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… »

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… »

Returning from holidays last week, the usual pile of mail awaited behind the door. It’s mostly junk mail, of course, but there are two nuggets among the pizza ads, credit card offers, and local newspapers: Developing Games 2008, the proceedings of the 3rd German Game Designers’ Days, and spielbox issue 4/2009, which comes with two extensions.

Interestingly, almost all games reviewed in this issue, even those by experienced designers, have rather average scores. I guess it’s just a sign that far too many games are published, which decreases the quality: there is a limit on truly good games that designers can come up with. Sadly, there is a lack of reports and interviews in this issue, two of my favourite rubrics. So, the contents is as follows, with games in italics receiving great reviews: Read more… »

spielbox issue 1/2008 comes with a new building for Cuba. The contents is as follows, with games in italics receiving the best reviews: Read more… »

I simply had to buy issue 5/2006 of spielbox: it comes with an expansion for one of my favourite networking games, Thurn and Taxis. The contents is as follows, with games in italics receiving the best reviews: Read more… »

The Hans im Glück Almanac is one of the occasional special issues of the spielbox magazine. After two issues about games (Settlers of Catan in 2000 and Carcassonne in 2005), and one about an author (Reiner Knizia in 2006), this one appeared in 2008 for the 25th anniversary of this German publisher of well-known and award-winning games, some of them shown on the cover. (Can you tell the games?)

Read more… »