Boardgaming Finland
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Short look at Principato by eggertspiele
2011 is definitely going to be an interesting year for Finnish geeks since there’s quite a few interesting releases coming for the year and increasingly these games come out from well known international publishers. Principato is the first one to hit the market and also the first with published rules which means it’s also the first one I can take a loot at.
Principato cover art Principato is designed by Touko Tahkokallio whom I know personally and who’s games I typically play as prototypes before they actually come out of the tube. Surprisingly though I have not played prototype of Principato which actually is very cool – one can feel the thrill of a new hot game. Touko is a solid designer with Politix, Arvuutin and Aether already on the market and loads of prototypes on the table to be released some time in the future.
Principato is based in Renaissance Italy; a theme we have seen in so many other games before. I’m typically fond of more thematic games and Renaissance Italy is not one of my favorites but in this case the mechanics of the game could actually fit rather well in the framework of it.
Principato looks like a simple game with only three possible actions on player’s turn. You can execute an actions card, you can change an actions card or you can take one joker resource. Scoring is also pretty straight forward but versatile enough to sustain the interest (and undoubtedly scoring is well balanced). The hard part of the game is to plan your game so that you have the right actions at the right time and that you’ll be able to maximize your score with the limitations yo face.
I think I’m going to like Principato which is not a huge surprise. There’s not too much going on in the game but enough for you to like it. Luck plays a role in the game but probably not too big of a role and skill and experience are needed to score high points (and win the games).
Thumbs up for Principato and thumbs down for the wait to get it played!
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Prototype session: Epäillyt
It’s rare to have an opportunity to test Finnish games that will come out in Finland. Kimmo Sorsamo is a designer who has done it once before with Maximus which unfortunately did not make into stores after it was nominated as a finalist in the Finnish Game of the Year 2008. This time game is published by Kimmo himself in a cooperation with Competo so there should not be any problems getting the game out.
Epäillyt is a game which presents Helsinki in 1930ies and a murder mystery that players try to solve. Deduction with an action mechanic is the heart of the game, game is for 2-4 players, lasts approx. 60 minutes and is targeted for families. Game is also solely targeted for Finnish consumers which means that it is not available in English; game itself is mostly language independent so if some geek is willing to translate the rules there should not be problems to play the game even outside Finland.
Epäillyt cover art The first impression of the game was a surprise; I have not seen such a cool cover art in a game probably ever before. Obviously I’m not objective here since I live in Helsinki and the cover presents snowy Helsinki in the 30ies but nevertheless designer of the art has done a great job. Gameboard and rulebook are also beautiful and historically accurate which adds spice to the game; it’s superb to learn local history from a board game.
Epäillyt game board Gameplay is rather simple: players collect clues as a form of character tokens from the gameboard with three detectives. On player’s turn he/she can introduce new detective on the board (there’s three for each player) or move already existing detective. Moving is done by using action tiles (1,2,3,4) which show how many steps player can move the detective. Detective can also be moved with a tram and there’s also a possibility to gather information from other players on player’s turn. The aim of the game is to be the first to solve the identity of the three characters who have committed the murder.
Epäillyt character tile Epäillyt is a solid family game because rules are not overly complex, game can be playerd in an hour and game is very thematic. Game is not a gamers’ game but our group of three, who all have played a solid number different games, did still enjoy the game so much that we played it twice. I’m sure this game has potential in the family game segment and I’m sure it’s going to succeed in the Game of the Year competition this year. There’s absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t also attract a new audience to play board games in Finland because of the nature of the game and gorgeous designand art.
On a personal level it’s also great to see Competo publishing Finnish board game. They have done such an awsome work with exporting quality games to Finland that it’s huge that they have began using their skills also in the Finnish board game field. We need more Finnish game first for the Finnish market and then outside and I hope this is a sign for growing activity to reach this goal.
Epäillyt should be in stores sometime during Autumn and I can’t wait to see the final version of the game.
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Very brief look at Kairo by Queen Games
This post is very brief because information on Kairo is very limited. It’s one of the games which came out in Nürnberg and what I heard was that the copy which Queen Games had at the fair was actually a prototype of the coming game.
Kairo presented at Nürnburg Why am I interested in this game? Well, Kairo it actually a remake of an Finnish game Tori designed by Kimmo Sorsamo which was published last year in the Nordic Countries.I was pretty heavily involved in the designing process of the game and therefore it’s interesting to see what Queen Games comes up with when they get Kairo published.
