I played Dominant Species yesterday and it was good. It was third time for me - first time I played with two players, second time with 3 players and now with 6. And it was really good, I even raised the rating from 8 to 9. On the other hand I've heard also quite many complaints about DS: it's too random, too AP-prone, cards are too powerful, game itself is too abstract, scoring is too random etc etc. This made me also wonder - why do I like this game?

I'd say that I like the freedom of choices Dominant Species offers. You have always some meaningful moves and actions - sometimes they're more obvious, sometimes you have to find them. But they're there. At least they've been there in those 3 games I've had. I like also the opportunistic behaviour this game enforces. You can't just gather a great pile of your species and then "rule the Earth", no, you have to choose wisely. Some of your species die here and enter the game there, you have to be aware about all the options your opponents are offering to you. Do you want to rule the tundra (and score with Survival) or just hang around in Wetland/Sea? Didn't reach the Domination action? You have always Glaciation or Wanderlust. Plus scores for second/third place. Like I said, plenty of opportunities to choose from - but I admit that you can't have a Cunning Masterplan from Round 1 and follow it throughout the game. And that's why I like it.

Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island - it just keeps going better and better. Short overview about previous games can be found here (in Estonian).

And Loopin' Louie rocks! Excellent both with my kid and wargamer friend of mine. So simple... yet brilliant.

Infiltration is something that may be good but my two plays gave me just a meh-feeling. Seems there is lot of potential hidden, but during those games the play was too dictated by the cards you receive at the beginning. I understand that this may be the idea, to keep some variety in the game, but... meh.

Infinite City. Well... I've tried it with 2. I've tried it with 3. I've tried it with 4. I'm not going to try it with 5 or 6 players. I just refuse to believe that there is something in this game. It cant be. Too much randomness.

King of Tokyo. Lots of randomness - but in this case 'me likey, me very likey'. When we gave it a first try in Essen, it was quite meh... but with every play I like it more and more. If you accept it as filler, it's perfect - you roll some dice, take/make some damage and move on. Always ready to play it.

Schafe Scheuchen (or "The Shepherd") is another game for childrens I bought from Spiel - just wanted to have something different from ordinary roll-and-moves - and it's good. There's plenty of rolling dice, variable game length, some opponent blocking - just enough for getting children to use their brain.

Love Letter is nice one, too! In BGG it is described as "filler filler" - and it truly is. You draw one card, you play one card, you keep one card. Next player. But the card interaction is quite good, so there is pretty high chance that you'll be challenged - and one of you will be out of the round then :)

And finally Uchronia. With Innovation I had very steep learning curve - I got to understand what's going on only during third (or fourth?) game - and as Uchronia is designed also by Chudyk I was prepared for worst. Luckily this one is a lot simpler but gives a lot to think about and opportunites as well. I liked it. Good one.

So... back in business. Visiting Essen (fourth time there, first year as publisher) and launch of my own game Making Profit - there was just not enough time to update this blog. But let's continue then, aye? I'm not going to list here all the plays since last update - there wouldn't be any point in doing this - I'd just list some more interesting games/sessions instead.

So. From where do we start? Perhaps Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island. Despite of rules being quite messy and sometimes hard to understand (8 pages of rules questions in BGG) the gameplay itself is quite enjoyable. We managed to win the first scenario but even then there were some crucial moments where all our preparations were starting to fall apart. Have played it only once so far, with 4 players, but I'm really curious about how it would be with 2 players or even solo.

Android: Netrunner was played during Lautapelaamaan convention in Helsinki, Finland. I don't know why but until then I thought that it's usual 2-4 player game - instead I discovered it's 1v1. Nevertheless the mechanics is interesting, theme is good (one side is protecting the servers and data, other side tries to hack them and steal the data) but as it was first game for both of us we were not quite prepared to the game logic, so attacker got easy access to servers and stole everything needed for winning.

And to keep the story short perhaps only one more comment. About 1817. I've played it now three times (twice during this year - this should be good number for such monster-18xx) and it keeps going better and better with every time. This time I decided to test the more passive-ish investment side and also running-selling only 2-share companies. As it appeared, there were both ups and downs with this approach - it was quite conservative and risk-avoiding but also not profitable enough. As we played with 8 players the certificate limit was very low, so president's double certificate had high influence. From other hand this game was first where I saw so much shorting shares - at the end 3 players were damaged as a result of their companies being shorted (one bankrupt, two on autoplay as passive investors). An excellent game with plenty of opportunities!

I'm not dead yet!

Quoridor. Quarto!. Pylos. Inside. Quixo. Due to an event I had the opportunity to try out several games from Gigamic line of games. Well... not my cup of tea... but at least they were quick to play. They're not bad but too abstract for me. Dry.

Tried also Alcatraz: The Scapegoat. Quite unique goal it has... normally you have one winner and in co-op everybody shares the win/loss equally. In Alcatraz there is one loser and all other players are winners - but the base mechanics is co-op. So you have to play with others, discuss with them, plan the moves - but at the same time you have to try to guarantee that you'll be one of the winners. By the one play I had I wouldn't say that Alcatraz is something extraordinary... it was ordinary co-op until at some stage there was discussion "lets ditch him and make that move - ok" and game ended. And no, I was one of the winners :) Perhaps it should be played more to understand the mechanics better but at least now those letters needed for winning were dealt out by too... randomly I'd say.

