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Patrick Korner: Essen Game Recap - Quick Hits and Thoughts
I know, I know. I write nothing of substance for the better part of several months, then both a review AND a column show up within a week of each other. Why is this? Well, there are two possible explanations:
a) A disturbance in the Force, or
b) I needed a break from work’s Fiscal Year End Insanity and decided that since I’ve no time to actually PLAY games, I may as well write about ‘em again, just to prove to myself that I still know how.
In any case, here I am. And the nice thing about having dragged my take on Essen out to the bitter, bitter end (i.e. well past Nurnberg but thankfully before my batch of Nurnberg titles arrives) is that I’ve actually played a huge number of my Essen acquisitions. And I’m gonna tell you what I think of ‘em. Settle in, folks.
(Oh, by the way: I’m also keeping track of what I played and when on BoardGameGeek – check out http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/25905 if you’re interested).
Age of Steam: America/Europe
Age of Steam: Barbados/St. Lucia
Age of Steam: Jamaica/Puerto Rico
Age of Steam: Mississippi Steamboats/Golden Spike
Age of Steam: Netherlands
I’ll deal with these as a group. Haven’t played any of them yet. Why? Because my gaming group is made up of folks whose first experiences with AoS were mostly sour, that’s why. So why buy the Bezier sets, then, you might ask? Well, because there’s always hope, because the sweeping nature of the America and Europe boards appeal to me, and because Ted’s a great guy and I wanted to do my part to support him. Someday, my train will come in. Someday.
Agricola
My copy is nicely pasted up thanks to a handy Mechanical Turk (full disclosure: I conned Rick Thornquist into pasting up my copy in exchange for visitation rights to the game), and I love it. Is it the Greatest Game Of All Time Bar None For Totally Sure? I’d say no. It has tremendous replayability and is full of rules that intuitively make sense, but it hasn’t quite grabbed me, slapped me about a few times and forced me to set off across the countryside, singing its praises. This is mostly because the games have all taken so very long – longer than I’d hoped. Is this because I’ve been too sure of my group’s skill and done them a disservice by launching into the full game right away? I’m thinking maybe.
All-Zeit (Space Dealer Expansion)
Haven’t played yet. Haven’t played the base game in months, actually. Partly because my sand timers were pretty, um, off – but to their credit Eggertspiele shipped a new set to me, all the way across an ocean and a continent. Really must play this again soon.
Amyitis
I was disappointed to see two things: One, that a few typos still ended up creeping into the English rules that I’d so painstakingly edited, and two, that the RGG edition ended up using what appears to be a slightly different ruleset. This is a good game, but the rules disparity (and, to be honest, the fact that the rules could have been arranged a little better) seems to be keeping it from the attention it deserves. The game itself is quite good – it has that patented Ystari ‘feel’ (you know the one – you want to do four things but the game will only let you do two, and you need to juggle multiple different resource / income types) – so I’m happy to have it on my shelf.
Black Box+
An ‘enhanced’ version of the venerable Black Box. This edition comes with a double-sided board – one side has the well-known square board, the other a hyper-difficult-evil hex board. Components are spiffy wooden bits – kudos to Franjos for releasing this. For folks like me who never grabbed a copy of the original, this is ideal.
Blue Moon – Promo Cards
Blue Moon City – Promo Tiles
More freebies (or, in the case of the BMC tiles, free insert in Spielbox magazine). Haven’t played ‘em yet.
Bohnanza
Tichu
Ha. I’ve played and loved these for ages. These, specifically, are collector’s editions in tins. Side note: I thought long and hard about the Bohnanza Fan Edition and ended up deciding that I didn’t need three copies of the game. Plus the artwork, being all different, makes that edition harder to teach to newbies, which is really what this game is best at – a gateway game.
I’m a little annoyed at the Tichu tin, too – given the size, I’d assumed it included two decks. Nope, just the one. Oh well. Still looks ubercool.
