Spiel: Boardgaming in the UK

Junta: Viva el Presidente
Boardgame for 3-5 players, ages 10+
Playing time approximately 30 minutes.
Published by Z-Man Games, designed by Christoph Reiser and Sebastian Resl 

Yggdrasil
Boardgame for 1-6 players, ages 13+
Playing time approximately 75 minutes.
Published by Z-Man Games, designed by Cedric Lefebvre and Fabrice Rabellino 

Neuroshima Hex: Duel
Neuroshima Hex expansion for 2 players, ages 8+
Playing time approximately 30 minutes.
Published by Z-Man Games, designed by Michal Oracz

Anima: Twilight of the Gods
Card game for 2-5 players, ages 12+
Playing time approximately 60 minutes.
Published by Fantasy Flight, designed by Anima Studio

Munchkin Monster Enhancers
Munchkin card game expansion for 2-6 players, ages 12+
Playing time approximately 60 minutes.
Published by Steve Jackson Games, designed by Steve Jackson 

Just a reminder that next Saturday is the date of the next Telford Mini-Con. It is being held at Shifnal Village Hall, Aston Street, Shifnal, Telford, Shropshire TF11 8DW. Start time is 10.00am and it will run until 10.00pm

Shifnal Village Hall will accommodate up to 120 people, and you should contact telfordminicon to reserve a space. Cost of entry will be £5 which also gets you a free ticket for a prize draw to win a Collector’s Edition of Warhammer 40k Deathwatch roleplaying game core rule book (which is not available to buy in shops).

Further information can be found here.

The first issue of 2011 of Spielbox arrived on Saturday and included a copy of the 8th Wonder (Mannekin Pis) for the game 7 Wonders. So the 8th Wonder is no longer an “Essen exclusive” after all.

In the magazine, there is another big article on the Essen releases, this time concentrating on games from France, Great Britain, Poland, Sweden, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. The reviews include Forbidden Island, 7 Wonders, London, Troyes and Lords of Vegas. Plus, there’s a short interview with JKLM’s Markus Welbourne, a portrait of Lookout Games and articles about Heinz Meister and his new game, Avanti.

Mousquetaires du Roy
Board game for 1-5 players, ages 12+
Playing time approximately 90 minutes.
Published by Ystari/Rio Grande/Asmodee, designed by François Combe & Gilles Lehmann.

Munchkin Zombies
Card game for 3-6 players, ages 10+
Playing time approximately 90 minutes.
Published and designed by Steve Jackson Games

Secret of Monte Cristo
Board game for 2-4 players, ages: 8+
Playing time approximately 60 minutes.
Published by Z-Man Games, designed by Charles Chevallier & Arnaud Urbon.

Dobble
Card Game for 2-8 players, ages 6+
Playing time approximately 5 minutes
Published by Asmodee, designed by Denis Blanchot, Guillaume Gille-Naves & Igor Polouchine

Summoner Wars: Cloaks
Expansion for Summoner Wars.for 2-4 players, ages 9+
Playing time approximately 30 minutes
Published by Plaid Hat Games, designed by Colby Dauch

Summoner Wars: Jungle Elves
Expansion for Summoner Wars.for 2-4 players, ages 9+
Playing time approximately 30 minutes
Published by Plaid Hat Games, designed by Colby Dauch

James Sheahan, whose Metagames blog regularly publishes good boardgame reviews has just announced the launch of a new boardgame service … link shortening. For those, unlike me, who are up to speed with Twitter, they’ll know that a 140 character limit can prove quite challenging when trying to publicise the latest and greatest boardgame link. Hence, bdg.ms! I’ll let James explain more…

bdg.ms is a link shortening service for all things boardgaming, but it’s also so much more…

• bdg.ms shortens links and lets you choose the end part of your shortened link
• bdg.ms lists all the shortened links so it’s a great way to find out the latest web site articles, blog posts and other boardgaming information that people are talking about online all in one place
• You can follow the whole site or specific users via RSS, so as soon as a link is added, your RSS reader will deliver it to you

Anyone can use the site (if you want to shorten links you’ll need to register which is free and mainly to prevent spam).

I hope you will join me and support me in using bdg.ms (whether shortening links or just using the digest of links to find the latest boardgame content).  The more we use it, the stronger and more useful it will be.

