Spiel : Boardgames in the UK

Jan and I have just returned from a week’s holiday in Tenerife where we had brilliant weather, a nice hotel offering plenty of activities - Archery, French Boules and others. Two wins at the French Boules - archery is clearly a game of millimetres and I was millimetres the wrong side of the line every time.

Managed to smuggle several games over to the Canaries and back again thankfully, as I got stopped at Customs on the way out as their scanner was showing a large amount of organic matter. Not sure why as I’d only taken LOTR: TCG, Ra: The Dice Game, Cafe International: TCG, Gloria Picktoria, Coloretto, MR: Jack the Ripper, Dominion, Mijnlieff, Archaeology:TCG, Stich Meister, Gold and Keltis: TCG.

Got to play five of them including two four-player games of Coloretto with my Dad and Jan’s stepdad. Even though it took them a while to grasp the rules, Geoffrey (stepdad-in-law) won the first and Rod (Dad) won the second. The good thing was that, after the first game, they both wanted to have another game straight away.

2011 saw me play 200 games of 156 different titles (interestingly, just one fewer than the 157 different titles played in both 2010 and 2009, although the total plays is down a bit compared with 208 in 2010 and 229 in 2009). My full list of games played is here.

My most played game was Lord of the Rings: The Card Game which saw 8 plays. All bar one of these was in May when the game was first released but I played again just yesterday and I’d like to play some more in 2012. I’m still exploring the mono-sphere decks and haven’t yet progressed beyond the first scenario so there’s plenty still to try out, even though I will not be buying any of the expansion packs.

No other game reached 5 plays and only Nefarious saw four plays.  Of the 156 titles, 125 of them were played just once, again due to my focus during the year in getting my unplayed games list down. It started 2011 at 29, dropped all the way to zero in June and is now sitting at 16.

2011 seemed to produce several really good games. My six picks for the year -which I’ll be publishing on my Trickylight site tomorrow- included two meaty gamers’ games (Trajan and Vinhos), a couple of middle-weight titles (London and Pantheon) and two excellent but different fillers (Biblios and King of Tokyo). I’ve also done a six picks of solo and two-player games featuring LOTR: TCG, the surprisingly good Revolver, Famiglia, Gold, Mijnlieff and Zertz (which I got to play for the first time in 2011). All in all, a pretty good year. Let’s hope 2012 is just as good.

It’s too long since I last played Pandemic so I decided to try out a solo game playing two characters. I randomly drew the Scientist and the Operations Expert, which seemed like a good combination. And sure enough, using the Scientist’s ability to discover a cure with four cards of the same colour (rather than five), we soon cured the yellow disease and the black one. The spread of black was fairly well contained so we managed to eradicate it completely, which was quite a good move. Having also, by that time, cured the red disease, it was looking really good for us.

I decided that now was the time to ignore they spread of the yellow disease and go all out for that final cure. We’d only suffered four outbreaks up to that time so it seemed like an easy ride to victory and sure enough, my Scientist collected the four blue cards necessary and the Operations Expert joined him in London and built a research station ready for the cure to be discovered on the next turn. However, disaster struck, an outbreak of the yellow disease in Lagos triggered a chain reaction of three further outbreaks and the world was doomed. So close and yet so far but an excellent tense finish. I really, really like Pandemic and have upped my rating to a 9. We need to get it played again on a club night.

Four new games arrived on Christmas Day: Paris Connection was a gift from my Mum and Dad; Santiago de Cuba was from Jan; while my Boardgamegeek Secret Santa surprised me with two games - Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer and Barons. Good stuff.

We’ve already tried Paris Connection and Ascension both of which were very good. We also got to play Top & Down (which was a bit trickier than expected for one of Schmidt’s Easyplay line of games) and Braggart (which was really good take-that fun).

This is a test post. Please ignore.

Our very own Pete Darby has decided to dip his toe in the water and start a new gaming blog. Entitled A Game of Life, Pete reckons that it is :

“partly to waffle on generally about games and life, and with one eye on getting material together to engage with and teach “muggles” about the hobby of gaming. A lot of it may look like going over old ground, or teaching you to suck eggs, but it’s with a view to talking to people who never sucked eggs, and if they did, it was a long time ago and the eggs were rotten. Wait, that metaphor ended somewhere stinky.”

Best of luck, Pete, and I’m looking forward to what you’ve got to say - complimentary comments about game club organisation will be gratefully accepted.

