Gameblog

Peloponnes and Schildkrötenrennen

2010-03-19T06:33:35Z

We had scheduled a game of Greed on Wednesday's game night, but that fell through. Some other time, then. I did get my copy of Greed back, I had borrowed it right after I got it, so I was finally able to take a proper look at it. It sure looks great. The cover is one of the best ever, classy and fits the theme well. The theme is excellent, at the same time serious and funny.

We did play Peloponnes, with the full compliment of six players. It worked well, which is a good thing, as six-player games this good are rare, but otherwise I wasn't too pleased with the game.

The problem is the same as with In the Year of the Dragon - I don't like the way the game keeps knocking down the things I built. That's not fun, even though it was somewhat entertaining how everybody around the table kept complaining about it.

Still, I prefer building games where I get to keep the stuff I build. I don't mind games that are difficult or even hostile towards players, but it shouldn't work this way. Peloponnes is short enough so I can certainly play it again, maybe with greater success and more fun, but I'm glad I didn't buy it like I planned at some point.

Hannu had found me a copy of Schildkrötenrennen. The Finnish edition is out-of-print and I've been kicking myself for not buying it when it was available. Hannu was fortunately able to find me a cheap copy.

This Knizia-designed tortoise race is a simple race game, where players play cards to move the tortoises back and forth. When the tortoises move into a space with other tortoises, they form piles and when you move a tortoise, all tortoises piled on top of it move as well.

Tortoises are secret, so there's a bit of bluffing, especially as you only have a five-card hand and must advance other tortoises as well - you just can't keep on moving your tortoise forward and the others backwards.

It's simple, quick and great fun. I played it twice with Johanna, which was great fun and then with Nooa. Nooa needs an easier game, so we played with open cards and open tortoises, and the game worked that way as well (though that's just a decent childrens' game, not an overall great game like the actual game).

Shopping list

2010-03-12T18:02:07Z

I'm not interested in buying lots of games, but as time goes by, my list of games I'd like to get slowly grows. It's now big enough for a blog post...

Samarkand: Routes to Riches is the new Queen-produced family version of Winsome's Age of Scheme. I've missed Age of Scheme, but it sounds like a good game. I don't mind that Samarkand is lightened family version, because I have enough hard core games, but not many games that would work with less experienced gamers. So, Samarkand sounds like a good thing.
Age of Industry comes from the other side of the great Bohrer/Wallace divide. I've completely missed Brass, which Age of Industry re-implements. Now's the time, I think! This is pretty much a must buy, especially as this one seems to do good things for Brass.
London is another game from Treefrog and sounds intriguing as well. This one's coming later this year, so I might pick this up from Essen. I'm definitely not placing a Treefrog subscription, because I'm not interested in A Few Acres of Snow, the third game in the subscription.
New England Rails is a new train game coming from Rio Grande. An interview at Boardgame News makes this one sound very good. A train game, but running other businesses is more important while rails are needed to get the most of other stuff. Could be welcome change for Winsome/AoS/18xx train games. Most likely a must-buy. The name's a tad confusing - I can't remember whether New England Railways is Rails or Railways, but from now on if I get it wrong, I'll hit another game!
Workshop of the World is a new game from Ragnar Brothers, mirroring the idea of Brass (first canals, then railroads - Age of Industry, by the way, loses the canals). This should be pretty tight game, the design notes certainly sound interesting.

First go on the Tinners' Trail

2010-03-10T18:10:09Z

Today's game of choice was Martin Wallace's Tinners' Trail, a game of tin and copper mining in Cornwall. It's a delightful little economy game. I didn't have expectations for it, I'd had just heard good things about the game.

It's a fairly simple deal. There are areas that are auctioned to players. Once you have a mine in the area, you can mine the tin and copper there. Mining costs money, depending on how much water there is in the mine. Tin and copper are worth money, the value fluctuates pretty wildly from turn to turn, but is known before you go mining. When you mine, more water is added to the mine.

