Just back from a week in Tenerife and, although I took several games with me to play, not a single title saw the light of day. That’s pretty unusual but we were having fun with other things and Jan managed to catch my cough and sore throat so wasn’t in the right frame of mind. So Mottainai, 3 Sind eine zu viele and Qwinto will have to wait a while longer for us to try them out. Patchwork, Tiny Epic Galaxies, Groo: The Game and Red7 also missed out.
Between Two Cities
After a couple of quick rounds of Dobble with Jan and Becky (Jan winning both), I tried out the solo version of Between Two Cities, the latest Stonemaier Games release. This is a drafting game and I suspect it will be very good with multiple players but the solo game is also pretty interesting.
You’re building up a city in a 4×4 grid and each building type that you place in the grid has a different way of scoring. However, you’re not just building one city, you’re building two with each of your neighbours and, at the end of the game, your lower scoring city is your game score. This makes for some agonising decisions as you want both of your cities to score well but not so that your neighbour gets the better lower score.
In a solo game you play against Automassa and Automarta and a deck of cards dictates how they draft buildings into the two cities they are interested in. I really enjoyed the puzzle aspect of this and it played pretty quickly. That said, Automassa did a better job than me and ended up the winner with 56 points. Automarta and I lagged behind on 48.
504 First play
Tried a two-player run-through of World 123, which is the suggested starting game for Friedemann Friese’s 504. It worked fine but it was pretty fiddly to set up and I’m not sure whether the payoff of game enjoyment over set-up time might be low and make me reluctant to get this to the table on a regular basis.
I also need to research which of the worlds are reckoned to be the best in terms of gameplay so we can see it at its best. Plus the rulebook / book of worlds is horrible and not easy to follow. Perhaps I need to see a decent video of the gameplay for another world.
Scharfe Schoten
Managed to try the 2014 trick-taking card game from Zoch, Scharfe Schoten, this evening with Jan and Becky. I really enjoyed this. At the start of each round you predict which colours of card you are going to collect both the most and least in. You score points if either of your predictions is correct and a bonus if both are correct. The card backs show the suit colours so you have some knowledge in working out your card play but it is often tricky trying to win enough cards in your off-suits to ensure your predictions pay off.
Jan and I managed to tie for points after three rounds and, with no tie-break rule, were happy to share the victory.
Another call for 6 Picks of 2015
Although six of us have already submitted our choices of the six best games we played in 2015, there’s still time for any of the other Shrewsbury Boardgames Club members to add their two penneth.
2015 end of year roundup
2015 saw me play 314 games of 205 different titles and 110 of these were new to me during the year. Comparing this to previous years, the games played are down a bit on last year but still significantly above previous years:
Year Total Different
2015 314 205
2014 335 219
2013 234 155
2012 239 154
2011 200 156
2010 208 157
2009 229 157
My full list of games played in 2015 is here.
My most played game was Codenames which saw 8 plays, closely followed by Roll for the Galaxy with 7. Only five other games had 5 or more plays (Baseball Highlights 2045 and The Game .. spiel so lange du kannst with 6 plays each and 7 Wonders: Duel, Crazy Coconuts and Hostage Negotiator with 5). 3 games were played four times, 14 were played three times, 37 were played twice and 144 of them were played just once. My unplayed game list started 2015 at 42 and fell down to single figures at one point but is currently sitting at 20. I need to get this down to single figures again fairly soon this year.
My six picks for the best games I played for the first time in 2014 were Roll for the Galaxy, Codenames, Mysterium, Quartermaster General, Stockpile and Staufer Dynasty. As with last year, I’ve also done a six picks of solo and two-player games featuring 7 Wonders: Duel (probably my favourite game of all in 2015), Trambahn, Patchwork, Baseball Highlights: 2045, Risk: Star Wars Edition and Sylvion. All in all, a pretty good year. Let’s hope 2015 is just as good.
I spent a good chunk of the year on my 2015 challenge to reduce my collection by 365 games by the end of the year. I actually managed to sell 410 games and, having done some tidying up of my collection here on BGG as well as my Trickylight site database, I now reckon I own 617 games a huge reduction on the 1,000+ games I have owned in the past. I’ll probably still look to trim that number further during 2016 but not to the same extent as this year’s effort.