Also a bit of old goodies as well... with London for starters. Played with 3 players and I have never had so awful run of cards... no decent money, no undergrounds, not even decent victory points - so at the end I lost badly.

Inca Empire was next to hit the table, with 4 players. I had played it only once previously - unfortunately only once, as it's a good game. This time it was quite equal until the start of the last turn. Then an massive scoring race started and my wife was most successful then, mainly thanks to her terrace's. At the end she beat me by 10 points, while having 7 or so of them. Anyway, it's a good game and definitely worth a try. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Oolalaa, Brass for 2. Can't get enough of it. There's very narrow window for selling cotton to distant markets... and I was shown that Brass can be won also without the distant markets :) This was also one of my tests about how is it to play high-income game... it was nice but still not enough money for building something more expensive at the end.

I'm also afraid that my irregular posts here will be even more scarce during the nearest future - all the attention is currently going to the preparations for Spiel 2012. I'll be there in 7-101 with my [mandatory advertisement starts] Making Profit [no more ads today] game. It has also reached the book stores here locally - the usual shopping place for mainstream boardgames. Let's hope for the best.

So... what have I played recently... oh, yes: something I played first time couple of years ago, with maximum number of players and it was first time to play it for everybody and it was during late evening and it lasted for 5 hours and everybody was really bored and sweared that it was an awfully boring and AP-prone game... and about year later when I had a chance, I bought it second-hand without hesitation. Wealth of Nations. Now I had tried to get it on a table for almost a month but there are actually quite a few economy game enthusiasts available... so when we were invited to play some boardgames and host asked me to "surprise them" I knew this was the moment. And it was good! The rules are actually quite simple and straightforward, so with 4 players we had very smooth start and quite fast play. As none had any experience with that game (I had forgot my first and only play experience as well) it was lots of fun to discover how at some moment you had everything for offer and then at next moment you had everything missing :) And of course my famous pass during first trading round - "I pass!" - "Are you really sure?" - "Umm... no-no-no-no-no-no-no!". I still managed to win by quite a narrow margin 65 vs 60 (if I remember correctly) - key to success was triggering the game end condition. So it was lots of fun at 2 hours and 20 minutes and at least 3 out of 4 players are eagerly waiting for next chance to play it!

In other news: Making Profit has finally arrived and hit the stores, as you can see from here for example. Ordering from Estonia to abroad is unfortunately a bit expensive, so ask your FLGS (or contact me for bulk orders). Review copies and preorders are going to be sent out really soon, so lets hope that the game will create enough interest among the distributors in other countries.

Our Finnish neighbours are organizing wargame convention WarCon, being held 5-7.10 in Tampere. Pretty tempting... as other games are also tolerated there. 1.5 weeks before Essen fair... Tallinn-Tampere-Essen cruise perhaps? :)

More information about WarCon 2012 is available here. In Finnish.

Yeah, it was about a time already to have some nice and decent meaty games to be played.

I actually played Ora et Labora some time ago already - but seems I have forgotten to mention it. I actually liked this game, very nice decent eurogame. Same designer as with Agricola, but I like Ora et Labora more. More choices to make and different strategies available. Definitely would like to try again after first play.

Another game I tried for first time was Evo (second edition). As I had played previously Cyclades then bidding mechanics was nothing new (although Cyclades was the one who borrowed the mechanics from Evo, not the other way) and the game play was also quite simple - everybody was trying to move to the currently safe areas. Some dinos were successful, some were not. I happened to get 'killer babies' mutation from auction and this seemed a bit overpowered - my babies had better combat win chance than with regular dinos, so thanks to it I was able to win get a second place with quite a large margin. I dunno... an average family game. Perhaps I would play it once more...

Recently I finished reading the fifth (and currently last) book in Game of Thrones series so I decied to give one more try to Game of Thrones boardgame, second edition this time. From first edition I had only vague meh-memories, so I wanted to see if anything is different with 2nd Ed. Actually there was... or I don't know if it was the players or the game but it was pretty interesting. A bit longish (5 hrs with 6 players) but there was tension until the last battle of last turn - and that was also where the victory was gained, no earlier. So it was better than 1st Ed, but it's still "Diplomacy Light"... and I'm not very fond of Diplomacy.

And finally... the creme de la creme... Brass. First we played it with 4 players. This was one of the rare cases when the winner was clear already before he took his first move - and he won by large margin. Brass does not forgive the mistakes and after making one you can only hope that your opponents make some... or you're doomed.

Next two games we played were 2-player games with unofficial 2-player map - but damn, this map (and rules modifications) works like a charm. Very tense and interesting game play and with 2 players one game takes a bit more than 1 hour to complete. I was beaten both times by my wife, so it must be a good game :) Anyway, Brass can be added to the list of excellent 2-player games being a lot meatier than usual cardgames.

During last week I managed to play only some card games (or games, based mainly on cards) but I'm still happy, all of those 2-player sessions have been great experiences.