Borneo
A small card game from daVinci. Played once, thought it was ok but not earth shattering. The English rules are on the ‘net only (i.e. I had to buy this on faith that English rules would show up at some point) but they’re quite good. I’m told this edition was some kind of limited test run and that a board version of the game is now coming – I don’t get this. It works perfectly well a card game, so why mess with it? A fair bit of ‘luck of the draw’, but I haven’t played enough to see whether skill can compensate for it.
Brass
Superb game. Tight, well-themed (well, except for the magical flying iron machinery), engaging to the end and well-produced. The rulebook has taken some lumps for being hard to plough through, and I honestly don’t get this. I suspect that the complaints being levelled at the rules are mostly due to people skimming them or not reading them all the way through, because we had no real issues. The real complexity in the rules comes from the fact that the game has a kind of ‘wheels within wheels’ structure, which makes it difficult to explain in a linear (i.e. rules-based) form. I’ve done up a summary sheet that makes it easier to teach – I’d upload it to BGG if I wasn’t sure that others haven’t already done so (and likely made theirs much prettier to boot). Brass it in my top 5 from 2007.
Caylus Deluxe
Haven’t played. Looks pretty, but I’m worried about the tile art – it seems to ‘swallow’ up some of the iconography, making it harder to see what each building does. But since I haven’t played I can’t say if this worry is real or unfounded. The coins are superfantastico, though.
Cheeky Monkey
Why is this game not getting more buzz? You’d think that a Knizia take on Can’t Stop would get more attention. Great push-your-luck game, well produced and fun to play with kids too (the addition of a kid-friendly rules variant is a nice touch and one I’d love to see repeated by other publishers). Face 2 Face should be getting more credit for this one. Come on, people – where’s the monkey love? Hang on, that kind of came out wrong…
Container
Very good game. Don’t use the beginner’s variant – it makes the game take WAY too long. Just explain to people that there are many, many ways to spend money but only one way to make money. Then emphasize the fact that the more you offer for someone else’s goods, the more money they’ll have to buy yours with, and you’ll all be fine. I’ve never seen anyone even come close to bankruptcy after our first game (where we kind of missed the point), so that worry kind of disappeared. Oh yeah – ever since I started referring to the goods as Cocaine, Heroin, Marijuana, Opium and LSD, nobody seems to get confused as to which colour is which. Still waiting on the replacement bonus containers, but it hardly matters – I’m more of a fan of wooden bits anyways.
Black Vienna
Chinatown
Cosmic Eidex
Wurmeln
Waldschattenspiel
Wizard
These are the various older games I picked up to fill out my collection. Have I played any of them yet? Hmm. You haven’t been paying attention, have you. (The answer is, of course, nope.)
Cuba
Gorgeous production. Lots of cool wooden bits. A game with lots of neat stuff going on. So what’s my complaint? It just doesn’t seem to last long enough – by the time you have a rudimentary economy going, the game’s over. This forces you to choose your path early on, allows little room for midstream adjustments, and thus limits some of the competition for resources I’d otherwise have hoped to see. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a fine game, but it just missed reaching classic status. I’ve heard of others just arbitrarily adding an extra round or two onto the end of the game, but I’ve no idea what to do with the law cards then – there are just enough for six rounds, not more. Perhaps some bright spark out there can think of a way to give the game a variable end condition instead of the fixed one – that might make things move differently.
Darjeeling
A solid family game, and my pick for an SdJ nomination this year (I’d have said winner, but I somehow doubt Abacus will win two years in a row). I don’t see the fiddliness others have complained about – there’s really not that much to keep track of, and each player’s turn moves along nice and quickly. Pretty components, decent price point, engaging gameplay – what’s not to like?
