Game of the year, 2007 22-Apr-2008   Paul For the last three years, the Piddinghoe Gamers have vote for their game of the year. Past winners have included Amun-Re, Oltremare and Canal Mania. This year, the panel cast their votes for games released in 2007. That's any game. Expansions, re-releases, they all count. The only qualification is that we must have played them. And if a game is to have any chance of winning, most of us need to have played it. We're not particularly interested in fairness, so we don't wait until mid-year to give people a chance to play games released later in the year. Though we are a bit later in the year than usual. We don't need to be fair. Unlike the Spiel des Jahres award, the Piddinghoe Gamers game of the year is unlikely to increase sales by several hundred thousand boxes. Actually, we buy most of our games later in the year anyway, taking advantage of the hugely cheaper prices at Essen, so later games aren't really at much of a disadvantage. So, 2006 is history. The votes are in. And onto the winners. Like last year, it was a two horse race. In fact only one vote seperated the top two. The accolade of first place goes to Agricola, from Lookout Games. This is a game which has been gaining a lot of praise and attention, surprisngly so as it's currently only available in a German edition. With a ton of cards, densely packed with German text. Second place went to Brass, Martin Wallaces latest and one of his finest. In third place, and surprisingly close to the top two, was Caylus Magna Carta. Most of the fun in half of the time. Also rather surprising was the fact that only seven games were put into the hat this year. Make of that what you will. Last year, the top two places went to the Brits. This time, second place was claimed by a different Brit and it could so easily have been first. So another great showing by the local lads. Will 2008 make three in a row?      Comment by Steve   22-Apr-2008 Agricola and Brass were my top two votes. I've enjoyed both games but in the end had to give the nod to Agricola as I have played it a few times now and have played Brass only once. However I hope this changes in the not too distant future.   Pauls Essen 2007 - Part 2 14-Nov-2007   Paul This took longer than I'd planned, but I've finally finished the second and final part of this year's Essen report. This covers Friday and Saturday. Chang Cheng The idea of this game is to build sections of the Great Wall of China. This is built over a series of boards, representing spaces to build the wall over a number of territories. The demo games were only using half of the player boards so our game wasn't completely representative of a full one. What we have here is basically an area majority game. Whoever builds the most pieces in a district scores the benefits of the distinct. Benefits are points, each district being worth a particular number. Of course the Wall was built to keep out barbarian hordes, and so the game has these too. The board on the "wrong" side of the wall is divided into a series of areas, each containing barbarians. Wall majorities on this side of the board are important too, as the majority holder - usually - scores negative points from the barbarians. Each player has a set of wall pieces, along with a set of action tiles. A turn consists of two actions, an action being placing either a wall piece or an action tile. Action tiles mess with other action tiles and wall sections. Each district is scored as it competes, and the person with the most points at the end wins. I don't think any of us were much impressed with this one. There's nothing particularly wrong with the game, it just feels a bit mundane and lacking in any real tension. Played with only half the boards it had the feeling of a filler, but I think the full game would take it out of that category. This might be for the better, but I suspect it would just prolong a dull game past its welcome. Owner's Choice This is a short and simple stock market game. Probably a bit too short actually. Players vie for control over four different companies. Control is a matter of owning the most stocks of a company. Turns are simple. First decide if you wish to buy any stocks. Then move a dobber along the track of a board that looks a little like a Monopoly board at first glance. The track is made up of various symbols, mostly representing the four different companies. If one of the company symbols is landed on, the director of the company decides which of two dice to roll. One costs money but tends to improve the company, with the other doing more or less the opposite. Once the dobber hits the last space on the track, everyone sells off their stocks at the current price. Most cash wins the game. Not a bad little game, and probably okay as a filler. Reasonably replayable too as the score track is made out of a number of double sided sections so can be constructed in a variety of ways. There was some scope for clever play, though the dice obviously injected a dose of luck into the game. The game was pretty much decided around the half way mark when I managed to bankrupt a company that Andy and Oggie had invested in. In the Year of the Dragon In previous years there would have been a buzz, positive or negative, about a new Alea game. We'd heard nothing about this game at all though, which didn't bode well. This may or may not be the year of the dragon. It's certainly the year of the games about ancient China. This turned out to be the second of three games we'd play with this setting. I would summarise this one as a combination of a role/action taking, resource management and special powers game. In each turn, an action will be selected. Actions cover such things as getting cash, building up your palace, and getting VPs. After this, each player chooses a person to select to their palace. Like actions, people grant benefits. In most cases, the result of the benefit will be to boost the power of the actions. For example, the more builders you have, the more you will be able to entend your palace if you take the build action. Recruitment also has a secondary purpose. They grant movement along a secondary score track. Well, score's probably the wrong word. The only effect of the track is to determine player order during the action selection phase. This is important as actions are "grouped". Once an action in a particular group has been selected, other players may only select an action in the same group by spending a very limited supply of money. Each turn represents a year, and a year is completed by actioning a disaster. Disasters are determined at random at the start of the game, so you will know when disasters will crop and can plan for them. The disasters usually drain resources or kill some of the people you have recruited into your palace. Points are gained throughout the game, with bonuses granted at the end. Most points wins. This turned out to be a reasonably interesting game to play, but not an outstanding one. It's the sort of game that we'd have snapped up three or four years ago, but none of us felt any need to buy it this year. The need to pay attention to the player order track, and prepare for disaster, sounds like it should be quite interesting. Sadly though the effect was to make the game feel rather restrictive to me, limiting the choices available. League of Six Back at the hotel again, we managed to grab a table, so time for more gaming. League of Six is themed around tax collecting. Not an obviously attractive theme, but never mind. The game's played over a number of rounds each of which has a number of phases. Firstly, players each claim a land. This is done by placing six land tiles into a circle, and having players bounce around them, displacing each other in a semi-Amun Re fashion. Then comes the tax collecting. Each tile has a number