There are ways of removing the water: ports, steam pumps, railroads and adits (sort of water pipes) help remove the water and give other benefits. Miners can be hired to increase production.

Some areas begin the game with known amount of ore, other can be either prospected and then bought, or bought blind and then prospected. That's a big of a gamble, as in our game Tuomo bought an area which turned out to have nothing but water.

The game lasts only four rounds, which is a pretty good length, actually - in our game, I had something like three tin cubes left in my mines on the last round.

The victory point system is fairly clever. It's not about money! Once in a turn there's a chance to buy victory points ("external investments"). They cost quite a bit, ranging from £5 to £50. Each packet buys certain amount of victory points. On the first turn, you get 1.2 points per £, then 1, then 0.8, then 0.6. Early purchases are rewarded, but of course you need the money to buy land and mine it.

I found the game good fun. The die-rolling brings quite a bit of randomness in the affairs, but in a good way. The way the water works is rather clever. All in all, this is a game I'd really like to play again. Our game took just 65 minutes, with maybe a third of it spent on the first round. If the game stays that short - or gets even shorter - this is a real gem.

After Tinners' Trail, we managed to play one round of Die Dolmengötter. It's one of my absolute favourite games, particularly in the 20-minute niche. It didn't fail this time either, even though we had two newbies to school. I played my dolmens correct, getting maximum multipliers for both 4 and 3, scoring wee bit over 70 points. Exploiting newbies is the way to go. Meanwhile my archnemesis Hannu was stranded on the outside looking in and barely managed to reach second place. What a sorry lad.

First impression: Lokomotive Werks

2010-03-03T18:29:37Z

I got my copy of Lokomotive Werks a while ago and got it on the table today. It's a 2002 Winsome title from Dieter Danziger. It's been reprinted twice and I managed to get a copy of the most recent reprint.

The game's about building locomotives, but it could be about any technology, really. What matters is economics, the building of an economic engine. Players design locomotive models and produce them. Produced locomotives are then sold to satisfy market demand. The goal is to get at least $300 - you start with just $10 and a simple locomotive model, so there's some work to do!

It's a very simple and skeletal game. There's little flavour, all locomotive models for example are identical: their production cost is twice their income and their design cost is twice the production cost. Only prices and types vary.

The market is the heart of the game. The locomotives are divided in four types. In each type, the latest model in game gets more demand - a die is added to a pool. The older model (there's usually two models available) loses one die each turn, so the demand diminishes. If there are three generations available, the oldest one becomes obsolete.

The demand is dice. Dice are rolled to get random demand and when players sell the trains, they can sell each model to a single die. If a demand die matches production, good - move the die from orders to satisfied customers. Otherwise the highest die is either moved to the customer pool or adjusted by the amount of locomotives sold. Every player gets to sell each model to just one die at the time, guaranteeing that later players get to sell something.

Image via Wikipedia

The marked mechanism is really clever. In addition there's turn order, where richest player goes last and poorest first. This way the poorer players can produce what the richer player produces and they can sell their stuff to the market first, annoying the richer player. The richest player gets to adjust their production last, focusing on areas where other players aren't leeching. They can also buy new technology last, making sure they can get a monopoly in at least one type.

It's a simple game, but takes a while before players get their engines running and make enough money to win the game (there's some attrition in the shape of 10% income tax). Our game took about 90 minutes. On the last round, everybody was making about $170-180. I was second, I just couldn't pass the leader.

Lokomotive Werks is an interesting game. The market mechanism is good, there's some chaos and unpredictability. A bad roll can screw you, but so can a sudden slump in the economy or some similar real-life event. Figuring out which locomotives to produce was interesting and entertaining. The game is really calculation-heavy, especially when you get to details like optimizing spending to get a good place in turn order...

So, another good Winsome game, I'm definitely playing this again.

JunaCon: 1830, Preußische Ostbahn

2010-02-28T10:49:49Z

Yesterday I made a trip to Turku - two hours driving each direction - just to play two games. Crazy? Well, one of the games was a five-hour game of 1830. Still crazy? Well, I like being crazy that way.

