Spiel: Boardgaming in the UK

Over on Boardgamegeek, someone started a geeklist entitled “Who is the most popular designer… on your shelves?” and was looking for the top three designers by number of titles that people had in their collections. The geeklist in question is here. Well, I looked at my collection and the names of the top three weren’t a surprise:

• Reiner Knizia
• Wolfgang Kramer
• Michael Schacht

However, what I didn’t expect was the number of Reiner titles that are in my collection. The answer: 89 !!! Wow!

Kramer was second with 40 and Schacht had 36.

I did also enjoy the comment someone made in response to my entry, suggesting I’d only another 500 Reiner games to go before I had them all. 🙂

Wayback When? is a review of the games I was playing five, ten, fifteen and twenty years ago with me highlighting the most memorable titles of each particular month in the vain hope that I might dig out some of them to play again. This month we’re looking at February 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009.

  

Five years ago was the first chance I had to play Matt Leacock’s excellent civilisation dice game, Roll Through the Ages, which is still fun today. We also got to experience Bonnie & Clyde, another in the Mystery Rummy series but a game that had been delayed so long people had forgotten how good the rest of the series had been and it, sort of, passed people by. I really enjoyed it though. The third game of note was the elegant little auction game of Byzanz designed by Emmanuel Ornella. I miss playing these clever little card games and should probably go about setting up another session outside of our current cycle to try and play some of these again.

 

In February 2004, I managed to play only two games and the only new game was Martin Wallace’s Princes of the Renaissance. This is a good game set in Renaissance Italy between warring princes and with a smattering of backstabbing and intrigue. Five years earlier, although I played a few more games (still only seven, what is it with February?), again I only played one new title and this was an obscure maze race game called Hey Culligan Man, later released in the U.S. as Switchboard

 

Twenty years ago, I played two great new games. The first was Jolly Roger, a fun set collection game with a push your luck scoring element. The second was the World Cup Tournament Football game, which was a great game of hidden teams in which the players were interested and you played chits to help their progress through the tournament. Probably a bit dated now and The World Cup Game probably does the same thing a little better.

I played a thrilling solo session of Pizza Box Football yesterday afternoon in preparation for the big event tomorrow. Could Peyton Manning lead the Broncos to victory against the NFL’s toughest defence? Let’s see.

First Quarter
Seattle kicked off but the return left Denver in good field position. Unfortunately, Manning was sacked on his very first play and Denver were forced to punt three plays later. Seattle moved the ball quite effectively and capped their opening drive with a field goal
Denver 0 Seattle 3
Denver fumbled a completed pass on their next drive giving Seattle the ball on Denver’s 23 yard line. No further progress led to a second field goal, doubling Seattle’s lead.
Denver 0 Seattle 6
Denver ended the quarter on their own 32 yard line.

Second Quarter
First play saw Manning get his first decent passing gain with 20 yards and they continued on the ground until they had to accept a field goal rather than anything better with ten minutes remaining in the half.
Denver 3 Seattle 6
The next drive saw Denver’s defence go to sleep as they first gave up 26 yards on the run and a 48 yard rushing touchdown. Ugly stuff.
Even uglier was the PAT attempt giving Seattle just six rather than seven extra points.
Denver 3 Seattle 12
Denver kept plugging away on their next drive but an interception around midfield deepened their agony. Seattle were, however, unable to capitalise and a missed long field goal attempt at least kept Denver with some hope.

Third Quarter
Russell Wilson started the third quarter in conservative mood although his running backs made sure they kept the ball. 32 yard and 24 yard gains took them to the Denver goal line and they forced their way in with Denver looking a beaten side.
Denver 3 Seattle 19
With little to lose, Manning strung a couple of good completions together to bring the Broncos to the Seahawks 25 yard line but with a fourth down and 2, Denver went for the yards rather than the field goal – and piled over with a 4 yard gain to keep the game alive. This obviously sparked the offence into life as the next play saw Manning deliver a touchdown pass to reduce the deficit to just 9.
Denver 10 Seattle 19
Seattle kept the ball for the rest of the quarter but it ended with Denver back in possession on their 33 yard line.