of different types of resources, but only a portion of them will be collectible. This is done in quite a clever way. A hex shaped tile is placed in the centre of each of the land tiles, with pointers on some of the edges. A player may orient this tile whichever way he sees fit. He will receive the items which the pointers indicate. Items come in three forms. Soldiers are used in the land picking auction phase. Goods are used to score points or end game bonuses. And horses determine who gets first dibs at claiming points. Goods are placed onto a row of two grids. Each give points when an item is places in it, and filling a row in one grid grants bonus points whilst doing so in the other grants cards which give an end game bonus. The person with the most horses places first. If they cannot fill it, the next person gets to contribute. And so on. Once a row in a grid is filled, the bonus goes to whoever started the row. The person with the second most horses then starts a row, and the process continues until no more items can be placed. And then the next round begins. This continues until the end is triggered, which is when all of the item grids have been used, if I recall correctly. End game bonuses are then added, and the person with the most points wins. Sadly the game didn't go over too well. We had a fair bit of fun in the auction phase, but the rest all felt a little bitty. One player commented that it felt like a bunch of mechanisms looking for a game. It seemed to lack a certain spark. However, we had just consumed most of a pig and a large quantity of beer between us so it may just have been us. Lascaux This cardgame comes across as advanced Geshenkte with a bit of Don thrown in. A set of cards is revealed each turn. Each card has three attributes - two colours and a type. Players will be bidding for these cards. The bidding system is quite straightforward. Either you pay a token to stay in, or drop out and take all the tokens paid so far. If you drop out, you secretly play a tile showing a colour. Once everybody has dropped out, colour tiles are revealed. The last person to drop out takes all of the cards matching the colour tile they played. The second last then takes any remaining cards matching the colour they played, and so forth. As each card has two colours, pickings become increasingly slim as the pecking order is worked down. Another round then starts, and the process continues until there are no cards left. The point of all of this is to collect majorities of types of cards. Majorities are worth points, and points win the game. I'd have probably liked this a lot more if I'd not already played Geshenkte. Instead, it just seemed more of the same. The components are a lot nicer, but not nice enough to make me want to buy a game so similar to one I already own. Oregon The board is a grid, with each element in the grid having six spaces. Players - usually - play a pair from a hand of four cards to play a card into the grid. Each row and column of the grid is marked with a symbol, as are the cards used to place them. The same symbols are used on the row and column, and the cards allow a piece to be placed into one of the empty spaces in the two slots - again usually - at the intersection of the symbols on row and column. Each player has a pair of tiles which allow for an extra turn, and for a card to be used as a wildcard. Once used they can be "recharged" for later re-use. Most German games are thinly themed. Given that I've not referred to the theme at all so far, you can see that this one is even more so than normal. Actually, I'm not entirely sure what the theme is. I think it's about colonising Oregon in the days of the cowboy but it could just as easily be about colonising Mars. You are attempting to place men and buildings next to each other. Doing so gives you points, and sometimes refreshes your special tiles. It's an okay game, which some scope for good play, but you're very much restricted in your options by the cards you have. Your hand size is only four cards, and picking up any duplicates really limits what you can do. In our game there was often a high scoring opportunity that you had no access to, having instead to watch somebody else snap up. Portobello Market This one’s been out for a few months now so again I'm not going to say much about it. It's another one we quite liked. It was quite short but with a bit to think about. There looked to be potential for kingmaking at the end though. Ming Dynastie And here we have the third of the Ancient China games we played. At heart this is a majority scoring game, but well done. The game's played over half a dozen rounds, of which every other is a scoring round. Each round has multiple phases. In the first phase, you place men in one of six holding areas. You then draft a hand of cards, with choices restricted by the holding areas you have played into. After that you move a Prince piece around the board transferring men from the holding areas to wherever the price is. Movement is via a system ripped out of Elfenland, playing cards to move over boundaries marked with symbols. The point of all of this movement and placement is to achieve two things. One is to put your men into temples. The board is divided into provinces, each of which has three districts. Each district has one temple, with room for one man. Each man in a temple scores during a scoring round. They do, however, restrict your abilities to achieve the second thing. And this is to obtain first or second place majorities in areas, which again are a route to points. In the scoring phases, temples are scored and the majority holders have men moved into the city. There is a city in each province, a third of the city in each of its districts. Getting a man into a city grants you a token in the colour of the corresponding province, and may score you some points. Sets of these tokens are traded in for points. A second set of cards is used in a blind bid to determine whether to leave men in the cities or move them back out. If they stay in, they will score some points. If they move out, they will contribute towards majority calculations in later scoring rounds. This was one of the better games of the show. Plenty to think about, but it moved quickly so downtime was minimal. The different scoring methods encourage you to move around the board to grab tokens and cheap majorities. But at the same time you want to hang around to protect your existing majorities. Also, you would like to move men into temples, which reduce your chances of scoring majorities. Decisions, decisions. We originally played with three, but have since played with four. Yup, we liked it enough to buy a copy. The four player game forces a lot more player interaction, not least due to the rule that your prince cannot end in the same district as somebody elses. Summary And that's about it. We popped briefly into the show on Sunday, but didn't try anything else. We did play a couple of games of R-Eco on the way home, but that's last years news. Well, almost. We played the new Z-man version, which is new this year. Not a bad little filler, with a couple of nasty twists. As ever it was a very enjoyable few days. Worryingly, we purchased very few of the games we tried. None seemed to offer much different to games we already had. in fact I didn't buy any games after trying them. I think though that that reflects our growing game collections as much as anything else. We'd have happily bought many of these games a handful of years ago; now we can afford to be more choosy. Usually I list my top five games fo the show at this point. This year, I have a top three with most of the other games milling around in a general pool below that so it's trickier than normal. Of course, this is from the pool of games which we played. We didn't try