Two weeks of games. Last week I expected two players, but we got third. Good that I hadn’t prepared with strictly two-player affairs.

• Dominion: Hinterlands. I’m a Dominion fan, so I like the new expansion. Simple as that. It sure is no Alchemy. There are several interesting cards. Fool’s Gold (money; first played on turn is worth 1, from second on they’re worth 4; if someone buys a Province, you can trash Fool’s Gold to gain Gold) was very popular and used to good effect. Very nice set. Enthusiastic.
• Puzzle Strike. More Puzzle Strike. In the first game I was eliminated fairly quickly and had to watch the other guys slug it out for fifteen minutes or so. That was painfully boring. Other than that, the games were pretty good. Suggest.
• Kings of Mithril. At the circus school I went back to Kings of Mithril. This time we played a bit faster and were able to play two games during the hour we had, almost three. At that speed, the game has a good level of decision-making and interesting stuff to the playing-time. This game is better than the sum of its parts, really – it should be less fun than it is. Delightful game. Suggest.
• It’s Alive! started the games yesterday. So far the only thing I’ll say is that this worked rather well with just two players, despite the auction element. Not a bad filler. Suggest.
• Elder Sign. Considering this game is quite contrary to my interests in many ways (it’s FFG ameritrash, a dice game and a co-op, all features I’m not thrilled about), this was surprisingly good. However, this is definitely going to be my last game of Elder Sign with six players. I might consider the iPad version, maybe. Anyway, not my cup of tea, with all the messy rules and too-small graphical details and fairly non-inspiring game play, but I can see how someone can love this game and the stories it tells. Indifferent.
• Kansas Pacific. One of the less-loved Winsomes, despite being designed by David V.H. Peters, the author of my favourite game Samarkand and SNCF. It just isn’t very thrilling. This time we did have companies across the Land Grant line, unlike the last time, yet it was too late in the game, so buying the Land Grant and attempting to go west wasn’t an option. That seems like a fairly essential part of the game, yet it just hasn’t happened in the two games so far, which is kind of boring. In the end, I’d much rather play other Winsome games, so I’m getting rid of this one. My copy is available on BGG for $35 including shipping (edit: sold in minutes!), in case you missed the recent reprint and want to try the game. Indifferent.
• String Railway: Transport. This didn’t go down too well. I suppose people love the original String Railway too much, and judge this version based on that very different game. This is not a fun game, this is a serious puzzler of a pick-up-and-deliver game. I love it, just like I love the original game, and I’d like to explore this one more. Enthusiastic.

I’ve been listening to Trevor Menear’s Some Kind of Sunshine last couple of days. Check it out, I think it’s a wicked good album.

• Puzzle Strike. Three more games. These were the best games so far. I played well, I think, winning two out of three. The games were well-fought and exciting. A tad long at 30 minutes or so each, but they didn’t drag on. I suppose there’s a good game in there. Going to play more today. Suggest.
• Lords of Vegas. My opponents didn’t like this one much, but I enjoy it. Looks like I’ve conveniently forgotten the trade rule every time I’ve played; I’d say it’s not particularly necessary, but I’ll have to remember it the next time to see how it goes. Anyway, I already wrote a review of the game, and a favourable one: I think Lords of Vegas is a pretty solid game with a good theme. Suggest.
• Ascending Empires. First three-player game of this 4X game. I think I like this more than Eclipse… Heh. At least this one plays much faster. Again, the response from my fellow games was less enthusiastic. But I love it, this game just works. Enthusiastic.
• Oregon. Two-player games at the circus school. Upped my rating for this one, it’s just such a fine little game of tactical tile and meeple laying. Simple, yet fun. Ok, looking for the possible locations allowed by your cards is kind of annoying, but that’s minor. Very clever game, all in all. Enthusiastic.

Tomorrow, it’s Puzzle Strike and Dominion. I finally finished my Dominion minibox: Alchemy box filled with cards. There’s Cornucopia and Hinterlands in entirety and the rest is filled with choice cards from other sets. I’d like to play more Dominion, and this should help.