Ascension is my all time most played game (when playing all the expansions as standalone games as I do) but I still find it fascinating. Storm of Souls this time. Best with 2p, I'd say. It's playable with 4 as well but in that case more experienced players may have too big downtime when beginners discover all the combos etc. Avoid playing it with more than 4, though.

Tried also Ghost Stories again, with 2 players, just the base game. If you're feeling that everything seems to go according to plan - well, things will change soon :) I don't remember if we have ever won the base game. Yes, there are guides available in BGG... but it's somehow like... playing some FPS 'godmode' with unlimited ammo/health. No challenge, youknow :)

And finally something quite forgotten... 7 Wonders. Damn, this shines with 2 players! If there are more players I have never enough time to watch who has what developments etc - but this way it has more suitable pace. And of course operating 50% of time in behalf of the "dummy player" - it's just extra fun. Leaders expansion just doubles it. Waiting eagerly for Cities.

Tried Innovation some time ago. It has received a great hype around here but at least my first game of it was quite bland. Things that were told beforehand to be 'very rare' happened almost all the time and the key to the victory (or at least achieving a good result) was to have your cards splayed ASAP. I hadn't so I was doomed. Luckily I got the Democracy card on my table so with help of it I was able to get the 3 dominance cards (out of 5 needed) - but that was the only highlight of the game. To be worse, at the end I was forced to king-making - it depended from my last actions if player A would win with influence or player B with dominance. No more choices. What a game, eh?

Played also Gears of War boardgame. When first two levels were just like walks in the park, third was a tough nut to crack. Of course when we'll crack it, finally. This time we only survived enough to see what was behind door number two... and then we were bleeding out. Oh, the dice rolls... throwing 4 black + 1 red dice which results in 0 hits and 2 defence... when all that was needed was only one hit. Epic. But fun. A bit longish, though.

Another play of Gears of War, this time with 4 players. Thrilled by the success we had last time, decided to choose the next mission - although for one of the players it was the first encounter with this game. Luckily GoW has quite simple rules, so there was some hesitation only during first couple of moves. This mission was pretty tough, with some almost-unkillable blind berserker rumbling in the house... but team spirit was high and co-op really worked, so we were able to survive the mission by slaying the berserker. It took ca 3 hours to finish it but it was time well spent. Excellent game I'd say... usually co-op games suffer from one player starting dictating the moves for others - but I'm not sure if it would be even possible with GoW.

Ghost Stories is another co-op I played recently... it was long time ago when we played it last time - and I forgot the rule sheet home, but we managed to remind the important bits of rules. Still, we were killed in pretty short time - but life in a temple is supposed to be hard :)

And finally... Doom: The Boardgame. Descent's predecessor with game balance a lot in overlord's favour. We played it with some mods to simplify the life for marines... but nevertheless it was pretty ugly experience for them. Also 2 of the 3 marines played this game first time and therefore most of the time instead of fulfilling the mission enjoyed themselves by killing all the monsters in range. Overlord was glad to see that as he knew that ammo tokens are quite hard to get later :) Anyway, long story short: marines found the blue key, instead of red one, but it was broken... and on a way back they were fragged in some nasty ways. Enjoyable game for overlord, hopefully also for marines :)

I had recently enough time & motive to try again the solo experience of Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft. I had played the first (solo) mission once, got killed - and decided to try now again. Got killed again. I was almost there, next tile would have been hidden staircase... but just then the kobold skirmisher did his worst. Well, it happens.

But despite of this quite tense situation on gameboard it wasn't really thrilling experience. The story was evolving, every move was crucial... but something was missing. Something important. I suspect that those D&D-style ameritrashy types of games are meant to be played in groups, to have some emotions and ideas and so on. Playing it solo was like solving a puzzle. Or watching a good movie alone, with nobody to speak about it later. So I wouldn't recommend Castle Ravenloft solo, although with more people it's pretty excellent game.

Agricola, on the other hand, is a game I wouldn't recommend to play, especially against experienced players... but solo experience makes it somehow better. Not good... just better :) With playtime similar to Ravenloft (ca 1 hour) and having same puzzle-solving feeling - it does not somehow get so boring. Perhaps it's in the nature of eurogames - you get same level of excitement both from playing it in larger group or also alone. And if you're not expecting anything, you can't be disappointed as well :)

Summer. An excellent opportunity for spending more time outdoors... which is the main cause of having less time to play board games. Nevertheless, there have been several games been played during the time since my last update.

Isla Dorada gave me quite a strange impression after my first play. On the one hand I'd like to try it definitely once more as the mechanics were pretty interesting... but on the other, some of the event cards were too powerful, creating randomness in favour of the card holder. Don't know what to think about it.

Dixit with several 7-y old kids was an interesting experience - there was much more creativity and joy than with any "hardcore" player I've played it :)

Only during last play of A Few Acres of Snow I noticed that I've mis-interpreted some of the rules, so the raids/ambushes should be a lot harder to be successful than we originally played. First game I won as French, second lost (to a different opponent) as British by narrow margin. It was my first play as British and so I wasn't aware that their strategy should be a bit different from playing as French.

Khronos and Thebes are games that don't hit the table very often, unfortunately. Played both as 2p games and they - especially Khronos - were really fast to play and enjoyable. I like the time-travelling theme of Khronos and Thebes has nice light indianajones-y feeling when searching for artifacts.

Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage was game I had wanted to play for a long time... but at the end it was the biggest disappointment of this year. You can't judge the game only by it's rating at BGG. I'm pretty sure I played something wrong with Hannibal, but during second turn he was killed in battle. From that point on, the game was just dragging towards inevitable with winner being clear and me having no chance. I'm not very keen about the battle mechanics as well, partly due to fact I lost all (yes, all of them) battles. Meh of the year.

Drako is small and simple wargamish game for two - three dwarves vs dragon. Nothing to say more :)

Gears of War: The Board Game - the co-op I've wanted to play also for a long time. Unlike Hannibal, this game I liked a lot. We played first mission with 2 players and it left pretty good impression - plenty of choices and decisions, firefights, monsters. Definitely would want to play it more. More. More! :)

In other news: No Thanks, Incan Gold, Kingdom Builder+Nomads

Tuesday Gaming Night. Naval Battles is a fast cardgame from Dan Verssen and it's not only fast but bloody as well... or you could say random. Anyway, ganging up against one player can be pretty mortal for that unfortunate chap - just like when we played. Japan was third in turn order, but when it was his turn, half of his fleet was already sunk. But hey, this game lasts 30 minutes max, so you don't have to suffer for long at least :)

Kingdom Builder + Nomads. 5 players. Nice. Being first in turn order gives you advantage at the beginning of the game... but being last at the last turn of the game. Especially if there's Lords card on the table.

Carcassonne. It's a popular game but... somehow a bit too boring for my taste. Played it yesterday and thought that even Kids of Carcassonne would be more fun to play than this one :)

Last weekend we had some friends visiting us with sole purpose - 1856. We have played it together couple of times already and with every play they like it more and more... and despite of what everybody's saying it's not too difficult to teach. First time it was 40 minutes to explain the rules... unlike first times of Vinhos, for example :) But nowadays I believe that Vinhos can be taught as well with 30mins.

Anyway, as I had more 18xx-experience than visitors, I took different approach this time, with trying to maximize the income, instead of evil scheming. Nevertheless it was an very interesting game, as one of my companies got never higher than it's par price (67) and it got also out of yellow zone only during last set of OR's. But this was also one of my keys to victory, as comp being in brown zone I was able to purchase 80% of it's stocks - and then run it with two permanent trains. It wasn't planned but turned out as an excellent opportunity... just like another move with receiving the presidency of CGR. Those two combined ensured me first place with my wife being second (by ca 1000$) and then one of the guests by also ca 1000$.

There were times when I thought that 1856 is "the bestest evar" in 18xx-series... but now I'm not sure if it's even in my personal TOP3. 1817 has an excellent M&A side, just like 1841... the classic version of 1830 is very cut-throating (but not the variants) - and also 1861 (that's either hated or loved - but mostly hated) with it's high learning curve in being totally different from others.

Tuesday Gaming Night. First I had couple of plays of Making Profit, then Incan Gold and No Thanks - was lucky in all those games. Then Kingdom Builder with 5 players - got my personal high score with Shepherds - 52 points when game ended. Bad thing was that with other two scoring cards (Citizens and Lords) I got only 18 points in total... but luckily my solid lead with Shepherds gave me victory this time. Excellent game. Suggest, like Mikko says :)

Left early, due to UEFA Euro 2012 - Go, England!

Friend of mine organized small Bootcamp during last weekend, so only wargames were played there. First we started with my personal favourite: Combat Commander + Mediterranean. I lost almost all melees there and opponent refused to advance (I wonder why) after discovering to what wing I had my heavy MG's hidden. I was defending as Germans and lost finally as was not able to push back the waves of Romanians. First I was excited to play as defender but later I discovered there were only quite a few defender-special cards. Good game, anyway.

Pocket Battles: Celts vs Romans then. Small and fast game and pretty nice one, too. Set up armies and then attack. First round was bloody and furious, managed to win the game after first attack of second round :) I'd say that the virtue of this game is in it's shortness. Wargame filler, I'd even say.

Sekigahara. My first game of this (some months ago) was a failure, as I rushed into battle with the leader I was supposed to keep safe at any cost (insta-win to opponent). This time I picked my battles, got majority on one wing and then moved slowly towards enemy's main castle. After defeating first point of resistance overran small army group - and to my big surprise it contained their major leader. Yay!

Next day started with No Retreat. I played as Germans and therefore had a blast with my panzers driving towards Moscow and southern troops having fun near Sevastopol. And then autumn started. And winter. Long winter. With spring turning also into winter :) What this meant was that my panzers were next to Moscow but were not able to retreat or attack either, so they just built the defence and waited for summer. Luckily southern front was able to break through the enemy lines (as majority of Russian troops were defending Moscow) and conquer Sevastopol plus several other smaller cities. As a result of this I gathered enough victory points to achieve victory, without conquering Moscow.

