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Gameweek 25/2013: Qwixx, Augustus and Brügge
One live session at N-BGC.
First game on the table was the SdJ nominee Qwixx which, to my surprise, is a small box dice game with simple rules and mechanisms. Since it is a SdJ nominee it’s not bad that it’s has simple rules but I was happy that it has some depth in it for the seasoned gamers too. Rolling dice is always fun but I can see Qwixx as a gateway game to other more complex games for the non-gamers and I definitely hope that I’ll get in on the table during the Midsummer.
Augustus is also a SdJ nominee and the biggest favorite to win the title with big box and excellent production values. The game itself is easy enough for almost anybody to understand and there’s some decisions during the game which are meaningful. I like the bingo mechanism and scoring methods are interesting but maybe a tad too complicated to non-gamers. Anyways a winner; if not the SdJ then just in general because the game is so good.
Augustus @ N-BGC Last game of the session was Brügge which was actually quite hard to play since the cards have a lot of German in them. Brügge is not the most suitable game for my gaming taste but I still felt that it’s a good game. Basically players play cards to gain resources to gain points. Very Eurogamish approach is the name of the game but it worked rather good. For a Kenner SdJ nominee I waited a little bit more engaging game but It’s not bad as it is at the moment. Not a bad game but not a winner of the Kennerspiel des Jahres either I feel.
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Gameweek 26/2013: Augustus, Lancaster and Unpublished Prototype
One live session at N-BGC and many games at Yucata.de plus Midsummer gaming at the summer cottage.
We began the N-BGC session with Augustus which I’ve found to be a solid family game. Bingo mechanism which the game is based on works very well and there’s enough options in the game to make it enjoyable. I’d say this is very likely winner of the SdJ this year. Suggest
Second game at N-BGC was Lancaster which I’ve tried to get on the table for some time now. I liked the game after reading the rules and I do like it after playing it too. Worker placement fits well in the game and I like the political aspect which has been included in the game too. It would be fun to try this out with more than 3 players though and see whether there’s more action on the board and thus more competition. Suggest.
We ended the N-BGC session with a prototype of Touko T. It was interesting and definitely something to continue work with.
I also played several games at the summer cottage while celebrating the Midsummer. Qwixx was a big hit because it can be played with almost anyone. 9 year old had fun with the game and only help needed was with the end game score. Dice immediately increases the interest level of non gamers towards the game which means that it probably will find the table quite often.
Augustus was also a hit during the weekend and we also played Langfinger which everyone enjoyed quite a bit.
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Gameweek 27/2013: Die Pälaste von Carrara, The Hobbit Card Game, Advanced Civilization and more
Very interesting week of gaming with a busy session at N-BGC and a full saturday of Advanced Civilization.
N-BGC began with Qwixx with is easy to teach and play while eating. I enjoy it and it’s my favorite horse in the SdJ race which ends next Monday.
We also managed to get the Die Pälaste von Carrara on the table and played it with the advanced rules. This game is a nominee in the Kennerspiel des Jahres category and it should be right up my alley but I did not like it too much. As many Kramer Kiesling games are, it’s rather dry and abtract whilst having some interesting mechanisms in it. Production is gorgeous as Hans im Glück games tend to be but it just isn’t enough. I’ll give it another try but my hopes are not high.
The Hobbit Card Game found also it’s way on the table and we actually played it twice. Dark side as an advantage in the game I’m sure since I’ve yet to see good guys win the game. This is a fun trick taking game with a high chaos element in it. I’d like to see a variant where players know which cards are in the game.
23 was also an interesting revisit since I hadn’t played it since it came out at the Spiel fair couple years back. Many of these small Amigo card games are gems and so it 23 which is light enough to be fun to play with basically anyone but still offers enough depth that seasoned gamers can have fun time with it.
We ended the N-BGC session with two games of Hanabi. Hanabi is an excellent cooperative deduction card game which is a nominee of SdJ. It has very unique feel in it and I love deduction mechanism but still I feel that Hanabi is a bit too thinky to win the SdJ. Newertheless it’s definitely finding it’s place on my table in the future too.
