Board Game Club: Steel Driver Torres

 I had a great time at today's board game club (yeah, the baby's still waiting for a nice day to be born perhaps next week?). I started with quick five-player game of Fortissimo, which is a simple speed test pattern recognition puzzle.
Cards have images with different attributes. 30 cards are laid on the table and every player gets one. Then you just have to find a card with a picture that has at most one attribute different from the card you have. Continue finding new cards until you can't, then say stop. Everybody who hasn't made a mistake scores one point per card.
It's simple and really fast. A round can be over in seconds and a whole game is done in five minutes or so. With five players, it was perhaps too fast. The task is fairly simple, though it's also fairly easy to make mistakes. This won't replace Flix Mix or Set, but I'll play this again -- but preferably with just three or four players.
My Milan-Spiele order arrived last Friday after just two months of waiting. The delivery itself was very swift, as the parcel was posted on Monday. We just had to wait for Duck Dealer... Obviously worth the wait. That game seems interesting. I also got Formissimo and Steel Driver in that order, so it was time to get Steel Driver on the table again.
Last time I played Steel Driver was in Helcon. Again we had five players. The game is quite easy to teach, which is nice. We also played fast, finishing the game in just 60 minutes.
It was a good game, with players using interesting tactics. One of the players figured out that since he doesn't know much about the end game works except that it's huge, he tries to make as much money (points) during the game as possible. He pretty much always paid all his money to buy the share he wanted and then developed the railroads a lot.
In the end he was second to last, so it didn't quite work out, but I think there's some potential in that strategy. It's just that his shares weren't good enough in the end. I did well and bought a total of eight shares (the practical maximum in five-player games is ten). That included about four really good shares, which was enough to secure my victory.
I like Steel Driver. It's a refreshing change from Wabash & Co that you use a fixed income of cubes to bid and the shares produce different currency, that's what makes Steel Driver interesting and worth playing.
According to my stats, the last time I played Torres was in August 2002. Six and half years ago, that is. The game has lingered in my mind since and I often thought about buying it. I think somebody thought about publishing it in Finnish, which made me hopeful, but that didn't happen. Finally I got the game in a math trade, I traded Chinatown for it. I even got the old version, I prefer the Crematoriums art of that version. We had four players in our game, with fairly little experience. So, of course we had all the action cards available for everybody. That way nobody has to remember what the decks contain. To me, that seems like the best way to play the game anyway, though I could try the version where everybody has a personal deck and the cards are drawn -- now it seemed like people had few action points too much at times.
It was a fun game. I was slightly annoyed by the lack of interesting building options in the end -- why do anything less valuable when I could simply expand my main castle with two tower blocks for eight points? Everybody thought I would win, and I did have a great castle 11 blocks wide -- but I was on the fifth floor and Riku and Toni were on the fourth floor, so that was just 11 points for me. In the other hand, those guys got 51 and 42 points from the king's castle, while I got just 18 points -- a loss of 33 and 24 points for me.
That was enough, I didn't win but I did place second. In what I understand is typical for Torres, the final scores were 238, 236, 235 and 193 -- so the difference between 1st and 3rd is just over 1% of the total score. Can't feel too bad about a third place like that.
Hopefully I'll get to play Torres again before 2015.

Good Older Games I Have Not Played Before

 Die Dolmengötter - I skipped this one in Essen 2005 because it looked ugly and not very interesting. I shouldn't have, because it's one of the real highlights of 2008 for me. I bought my copy from Tommy, since JC Lawrence said nice things about in Geek and I wasn't disappointed. I even upped my rating to ten after some hesitation - the game is really, really good, but only with four players.
With four the game certainly nears perfection. It's 20 minutes of absolute bliss. Interesting tactical decisions, a hint of overall strategy and some luck or player interaction chaos - make sure you max out your highest dolmens and you're set for glory.
If I ever want an arts & crafts project, I might consider doing a nice-looking re-theming of Die Dolmengötter. The theme is completly bogus and the board is somewhat ugly - I think it could be nicer. I have no idea of a suitable theme, though.
Preference - A traditional card game. There are actually several similar games with the same name, usually identified by the country of origin. We play the Russian variation, which I believe is slightly more complicated than the more usual Austrian game. It's no Bridge, but a nice three-player game that is just challenging enough while being easy to teach - very easy, if the student has ever played a trick-taking game with bidding.
Preference also plays fast enough. It's a charming game and though it only works with three players, it's become a very likely choice if there are three players including me and Hannu and someone who doesn't hate traditional card games. This one's definitely worth trying if you're looking for a trick-taking game for three and want something more casual than Skat.
Tolstoy was a fan of the game. Oh, and when we play Preference, it looks just like in this painting by Viktor Vasnetsov. The archive copy of The PrefPage is probably the best source for rules in English, though it's slightly vague. Wikipedia has more.
Le Truc - This is another traditional card game that has gained local popularity. Ok, so Hannu likes it. Sid Sackson saw the greatness in this game and listed it in his A Gamut of Games. It is truly a great game. Very simple on the surface: three-card trick-taking with suits having no significance at all. However, the scoring system is where the game shines.
The possibility to raise the stakes mid-hand makes Le Truc work slightly like poker. Many elements are there: bluffing, slow-playing, going all-in. Le Truc is simple, but makes for a great two-player filler, since after all, everybody is carrying a 32-card pack with them all the time anyhow (what? You don't? I know I do). The game is best played in rubbers, at least the best two out of three, preferably even more, since there's plenty of luck involved and getting to know your opponent makes for a better game.
I should probably rate this one a ten, since I expect it has a good chance to stay in my standard repertoire for the rest of my life.
1825 - I went and bought the whole shebang - well, almost, I'm missing some expansions - in the Spring, the basic sets from BoardGameGeek marketplace and the rest from Leisure Games and Northumbria Games. I'm still missing the Phase 4 expansion, so if anybody has a spare copy, name your price.
I've only played three times - two two-player games of Unit 3, one three-player game of Unit 2 - which is a shame, but these longer games are hard to play. 1825 is just too long to fit comfortably in our weekly game nights. However, I can easily say this is my favourite 18xx game.
Qwirkle - Let's put Qwirkle here, even though the Finnish edition came out this year. Qwirkle is a really solid game: I rate it as eight, but I listed it on my Christmas Good Games list as the general recommendation (I list games I've reviewed and have various categories: for adults, for gamers, for families, whatever, and one general for everybody recommendation). This is a high honour, but I think Qwirkle deserves it.
Why? Qwirkle is simple, has enough luck and skill involved, looks nice, feels nice... It's non-offensive and perhaps a tad bland. I don't think many people are going to list it as their number one favourite, but I don't think many people hate it, either. It's an easy-going, fun game, with enough new and enough familiar. A solid game, with just one flaw - that's the score-keeping, which is somewhat clumsy.
Glory to Rome - I finally ordered this from the States, thanks to cheap dollar and Brian Bankler's constant mentions of it. It didn't cost much, buying just this one game. It was well worth it, as the game is wicked fun. It's like Race for the Galaxy, but wilder... I like the ways the cards interact and how the combos can get outrageous. It's slightly tough game to teach and some people just don't like it - so, not an excellent game, but a definite keeper, I like it myself a lot.

