Tom Vasel:  Merry Christmas!  Abstracts, too.

by Tom Vasel,
December 19, 2005

Today was the first day of my three week vacation, and I thought that finishing up three reviews was impressive.  Then, while posting them - I suddenly realized that I was late to post my blog!  So here are my haphazard planned thoughts for the day.

1.) First of all, Merry Christmas!  I guess it’s not politically correct to say that everywhere these days, but I don’t care.  God bless each and every one of you this holiday.

2.) I spent hours this weekend working on a Secret Santa project at BGG.  I thought that maybe fifty people would get involved, but the final count I currently have is 226!!  This was a bit more work than I had originally planned on (i.e. I was pulling my hair out at times as I tried to make sure I didn’t send out any duplicates), but it was a lot of fun, and I’m very impressed with the amount of folks involved!  Maybe next year I’ll let someone else run it so I can play!  Thanks to all those who participated.

3.) I also spent quite a bit of time revising my ratings at BGG. I adjusted them up or down (adding them to my collection or subtracting them, etc.).  I was surprised at how little most of my ratings have changed over the past year.  A few games came down a few points, a few others came up a few points - but most games changed by .5 at the most.  I also bribed (with pizza) some kids to help me do an exhaustive inventory of my collection.  After quite a long time, I finally got all the games counted and sorted out.  I culled the collection of about seven games I probably will never play again (Transformers: Armada, Triopoly, etc.), and currently have 852 games.  That’s too many, according to most people, but I still have a little room left for Caylus.  :) It was good to go through the collection, as I spied several older gems that I haven’t played in a while.

4.) I got Railroad Tycoon in last week, and have already played it three times, with more planned.  I absolutely LOVE this game!  It’s gonna be a tossup as to whether it replaces Age of Steam in my top ten, but man oh man - it looks nice and is so much more user friendly.  I’ve taught the game to seven different people, from experienced gamers to new players, and all understood it easily.  At the same time, the strategy is great and varied.  Eagle games has produced their best game yet!  I want to play it again now!!

5.) I’m also working through the Memoir ‘44 expansions, and they confirm that the system is a great one.  (bows to Richard Borg)

6.) Where’s my Caylus copy!  I have to find out if the hype is true!

7.) Listen to the Dice Tower this Wednesday, to hear Joe and mine top 10 games from 2005, along with a couple special guest’s opinions.  See if you agree (you won’t).

8.) Over the past couple of years, I’ve slowly come around on abstract games.  I used to shy away from any game that didn’t at least have some semblence of a theme, but now I’m becoming more and more intrigued with abstract strategy games.  In Eurogaming circles, Gipf games are all the rage - and I can see why - they’re beautiful, simple, and have a lot of strategic and tactical options.  In fact Yinsh, one game of this series, is my favorite abstract strategy game.  But here is the question that I pose to you - why are the Gipf games so much more popular than any other abstract strategy games?

I think the answer is availability, and to a smaller extent - hype.

Now before everyone piles on me, I use the word “hype” in a very mild way - I’m not suggesting that there is a secret plan to make Gipf games rule the abstract strategy roost.  But after playing several of Pin International games (which in my opinion are just as good if not better than most of the Gipf games), I couldn’t understand why they weren’t as popular.  But it would seem to me that it’s because they aren’t known.  Hey, all the cool kids play Gipf.  That’s what made me notice the games, and that’s why I played them.  But the cool kids don’t play any other abstract strategy games - or at least not many.  So I believe that many diamonds in the rough are going unnoticed.  Try Creeper from Pin International.  It has some of the best strategies I’ve ever seen in an abstract game - it’s better than Zertz and Tamsk any day in my book - and has cool wooden pieces besides.  It’s just not been played by many people.

So my admonishment to you is to try out some abstract strategy games that you haven’t played before.  You just might like them, despite their humble backgrounds.

And that’s my ramblings for today.
See you next week!

Tom Vasel
“Real men play board games”
www.tomvasel.com

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