ludossier

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?)

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The Knizia 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), this one appeared in 2006 as a tribute to one of the greatest and most prolific game authors of all time: Reiner Knizia.

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Today I received 4 spielbox special issues I had ordered, each with an expansion. Read more… »

Today I received spielbox issue 3/2009, with two small expansions for Tigris & Euphrates and Planet Steam. The contents is as follows, with games in italics receiving an average reviewer score above 7/10: Read more… »

The contents of spielbox issue 2/2009 is as follows, underlining the games the reviewers liked most: Read more… »

Today I received my copy of spielbox issue 1/2009, with the following contents: Read more… »