Agricola, Making of the President, or other games which seem to be garnering a lot of interest. Anyway, ignoring anything released prior to Essen, my top five were Tribune Brass Ming Dynastie Seiao Oregon The order's probably about right too. Like last year, there wasn't much evidence of rampant discounting. I'm taking that as a positive sign of the health of the industry. Also not in evidence were the huge crowds of last year. This, I think, was partly due to a rail strike in Germany. It certainly made wandering the halls a more pleasant affair. Pauls Essen 2007 - Part 1 28-Oct-2007   Paul Let's start with the standard disclaimer. We may well have misread, misheard or misunderstood rules in any or all of the games we played. Whilst a wrong rule is unlikely to convert a good game into a great one, it may well turn a good game to a poor one. So bear this in mind whenever I describe a game in less than glowing terms. Also, most of my opinions are from a single playing of a game. This might be an outlier, and the game may usually play better or worse. As I'm way behind in writing this this year I'll not mess about with trivialities like how we got there and what we played on the ferry. Let's get straight onto the new games. Brass I'd decided to approach Essen a little differently this year. Usually I do copious research and turn up knowing quite a bit about the games we'd see. This time I decided not to do any, and just wing it. Brass was one of the few games I knew anything about so I was keen to give it a go. It supports four people, which was a bit of a problem as we had four and a half. The half was one person who'd obviously had an early start and slept through much of the game. That was soon solved by Andy and Oggie teaming up, and the judicious use of a finger to wake the sleepy player from time to time. Brass is all about the industrial revolution. It's set in Lancashire, with connections at the edges of the board to foreign places like Yorkshire. It's a game of two halves. The early game is largely about trying to build up infrastructure to generate some profits. This mainly involves building mills to produce cotton, canals to move it, and ports to ship it. As the game goes on it becomes necessary to build coal mines and foundries, especially in the second half where rails replace canals and - along with more advanced buildings - require materials for construction. The rules are laid out well. The core rules get you up and running, with a separate section explaining things in more detail. This got us started without much rules reading, but did slow us down a bit when we needed to look things up. Swings and roundabouts really. It did contribute to the game running on the long side though, clocking in at the best part of three hours. That was too long, especially as you can't do anything during other people turns. I think we'd complete future games in nearer two hours, which is fine. Overall we all liked it. After hearing the rules I though there might be a solitaire feel to it but that didn't turn out to be the case. Buildings can only be placed in a limited number of places which forces competition for them. Moreover anybody can use your buildings so you may - for example - see your cotton shipped off to somebody elses port. Not the end of the world as you still get points for it but likely not as lucrative as shipping it yourself. For my money, this is Martin Wallace's best since Age of Steam. I'll happily play this one again. That seemed to be the general opinion of everyone else I spoke to about the game too. 1001 Karawane This is by the guy who did the game about breeding garden gnomes a few years ago. We really enjoyed that one in Essen, but it seemed very average the only time we played it since. But 1001 Karawane looked rather pretty, and we were ready for a sit down. It turned out to be a lightweight exploration game with some (small) elements of memory and deduction. Players put together caravans to explore the desert. These consist of various combinations of water, guards and trade goods cards. Water is used each turn and guards are needed to protect against bandits. Trade goods can be sold for cash should a city be located. The board consists of tiles which are placed face down. Each turn you can move your caravan over three of these tiles, secretly looking at the underside as you do. Most of them are blank but some have cities, oases etc. The purpose is to find the three tiles which have magical items. The first person to find these and get them back to base wins. The game looks attractive and plays quite quickly but there's not a great deal to it. Tribune I know that a lot of people have been looking forward to this one so we were happy to see that one of the two demo tables was free when we wandered past. The game is themed around old Rome. Victory goes to the first person to achieve a certain number out of six possible victory conditions. Most of these are obtained by building sets of cards to take control of seven different factions. Taking, and holding, control confers various rewards. Each round, the board will be populated with cards. Players then take turns to place their pawns into various areas of the cards. Most placements will be to take cards, others will be to try to take control of factions or grab items to contribute toward victory. Mechanically it's not a complex game but each area of the board plays a little differently so there's quite a bit to explain. I don't fancy typing out a ten page explanation so I'll leave the game summary at that. Play is quite quick as players just take turns to place a pawn. The actions activated by this are almost all triggered after all placements have been made. This means that downtime is almost non-existent. The game took about an hour and a half with four players, which felt about right. Though not complicated, this is a gamers game and not a family game. It reminded me a little of Pillars of the Earth, which is a good thing in my book. It was certainly one of the better games we played at Essen. We have, however, played again since getting back. In the latter game we had five players. The goal cards told us that we needed to achieve three of the six victory conditions with five. Unfortunately though this didn't seem to work out so well. The game seemed to be over before it had started which was quite disappointing. We'd probably fix this by simply playing to four victory conditions next time we try with five. Despite the second game not working out too well, this was certainly one of the better games we tried at Essen, and one of the few we tried and buyed. Burg Appenzell This is a kiddies game about moving mice around a castle in search of cheese. It's an action point game where players take turns to move mice, peek under roofs, and modify the board slightly by sliding tiles. Tiles depicting various types of cheese are scattered across the board. If you can get two of your mice onto the same cheese symbol, you take a token. The first player to get a certain number of tokens wins. The main word that springs to mind to describe this game is fiddly. The board sits on top of the game box, which has holes to trap mice and slots to allow rows or columns of tiles to be pushed. The most interesting part of the game is sliding a row or column of tiles and it seemed quite difficult to do this without pushing against bits of the board you didn't want to be pushing. Moreover, should you wish to play a second game, getting captured mice out of their holes requires more or less demolishing the board. The other word that springs to mind is luck. All of the cheese tokens are hidden under roof tiles. Thus you don't know where they are until you go peeking under them. If you find a pair in easy reach of your mice, you're quids in. I shouldn't be too harsh about it, as after all