Fourth Quarter
Manning could sense the tide had shifted but with time running out he needed some big plays. 13 and 19 yard pass completions as well as 11 and 15 yard rushing first downs certainly looked to be the right medicine and a ten yard pass into the endzone brought the game down to a one score game.
Denver 17 Seattle 19
Seattle fans were biting their nails as their team tried to wind the clock down but they eventually had to punt the ball to Denver for one final push. Manning was in his stride now and a couple of fifteen yard passes brought them just about into field goal range. Not wanting to give up the ball, the next couple of plays stayed on the ground before one of the running backs broke through for a twenty yard gain. With just seconds left on the clock, Denver completed a remarkable comeback with a successful field goal to win the Superbowl.
Final Score:
Denver 20 Seattle 19

What a great finish!

P.S. I have no allegiance to either team. That is probably the best session of Pizza Box Football I’ve experienced and let’s hope the real thing is as exciting.

In January I managed to play 26 games of 20 different titles, 10 of which were new to me. The new games were: Air King, Coal Baron, Bugs in the Kitchen, Escape: Illusions, Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia, Glastonbury, Guildhall, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Das Kartenspiel, Legendary: Fantastic 4 and Speculation.

I added three new games to the collection which were Bugs in the Kitchen, Candy Chaser and Shephy. My most played game was the fun Bugs in the Kitchen at five plays although the oldie Vom Kap bis Kairo managed three plays. My unplayed list has dropped from 39 to 32 and Game of the Month was going to be either Euphoria or Speculation until the last day of the month when Coal Baron, yet another incredibly smooth game from Kramer & Kiesling, blew the competition away.

Just back from a week in Lanzarote. Although much warmer than the UK and only a couple of brief showers during the week, it was very windy which made it a bit chillier than normal. As usual, I’d packed one or two games and we (Jan, Cat and myself) managed to play something every day except one (when Cat and I watched The Hunger Games instead). Here’s a quick rundown of what we played:

Sunday 19th: Although we didn’t arrive until about 7.30pm, we still managed a quick game of Clubs. Although a very simple climbing cardgame, I really like it and it is very easy to explain to people. We played to 40 rather than 50 points and Cat won 48-44-32.

  

Monday 20th: Managed a solo game of Friday in the afternoon. Can’t believe it’s so long since I last played this. However, it came back to me fairly easily and I managed a win. My score ended up as Fighting 34 Pirates 30 Life 45 Aging -5 Hazards -27 = 77. We also managed to play Air King which has been on my unplayed list since I acquired it at Essen. It’s a hidden goal game where you are trying to manoeuvre planes to their destination so that your planes arrive before anyone else’s. It wasn’t a bad game but it’s not one that’s going to be jumping out at me to try again. Jan won.

Tuesday 21st: Another one of my unplayed games today: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Das Kartenspiel. This is a simplified version of Reiner Knizia’s King’s Gate where you place tiles in your colour around a location and once all the spots are covered, you score and move onto the next location. Again, easy to play although Jan got stuffed a couple of times so wasn’t as thrilled at the game as might have been the case. Cat won this one 12-10-9.

  

Wednesday 22nd: We played Vom Kap bis Kairo, a game I’ve been meaning to dig out and try again for ages. We were all impressed with this neat racing card game, building our railways across Africa. Has some nice bidding choices to make in determining the type of landscape you need to traverse each round but seems nicely balanced so a runaway leader shouldn’t be a problem. This went right down to the wire with all of us just one step from winning but Cat had enough cash left to buy the extra rails she needed to reach Kairo first.

Thursday 23rd: I’m a big Mystery Rummy fan and Wyatt Earp may be my favourite. Last time I played this was three years ago, again while in Lanzarote. Another close finish but I managed to take $11k in the third round to overtake Cat for the win. $26k-$24k-$22k.

Friday 24th: This was movie night but I did still manage to play a solo game of SOS: Titanic. I got a very fortunate start but my luck didn’t hold out too long. As it was, Fredrick Fleet managed to rescue 29 passengers before the ship sank.

  

Saturday 25th: Our final night saw us fit in two games. We started with No Thanks, a great little game. I banked on getting a long run of high cards but had two gaps killing my chances. Jan won 7-26-77 (don’t look at that last score!) We then decided to play Vom Kap bis Kairo again and it was just as close a result as the previous time with Cat this time gambling by using the last of her money to cross her seventh terrain. However, it paid off as we were unable to stop her getting to Kairo first again.