After that it was time for "Game of the weekend" - Virgin Queen. I knew nothing about it, except it was based on Here I Stand (I hadn't played). Sides were selected randomly and I got to play as Ottomans. They had quite straightforward strategy, as I found out quite soon - as having no interest in catholic-protestant power struggle nor political power play, they just raised the armies and conquered everything they could. And - it proved to be succesful as after 5 hrs of play and conquering Madrid with Ottomans I was declared as winner :) The beauty of this win was the fortunate flow of events: Ottomans were always first in turn order, so my troops in Spain were able to start the siege of Madrid with no problems - but the siege was always solved only during your next turn. Luckily I had in my hand event card "Gregorian calender" that allowed one power to make his move anytime he wanted - even immediately after his own original move. So I started siege, declared the use of gregorian calender - and successfully conquered Madrid.

God's Playground. This game we played even twice. First time was late Saturday night (with finishing appr. 2AM) and after that we discussed about several possibilities and strategies for about hour more... so it was natural to have another blast at Sunday morning. Excellent game with plenty of possibilities - I really wonder how did it happen that I had no information about this game earlier at all....

Then it was time for something lighter, so we choose Nexus Ops. I had played it only once several years ago and had not very good memories about it... but this time the mechanics felt pretty good. Simple movement with enforced battles and increasing victory conditions. Nice one.

And for the end, another of my high-rated favourites - not especially wargame, though, but more like economy-war game, i.e. Brass. You can see that Wallace was most played designer this weekend :) Nobody had played it for a year or so, but the feeling was good... remembering the combinations, setting yourself to have 4 actions in a row etc etc. Brilliant game, worth even just for an experience. With 3 players it went a bit more than 2 hours.

Oh, and of course we played my game - Making Profit: The Boardgame (received couple of samples at Friday) - do I have to say that it's a good game? :) Originally I was planning to have one game and listen to the comments then... but it ended in 6-7 plays in a row. Surprisingly good feedback - and this game can be preordered now as well :)

Besides the boardgames, sometimes it's good to try something different for variety. Hattrick, for example - an online football (soccer, eh) team management game. It's simple enough (you don't need to worry at level "where should my left footed forward or right footed defender play") but allows also tactical/strategical planning and skill management, if you want that. If not, you can just put your team together and have fun - almost like I do :) Actually I played this game first during 2002-2007 but lost motivation then and team was suspended after some time. Now I registered again and managed to win my division on 6th (lowest) league, therefore moving higher into 5th.

Totally another area is World of Tanks. Like a friend of mine said: "Tanks - you can't go wrong with them". In theory it's team play with tanks, but in practice you're pretty much on your own. In random battles (I only play them as I'm not in any clan) the goal is simple - each side has 15 tanks and your side win by capturing their base or killing all enemies. After the battle, based on your inflicted damage, capture points, etc etc you get experience and money. With experience you can research new tanks/equipment, with money you buy them. Oh, and if you get killed/damaged during battle you have to pay the repair cost - so especially in higher tier battles (with more advanced=costly tanks) the result is not always positive. Despite of reaching tier 7 (out of 10) with some tanks I admit I'm still pretty much on n00b level there.

And of course 18xx PBEM - to scratch my that itch. Thanks to playing by e-mail I've had a chance to try out lots of different 18xx titles and chat with people with similar hobby - from Finland to Poland to Portugal. Actually I'm even participating in "5 Nations 1830 Tournament" at the moment - representing the Finnish team as legionnaire - and it's pretty much fun. My group consists of people from Quebec, Rome, San Diego and London - pretty cool.

Tuesday Gaming Night + some solo play yesterday. Second play of Blood Bowl: Team Manager - The Card Game - and another second place. But when considering that I played with elves (vs orcs, kravens and chaos) it was quite a good result. This game is still fun when you imagine a bit what may happen on a field - like when elf tries to tackle orc :) Fortunately elves had their ents with them - and when 5-star Deeproot appeared on court, nobody wanted to mess with him. Oh, and the ultra-violent flavour texts... "Hey, Bob, did you see that hit? - Yes, Jim, no need for toothpick for him anymore!"

Wiz-War. If you pose a threat, people will harass you. And you're not going to survive in 1 vs 3 situation :) First time to see player eliminated - unfortunately that player was me :)

Rune Age. More I play it, more I like it solo (although I'm not normally very fond of solo playing). It's just that the PvP combat seems a bit... pointless. Esepecially if you win only by defeating Enemy - like in Dragonlords scenario. I'm also suprised that there is so much variety packed into this card game: you can play it solo, competitively, in co-op mode and also in 1 vs many mode (i.e. everybody vs First Player). And there's expansion coming out as well. Interesting.

Last weekend was quite loaded with games - another boardgamer had birthday party. First we started with 7 Wonders + Leaders expansion. I had played with this expansion once, really long time ago so I basically remembered nothing about it and had to be briefed about rules. Neither of my neighbours was rich of resources so practically I could use only those I produced myself. This set certain limitations and at the end I just struggled to avoid the last place (7p game). Next game (6p) I had already better understanding and built as many resource cards as possible, so thet during third age I was able to build all kinds of structures with no purchases. Managed to get decent leaders and guilds, so won this game. I'd say that Leaders adds a lot to the base game.

Blood Bowl: Team Manager - The Card Game: I was afraid first that this game depends on knowledge of American Football with quarterbacks and so on - but luckily it was quite simple area control (if I can say so?) card game. The flavour texts are excellent, though, and with good crowd there's lot to laugh about. 4-player game was quite tight at the end with scores 34-34-34-31.