Games I've kept on enjoying

Mahjong - I got back to mahjong this year, enough to do a mahjong web site in Finnish. That was - and is - a fun project, and something that was missing from the web. The site isn't tremendously popular (less than thousand visits a month these days), but at least the few visitors are really active with the Google ads.
I've played few games, experimenting with new rules instead of the good-old Japanese classical rules. I've tried the Chinese official rules, modern Japanese rules and the World Series of Mahjong rules. It's the WSoM rules I like the most, they are simple yet give the player enough options. I will play with just about any rules, though, as long as only the winner of the hand is paid. That's where I draw the line.
I also spent some quality time with Four Winds Mahjong, as I had to buy a Windows laptop to do my new job properly. They haven't released a new version, but the old one is still highly functional and an excellent tool for getting used to different mahjong rule sets.
Age of Steam - Good old Age of Steam. I managed to reach my goal of playing five games, but unfortunately didn't get any more in. For some reason Age of Steam is slightly difficult to get on the table. Well, I had fun with the few sessions I played, and got to try few new maps. Of course, I bought more maps than I played, so I'm still in trouble.
The Secret Blueprints of Steam maps intrigue me a lot. I tried them once, but the company wasn't the best possible - it just isn't a newbie-friendly way to play. I'd really like to try the blueprints with experienced players.
I also got to try New England Railways, an ancestor of Age of Steam. There are interesting differences and similarities, and while my opponents weren't excessively interested in this game, I found it rather charming.
Tarock - We've continued playing tarock - and it is definitely tarock we play, not tarocco or tarot, as we mostly play the Slovenian game with four and Strohmann with two. With three we play Preference, though Cego might be worth trying. We've only played Cego once, and that was with five if I remember correctly, and I get the feeling Cego is a three-player game.

The Not-So-Good, The Disappointing, The Plain Bad

 Eketorp - This game looks good, but it combines all sorts of elements I don't like. Double-guessing is the worst offender, and the fact that this game took 90 minutes to play. Eketorp looks great, but it looks like the mechanics don't really mesh with the majority of Board Game Geeks: the game has just two 10s and nine 9s.
West Riding - I got something of a Winsome Games mania and purchased a set of Winsome Games when I found them at Northumbria Games. Of the three, West Riding was the disappointment. Dutch InterCity, an ancestor of West Riding in a way, is an odd game I've played only once, but it's a short game so I'd like to try it again at some point. West Riding, however, was kind of ok, but definitely not worth the three-hour play time. Were it in the same one hour slot as Wabash, it'd be another story. The third game of the bunch was New England Railways, which I already mentioned.
In the Year of the Dragon - This is a popular game, probably one of the more popular games amongst my friends I just can't stand. I've played this once on board and once on SpielByWeb and I don't want to play again. Something in this game rubs me the wrong way. It's kind of like Amun-Re - I can see why some people like it and I kind of think it's a pretty good game, but just not for me.
Animalia, Kingsburg, Airships, Thief of Baghdad - Meh.

Quick look on the good games of the previous report

Agricola - Five games this year. Requires will to get this on the table, and I'm slightly wary of playing the game with newbies. I would like to play more.
Caylus Magna Carta - Played once. Not a huge hit. Should probably sell this one. Magna Carta felt better than Caylus, but in practise isn't. In the end Magna Carta isn't short enough - were it more like San Juan, it would be better.
Combat Commander: Europe - Gone after few games. Too long, too fiddly, high resale value.
1960: Making of the President - Played once, sold. Not my cup of tea.
Phoenicia - Thinking about selling. Didn't play once in 2008, but I like it - then again, 2008 was the year of selling good games I just don't play (off went Memoir '44, Finstere Flure, Tigris & Euphrates, Combat Commander and several others).
Race for the Galaxy - I still like it a lot and I played it, too, but it wasn't quite the hit I expected. Hard to teach, too slow for my tastes with newbies, not a huge hit with the club.
Through the Ages - Bought the new edition, played it once, definitely not going anywhere (but I wished it got on the table).
Ubongo Extrem - Nice, but... one play of Extrem is all Ubongo I played this year. I like the games, but don't play them. Perhaps I should sell them, or sell the basic version and keep the Extrem, as I like it more.

