Spiel: Boardgaming in the UK

Three weeks yesterday, the annual Essen Games Fair begins and, as usual, I’ll be there for two of those days.

Also, as in previous years, I’ll be highlighting some of the games to look out for, with a focus on those released by UK companies / designers. I’ve already mentioned one or two and hope to post something about all those that I know about. First of all, Warfrog (or Treefrog) have a few new games to mention. Today, it’s the turn of God’s Playground.

God’s Playground is the next of Martin Wallace’s three player only games being released in the Treefrog line. The game covers the period of Polish history from the 1400s to the mid 1700s, i.e. from the war against the Teutonic Knights to the period leading up to the first of the three partitions. Further information, including a link to the rules can be found on the God’s Playground page on the Warfrog website.

Unsurprisingly, I missed my target of getting down to 85 unplayed by the end of September. With the girls now away at University, I’ve got fewer targets at home to rope into a game. In summary:

3 new games acquired (Change Horses, Endeavor, Ad Astra)

11 games no longer unplayed (Adam & Eva, Animalia, Explosiv, Fish Eat Fish, Flix Mix, Endeavor, Ad Astra, Pick & Pack, Toledo, Floriado and Monastery).

0 games sold

October is going to be a damage limitation month. With Essen three weeks away, I must try and keep the shopping list under control. Expect me to be back in the 90s by the end of the month. 

The winners of the International Gamers Award have just been announced on the IGA website.

In the multi-player category, the winner was Le Havre, designed by Uwe Rosenberg and published by Lookout Games. So, Dominion didn’t win (it came second) for a change but, as this award tends to be the one that typically goes to the gamers’ game, Le Havre isn’t really a big surprise.

In the two-player category, the winner was Day & Night, designed by Valentijn Eekels and published by Mystics.dl. I know nothing about this one although I think it has only just been released in the UK.

Full details about the voting can be found here.

The rules to the latest Fragor Games release, Savannah Tails, an ostrich racing game, are now available on Boardgamegeek here.

I particularly like the rules for choosing a start player!

The winner of this year’s DSP has just been announced and the award went to ….. Dominion. Not a massive surprise and it was a pretty clear winner with the second placed game, Le Havre, only receiving 54% of the votes Dominion got. The top ten games were:

• Dominion, by Donald X. Vaccarino (Hans im Glück) – 4735
• Le Havre, by Uwe Rosenberg (Lookout Games) – 2559
• Pandemic, by Matt Leacock (Pegasus Spiele) – 2504
• Finca, by Ralf zur Linde and Wolfgang Sentker (Hans im Glück) – 1695
• Small World, by Philippe Keyaerts (Days of Wonder) – 1155
• Valdora, by Michael Schacht (Abacusspiele) – 1002
• Diamonds Club, by Rüdiger Dorn (Ravensburger) – 911
• Through the Ages, by Vlaada Chvatil (Pegasus Spiele) – 718
• Sherwood Forest, by Nils Finkemeyer (eggertspiele) – 679
• Fauna, by Friedemann Friese (Huch & friends) – 657

Congratulations again to the designer, developers and publishers – just the IGA to go now for a clean sweep.

 

 

 

Yesterday saw the UK release of two games I’ve had my eye on for some time. And, as Gameslore had them both on at a pretty good price, I took a diversion via Cold Hatton and picked them up on my way home.

Endeavor has been getting some very good early reports and is a game of world exploration and empire building. With a central board and five large individual player boards, this looks like it may struggle to fit on the normal game table. Looks like another fine addition to Z-Man’s line of games.

Ad Astra is a new game by Bruno Faidutti and Serge Laget and looks to be Settlers crossed with Citadels set in space. This one is also very nicely produced by Fantasy Flight but with a normal retail price of about £43, this is really pushing things in terms of what you get inside the box for your money.

Hopefully, we’ll play one or both of these on Friday.

