Essen trip booked (29th July 2010 22:09)
Hooray! This year's trip to the Mecca of gaming is well and truly booked. As usual, flying out early on Thursday 21 October in order to get there at or around opening time, and returning on Friday evening. Can't wait!
Fantasy Premier League 2010/11 (27th July 2010 23:08)
Nige has set up a Shrews Boardgames fantasy league on the official Premier League game. Two signed up so far - me and him. Why not go along, register and pick your team for the new season at this site. Once you've picked your team, sign up for our private league using this code: 276813-104943
Back from holiday (25th July 2010 19:14)
Well, I'm back in the UK after 10 very hot and humid days in Cyprus. Coolest place was the air-conditioned bedrooms so managed to play several board games. Five more off the unplayed list, including Derek Carver's Farfalia, which is a very nice trick-taking game, with dealer playing against two teams of two in the five player version. Bananagrams continues to be good fun (I won with a grid that included the word "FARTS") and I've decided I slightly prefer Jaipur to Drachenherz even though both are great two player games. I also managed to play the two player Pillars of the Earth: Builders Duel and found it to be ok but nowhere near as engaging as the origianl or World Wihout End.
Spielbox #3/2010 (13th July 2010 20:10)
The new issue of Spielbox arrived today. It includes good reviews of Knizia's Jager und Sammler, Fresco, Macao and Speicherstadt among others. There's also a free co-operative game, Spook by Spook by Matthias Prinz included.
Holiday gaming (13th July 2010 09:04)
When I go on holiday, I always take with me the box for Pig Pile and the box for Mhing. However, a secret lies within both of those boxes as Pig Pile contains all the cards to Dominion and Mhing contains as many small games as I can stuff in it. This time, it's got Tin Soldiers, Drachenherz, Murdero, Meuterer,Gang of Four, Auf Falsche Fahrte, Handelsfursten, Farfalia, Jaipur, PotE: Builder's Duel and Sushizock in Gockelwock.
Spain win World Cup (11th July 2010 20:25)
Well, at least they will if the game follows the Weykick game that Chris and I played immediately before kick-off. It was extremely close with Spain (me) eventually coming out on top 10-9. Not predicting quite as high a score in the real thing.
Bananagrams (11th July 2010 20:24)
My new favourite word game. Tense and fun to see the words people create. We played twice - Jan easily won the first; the second saw several dubious words being suggested before Catherine won. Great fun for a game that takes 5-10 minutes a round.
Tintenherz - Das Wurfelspiel (10th July 2010 21:51)
Translated the rules to Inkheart - The Dice Game and then played a two player game with Jan. This is a fun family game where you tend to curse the dice rolls and other players for not being able to grab the cards you want. A few decisions to make but nothing very taxing. Our game ended up tied at 30 points each
2009 Meeples Choice Awards (8th July 2010 22:00)
Here is another award that I'm late in reporting on. This is worse than the SdJ as I actually had a vote on this result. Anyway, the winners were Small World, Hansa Teutonica and Endeavor. All good games but my vote went to HT, Macao and Roll Through the Ages.
BoardgameNews (7th July 2010 22:29)
Eric Martin has just unveiled a new look for the premier game news website Boardgame News. The new design looks good but today pages seem to take an age to load. I'm sure this is just a temporary thing but I need it to be as speedy as it used to be so I can get my fix of game news instantaneously.
June Game of the Month (6th July 2010 17:16)
I decided to give this to Drachenherz, a two player card game designed by Rudiger Dorn and published by Kosmos. It's another game with tough choices on which cards to play when but all wrapped up in short playing time. Not sure if this or Jaipur is my favourite 2 player release this year.
Spiel-des-Jahres 2010 - The Winner (5th July 2010 13:46)
Only a week late with this news but the winner of this year's SdJ was Dixit, designed by Jean-Louis Roubiraand (with spectacular art by Marie Cardouat) and published by Asmodee. Congratulations to all concerned.
I was still on holiday this week so Nige again recorded the scores. Disappointed to miss this one as El Grande is one of my favourite games and I haven't played it for ages. Mark K took the win.
I was on holiday this week so Nige recorded the scores. Apparently, this was closer than the scores suggest with Guy getting loads of points at the end of the game but it wasn't quite enough to catch Nige.
There were seven of us this week so we split into two groups. Nige was keen to play Amyitis so Guy and Steve joined him. Steve was the only one not to have played before so naturally he won.
Mark G suggested the rest of us play the Deutschland edition of Settlers so that's what we did as Mark K and Mark W had not played before. Mark W got off to a terrific start although he didn't make many friends with his aggressive tactics, cutting off first me and then Mark G - I think he now has more black marks in Mark G's notebook than any of the rest of us put together. My position, which looked absolutely dire at the start when I was only on 4 points at the same time as Mark W was taking his 8th, slowly improved and eventually I was able to grab the longest road. Although I briefly lost it to Mark K, I managed to grab it back and with an extra VP from one of my development cards was able to claim the win. Good stuff as always but I think I still prefer the original game as the board setup on the Deutschland version restricts the choices on how you can get to the target 10 VPs. You have a bit more freedom with the original.
The group of three opted to follow Amyitis with a game of Thurn und Taxis, which Steve has played several times before. I know nothing about how this one went, other than Steve won again - two good wins for the night.
Having finished Settlers with about 30 minutes left, Mark K was keen to try Atlantis as he had missed out last time we played. However, everyone was determined (even those on the other table) that I wasn't going to win this time. They needn't have worried because, even though I was playing last and therefore started with more cards than everyone else, I always seemed to be lacking the right colour for the really big jumps. That said, towards the end I did manage to move one of my men all the way from Atlantis to the mainland in one go. Mark W was the first to get all his men home but everybody else was far enough advanced that the cost of reaching safety wasn't too big. And amazingly, when the treasure was totted up, three players (not including me) tied for the most, creating a three way tie for the win.
Rating
Score
Position
Winner
Mark W
9
1
Mark G
7
9
1
Mark K
8
9
1
Garry
2
4
Garry's
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