Ok I admit it, I am a huge sucker for animal/zoo themed games. As a kid I wanted to grow up and be a zookeeper, that was before I figured out I’d have to clean a lot of cages. Still, I couldn’t resist this game. The previous game in this family, String Railway was a charming take on rail games. What would String Savanna bring?
First of all, a nice compact box, the same size as the 2nd ed of String Railway.
Inside, plastic chips, tiles, wooden cubes and of course, string!
[Editor's note - my apologies to the readers and writers... this post was meant to go live on Monday, the day prior to the SdJ lists being announced, but somehow I mis-dated the post and didn't notice until this morning.... It is somewhat less timely now that the real lists are out, but I still think it's an interesting read! DPY]
OK, so it’s that time of year again where rampant speculation about the Spiel des Jahres list takes over my imagination. The real list is set to be announced on Tuesday, May 21 – but in advance of that, I thought that I’d try to take a guess at which games will make the list. Some of the other OG writers may also chime in between now and Tuesday…
For my short list, I will limit myself to 5 games. I’m hoping to get 3 of the games right… There is usually one game each year that makes the list that I didn’t even know existed – mostly because I’m never quite sure what is available in the German mass market or I haven’t had a chance to play it myself.
Short Version (in alphabetical order): Augustus, Escape, La Boca, Rondo, QIN
Longer Version…
Design by: Reiner Knizia
Published by: R&R Games
2 – 4 Players, 30 – 45 minutes
Review by: Greg J. Schloesser
I regularly harangue designers and publishers for using tired and over-done themes. Dragons, orcs, medieval villages, constructing towers, castles and/ or cities … they have all been used over-and-over again. While the underlying games may well be quite good, the worn-out themes present an initial obstacle to my enthusiasm and enjoyment. I understand certain themes are very popular, but I just wish an effort would be made to utilize original or seldom used topics.
How about this for a theme: traveling circuses crisscross the countryside enchanting villages with fantastic feats, amazing stories and boisterous songs. Financial backers stand to reap huge profits, but a missed date or botched performance can send their bottom line spiraling downward. Backing the best shows and dumping those that seem destined for failure requires keen discernment and flawless timing. Now that is an original theme!
Welcome to Spectaculum, one of the recent designs from Reiner Knizia and published by R&R Games. An attempt is made to bring the world of traveling circuses to life via cards depicting a variety of whimsical characters, including the beardless dwarf, fearful flea-tamer, shy jester, conjuring serpent and far-sighted fortune teller. Unfortunately, these delightful characters have absolutely nothing to do with the game. Rather, the theme is about as thinly pasted as possible, which is a major disappointment. There is no disguising that Spectaculum is unmistakably an abstract design.
With the enormous popularity of Love Letter, I think it’s a fine time to explore what I’ll call the Minimalist Movement from Japan. Apparently the tradition at the Japanese Game Market is to try and design a small game with simple rules and minimal components. It has produced some really interesting and diverse games. I have been impressed with the fresh twists in games from many of the Japanese designers. Of course the biggest reason I like these small games is because I don’t have very much room let for new games! First I’ll mention a few older games of interest, then on to cult of the new! I am hoping that interest generated in the new games will result in some reprints of these games.
R from 2012 is similar to Love Letter, it’s by the same designer, Seiji Kanai but it’s only for 2 players. 
The game consists of 8 cards. Each player has identical hands and they play cards simultaneously. Like Love Letter, each card has a strength and a special power. These determine the winner of that round. The first to win 4 rounds is the game victor.
From 2010 RR and RRR (which came as relative “big” 
box game) on the other hand have no bluffing elements.
RR and RRR hold relatively few components and a simple premise but pack a fairly interesting game for two. RR and RRR have open information and no luck involved in the game play. I first visited this here, RRR and R for Review.
RR consists of only 15 cards played on a 3×3 grid. Players have identical hands of 7 cards and take turns playing cards. The cards have special abilities affecting the cards around them. the goal is to end the game with the most cards facing your direction.
The 138 Games series closes out the 1990s today after spending 6 weeks presenting the 30 games from the decade that you absolutely must try. But we’re not done yet. We’ve still got 56 games to cover from the 2000s, with a few surprising twists and turns in there that you very likely will not expect.
- Samurai -
Andrea “Liga” Ligabue: Probably my favorite Knizia game along with Medici. Samurai is a simple game of claiming territory. In a hex-gridded Japan, players are placing tiles 
(distinguished by their strength) to gain control of three different resources: rice paddies, Buddhas, and high hats. A resource is taken when the land spaces around it are all occupied and the player with the highest strength gets the resource.
All the players have the same set of tiles but not at the same times and no one knows what other players actually have in hand. There are also a few special tiles, plus ships that can be played on sea spaces. A simple mechanism but a great game. I have played Samurai countless times, with two, three, and four players. I prefer it with two or three, since there is less control with four.
I still play Samurai since it is one of the real evergreens and I consider it one of the best expressions of Knizia’s design skill.