On Saturday we had a 8 player game of Advanced Civilization which is one of my favorite games. I had the pleasureto be Illyria and obviously had high hopes of winning the game. Advanced Civilisation is an experience and an epic game which punishes the players throughout the game severely.
We had a very close game which in the end went to Africans played by Tuomas. His a veteran player and it wasn’t a big suprise that he won. I ended up being 5th which was a slight disapointment but I still enjoyed every minute of it especially because I was just couple hundred points behind the podium positions. It’s sad that I rarely have time for Adv Civ nowadays but I’ll gladly play it when I find the time for a long game.
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Gameweek 28: Qwixx, The Hobbit Card Game, Brügge and Legends of Andor
First week of my summer vacation and one live session which was organized the same Monday that the results of the SdJ came out. Thus the plan was to play the missing SdJ nominees to be able to comment them in the coming episode of Lautapelisuomi podcast.
We began the session with Qwixx which I’ve played quite a bit and which is a solid game in SdJ category. It’s got dice and it’s easy enough to be played with anybody. Qwixx was my favorite for the SdJ but I’m happy with the winner Hanabi and the third nominee Augustus is also excellent family game.
As we waited to get in to Rotterdam bar we had time for The Hobbit Card Game of which I got a Finnish review copy. I actually like this game quite a bit after several plays. It’s a rather simple trick taking game which can be introduced to people not familiar of the concept easily. The team element also serves the game well as does the element of chaos which not knowing the exact distribution of cards brings. Evil side has a definite advantage in the game but I also think that it makes the game more interesting because it would be dull if good guys would always win the game.
Once indoors we set out to play Brügge which I had pimped and done some paste ups of my German cards. First play of the game was a struggle with German cards but this time game ran much more smoothly. Unfortunately it didn’t make the game better at all in my eyes even if the playing the game was easier. I don’t fancy the general concept of the game where cards are used in several different actions. There’s just too much options in a turn and it slows the game down a lot. Since the idea is also to build an engine I can’t understand why there’s 180 different cards with different actions on them. It’s impossible to build a strategy in the game when you have no idea whether you will get the cards needed for it and you just end up playing some card. Brügge is not a game for me but I’m sure there’s a bunch of Race for the Galaxy fans who also like this game (it reminds me of RftG).
Last game of the session was Legends of Andor which was the last of the Kennerspiel des Jahres nominee I had not played. This is a cooperative fantasy game by Michael Menzel who is known for the many of the best graphic design in board games. Legends of Andor is built so that rules of the game are introduced while playing the game. While I like the idea of learning the rules when running through the campaigns I still prefer reading the rules before hand. It speeds up the game significantly when even one player knows how the game works before group sets out to play it.
Legends of Andor was a plesant surprise and we had fun time playing it. It has a video game like structure where game moves forward with preset events. Mechanisms in the game were simple but fun and there’s a fun ride ahead of the company who sets out to play through the chapters of the game. I’m also pretty sure that now that it won the KSdJ there’s going to be expansions which add more content to the game. I’m happy that Legends of Andor won the KSdJ because I did not like the other nominees at all and Legends of Andor is a solid game.
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Lautapelisuomi podcast – 30 jakso – 12.9.2013
Tässä jaksossa käymme Tuomo Pekkasen kanssa läpi:
Pelatut pelit
Muun muassa Voll ins Schwarze, Jää sulaa, The Hobbit Card Game, Continental Divide, Suburbia ja muutama muu peli.
Spiel des Jahres
Käymme läpi voittajat ja finalistit ja kommentoimme pelejä ja kilpailua yleensä.
Voit itse käydä tutustumassa kilpailuun kilpailun kotisivulta
Suomen Vuoden peli 2013
Käymme läpi vuoden voittajat ja finalistit ja marisemme duossa tämän vuoden ehdokkaista ja kilpailusta ylipäänsä.
