My final spielbox subscription issue arrived today. The envelope was suspiciously hard for a magazine and upon opening it I found an A4 cardboard within the issue, with 222 small pieces! If this was a game expansion, the base game wasn’t named on the cardboard; and the spielbox centrefold games never come with game material. My curiosity piqued, I turned to the centre of the magazine and surprise: Read more… »
Board Game Info, the new kid on the block of general boardgaming sites, is giving players the opportunity to contribute to the site (by uploading reviews and game data, for example) and thereby earn points which can then be converted to free games. If you prefer to spend less effort to get a game for free, you can always try their giveaway competitions. The first one ends 23rd April: a copy of Minion Games’ Those Pesky Humans is up for grabs.
Although I have received this issue long time ago, I only got round to read it yesterday. The highlight of the year’s final issue is of course the almost 30-page long report on SPIEL’10, the world’s largest game fair, in Essen, Germany. I was very pleased to see Caravelas and Vinhos among the games reported and photographed by the spielbox journalists. Not only are both games designed by Portuguese, their themes are also related to Portugal. If we add to that Navegador (also reported in this issue), Portugal certainly had a very strong trio representing it in Essen. I especially like that all those games have Portuguese names, and Portuguese words on their boards, without any attempt to translate them.
The report on Essen also includes a short profile on Jussi Auto and his Finnish company, Tuonela Productions. Moreover, I couldn’t help notice a 2-page advert for Korean games in this issue. One of the reviewed games (K2) is Polish. And past reviews include Czech game, for example. Boardgame design and publishing is definitely becoming global and (sometimes, as in the case of Caravelas and Vinhos) multi-cultural.
Apropos Vinhos, its failure to be sold at Essen due to production delays was apparently not a single case. This issue’s editorial notes that more than a dozen (!) of the games bought for the spielbox office had production problems: defective boards, missing pieces, etc. The editorial notes how many publishers (especially new ones) are pressing themselves to present one or more novelties at each SPIEL and thereby run into all kinds of quality problems (e.g. rules with errors and omissions) to the point of having no game to present, in the extreme cases. Why gamble on quality when there is so much competition nowadays?
The issue’s contents is as follows, with underlined games getting high scoring reviews. Read more… »
This week I was again in Portugal for work. I had intended to go to one of the weekly Wednesday meetings of the Lisbon Boardgamers, which was not far from my hotel, but in the end had to skip it. It was a shame, because from before 6pm to after midnight they certainly played tons of games, some quite long. Nevertheless, it was a successful work & play trip, the latter for two reasons.
On Thursday I met Tiago from MESAboardgames, which have edited a string of family games with Portuguese themes. He had come to Lisbon for a meeting with an organization for which they’re developing a corporate game and he brought my pre-ordered copy of Caravelas, which Matt wasn’t able to pick up in Essen because he had already his luggage full of games for himself. So, in the end I still managed to get the Essen deal (game + expansion for a reduced price) without paying postage. I only had to follow that old proverb: ‘if the game will not come to Michel, Michel will go to the game’.
On Friday I packed my big suitcase with several kilos of my father’s 30+ year old Fleischmann model train. It had taken him days to rummage the attic for it, and I had to leave back in Lisbon almost as much material as I brought. In particular, the beautiful steam locomotive had to go to the shop for repair. We should have a quote in two weeks, let’s hope it’s not dearer than buying a new one… The rest of the material also has some problems, e.g. the turnout points can get stuck, but considering its age, I certainly won’t complain. I was only sad one coupler of the brown freight wagon on the photo broke during the trip, but considering the ‘careful’ way luggage is handled at airports, it could have been worse.
Yesterday, my youngest daughter and I put together a simple oval as a first test, followed by the track on the left, which showcases some of the tried and tested analogue electro-mechanical technology that has been in the Fleischmann catalogue for decades. My daughter put down the track and built the ‘tunnel’, I did the wiring. It was great fun, and a trip down memory lane to when I was about her age and played with my father. I guess history does repeat itself. Now we have to move onwards to more challenging layouts…
This issue was almost falling through the cracks, but better late than never. Noteworthy articles are:
The report about the UK Games Expo concludes that while it won’t become a competitor to SPIEL in Essen, the Expo’s small size makes it a better alternative to try out prototypes and talk to game designers.