It was my first go at this most significant game in the 18xx family. We had five players, all 1830 newbies, some with other 18xx experience. We managed to finish under five hours, but include setup and rules and the game time goes slightly over five hours.

Experience counts, as players finished roughly in the order of experience. I won, having most cash and the best stock portfolio. It was a fairly friendly game, with no major company dumping or stock thrashing.

Based on this game, 1830 isn't one of my favourite 18xx games. There are few things I don't like... the dot towns are annoying (they won't upgrade from yellow), yellow cities are purely straight track tiles, OO tiles are annoying and let's not even get started on diesel trains. 1825 is better on these respects (dots upgrade to major cities, there are many kinds of yellow city tiles and the upgrades are more interesting, there are less OO cities and no diesels) and I much prefer the 1825 stock market with the multiple step jumps for good dividend performance.

Still, I'd like to explore this game a bit further, being a classic and all. Perhaps it'll get better once I get used to its quirks and as the players gain experience.

After 1830, I didn't have time for anything major. I had brought a bunch of Winsome games and we ended up playing a three-player game of Preußische Ostbahn - I might've preferred playing something I haven't yet tried, but I can't complain, Ostbahn is such a great game.

So it was this time, too. One of the players complained about not getting turns - and ended up winning the game, of course. Another player was badly left behind early on and I was sure he would lose. Well, he did, but only $10 behind the leader, while he was more than $100 behind the top two at some point in the game. Had he played his last move better, he could've won the game. It was that close.

So, a top-notch game, once again. Preußische Ostbahn is certainly chaotic game, where small things make a big difference and the result is probably quite a bit influenced by pure luck, but who cares? It's really exciting and fun, that's what matters.

I really love this game. I went and upped my rating to 10, it's that good.

The reason why I went to Turku was JunaCon ("TrainCon" in Finnish), a board game event dedicated to train games and train games alone. The event was held at the Turku railway station, a suitable location for a train game event if any! Yesterday was a good success, they had something like 40 players. In addition of my games, people played 1853, 1856 (same guys played these two in a row), 18AL, Steam, Age of Steam, Freight Train, On the Underground and other lighter games.

Today they're playing the Finnish Ticket to Ride championship tournament. It was a really nice event, well done and I hope they do it again next year.

Update on recent games

2010-02-12T09:58:46Z

I've been seriously busy writing my book and this blog is one of the things that has suffered. So, here's a bit of an overview on recent gaming so you don't feel all lonely and deserted here.

I've played lots of kid's games with Nooa. Das magische Labyrinth and Click Clack, mostly.

I printed out Open Rails Origins - 18AL, which is a train game that mixes 18xx, Age of Steam and Winsome cube games together. The game is played on 18AL map. It's a small game, for two or three players (or solitaire). Jack Neal, the designer, says it takes 60-90 minutes, but our two-player game took two hours. Shame, as 60-minute play time would've made it a real killer. Now I think it's fine. I had some issues with the advanced rules and next time I try it I'll use the easier train rules to see how that goes.

Despite my quibbles, I think Open Rails Origins is a good print'n'play title for all train game enthusiasts. A word of warning, though, apparently the rules are borderline incomprehensible without steady train game background. I found them mostly understandable. Sampo Sikiö's alternate art is a must-have.

(For a larger version of the picture, see BoardGameGeek).

We also played some Preußische Ostbahn with the new expansion. The expansion is more of a "why not" than "must have", but the best thing was playing the game - I love it, it's an absolute blast every time I play it. I highly recommend the game, too bad it's once again sold out. However, a licensed edition is coming out. If they don't mangle the game (and I doubt it), it should be sweet.

On the Winsome front, I bought the recent reprint of Lokomotive Werks. The game sounds intriguing, but what comes to the length of the game, I hope we're closer to the 45 minutes of Dale Yu's group than the three hours some folks report.