Täydet listat osallistuneista peleistä löydät Suomen leluyhdistyksen kotivisulta
Lautapelaamaan 2013
Mainitsemme tapahtuman olevan tulossa ja toteamme, että lisätietoa löytyy osoitteesta
www.lautapelaamaan.fi
Tikkipelit
Käymme läpi mekaniikan määritelmän, hyvät ja huonot puolet sekä listaamme luonnollisesti loppuun TOP 5 peliä, jossa kyseistä mekaniikkaa käytetään.
TOP 5
Antti
5 Ranskalainen Tarot
4 Stich-Meister
3 Doppelkopf
2 Wizard
1 Mü & More
Tuomo
5 Die Sieben Siegel eli 7 Signum
4 Frank’s Zoo
3 Bargain Hunter
2 Sticheln
1 Tichu
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Gameweek 38/2013: Lancaster and Mit List und Tücke
One live session at N-BGC game night plus online plays at yucata.de, littlegolem.de and mastermoves.eu (maybe two live sessions but it remains to be seen).
I’ve played quite a few games during the summer but haven’t been up to writing about my sessions. Family keeps me busy and it’s hard enough to try to find time to actually play some games now and then let alone to write about them.
This week I managed to take part in N-BGC meeting and we began the night with Lancaster. Idea was that we get it played with 4 players in 90 minutes, like the box says, so that the late comers would also get a game or two in during the session. We weren’t even close of succeeding in it but had fun with the game nonetheless.
Lancaster is a very polished worker placement game which has superb components, well known mechanisms but also some additional flavor which makes it an unique game. As in many worker placement games there’s a lot of interaction involved and situations can change rapidly during the game. There aren’t any mechanisms or phases in the game which would stand out as the best side of the game which is positive in general and rare nowadays in games.
I did not do very well in the game (third) but enjoy the game a lot. The only problem I can see in the game is that it’s very close to be the same game evertime you play it thus there are ways to play which become the norm and without expansions one looses interest in the game eventually. Queen Games has probably seen this beforehand since they’ve put out an expansion for the game that is high on my list of games to buy.
Second game of the night was Mit List und Tücke which is a trick taking game from the year 1999 which is definitely time before the golden age of board games we’re living right now. I had played the game once before a long time ago but rules for the game are not that long of complex and we got a game running in no time.
Mit List und Tücke is a simple trick taking game with a twist and some nasty sides as well. Game is from 1999 so it’s probably not a game you find easily nowadays but if you come accross it give it a try since it’s actually quite fun little trick taking game. There’s four colors, one doesn’t have to follow suit when playing in a trick and higher card played in the suit lead wins the trick. Winner takes one half of the cards in the trick and the player who played the lowes non-trump takes the other half. And this continues until all cards have been played.
Scoring is the most annoying part of the game because players multiply the number of cards of the two suits they’ve collected the most cards during the round and divide it with the number of the rest of the cards. Thus there’s a lot of multiplying and dividing ahead of the players and it really doesn’t feel good compared to the standards which are found from games published at the moment. Still, as said, I like the game and hopefully it’s going to see more plays sooner than later.
Enjoyable session at N-BGC and the games played were fun to play. Coming weeks look challenging since I’ll spend some time in Berlin running a marathon. But lets hope that I’ll get some live games in in September.
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Gameweek 41/2013: Legends of Andor, Innovation, Crazy Lab
One live session at N-BGC and games at yucata.de. I’ve also read probably over 20 rules for games to be released at the Spiel Fair in Essen Germany. Couple weeks and there will be a lot of games to report.
We began the N-BGC game night with 2nd legend of Legends of Andor. I’d played the first legend twice and playing introduction scenario several times is usually a bad idea. In Legends of Andor’s case this is true since the game is easily teachable when going in to a new legend. We had four players of which three had played the first legend so there wasn’t big problems in starting the game and getting things rolling.
Unfortunately we were really lucky in the beginning of the game and found the important information of the scenario in the first fog token of 15 that were in play. Thus we had a lot of time to react to the events to be come in the legend and survived easily from the foes that the game sent our way. I like the game and I feel a need to play the 5 legends which come with the game but lets see how much this game has to offer after that.
