Month: September 2013

Wayback When? is a review of the games I was playing five, ten, fifteen and twenty years ago with me highlighting the most memorable titles of each particular month in the vain hope that I might dig out some of them to play again. This month we’re looking at September 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008.

  

September 2008 saw the first outing for Shadow Hunters, a really fun game of hidden identities which is best played with a larger number of players. Great fun and one to dig out when I need a win to take the annual Hall of Fame title. This month, I also played the beautifully produced Lexio, which is a climbing game in the same mould as Tichu and The Great Dalmuti but comes with great chunky Bakelite tiles.

Five years earlier, we got to play I’m The Boss for the first time, a very unforgiving negotiation game. Although I’ve since sold my copy, it’s still a fun game that we ought to dig out from time to time (Nige???)

 

September 1998 was a good month for three excellent new games played. Basari is an extremely fun simultaneous action and set collection game designed by Reinhard Staupe (and remains his best design to date in my view); Schnappchen Jagd is a tricky Uwe Rosenberg card game that was re-published as Bargain Hunter; and David & Goliath is a fantastic trick taking card game designed by Reinhard Staupe (and remains his best … card game design to date in my view).

Turning to 1993, September only saw me play one new game (to me) of note and that was Labyrinth, the clever tile sliding game where you try to clear a path to the treasure by sliding tiles around the labyrinth.

And talking of Legends of Andor, it features on the cover of the new issue of Spielbox, which turned up the other day, by virtue of it being named Kennerspiel des Jahres (Enthusiast’s Game of the Year). This issue includes reviews of Rialto, CO2, Le Havre: The Inland Port, Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island and Potato Man (which I definitely need to obtain). It also includes various articles, the most interesting of which explains the relocation of the Essen Fair to Halls 1,2 and 3 during the refurbishment of the Messe. For the collectors out there, this issue also throws in a couple of Messenger cards for Last Will and a Damned card for Bruno Faidutti’s new game, Mascarade.

Unexpectedly, a copy of Legends of Andor is on its way to me. A speculative order from the Foyles website in January, quoting a price of under £25 seemed like a good deal. However, after several months of it still being “On order”, I expected it to have been cancelled. Seems I was wrong.

In August, I managed to play 22 games of 19 different titles, 8 of which were new to me. The new games were Pictomania, Dixit, Hockey sur Table, Sushi Go, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Deck-Building Game, Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island, Trains and Bruges.

I added eleven new titles to the collection which were Hockey sur Table, Hey Waiter, Dungeon Twister: The Card Game, Mascarade, Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island, Sushi Go, Eight Minute Empire, Trains, You Suck, Bruges and a review copy of Stak Bots. My unplayed games list has grown to 31 this month and game of the month was a close call with Bruges being the third Stefan Feld game to take the title this year.