Wednesday we played some Power Grid - Factory Manager. The game got a very warm welcome, it was generally quite well liked. I thought it was fine. Nothing too exciting, kind of like a more complicated version of Industrial Waste. Clever is the keyword. There was some downtime - we had five newbies around the table - but nothing intolerable. I'm not buying, especially as everybody else seems to want the game, but I'll certainly play again given a chance and nothing more interesting. Early 7 rating, but 8 is likely.

Oh, I also reached 600 rated games on Geek. 600th game was The aMAZEing Labyrinth against Nooa. So the time passes (not that he's ready to play that one for real).

Steamy steeds

2010-01-24T18:12:33Z

Played Dampfross today. It's dated, slightly too long, but good fun nevertheless. I would like to play the game again, but I think it might be a bit difficult.

Here's Robert thinking about his final moves in the building phase. All cities are connected, so it's time to race! I'm the red network, spreading out from Münich all the way to Kiel. A bit weak on the Western side of the map, though, with only one connection to the Ruhr valley. Still, good enough network for second place. Blue won, with a network from Münich to Hamburg, but in the more densely populated West Germany.

Larger image at Geek

Railroad Dice 2, first impressions

2010-01-20T11:16:09Z

I'm very busy writing a book with a really tight schedule - the manuscript needs to be done by the end of February - so my blogging tends to lag a bit. Thus I'm reporting what happened last week in the board game meeting... We played Railroad Dice 2. I bought the whole set (the first game, Germany expansion to that and the second game) from a friend and finally got some part of it on the table.

This game has a notoriously bad rulebook and the clearer rules summary available online isn't all that clear - but it's still mandatory to understand the game.

Well, we were able to play the game with relatively few problems. It was fun - well, I did win. There are problems, but I found the connection-building and passenger-moving entertaining. The game has a bit of luck involved, with all the dice and whatnot, but plenty of tough decisions to make.

The components are one of the problems. The dice are fairly small and the board is so small it looks funny. Playing isn't as easy and pleasant as it could be. However, everything works.

It's a nice game, with some issues, but one I'm rather happy to own. The start player rule is good enough for that, actually, as the player who owns most railroad games gets to play first... I've got 25, how about you?

First impression of Cannes

2010-01-10T11:22:37Z

I'm mostly price insensitive when it comes to board games. I've learnt a long time ago that low price doesn't make a weak game any better. If a game is interesting enough, I'm ready to pay a lot for it.

However, I can appreciate a good deal when I get one. Three euros for a Splotter game? You got it! I don't care if it's one of their less-celebrated titles... So, I got Cannes, the game with notoriusly bad cover art.

It's a clever game inside that box, though. Players are film producers in Cannes, trying to make movies and profit as much as possible. There are three kinds of movies: action films, romantic comedies and science fiction movies. Action films require stars and special effects, romantic comedies require stars and scripts and science fiction takes scripts and special effects. Stars can be made of ordinary people, special effects are made with computers and scripts are made of computers and beer. Computers are made of micro chips. There are tiles that provide chips, beer and people and tiles that do the transformations.

Players connect tiles and can use every tile they connect to. Parties are important, as all party tiles that connect to each other form a single tile where you don't need internal connections. That's good, because you only have five rods to make the connections with and as soon as all are in play, you'll have to move the ones you have.

Because five rods is so little, there's the Old Boys' Network. This requires a visit to the golf course tile, where you can change two people to a cigar, which you can place like a rod. These form the Old Boys' Network, which everybody can use. That speeds up the game a bit.

So, build connections, collect resources, make them into better resources, produce films, release them in Cannes. Films are worth money, but the more films are released in single genre, the less they are worth. Worry not, you can always use beer to bribe a reviewer to increase the value of a genre!

The game ends when all big boy cigars are in play or when all tiles are played. Getting the last turn seems very important, so there's some interesting timing there.