it is a kiddies game. Not one I would have any desire to play again though. Seiao While patrolling the halls we spotted an unusual looking game which was very much "about" Japan. Firstly it was played on a map of Japan. And secondly, all of the playing pieces sported characters of the Japanese alphabet. The designer told us it was a Civilisation based game so we decided we'd best have a go. Each player has an "army" of tiles. The first one to get all of them onto the board wins. This can be done by building them in provinces of Japan whose names contain the characters, or by trading them with another player. So the first thing we did was to spread out across the board grabbing territory, then swapping bits with our neighbours. That worked fine for a bit until we ran out of space to "breed" in so we started to eye each other's territories up. This inevitably led us to combat, which is resolved simply by taking pairs of tiles, one each, off the board. All well and good, but where does the Civilisation bit come in? In the shape of another set of tiles. You may spend your turn flipping one of these over. Hopefully you can then build it, as otherwise it becomes available for anybody else to build. Each of the tiles confers a benefit (ships, cannon, universities and so forth) but can only be built in particular provinces. If somebody else beats you to building it, you can either wait for another copy of that tile to be turned over or send your army over to attack it. It was quite an interesting game, but did have a couple of issues. The main one was fiddliness. Did I say Burg Appenzell was fiddly? Not as fiddly as this one. Well, perhaps fiddly isn't the right word. Perhaps awkward is a better one. The problem was one of character recognition. At the start of the game you have to put all of your tiles onto the right spots on a player mat. That takes a while trying to match the correct characters. Then throughout the game you're faced with the issue of trying to match character on mat to character on map. The second issue was one of length. It's a four hour game. That's actually a pretty good length for a Civilisation game but I couldn't see any of our group sitting down to a four hour squiggle matching exercise. Which is a shame. Darjeeling Back at the hotel, we were invited by a pair of Americans to join their game of Darjeeling. The game is about tea growing. Each person has a little man which they move around a grid of tiles. These tiles represent parts of crates in four different colours. In your turn you move your man to a tile, take it, and then optionally "ship" a number of crates. To ship crates you must play (and then discard) a set of tiles which form complete crates. Doing this scores points and sets you up for further points in future turns. The future points come from crates on ships on the main board, which sit around in the harbour until displaced by other ships. The longer the crates have been sitting around, the less - on average - they will be worth as time goes on. Well, none of us were hugely impressed with this one. Options were limited and decisions seemed obvious. Teh game seemed overproduced for what it was too. Part 2 to follow soon.....      Comment by Andy   29-Oct-2007 Well as I am not going to write a report, I’ll add some comments … Brass What can I add – nice game & free frog with every purchase!! 1001 Karawane Wasn’t taken by this, as Paul says, minimal strategy, lightweight and luck driven with a memory element. A good game for younger folks though. Tribune I liked it and was glad that Oggie bought a copy. Paul told me about the 5 player game not going so well but I recalled the demo guy saying something to the effect that the rules were a bit different for 5 players (our demo game was with 4). I hope that I am right about this otherwise best played with 4 by the sounds of it. There is also an English language edition due out in a few weeks time apparently. Burg Appenzell We only tried this because the Geek comments said that there were strategy elements for adults. Sadly, and unless we missed something, then this did not seem to be the case – cute mice though! Seiao I don’t want to be too harsh on this game because it was an interesting idea. Basically you had the Japanese alphabet superimposed upon a vague Civilization type theme. Unless you are really into the language, then it’s more likely to frustrate as you try to match the squiggles. Darjeeling This was an OK game, with a bit of strategy. The main reason to mention is that it should be noted that the three British tea drinkers beat the two American coffee drinkers. Goes to show that the Boston Tea Party was a big historical mistake :).   Essen Purchases 2007 22-Oct-2007   Andy Another Essen has come and gone and this is what I came back with: Moai Hamburgum Portabello Market Notre Dame Mordred Brass Funkenschlag + expansion cards Caylus Magna Carta Ticket to Ride - Switzerland Tiket to Ride - Computer Game and 2 card games for 1 euro each : Yoyo and Porca Miseria Gaming hightlights of the week, #5 13-Jul-2007   Paul I've been meaning to put this up for a few weeks now. Better late than never. This highlight involves Pickomino. That's the game that you'll regularly see Brits bringing a dozen copies of back from Essen for friends. £20 to buy in England of 7 Euros in in Germany. Not really a hard choice. Anyway, back to the point. If you've never played, here's a very brief summary. It's a push your luck dice game. You roll eight dice, some of which will be saved and others rerolled. You may save all of the dice showing a particular number, but only if you haven't already saved that number. All dice not saved so far are rerolled. Any time you save some dice, you can stop. You're aiming to total a high enough number to take a scoring tile. There are also a couple of particularly pertinent rules. First, these aren't quite normal dice. They're almost normal d6, but instead of having a 6 on one face, the dice sport a worm symbol instead. These count as fives for scoring purposes. Second, if you don't save any worm symbols before you run out of dice to roll, you bust. And finally, if you can't save any dice, you also bust. So there we were, stuck in a pub waiting for the rain to stop. Oh, the humanity of it! And as you've no doubt gathered, we were playing Pickomino. Boog to roll. He gets ... five worms among the eight dice. Five worms! Cue a big grin on his face, and rude words from everybody else. Twenty five points already, and he has his worms. Obviously, he saves the five worms and rolls the other three dice. And gets .. three more worms! Bust! Cue rude words from Boog and big grins from everybody else. Huge grins. In fact, cue victory dance from everyone else.      Comment by Boog   18-Jul-2007 I still can't get over the injustice of it! I rolled FIVE worms. Then I rolled THREE worms. What are the odds? To add salt to the wound I had a tile at that point and had to give it back. Pah - stupid game.   