Settlers Expansion – Burgbau auf Chaffenberch
Settlers Expansion – Renaissance in der Steiermark
Settlers Expansion – Hessen
Another set of lumped-together expansions. You know what that means – yup, haven’t played ‘em. This is mostly likely because I haven’t played Settlers in, oh, about three years. I think I OD’d on it when it was first introduced to me. I should try and set up a dedicated Settlers night to try and get these played.
Settlers Dice Game
Flowerpower
Ubongo BMM
Again, various older games I picked up to fill out my shelves. The difference here is that I’ve actually played these. Hooray! I like ‘em all, of course – otherwise why would I have bought them?
Die Wiege Der Renaissance
Not yet played, sigh. I’ve waded through the rules (in German) once, again (in English), and I still don’t feel quite ready to teach the game. I guess I’ll just have to find some masochists willing to suffer together with me. This is annoying, because the game actually looks pretty cool and thinky. Is thinky a word? If not, it certainly should be.
Down Under
The latest effort from Gunter Cornett. This is actually a re-working of a previous game, Schlangennest (Snake Nest), and it’s good. Quick and with enough going on to keep you paying attention – you’re basically building a route with your set of tiles while trying to snag as many ‘good’ animals along the way as possible. Since the animals only show up on neutral paths (which, while present on your tiles, can’t be added to your path directly – you have to connect to them with other tiles), there can be a fight to see who gets there first. Add the fact that the play area doesn’t get fixed until a certain trigger (row or column length) hits, and there’s lots to think about. And it’s small and portable. What’s not to like?
Filou
Hmm. This is a great bluffing / bidding game, but for some reason the buzz died out shortly after Essen on this one. Why is this? Everyone I’ve introduced it to thought it was great, so I’d have thought its Internet legs would be longer than they seem to have been.
Festival
A Japanese card game. Odd. I can’t tell if the game has the spark of genius or not, because the one game I played felt odd – like the best strategy was obvious, and the winner would be whoever got the luckiest. I have to try it again, because the first play did nothing to solidify my opinions. Oh – some of the cards have some fairly risqué artwork on them, so be warned if you’re of delicate constitution.
Galaxy Trucker
Great, great game. Yes, it’s heavily experience-weighted (that is, the experience is most of the fun), but it’s such a blast to play that people keep asking for it over and over. The rulebook is, as you’ve heard by now, fantastic, but I also wanted to point out the graphical design - it’s very, very well done. Colours make sense (does the tile have a green glow? If so, you’ll need green batteries to power it. The brown alien is helpful with engines (which are also brown) and so on), the artwork is fun without being confusing - this game basically gets everything right. I’ve downloaded but not yet tried out the free expansion from last Christmas - something tells me my crews aren’t ready for that onslaught quite yet.
Giganten der Lufte
A solid dice game, different enough from To Court The King to make me happy to own both. Very, very nice production, except for the stupid Queen box that makes me want to break things. Unless Queen starts packaging portable black holes with their games, they’re going to have to acknowledge that not every gamer has the limitless shelf space their moronic boxes seem to assume. The fact that this game has a generic insert (that doesn’t even fit the bits properly) is even more galling. Gak.
Gipsy King
I have heard this game referred to as multiplayer Prisoner’s Dilemma, and while that somewhat negative analogy has some merit, I think there’s a better game here than that. The bits are very nice and chunky, and when played with more than three players there are definite options for blocking / maneuvering that appear. Plays very quickly, which makes it a good filler too (as long as you’re not overthinking your moves too much).
Glik
I have a hard time with this one. I so wanted to like it, but the two-player game seems degenerate – whoever goes first will win. Opportunities to block your opponent while advancing your own cause are few, so it turns into an efficiency race with the occasional sidetrack while you wait to be able to move guards out of your way. I really hope it’s more fun with four, because otherwise this will be a major letdown. Too bad, because it feels like there’s an awesome game just bubbling under the surface, waiting to break free and amaze.
Goita
Haven’t played yet. Appears to be a reworking of a traditional Japanese game, so it’s probably decent.