It's a fun little brain burner with a surprisingly fun theme. The art is either cute in its naïve style or hideous, but it shouldn't leave anybody cold... There are some rough edges to the game, the experience is probably quite different depending on how certain tiles turn out. Our game lacked the script-making tile - only one of them in the set - for a long time, making action movies highly desirable.

In the end Olli won 78-70, having produced more movies than I did. I managed to salvage something by forcing the game to end by finishing up the old boy network. Olli could've made a movie or two on his next round to reap 20-25 more points. Our game took an hour or so, which was nice.

Pictured above is the network after the game. For a larger view, see the image at Geek (once and if it's approved).

Gaming Year 2009

2010-01-01T18:12:00Z

Time for another of these yearly reports, huh. This was a fairly quiet year for games. Last year was really good, but we got the second kid this year (see Gaming impact of children)... So, from last year's 284 plays to this year's 130 plays and some very quiet time (just one 90-minute session in February and only a single 18xx game in September).

That's quite a drop, as I've had 300-400-play years from 2001 to 2006. 2007 was the first drop, then I recovered nicely in 2008 to almost 300 plays and now hit the worst year ever. There are many factors to this. I can make it to fewer sessions, I'll have to head home earlier, I don't have time to play in BrettSpielWelt and so on.

Then again, I'm seeing signs of better future. I already played almost 20 games with Nooa this year and he's real keen on playing games. Right now his skills aren't quite there yet, but he'll learn and he's already much better.

I've been busy, though. This year's big thing was of course Lautapeliopas which I started building year ago and got ready in June. Since June we've already published over 150 articles - even though that number includes a bunch of small news items, it's still a major leap from Lautapelaaja.net's recent rate of a review each month or so.

Good new games (2008-2009)

Dominion is still heading this list, thanks to Intrigue and Seaside, two great expansions. Both are good, but I think Seaside is a bit better. Dominion is by far my most played game this year, accounting for 1 of 6 games I played.

It's still a great game I enjoy a lot and there's no sign of getting bored in it. The expansions have helped a lot and I think I'll keep on buying new expansions as they come. With the basic set alone, I wouldn't have played the game as much. Still, I'd say it's a fairly cheap habit to maintain.

Kids of Carcassonne. Another big hit. Nooa likes this, which is the key here. I like it too. The game is still a bit too difficult for Nooa to really understand, but he likes to play it and I help him a bit and it works - we have fun.

The game is really well done, with at least some illusion of skillful play amongs the luck of the draw and the components are really top notch. Excellent game. See my blog entry about it.

Steam turned out to be a good game and seems like worth owning, despite Age of Steam. I only managed to get two plays in, once with the basic game and once with the advanced rules. Both are fine and I think I actually prefer the basic rules a bit, because the advanced rules are closer to Age of Steam and there I prefer the original.

In any case, Steam is a worthy train game in my opinion. I've got Steam Barons in the closet waiting to be played, it'll be interesting to see how that turns out. The concept is interesting, but some bits of the execution raise some questions.

Last Train to Wensleydale is another interesting Wallace train game. I've only played once, with partially wrong rules, but the game seems promising and what's most important, pleasantly different from most train games.

Good older games I haven't played before

Greentown is an obscure little game, yet quite a find. Unfortunately I only got it on the table once, but I certainly would like to play it more. It takes a small bit of 18xx games and makes it a whole game. It's one of the least favourite parts, actually, route calculation, but what Greentown makes out of it is quite the pleasant brainburner.

Games I've kept on enjoying

Age of Steam is always on this list. This year was pretty bad, just four games, but all were excellent fun nevertheless. Of the expansions, I really enjoyed Zombie Apocalypse and Finland.

Preußische Ostbahn continued to charm me. So does Gulf, Mobile & Ohio. Too bad I only played them total of three times. I should really concentrate on playing these really good games more, yet at the same time it's really hard to say no to new games...

