From the monthly archives:

January 2006

Gameblog wins awards!

January 30, 2006

I’m proud to tell you, my dear readers, that Gameblog has won an award! Gone Gaming Board Game Internet Awards jury gave Gameblog the best session report award for my Essen 2005 coverage. That’s not all! Gameblog also got an honorable mention for the award of the best game blog (winner was Chris Farrell’s blog, [...]

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My favourite designers

January 30, 2006

Larry Levy had a column in Boardgame News called Rating the designers. He wrote about two different approaches to rating the designers, Knizia approach (counting a sum-based score from ratings given to designer’s games) and Seyfarth approach (counting an average). First approach favours someone like Knizia, who has a wide repertoire of games with varying [...]

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Gargon

January 27, 2006

A review of Gargon is up on my site. Gargon by Rüdiger Dorn is a small card game from Amigo. Gargon is one of those kind of traditional, yet quirky games. The idea is basically a trick-taking game, but it would stretch the definition of trick-taking to fully include Gargon in that lot. Weird ideas [...]

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Good service from Spiele-Offensive

January 26, 2006

I must say Spiele-Offensive gets a nod from me. I recently placed a big order (almost 600 euros) there, driven by their selection (Neuland being the biggest incentive, I mean, I thought the game was firmly in the unavailable, you’ll-never-ever-get-it category). Ordering and paying (with credit card through PayPal) was easy and their shipping costs [...]

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Blue Moon

January 25, 2006

Blue Moon is a fantasy world developed by Reiner Knizia and at the same time the first game set in that world. A board game is on the way, so it won’t remain the only Blue Moon game for a long time. Gotta get them all Blue Moon is about eight different peoples, all mixed [...]

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In the Shadow of the Emperor

January 23, 2006

In the Shadow of the Emperor seemed pretty cool when it came out. It was touted as a real gamer’s game with clever new mechanics. However, for some reason I played it twice and forgot about it afterwards. What happened? Setting In the Shadow of the Emperor is set in Germany in the late middle [...]

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Blockster

January 22, 2006

I wrote a review of Blockster (in Finnish and sorry, no naked ladies on the marginals). Blockster is a small dexterity game, where players are trying to stack small plastic pieces according to cards. There’s a timer to add pressure! When someone fails, everybody else scores a point. The basic idea is nice, but the [...]

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Louis XIV

January 20, 2006

Rüdiger Dorn’s Louis XIV started Alea’s new mid-size series. It’s not a big board game, but not a card-game either, but something in between. There’s no actual board, though there is something quite like it: a grid made of cardboard tiles, functioning as a board. The game definitely plays like a board game. Palace intrigue [...]

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Around the World in 80 Days

January 19, 2006

Around the World in 80 Days by Michael Rieneck is based on Jules Verne’s book. Players are sent from London to circumnavigate the globe, hoping to make it back to London in 80 days. A race has begun! Race around the world So, it’s a race game. Race games have generally two problems, I think: [...]

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Antike

January 18, 2006

For me, Antike was definitely one of the brighter hits from Essen 2005. I had reordered the game, mostly tempted by the theme and having some faith in Eggert-Spiele thanks to Neuland, which was excellent. Lower price I got didn’t hurt, either. I wasn’t disappointed. While Antike isn’t the Civ Lite some people would probably [...]

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