Invasion from Outer Space: The Martian Game. This game was another I've had doubts about regarding being the possible LNoE clone with just another theme pasted on. Luckily it wasn't - instead IfOS was quite fast ameritrash in a good way: lots of cards, lots of dicerolls. The only complaint I had was that with 4 players you had to gather 8 VP's (sorry, Terror Points) - and you can get them by mainly conquering different locations - but the alien strength varied by race from 2-4 and it was quite important modifier for conquests. Yes, you guessed correctly - I had those 2-strength brainiacs - but as the gameplay is quite volatile I was the one who managed to conquer the capital by successful card combinations. I'd say that short gameplay is what makes this game good - you'll know that one way or another - it will be over in 30-45 minutes, so you don't have to worry about unlucky dicerolls for long.

Last couple of plays of Giants have been really disastrous - I've been last by large margin and I don't even have an idea about what I'm doing differently, compared to times I won several games in a row. But it's still a good game, though.

London is a game with simple rules yet elegant design. Building large or small city, taking loans or building reliable income source, managing poverty... lots of decisions. This time (4p game) I took out 3 loans quite early in the game and managed even to pay back 2 of them at the end of game - but at least I had nice money reserve during game so was able to build and purchase almost as much as I wanted. City size was equal to burroughs I owned, so no poverty from running the city - and as a result of one city card I got also no poverty from cards in my hand. But the game end was triggered a tad too early so after all I lost first place with tie breaker :)

Rune Age is a strange game. First time I played (3p), it left a quite meh-impression. Second time, solo, it was much better - fast and furious. Third time (2p) it fell again on meh-side... dunno... perhaps it's the direct confrontation that somehow beats the excitement out of it? Must try more...

Isis & Osiris - nice little one. I don't normally like the memory-elements in game mechanics but in this case I'll make an exception. You just have to remember on scale "good-bad" to play it, so even I can manage it :)

Yesterday I complained that Cat & Fish with 2 players is too quiet... well... now I can say that with 4 players it's one of the tightest gameplays I've experienced. Monsters, oil leaks and typhoons were roaming all over the game board and there was shortage of vacant action spots almost always. During mid-game I had a slight lead, so others ganged up on me and bashed pretty thoroughly... as a result of it winner (by large margin) was the one who hold the second place at that moment.

Kingdom Builder + Nomads, 3 plays in a row with 5 players each. Board gets crowded... pretty-pretty crowded. As a result of it the scores are quite low, but also (at least in our case) the spread was always pretty narrow, like 52-47-47-45-43. This also means that you don't have to get the maximum points from all three scoring conditions, in most cases it's enough to have like one major and two minors/mediums. Anyway, managed even to win one 5p game - as I'm not good with this (even after 60 plays I can admit it) it's an memorable event. I'm also glad that more and more people are beginning to see the real challenges of this game - at the beginning it got mainly "Meh? What a random..." attittude.

In other news: Incan Gold and No Thanks.

Yesterday we had a feeling that might try something completely new. One heavy modifier for this feeling was that I had just finished reading the rules for Cat & Fish - the game my wife bought from Spiel last year because "it had kittens on box cover" and it was on sale. Anyway, the first look at it was that it seems to be a childrens game... and it was left on shelf for over half a year. But after reading the rules I can assure, it's quite a good strategy game. Game lasts 5 years (consisting of 4 seasons each) and the winner is the one with most money at the end. You get money from fishing and then selling the fish - but price depends of the season, so it may be quite common to discover that for getting the best price you have to keep your fish for several seasons. There is also simple technology tree built into the game - by upgrading you can move faster/farther, get better price, have more actions etc etc. At the beginning you have only two action markers, so you can't do everything you'd like, you're also missing money and game end is also too near... so it's similar to the economy games of Martin Wallace :) Anyaway I'm quite eager to play it again, with 4 players, as with 2 it was too quiet, there were free action spaces almost always available.

Another first impression we got yesterday was House of Spirits from Lock'N'Load Publishing. I knew this publisher mainly by their wargames so it was quite interesting to see how they manage to design something else. Rules were quite easy to understand and we got the game flowing soon. Soon after I discovered that marking players' and monsters' HP with pen/pencil is quite painful... you write the name, mark the HP, then cross it when somebody kills it. Rinse and repeat. The gameplay itself left also quite meh-feeling: turn card, roll the dice, killed? no? roll dice again, room empty? yes? new room, roll the dice... and so on. I admit I'm not a good adventure player but this time I even had no desire to read the flavour text on cards. The idea of mechanics was quite good - investigation-themed CDG - but the result felt quite clumsy. I'm not sure if I'd give it another go... anybody up for mildly used copy? :)

Just received information from the production factory that I'll receive the game samples no later than on 11th of June. It's what... two weeks, max? Yay!