Probably there’s not going to be huge changes at least in the core mechanics of the game. The most innovative mechanic in Tori (a game about trading in a market square) is the satisfying customer needs mechanic(which also was the starting point for the game itself). In the game customers are meeples in different colors and colors represent the customer needs in certain type of goods. Players act as entrepreneurs and try to lure customers to their counters (same colors as the one’s of the customers’). Once a customer buys the goods he needs, the meeple chances to another one in different color (staying at a designated place off board) and voilà, the customer thus wants to consume some other type of goods like he would in real life.
Other mechanics of the game are more like in a average euro style board game and obviously the purpose of the game is score more points than fellow players. Tori is more of a gamers game and I presume that Kairo is going to be developed more into a family game. Maybe they come up with a similar approach they’ve used in Fresco where the basic game is quite basic but you get extras with the main game which deepen the gaming experience.
We have to wait and see.
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Lautapelisuomi jakso 22 – Spiel des Jahres 2009 -ehdokkaat
Lautapelisuomen jakso 22 sisältää seuraavaa:
Johdanto
Uutiset
- Ajatuksia lautapelaamisen SM-turnauksesta
- Tutustu Lautapelioppaaseen
- Lisätietoa Epäillyistä
Lautapelisuomen 21-jakson kilpailun päättäminen
Tällä kertaa palkinnon voitti Mika Korhonen. Onnittelut voittajalle ja kiitos kaikille vastauksen lähettäneille!
Spiel des Jahres -ehdokkaiden lyhyt esittely ja arviointi
Lisätietoa peleistä löydät täältä:
- Dominion – Valtakunta
- Fauna
- Finca
- Fits
- Pandemia
Pelit ovat kaiken kaikkiaan oikein mielenkiintoisia ja odotan innolla lopullisten tulosten julkaisua!
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Palaute on tervetullutta ja pyrin ottamaan sen huomioon tulevia jaksoja suunnitellessani. Lähetä ihmeessä myös toivomuksia tulevia jaksoja silmällä pitäen. Kiitokset myös Eminorille ja Mikko Putkoselle jakson musiikista.
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My most anticipated game for 2011 goes for Eclipse
To be quite honest Eclipse would have definitely been in my top 3 games I played during 2010 but as the 2 games I played were done with an unpublished version of the game it really doesn’t count.But it was very delightful to hear that Lautapelit.fi will publish the game and presumably the date for the release is Spiel Fair (at Essen) in late October. For all of you wondering whether Eclipse is going to be seen outside the Scandinavia I have good news – game is going to be published in English. I’m also pretty sure that there’s going to be distributors involved both in the Europe and in the US.
Cover of Eclipse Why do I anticipate Eclipse so much? Well, I’m a sucker for thematic, epic games which have solid mechanics, civilization feel, huge amount of gorgeous bits and pieces and they bring enjoyment even if the game lasts for a couple of hours. There’s a few games you know you’ll going to enjoy greatly for a long time after the first play and Eclipse did it for me (last game in a similar category was probably Twilight Struggle). All the ingredients of the game form an interesting mix which just clicks for me and I’m not alone with my feelings since everybody who have playtested the game have enjoyed it (average rating with 21 responders is 8.38).
If the marketing of the game is done well and there’s even a slight hype for the game, Eclipse is probably going to be one of the international hits of 2011. Hopefully we are going to get updates from Touko Tahkokallio and Sampo Sikiö of the present and future state of the game!
Eclipse playerd at Ropecon 2010 -
Is 2011 the break through for Finnish board game designs?
This is a question which boggles my mind not just because there has been interesting news on upcoming games from Finnish designers but also because I’ve played four unpublished prototypes during the last week. Finland is a small country and domestic market for board games is relative to the size of the nation.Therefore we don’t have too many companies producing games in Finland and we have even smaller amount of games from Finnish designers which have caught general attention in Finland. Historically Finns have been active to export goods and services and it seems that this is what’s happening also in board game design at the moment.
Nürnberg Toy Fair began an interesting year for Finnish board game design with announcements from eggertspiele and Queen Games of new releases designed by Finnish designers. Principato by Touko Tahkokallio is actually one of the first games from Finnish designer which has been published directly in a foreign board game company. Hopefully this opens doors for other Finnish designers as well and it teaches the other Finnish designers a lesson to be learned – you have to be active outside Finland in order to get your games published.