Totals

Fives and dimes

Games played ten times or more in 2008:

• Dominion (28)
• Le Truc (14)
• Die Dolmengötter (11)
• Wabash Cannonball (10)
• Black Vienna (10)

These games were played five to nine times in 2008:

• Tier auf Tier (8)
• Race for the Galaxy (8)
• Qwirkle (7)
• Mahjong (7)
• Preference (6)
• Strohmann-Tarock (6)
• Set (6)
• Battle Line (6)
• Flix Mix (5)
• Bondtolva (5)
• Agricola (5)
• Age of Steam (5)

Pretty good lists, a lot more games than last year. I like these lists, I'm always happy when I get repeat plays for good games. Missing Age of Steam from these lists would've been a major disappointment.
Totals come to 284 games of 114 different titles.

Month metric

Top games on this list were Die Dolmengötter (six months) and Le Truc, Qwirkle and Preference (five months).

Year metric

1. Battle Line (7/8)
2. Attika (6/6)
3. Gang of Four (6/6)
4. Age of Steam (6/6)
5. Modern Art (6/7)
6. Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (6/7) *
7. San Juan (5/5)
8. Ingenious (5/5)
9. Lost Cities (6/8) *

I didn't play games marked with an asterisk this year.

Huber Happiness metric

Dominion, Mahjong, Age of Steam, Wabash Cannonball and 1825 brought the most Huber Happiness this year.

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Thursday Session: Tier Auf Tier, Attika

  Actually, I'll start with another session report first. Wednesday we went to see some of our playground friends. The kids - 5 and 7 years - don't mind Nooa much, but they are all over me. Well, Nooa had great fun playing with their toys (Bob the Builder Duplos, a guaranteed hit) and I played some games with the kids. It was fun, if a tad chaotic. We started with some roll and move games. Duck Pond, a Ravensburger game by Heinz Meister, was one of them. We played it wrong, and it was terribly boring. When played correctly it's still almost decision-free, but at least three times faster and thus much better. Players move ducks in a pond to pick up cards; we had each player controlling a duck, while actually everybody can move every duck. For four-year olds, but adults will be nevertheless be bored dead by this game.

Tier auf Tier aka Eläinpyramidi is my latest acquisition. This Haba game won the Finnish Game of the Year for kids this year and when I saw it for just 15,16 euros (a strange price), I had to buy it. It was a great purchase, as Nooa loved the game immediately. He was all over it, playing with the wooden animals.
It's a simple dexterity game for kids. Everybody gets a set of seven different animals, a crocodile is placed on the table and players take turns putting animals on top of the crocodile. If something falls, the player who made the mistake collects up to two animals and game continues until someone is out of animals. Simple and fun.
The kids weren't thrilled. We played a game, but they didn't want to try it again. They were really keen to play with the animal pieces, so that's what we did - it was fun, though I prefer actually playing the game. Well, maybe other kids like the game more. I sure did.
We did play the game today, while waiting for more players to arrive. When Hannu and Sonja joined us, the first thing they wanted to do was to try the animal game, so once more... And why not, because this is an excellent little dexterity filler. It only takes about 10 minutes, tops, and while the game is really simple, it's also rather entertaining enough. The dexterity part is fairly easy, until the pyramid gets tall - the pieces are quite slippery.
So, a top-notch game: a nice small box, really gorgeous components, really easy to teach, plays fast, works with (at least some) kids, is fun enough for adults to play without children - what else can you wish from a game that costs 15 euros? I just hope Nooa likes the game as much as he loves the bits.
Back to Wednesday. We also played Candy, which is a rather entertaining quick perception game. A bunch of multi-colored candy tokens are spread on a mat. Three colourful dice are rolled and the players must race to grab the piece of candy with the correct colours. Simple, yet fun.
Here's another game that suffered from not playing by the rules. We played until the very end, or would've except we had to leave. The rules suggest playing until someone gets five, and I can see why: as the pieces are taken, more and more rolls are blanks, pieces that are already taken. It gets a bit boring. But if the game stops at five, it works much better (and then you start again and play for best out of five or something like that if you want a longer game).
In any case, this is a good game for kids, nice practise to make the kids ready for more adult reaction test games. The publisher, Beleduc, seems to be one of those companies making quality children's toys and games, like Selecta and Haba. It's a German company, no surprises there... The components in this game were nice, the candy is wooden and the mat is nice cloth.
Then, today's games. After Tier auf Tier, we played a quick game of Dominion - the less said about my performance, the better - and after endless discussions of what to play, ended up playing a three-player game of Attika followed by a four-player game.
Attika is one of those fairly rare games I've played constantly - it, Gang of Four and Age of Steam form a trio of games I've played every year for six years now. Not much Attika for the last few years, true, but still - every time the game hits the table I'm reminded of how good it is. It's such an elegant game, my rating of 9 is definitely valid.
In the first game I showed the novices Petri and Hannu how to play, in the next one first Petri was really close to win by a temple connections and then Hannu did it, right out of the blue. I'm actually fairly sure Hannu will eventually buy a copy, he seemed to like the game a lot.
We wrapped up the evening with a quick game of Die Dolmengötter. I was on a roll, played well and eventually won the game with few points over Sonja. Hannu seemed certain Sonja would win and she did play a good game, but I knew I did well, too. Funny enough, only Petri was left with dolmens, so it was fairly close game.
I now have 11 games of Die Dolmengötter logged and I really like it. I'm seriously contemplating a 10 rating. If the game was as good with three or five as it is with four, a rating of 10 would be close to obvious. Now Die Dolmengötter is simply one of the very best 20 minute games for four, full of wonder and clever moves. My record is strong: I've won 7/11.
Ok, so I did it: Die Dolmengötter is now rated 10. It simply is that good.