The commentary on Germany’s Game of the Year Award points out that the only constant throughout the years is the unpredictability of the jury: this year a communication game (Dixit) won the award, while in past years that kind of game often didn’t even make it into the jury’s recommended games list.
The news about a multi-player game timer that has come on the market makes clear it’s the ideal accessory for people playing with me, as Matt pointed out. Although he didn’t put it quite this way, he suggested I should buy it to work on my innate ability to take ages to finish my turns. I had to explain it was a deliberate strategy to nerve my opponents and obtain a competitive advantage to offset my natural tendency towards low scores.
The issue’s contents is as follows, with underlined games getting high scoring reviews. Read more… »
Going to the games night this week was again a last minute decision, this time because I was recovering from a bad cold. Feeling quite OK and eager to get my Euros back from Matt, as he wasn’t able to bring my pre-ordered copy of Caravelas from Essen, I decided to go. As I entered the room, Nigel said ‘In the Nick of time, Michel…’, because Big Nick had just phoned cancelling his game of Key Market with Susan and David. Fortunately, David had brought along Norenberc, from the designer of Hansa Teutonica. As he explained the rules I thought to myself it would be another dry set collection game, with VPs being awarded for different kinds of sets and majorities. Fortunately I was wrong. Read more… »
After complaining that the last issue had almost no articles besides reviews, they’re back. The non-reviews are still not enough to change my overall opinion about the magazine, but this issue is certainly more to my liking than the previous one.
It’s also clear spielbox is covering more games that are not available in German, maybe because of the magazine’s English edition.
I couldn’t help noting that two of the games in this issue (Rattus and The Plague) are about an uncommon theme, The Black Plague, but I won’t take it as a signal that it will become popular 
Another curious coincidence: a review on a game I just played two days ago, Ascension. The reviewer notes that the game lacks depth and that its fantasy theme is completely irrelevant, but praises the rulebook and the game’s simplicity, giving it a score of 7/10. I wholeheartedly agree with everything, except that it deserves such a high score.
The editor-in-chief comments on the German Game Award results, writing that the top 10 voted games make for one of the most uniform lists ever, with most games being of the VP-gathering kind, with similar mechanics; cooperative, communication or dexterity games are absent. The magazine presents the 2010 and 2009 lists side by side and it’s plain to see that last year was far more interesting, with games as diverse as Dominion, Le Havre, Pandemic and Small World. He also notes that the winner (Fresco) beat the second placed (Vasco da Gama) by the narrowest margin ever in the award’s history. Darn! Well, at least I did my bit by voting for VdG and Macao, which also made the top 10.
The issue’s contents is as follows, with underlined games getting high scoring reviews. Read more… »
This week I had to delay participation in the game’s night to the last minute, due to a parent’s evening. As I arrived I couldn’t believe my eyes: the room was completely packed, with hardly any empty floor space between tables. I had never seen so many of our members together. There were four 4-player games of Seafarers of Catan for this year’s Eurogames tournament, a 3-player game of Agricola, another 4-player game I wasn’t able to see what it was, and Michael, Mark and Graham waiting for me to start a game of Those Pesky Humans! Read more… »
This month’s issue has no article on the roots of a game and no portrait of a game designer or publisher. It confirms the recent trends: the magazine has too many reviews and too few historical and ‘backstage’ articles for my taste.
The spielbox reviews are just one reviewer’s opinions, while BoardGameGeek provides many reviews on the same game: one gets a diversity of opinions that spielbox simply can’t compete with. Also, BGG doesn’t have space constraints: many reviews are considerably longer, and hence more detailed and in depth, than the 1 to 3 page reviews in spielbox. Last but not least, I often don’t quite understand the game descriptions in spielbox; maybe my German is not good enough, or the limited space forces the reviewers into terse descriptions, but I certainly don’t have a such a problem with the many great BGG reviewers.
