My simple notepad about the board and card games I play and gaming in the UK
Came home via Gameslore tonight and picked up three new games: Doctor Who – The Card Game looks a nice game for 3-4 players designed by Martin Wallace; Divinare is a game about mediums and their predictions, designed by Brett Gilbert; and Libertalia is a 45 minute pirate game that looks to have some really nice mechanisms and is getting some good reports from people who’ve played it.
 
 
I’ve been keeping an eye on this really attractive looking two player game for a while. Morels is a game about foraging for mushrooms and is getting a lot of buzz for being a good game to play with a reluctant non-gamer spouse. I saw a copy at The Cast Are Dice back in August but it’s only available to order by mail from the designer in the U.S. Well, I’ve finally taken the plunge and ordered a copy. Let’s see how long it takes to make its way over here.
My trip to Essen is now just three weeks away and I’ve had my first run-through the massive preview geeklist on Boardgamegeek. At this stage, I’m trying to be disciplined and identify the absolute definites. This is the list I came up with:
Is there anything you think I’ve missed that is a must have (Snowdonia, possibly)?
This weekend is the next Bolton Games Day. It’s taking place on Sunday 30th September from about 10.30am to 11pm at St Mary’s Church Hall, Horwich, BL6 5QT
Just £3.50 to get in, and that gets you a plate of something warm around 6pm. And there’s a bar open all afternoon. More info can be found here.
I picked up A Fistful of Penguins at the weekend and got to play it last night with Jan, Bex and Chris. The game is a simple dice game made up of nine dice with different animals on each face of the die. You also get a stack of penguins that allow you to manipulate your turn.
On your turn, you roll four,five or six dice (increasing in each of the three rounds) and you either stick with your result or spend penguins either to add dice or re-roll your existing dice. When you stick, you score for the animals you have displayed. Highest score after three rounds of play wins.
I’m not sure if there is just one optimum strategy – grab as many penguins as you can in the first two rounds and then use your multiple re-rolls to max out on kangaroos. I suggested this as an option to Chris and he executed it perfectly to run away with the victory (105 points with second place only getting 76). However, it was good fun and only took about twenty minutes to play.
For the last few months, I’ve been posting my game snippets directly onto my trickylight site rather than Spiel.co.uk as it’s slightly quicker. However, it doesn’t allow for comments which is rarely a problem as I get very few comments on the blog as it is. That said, Nige recently asked where the comment facility had gone as he’d wanted to add something to the post on the IGA nominees.
So, I’ve done some re-jigging and now I’m going to put all my general news, thoughts and snippets on Spiel and a link through from Trickylight. I still don’t expect to get many comments but at least the facility is there.
The winners of this year’s DSP have been announced:
1. Village, by Inka and Markus Brand (eggertspiele)
2. Trajan, by Stefan Feld (Ammonit Spiele)
3. Hawaii, by Greg Daigle (Hans im Gluck)
4. Ora et Labora, by Uwe Rosenberg (Lookout Games)
5. Helvetia, by Matthias Cramer (Kosmos)
6. Targi, by Andreas Steiger (Kosmos)
7. Kingdom Builder, by Donald X. Vaccarino (Queen Games)
8. Vegas, by Rudiger Dorn (alea)
9. Africana, by Michael Schacht (ABACUSSPIELE)
10. Santa Cruz, by Marcel-Andre Casasola Merkle (Hans im Gluck)
Congratulations to Inka & Markus Brand for doubling up on the awards this year (having already won the Kennerspiel des Jahres). No real surprise but my own choices would have been towards the end of the list.