Thursday Session: Erie Railroad, Secret Blueprints

  When I arrived, the guys were waiting & hungry. It was Wabash Cannonball time. Hannu & Petra, the two main Wabash fans in our group wanted to give the new Erie Railroad expansion a go. Tapani both newbies to Wabash, joined us for another five-player game.
The Erie is a small expansion. It's just a single-share company with, what, 13 cubes. Once a certain trigger is reached - railroads have expanded enough - Erie can be capitalized. It starts in Buffalo and has enough cubes to reach Chicago. It can also build to New York to grab eight income there. Simple, rules-wise, but this has plenty of subtle effects on the game.
Tapani played a rather excellent game for a newbie, beating us hands down. The final scores were 106-84-66-64-41. The Pennsylvania was distributed completely on the first round, after which the company headed straight to Chicago. That was brutal. Tapani and Hannu, winner and second, were both invested in Penn. So was Petri, but he played too carefully and didn't buy enough shares - he went most of the game with that single Penn share - and I was able to cut to the third place before him.
I ran the Chesapeake & Ohio on the southern edge of the map, taking it to Chicago with - who else but Tapani. Hannu got both Wabash and Erie, and played both of them well. Tapani did a great job with Baltimore & Ohio, too - he didn't develop it, so no shares where sold until late in the game.
Five-player Wabash is a tough beast. There aren't many actions per player, so choosing what you want to do is very critical. It also led to problems with certain not-so-useful yet very important actions, such as diluting B&O and Wabash. You want to see that done, but you'd rather use your own actions for promoting your agenda - so nobody does it. Next I force the others play Secret Blueprints of Steam. This is a curious expansion that is unlike any other. Each player has a personal board. All boards are identical, except the layouts are mirrored and the cities have different colours. Bidding and action selection is as usual, but building and moving goods happens simultaneously. Everybody builds on their own map and moves goods and announces the results. Very simple! The maps are kept secret from other players, mostly because of the Production action: instead of drawing the cubes from the cup, the player with the action announces a colour and everybody else must give a cube of that colour from their maps.
It's very solitaire-ish, but there's some interaction. The auction is still there - and more brutal, too, as First Move and First Build are not available and Urbanization is really important - and the Production gives some interaction, too. But it's a lonely game and loses lots of the good fighting there is in Age of Steam. However, whatever is lost is gained in time: our game took about 90 minutes, but that included some really serious thinking and newbie players. With experienced players, finishing a game in less than an hour is likely.
So, it's pretty neat, with few caveats. Total Age of Steam newbies and Secret Blueprints don't mix. Just don't do it. Also, if there's any reason to doubt the honesty of your fellow players, this just won't work. The same goes with mistakes, if somebody makes mistakes, it's impossible to notice or fix afterwards. But that's not a huge deal, really, in casual play, and I wouldn't worry about it much. Just, you know, teach the newbies with something that has a public map.
The results weren't really interested, I won hands down and that's it. What is interesting is that Hannu did learn something from the last week's session - his second place was as strong as my victory and he managed to build quite a track.
While Secret Blueprints didn't win everybody's heart, Age of Steam is still requested for next week. I'm more than happy to comply.
Rust went flying when four very rusty Die Dolmengötter players met. It's been a while from the previous game, but from now on Dolmengötter will return to my every-week game rotation. It's a bloody excellent game. (Ok, so I got a surprise victory here.)
A quick hand of Strohmann and a game of Dominion wrapped up a rather splendid afternoon of games.

