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.