Gondoliere
Cut n’ play version of Interurban. Haven’t played yet but I did finally cut apart all the bits. So it’s getting there.
Hamburgum
Solid rondel game from Mac Gerdts / Eggertspiele. Since I did a fair bit of playtesting on this one I won’t say too much except that I like the game quite a bit. The traditional Eggertspiele uber-amazing components certainly don’t hurt.
Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage
Haven’t played. Really, really want to play. But haven’t played. Arrgh.
Wurfel Bingo
What the…? I had this in the W’s, but here it is. This has now apparently been released in English as High Score. Run, don’t walk, to buy this. It’s a great, great non-gamers game (because it’s dead easy for anyone who’s ever played Yahtzee to pick up) and playable with large groups as long as you have enough scorepads / pens for everyone. This is the game that would happen if Yahtzee and Take it Easy took off for a romantic weekend in Paris.
Jantaris
Haven’t played. Stayed far, far away after reading some of the comments of those that did. Now on sale in the BGG marketplace.
Katalon
A very cool abstract from HiKu Spiele. Leather board and semi-precious stones as playing pieces, and an interesting “your move dictates your opponent’s move” mechanic. A good two-player game and one I’m happy to have picked up, since it appears impossible to find online. Unless I just haven’t looked hard enough.
Key Harvest
It’s a Richard Breese game with Key in the title, so it already has a leg up on many other efforts. I found it worked well enough, but the spark (present in Keythedral and Reef Encounter) seemed to be missing. It just felt, I don’t know, a little too procedural. It’s not a bad game – far from it, it’s well designed and works well – but perhaps my expectations were a little too high. If this were called “Medieval Shenanigans” and was self-published by Joe Schmengie, I’d probably be much more effusive in my commentary. Does that make me a bad person? I hope not.
King of Siam
This, to me, is the ultimate three player area control game. Tight, very (VERY) limited actions, agonizing decisions, shifting alliances, nice artwork and solid components – this is another of my top 5. Probably as close to Kryptonite to the Ameritrash folks as you can get – zero chrome, no plastic anywhere, no outright combat, nothing but tense choices and cube movement. Is this readily available in North America? I think it is – through Simmons Games. If you like area control games, you owe it to yourself to try this one out.
Laborigines
Haven’t played. Not getting quite the heebie-jeebies from this one as Jantaris, but the reports I’ve ready have certainly not been encouraging. Has anyone played and liked this?
League of Six
Played once and definitely felt the ‘League of One x 6’ vibe. What you do is fun enough, so it’s okay doing it six times over, but I’ve have liked a little more difference between rounds 1-3 and 4-6. The bidding part is great fun, and it’s likely that repeat play will force me to pay closer attention to what others are trying for, but right now it’s in the ‘good but not great’ category.
Macht und Ohnmacht
Wow. I really, really wanted to like this, as the mechanic is neat (different provinces are adjacent to each other in different phases) and the designer’s pedigree is pretty good (Andreas Steding). But I’ve played three times, and all three times it played out the same: One player would dominate one type of phase, the other would dominate the other. And so we’d play leapfrog on the victory track until someone had enough to win. I’ve double checked the rules and I think we’ve done everything right, but it just didn’t soar. Probably headed for the trade pile.
Codex Leonardo III (Leonardo daVinci expansion)
Mr. Jack Expansion
Mykerinos: The Nile expansion
Pillars of the Earth expansion
More unplayed expansions. Surprise, surprise.
Moai
Evil game that will have you cursing your friends as you play. The components are nice and the rules are well written, but they have an irritating flaw: they don’t match up well with the examples / illustrations that run down the right. So, many times, concepts or components are introduced without explanation – but you’ll understand if you page ahead a little to see what’s going on. Annoying but not overwhelming, it just means you’d better read the rules through before teaching the game – trying to do it on the fly will mean a lot of flipping back and forth. That said, this is a tight, unforgiving system. Creeping doom is the order of the day, so don’t expect to finish playing this ready to go dancing through the flowers. More like go hug your kids and be glad you don’t have it as bad as the poor Easter Islanders did.