Thursday Session: Age Of Steam, Dominion, Le Truc

 It's been too long from my last game of Age of Steam. Today I got some railroad action in the form of the Scotland scenario. So still no Secret Blueprints, unfortunately, but at least something. I played against Hannu, who has played one game of Age of Steam, about year ago. He was a bit rusty, that is. I got two 2-link moves on the first round, which pretty much sealed the deal. I managed to build a nice track on the easy west coast of Scotland, then come down on the east coast. Hannu fought me a bit, but it was a pretty easy ride. At the same time, Hannu didn't quite realize the value of long connections. The final results were pretty clear.
This was a bit of an extreme case, but I'd still say the recommended eight turns is probably one turn too much. We finished the game one turn early (but could've quite probably two turns earlier, it was that obvious), and at that point the map was pretty much completely built. Age of Steam isn't the most exciting two-player game there is, but this was certainly a fun way to spend 60 minutes or so.
Dominion is a hit. We played four games in a row, and that's rare. It was pretty fast, too, all were three-player games and moved fast. We used random setups every time and that worked well: we got some pretty interesting setups. Witch with no Moat or Chapel (but with Remodel) was interesting, but not as nasty as it could've been: we were all fairly high in positive points, even though the Curse pile ran out.
Thanks to a tip from the Board Game Society forums, I did some remodeling to the Dominion box insert. I cut the four bits that stick out from the bottom and removed few millimeters of the bottom edge. That way the insert is slightly lower in the box and the sleeved cards fit in better. Now it's just about excellent. The sleeves made the game more pleasant to play, I just like shuffling sleeved cards.
Dominion is excellent fun, now I just need to figure out how to win the game against non-newbies. We played four games and I wasn't really close in any of them...
I wrapped up the evening with some Strohmann-Tarock and Le Truc with Hannu. The tarock was a disaster, but the Truc game was really, really good. I won the first game 12-0, then lost 12-8 and finally won the decisive round 12-11. It was close, but I had good cards and nerves of steel.
Truc is an amazing game, but it takes a while to appreciate it. Random game with someone you don't know isn't going to make it. It gets much better once you play repeatedly against the same players and start to get inside your opponent's head a bit. Excellent fun, particularly with Hannu...
Someone should introduce Truc to all those poker pros who play Chinese Poker a lot for amazingly high stakes. That game's complete rubbish, after all... Truc is much less luck and much more bluffing, personality and skill. It's trick-taking, but I'm pretty sure most serious poker folks should see the shine.

Thursday Session: Dominion, Container

 After a quick hand of Le Truce with Hannu, Petri arrived and Container hit the table. Petri is interested in modern-day business games and Container hits that niche pretty well. After all, the setting is definitely contemporary and the game is all about buying and selling.
This time I managed to avoid embarrassing blunders and actually everybody made pretty good money. When we started, the guys were slightly confused, but figured out the works before the game was over. I think my one-game experience gave me enough of a head start to win the game, but Petri got close (115 vs 92). Hannu had the wrong colours of containers floating around and lacked cash in critical times (and didn't realize to take a loan), and ended up with 56 points.
Three isn't probably the sweet spot of Container - I think more is better, as there's more action going around, but the game works this way, too. It was a pretty fast, too, clocking in at 60 minutes. Petri loved the game and Hannu seemed to enjoy it, too. My rating is also on its way from 7 to 8.
Thursday's board game club was a Dominion party, pretty much. I played three games of Dominion during the afternoon, first two times in a row and then a third game just before leaving with some other folks.
It's a popular game, let me tell you. Ok, everybody didn't love it, but the game got some "I've got to have this" response, which is after all fairly rare. In the first game we used the basic setup and I beat everybody else hands down, in the second one we tried a randomized setup and things were much closer. Hannu won that one. I tried using a Chapel and didn't do it quite efficiently enough, but it was an interesting experiment. In the last game we used the Village Centrum (or whatever it's called in English - the difficulty with translations...) setup which was nice, too.
I'm enjoying the game more and more. I've still got it rated as eight, but nine is probably closer to truth. The game has plenty of potential, but the question is will it become stale? The designer has played it a lot, which would suggest there's enough staying power. Well, I'll just have to see and I'm definitely going to enjoy the game for now!
By the way, I just sleeved the game today. Based on some of the complaints, it would seem like a really difficult task, but I got the Ultra Pro basic soft sleeves, 1,50 euros per pack, and put the cards in those. The cost was minimal, the size of the cards matches the sleeves well enough, the sleeved cards fit in the insert and the box lid can be shut. Works like a charm, that is.
I also played a game of Russian Preference, a three-player favourite of me and Hannu. We got Gargoyle, another friend of the game, to join us. It was another reminder of why I don't play games for money. I lost badly: 130, 99, -229. I was deep in the hole after the fairly quick game was over.
Despite my terrible performance, I still really like the game. It's one of the better traditional card games and my favourite when there are exactly three players around.

Thursday Session: Riichi Again

  After a quick round of Da Vinci Code, it wasn't hard to get a Mahjong table going. There were more than four interested players.
We used the new set I had bought. It's a cheap set, made in China but Japanese in style. That means it's small (the tiles seemed very small the first time I saw them, but after playing with them a little, I think they're actually all right and not that small), there are no western indices, the white dragons are blank and there is one red five in each suit.
The lack of indices was a bit of a problem. I think it's one of those things you learn with practise (and it's a lot easier task than learning the Shogi pieces, for example, since you only need to learn the characters and winds, and few of the characters are really easy, too) and I also think it's something mahjong players should learn at some point. We had cheat sheets, of course. I think it slowed our game a bit, but not much. Don't let the lack of indices stop you from getting an otherwise cool set.
Anyway, since we had a Japanese set, we played riichi. We played for almost three hours and almost finished the game. A full game of riichi is two rounds or eight hands, but there can be more if there are draws or dealers win hands. We played 11 hands in total, I think, and were two hands (+ extra hands) away from finishing the game.
It was swingy, like riichi is. I think I scored the biggest hand in the game, for 11 600 points, but in the next hand I made a mistake that cost me 12 000 points, since I had to pay 4 000 points to other players for an incorrect winning hand. So, after few more failures I ended up dead last.
Few more words about the set. I bought it from MahjongMart (it's the white/yellow Dragon set), because it was dirt cheap. Of course, as usual, cheap means "low quality". The material is nice, but you can smell - from quite a distance - that it's made cheaply in China. The tiles are fine, but the case reeks. Hopefully it'll get better.
The carvings are decent, but the paint job isn't very good. The colours have been applied with a wide brush, it's not very exact work. Again, that's what to expect from a cheap set, really. The biggest problem colour-wise is the bamboo tiles. They are not green, but more like really dark brown.
So, if you want a cheap Japanese-style set, it's a valid option, but I'd probably suggest investing a bit more to get a nicer set. After all, it's going to be something you'll use for years. I actually sold the Dragon set already and have ordered this riichi set from Yellow Mountain Imports. Based on the pictures, it looks nicer: the colours are bright, clear and exactly applied. It's not very expensive, either, just $47, but the shipping costs were a lot more expensive. Apparently shipping stuff from Japan is fairly cheap. Of course, US folks will be fine since Yellow Mountain Imports is in USA and the shipping starts from $11.
Oh, by the way - remember my Board Game Auctions site? It's been doing great. People are really shopping for games in eBay. Old mahjong sets have been the biggest bestsellers there (and since they're often quite expensive, the commissions are good), but I've also made some money from old war games.
Since that site is doing so well, I thought I'll expand to other niches and now I'm seeing how Kids' Stuff Auctions will do. For that site I'm still waiting for Google to get to it and start bringing people in (which is, of course, part of the reason I'm mentioning it here, because Gameblog's front page is well-loved by Google - and why not ).