December 2015 roundup
During December, I managed to play 19 games of 16 different titles, 5 of which were new to me. The new games were:
Geister Geister Schatzsuchmeister – This is a fun and simple co-op game about grabbing treasures from a haunted house before it gets completely over-run by hauntings. Although this was the German Kinderspiel des Jahres in 2014, it’s still fun and challenging for adults.
TIME Stories: The Marcy Case – The second TIME Stories scenario is another horror-themed affair that, on a first run through, didn’t seem as challenging a puzzle as the Asylum. Maybe it’ll ratchet up the further we get into it.
maskmen – My latest Japanese micro game from Oink Games is a wrestling themed card game about getting rid of your hand of cards before your opponents. Works nicely as a two player game and very quick.
8-28 – This bluffing and second-guessing card game is a nice variant of Blackjack where you’re trying to get cards totalling as close to 8 or 28 without going over. Not sure it’s one to play regularly but enjoyable once in a while.
Risk: Star Wars Edition – This is a battle game based on the finale of the Return of the Jedi film, where the Rebel Alliance is trying to blow up the Death Star, but the game is fought on three fronts: the space battle, the battle for Endor where the Rebels are tring to dismantle the shield generator, and the fight between Luke and Darth Vader on the Death Star itself. Great fun.
I added 8 new games to the collection: Scharfe Schoten, Pi Mal Pflaumen, Big Book of Madness, Bomb Squad, Bomb Squad Academy, Yeti Slalom, Risk: Star Wars Edition and Mottainai.
My unplayed list is up from 18 to 20, and my Game of the Month was the fantastic two (or four) player battle game, Risk: Star wars Edition.
A little bit of house-keeping
Some might know that I spent most of 2015 trimming down my game collection and, while I kept pretty much up to date with updating my Trickylight and Boardgamegeek databases with the changes, I did notice quite a few discrepancies from games that had left the collection in earlier years.
So I’ve spent the past couple of days straightening things out and it appears I now own just 617 games (having been well over 1,000 at the start of the year). I’ll probably still look to trim that number further during 2016 but not to the same extent as this year’s effort.
One game has curiously gone “missing in action” as I’m certain I’ve not sold it and yet I can’t find the game anywhere. If anyone knows what might have become of Dice Town, please get in touch and put me out of my misery.
I’ve also played around a bit with the theme on this blog so let me know if you like it.
2015 Spiel des Jahres and KedJ – The winners!
The results of the German game of the year awards were announced this morning and the winners were:
Spiel des Jahres: Colt Express
Kennerspiel des Jahres: Broom Service
By some strange coincidence, these are the games I predicted would win yesterday. That doesn’t happen very often.
2015 Spiel des Jahres and KedJ predictions
The awards for the Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres are announced tomorrow morning. Here is my speculation about which of the three nominees for each prize will be celebrating victory.
Spiel des Jahres
For the main award, I’ve played all three nominees: Colt Express, Machi Koro and The Game… spiel so lange du kannst! All three are fun games that I could see as a good choice but I don’t see The Game… as a serious contender. It’s a small card game, has little expansion potential and doesn’t do the “co-op with limited communication” genre as well as Hanabi (even though I prefer it to the earlier game). Of the other two, I’d like Machi Koro to win, as it’s a fantastic light game where the dice rarely do what you want them to, but I think the toy factor of the three-dimensional train will get the nod for Colt Express.
Kennerspiel des Jahres
Unfortunately, I’ve only played one of the KedJ nominees: Elysium. As a next step up game, it fits the criterion really well and you can see plenty of potential for expanding the game – even though that’s something I don’t really appreciate. Orleans has the bag-building mechanism that was the novelty of Essen last year and seems a pretty solid game, whereas Broom Service was a surprise nominee to me (and a lot of other people) as it is a re-working of Witch’s Brew but it does seem to add a bit to that earlier game. I really am having difficulty judging what the judges might be looking for from these three nominees so I’m going to say Broom Service, as I hope it makes what was already a fun game even better.