Recent shopping includes the Dominion promos Stash and Governor from the BGG store, the Hinterlands expansion and Container, which I finally repurchased. I’m also eyeing Kaivai, but since it’s a 2-3 hour game, I’m not sure it really makes sense to buy it. If the price drops, I’ll spring for it, right now it’s 40 euros plus shipping for the base and expansion, and that’s a bit much.

2012 is off to a flying start. My wife has been incredibly understanding of my board game hobby and I’ve been able to spend more time playing games. Part of that is definitely the kids: they’re older now (my son is 5 and my daughter is 3 in less than two weeks), so taking care of them is easier. Anyway, I’ve been very happy.

Yesterday was crazy good, for example.

• Modern Art. I played my first game of Modern Art ten years ago. The previous game before yesterday was back in 2008… Not the hottest game, but it is fun. Our game yesterday was tense and interesting. I got the windfall from some  over-the-top prices paid, but that wasn’t good enough for more than 3rd place out of four. Suggest.
• SNCF. I’ve decided this game should reach ten plays during 2012. That should not be very tricky, if I just keep carrying it around. I’ll try. It’s just such a good filler. Ok, the setup is a bit of a pain, but the game plays fast and fun. I should also try the German map. The Iberian expansion map was good, if a bit standard, the German map has more changes – but I suppose it also requires experienced players. Enthusiastic.
• Dobble. We had six players and had to wait for a while for someone to arrive. One round of Dobble was the perfect fit. I love this one, and managed to win even with my very slow start. Enthusiastic.
• Die Aufsteiger (Climbers). Another filler, while waiting for someone. This sessions was unlike other before. We dead-ended the tower faster than ever before. It was nothing like the monstrosity we had in this session. Sonja and Ville built a branch, got stuck, then I reached the same level and won the game. Lagging behind for the win! I’m coming to a conclusion with this game: it’s a keeper. Suggest.
• Megastar. We had five players, but not enough time for Clippers. So, we ended up playing this Friedemann Friese card game. It sucks. At least with five players, that is. Players try to adjust a ranking in a way, that the cards they have in hand score as many points as possible in the end. However, in order to boost a type of cards, you must play them away. Clever idea, but unfortunately there’s very little control over what happens in the game, so that makes large part of the game quite meaningless and a small change in timing can have a huge effect. Maybe this works with three players. Indifferent (but not Avoid).
• Clippers. The time-restricted player left and we could now play Clippers. In this old Alan Moon game the players build shipping lines on South Pacific, but don’t control those lines. Instead players have ports and to score you must get as many shipping lines to your ports as possible. There’s lots of interesting tension in this game. Every round you can place a port or get an option tile which lets you build more shipping lines – that’s a tough call to start with. The way the shipping lines run offers lots of potential screwage, too. All in all rather delightful game, and the fact that I got beaten really badly means that I really want to play this again. Suggest.
• Puzzle Strike. Me and three newbies. 45 minutes. Confusion. Not the best game, but they actually liked the game in the end (at least most of them). Why not – Puzzle Strike is an interesting Dominion variant. I’m still not sure if this is a keeper, but at least I’ve been pondering it for 10 games now and will continue… Suggest.

We played Eclipse yesterday. Our regular location had some strange holiday opening hours, and we had to do a quick relocate. Fortunately the nearest bar had large enough tables (just barely) for a five-player game of Eclipse – that’s not obvious, as the game is quite demanding when it comes to table space.

I had Planta, the plant species that spreads out fast, but which is a bit weak. I started next to the military superpower Orion Hegemony, but I was able to explore the border and manage the wormholes so they couldn’t attack me. On the other side I was next to the Mechanema.

I won the game. Apparently, that’s fairly easy with Planta. It didn’t look like I would win, but the Orion Hegemony was attacked on the last turn by their allies the Terrans, making them lose the Galactic Center. Well, I would’ve won even if the Hegemony had held the center, but that was still a bit of a shift in the balance of power. Too bad the Terrans pretty much bankrupted their empire with that attack, which should’ve happened at least two turns earlier.

Meanwhile in my corner, I fought a little with the Mechanema, who took two hexes from my empire. I could bear that loss, though. In the final round I sent my cruiser on a suicide mission in order to score some final reputation, as I had one reputation spot empty. Mechanema got provoked, and attacked my home world with a single dreadnought. Fortunately I had two starbases and one interceptor there, with bunch of plasma missiles, and I was able to fend off the attack. Those two battles scored me five points, thus sealing my victory.