Neuroshima Hex
Fast and furious fun. The two-player game is a luck-heavy dogfight, the multiplayer games only less so. I haven’t checked the publisher’s site in a while, but the expanded board included with this edition is simply crying out for objective-based scenarios, so I hope some show up soon. Although in the meantime, bashing your opponents to bits is lots of fun. I think the luck of the draw could be lessened somewhat by stacking your armies and maneuver tiles separately – so you know what kind of tile you’re drawing – but I haven’t messed with this much yet.
Neuroshima Hex 5th Army (expansion)
Haven’t played. You know the refrain by now, right?
Origin of Failingwater
Awesome game. My trick-taking fiend friends love it. Yes, you CAN plan ahead. Yes, there IS non-random play. Yes, this game IS good. You just have to take a little time to figure out what’s going on and what cards are likely to be played. Observing your opponent’s plays and keeping track of which cards are still out there means that this isn’t really a trick-taking game. Well, it is, sort of. It’s actually all the observation, memory and logic associated with a well-played trick-taking game first, then the actual trick-taking later, kind of as a clean-up phase. I have a second copy that will probably make its way onto the Gathering Prize Table.
Palastgefluster
Another little card game that plays bigger than its size, which is a hallmark of Adlung games. Fun and not without the ability to think through your moves and plan ahead. I’m not as big a fan as others out there, but it’s a solid game and well worth the few cubic inches of space is takes up on the shelf. My only annoyance is that because of the game mechanic where players playing a gray card get to choose who plays next, it’s occasionally possible for someone to do very little for most of a round. Not playing is not fun, but it can’t be helped in this case.
Papillons
Fun pattern-making game from Cocktail Games. Pretty cards and a relatively straightforward ruleset make it worth keeping. I can also play a Go Fish variant of my own concoction with my daughter, which she loves. If only these little metal tins weren’t so hard to store…
Perry Rhodan: Die Kosmische Hanse
A very good game. I seem to have a knack for getting the rules a little bit wrong, but some back and forth with Heinrich Glumpler (the author) set me straight. It’s a light-ish game, but the theme is engaging and I have fun with it. I still don’t know for sure if RGG is releasing this one, so I’m glad I have my Kosmos edition. Nice to see the Kosmos 2-player line back on track after some pretty mediocre offerings in recent years.
Pick n’ Pack
Another very good game, this time from Z-Man (although the box would make you think Kosmos at first – it’s a dead ringer for the 2-player line). I just reviewed this one here at BGN so I don’t say much other than the fact that this one’s kind of like Logistico, another brain-melter I love – you start out with tons of options which gradually reduce over the game. That means you’ll think hardest at the start, so if you play remember that the turns will get faster with time.
Power Grid Card Deck
What do you know, an expansion I’ve played! I like it. Anything that adds life to Power Grid is awesome in my book.
Quinamid
One of the better abstracts out there. I’ve also reviewed this one here at BGN so I don’t reinvent the wheel. If you like abstracts you should buy this. That’s probably as succinct as I need to be, no?
Robotics
Sigh. Huge potential, ultimately a not very good game. Way too luck heavy to be really good, which sucks because the components are first-rate. This is a game that has me looking at it and thinking “there’s GOT to be a better game hiding in there”. Has anyone figured out how to tease a gamer’s game out of the box yet? The theme is great – who doesn’t like building goofy robots? The bits are great – who doesn’t like rotating board platters? The mechanics suck – who likes drawing random tiles and hoping? Unless something comes along to redeem this one soon, it’s going to get booted off the island.