Back To New England

  I visited board game club today for a while. I had to leave early, but I did have time for a round of New England Railways. We got five players and this time, since I was carrying Age of Steam as well, we replaced the cardboard chits with actual wooden cubes. It was much better.
This time the results were slightly different than in our last session. Tero won with $65, Olli had $19, I had $9, Outi had $4 in the red and Robert was $14 in the negative. So, no debt death spirals, but no really good results either. Even Tero had some debt left and he was the only one to pay any debt at all.
The shortness of the game - just half of the three-player game - is obviously one reason. We also had a nasty case of plenty of blue cubes in the main network and no access to blue cities. An earlier link to the blue cities on the edge of the board would've increased the incomes, I believe.
My own game was bad... I got a bad start and took many, many turns to get any income (I didn't buy a link on the first turn, then bought two useless unconnected links, way to go!). I was tight on the loans, so in the end that didn't hurt too much, but it was somewhat boring.
It was fun, or at least fun enough, but I don't think I'm playing the game again with five players any time soon. Someone might enjoy this - or even play with six players, but I prefer the three-player game with more turns and more time to enjoy your network. Four-player game might be the best, I'll have to try and see. But five's too much for me, that I know.

Thursday Session: New England Railways

  My Thursday games started with a quick 2-0 loss in Truc and a four-player game of Race for the Galaxy. It's been a while since I played Race, but I was in good form and able to win (ok, so we had two newbies in the game).
The main course for me was, however, Winsome's New England Railways. I was able to score a copy from Northumbria Games earlier this year and now the game got on the table. I'm glad to say it's a really good game and clearly the best of the bunch I got (West Riding and Dutch Intercity were the other two).
This Early Railways game is an ancestor Age of Steam and shares some ideas: players build railroads on loaned money and move goods to get income. However, there are some big differences as well. The track-building isn't freeform: there are set connections between cities auctioned each turn. The loans are more expensive, but they can be paid off.
The loans cost 20% each round, like in Age of Steam, but they feel more expensive. In Age of Steams, shares pay 5 and cost 1 per round, while in New England Railways loans start from 10 and cost 2, and it's not rare to have, say, $100 in loans that costs you $20 per round in debt service. Income, however, is usually less than in Age of Steam. I found that going over 40 income was possible, but staying there for more than one round was hard.
So, ending up in a deadly debt spiral is fairly easy. In our game, it was common to take new loans to pay the debt service on old loans. In that sense our game was a fairly accurate simulation of typical debt-based economy.
Me and new guy Tuukka were more heavy-handed with our debt, while Tuomas was more careful. The difference between me and Tuukka was the health of our railroad networks. I got the best network and after Tuomas' strong few rounds I was in the lead. Tuukka, on the other hand, took a while to get any income. The result? I was deep in debt but in the end of the game I had paid all my debts and I got $110 in cash. Tuukka was deep in debt and in the end was even more in debt, finishing the game with $294 in the red. Tuomas paid off almost all his debts, ending up with $34.
Add to that the value of the network, and the final scores were 180 for me, 114 for Tuomas and -240 for Tuukka. In this light the mercy of going honestly bankrupt seems welcome... My victory was a result of a good network. I had a strong network : Boston, Providence, Worcester, Plainfield, Hartford, New Haven... I also got plenty of income from Tuukka, as my network connected well with his network. Tuomas had a nice network, but had a bit of a lack of good cubes to ship and support from Tuukka. Lesson learnt: a good, central network is a key to victory, and getting help from friends is nice.
New England Railways has a nice income reduction mechanism, by the way. Each round two dice are rolled. Each player loses 1/(2d6 +1) of his or her income, rounded down. It's a nice mechanism, less gamey than the income reduction tiers in Age of Steam. There's some randomness involved, but it hits everybody equally (relative to their income levels). We had few depression rounds when I rolled 3 or so - I lost 11 income twice. That hurt, since getting income was a lot harder than in Age of Steam - I made few 5-link shipments, but mostly shipped three links or so.
So, New England Railways is a really good game. It's similar to Age of Steam, but different enough. I definitely want to explore this game a tad more. Our session took a nice 1 hour 45 minutes. Of course the production quality is typical Winsome level, but using poker chips and wet-erase pens helped and replacing the low-quality goods chips with wooden cubes would help even more.