Innovation was the second game of the night and second game I won. I like the fact that I won, I like the gameplay and some of the ideas of the game but man did I not like the random nature of the game. You draw card(s), play one and activate actions which give you some goodies but also hit your fellow players in the face. There’s probably some tactics in the game but it really did not feel that way. I’ll give it another go someday but not the finest of games in my opinion.
It’s almost a habit that we end the gaming session with a card game which quite often has a trick taking element in it. I love trick taking as does Janne so Jack had to follow the lead and try to wrap his head around Crazy Lab. In this trick taking game each player has negative color and positive color and most cards have more than one color in them. Each trick also has different trump color which makes things even more interesting and chaotic especially when there’s less cards in players’ hands. I’ve played this game now three times and like it but I can’t really say whether there’s really any strategy in the game or is it just intuition you have to use when figuring out which card to play.
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Gameweek 42/2013: 6 Nimmt, Ave Caesar, Hanabi and Crazy Lab
One live session at N-BGC and several games online.
We began the N-BGC session with 6 Nimmt which was a solid game to wait food and real games. I like 6 Nimmt but have never been any good at it. There aren’t any other game like this (none that I know of anyways) and what we get is actually an interesting and quite entertaining little card game. I lost, which was predictable but it was fun to play the game.
Second game of the evening was Ave Caesar which is an older racing game with Rome theme. I had played once before and bought it because it seemed like a solid family game. After second game I must say that this game fits families very well and I just hope Ave Caesar would hit the table a bit more ofter that I predict it’s going to.
Hanabi was the next game and we did reasonable well with some newbies to the game. I like Hanabi but I fear that it’s actually not a game one wants to play again and again. Once the group knows each other game probably becomes a bit boring even if achieving high score remains hard enough.
Last game of the night was again Crazy Lab. Not much control but an enjoyable trick taking game. I’ve talked more about it last week and before that so go back and read what I’ve said.
Next week is Spiel week and I’ll of to Germany on Thursday. Thus there’s definitely going to be many games to play in a good company. I’ve been reading rules like maniac and there’s several interesting games which I wait to see and play. But you have to wait until next week to hear about the games I did play and enjoy.
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Lautapelisuomi podcast – jakso 31 – 22.10.2013
Tässä jaksossa käymme Tuomo Pekkasen kanssa läpi:
Pelatut pelit
Muun muassa Legends of Andor, Crazy Lab, Super Farmari ja Las Vegas.
Lautapelaamaan 2013
Tapahtuma lähestyy ja kaikkien on syytä laittaa se kalenteriin!
www.lautapelaamaan.fi
Spiel 2013 Essenissä
Ensin pieni selostus tapahtumasta ja sen luonteesta niille, jotka eivät ole paikalla käyneet ja sitten:
TOP 5 SPIEL 2013 PELIT
Antti
5 Coal Baron
4 Romolo o Remo?
3 Steam Park
2 Rampage
1 Space Cadets Dice Duel
Tuomo
5 Carcassonne: South Seas
4 A Study in Emerald
3 Russian Railroads
2 Trains (AEG versio)
1 “Suomipelit” (Concils & Contracts, Gear & Piston, Nations ja Eclipse Ship Pack One)
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Spiel 2013 – mitä tein ja niin edelleen DAY 1
Takana miellyttävä ensimmäinen päivä Essenissä ja jonkin verran saimme pelejäkin pelattua:
Love Letter oli mukava kantaa mukana matkassa ja on toki erinomainen peli myös.
Qwixx toimi myös matkapelinä ja tämäkin on oikein toimiva pieni noppapeli.
Copie Colle, jonka Touko osti alennusmyynnistä muutamalla eurolla. Aivan hirveää paskaa oli tämä peli, jossa yritetään muistella kenellä on minkäkinlainen kortti kädessä ja vältellä miinuspisteitä kiukulla. Ei varsinaisesti mikään ihme, että löytyi alelaarista.