Kairo by Kimmo Sorsamo continues the success of The Club and Hornet which were published in Finland but distributed world wide. This is a solid way for the few Finnish board game companies to produce games also for the domestic market. Risks of the new game decrease when you are able to sell the rights of a game to other markets and while the domestic market is limited in size I think this will be a continuous model to get the games out in the future.I was very glad to hear that Lautapelit.fi plans to publish Eclipse in 2011 because I am really fond of the game. Eclipse is also interesting because the focus of the game is solely in foreign markets (game is published in English). It’s not the first game which has been designed an an export product – Tuonela Productions has done it with their products before and while their games have not been big hits they’ve done it multiple times. Tuonela is bringing out The Capture of Sampo in 2011 which continues the line of thought they’ve had in their business.
Finally, there’s also the private entrepreneurs who surprise everybody with their games. Last year is was Mindwarrior Games and Hyptic who published games nobody had heard of but were glad to do so. BGG Geek of the Week Timo Multamäki also published new game with his Dragon Dawn Productions Ltd and The Phantom League has even had smallish hypein the BGG. I’m pretty sure there’s going to be surprises also in 2011 but that’s something we have to wait and see.
I’ve continued my rant for far too long but have not talked about the prototypes which lead to the chain of thoughts. All four prototypes were promising but in different stages. One of them probably comes out in 2011 from a foreign publisher and hopefully the other three will reach the final stage of the design process and find their ways to the gamers’ tables.
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Finally back in business
It’s been a long pause for boardgamingfinland but finally I’m back in business now that we’ve moved to a new location and I have a room dedicated for work and gaming. I kicked it off with three friends and three fun games.
First game of the night was Hamsterrolle which is at the moment unavailable at the market and I suppose Zoch is not going to republish it any time soon. It’s a pity since Hamsterrolle is a very entertaining dexterity filler with gorgeous components. The game takes maybe 10 minutes and filling the wheel with wooden pieces is challenging enough to keep it interesting for several plays. I can’t recommend Hamsterrolle as the beef of the game night but fortunately there’s plenty of other games to play when you need meatier game.
Image by W. Eric Martin One good candidate as a meatier game is Principato which we played next. I’ve had the game for some time now but have been unable to play it because of the boxes lying around waiting to be emptied. I had read the rules a couple of times and Hessu had played the game once before so we had the game running in no time.
There’s several reasons why Principato is interesting from the boardgamingfinland point of view. Firstly the designer Touko Tahkokallio is a friend and a Finn and there aren’t too many Finnish designs in the international board game market. Secondly I really liked the game after reading the rules; it seemed that there were clever card mechanics and enough meat in the game for a hobby gamer.
Principato is actually quite straight forward type of game where on your turn you have two actions of three possibilities. You can activate a card you own, you can change a card you own to one of the general stock or you can take a joker resource. Players build an engine which generates points from military and or culture and the one who does it best wins the game. This sounds very euroish and that’s just what Principato is – a solid and streamlined eurogame.
I liked it but it took a tad too long with four players for what it is. I’m pretty positive that playing time can be reduced once everybody knows what they are doing but there is always the AP danger in a game like this. For all of you who are fans of engine building Principato might be what your looking for.
Image by Antti Koskinen / boardgamingfinland The last game of the night was Dominant Species which has been sitting on my shelf for nearly a year since I last played it. Unfortunately year was too long and after three hours of playing we finally noticed that we had played one crucial rule wrong (each player controls animal and species refer to cubes players have on the board not like species refer to a player and all his cubes like we played). One mistake can have severe consequences and we decided that the way we had played had ruined the game and there wasn’t a reason to finish the game.
I probably should try to get Dominant Species on the table soon so that we could have another go with the correct rules. I like the game and the concept but there’s not enough time to play the game very often these days.
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Gaming week 40/2011
I did get some interesting games in this week.
On Thursday I visited Leppävaara’s game club and began the night with Navegador. This was the one game I really did want to play since it’s one of the games in the European Masters tournament which we’ll be attending during Spiel 2011. I had not had too many opportunities to play the game and there’s not that much time left before the tournament so I was glad that three other gamers joined me to play the game.
I was even more happy when we finished the game and I won it. I did not have strategy and I made mistakes but I suppose other players did more of them. Navegador is a game which I probably don’t play after the tournament because I find it to be much too dry and themeless for my taste. Mechanically the game is superb and theres’ a lot of meaningful choices throughout the game but it just isn’t fun enough.