Chess 11-Jul-2007   Andy I played a lot of chess when I was young, starting at the age of 7 with friends at local chess clubs though to when I left secondary school having played regularly for all three of the schools chess teams one of which I captained for 2 years. I wasn't the best chess player in the school by far as we were lucky enough to have a number of very strong players who helped the school be top dog in the local school league at that time. Anyway a recent game of Bilabong made me realize what an influence chess has had on my play style and even to some extent preference for games as a boardgamer. Bilabong itself has a couple of similarities with chess in terms of the board (i.e. a grid - although larger than 8x8 and with a no-go area in the middle), and the piece movement (i.e. Queen like movement, except you're jumping over pieces). But the main difference is really the thought process of figuring out your moves as you negotiate your kangaroos around the board. Basically nine years of training as a chess player has equipped me to win more than an average number of games of Billabong and it’s interesting to note that the other person who has won a number of Billabong games was also a chess player in his youth. There are a couple of other games we like to play which I believe share this trait - Ricochet Robot for example and possibly even Robo-Rally, both of which I tend to do well at. Anyway it's just interesting to me that something I enjoyed when I was young is still influencing my life today. Too dumb to game 04-Jul-2007   Paul I've never been accused of being an idiot by a designer before. Though I suspect that would rapidly change if they saw the way I murder some of their games. But now that's all changed. A few years ago, Andy was given a game for Christmas. It's not really important which so I'll keep the name anonymous, even if it does spoil my punchline a little. So we made a space among the turkey and trimmings, cracked it open and gave it a go. Being Christmas, we'd had a beer or two. Perhaps more. So it's likely that we got even more rules wrong than we usually do. But the basic gist was a roll and move game. We weren't enthralled by it. This was back in the days before the birth of The Piddinghoe Gamers website, and we were still putting session reports on Boardgame Geek. So of course I popped a session report up for this game. We'd added a whole bunch of reports between us. Some positive, some negative, and most of them likely riddled with rule errors. Either Knizia wasn't reading them, or he didn't really mind. But out of the blue I got an email from the chap who designed this particular game. He wasn't very happy with the session report. Seems we'd played the game wrong and missed all of the subtleties of his strategy masterpiece. And to be fair I doubt I'd be happy if some fool got the rules to my game completely wrong. And then trumpeted to the world how bad the accidental variant was. So we exchanged a few mails and I posted a summary of his corrections. I noticed this evening that he's now posted up a more extensive summary, which is what I should probably have done. Fair enough. And amongst them he's included his own little report on the gamer - "Doesn't sound like the sharpest stategy brain in action to me!" Cool! I've never had a report on me before. Maybe I should get a badge. Or better still, I could get a t-shirt printed up with "Too stupid to play *** ******" on the front. And "But not stupid enough to play it twice" on the back :-)      Comment by Iain Cheyne   05-Jul-2007 And via the magic of Google: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Doesn't+sound+like+the+sharpest+stategy+brain+in+action+to+me!%22+boardgamegeek :-P        Comment by Andy   05-Jul-2007 Tis bizarre indeed that the author is still defending himself 5 years after the session report. Anyway - would someone like my copy, free!!! just pay postage .... ?        Comment by Andy   06-Jul-2007 p.s. I told you that you should have had it out with him at Essen last year despite walking past the games stand several times. Sharpened meeples at dawn I say!   Expo 2007 18-Jun-2007   Paul "Who fancies a weekend in Birminham?". We waited for the punchline. "There'll be games. And beer!" And so we decided to visit the UK Games Expo. And some pubs. None of us fancied the journey from the south coast to Brum during the Friday night rush hour(s). We weren't too keen on rising at the crack of dawn to get up on Saturday morning either. So up we popped on Friday afternoon. No gaming to be had that day of course, but we were a stroll away from the centre of Birmingham. Which has pubs. So we drank beer and played Perudo. We were an even shorter stroll away from the Expo, which was very handy on Saturday morning. We'd been discussing where to set our expectations, and the general consensus was that we expected enough to keep us busy for a couple of hours. Tel, ever the optimist, was fervently wishing for a gaming wonderland that would keep him occupied all weekend. We were keen to see who was right. The Expo had a small queue outside, and signs that there was no more parking. A promising start then. Entertainment was provided outside in the form of people dressed up in their finest Star Wars gear. Darth Vader was suitably tall, but appeared to have taken a liking for pies since his last movie appearance. One of the Boba Fett's was obviously having the time of his life, randomly haranguing small children. And making Oggie's day by accusing him of having a Jedi beard. Entrance was handled efficiently and we were inside after a couple of minutes. We headed straight into the boardgaming section. Judging by the size of the first room, our two hour estimate was looking optimistic. A few stalls around the outside selling various stuff and tables in the middle set up to demo miniatures. On further reflection many of the stalls around the outside were selling miniatures, RPGs and demoing PC games. Two hours was looking extremely optimistic. Fortunately the board game stuff was actually scattered across a number of rooms. Fortunately we had handfuls of items to mark our passage through the maze of twisty passages. The next room was more promising, looking more like a miniature version of the small publishers halls in Essen. Warfrog were there with a demo version of Brass and Mordred. I’d heard good early mutterings about Brass and was interested to find out more. Sadly I got distracted with other things every time I went near the stall so I’m still none the wiser. I did note a large stack of tiles next to the board though, so I can confidently state that it’s a boardgame with some tiles. JKLM had Phoenicia set up next door, minus a few bits. We spotted Sebastian Bleasdale, designer of last years random component fest, On The Undergroup, and thought to tease him about quality control again. We'd had a fine old time at Essen doing exactly that. He's obviously learning as he refused to meet our eyes. Further along the room, the Ragnar Brothers were doling out upgrades to Canal Mania for purchasers of the first edition. Copies of the second edition were piled up for sale, and copies of the French edition of Viking Fury were being knocked out cheaply. A poster advertising their forthcoming game – Monastery? - adorned one wall. One of the brothers noticed us having a gander and filled us in on the broad details. It’s going to be a tile game where you score by collecting letters of a Latin phrase. Sounds odd. Hopefully good odd, but we won’t know for a few months yet. Their artist broke his hand; obviously a bit of a drawback, this has delayed release by a few months. Look to the end of the year for this one. One of the more noticeable items in the room was an enormous, 3D, Settlers of Catan. Oggie seemed fascinated by this. Apparently the players weren’t very fast. Perhaps he found some kindred spirits. Outside the main room, part of the hallway had been called into action for additional table space. A couple of smaller companies were set out here. Surprised Stare was showing a prototype of their forthcoming Essen game, Scandaroon. Somebody tried to encourage me to play, singing its praises. I figured him as part of the demo team, and besides they didn’t have room for all of us to join. I did get a short explanation though, and it appeared to be a trick taking game with special powers. Probably worth a look at in October. Across the hall and into another room, we found the bring and buy table and a few more retailers. That, we assumed, was that until we wandered up the main staircase to see if anything was up there. Indeed there was. The top floor had another couple of rooms. One looked like the tournament room so we ignored that. The other had a café and a scattering of even smaller publishers than those showing their wares downstairs. For those wondering, our couple of hours estimate turned out to be about on the nose. We were done by about half noon. I’m sure others stayed longer. There were a number of tables set up for people to play demos, and unlike Essen they weren’t all filled 10 minutes after opening. Most people seemed happy enough just poking about and browsing though. All in all, a good effort first time round. Whether it was worth the distance we traveled is debatable, but the time we were there was enjoyable enough. It was a good opportunity to catch up with various UK gamers that we usually see just once per year too. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next year. So half noon and we were done. But fortunately the hotel had some big tables, and we had a copy of Canal Mania. And we were near the centre of Birmingham, which has pubs.      Comment by Geoff   22-Jun-2007 I feel you are doing them something of a dis-service with regard to "only 2 hours of entertainment". What they actually managed to achieve was somthing on their first try which was about 25 times bigger than the first ever Essen. What they now have to do is build on that. They need to expand their core base, so it's no use inviting you lot as you will probably go anyway, or me, or Wallace, but what they DO need to do is send out 20,000 free tickets for all the kids in Birmingham. Obviously, should there be a 10-15% take up of their offer the kids will come....with paying parents. if 20% of those kids become involved in the hobby then thats a good thing. Next year do the same. Eventually you will end up with an Essen. Once the ground has been broken and the rush starts you will need both hands to hang on. I too was very skeptical with regard to the show, however, I was made to eat my words by the fantastic results I believe the organisers acheived. I can only hope that it didn't cost them too much money.        Comment by Andy   22-Jun-2007 Hi Geoff, I think as a group, and having visited Essen for the last few years that we are somewhat spoilt. Personally, I agree 1000% that there was far more than 2 hours worth there it's just that the bits that drew us to the show as a group lasted 2-3 hours. If you take into account the competitions - which there were plenty (and none of us entered) and the minature wargaming stands (which we are not into) and probabally a dozen other things that I've missed then there was at least a day's worth there.        Comment by Iain Cheyne   02-Jul-2007 That was a really nice write-up. I hope I can make it next year. I am sure the organisers will improve the convention with their experience.        Comment by Paul   04-Jul-2007 Thanks for the comments guys. Cor, we have readers! What I'd like to see more of next year is tables to play the new boardgames. They were a bit thin on the ground this year. And that's not meant as a criticism of the organisers. It's just a comment on the state of the British gaming industry at the moment. You can't supply what doesn't exist. I noticed here that this is exactly what they're hoping to achieve next year. Here's hoping they manage. It's a very encouraging start so far. If they can keep the momentum going, and encourage the industry to grow, they'll make a lot of gamers very happy.   Who's turn is it? 01-Apr-2007   Paul I've just found a cartoon generator, and thought I'd have a play with it. Fortunately it has a lot of pre-drawn characters and so forth, which avoids me needing to use my "considerable" artistic talent. That just leaves the small matter of words. So I thought I'd cheat, and draw on this for inspiration. Breaking ties 23-Mar-2007   Paul We had a very close game of Industria this week. I'd held a small lead for much of the game, and everyone else had concluded that victory would be a formality. I wasn't so sure. As it turned out, I did win, but only by a single point. In fact, had Boog had another coin at the end, it would have been a tie. So out of interest I thought I'd have a look to see what the tie break condition would have been. Ties are broken in favour of most tiles played, which I think would have been Boog. Second tie break was most cash, which Boog would definitely have taken. I remembered coming out on the losing side of both of the last tie breaks I'd been involved in - Fowl Play and Keythedral. To add insult to injury, the latter was after informing everyone before starting that we didn't need to worry about ties as we'd not seen one in the game so far. So I got to wondering what my record on tie breaks was. It turns out I didn't have to go too far back to find the last time I'd won on a tie. Only as far as the previous tie in fact, which was in September, in a game of Mykerinos. Looking further back though, that, was an oasis of victory in a desert of losses as I'd lost the previous six tie breaks. Shear Panic after Andy unwittingly turned into a last round Kingmaker. Aladdins Dragon when I made the wrong choice of tiles to take, causing a tie. Our first play of Pompeji, in Essen, when Oggie got all of the omen cards and sacrificed too many of my people to the volcano. Star Fighter, as part of a five way tie. Goa, where Tel had just a bit too much cash at the end. And Industria, back in 2004, due to not building enough tiles. So, that makes it only one win from the last nine tie breaks. A little unlucky, though not particularly significant statistically. And I did win the two tie breaks before that, so it all comes out in the wash eventually. I'm still not particularly keen on them though. They often seem quite arbitrary, so it's quite unsatisfying to have an hour or so's gaming decided on what could just as well be the toss of a coin. While I was at it, I checked the records for the rest of the group. Given the luck warping fields which surround Oggie and Tel, it would have been no surprise to see one of those two coming out ahead. That's not, however, the way it's worked out so far. Here are the tie break records for the group so far - Andy - won 3/5 (60%), longest losing streak 1 Boog - won 2/2 (100%) Paul - won 3/11 (27%), longest losing streak 6 Oggie - won 1/5 (20%), longest losing streak 4 Steve, won 5/6 (83%), longest losing streak 1 Tel - won 7/17 (41%), longest losing streak 5 Board games for the PC 12-Feb-2007   Paul I've recently spent a couple of evenings gaming with Derek Carver's group. They're a good bunch of people, and it's an interesting change of pace to play with a different group. I know the rest of the Piddinghoe Gamers well enough by now to pretty much be able to guage their response to my moves, which is to stitch me up as efficiently as possible. And of course, it's my job to do exactly the same to them. While Derek's group seem to enjoy the art of the stitch up too, I don't know that they'll do it to me - I just strongly expect that they will. Which changes the gameplay enough to keep me on my toes for reasons other than the norm. One of the other members of the group is George Crawshay, who's name will also be known to many of you. I first came across his name a few years ago, when I found a version of Breaking Away on the Fiendish Board Games site which he'd coded up in QBasic . Soon after that his name cropped up again in a copy of Counter. This was in a letter which mentioned that he'd converted a number of other games to the PC, but that they were no longer easily available. Intrigued, I managed to hunt a number of them down via the Wayback Machine, on what I think must have been an old version of his website. Again, they were in QBasic, but undaunted I downloaded a copy of a QBasic compiler and kept myself occupied for a few evenings compiling and playing the games. However, it's