I would therefore like spielbox to provide me the overview, the ‘backstage’ and the historical perspective on games, their designers and the industry, that the many scattered forums of BGG can’t. BGG is full of nice trees, but spielbox could show us the forest. Alas, most readers said in the last spielbox survey they wanted more reviews. The editor in chief then commented on the survey, remarking that the reviewers of spielbox have decades of professional experience and insight that most BGG users haven’t. Now, in this issue’s editorial, titled ‘Our ordeals with the scoring’, he justifies how more and more spielbox collaborators don’t provide a numeric score (from 0 to 10) on the game they try out, because with so many more games to review, it’s hard to play each one often enough to give it a fair score. Also, with more games on the market for the spielbox reviewers to cover, it becomes harder for a game to get more than one score (the one from the review’s author). I rest my case on spielbox vs BGG.
So, it will be bye-bye from me to spielbox in 2011. I shall miss the non-review articles, but the scant pages (and getting fewer…) dedicated to them are not worth €46 a year.
Well, back to this issue. The contents is as follows, with underlined games getting high scoring reviews. Read more… »
This week David and Susan suggested a game of Genoa, and Richard and I joined them. I had played it only once, in June, and Richard had never played the game, but he got it immediately and beat us thoroughly. He drove hard bargains (must be his patent lawyer training) and managed to accumulate most of the privilege cards, thus getting a massive money bonus at the end. He also played very efficiently, ending without any surplus wares. There were several ‘nasty’ moments throughout the game, for example when Susan finished prematurely her turn, not allowing any of us to take an action. There were also some ‘duh!’ moments, typically provided by yours truly, when I realized I had miscalculated the path of the tower. While I came last in June (605 florins, against 655 for Julie, 665 for Ian, 670 for Ester, and 725 for Julian), this time I miraculously came second, don’t ask me how. I guess it was the large orders I fulfilled, one of them in the game’s and David’s last turn, for which I had to split the order’s proceedings with him. Better 50 florins than nothing…
Genoa seems to be a game that doesn’t get easily repetitive because it gives players so much leeway with respect to trading, strategy and tactics, which in turn means that each play with a different group of people can be quite a different experience.
David and Susan depended on André to take them home and had to wait for him to finish a marathon game of Dominant Species with Big Nick and Michael. So, we next played two rounds of Category 5 (6 nimmt). Meanwhile, other games were finishing, and Mark and Manuela joined us for a game of Vampire. The game’s ‘theme’ is pointless. Suffice to say there are 6 suits of cards, each card being worth 1 or 2 points, and that each player’s goal is to put down a set of at least 3 cards, as valuable as possible, in each suit. Cards cannot be added to sets once they’re formed on the table. At the end of the game, for each suit, whoever has the least valuable set has to discard those cards; all other cards’ points are then added up. During the game there is a face down draw pile, and one face up discard pile per suit. On your turn, you take two cards from the draw pile or you take one complete discard pile. You then either discard a card from your hand or else put down a set of cards. If you take the discard pile of a suit, you must use it to form a set, possibly with additional cards from your hand.
In the first game we were cautious and only formed sets with a reasonable number of points to make sure our own sets would not be the least valuable ones and become worthless at the end. However, it turned out that for each suit there was at least one player who had not formed a set in that suit, which meant that everyone scored the cards in their sets. Since the game ends as soon as the draw pile is exhausted or someone forms a set in each suit, for the second game I tried to make low value sets as fast as possible to force the game’s end before anybody else had accumulated many points. Easier said than done, because it was easy for the others to spot the strategy and try to ‘starve’ me of the suits I still needed, by hoarding them in their hands and then forming sets. Nevertheless, I had a quite better score in the second game, which means the strategy is not too bad. I just have to execute it better next time, maybe by only starting to form sets when I have at least two cards of each suit in my hand. Overall, a nice little filler from Knizia that plays fast and demands some non-trivial choices, but by far not his best game.
