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… »
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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 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… »
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 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… »
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… »
