Aug
28
Session report: French Tarot
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It’s fun to play games and it’s even more fun to do it unexpectedly but this was the case in our little Tarot session in Wednesday night. My gaming pal Markku was in town because of his work and looked for something to do other than playing games in BSW (which by the way is a great way to spend time). We didn’t have much time to arrange the event but were lucky enough to have Janne to play with us.
As all three of us are seriously into card games it was no wonder that we immediately began to think of a card game for three. I suggested French Tarot which I had learned in Ropecon and found out to be fun and not overly complex Tarot game. Others had not played it and were willing to try this beast out.
French Tarot is played with 78 card French Tarot deck which I don’t own (ordered it though to avoid similar situation in the future). Luckily these games cand be played with others decks as long as there’s the same amount of cards in them and I had my 78 card Piemontese deck with Italian suits with me. Obviously this made the game a bit harder since none of us had played much with the Italian suits and figuring out what we had in our hands after the deal was rather hard.
21 trumps of a game of Tarot
The game itself is of moderate challenge. The trick taking part of the game is simple for those who have played any trick taking games before; one player plays against the others and tries to win enough tricks to score adequate amount of card points. What makes the game a little bit tougher that typical trick taking games is the auction of who gets to play. The amount of card points you have to win depends on the ends (tarot 21,0 and fool) you win from the tricks. To make the bidding a bit more challenging there’s also a dog of six cards on the table which you can use (in a way or another) if you win the auction. Typically you get the cards on the table and change some cards from your hand to those but there are other possibilities for the dog as well.
Bidding is quite harsh because if you win you get a number of points from the opponents and if you lose you pay the same amount of points to all of your opponents. This leads to a situation where failing a high bid can really ruin your game because you score a stupendous negative score. Janne basically tried this option in our game in the second deal and did not recover from it and helped me and Markku quite a bit since we got the points Janne lost.
I liked the game and hope to play it soon again. These games need experience to be most enjoyable and after one or two plays one can only feel that thay are great games if you master them well.
Aug
24
Video introduction to Politix
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I did something I haven’t done before and that’s a video review of a new Finnish card game Politix.
You can check it out from Lautapeliopas [ review can be found here] and please leave comments so that I’ll be able to develop this new brand of Boardgaming Finland.
Unfortunately this is only for those who understand Finnish but maybe someday I’ll have time and energy to do something similar in English.
Aug
16
Session Report: Politix
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Year 2009 is going to be very interesting for the Finnish games scene. We have already seen one solid board game released and more is coming at Spiel fair in Essen in October. I had an oppurtunity to try out the newest addition to the list of Finnish games, Politix.
Image by Touko Tahkokallio
Politix is a game by Onni Games and Tuoko Tahkokallio and it’s a card game of Finnish politics. I got a chance to try it out with my friend as a two player game while we could have had up to six players. The first thing that one notices when getting hold of olitix is the great graphics in the game. Illutration is witty and fun and creates humorous atmosphere for the game before it even has started. Cards are of good quality but so thick that they are hard to shuffle but fortunately you don’t have to shuffle cards too often and you can get rid of the problem with card sleeves.
Politix is a game where players are members of a Finnish political party and play the role of well known member of the parlament. What you try to do is to attract voter groups by playing politicking and/or special cards. There’s six different voter groups and there’s seven cards in each group and game ends when all voter cards have been taken out by parties. Winner of the game is the one who has best worst group after all cards have been divided among the players and thus the game reminds me of many of the Rainer Knizia games.
In our game I was Center Party and my friend Right Wing while I took the role of Paavo Väyrynen and my frined was Sauli Niinistö (both of whom are currently active in the Finnish political scene). Game started slowly while we were figuring out how one should play the game but I soon realised that my friend did not quite get the winning condition of the game and let me collect votes from farmest too easily. This was basically due to the fact that Center Party got bonuses for attracting farmers. In the end I secured all seven farmer cards available and since I also got at least one card from every other voter group I knew that I had won the game.
Image by Touko Tahkokallio
We both enjoyed our first play even though my friend did not quite grasp the rules of the game. With two players Politix is tense game where you really have to keep track of what your opponent is doing and count the voter group cards. I suppose that with more players it’s more work to keep track of the cards and you just try to balance your own game. It’s also interesting but realistic how it’s very hard to attract some voter groups when you belong to wrong party and your character doesn’t have the right attributes.
Interesting game and I hope I’ll be able to try it out again soon.