August saw my mission of getting down to fewer than 20 unplayed games progress quite well with the total falling from 108 to 97. In summary:

2 new games acquired (Ra: The Dice Game and Harry’s Grand Slam Baseball Game)

13 games no longer unplayed (Take Stock, Relikt, Subulata, Pizza Box Baseball, Ghost Stories, Ra: The Dice Game, Automobile, Nacht der Magier, Harry’s Grand Slam Baseball Game, Neuland, Fiji, Stop It! and Finale).

0 games sold

My aim for September is to get down to 85 unplayed but this might be a bit optimistic as there will be two weekends involving the transport of Catherine and Rebecca back to university. 

Finale is a game I’ve had for years and have never managed to play it…until now. It is one of the classic Kosmos two-player range. Each player has a similar set of player cards and sets out 11 players in their choice of formation. They also have a set of tactic cards and on each of the six turns, players choose a tactic card and compare the values. The higher value attacks with a combination of players as shown on the tactic card and the defender picks players to defend. Dice rolls are added to the strength of each side and if the attacker breaks through on goal, a similar process establishes whether a goal is scored. each turn represents 15 minutes of play so after six turns, the final whistle is blown and whoever has scored more goals wins. However, if it is tied, extra time is played over two further turns and if then still tied, penalties ensue.

Chris and I played tried this tonight and had a good time as it was pretty close throughout. Chris took the lead in the opening minutes but I soon equalised and managed a second just before the half time whistle. Into the second half and I was reduced to ten men following a cynical foul on Chris’s goalkeeper, who had to be substituted. He then marched down the pitch and made the extra man tell and tie the scores at 2-2. Mid way through the second half, Chris took the lead while the bad luck for goalies continued and my keeper got injured and had to be replaced. With whistles from Chris’s crowd for the final whistle resounding around the ground, I managed a counter-attack in the closing minutes and put the ball in the net to make the score 3-3 after 90 minutes. The opening half of extra time was an ugly affair and Chris’s team was also reduced to ten men but he did sneak a critical goal. My team tried everything to get the equaliser but with time running out, I was reduced to nine players after one of my defenders received a second yellow card. Chris managed to play out the remaining minutes and recorded a good win 4-3.

There were only three of us this week so I decided to try Neuland, produced by eggert spiele and Z-Man games as it was reported to be best with three players. That’s probably true because a four player game would have ended up even more tedious than this session turned out. It’s not that the game was bad; it just seemed like too much work and very little fun. Someone hinted that the lack of fun made it the perfect game for ‘no-fun’ Nige (can’t remember who said it) but I think Nige would actually have hated it with a vengeance.

The game involves working down a production tree, using basic resources to produce something that is then used for something else which can then be used in combination with another resource to produce something else. Once you get far enough down the production tree, you get to produce something for victory points and once someone has claimed 12 VPs, they win. Unfortunately, there is little you can do between turns and although you try to set yourself up for your next turn, things can change and you need to work through your various actions from scratch. That said, there is quite a bit of planning you can do but there seems very little that can be put down to clever play. You pick a branch of the production tree to go down and then optimise your actions accordingly. And the branches are too long in my view. The game works but it is just too dry for me. The one aspect that I did quite like was the turn order track in that, like Thebes, the player furthest behind takes the next turn. Hence it is possible to engineer that you take two turns together or before your main rival.

In our game, it was pretty close between Mark K and me but once it became obvious that I was bound to win (this being after two and a half hours), we decided to stop with possibly another 10 or 15 minutes still to play. Basically, we found it too long overall, player turns were too long so plenty of downtime even with three players and no real spark to make it fun. One for the Ebay pile, I think.

The new issue of Counter arrived yesterday and, as usual, it looks to be full of interesting stuff. 25 reviews including a few that will be worth looking into further: Der Schwarm (Kramer/ Kiesling), Livingstone, Masters of Venice and Tulipmania 1637. There is also an outline of the various expansions included in Alea’s Treasure Chest, which celebrates their tenth anniversary. Steve Owen contributes an article on strategy in Snow Tails which I still need to read and there are articles on the UK Games Expo by Kendall Johns and Alan How. Several other articles including six pages of letters complete this quarter’s 84 page issue.