ludossier

A few days ago the third issue of 2010 arrived, including a postcard to vote for the German Game Award, but one can also vote online.

The chief editor criticises the Spiel des Jahres jury for this year’s selection of light-weight nominees and for muddling things up with yet another special award, ‘Spiel des Jahres plus’, instead of separate family and hobby games awards.

I think that Macao received an unfair review, complaining about the complexity of cards and the tendency for paralysis and loosing the overview of other players’ strategy. The same could be said of many other well-received games…

Last but not least, there is a Dominion-campaign design competition: readers are invited to submit rules for a campaign of 4-8 games that must be thematically bound through some background narrative. The rules must specify which cards are used in each game and how the ownership of some cards or the points obtained in one game influence the succeeding games. The campaign may use any existing Dominion cards, but also other material (dice, meeples, etc.).

The remaining issue’s contents is as follows, with underlined games receiving great reviews: Read more… »

Last week the second issue of 2010 arrived, with the round-up report of the Nuremberg Fair, where the year’s new games are unveiled. Another copy of the last issue’s Dominion add-on is also included. The issue’s contents is as follows, with underlined games receiving great reviews: Read more… »

On Thursday the first issue of 2010 arrived, with the news that spielbox will be issued in English too! Moreover, I was pleased to see that Vasco da Gama got 9/10 from all its 4 reviewers. Not so pleasing was the editorial, stating that based on the replies to their earlier enquiry, they will keep the format of the magazine (as I had predicted): my plea for fewer reviews and more historical, comparative and other kinds of articles was obviously in the minority.

The issue comes with a mildly useful Dominion add-on: a cardboard to put your draw and discard piles on and not confuse both. The issue’s contents is as follows, with underlined games receiving great reviews: Read more… »

Last week the last spielbox issue of the noughties arrived. As usual, the main feature at this time of the year is the report on the games fair in Essen. But not as usual, the game in the magazine is neither an expansion nor just a board to which you have to supply your own dice and counters: it’s a full, self-contained game. The issue’s contents is as follows, with underlined games receiving great reviews: Read more… »

Gosh, two issues arriving within weeks! I barely finished reading the previous issue, when I got the new one yesterday. This time, there is a special section of short reviews of game expansions; most don’t fare too well in the reviewers’ opinions. Also, Friedemann Friese’s game Die 3 Gebote received two 3/10 scores! I have never seen such low scores in spielbox.

The magazine comes with a small expansion for Carcassonne, by one of the magazine’s regular reviewers. Moreover, thinking of the future generation of gamers, the children’s section looks at games for 2-year olds. The issue’s contents is as follows, with underlined games receiving great reviews: Read more… »

Yesterday I had to miss the games club night due to work-related travel to Lancaster. It was nice to see familiar names on the way there, like Stockport, Manchester, Wigan, Bolton, and Preston, and remembering laying tracks between those cities when playing Brass (click on the image to enlarge). My hosts were intrigued when I told them about the game and asked me to bring it next time I go there. The trip was too short to do any sight-seeing, so I definitely must go up Lancashire some other time.

Coincidentally, a Brass tournament game took place yesterday, won by Steve. He played only 3 tournament games so far, winning also Princes of Florence and coming second in Age of Steam. Impressive! No wonder he’s currently second in the ranking, behind David, who has 9 points (and 2 games) more. My Brass tournament game is due in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed…

Last Friday issue 5/2009 arrived, with a reader survey. Respondents enter a draw of free tickets and accommodation for Spiel 2010! Fingers crossed… The online web form allows to add our own comments, so I took the opportunity to tell the publishers that what I like most about the magazine are the historical articles, the interviews and the reports, not the game reviews. There is no review that can replace the plurality of opinions on BoardGameGeek and the spielbox reviews are actually 80% rule summary and 20% opinion. Not very helpful. Moreover, certain reviewers have a rather convoluted way of writing (to add on top of the convoluted sentence structure in German), which means I can sometimes hardly parse their sentences, let alone understand how the game works. I doubt a 25 year old magazine will change their structure, but I wish they reduce the number of pages dedicated to reviews and increase those with the kind of articles I can’t get anywhere else. One of the survey questions was whether we felt the reviews were too detailed, so there’s hope…

Moving on to the issue’s contents, it is as follows, with underlined games receiving great reviews: Read more… »

No, we didn’t move our games venue to a sauna last week — we played Martin Wallace’s simplified version of his Age of Steam. Keith brought his copy and explained the rules to Damen, Graham, Sam and myself. It was again one of those evenings where I did some of my trademark stupid mistakes, this time right in the first round. While in many other games I would have plenty of time to recover into, say, 3rd position, Steam is absolutely unforgiving and I would remain last throughout the game… Read more… »

After two months of waiting, I got yesterday a letter from the Open University saying that I passed the computer games course (Digital worlds: designing games, creating alternative realities) with score 80%. Not bad. I’m sure I got marks deducted for going over the word count limit in the description of my charity game design; and in other questions I was probably too terse. It’s always a fine balancing act of return for time invested.

The important thing is I enjoyed the course. It covers a wide range of topics, from the economic impact of the game industry and the social perception of videogames culture, to how modern games are produced and getting a small taste of it by designing and implementing our own little maze or platform game with GameMaker. Topics like serious games and games with a purpose were also included. The assessment’s questions were as wide-ranging as the course, but I can’t give any further details without getting into serious trouble. I can safely recommend this short course, but then, being an OU employee, I’m obviously biased.

I spent the past 4 days in Cambridge, for professional reasons. I looked in advance for shops in the city and came across MNG-AJM Games and Collectibles, Andy Merritt’s business. He has a mind-boggling variety of games in stock, mostly used and little known, but also several in shrink, besides some books and magazines. Andy produces a monthly catalog of a small subset of his stock (see e.g. this month’s list) but the easiest is to e-mail him a list of the games you’re looking for. That’s what I did and he had La Strada and King Me! in excellent condition and at very reasonable prices. He even delivered them in person at the college I was staying in.  I’ll certainly keep Andy in mind for future acquisitions of out-of-print games.