From the category archives:

Less about games

More precise session data

June 13, 2010

I did a nice little addition to my board game session database. Previously I’ve been tracking Age of Steam plays by the expansion. That isn’t completely satisfactory, as most expansions include several maps. My software can track expansion plays, so that they count also as plays of the base game — five plays of different [...]

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Gaming Year 2009

January 1, 2010

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 [...]

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Playing cards and Dominion

December 31, 2009

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 [...]

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Board game auction

October 18, 2009

Today ends our large board game auction. We have couple of hundred games for sale. See the auction at Lautapeliopas. Feel free to participate, if you understand the instructions and can pick up your games at Helcon or from me.
I made a huge inventory cleanup for the auction, I’m selling over 40 games. Lots of [...]

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Dominion box

July 16, 2009

I built myself a new box for Dominion. I found the plans in Geek, but had to fix them a bit — for one, the suggested length of 285 mm is huge, my box is slightly too short at 210 mm, correct length with Ultra Pro soft sleeves should be something like 230 mm to [...]

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Hobby Games: The 100 Best

March 1, 2009

I’m a tad late with this, I know, but I just finished reading Hobby Games: The 100 Best, which I liked a lot. It’s a collection of hundred short essays on games.
The authors are a variety of games industry notables: designers, publishers, authors and so on. There’s Steve Jackson (both of them, actually), Martin Wallace, [...]

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Gaming year 2008

January 1, 2009

So, how was the year? Pretty wild, if you ask me.
Good new games (2007-2008 games)

Dominion — Well, I played 28 games of this, and most of them outside BrettSpielWelt. That’s a pretty nice number, considering how late this game arrived. Everybody likes it, or at least doesn’t mind playing a game. Dominion is also really [...]

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Current affairs

October 17, 2008

Boardgaming Finland has done their first podcast in English. It’s an interview of Jussi Autio from Tuonela Productions, the creators of The Club.
I’m using Twitter these days, I’m msaari there. Actually, my priority feed is in Identi.ca (msaari there as well), I just automatically copy everything to Twitter as it’s the more popular service. If [...]

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Definition of skill in games

October 3, 2008

Dutch professor Ben van der Genugten has created a formula for calculating the skill level of a game. He has used it in Dutch courts to help determine that fantasy sports games are games of skill and now he’s using it to argue that poker is a game of skill, too. (See Leading Professor Rekindles [...]

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West Riding for sale

September 6, 2008

I’ve got a copy of Winsome Games’ West Riding for sale and it’s ridiculously cheap for something that difficult to find: just 20 euros (under $30), including economy shipping anywhere in the world. If you want it, just head to the BoardGameGeek Marketplace.

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