Thursday Session: Mahjong, Bausack

  Our Thursday sessions have returned to Thursdays. We got our old location back now the university is again open in evenings. Actually, that happened last week, I just missed the first meeting. This time we had a nice turnout, I think we had four tables going on at the same time.
My table was playing Mahjong, again. This time we tried playing Riichi, the modern Japanese game. It's a gambler's game, where concealed hands and major point swings play the leading role. It's fun, fairly simple and moderately short.
We played one three-player practise round, then the East round. One of the players had to leave early, but she was replaced with another, so we could finish the round. Everybody was more or less a newbie, particularly with the Riichi rules. Riichi has a minimum score, too, the hand needs to be worth one yaku (a double) - that's not as hard as the 8-point minimum of the Chinese official rules, but still, with newbies we probably should've played without it.
Anyway, it was fun, and I'm definitely playing Riichi again. I've played about ten games with Four Winds and I do like the ruleset. The biggest flaw of Riichi is the tendency for draws, but fortunately there's the tenpai-noten rule: after a draw, players who are tenpai (waiting) get points from those who are not (noten).
So, more Riichi!
Next up was Bausack, the old favourite from 1987 recently released in Finnish as Bandu (I did the rules). This is the dexterity game that looks like the odds and ends collection from a carpenter's workshop. We played the Knockout game, where the last tower standing is the winner. To spice up the game, the blocks are auctioned, either "pay to take it" or "pay to not to take it".
It was great fun, particularly our second game. The towers got outrageous. Petri, who has a history of doing miniature paintings, demonstrated his capabilities to put down difficult blocks between heartbeats while Make had definitely the worst case of shaky fingers, that was just nasty to even look at. Petri won the game, even though Harri had one more token - Petri had to add two tough blocks to his tower but he did it and won the game when Harri was simply unable to add anything to his tower.
There's a bit of a luck element in the end game, I think, as the order of players can play a bit of a role in the end, but I suppose it's not a huge problem, because in the end Bausack is such a fun game and watching the grand finale of the second game was just about as much fun as playing the game.
In the end I had the time to play a single round of Le Truc with Olli - another convert!

Last Train to Wensleydale first impression

I was fortunate enough to make it to the game night this week. Last Train to Wensleydale was most wanted of the new games, so we got full four players. Short version: it's good and worth buying.
Description of the game
Players build small railroads in the Yorkshire Dales, moving cheese, stone and passengers. Passengers are tricky, because they have specific needs, they need to reach the NER or MR network. Stone and cheese are easier to move.
Everything hinges on influence. There are four sorts: government, train, NER and MR influence. Players get influence from a Amun-Re style auction. Government influence determines track building order and is necessary to get rid of complaining farmers who want to block progress. Train influence is super important, as it's needed to rent trains and it also determines the order of goods movement. NER and MR influence are needed a bit in the track building and a lot in the end of the turn (I'll explain later).
Track-building is easy. You can only build one continuous stretch each turn, no forking! Track has a cost, which you can pay in investment cubes (= money that's replenished each turn) or influence. Building must start from a MR and NER town or from own track.
In the movement phase players rent trains of varying capacity and move stuff. Cheese can be moved if your track reaches the area where the cheese is, stone moves if your track is next to the hill with the stone. This is pleasantly simple. Red passengers want to reach a MR town, green passengers want to reach a NER town.
Players get profit from goods moved and collect those for end game scoring, loss is accrued from track on board. Placement on profit/loss track determines general turn order.
In the end of the turn, players can make one of the big companies to acquire their track. It takes a connection to a company town and some matching influence. No more losses from useless track! This is very important phase for the general well-being of your company.
This goes on for four or five rounds. After that you score your profit or loss, 1 point for each good moved during the game and 2 points for each set of four different goods.
Our session and my impression
I like the game. It's fairly hard to grok, I think we got it pretty much on the second or third round. Next time it'll go better. The rules aren't super clean, but we got only one thing wrong (the cost of takeovers). Still, takes a while to explain them.
The setup is notoriously tedious (two cubes are placed on each area, then wrong-coloured cubes - white on lowland, orange on hills - are removed, then passengers are placed in towns) and indeed a bit annoying. There's some fiddly tracking of influence, too.
The game took about 110 minutes. A bit long, but full of action and I can see fast experienced players playing this in 90 minutes. Still, two hours is fairly well justified, there's meat in the game (and I'm not talking about the board, which looks like a bacon omelette).
There's lots of clever stuff going on. I like the auctioning for company influence, the track-building, collecting goods and the takeovers - most of it, that is. Last Train is pleasantly different from the collect-the-shares train games and pick-up-and-deliver lot.
I started by building a track to Hawes in the middle of the hills. I kept the track the whole game, shipping plenty of stone to keep myself making profit. I also got some cheese and green passengers. The route had plenty of red passengers, but it took some effort and two turns of track-building to reach a red town. On the last turn, I did a separate track to gather up some more cheese and green passengers. I wasn't very efficient with the takeovers, so on the last turn I ended up on -3 in the profit/loss track.
However, I was the best with goods, gathering 34 points from four sets and ten more goods cubes. Petri got 23 (least cubes, +5 profit), Hannu 20 (29 points in cubes, -9 mostly from unnecessary track) and Tuomas 11 (21 points, -10 on p/l track).
I'm very glad to own the game and definitely want to explore it more. The different setups will lead to different games, so I suppose there's quite a bit of replay value there.