Image by Daniel Danzer / BGG After Navegador I ended willingly to play prototypes (the other choice would have been Eclipse but I probably have several chances to play it in the near future). First we tried Paul’s card game proto which was interesting and felt quite ready to be published. Game was a card placement game which had some interesting choices in a short playtime.
Next there were two prototypes from Touko – a trick taking game and a work game with cards. I had played the trick taking game and the small changes it had undergone were good. Game has quite unique card playing mechanic but I don’t know whether this mechanic alone makes the game interesting enough for continuous play. Word game was very interesting mix of classical word game and a speed game. It has potential and I suppose it’s going to be published some day.
Last game of the Leppävaara night was Kosminen kierros by Jani and Tero Moliis. I have had this sitting on my shelf for some time and it was great to have it on the table. Kosminen kierros is a game in which players are scientist on a mission to travel around the sun and gather as much information as possible. Each turn players visit one department of their space ship and trigger the action attached to it. Players can turn the ship, take resource cards, take information cards (which score in the end of the game) or fly the ship one space forward.
Image by Jani Moliis / BGG Idea of the game is to fly the ship back to Earth and obviously there’s a high chance that ship crashes before it reaches Earth. The biggest problem in the game is that it is a collaboration game in which each player tries to gather their own points. This leads situations where some of the players don’t actually want the ship to finish because they don’t have any chance to win the game. With children this might not be such a big problem but because it’s fun to reach the final destination but gamers play to win and if they can’t it’s better to not let anyone else win either.
I also got a chance to try out the new 4X space game Space Empires: 4X which I’ve waited for almost a year. With three players the game took 4-5 hours and we did not even play until extermination (which would have taken several more hours). Playing time is definitely the biggest problem with this game and I don’t see a clear reduction of the duration even when players know the game. There are other issues with the game as well like the fact that you probably never have a chance to develop all the technologies in the game (they are just too expensive) and the fact that once someone has taken a clear lead in the game other(s) have no chance to come back (and the game might still last several hours).
Fortunately there’s variation and scenarios available for the game and you can play the game solitaire which offers a chance for longer games. Obviously I also need to try the game out with different amounts of players and maybe a bit smaller map and other additional rules. I hope that these changes will make the game better.
Image by Jim Krohn / BGG After the very long Space Empires we still had time to play one short game. Hessu wanted to play Lemming Mafia and I had no objections since it is a solid game. I actually think that this game is a hidden gem which has gone under the radar for most gamers. There’s gorgeous components, fun game play and some interesting decisions in the game in the 20 minutes it lasts. Obviously it’s not a very deep game and there’s a lot of chaos in it but as much as I don’t like these characteristics in many games, in Lemmings Mafia they fit the theme and mechanics very well. Solid filler and a very good game to be played with families and non-gamers.
Image by Carsten ◄► Wesel / BGG Great week of gaming behind and probably a bit quieter week ahead. I hope I can get some games in but even if I don’t, it’s soon going to be Essen time and I’ll be off to Germany to play a lot of games!
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Lautapelisuomi podcast
Lautapelisuomi – Preludi < lataa tästä>
Lautapelisuomen ensimmäinen lähetys, jossa kerron, miksi ja mitä aion tehdä ja kuka olen.
Preludin kesto on 9.25 ja voit kuunnella sitä soittimilla, jotka tukevat mp3-tiedostomuotoa.
Jaksossa mainittiin seuraavat pelit:
Settlers of Catan
El Grande
Shogun
Notre Dame
Erityiskiitos musiikista Mikko Putkoselle ja eminorille
Suosittelen lämpimästi tutustumaan kyseisen bändin tuotantoon!
Laita ihmeessä palautetta jaksosta sekä toivomuksia siitä, minkälaista ohjelmaa toivoisit kuulevasi. Palaute otetaan ehdottomasti huomioon uusien jaksojen suunnittelussa.
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Lautapelinurkka – 1960: Making of the President
LATAA JAKSO – TÄSTÄ-
Tässä jaksossa arvostelen 1960: Making of the Presidentin.
Voit kysellä ja katsella pelin saatavuutta joko Lautapelit.fi:stä tai Milan-Spielestä. Tämän hetkisellä dollarin kurssilla peliä ei kannata Yhdysvalloista tilata.
Kerro minulle, mitä mieltä olet arvostelustani. Oletko samaa mieltä vai puhunko aivan puuta heinää.
Ja erityiset kiitokset jälleen Mikko Putkoselle ja Eminorille musiikista, joka on ihan taivaallista ja johon toivon sinun tutustuvan.