From the monthly archives:

June 2008

Hot games for Q2/2008

June 30, 2008

Continuing from the previous round… Glory to Rome takes the spot as the hottest game of the quarter, by far: it has double the hotness points the second game on the list has. And why not? It’s new and it’s very, very good. I’ve played four games, once each with two, three, four and five [...]

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Playing-card review 6: Piatnik Tarocks

June 29, 2008

Piatnik makes some very beautiful 54-card Austrian-style Tarock packs with French suits . The first of my playing-card reviews covered one of them; here are the rest. Start with that review, because the packs are actually all exactly the same on the front. What differs is the back and the presentation. Two of the packs [...]

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Thursday session: Dolmengötter, Pampas Railroads

June 26, 2008

Our latest game session (actually on Tuesday) got a good start with Die Dolmengötter. It’s a favourite of me and Hannu, and the others were happy to play the game as well. Mika was the only newbie around. Petri had devised a rather clever strategy: avoid Mikko. I certainly did fairly well, pretty much thanks [...]

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Playing-card review 5: Tarock and Schafkopf

June 18, 2008

ASS Tarock Schafkopf Club and Piatnik Schafkopf Tarock (no. 182211). These packs (ASS on left, Piatnik on right) have the same Bayerisches Bild pattern with 36 cards. The Bavarian pattern has suits of acorns (Eichel), leaves (Graß), hearts (Herz) and bells (Schellen). The face cards have a king and two officers, Ober and Unter. While [...]

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Thursday session: Glory to Rome, Preference, Tarock

June 17, 2008

Our Thursday session was on Monday this week. That’s summer for you… I would prefer a fixed date, but sure, it’s pretty hard to fix when people have fluctuating schedules. I started games with a two-player game of Glory to Rome. I’ve now played with two, three, four and five players — that’s fairly rare! [...]

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Thursday session: Dutch InterCity, Modern Art

June 13, 2008

As my order from Northumbria Games arrived in just two days, we started our games with Dutch InterCity. We had four players, but fifth arrived just when we were about to start. Five, then. Dutch InterCity is an older title from Winsome Games and a progenitor for the Riding series. It is somewhat similar to [...]

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Canal Mania back in favour

June 8, 2008

My opinion of Canal Mania seems to shift after every game. Now I like the game again! We played the game yesterday with the four of us (my mother, Ismo and Severi). With three newbies, we were still able to finish the game in 90 minutes after I broke the 50 points. It was a [...]

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Bondtolva in the park

June 6, 2008

Yesterday’s session was a disaster: Mari arrived at 16.20 or so, I arrived at 17.00 and Make arrived at 17.30 — none of us stayed long enough to meet each other. Way to go! However, today was much better. You see, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time outside in the Kaukajärvi parks with [...]

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Jonathan Schaeffer and Duplicate Poker

June 3, 2008

I was scouring the web for interesting Poker news (that’s what I do for living these days) and I bumped into a familiar name. There’s a Man vs Machine Poker Championship coming, where two human Poker pros will play against Polaris, a Poker computer program. In the end of the article I read, they interview [...]

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Co-operative Settlers of Catan

June 1, 2008

Settlers of Catan meets M.U.L.E. in Seize Life! describes a M.U.L.E.-inspired variant of Catan where players must co-operate and win together: In M.U.L.E. the player are all in coopertition, cooperative competition. They are colonists trying to make good for themselves but also must help their fellow players. At a certain time “those in charge” return [...]

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