Summoner Wars Master Set
Card game for 2 players, ages 9+
Playing time approximately 30 minutes.
Published by Plaid Hat Games, designed by Colby Dauch

Summoner Wars: Goodwin’s Blade
Card game expansion for 2 players, ages 9+
Playing time approximately 30 minutes.
Published by Plaid Hat Games, designed by Colby Dauch

Summoner Wars: Hawk’s Strike
Card game expansion for 2 players, ages 9+
Playing time approximately 30 minutes.
Published by Plaid Hat Games, designed by Colby Dauch

The Hills Of Emyn Mul Adventure Pack
Lords of the Rings LCG expansion for 1-2 players, ages 13+
Playing time approximately 60 minutes.
Published by Fantasy Flight, designed by Nate French

Sentinels of the Multiverse
Boardgame for 2-5 players, ages 8+
Playing time approximately 60 minutes.
Published by Greater Than Games, designed by Christopher Badell & Paul Bender

Arcana (revised edition)
Card game for 2-4 players, ages 13+
Playing time approximately 60 minutes.
Published by Fantasy Flight, designed by Damien Desnous

Food Fight
Card game for 2-6 players, ages 13+
Playing time approximately 30 minutes.
Published by Cryptozoic Entertainment, designed by Matt Hyra

Fresco: The Scrolls
Boardgame expansion for 2-4 players, ages 10+
Playing time approximately 45 minutes.
Published by Queen Games, designed by Wolfgang Panning, Marco Ruskowski & Marcel Susselbeck.

Martian Dice
Dice game for 2-99 players, ages 8+
Playing time approximately 10 minutes.
Published by Tasty Minstrel Games, designed by Scott Almes

Loads of titles this week so this list has abbreviated details compared to normal:

Blood Bowl Team Manager - The Card Game
Card drafting game for 2-4 players, ages 14+, from Fantasy Flight Games.

Star Trek: Fleet Captains
For 2-4 players ages 14+, from Wizkids/NECA

Confusion: Espionage and Deception in the Cold War
Board game for 2 players, ages 12+, from Stronghold Games.

Deadwood
Board game for 2-5 players, ages 13+. Published by Dust Games/Fantasy Flight

The Walking Dead: The Board Game
Board game for 1-6 players, ages 13+, from Z-Man Games

The Climbers
2-5 players, age 8 to adult, from Strategic Space.

Survive: 5-6 Player Mini Expansion
Expansion for Survive—Escape from Atlantis, from Stronghold Games.

Claustrophobia: De Profundis
Expansion for Clautrophobia, from Asmodee

Eye for an Eye
For 5-21 players, ages 12+, from MJ Games.

Galapa Go!
For 2-6 players, ages 6+, from MJ Games.

Miam
For 3-5 players, ages 8+, from MJ Games.

Picnic Blitz
For 2-4 players, ages 7+, from MJ Games.

Shashawa
For 4-12 players, ages 5+, from MJ Games.

Shokoba
For 2-4 players, ages 8+, from MJ Games.

Sultans of Karaya
For 5-15 players, ages 12+, from MJ Games.

Insidious Sevens
For 2-5 players, ages 9+, from MJ Games.

Vizia
For 2-4 players, ages 7+, from MJ Games.

Curse of the Jade Emperor Asylum Pack
Expansion for Call of Cthulhu Living Card Game, published by Fantasy Flight Games.

Here To Serve Chapter Pack
Game of Thrones Living Card Game expansion, from Fantasy Flight Games

The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus
Boardgame for 2-6 players, ages 13+
Playing time approximately 45 minutes.
Published by Fantasy Flight, designed by Guillaume Blossier & Frederic Henry

Star Fluxx
Card game for 2-6 players, ages 8+
Playing time approximately 15 minutes.
Published by Looney Labs, designed by Andrew Looney

Timeline: Inventions
Card game for 2-8 players, ages 8+
Playing time approximately 15 minutes.
Published by Asmodee, designed by Frederic Henry

Grave Business
Boardgame for 2-4 players, ages 13+
Playing time approximately 45 minutes.
Published by Minion Games, designed by Andy van Zandt

The result of this year’s voting for the other German game award has just been announced. And 7 Wonders picks up another win after its Kennerspiel des Jahres victory. Here is the list of the top ten:

1. 7 Wonders, by Antoine Bauza (Repos Production)
2. Die Burgen von Burgund, by Stefan Feld (alea)
3. Troyes, by Sébastien Dujardin, Xavier Georges and Alain Orban (Pearl Games)
4. Navegador, by Mac Gerdts (PD-Verlag)
5. Asara, by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling (Ravensburger)
6. Mondo, by Michael Schacht (Pegasus Spiele)
7. Pantheon, by Michael Tummelhofer (Hans im Glück)
8. Lancaster, by Matthias Cramer (Queen Games)
9. Luna, by Stefan Feld (H@ll Games)
10. Strasbourg, by Stefan Feld (Pegasus Spiele)