All in all, a great week’s holiday, despite the breeze, and some good gaming as well. And I only won once all week.

Wayback When? is a review of the games I was playing five, ten, fifteen and twenty years ago with me highlighting the most memorable titles of each particular month in the vain hope that I might dig out some of them to play again. This month we’re looking at January 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009.

  

In 2009, we played a few excellent new games. Leader 1 was a fabulous cycle racing game with modular courses and excellent movement mechanism (one of Mark W’s favourites). Diamonds Club is a very elegant design from Rudiger Dorn about a competition to develop one’s country estate and really should be played again soon. Oregon is also a charming design set in mid 19th Century western America and is about positioning farmers and buildings in the best locations to yield the most points.

 

January 2004 only saw me play five games but there were two good ones among them. Oasis is a fun hand management and area control game by Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum, with an interesting offer mechanism for determining turn order. Pirates Cove is an early Days of Wonder game about pirates fighting for booty over various islands to become the most famous swashbuckler.

  

Fifteen years ago saw my first opportunity to play the excellent Carabande (republished as PitchCar), the ultimate flicking race game, as well as Tycoon which is a Wolfgang Kramer and Horst Rainer Rosner design about businessmen travelling the world opening hotels and factories to make the most money. I also played another great Reiner Knizia card game, Circus Flohcati, which works as a fun 20 minute game in virtually any setting.

Unfortunately, January 1994 saw me play only two games, neither of which was new to me. However, one of them - Broadway – is definitely worth playing again (Monopoly’s gamier friend).

2013 saw me play 234 games of 155 different titles (just one more than the 154 different titles played in 2012, one fewer than the 156 different titles played in 2011 and two fewer than the 157 played in both 2010 and 2009). Again, I find it pretty remarkable how close these numbers are. The total plays at 234 is slightly down compared with 239 in 2012 but higher than the 200 in 2011, 208 in 2010 and 229 in 2009). My full list of games played is here.

My most played game was Legendary which saw 15 plays (including some played with the Dark City expansion). Only three other games exceeded 3 plays (Love Letter with 11, Qwixx with 6 and Star Wars: Angriff der Klonkrieger with 4). 13 games were played three times, 23 were played twice and 115 of them were played just once. My unplayed game list started 2013 at 23 but has ballooned towards the end of the year and sits at 39. I need to get this down to single figures fairly soon this year.

2013 (like 2012) seemed to produce several good games but not a single stand out game. My six picks for the year were Snowdonia, Qwixx, Rialto, Clubs, Spyrium and Amerigo. As with last year, I’ve also done a six picks of solo and two-player games featuring Legendary, SOS Titanic, Robinson Crusoe, Stak Bots, Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game and 1911: Amundsen vs Scott. All in all, a pretty good year. Let’s hope 2014 is just as good.

In December, I managed to play 21 games of 17 different titles, 12 of which were new to me. The new games were: Amerigo, Piraten Kapern, Flash 10, UGO, Mush! Mush! Mascarade, Prosperity, You Suck, The Logo Board Game, Concordia, Risk Express and Battleship: Hidden Threat.

I added seven new games to the collection which were Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia, Cheaty Mages, Guildhall, Mush! Mush! Game of Thrones, The Logo Board Game and Speculation. My unplayed list stands at 39 and Game of the Month could have been Concordia (but I need to see how it plays multi-player, although it plays really well as a two-player game) but instead I decided to pick yet another Stefan Feld game, Amerigo.

Having declared Nige the 2013 Hall of Fame winner last night, on the back of some hasty calculations, it seems I either can’t read or I can’t use a calculator correctly. After writing up the reports and scores from the games played last night, the site has done the calculation correctly and declared that this year’s Hall of Fame has ended up a tie with both Nige and Guy ending up on 37.5%. I had entered Guy as having played 89 games for the year rather than 88.

Looking at the club rules on the tie-break procedure, I have found … we don’t have a tie-break procedure (probably because we don’t have any club rules). Therefore, I declare that for the first time in our history, we have joint winners of the Hall of Fame and congratulations should go to both Nige and Guy.

Right, let the howls of indignation begin 😉

It’s that time of year when we reflect on the best games of the year so, if anyone wants to let me have their Six Picks for 2013, I’ll start to publish these in the run up to – and over – Christmas.