And this is just the start as there are lots of other exciting features that will be added to the site over the next weeks. Follow the bdg.ms blog for details (via RSS and/or @bdgms twitter).

So, if you want to go to my Trickylight site, you can now just type in bdg.ms/trick Of course everyone reading this already has Trickylight at the top of their favourites list anyway.

As of today, the games room at home is just about back to normal with the games cupboard back in place and refilled. I took a couple of photos before the cupboard doors went on:

First the left half

And the right half

Trollhalla
Boardgame for 2-4 players, ages 8+
Playing time approximately 60 mins.
Published by Z-Man Games, designed by Alf Seegert

Nightfall
Card Game for 2-5 players, ages 12+, 
Playing time approximately 45 mins.
Published by Alderac Entertainment, designed by David Gregg

Runebound Essential Collection
Expansion collection for Runebound.
Contains 6 previously released expansions and 2 new adventure variants
Published by Fantasy Flight

Cargo Noir
Board game for 2-5 players, ages 8+
Playing time approximately 60 mins.
Published by Days of Wonder, designed by Serge Laget

King Up! (new version of King Me!)
Board game for 3-6 players, ages 8+
Playing time approximately 20-30 minutes.
Published by DV Giochi, designed by Stefano Luperto.

Lords of the River
Expansion for Battle Lore, Battles of Westeros for 2 players, age 13+
Playing time approximately 60 minutes.
Published by Fantasy Flight Games, designed by Robert A. Kouba

Conquest of Planet Earth
Board game for 1-4 players ages 12+
Playing time approximately 60 minutes.
Published by Flying Frog Productions, designed by Jason Hill.

Shogun: Tenno’s Court
Expansion for Shogun for 3-5 players, age 12+  
Playing time approximately 120 minutes.
Published by Queen Games, designed by Dirk Henn.

Munchkin 7: Cheat With Both Hands
Expansion for Munchkin card game for 2-6 players, age 12+
Playing time approximately 60 minutes.
Published by Steve Jackson Games, designed by Steve Jackson.

Nuts!
Card game for 2-6 players, ages 13+.
Published by Wildfire Games.

Jungle Speed (new edition)
Card Game for 2-8 players, Ages 7+
Playing time approximately 10 minutes.
Published by Asmodee, designed by Thomas Vuarchex and Pirreck Yakovenko

Stronghold (reprint)
Boardgame for 2-4 players, ages 10+
Playing time approximately 120 minutes.
Published by Valley Games, designed by Ignacy Trzewiczek

The next Bolton Games Day is only a couple of weeks away. Here are the main details from Chris (boltongeordie):

Gamers North of Manchester England (GNOME) are holding another of our famous all-dayers on Sunday 27th March 2011 at St Mary’s Church Hall, Horwich. Access to the car park is from Richmond st (BL6 5QT for you Satnavvies). Doors open at 10:30AM and we need to be out by 11PM.

As previously, we have the hall to ourselves and the bar is open from 12 Noon to 11PM. There are shops and takeaways within easy walk but we will be providing some light grub at around 6PM to keep you going.

Everyone is welcome of course, including kids (so long as they are gamers and not run-around-and-knock-things-over-ers). Bring your own games or come and play ours.

Entry is £3 (£1 for under 16s) which includes free hotpot/soup at 6:00PM. There may be better deals out there, there may be more for less, but before you know it they have hit you up for airport taxes, a £10 sandwich and of course with the taxi into town from that airport you have never heard of which turns out to be 50 miles away maybe it wasn’t such a great deal after all.

If you’re interested in going along, you can let Chris know and see who else is attending in this BGG thread.

The latest Alea release arrived at Shire Games today so I took a diversion on the way home and picked up a copy. This is another Stefan Feld design that uses dice in an interesting way. Players are trying to develop their estates through trading, livestock farming, city building or scientific research. Players have two dice that they allocate to their choice of actions, the four choices being taking tiles from the gameboard into their storehouse, moving tiles from the storehouse to their estate, selling goods, or taking worker tiles to help manipulate the dice rolls in future. The game looks like an interesting game of forward planning and optimising choices based on the dice you roll.

This is number 14 in the large Alea box series and comes with German, French and English rules, so no need to wait for a Rio Grande version.

I also picked up a copy of A La Carte, as I’ve been meaning to get a copy for ages, and it was just sitting there next to Die Burgen von Burgund. Me…impulsive?