It was a fun game. We took slightly over three hours, which means we made it in less than 40 minutes per player. Considering the game’s supposed to run 30 minutes per player, the length was very tolerable. The time flew, and the game was full of good banter and thematic narrative.

After Eclipse we lost couple of players, so we played a three-player game of Eminent Domain. That didn’t go down quite as well as Eclipse. It’s a bit overwhelming for new players, I agree, and takes a while to take in all the stuff in the game. The iconology, whily decent, is pretty heavy and there are lots of significant but very small icons.

This session was clearly better than the first one in Lautapelaamaan 2011. That was just colonize and not much more, here we started doing other stuff right away: research, even produce and trade. Warfare was also more popular. All in all a well-rounded game. The game felt a lot better.

However, it’s starting to seem that while the game is interesting, it’s also so overwhelming for new players that it’s not going to have a long life. It would require more play than it’s likely to get. Too bad, as I like the game.

Good games yesterday. We managed to get through four games in one evening.

• Tulipmania 1637 is a pretty cool game of a bubble market that heats up and crashes. Somehow the game felt a bit flat, though. I want to give it another go, but next time it’s five players or nothing (now we had four, and I have a feeling that fifth player will improve the game).
• Terra Evolution with four was less interesting than with two. The price of the disasters is too high, I think, if you hit someone else with one you both lose compared to everybody else. Works better with two, in my opinion.
• Quo Vadis? offered the best entertainment of the evening. Delightful game, but somewhat sensitive to having the right players.
• Felix: Cat in the Sack is a fun little auction game, where it seems the best thing to happen is to be last player to pass (guaranteed a nice pile of money, which gives points and flexibility). Being the first to pass sucks, but winning the auction is not always that great, either… Clever.

I got a review copy of Terra Evolution in Lautapelaamaan con and I’ve now played it five times, on two occasions. Both have been my Monday circus school games with Janne, so all have been two-player games.

So far, I dig it. I’d rate it a 7, so probably not a keeper, but I did choose to play it again this week and didn’t choose something new, so that’s something. The two-player game is fine, it takes about 20-25 minutes and while the strategy isn’t terribly deep, there’s still interesting choices. The basic process of bilateria to fishes to reptiles to birds and mammals is set in stone, but do you take the side trip to insects (no evolutionary process or important fossil track points, but a boost in population cards ie. money)? First that seemed obvious, but it isn’t.

Also, very important: the disasters! If you don’t buy any disasters, it’s a race and whoever gets the better draws wins the game, pretty much, if both players know what they’re doing. So you need disasters to slow down your opponent. Which and more important, when? You need to hit your opponent so it hurts. I did that today, snatching Janne’s reptiles when he only had one reptile card in play, halting his progress for a while. That hurt and it was an easy victory for me.

Few issues… I’m not sure how well the disasters work in the multiplayer game. If A hits B with a disaster, I’m afraid it’s C and D who reap the biggest benefits. Somebody has to take one for the team and hit the leader with a disaster, but who wants to do it? I’m not sure if the dynamic works like this, but this is what I fear. Of course, this problem doesn’t exist with just two players.

We’ll see. As it is, Terra Evolution is at least a pretty fun deck-building game (sort of) for two players.

Traditional Helcon is now Lautapelaamaan (“to play board games”). The event remains the same: a weekend of open gaming in Helsinki couple of weeks after Essen. 2011 saw another change in venue, this time to a bigger hall inside Kaapelitehdas. Not bad, as the hall last year was a bit crowded, but Kaapelitehdas is a good location otherwise.

First time in years, I was able to make this an overnight visit. Last one of those was in 2005, before the kids. Now they’re finally old enough. My brother joined me and we shared a hotel room near the location.

I hit the road at seven am, picked up Ville from Hämeenlinna and we reached Helsinki by nine, when the convention opened. We missed the lectures on Friday, but that wasn’t a big deal. Open gaming, that’s what counts.

After a quick match of King of Tokyo, we started the day with Eclipse. Sampo, one of the designers had asked me if I want to play again, and I was a bit wary, not wanting to waste many hours on single game. However, when Sampo promised me a four-player game with swift players, I was sold. The other designer Touko joined me, Ville and Sampo.