no longer necessary to hunt through the dark corners of the Internet to get your hands on them. The good news is that George now has a new web site, from which his games are again available for download. He's even compiled all of them - with the exception of McMulti - so all you need to do is download them and play. The address is http://www.george.crawshay.com. There is just one small thing to be aware of, and that is that you should use the option to download as zip files, not as EXEs. The latter option gives a missing file error. It's well worth taking a look. George has done a good job with these, especially with the AI on a number of the games. You won't find anything released in the last couple of years here, but fans of Sid Sackson games will be very satisfied. Thought I'd give this one a go 01-Feb-2007   Boog Since Paul followed on Tel's "games that made him the gamer he is", I thought I'd give it a stab. I followed the same idea, using Tel's tag lines and trying to work out what applied for me personally. Perhaps unsurprisingly several of mine cross over with both Pauls and Tels. Ah well, here they are. 10 The first game that really got me hooked and responsible in no small way for me wanting to play board games in later life. I didn't really start playing board games until I got to University. Of course there were always the outings with Snakes and Ladders, Ludo and (god help us) Monopoly (involving all the Christmas family arguments about what the rules were and all the rest). Once I got there I got exposed mostly to games sold by Games Workshop, who in those days still sold games they didn't produce themselves. So I got exposed to Risk and Civilisation and Fury of Dracula. The one that *really* did it for me though was Talisman. Me and my mates were mad for that game back then. To the extent that I had the original plus all 4 expansions for it. I even went to the point of buying a load of the lead figurines Games Workshop produced for the game. It'd probably all be worth money if I hadn't thrown away all the expansion boxes (took up too much space) and inexpertly "painted" half the figures in garish colours. Probably not a game I'd get anything out of these days, but I have rose-coloured memories of it. 9 The first german style game I ever bought. I don't have all that many, and most of them are card games. I couldn't tell you what the first one of those might have been, but I know the first proper "board" game I asked for, which was Vinci. Despite only having managed to win it once, it still features as one of my favourites. The variability provided by the different civilisations lends it a lot of replayability for me. Of course the fact that *my* copy has never been opened is not the point... 8 Tap card to be hooked on games for life - my gaming would be much more sporadic without this. Aaargh. I could have killed Paul when he started us all off on Magic. Actually I totally bought into it at the time (and bought and bought and bought), but once I finally managed to kick the habit I could have killed him! I still haven't managed to summon the will power to set fire to the cards though - soo much money spent on them, and I kicked the habit long before the others and spent less while addicted! 7 So you can play 1 game all day without getting bored. Paul suggested Civilisation for this. That would only work for me if you skipped the last 3 words. You can certainly play it all day (and all night as well), I usually lost interest after 4 or 5 hours. I'm not sure I can think of a game I could play all day without getting bored that doesn't involve being an undead priest, but Brittania might fit the bill. We used to play over two evenings (and on the most recent game those two evenings are standing at about 5 years apart and increasing!), and I always found it involving. 6 The game that launched my german revolution. Gonna have to agree with Paul on this one. Settlers of Catan was a radical shift in my view of board games. The first time I played it I was astounded that such a game could exist. The mixture of luck and skill mostly the former in my case), cards, dice, a random board and all the rest left me slightly stunned. Not one we play that much any more, but I have fond memories of the Travel Settlers we played on the ferry across to Holland. 5 An early favourite in the genre and partly responsible for my annual pilgrimage to Essen. Since I've only been to Essen the once, I'm not sure I can comment on this one. Early favourites for me would include Vinci, Settlers and Medici, all of which I enjoyed a lot and which expanded my horizons about what board games outside the UK could be like. 4 Proving that in the right circumstances any game can become a favourite. Tel has the right of this. He'd just had some fairly major surgery, and was still on a drip for crying out loud. And we roll out Limits. Don't get me wrong, Limits was always likely to be the sort of game I like. But with Tel pleading with us not to make him laugh in case he pulled a stitch out, that game session is always going to live in my memory. In a similar vein games like Sticheln or 6 Nimmt are favourites in large part due to particularly unforgetable moments. 3 Games can even make commuting enjoyable. Ah so many choices. For a few months Paul Tel and myself were all commuting on the same train. And we arranged to meet at the same carriage (with a table) so we could play games for the hour long commute every day. Needless to say there was a lot of very English sideways staring going on trying to figure out what we were doing, followed by a couple of people introducing themselves and even joining in. We played Mystery Rummy, Al Capone, Lost Cities, Flaschentuefel and San Marco. And probably others. My vote has to go to Flaschentuefel (bottle imp) though. Mostly because it's one of the very rare games that Tel is absolutely hopeless at :) 2 As close to a gaming nirvana currently available. I'm gonna have to go with Power Grid on this one. I'm not sure I've played the same variant more than once, but I've seriously enjoyed every single game of it. It's currently joint top with Puerto Rico (and a couple of card games) as my highest scored game ever. My only gripe with it (and it's a minor one) is that the unpredictability of the really large power stations can be a serious issue if they come out before anyone can afford them. Almost perfect. 1 The next one...or possibly the one after that. Interesting. I'm always up for trying something new, even if it turns out to be pants. You'll never know unless you try. Having said that, it'd take some pretty serious negotiations to get me to play a sequel to Richochet Robot! Who can say what the next big thing will be. I imagine the Piddinghoe game vaults still contain a pile of unplayed games from last year's Essen, so it could be one of those. Or one from this year's Essen. Or even one picked up at random at a jumble sale. Who can say. Gaming highlights of the week, #4 29-Jan-2007   Paul I haven't done one of these for ages, so I thought I'd throw this one in. A bit unfair to Boog on his initial play perhaps, but you have to take your material from wherever you find it. This week we did something unusual, which was to play the same game twice in one week. Okay, it does happen, but usually only for fillers or card games. This time we got Maestro Leonardo into play twice. Now this is where the unfair bit comes in, as Boog had never played the game before whereas most of the rest of us had played a couple of times. One of which being two days earlier. For anyone who hasn't played before, it's important to know that money is VPs. It's also important to know that you start off with 3 cash. You have the option of adding another 5 or 10 to that during the set-up phase. That turns out to be quite handy, as you're likely