1825, particularly Unit 3 definitely belongs to this list. I managed to play two games with Olli and a bigger Unit 1 game in Helcon (see Helcon notes). It's really pleasing to just start playing the game, no rules explanations, no fuss, just quick setup and off you go.

The not-so-good, the disappointing, the plain bad

Bunny Bunny Moose Moose should be the best party game ever. I thought it was unpleasant, boring and annoying.

Formissimo didn't impress me much, even though I like the genre (quick reflex pattern matching).

Quick look on the good games of the previous report

Everything's still good, I just haven't had time to play them... Well, I'm thinking about selling Steam over Holland, but that's just because I have too many 18xx games already...

Fives and dimes

Games played ten times or more in 2009:

Dominion (23)

Games played five to nine times in 2009:

Kids of Carcassonne (7)
Blue Moon (6)

Total 130 games, 67 different titles.

Month metric

Dominion is pretty much the only game to register anything here...

Year metric

Battle Line (8/9)
Age of Steam (7/7)
Attika (7/7)
San Juan (6/6)
Ingenious (6/6)
Gang of Four (6/7) *
Ta Yü (6/7)
Modern Art (6/8) *
Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (6/8) *
Mahjong (6/8) *
Lost Cities (6/9) *
Trivial Pursuit (6/9) *

First number is the years I've played the game, second is the number of years since the first time I played. So, I first played Age of Steam seven years ago and have played it every year since that. With Battle Line I've missed a year. I didn't play games marked with an asterisk this year.

Playing cards and Dominion

2009-12-31T19:23:55Z

Image via Wikipedia

Here's something geeky: an inventory of my playing cards.

Tarock (54 cards)

Wiener Veduten Tarock (Piatnik gift set w/ booklet)
Nr. 1934 (Piatnik)
Nr. 1936 (Piatnik)
Das Constitutions Tarock (Piatnik)
Cego (ASS)
Grazer Tarock (Piatnik)
Allerfeinste Kaffeehaus Tarock, nr. 1909 (Piatnik)
Luxus Tarock, nr. 1903 (Piatnik)

Tarot (78 cards)

Versailles (Carta Mundi)
Tarot de Marseille, Jean Noblet (Le Tarot)
Lo Tarot (Japon Brand)
Jeu de Tarot (France Cartes)
78 Cartes Super Luxe (Piatnik)

Hungarian Tarock (42 cards)

Ungarisches Ansichten Tarock (Piatnik)

Italian Tarocco (62-78 cards)

Tarocco Siciliano (Modiano)
Tarocco Bolognese (Modiano)
Tarocco Piemontese (Modiano)

Doppelkopf (2 x 24 cards)

Doppelkopf Deutsches Bild (ASS)
Doppelkopf Franz. Bild (Piatnik)

Standard 52-card packs (52-55 cards)

Caravelle, red x 3 (Carta Mundi)
Caravelle, blue (Carta Mundi)
100% plastic, red x 4 (Copag)
100% plastic, blue (Copag)
Anglo, blue (Offason)
Anglo, red (Offason)
Invisible Cards (Kikkerland)
Öbergs spelkort (Esselte)
Playing cards, red x 2 (Cart Classics)
Great Russia Standard, red (Piatnik)
Great Russia Standard, blue (Piatnik)

Binokel Gaigel (2 x 24 cards)

Binokel Gaigel, Württemb. Bild (Nürnberger)
Binokel Gaigel, Württemb. Bild (Piatnik)

Skat, Wilhelm Tell, others (32-33 cards)

Skat aus Berlin (?)
Skat Turnier Bild x 5 (ASS)
Skat (Couer?)
Mariàs dvojhlavy (Piatnik)
Wilhelm Tell Wilmos (Piatnik)
Magyar kártya, red (Piatnik)
Jednohlavé Hrací karty, Prager bild (Piatnik)
Zeleznicárské karty (Akord) (really cool train-themed pack!)

36 card packs

Russian souvenir pack (?)