The Sims Tv

pubblicato: lunedì 17 gennaio 2005 da darkripper in: Varie Segnalazioni Pc Gestionale Sembra che Ea stia lavorando all’idea di uno show televisivo basato su The Sims e “interpretato” dai suoi personaggi. Per ora non si sa molto, ma il progetto credo che sia quello di far interagire i giocatori/spettatori con lo show, il tutto da casa. La cosa ovviamente avrà un successo spaventoso, visto che ormai i signori di EA hanno capito che basta scrivere “Sims” su qualcosa per stravenderla. Ok, su QUASI tutto. The Sims Online non é stato una gran vittoria.
Nel frattempo, si avvicina la data d’uscita di The Sims: University, primo add-on per The Sims 2 rilasciato da Maxis.
Non attendiamo altro.

PSP in vendita negli US a 200$

pubblicato: lunedì 10 gennaio 2005 da admin in: Varie Un esponente di Sony ha dichiarato al CES che la PSP sarà in vendita a marzo con un prezzo al pubblico inferiore a 200 dollari; sicuramente una mossa inaspettata che creerà qualche preoccupazione a Nintendo con il suo DS che, sul mercato a 150 $, sembra sia già stato venduto a quasi 3 milioni di persone.
Interessante leggere un articolo su Forbes che chiarisce la posizione di Sony nei confronti di iPod e del mercato della vendita di contenuti audio-video digitali.

Le speranze di Gamesblog per il 2005

pubblicato: venerdì 31 dicembre 2004 da darkripper in: Varie Pc PSP Nintendo DS RPG First Person Shooter MMORPG [Letto su Mobileblog di alcune previsioni per il 2005. Io sono scarsissimo con le previsioni, e inoltre l’Industria é già incasinata di suo, così spesso le previsioni si rivelano molto-troppo sbagliate. Ad esempio: non avrei puntato due lire sul GameCube, mentre molto puntai sul Dreamcast. Eccovi così i miei desideri per il 2005, anno che vedrà l’arrivo in Italia di due nuove console e di ben due giochi di ruolo online del calibro di Everquest 2 e World of Warcraft]

I controller per Ps2 di Street Fighter

pubblicato: venerdì 31 dicembre 2004 da darkripper in: Otaku Lifestyle Ps2 Abbastanza inutile, quindi assolutamente cool.
Pensateci, un controller senza stick analogici, quindi utilizzabile ormai esclusivamente con i picchiaduro 2d. Il tutto per commemorare l’anniversario di Street Fighter, che non credo abbia bisogno di presentazioni.
Un auto-mutilazione ludica in piena regola, disponibile in quattro versioni (Ken, Ryu, Akuma e Chun-li). Il mio preferito é quello di Ken, ma anche quello di Ryu non é male.
Come al solito disponibile da Lik-Sang e dai principali importatori. E se poi siete dei folli totali ecco la versione arcade, decisamente consigliata se cominciate a massacrarvi i pollici a furia di mezzelune.

Unity Cancellato

pubblicato: venerdì 10 dicembre 2004 da darkripper in: Varie Gamecube
Unity, strano esperimento che il vecchio guru Jeff Minter stava sviluppando con il supporto di Lionhead, é stato cancellato.
Il gioco proponeva un gameplay simile a quello di Rez, solo che lo sviluppo avrebbe impiegato ulteriore tempo, troppo per riuscire a trovare una sua collocazione.
Minter ha postato una lettera ai fan nel suo forum, spiegando che portare avanti il progetto avrebbe significato ottenere qualcosa di molto differente dall’idea originale.

Rilasciato il trailer di Band of Brothers

pubblicato: venerdì 10 dicembre 2004 da darkripper in: Pc Xbox First Person Shooter Downloads
Inutile mentire cambiando titolo: Brothers in Arms é chiaramente un’imitazione ludica del bellissimo serial tv Band of Brothers.
Come spesso accade con i First Person Shooter storici, nonostante l’assenza di licenza ufficiale, non é difficile scovare gli elementi (e spesso le inquadrature) del cinema di riferimento.
Nel trailer di Brothers in Arms, da poco disponibile online su Fileplanet, c’é più o meno un concentrato della serie prodotta da Steven Spielberg e Tom Hanks.
Brothers in Arms offre la gestione di una intera compagnia di paracadutisti, con un approccio strategico che a me ricorda vagamente Full Spectrum Warrior.
Il gioco sembra interessante, ma bisognerà vedere come al solito come si comporterà l’intelligenza artificiale dei propri compagni. L’uscita in ogni caso é prevista per febbraio.

Left 4 Dead 2: disponibile la demo per gli abbonati Gold di Xbox Live

pubblicato: mercoledì 04 novembre 2009 da Matteo F. in: Pc First Person Shooter Demo Downloads Xbox 360
Dopo aver reso disponibile la demo di Left 4 Dead 2 per chi ha preordinato il gioco attraverso Gamestop e Steam, Valve ha rilasciato in giornata anche la versione per gli utenti Gold di Xbox 360.
Del peso di circa 2 gb, la demo offre la possibilità di giocare una parte della campagna The Parish ambientata a New Orleans sia in singolo che in cooperativa (via spit-screen o insieme ad altri 3 utenti via Xbox Live).
I possessori di abbonamento Silver dovranno invece attendere il 10 novembre, data in cui verrà rilasciata la demo pubblica.
Ricordiamo che Left 4 Dead 2 è atteso per PC e Xbox 360 il 17 novembre.