Spiel: Boardgaming in the UK

I’ve just added the 999th and 1,000th game to the Trickylight games database. Following a trip to Gameslore, I picked up the two new Queen games – Samarkand:Routes to Riches and Fresco.

I’m hoping to try both in the next week.

Although the database contains 1,000 games, I still don’t own 1,000 and I’m not sure I would want to. If my BGG profile is up-to-date (and it should be pretty close), I actually have 813 – the remaining 187 are, therefore, games I’ve previously owned and games I don’t own that have been played at the Shrewsbury Boardgames Club.

I’ve just put nearly 40 games up for sale on Ebay, with auctions due to finish on Thursday 29th April. Highlights include original Warfrog edition of Struggle of Empires, original R&D Games edition of Reef Encounter, Graenaland by Czech Games, Friedemann Friese’s Formidable Foes and Michael Schacht’s Die Goldene Stadt.

Here is a link to the full list

The new English language edition of Spielbox arrived today and it looks terrific. Even the adverts are translated. Now it is still not perfect English as would be written by a native but it is close enough and a fantastic effort given the amount of content that has been adapted. I am so grateful that the editorial team have done this, even though I did manage to struggle my way through the German previously. I encourage everyone to at least try it and subscribe if, like me, you think it is well worth supporting a professionally produced magazine on our hobby.

Its 64 pages is packed with interviews on the likes of Endeavor, Vasco de Gama, Atlantis and Last Train to Wensleydale but also has a great article on Amigo’s 30th anniversary, a free space themed race game from Christof Tisch as well as a Dominion play-aid.

I’m going to give up predicting where my unplayed total will get to by the end of the month as I keep falling woefully short. And it isn’t as if I’m buying lots of new games. It’s a combination of playing older stuff on club nights and not getting much family gaming in. Anyway, during March this happened:

1 new game acquired (Campaign Manager 2008);

4 games no longer unplayed (Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm, Oceania, Campaign Manager 2008, Jaipur);

0 games sold.

Three months to go means I’ve now got to average 21 games a month coming off the list. Futile? Probably but we’ll see how close we can get.

Baycon 2010 will be held at the Exeter Court Hotel, Kennford, from 1.00pm Thursday 8th April to 3.00pm Sunday 11th April 2010 (the weekend after Easter). Kennford is situated approximately 5 miles south of Exeter on the main A38 (at the first junction following the end of the M5 motorway, and signposted Kennford Services). There is ample free parking in the hotel car park.

With the new Days of Wonder game, Mystery Express, appearing in the UK this week, I decided to have a go at picking the cream of their releases to date.

Ticket To Ride is the obvious first choice. Although I could have gone for one of the subsequent variants, I like the elegance and simplicity of the original best.

Memoir ’44 is a super game of soldiers and card play and will always be remembered for the classic game when Mark G and I got destroyed by a surprise barrage gun blast when I had insisted we didn’t need any medics.

Small World takes a good game, Vinci, and polishes it up while transporting it to a fantasy setting. And the different boards for different player numbers works really well.

Mystery of the Abbey remains one of Bruno Faidutti’s most popular games and any occasion where we can get Nige taking a vow of silence has to be a good thing. Sorry Nige.

Pirate’s Cove is an old game that needs to get played again. It is a classic blend of second-guessing and picking which battles to fight and, don’t forget, it’s got pirates. Avast me hearties!

Shadows Over Camelot possibly reignited the trend towards co-operative games but has that classic “who is the traitor” element that keeps people on their toes.

Jan and I played Jaipur on Sunday, a fabulous card game by Sebastian Pauchon and published by GameWorks. Lots of tricky decisions about when to collect camels, exchange goods and how quickly to cash the goods in for treasure tokens. Best of three rounds means games last about 20-30 minutes. I really enjoyed this a lot.

Issue 48 of Counter arrived at the end of last week and, as usual, its 84 pages are filled with interesting stuff.

This time, there’s the usual Top 5’s for the previous year as well as articles on A Brief History of the World, 1853 and Magic: The Gathering. There are also full reviews of 20 of the recently released games and a few mini reviews from Ben Baldanza, together with several pages of letters.

As I’m off down to London tomorrow, there’s some good stuff to read on the train.

With only four months to go in my quest to get my unplayed list below 20, that target is looking more and more unlikely and was not helped by another five acquisitions in February. Managed to get three of the many little card games crossed off during my Lanzarote holiday but we still need to concentrate on getting the titles played or sold. Look out for some possible Ebay listings in the near future:

5 new games acquired (The World Cup Card Game 2010, Macao, Pillars of the Earth: Builders Duel, Jaipur and Tintenherz: Das Wurfelspiel);

8 games no longer unplayed (The World Cup Card Game 2010, Traders of Carthage, Power Grid: Factory Manager, Macao, Fzzzt, Im Auftrag des Konigs, Im Bann der Pyramide and Alcazar);

0 games sold.

This month’s target is the same as the last two months’ i.e. to get at least below 75 this time next month.

This week, I had expected there to be six of us so was planning to split into two groups. However, when we learned Mark W was stuck on Ludlow station, we opted to try Friedemann Friese’s latest game – Power Grid: Factory Manager – a game which has nothing to do with Power Grid but is still a tense, economic optimisation game.

The game is played over five rounds and each round is identical: Firstly, you bid for turn order tiles, which also determine how much discount you receive on your purchases each round. Then each player selects which factory components will be available for purchase, with the cheapest of each component having to be selected for possible sale before the more juicy stuff. Each player then buys what they want or can afford and places them in their factory. You are trying to obtain components that increase your production and storage or decrease your manpower requirements, while keeping control on your energy costs. Each time you add / replace something in your factory, you adjust these four factors and then receive income based on the lower of your production / storage capacity, after paying your energy costs (the price of which increases during the game. Income in the final round is doubled and then whoever has the most money wins.

We all thought this was an excellent design although, with five players, more stuff comes into the market and the length of the game increases accordingly. It took us around 2.5 hours to play, which is a bit long particularly as there is a big chunk of downtime while others take their turns. Nige and I almost decided to play a game of Macao while we were waiting at one stage. In the first round of our game, only one storage tile came up so the first player (me) snapped it up and gained an early income advantage on the others, although I had to tie up more workers for the next round. Mechanisation seemed a good option as it releases more workers to buy stuff with so by the third round some of us had factories completely populated by robots. I think Nige and I were the only ones to take seasonal workers in one round but Nige soon saw the error of his ways as he didn’t actually employ them in the next round so had basically wasted 14 Elektros. The fourth round saw me last in player order but with nothing decent to buy. I needed storage but there was none so I had to have a frugal round, spending just a little on upgrading a couple of machines. However, it meant I needed to be first in player order for the final round and it cost me two workers to secure that. However, I could still afford it in my robot-run factory. Guy on the other hand had all bar one of his workers in the canteen, although he was ahead on the income scale the previous round, so we experienced the quickest Guy turn ever in the history of the club. He had placed his worker for turn order so could add nothing to the market and had nothing to buy. We knew the scores were going to be close but didn’t realise it ws that close as just 6 Elektros separated first and third. My “bad” penultimate turn, where I virtually spent nothing was just enough to give me the win – phew! As I said, very tense. Ratings were pretty good although Nige and I knocked it down a notch due to the game length. Interested to see how it plays with 3 or 4 players.