Regular Tuesday gaming night at store. After all the "usual" games - No Thanks, Incan Gold, Kingdom Builder - tried also Opera. I had played it only once, couple of years ago and with two players - it was fun then and we decided to try it now with full board, 4 players. Beginning was quite tense - bidding for budget, deciding what roles to choose - but at some point the game mechanics fell apart. It happened soon after 3 players had built Paris and Maestro was visiting this city - after that 3 players of 4 received 20+ money during Income phase and there was no tension whatsoever on this scale anymore. You just bid to the level 10 at the beginning of the round and after that there were only some tactical decisions about who gets the first place for building Milan or sth. Building + opera purchasing cost less money than we received during Income phase, so bank was soon out of money and we started to take income in credits. After the game I even re-read the rules to check if we had missed some vital rules about money management, but no, everything seemed to be ok. Very strange. Money meant mothing at the end but nevertheless the person who got least of it, was left last... and the overall score spread was quite large. Lowered my BGG rating for this one 7->6.

Last week I had pretty tight schedule as in addition to all the other pretty responsibilities I was Main Organizer for second stage of car-orienteering championship - and this took all the available time. By Saturday night it was over and therefore, when we were invited to the birthday party on Sunday, several games were taken along.

Cable Car is an excellent gateway game with easy-to-understand rules, high-quality components and practically no downtime. I was explaining the rules, so, naturally, I was the one who was getting mainly "Oh, you got only 3 points? Whoops..." moves - but, hey, it was fun nevertheless.

With Kingdom Builder there were also more interested participants than vacancies so I just explained the rules and watched the game flowing. It was quite ineteresting to notice, how, from turn to turn, players discovered new options and possibilities and sometimes it took quite a time to make the good tactical/strategical decisions. This crowd is all good players and quick learners - their learning curve has been: first introduction to boardgaming was Roborally, after that we continued with 1856 - and I'm not kidding.

Playing was finished by Abandon Ship and Rumble in the House - two fillers that are both simple, fast and fun - as fillers are meant to be. It's not the winning that matters with those, but the journey itself.

Kingdom Builder with expansion. Played it with 5 players first time... and the board was pretty crowded. Quite refreshing actually, with Ambassadors victory card in play there were several interesting choices available - should I aim for some victory cards at the end or just take now 3 points. Very good expansion, I like it. More choices, more opportunities, a bit more downtime... but actually, does 'downtime' per se exist with this game after all?

Giants. Again one of my favourites. This time, though, lost it by la-a-a-a-rge margin (5p play), usually I play better than this. But the mechanics is interesting and nobody knows the exact score before the end... and of course you can always get points when somebody exploits your worker. Excellent.

Hooray to all the 5 feedreaders of this blog!

Friend of mine celebrated his birthday this weekend and - boardgamer as he is - several games were played. First Ants. In BGG there are several threads about playing it without player elimination... I dunno... it kinda breaks the game then for me. It's fast, there's almost no strategy/thinking involved (if you don't attack, sooner or later you have to defend - but there's component limit so you can't build large defences) and it's quite fun in some brutal way. I'd call it a light-ish wargame for up to 6 people.

Rex: Final Days of an Empire. I knew only two things about this game: (a) it's a remake of some famous boardgame "Dune" and (b) it's based now in Twilight Imperium universe; thus it must be very-very good. I remained cautious because of such hype and started the game with pretty low expectations... but behold - it was even more boring than I even thought it might be. There are 5 strongholds on board, whoever controls 3 of them, is winner. If there are alliances made, more strongholds need to be controlled. And that's it, plus 3 simple race-related special victory conditions with one as "If nobody wins, you win". Strategy? Naaah. Negotiations and breaking the alliances? Didn't see them. And it's not a sore loser's speech - I (my alliance actually) won the gorram game. On Turn 1 built all my troops to my starting base... fast-forward many hours... and at the end of last turn my alliance won, as I had the "nobody wins, you win" condition with my race. At meantime there was nothing to do for me than to defend the stronghold with all my troops and wait for the game to end. I'm quite sure that playing 1856 as dedicated banker is also more interesting than this. (Remark: there are also some optional rules available with Rex that add more variability in victory conditions but those were not used this time)

The Adventurers. We started this game appr. 1AM and the person reading the rules left out some important bits in game play... so as it appeared at the end it was "houseruled" a lot. Everybody reached the end safely, nobody was hit by boulder. If I hadn't played it once before, would've left quite a bland impression.

Elder Sign. From all the Arkham-related games this one I like most. Reason is simple: it takes the best parts of AH - monsters and dice-rolling - and leaves all the rest. No more boring downtime, this is fast and fun and no-AP-prone dice-rolling ancient-beating game. Really good experience in short timeframe.

God's Playground. I suppose it's one of the most complex games Martin Wallace has made, but it's also one of the few titles available, designed specifically for 3 players. No more, no less. Although I'm quite a fan of Wallace's games, I hadn't heard about it until yesterday... but oh boy, what a ride it was! Add together classical eurogame, wargame and co-op elements, shake well, serve with olives. 3 hardcore 18xx/wargame players had to agree yesterday who will defend Poland when each of the regions will give victory points to some players more than others... but if nobody defends practically everybody loses. Anyway, at the end my strategy of faith and belief was victorious as I was building Jesuit schools all over the lands and left the fighting to other players - and securing my estates in region where others had significant points to be had as well. Definitely would like to try this game again, despite of bad stuff that happened from the beginning from Turn 1 already. But as Wallace says in rules about this game - "stuff happens to you and you just have to live with it. If you feel like everything is going wrong and that you a fighting a losing battle then you are experiencing what Poland had to go through."