Sternenhimmel Expansion: Die Schlange
Another expansion I haven’t played, but for an older game. I’m still in shock at how I got this one, since it’s long out of print (was released in limited quantities at Essen 1995) and highly sought-after. I simply asked to see the copy of Sternenhimmel that the one dealer’s booth had, peeked inside, and saw that it had the expansion included – which the dealer either didn’t know or didn’t realize how much value it added. So, 18 Euros later, I have this. The spare copy of Sternenhimmel’s gone now too – traded straight up for Liberte. Hooray on all fronts!
Tai Chi Chuan
Haven’t played. This is borderline criminal since it’s a William Attia title. I must find other word freaks and then bust this out. Since it’s small, it’ll almost certainly make the trip to Columbus with me.
Territories
This was the free game you got from Cwali if you bought Gipsy King. It’s really good – reminds me a little of Nuggets, but different enough to be unique. Place fences, grab territory, score points, all in about 15 minutes. Other publishers should give away free games like Corne van Moorsel does – between this and Floriado, he’s had some solid hits.
Tzaar
A Project GIPF game. A really good one at that. I decided to buy this after watching Ted and Jeremy play this like three nights in a row at Essen, and I wasn’t disappointed. Another one of those ‘if you like abstracts you’re bound to love this’ games. I wonder if GIPF is going to keep growing or if Kris Burm is now going to start a new series of games?
Ubongo Extrem
Holy Ubongo, batman. Super-tough (and now that Ted Alspach has released Extreme Craxy Expansion, even tougher) but awesome. I’m a Ubongo Junkie (Ubongo: Das Duell will be waiting for me in Columbus) and this is like a mainline hit of pure China White. I can only hope that Code Omega (another game by the same author and also waiting for me in Columbus) is half as good.
Utopia
Another ‘Hmmm’ game. Pretty, oh so pretty, and with definite meat, but hard to overview and one is left with a decided feeling of randomness after playing. I think there’s a real game there, but the reaction from my group was so ‘meh’ that I doubt we’ll spend effort finding it. The visitor tokens are also annoying: there tiny and not easy to tell apart, especially when they’re sitting on the board. That I think is part of the problem – what other players are trying to do is so well masked by the component ‘busyness’ that people stop paying attention and just try to maximize their own performance.
Wadi
Only played once, can’t comment intelligently enough yet.
Ziegen Kriegen
I love these Amigo card games. Simple rules, good artwork, often lots of fun (well, we’ll just forget about Diabolo, okay?) – this is a prime example. A trick-taking game crossed with some screw-your-neighbour elements that features some very funny goat artwork on the cards (the Matrix Goat is my fave) – I think this would be a big non-gamer hit if it had wider exposure in North America.
Zooloretto and Expansions
Lumped together because there are like five expansions and my fingers are getting tired. I’ve played, I think, two or three of the expansions now, and I like the way they add life and variety to the game. Already looking forward to seeing what Aquaretto adds to the game, too.
And that’s the list. Phew. Looking over what I’ve played and not yet played, it’s clear that expansions need more loving in the future. Maybe part of the problem is that when faced with a new game or an older game (albeit with new expansion), most people seem to want to try the whole new game first. So the expansions wait patiently for their turn on the table. But at least they don’t take up much room – most of ‘em fit in the original game’s box, which is good. Well, except for Power Grid. Now that I’ve also printed out the Atolla Modullis expansion, my box won’t fit them all any more. Oh, and Age of Steam – that one burst its banks long ago. Oh well – some problems are nice to have.
Next time (whenever next time is) I’ll probably have something to say about the Nurnberg games, since I have a fair number of them coming my way one way or another. Must. Play. Faster!
Until then!
pk
© 2008 Patrick Korner
Posted by Patrick Korner on Mar 29, 2008 at 04:00 AM in Columnists, Patrick Korner / 969
Comments:
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No mention of Wabash Cannonball? Posted by J C Lawrence on Mar 29, 2008 at 09:34 AM | #
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Great writeup pk!
