CR and GSWR, blocking GNS at Perth, for example. So, I could've lost but I also might've won with a wider margin as well. It was a learning game for both of us, so no wonder we didn't play the sharpest game possible. But it was fun! It took us about 30 minutes to do the setup and go through the rules (Olli had played another 18xx once before) and then two and half hours to play the game. Not bad. Instead of paper money or poker chips we used pen and paper bookkeeping, which worked well. There's a lot of calculation, though, and counting the bank was a bit of a pain. Still, it's a fairly nice method and I would use it again. The best way would still be a computer spreadsheet (this was basically an analog version of spreadsheet). It was pretty smooth sailing, but promoting tiles gave us some headache. We played it correctly in the end: when promoting tiles, you need to maintain all the connections leaving the hex, but you don't have to create all the connections entering the tile. That is, you can place a tile so that tracks run to an empty side of the tile. That's fairly critical for Glasgow on this map. There's a bit of a confusion in the rules, as they say you can't run rails to a blank side of a brown hex - to figure it out one must realize that the brown tiles players play aren't actually brown, they're russet. Brown means the brown tiles that are printed on the board. Slightly confusing, I'd say! We finished off the afternoon with a quick match of Schotten-Totten, which I also won - and it was a close game as well, 5-4. Rather excellent session in general.]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/twoplayer_1825.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/twoplayer_1825.html Session reports 1825 1825 Unit 3 18xx Battle Line Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:59:14 +0200 GeekList: Builders vs warriors So, who else is a builder? It's about how building stuff is what makes me happy in games. Take a look, comment and add!]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/geeklist_builders_vs_warriors.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/geeklist_builders_vs_warriors.html Outside world GeekLists Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:39:48 +0200 Thursday session: Shogun, Dolmengötter Shogun box panorama Yesterday's game session was mostly about Shogun, the Dirk Henn game of warring Japanese daimyos in the 16th century. It's a redevelopment of Wallenstein, which I've played once as play-by-web (and I didn't like it). Now most complex games are better learnt by the board, so I was willing to give Shogun a go. Shogun is a pretty neat game, but not my favourite. It does several things right: there's a nice economy of scarcity, the simultaneous planning phase is very nice, I like the way the battle tower works (battles are resolved with a clever cube tower device), the whole structure of the game just works pretty well in my opinion. However, while the game is rather good at what it tries to be, I just don't like the genre. It's a multi-player war game, where players struggle for the different provinces of Japan. You win some, you lose some and in the end you try to win more you lose. Nothing is permanent, anything can be taken from you... it's just not my cup of tea. There's plenty of interaction and with a midpoint scoring, this is one those games where being in the lead after the first scoring is not a game-winning strategy. Standing out means getting beaten. Of course, one must not hang too far behind: I was dead last after the first scoring and while I played a good second half, I was able to rise one step to third. Petri, who was leading by few points after the first scoring dropped last, mostly because I beat him senseless. That's not nice, but it was the best thing for me: I was able to score quite a few points with the provinces I stole from Petri. Shogun is a highly chaotic game: there are small inputs of chaos all around the system. The battle tower is chaotic, the actions are resolved in random order, the combinations of player order and special cards are random, there's a random event every round... So planning anything long-term is really, really difficult. That is something one needs to accept when playing Shogun. So, Shogun is a good game, but not for me. I would play again, but given an opportunity to play something else I would probably skip Shogun. Die Dolmengötter box We didn't have much time after Shogun, but enough for a game of Die Dolmengötter. Everybody had played before, which is always a bonus. It quickly turned out to be my game: I was getting quite a few dolmens on top of the piles. However, Hannu was doing the same, just few steps behind me. Petri and Tero were building their dolmens on the bottoms. In the end I won, but I had only five points more than Hannu. Tero and Petri were able to catch up a bit, too, Tero lost just five points to Hannu and Petri was two points behind Tero. So, it wasn't quite the slaughter it seemed to be. Hannu still claimed to be completely lost about the game, and I suppose it's no wonder: Dolmengötter is a clever game. I started to feel in control of the game, now that I've played four games. In any case, I'm seriously fond of the game. It's very quick, but very meaty for a 20-minute game. I upped my rating to nine, because this gem certainly deserves it. Tomorrow I'm meeting at least Olli for some 1825 action. Expect reports on Sunday!]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/thursday_session_shogun_dolmen.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/thursday_session_shogun_dolmen.html Session reports Die Dolmengötter Shogun Wallenstein Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:43:18 +0200 Interview and a review Boardgaming Finland podcast interviewed me and reviewed my book in their latest episode. Unfortunately the interview and review are in Finnish, but if you understand Finnish and want to hear someone else's opinion of the book, Cane's review is definitely worth listening (it helps he gives the book an excellent review).]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/interview_and_a_review.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/interview_and_a_review.html Outside world interviews podcasts Tarotista Texas Hold'emiin Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:07:11 +0200 Thursday session: Airships, Dolmengötter, Vegas Showdown Airships box We were planning to play cards this time to celebrate my book, which was finally released last Friday. Well, that didn't happen, thanks to rather diminished number of players (four), including one particular person who doesn't fancy traditional card games. So, card games were restricted to Flix Mix. So, we started with Airships (aka Giganten der Lüfte), a die game from Andreas Seyfarth. Players collect cards by rolling dice and hoping to roll high enough. Cards provide more dice and various bonuses and eventually points. It's all fun and games like any dice game, but fell flat for the same reasons. Basically, die rolling just isn't that much fun. Especially when someone else is having the dice. Our game took 60 minutes, so with four players you spend 15 minutes playing and 45 minutes watching something that isn't very interesting. Talk about fixed fun. This is probably better with just two. In our game, Hannu realized the value (high) and scarcity of point-producing points best and sailed to an easy victory. Die Dolmengötter box Next we played something much better: Die Dolmengötter. The more I play this one, the more I like it. I was able to use my experience to actually win the game, too. This is such a clever and a swift-moving game, ours took just 20 minutes or so. And it's alll good, pure fun. My current rating is eight, and I'm seriously considering upping this to a nine. A rare gem. I'm rather glad this fell flat in the Leppävaara game club and I was able to buy Tommy's copy for a low price. Vegas Showdown box Vegas Showdown closed the evening. We played with a variant where start player rotates, except when someone chooses to renovate or publicize, in which case the first player to do that each turn gets the button. I'm not sure I like the change, but it's not a huge deal, I can play either way. I still like this, the economics in this game are rather interesting and mellow in a good way.]]> This entry is copyright 2008 by Mikko Saari. If you're reading this from another site than Melankolia.net or your RSS reader, the site is stealing content. http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/thursday_session_airships_dolm.html http://www.melankolia.net/gameblog/archives/2008/04/thursday_session_airships_dolm.html Session reports Airships Die Dolmengötter Flix Mix Vegas Showdown Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:42:12 +0200