Going, Going, GONE! oli sattumalta odottamassa meitä, kun kävelimme ohi ja tartuimme tilaisuuteen. Luin säännöt jo ennen messuja ja olin kiinnostunut samanaikaisesta huutokaupasta, jota tässä pelissä harjoitetaan. Tarvoitteena pelissä on arvokkaimmat setit siten, että huutokaupan on samanaikaisesti viisi kohdetta ja seitsemän korttia. Kaikki bidailevat samanaikaisesti kaikista kohteista ja eniten pidannut saa pitää kohteen. Vänkä peli, joka oli varsin viihdyttäväkin vaikka kontrollia tekemiseen ei nyt varsinaisesti ollut nimeksikään.
Der verzauberte Turm eli Kinderspiel des Jahres voittaja tältä vuodelta, joka on moninpeliksi naamioitu kaksinpeli. Pelissä ilkeä noita ja ritari yrittävät ehtiä avaimelle, jolla pääsee kokeilemaan yhtä kuudesta kirotusta ovesta torniin, jossa neitsyt odottaa. Noita tietää missä avain on mutta aloittaa matkan huomattavasti kauempaa kuin ritari, joka ei tiedä mistä avain löytyy. Ei huono lastenpeli mutta ei nyt varsinaisesti mikään hittikään. Eniten tässä ehkä ärsytti se, että noitaa liikuttaa yksi pelaaja ja ritaria kaikki muut yhdessä eli käytännössä peli on kahdelle pelaajalle.
Speed Cups Amigon uutuuksista oli nopeuspeli, jossa kupit pitää saada nopeiten oikeaan järjestykseen. Ei mitään uutta taivaan alla mutta ihan toimiva peli toki kyllä.
Black Spy on Alan Moonin vuonna 1981 suunnittelema tikkipeli, josta puskettiin ulos uusintapainos. Viisi väriä, joista musta on käytännössä miinusväri, pitää tunnustaa maata tai pelata saman numeroinen kortti kuin millä ajettiin ja kaveria pääsee tässä pelissä löymään oikein urakalla. Saman henkinen kuin Sticheln ja muut ikävät tikkipelit ja mekaniikka, jossa voit valita seuraatko maata vai väistätkö samalla numerolla on erinomainen. Rautainen tikkipeli!
Fünf Gurgen puolestaan on Friedmann Friesen uusi tikkipeli, jossa pelaajat yrittävät välttää seitsemättä eli viimeistä tikkiä, jonka voittanut saa itselleen kurkkuja. Mukana vain yksi maa ja pelata saa samaa tai suurempaa numeroa tai pienimmän kortin kädestä. Käytännössä peli pelaa valtaosan ajasta itseään eli päätöksiä ei juurikaan pääse tekemään. Lisäksi peli päättyy, kun jäljellä on vain yksi pelaaja ja pelaajien eliminoituminen hidastaa uusien pelaajien eliminoitumista mikä johtaa aivan turhan pitkiin peleihin. Ei kovin vahva esitys suunnittelijalta, jolla on oikeasti hyväkin tikkipeli CV:ssä.
Coup oli ihan viihdyttävä bluffailupeli, jossa tavoitteena on olla viimeinen pelaaja pelissä mukana. Jokaisella on kaksi roolihahmoa pelin alussa, joita käyttämällä pääse tekemään toimintoja. Bluffata voi ja siten tehdä muitakin kuin roolin mukaisia toimintoja mutta tällöin muut pelaajat voivat epäillessään tappa sinulta hahmon pois (tai tapattaa omansa, jos epäily menee väärin). Seitsemällä rahalla saa listiä yhden hahmon toiselta pelaajalta ja peli tosiaan päättyy, kun jäljellä on vain yhden pelaajan hahmo(t).
Mielenkiintoinen ensimmäinen päivä, johon sisältyi paljon pieniä pelejä. Ehkä tänään saadaan aikaiseksi muutama vähän raskaampikin peli, jottei messut mene ihan pelkäksi kortin läpsimiseksi.
Tags: Spiel 2013