It was a quick game. Actual play time was under two hours, with setup and rules slightly over two hours. Very nice, and it didn’t feel like we were rushing the game. We did have the Cube timing the game, but with no time limits.

Eclipse is still good. It was mostly the same as back in Helcon 2010, but with small tuning here and there. The diplomacy rules were the biggest change. I’m really looking forward to getting my own copy in December and playing the game against easier opponents. This time I was third, beating Ville with the tiebreaker.

In the photo below, Touko Tahkokallio is on left, Sampo Sikiö on right.

Next up was another 4X game, Ascending Empires. Here’s a pretty cool game! I’ve now played twice, and I like this one a lot. It’s a simple game of recruiting troops, converting them to space ships to launch to other planets, building up technology and fighting space battles — but with a cool dexterity element. The ships are discs, flicked on the board. Flying requires sharp flicking skills.

The game is otherwise rather simple, but that’s what’s so great about it. The turns are lightning fast when players know what they’re doing, with an occasional longer turn when somebody goes flying. Think Antike, the games are very similar in flow.

I like this one a lot. Now that we’ve switched our game meeting from Konttori to Artturi, the new place has large enough tables so I can play this one more. Our first game couple of weeks ago took two hours, but now we played the game in an hour, like it should be.

Continuing on the space theme, we moved on to Eminent Domain. I finally got the Kickstarter game! The first game didn’t impress me a lot, but I want to investigate the game further. There are interesting elements in it, that’s for sure, but also lots of stuff that seems quite pointless — like most of the research cards, the whole trade engine and so on. Probably just the way we played… But yeah, I need to play more.

Tuomo, a friend of mine who does great board game review videos, did a really nice String Railway game in 5x scale. So, instead of 30 cm and 60 cm strings, the players have 1.5 m and 3 m “strings”. This was a great game for a con, at least it got lots of attention… It was pretty nice, I’d like to have one myself for outdoors use and so on. It worked really well.

After that it was time to check in at the hotel and grab some food, then it was time for String Railway: Transport — this one in regular 1x scale. I’ve had this game since Summer, but haven’t managed to play it yet. Now it was the time, and well, it turned out to be an interesting game. Heavier than the basic game, and not as useful as a filler, but it was fun to play and I’ll definitely want to play it more.

Ok, I don’t want to continue the narrative anymore, let’s focus on games.

Oregon — This one I like more and more. It’s a very strong game in the short family game genre. Plays fast, has clever stuff in it, looks nice. Not bad at all. I gave three newbies a solid beating, thanks to my superior two-game experience.

Chunky Fighters — My brother has made a set of these. The idea is cool and the art is fun, unfortunately the game is tedious.

King of Tokyo — Mentioned already… This is a good die-rolling filler, with really neat art and funny cards. In the genre of dice games, this is a very good game.

Uluru — A quick two-player game says this is an interesting logic puzzle. Time limits in these kinds of games are often too easy, but here I ran out of time couple of times. That’s always good.

K2 — Paul Laane taught me this one. It’s a pretty cool game, as it has you fighting against the elements while scaling K2, one of the deadlier mountains in the world. Both Paul and Ville got their climbers killed, but I got my climber to the summit and made it down, too, alive. Nice, if not earth-shaking. I wouldn’t mind giving the seriously difficult winter variant a go.

Quo vadis? — Last time I played this was in Essen 2005, when the Amigo edition was new. Funny detail… I’ll quote from my Essen blog post: ”Interesting enough, Reiner Knizia was there too. Andreas rushed to buy a copy of Quo Vadis, but by the time he was back, Knizia was gone. Too bad for Phil, who the game was going, I think.” Well, that copy of Quo Vadis, unfortunately without the Knizia autograph, is the very same copy we played with in Lautapelaamaan and which is now in my possession.What goes around comes around, I suppose. Anyway, it was a fun game, though Ville in particular detested it. Me, Hannu and Paul at least had a good time with the game…

Walnut Grove — This was the only game we played on Sunday and unfortunately I botched the rules. As an excuse, I’m not the only one, somebody else at BGG had done the exact same mistake. Anyway, the game felt pretty dreadful at times, but that’s clearly because of my mistake. I’ll have to give the game another go at some point.

