From the monthly archives:

October 2006

Die Säulen der Erde first thoughts

October 30, 2006

Played a game of Die Säulen der Erde with Johanna yesterday, while the baby was sleeping. It was reasonably enjoyable. Nothing special — I’ve rated the game as 8 right now. As many of you have heard, there’s more than a passing resemblance to Caylus, but I think the comparison doesn’t hold too far. At [...]

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Catan World Championships

October 27, 2006

The Catan World Championships were played in Essen last week. The new world champion of Settlers of Catan is Markus Nuopponen from Finland. Markus won three out of the four games in the first rounds and kicked butt in the semifinal and the final. Go Finland! I’ve had the pleasure to play with Markus, who [...]

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Memoir ’44: Pacific Theater

October 25, 2006

Review in Finnish. Pacific Theater is the latest expansion for Memoir ’44. Like Eastern Front, it adds new figures, new rules and new scenarios to the basic game. This time the fighting is between the Japanese and the US Marine Corps. Japanese forces never surrender (that is, always ignore the first retreat flag), attack with [...]

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Essen bounty

October 22, 2006

I’ve been following the Essen discussion on the Board Game Society message, and here’s my list of the new stuff I want: Der Elefant im Porzellanladen — Mandatory Amigo card game. A friend will bring this to me to pay back a favour. Null & Nichtig was also on my list, but the same friend [...]

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Game comics

October 20, 2006

I’m not sure if Larry Leadhead is a good webcomic or not, but this one kind of hit home…

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Da Vinci’s Challenge

October 18, 2006

Review in Finnish here DaVinci’s Challenge is yet another game trying to milk the popularity of Dan Brown’s books. Once again, any connection between this game and Leonardo Da Vinci is fairly thin and based on art alone (and even the art is mangled: let’s just say the Vitruvian Man is less of a man [...]

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Pentago

October 17, 2006

This review in Finnish Pentago, the Finnish Adult Game of the year for 2006, is a twist on good old naughts and crosses. Players try to form five in a row on a 6×6 grid. That’s fairly boring, but fortunately that’s not all. The twist is in the board, which is divided into quadrants of [...]

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Viva Topo!

October 16, 2006

Finnish edition of this review It’s easy to dismiss Viva Topo! as a simple game for kids. That’s what it is, but it’s also more! It’s become the current favourite of me and my wife. We play it together, as our son is still way too young for board games. Viva Topo! is a simple [...]

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Da Vinci’s Challenge

October 16, 2006

I played Da Vinci’s Challenge with Johanna yesterday. She hated it, and I didn’t like it much better. Basically it’s a simple abstract game, where pieces are laid on a board with a Flower of Life pattern. It’s nice, except the game is somewhat boring, counting points is tedious as you must check carefully to [...]

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Quick touch with Pentago

October 13, 2006

I played Pentago, the Finnish game of the year, yesterday with Johanna. My darling wife was amazed when she heard that was the winner. She may not be a hardcore gamer, but she isn’t clueless either! The game sucks, simply put. It’s your typical naughts-and-crosses on six by six board; one board quadrant is rotated [...]

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