Spiel: Boardgaming in the UK

Beowulf – The Legend

John had not had the chance to play this yet, so as there were five of us and those that had played before were keen to give it another go, we set out on the epic voyage. This time, Mark K and Nige were very wary of getting wounded as this had been their downfall last time. Nige got off to a good start but Mark K had luck against him on a couple of early risks. I managed to grab the special card that allows you to decline any wound and I held onto this to protect against the deadly double wound at the end. As we approached the end of the game, Nige had amassed a fair number of fame points but was left unable to compete much in the critical last few episodes. Mark K recovered from his early misfortunes and scored steadily, especially in the treasure episodes. However, this left me with most treasure and most symbols at the end to collect a vital 12 fame points.

The final count revealed Mark K and me tied with 25 points, a joint win made all the more satisfying by NIge lagging behind by just one point. John’s rating was equally high as we had decided last time and I’m still finding there plenty to enjoy in the game. Good stuff.

Fettnapf

We finished off with this nice light memory cardgame, designed by Reinhard Staupe and published by Amigo. There are two types of card: number cards and island cards. Everyone starts with 1 island card and a hand of 3 number cards. Each turn, a player plays a number card, announces the current total of that card added to the last player’s total, and draws a replacement number card. If the total goes above 30, subsequent cards are deducted from the total until it falls below 10, at which point cards are added again. The player to the right of the one whose declared total breaches the 30 or 10 limit gets rewarded with an extra island card. If the declared total ever matches the number of an island card held by another player, the declaring player gets a penalty Fettnapf card. Once one player has gathered 4 Fettnapf cards, whoever has the fewest number of penalties wins.

This is a very simple game but there are some tense moments when you’ve forgotten which island cards have already been declared. Mark G had everyone in stitches when, after I had just picked up a Fettnapf card, he immediately played a Zero card, declared the same total and after the briefest pause said “Ah, I don’t think I meant to do that.” We weren’t surprised after that when he became the first to collect a 4th penalty. We were surprised that Nige was demonstrating the mental capacity (some might say, luck) not to pick up a single penalty and claim the win. Nice quick game which we all pretty much enjoyed.

After Cash Trap, we turned to the newest Klaus Teber game in the Catan Adventures series: Elasund. This game is about the growth of the first city of Catan and borrows certain of the characteristics from standard Settlers of Catan but does not have the resource trading aspect and is a bit more cut-throat in the way players are competing for victory points.

Our game started reasonably friendly. I challenged Nige for space to build a four square building on rows 11 and 12 and he decided not to turn it into a war, so I got my building reasonably easily. This was good for me as 11 was rolled on the dice much more than statistically justified. Nige then concentrated on getting the first church piece in place, which he achieved, but then I turned to adding church pieces. These are useful as the VPs gained from church building can’t be lost. Mark G was the wall king, building most of the cheap wall pieces. He also knocked over one of my early 2 space buildings, before competing with Nige for space on the far east of the board.

My gold production was flowing quite nicely during the middle of the game and I could have continued with church building. However, I spotted an opportunity to set myself up for a 6 square building that would also cover 3 windmills and catapult me to 10 VPs and the win. I managed to get my building permits in place before Nige spotted what I was doing. It then became a race between the two of us to get the few gold needed to build. Then, the gold dried up for both of us for two complete rounds! Amazing. Luckily though, the gold returned and I was just able to get in ahead of Nige to place my winning building.

Elasund is a really good game. Our first try got really tense at the end. There are plenty of routes to get VPs and some of these can mess with other players so there is a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing. Our game took about 90 minutes but this could come down with more plays. Should also play well with four.

Now this has definitely got me interested.

New from Days of Wonder, a family game that includes a true, three-dimensional palace that players compete to build. A game by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc.

See the preview page here.

I very much enjoy Bruno Faidutti’s game descriptions and appraisals. They’re normally not too far from my own. Sometimes, he doesn’t need to say very much to get the message across.

I’m glad I got Diabolo a few days ago and am looking forward to playing it a lot.

I’ve just received the new Wolfgang Kramer & Michael Kiesling game, Celtica, in my latest Adam Spielt order. We’re itching to try it (hopefully Friday) and so I’ve done a quick translation and posted it to BGG, if anyone’s interested. The Celtica page is here.

Looks fairly light but there are a few interesting tactical decisions necessary and I think it will go down pretty well with our group.

I’ve just added a session report for the new game from local designer, Debbie Keigan, to my Trickylight website. You can read the report here.

Just added the latest session report to my Trickylight site:

“Our first session of 2006 and I decided to try Antike, which has been described as a two hour Civilization game. It was designed by Mac Gerdts and published by eggertspiele. It scales from 2 to 6 players, which is good because we are often struggling to find good 6 player games.”

You can read the full report here

I don’t normally go in for choosing a top 10 of the year but, after browsing a few of these over recent days, I was intrigued to see if my choices were close to what others thought. The following are the list of games I have gained the most enjoyment from in 2005. They are not meant to reflect the most deserving releases of 2005 (and indeed one is a 2004 release that I only first got to play in 2005), but they are the ones that made the best impression on me. So here, in alphabetical order, as I would struggle to place these in order of preference, are my picks of 2005:

Australia
Beowulf – The Legend
Caylus (despite our 5 player game running too long)
Havoc: The Hundred Years War
Hazienda
Kreta
Louis XIV
Shadows Over Camelot
Tower of Babel
Verflixxt!

I’m sure the rest of the Shrewsbury Games Club will concur with my choices. If not, they can always tell me where I went wrong in the comments section.

Let’s hope 2006 brings more excellent releases along the lines of these 10.

I’m a bit late in noticing this but the Piddinghoe Gamers have just launched a blog on their website here.

The latest entry about the price of poker chips and their downward spiral is pretty upsetting. It rubs in the fact that I bought my set 18 months too early at a very steep price when you could only get decent looking chips online. Now, of course, you can get poker chips everywhere on the high street (albeit not as good quality) and the sellers of quality chips have had to drop their prices accordingly.

I’ll just go and sulk in the corner for a couple of hours.

The latest issue of Counter dropped through the letterbox today.

Weighing in at a healthy 84 pages, there is plenty of discussion about the Essen Games Fair, even an article from Derek Carver contrasting the fair of 20 years ago with that of today. Added to that are oodles of reviews and the usual letters section, which means I’ve got plenty to read over the next few days.