Schnapsen (24 cards)

Doppeldeutsche Schnapskarten (Piatnik)

Schafkopf Tarock packs (36 cards)

Schafkopf Tarock, Bayerisches Bild (Piatnik)
Tarock Schafkopf, Bayerisches Bild (ASS)

Jass (36 cards)

Jass (Piatnik)

Spanish cards (40 cards)

32 (Fournier)
Barajas Espanolas (Piatnik)

Italian styles (40-52 cards)

Bresciane (Modiano)
Napoletane (Modiano)
Piacentine (Modiano)
Piacentine (Dal Negro)
Primiera Bolognese (Dal Negro)
Salzburger (Dal Negro)
Sarde (Modiano)
Siciliane (Modiano)
Toscane (Dal Negro)
Trevigiane (Modiano)
Triestine (Piatnik)
Triestine (Modiano)

The last game I played this year was Dominion, two games with Johanna. The year 2009 review is coming soon, I've got most of it done already. This session, by the way, pushed Dominion to over 50 plays, seventh game to reach such lofty heights (yeah, I don't do a lot of repeat plays in general).

Finnish Board Game Society Christmas Greeting

2009-12-23T15:58:35Z

The Finnish Board Game Society Christmas Greeting - shown here - is pretty cool. Kudos to Sampo Sikiö.

The idea is obviously cool, because I used it for the Lautapeliopas 404 page (the Lautapeliopas card text says "Name a card that isn't in your deck. If you can find the card in your deck, take a Province. Otherwise get -404 victory points.")

Ubongo Duel first impressions

2009-12-22T18:21:15Z

My brother was visiting, so of course I got him to play something with me. Ubongo Duel was an excellent choice, as I hadn't played it before. Always a good idea to shorten the list of "owned, not played".

My brother had never played any Ubongo, but got the gist of it very quickly. It was very close game, too, as I won 5-4. We tried the five-tile side once, but afterwards stuck to the easier side, to keep the game short and simple. It was pretty quick, with each of us getting one instant win round. There was were one or two very difficult rounds, where the correct solution evaded both of us, but we were able to find all solutions in reasonable time.

Ubongo Duel is a good game, one of the better in the family. The two-player game has no need for complicated scoring rules, but there's an interesting handicap variant (player in the lead must solve two puzzles) to balance things out if necessary. The difficulty of the puzzles is good, too, I'd guess most four-tile puzzles offer enough challenge and the five-tile puzzles are diabolical at best.

So, a good one. I think this might be the Ubongo I'll keep in my collection - I've so far sold all others away, because I don't play them. This combines the easy portability of the Mini with solid difficulty of the Extreme, which sounds like a winning combo.

Look, it's Scotland again!

2009-12-13T18:14:51Z

Olli came by to try out the new table. We've moved (short distance, just couple hundred meters, but we got an extra room and about 30 square meters more space), and now we have a kitchen and a separate dining room, with a gorgeous new table. As we also have a table in kitchen, it's easier to conquer one table for games while rest of the family can eat on the other...

I was planning an 1830 game, but that fell through, nobody else could come with such a short notice. That wasn't too bad, because it meant we could play our staple two-player game, 1825 Unit 3. This would be our fourth game.

Previously we had learnt that letting your opponent take all of Caledonian Railways on the first stock round is a good way to guarantee a loss. So, we split it more equally this time. Olli got the directorship, while I took a good dose of NBR stock. The opening was fairly typical, but got a new direction, when Olli opened Highland instead of GSWR. HR opened cheap, at 67 (it ended up the weakest company at 142).

GSWR worked well for me. So did NBR, actually - I pushed the price up to 120 or so, sold most of it while retaining directorship, let it collect dividends while falling back to 90, then rebought and drove it eventually to 255, including one quadriple leap. Beautiful.