to have to spend some money in the first turn or so. More money, or VPs, is earned mainly by researching inventions. It's a race to finish research first, as that brings the biggest financial reward. But anyone who finishes an invention will be paid, just not quite as much as the first person. So, enough of the scene setting and onto the game. It all started off normally enough. Tel explained the rules. Steve corrected them. We asked Oggie for bacon sandwiches. He refused. Boog looked a bit confused but generally seemed to have the idea. Paul tried to think of some sneaky rule loophole. All in all, par for the course. We played a couple of rounds. Tel grabbed a couple of inventions. So did Steve. Oggie decided to get in on the act. And then Boog noticed something. Something else which it's important to know is that each invention needs a set of ingredients. These must be tucked under your workshop before you start researching them. It's traditional to pick the ingredients that match the requirements for the invention to be researched. Or at least to pick ingredients which might possibly be used for an invention not yet revealed. Except Boog hadn't. A brick and a rope had somehow translated themselves into a brick and a lump of wood, completely unsuitable for any kind of invention. "Oh dear!" he exclaimed. Now I should note that I'm treading on slightly delicate ground here, having managed to make the same mistake not once but twice so far. So I'm being very careful not to mock. Too much. So onwards and forwards. Realising that the current line of research wasn't bearing fruit, Boog decided to abandon it and start again. Except that he didn't have any ingredients for any of the inventions currently on display. So he set about collecting new ingredients, slightly hampered by the fact that he still only had his original three cash. Being helpful fellows, and noting that Boog had a problem with the inventions on display, we all made a concerted effort to help him by hurriedly researching them all. Usually, completing them just as he gathered the right ingredients, which by a completely mean and unwarranted rule meant he was unable to start researching them. So he set about collecting more. Again hampered by lack of cash. And eventually the game, and the whole sorry episode, came to an end. At which point Boog revealed his score. Zero. Plus nothing for end game bonuses, making a final score of ... still zero. Now, you may remember that he started out with 3. And could have had an extra 10. So in the course of the game, he lost 3 points. Or 13. Whichever way you look at it, the final score was less than he started with. After 90 minutes of play. Passing each turn, and doing nothing, would have been a more lucrative strategy. And I thought I was the only person who discovered such mighty strategies. Still, I have to admit he was a good sport about it. And I suspect he'll try something a little different next time. But for now, his personal best is there for the taking.      Comment by Boog   30-Jan-2007 Pah. Crap game, we should never ever play it again. To be honest I was mostly aiming for a zero score towards the end. I was so far behind I thought it would be funny. I could actually have made one of the things in the last few rounds, but didn't really see much point in it.   Numchucks 29-Jan-2007   Andy I'm glad to say after two months of waiting that I finally have my pre-ordered Nintendo Wii in my now hot sweaty hands. Now some people might be a bit fed-up waiting for two months - especially when the whole distribution of the console proved to be a complete lottery, but I should add that I pre-ordered on the last day of pre-ordering and so naturally I was towards the bottom of the list. It's amazing the way the whole console thing works, people will probably go just as crazy for the PS3 next month as they did for the Wii, but I am just happy to have my Wii at long last - just hope that I don’t put the controller through the TV!      Comment by Andy   30-Jan-2007 It's now Wii arrival+1 and in those 24 hours it has put a big smile upon my face. One of the first things you do is put together a Wii Mii, in other words and Avatar that can be used in some of the games - like Wii Sports (which is bundled with the console). Ironically there are enough choices to get some similarity with ones-self, and that was quite good fun in itself!! So far I have tried all of the Sports games in the Wii Sports pack - tennis, golf, 10 pin bowling, boxing and baseball and a quick go at Rayman Raving Rabbits. All of the sports games are best played standing up and require you to use the remotes to simulate each sport. For example when boxing you hold the remote in one hand and the nunchuck in the other act to act as physical boxing gloves to beat your opponent up with. For RRR, the remotes are used in a variety of sub-games to run, draw and even hurl cows around your head in some bizarre version of the hammer throw from track & field sports. The good news is that this is all pretty energetic, it's a fusion of exercise with computer games and works very well. After three rounds of boxing, I could feel that I had done something physical without getting hurt! One word of caution is that I can see how excessive play could actually cause you to be injured (e.g. pull a muscle), so you need to be wary of what you do with the remotes.        Comment by Boog   30-Jan-2007 Didn't know we were covering computer games here as well! In that case I'd like to bring to the forum my shiny new XBox 360 and an extreme World of Warcraft addiction. I'll post reviews of all three games I currently have on the XBox, and a detailed log of my two year odyssey in Azeroth and more recently the Outlands as soon as I have time. I've got a lot of cameras too, but don't get me started on those ...        Comment by Andy   30-Jan-2007 Works for me ... Cameras? I'd heard about your sort! Wiiiiiii !   Game of the year, 2006 17-Jan-2007   Paul For the last three years, the Piddinghoe Gamers have vote for their game of the year. Past winners have included Amun-Re, Oltremare and Ticket to Ride - Europe. This year, the panel cast their votes for games released in 2006. That's any game. Expansions, re-releases, they all count. The only qualification is that we must have played them. And if a game is to have any chance of winning, most of us need to have played it. We're not particularly interested in fairness, so we don't wait until mid-year to give people a chance to play games released later in the year. We don't need to be fair. Unlike the Spiel des Jahres award, the Piddinghoe Gamers game of the year is unlikely to increase sales by several hundred thousand boxes. Actually, we buy most of our games later in the year anyway, taking advantage of the hugely cheaper prices at Essen, so later games aren't really at much of a disadvantage. So, 2006 is history. The votes are in. And onto the winners. And I'm pleased to announce that the winner this year is Canal Mania, by the Ragnar brothers. In second place, and only losing by the narrowist of margins, is On the Underground from JKLM. Third place, and quite a long way back, is Leonardo da Vinci by daVinci Games. Congratulations to the winners. The awards are in the post. Honest. It is particularly pleasing this year that the top two spots were taken by British designers and British companies. The British games industry has long been in the doldrums so hopefully this is a sign of better things to come. Let's hope.      Comment by    19-Jan-2007 CM is aworthy winner for 2006 with a good theme. I would reccomend it to anyone who is a fan of transport games. On the Underground is also a worthy runner-up and no supprise that the result was close.        Comment by Andy   19-Jan-2007 The above gibberish having been written by me! :D     Next page