Another game I played was Lübeck - I suppose it's unknown to most players as we're the only one in region selling that. It has quite decent gameplay hidden under ugly design and clumsy components... but it plays fast and has simple rules.

First couple of plays of Kingdom Builder: Nomads. Quite interesting new strategies are made available. Also, one play when we had new objective card in play, forgot completely that you must score those points immediately, not at the end.

Oh, and the box says "Expansion 1" :)

At Monday there was large boardgaming party at store - from 18:00 - 06:00 with auctions and prizes and surprises. Had to run several things, so didn't get a lot chance to play - just Wiz-War (both my treasures were stolen, I succeeded stealing only one), Vasco da Gama (what a lovely game but everybody else hates) and Valdora (another lovely game I tend to loose every time).

Haven't had any sufficient time for gaming lately, actually...

Everybody says that boardgame retail sales is a tough business to survive. So I had to try it. Yes, it's tough - but it contains also lots of fun. Everybody says that publishing your own game is a road, better to avoid. So I had to try it. Well... the story continues... :)

Played only two games yesterday, although it was our store's official gaming night. Dunno, getting old or something.

Combat Commander: Mediterranean. It's basically the "good old" CC with just new maps and countries - and it means that it's still good! I'm even thinking of purchasing one copy of CC to myself - even when all the possible opponents I know here have already their own copy. Playable in 2-3 hours (one scenario), complexity of average eurogame, I just like it.

Dixit Odyssey. All this Dixit hype has missed me (played it only once before) but quite good mechanics it has. Not brilliant but still - an decent party game, despite I remained on last position :)

Some more recent plays...

Doom. I managed to purchase both this OOP copy and expansion from last Spiel; after some price negotiations got them both for 30 euros. Drawback is that base game is danish/norwegian print - but as components are language-independent, rules can be found from BGG and new card sets are included in English expansion - it doesn't matter at all. Anyway, it was quite fun to play after some long time and also first times for me to play there as invader.

Kingdom Builder. 51 logged plays now since last Spiel. 'nuff said. Managed to get the All-Time High Score with 103 points (2p game).

No Thanks. Localized version has 'No Merci' as its title and almost everybody - including myself - read the title first as 'No Mercy'. Really good fast but tense filler. Greed rules.

3 days of boardgaming with friends this weekend... some highlights:

HellRail - train game with ramming and derailing + special events. Every player is train engineer in Dante's Inferno with goal to deliver as much souls to needed rings as possible. Fast and easy track building game. Quite fun, actually, with good company.

Fortune & Glory - forget LNoE, this one is much better. Discover temples, pass dangers, get artifacts, fight nazis - this game has so much theme it's dripping. 10 games so far, every next one is more epic than previous. Have tried competitive and teams variant, should try the co-op version as well.

Valdora - pure excellence in eurogame. Have played it now 4 times, been last 3 times (by LARGE margin) but still think that it's one of the best current year discoveries. Quality components, fast game play, easy rules - eurogame I'm eager to play anytime. And now to think that it was on shelf almost 2 years, unplayed...

Pacific Typhoon - had 2 games in a row with really boring experience. You can't play this game with people who take it as a strategy game with main goal to win. Luckily third game was better.

Arcana - played only once, with 2p. Very strange experience. During midgame I still had no idea is there any depth at all - or just an bidding for cards. Should try with more players.

Attended local MUG event yesterday and run a workshop about boardgames. Surprisingly positive feedback. Of course, majority of listeners were Diablo/WoW/CS (ex-)players.

Two new games yesterday... FAB: The Bulge - wargame with blocks in 2nd WW era. Played the introductory scenario, 3 moves each - but the first impression was pretty meh. Playable, above average but something was missing from the game. Perhaps it was because of the reduced introductory scenario functionalities.

Rune Age was one of my latest purchases that arrived yesterday, so had a first try with 3 players. Well, if your wife beats you in the first game, it's quite intrigueing :) Anyway, seems to be quite a decent deckbuilding game, short, fast and violent with player confrontation. Me likey.

Soon to be tested: Hellrail, Arcana, Princes of Florence. Oooh, the benefits of running a store :)

3 x Kingdom Builder and one Alhambra as well, played yesterday. Kingdom Builder is a love from first play in Essen. Simplicity of rules and subtle depth (that is easily confused with pure randomness) - excellent game to play if you have 30 mins to spare. First game to achieve 50 logged F2F plays. Alhambra is a forgotten gem - first time played it 3 years ago - and then got overwhelmed by massive load of new games. Just recently started to play it again - pretty nice one.

Fortune & Glory: competitive game with 6 players is awfully lagging, with 5 manageable but 4 players seems to be the sweetspot. Haven't tried yet coop/teams. Oh, and with 2p the competitive game shines as well - minimum downtime.

Played Combat Commander: Europe today, after some long time. One of the few wargames I really thoroughly enjoy - it's relatively fast to play (it lasted today max 3hrs) and has no dice but excellent card-driven commandment. Started/ended session with some fillers - Geistesblitz (oh my, how I suck in playing that) and No Thanks (easy push-your-luck filler, based mainly on greed and luck).

Next time: Sekigahara perhaps.