Posted by Lee Fisher on Mar 29, 2008 at 10:07 AM | #
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I love AGE OF STEAM but like Patrick’s, my group had a bad initial experience with players losing the game (going bankrupt) before they’d even got going!
- Derek Posted by Derek Carver on Mar 29, 2008 at 12:02 PM | #
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I’d say Code Omega is about 75% as good as Ubongo (I haven’t played Ubongo Extrem yet). Posted by Dan Blum on Mar 29, 2008 at 12:32 PM | #
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Very nice, Patrick. It’s funny that both of us have had our recent writing schedule determined by our workloads, but I started writing when the work slackened off and you started when it ramped up. Must say something about that hardy Canadian spirit! I appreciate the thoughts of you and others about the Brass ruleset, but y’all have to give us naysayers more credit. Most of the folks I’ve talked to who had problems with it DID read the rules all the way through (I diplomatically choose to ignore the experience of Valerie and Dale). We just don’t like the way the rules were organized and find both learning them and getting clarifications from them to be unnecessarily hard. That hasn’t stopped me from declaring it one of the best games of last year, though. Bring Wiege der Renaissance to the Gathering if you want to try it out. I’ve played once and enjoyed it, but I’d still need to refer to the rules again. I think “Ameritrash Kryptonite” would make a great Geekbadge! :-) I played the prototype for Origin of Failingwater way back when and definitely saw the potential. I’d love to play it again to see if that or the potential flaws won out in the final design. I’m definitley up for trying out Tai Chi Chuan in Columbus. Word game by Attia--I don’t need to know much more, do I? I doubt we’ll have much trouble finding other takers. Really looking forward to getting together with you in a couple of weeks, Patrick. As long as you keep showing up with Snifty Snakes, you know they’ll keep inviting you! See you then. Posted by Larry Levy on Mar 29, 2008 at 01:28 PM | #
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JC - Forgot about Wabash, mostly because I got my copy after Essen. It holds much promise for me, but as I’ve only played once the genius you and others have spotted hasn’t made itself known to me yet. As I’ve commented elsewhere, I really enjoyed the game but have no clue why the winner won. Lee - Yeah, I just about fell over when I spotted “High Score” on the shelf of a small toy / game store last weekend. Good to see, though - it’s a very good game. Derek - I should try that variant. Doesn’t do much for the perception that your plans can be snookered on the first turn, but there’s really no substitute for experience… Dan - 75% of Pure Puzzle Perfection is still pretty good. :) Larry - Looking forward to gaming with you too! I will be bringing Tai Chi Chuan as well as Moot, another word game I’ve been trying to get played there for the past couple years. Also Pick n’ Pack, Wiege, and a few other choice bits. As for the Brass ruleset, I’ll agree that the organization is a little odd - but I’ve never had trouble finding things. The glossary is pretty easy to navigate, no? And as for Snifty Snakes - man, if that’s all that’s keeping my name on the list I’m gonna be in trouble next year! pk Posted by Patrick Korner on Mar 29, 2008 at 01:53 PM | #
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That’s a standard reaction to Wabash Cannonball. The next step is clearly seeing why someone won, but then having no idea as to how to employ that toward your own success in the next game. Posted by J C Lawrence on Mar 30, 2008 at 04:46 PM | #
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BtB While King of Siam is a fine 3 player game, I find it much more interesting as a 4 player partnership game. British victories also seem more common with 4 players, making the dance between partners even harder. Posted by J C Lawrence on Mar 30, 2008 at 04:49 PM | #
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About the rulesets of Amyitis: The rules are the same for all languages but RGG posted an unfinished rule (with the “wine tokens” instead of “regular” ones on the caravaneer card) on their website. It changes the game quite a bit, but only if you don’t refer to the rules that are inside the box.
REgards,
Posted by Cyril Demaegd on Apr 1, 2008 at 04:19 AM | #
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