Spiel: Boardgaming in the UK

Woo hoo! My Secret Santa emailed me a couple of days ago to let me know that real life got in the way of him sending something before Christmas but something was on its way. And voila! A parcel arrived today with a shiny new copy of Jamaica – a great choice of game and one I can’t wait to try out. Many thanks Santa!

This week we were all lined up for a four player game of Opera when Mark G arrived to give us five players. Once Opera waspacked away again, we opted for 20th Century, the new game from Shipyard designer, Vladimir Suchy. This was an interesting game of trying to balance coin and science production (the two currencies for the two types of auction in the game) with garbage disposal and victory point production. Not knowing the land tile distribution (or more specifically the recycling plant distribution) for our first game, most of us started off pretty conservatively, except for Mark K who bought four land tiles on the first turn with the asociated 10 garbage tokens. For a while, it wasn’t looking too promising for him but he did eventually manage to acquire the necessary recycling plants to get rid of his waste, although we were very kind to him in allowing him to acquire the right tiles without overpaying – I think we were all too concerned with our own garbage and pollution. Nige and I were pretty starved of science points so we were resigned to taking the worst catastrophes while Mark G steadily built up an impressive ‘green’ economy and scored loads in the final bonuses. However, Mark K ended up in a different league as he cleared all his garbage and also scored lots of points at the end to add to an already sizeable lead built up during the rest of the game.

We all enjoyed this and will probably have a better idea of how adventurous to be, now knowing that recycling becomes more common as the game progresses. Good stuff and a good win for Mark K.

Scores and ratings are up on my Trickylight site.

Steve Perkins emailed me with details of the next Telford Mini-Con. It will be held on Saturday 9th April 2011 at Shifnal Village Hall, Aston Street, Shifnal, Telford, Shropshire TF11 8DW. Start time is 10.00am and it will run until 10.00pm

Shifnal Village Hall will accommodate up to 120 people, and you should contact telfordminicon to reserve a space. Cost of entry will be £5 which also gets you a free ticket for a prize draw, included will be a unique prize that money can’t buy.

Further information can be found here.

The final Spielbox of 2010 arrived today and includes a “Christmas Tree” expansion for Zooloretto. The bad news is that the instructions say this can only be played at Christmas so it looks like I’ve missed out for nearly 12 months; the good news, however, is that there is a note at the back of the issue that readers of the international version of the magazine are exempt from this restriction. Phew! (Actually, I’m unlikely to play it anyway, but you never know).

The bulk of this issue is devoted to a report about the Essen releases although there are also a few detailed reviews, including Asara, The Pillars of the Earth Card Game, K2, Thunderstone and Safranito. The Ted Alspach game, Perpetual Motion Machine (which is a neat little card game that I played and enjoyed with Bex before Christmas) also gets a thumbs-up in the At A Glance section.

2010 saw me play 208 games of 157 different titles (coincidentally, the same number of different titles played in 2009, although the total plays is down a bit compared with 229 in 2009).

My most played game was Pig 10 which saw 7 plays. By any stretch of the imagination, this is not one of the stand-out games of 2010 but it is short and fun and both Cat and Bex became keen on it. My only other games that saw 5 or more plays were two party games – Say Anything (6) and Telestrations (5) - and Dominion (5) although some of these were probably a mix of base game and expansion cards. Of the 157 titles, 122 of them were played just once but this is due to my focus during the year in getting my unplayed games list down to more manageable levels. It started 2010 at 89, dropped to below 20 before Essen and is now at 29. A number of these should disappear early in the New Year so I’d like to get and keep below 20 if at all possible.

2010 seemed to produce several really good games. My six picks for the year were a mix of good gamers’ games (Hansa Teutonica and Macao), one excellent two-player game (Jaipur), one party game (Telestrations) a great social deduction game (The Resistance) and the simply fabulous 7 Wonders. I would really have liked to include Egizia as well but that would have made seven picks and I don’t like to cheat in these things.

Back after a couple of days at Essen. Here is what I picked up.

Tikal II  (Gameworks); Porto Carthago (Iron Games); Olympus (Stratalibri); Asara (Ravensburger); Black Friday (Rio Grande); 7 Wonders (Repos); Mousquetaires du Roy  (Rio Grande); Isla Dorada (Fun Forge); Navegador (Rio Grande); London (Treefrog); 20th Century (Rio Grande); Perpetual Motion Machine (Bezier Games); Triumvirate, Haggis and The Resistance (Indie Boards & Cards); Sobek (Gameworks); Trollland (Ludocortex); Famiglia (Rio Grande); Die Saulen der Erde: Das Kartenspiel (Kosmos).

That’s 20 new games, plus I picked up the expansion tile sheet for Peloponnes: The Hellas Expansion, which was the only add-on I picked up having decided not to buy any expansions this year. And this was only because Bernd persuaded me that it didn’t change the play very much at all, just adding a ninth round and some extra tiles.

More details about the trip later.

Greg Schloesser has just announced the winners of this year’s IGA. In the multi-player category, the award went to a game I’ve actually not played: Age of Industry – the streamlined version of Brass designed by Martin Wallace and published by Treefrog. The award for the best two-player game went to Campaign Manager 2008, designed by Christian Leonhard and Jason Matthews and published by Z-Man Games. Congratulations to all the winners especially as they were up against some very stiff competition.

There’s a new more portable version of Mr Jack now available. I picked up a copy from Leisure Games. However, although it retains the main elements of the original, it does play differently. For one, the board is made up of a 3×3 grid of square tiles, showing alleyways, walls and each of the suspects. Holmes, Watson and dog Toby move around the edge of the grid (as in Kupferkessel & Co.) and depending on what they can see down the alleys they stand next to, they eliminate suspects from their investigations. Without having played it yet, it looks very clever and I can’t wait to try it. The box says it only takes about 15 minutes so it ought to be easy to get to the table.

I’ve got a very large batch of games (55 to be exact) up on Ebay, the auctions for which are due to end on Wednesday. Too many to mention each of them here but these include the fabulously produced Wicketz, Cannes by Splotter Spiele, the large tennis dexterity game Tennis Masters, Ponte Vecchio, Meteo (also known as Wind und Wetter), Big Deal, Wolfgang Kramer’s City and loads of cheap card games. Get bidding before they go forever! The link is here.

The winner of this year’s DSP has just been announced as Fresko, designed by Marco Ruskowski and Marcel Süßelbeck and released by Queen Games. The list of the top ten with the voting points shown after the publisher was:

1. FRESKO by Marco Ruskowski and Marcel Süßelbeck (Queen Games) 2.087
2. VASCO DA GAMA by Paolo Mori (What’s Your Game?) 2.033
3. WORLD WITHOUT END by Michael Rieneck and Stefan Stadler (Kosmos) 1.701
4. TOBAGO by Bruce Allen (Zoch Verlag) 1.389
5. HANSA TEUTONICA by Andreas Steding (Argentum Verlag) 1.292
6. ENDEAVOR by Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray (Lookout Games) 1.144
7. EGIZIA by Acchittocca (Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli, Stefano Luperto and Antonio Tinto) (Hans im Glück) 994
8. MACAO by Stefan Feld (alea/Ravensburger) 965
9. DUNGEON LORDS by Vlaada Chvatil (Czech Games Edition/Heidelberger Spieleverlag) 759
10. POWER STRUGGLE by Maximilian Thiel (eggertspiele) 669