The two remaining minors were opened at much higher. Olli had learnt the lesson as well. He opened GN of S at whopping 142. I was content to open M&C at 126. Olli even helped me fund it (why not, as he bought an IPO share and immediately sold it for 160). That 1,260 pounds was enough to buy the mandatory 3T train and two more trains, a 3 and a 5, both of which were sold for 10 pounds to NBR. To finish it off, I sold the M&C director's share for 720 pounds when it had reached it zenith (well, it would've climbed one more step, I forgot to account for tile replacement on its tiny route).

Image via Wikipedia

I was raking in money at the end, which was highly useful. The thing was, Olli had somewhat better stock portfolio. He had more minors, which meant higher share density. In the last operating round he exceeded my earnings, too, which meant the game finished exactly at the right time for me.

In the end, my stock portfolio was 5,059 pounds against his 6,061 pounds. However, I had 2,675 pounds in cash against his 1,375 pounds. Thus, the final scores were 7,734
and 7,436 pounts and I was able to win the game! It was close, but I had over 5% margin, so it wasn't a completely marginal victory.

So, for the first time, the original director of CR lost the game. That was a welcome change. My winning score was the highest ever and Olli's score was the third highest so far. I figure that means we've learnt something.

Once again the game took three hours sharp, with some heavy thinking included. I forgot to take an end-of-game photo, but the track play was fairly typical.

We finished the session off with two quick games of San Juan, including the expansion cards from Alea Treasure Chest. These add some welcome spice to the game. There are also events, which are extra actions players can use. These one-off actions offer some special opportunities. It's not as good an addiction as the new buidlings, but not bad. The new buildings include some gems.

If someone has the Alea Treasure Chest but doesn't need the San Juan expansion, I'd like to buy it! Drop me a comment or an e-mail (mikko at mikkosgameblog.com) I've got zero interest for the other expansions and buying the whole set and then selling the other expansions sounds like too much trouble.

Zombie Apocalypse - with trains

2009-12-10T17:49:27Z

We've been moving and I've been otherwise busy, so I've had to skip each board game club meeting in November. Now I was finally able to make it and we got to play the game that's been right on top of my "want to play" list.

Age of Steam - The Zombie Apocalypse. Even the name is amazing. I mean, the dead are raising from the graves, but who cares? There's profit to be made on the railways. After all, people still need to travel from A to B, and preferably quickly, so they're willing to pay premium - especially if you have armed guys on the train ready to blast the zombies to tiny bits.

The base of the game is pretty basic Age of Steam. There are no production rolls, though. Towns start with cubes and each new city gets two cubes in the beginning. Production action is draw 3, place 1 anywhere on board.

Then there are the zombies. In the beginning, zombies are placed on three random graveyards. After that, there are no random elements. In the end of each turn, zombies move towards closest cubes. If there are multiple options, zombies split up. If there's more than one way to reach the same cubes, again they split up. If there are decisions to make, the player who is first in the turn order makes them.

Image via Wikipedia

Zombies cause some problems. Once a zombie reaches a town or city, the place is razed. Cubes are removed and the town or city is dead - it counts as a city of no colour. Zombies spawn, of course, there's one or two more of them. Zombies also add to the cost of building and moving cubes through the zombies costs more, too, unless you choose the Military Caboose action that replaces Locomotive.

There are two maps, one for three players and one for four and five. We played the bigger map, which is full of $3 mountains. Almost nothing but, actually, and for some reason the share track goes to 20. It was ridiculously difficult. The cube distribution didn't help, plenty of cubes in the same-colour cities...

Zombies weren't that bad, actually. Sure, few cities were razed, but the largest horde of zombies prowled a corner of the map that nobody built in. Of course, that reduced the amount of cubes a lot. I was the only one to go up to 5-link trains and even that was pointless.

The final results were dismal. I won, with whopping 25 points. I don't think I've played many games of Age of Steam where that wouldn't mean final place. Of those 25 points, 22 came from track I built. Pretty bad, I know...

But this was a good one, definitely one of my favourite Age of Steam expansions. Michael Webb is a top-notch designer. The zombies are an excellent addition to the game, the way they bring danger and some chaos, even though they move in fairly predictable and deterministic ways.