Here’s my Flickr photo set. I particularly like this portrait of Paul Laane:

Catching up again.

• Top Race. A Wolfgang Kramer race game from 1996, just recently released in Finland. Not a bad game to release, though, as the game’s pretty solid for a family racing fun. Players get cards that move all cars, then the six cars are auctioned and the race is driven. The better your car places, the more money you earn — hopefully more than you paid for the cars. Three races, most money wins. Simple and entertaining.
• Cartel. A Philip Orbanes money game from 1973! The best economics game from 1970s, I’m told, and it’s easy to believe that. Players buy companies that make money, trying to get lots of money and valuable companies. The catch? There’s not enough cash, so the purchases have to funded by bonds (pays half of the company, but sucks half of the profits as well) and selling stock (which would be more valuable later and best if not sold at all). How much debt you can take to expand as much as you wish? Interesting game, but with some luck-of-the-draw issues.
• Portobello Market. Good: clever game, 20 minutes per match. Bad: just not interesting enough to own.
• Stone Age. I tried the starvation strategy for the first time. Instead of feeding my people, I let them starve and took 10-point penalties. I got a record score of 290 points (against rusty opponents, though). Next time, I didn’t get any of the necessary cards and had a bit of a bad luck with the dice, and lost. So it’s not a guaranteed winning strategy. In the third game this weekend I took a more traditional approach and got back on the winning streak. Multipliers of 7 for both huts and people, thank you…

Cartel looks lovely:

Hey, I did play games last week. Better blog about them before I head to this week’s game session, right?

We tested an auction acquisition from last summer, Lords of Vegas. Had to try it before the math trade deadline, so I know if I have to pass it on right away… but no, it’s a keeper, for now at least.

Lords of Vegas has players developing casinos in Las Vegas. Casinos are made of tiles with dice. When there are several tiles of same colour adjacent, they form a big casino, and the player who has the die with the largest number on it in the casino controls it and scores points from it. Everybody with a die in a casino scores money.

It’s an area majority game, with a twist, and lots of luck. Well, maybe not luck, but probabilities. Which casinos pay is determined by a card draw, and while you can see which cards have been drawn and thus know the odds (well, almost, as all cards are not played), it can get streaky. Of course there’s die-rolling in it too.

The best twist is on the score track: at some point, you need to score two points at a time in order to move forward on the score track. The casinos are scored one at the time, so at that point you can forget all-those one-point casinos, you must have two-point casinos. Then the step goes to three and so on. It’s kind of like Age of Steam’s Income Reduction mechanism, really. Very clever.

I’m actually hoping to get a rematch today.

Merging ahead. Not from our game, photo by Virre Annergård / BGG.

Last week I finally got Cavum on table. I bought it a while ago (June 2010 to be specific — I had been wondering about the exact time, yet I didn’t check the blog, silly me) and it took over an year to get it on the table. It’s a heavy game, with a two-hour box play time.

Well, we took almost 2.5 hours. All newbies and Atro, who is a good man but a slow player =) So, it took a while, but it does say something about the game that I didn’t get as annoyed as could’ve been expected. The game kept me intrigued enough.

It’s a Kramer & Kiesling game where players dig mine tunnels into a mountain, in order to collect jewels. The jewel collection is like route calculation in 18xx games: start from an own station, follow the tunnels without going through other players’ stations and don’t pass each tile more than once, collect all jewels you pass and then stop at an own station.

Jewels can be sold in an auction or they can be used to fulfill contracts, which score bunch of points for a specified set of 2-4 gems.

The game is played in three phases. In each phase, players have 12 actions they must use, taking 1-4 each turn. Actions include laying tunnels, placing stations and prospecting. There are also flexible buy options, which allow you some freedom of what to do.

There’s also dynamite: after the phase is over, all visible dynamite tiles blow up removing adjacent tiles, which can lead to more dynamite being visible and so on. This is a fun way to shuffle the game situation a bit between phases.

I don’t expect Cavum to get lots of play, thanks to the play time, but it still has a place in my collection. I like it.

In our game I thought I was doing great, but Tuomo was doing even better and won the game with a clear margin.