OK, it’s that time of year again… for Spiel des Jahres speculation! The announcement of the nominated and recommended games is just around the corner. Well, actually, it’s tomorrow, so that doesn’t give us a lot of time to get our act together. In the two years that we’ve been around, the Opinionated Gamers have tried to predict which game will win the award. We will again try to prognosticate, and in true OG fashion, we will use a different format than the year before!
This year, I simply asked the writers to give me their three choices for Spiel des Jahres (in rank order). These votes were weighted: 5 points for first choice, 3 points for second choice and 1 point for third choice. I figured that we could generate an early list of games we thought could win the award, and we could take the top 5 from this list as our group choice for the nominated games.
Of course, there are all sorts of pitfalls to this methodology. First, and foremost, we’re not SdJ jury members, and we have proven that we can be wide of the mark at times :). Second, since only one of us actually lives in Germany, we’re generally not quite sure what is really available on the store shelves. Third, while we’re going to compile a top 5 list for the nominated games – the question that I posed: “Which game(s) do you think will win the SdJ” most definitely has a different answer than: “Which game(s) do you think will be nominated for SdJ”.
Nevertheless, we’ve polled the writers, and 16 were brave enough to record their votes… After much number crunching, the Opinionated Gamers predict that…
By: Greg J. Schloesser
I have had the great pleasure of writing reviews and articles for Counter magazine for 14 years. In my admittedly biased opinion, I believe Counter to be the finest journal in the boardgaming hobby. The articles, reviews and commentary are all top-notch, in-depth and insightful. It is difficult to find such consistent quality material in one place (outside of the OG site, of course!)
After 15 years at the helm, Alan How and Stuart Dagger have decided to retire from the managerial and editor duties. Ben Baldanza and I have taken over these tasks and our first issue at the helm should be arriving in subscribers’ hands within the next few weeks. To quote the Grateful Dead, “What a long, strange trip it has been.”
The amount of groundwork that had to be done was staggering. Subscriptions were not accepted beyond Issue #61 (Stuart and Alan’s final issue at the helm), so we immediately had to undertake efforts to encourage current subscribers to re-subscribe. Sadly, since Counter is a print magazine, there was no database of email addresses for the subscribers. We were able to place notices in the last two issues, but knew that we should also try to contact the subscribers individually. So, I spent weeks scouring the BoardGameGeek database, hoping to find email addresses whereby to contact both current and previous subscribers. This seems to have worked, as subscriptions did increase dramatically. We also launched various campaigns to make the gaming hobby-at-large aware of Counter and hopefully prompt folks to consider subscribing.
Dear Gamers, here again after a long silence to continue my series of interviews. Please, write me if you are interested in some particular designer or, if you are a designer interested in being interviewed. In the meanwhile I have read several books about design and game design and so in the next interviews I’ll be much more demanding.
After the last interview of Rudiger Dorn, I’m continuing with “German” designers but I’m also getting close to starting with someone else with a r
eal different approach and point-of-view. Bernd’s preferred title is Rudiger Dorn’s Goa, and that is something that can help us to have an idea of Bernd’s designing style.
Bernd is a designer that, with his own label Irongames, floats in the vast area of small-publishers, living between self-publishing and real publishers, that thanks to Kickstarter are growing in number and capacity. In the first part of interview Bernd says “I’m more a gamer than a designer,” something I really like. Since designing games is about making players get a good experience, those who are able to play a lot can really have more shots in his gun. Concerning the core question he says “[I] think you need a good balance of Art and Craftsmanship” and then “You need a minimum of Art to design games, otherwise you would almost copy existing games. But you also need a lot of Craftsmanship.” Asked about language independency in games he told me: “I wanna read, I take a book, not a board game,” a nice answer!
Here is the full interview:
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This week the 138 Games series rolls on through the late 1990s with a handful of more obscure games. In contrast to last week’s Medici, Settlers, and Bohnanza, this week we’ve got five games for you that you may not have played and, in some cases, may not have heard about before. Remarkably, this entry in the series includes a Friedemann Friese that is not Power Grid, a Klaus Teuber game that is not Settlers, and an Urs Hostettler card game that is not Tichu.
- Frisch Fisch -
Joe Huber: One frequent goal, in designing a game, is to find a very simple set of rules that at the same time makes the game simple to learn, but with sufficient depth and choice that the game itself is very deep. Go is a classic example of this, as for that matter is Bridge. Frisch Fisch is not.
Oh, there is an absolutely brilliant rule – the expropriation rule, which very simply states that (1) every undeveloped space, every source, and every outlet must have road access, and (2) all the roads must be part of the same network. To have reduced the complexity that this leads to into such a simple rule is simply brilliant. F
riedemann Friese has done a lot of impressive game design, but fifteen years after the release of Frisch Fisch this still remains the pinnacle, in my mind.
So if it’s so brilliant, why doesn’t it qualify? Very simply, because visualizing the consequences of the expropriation rule is something that stumps many, or most, gamers. I would recommend that everyone try the game – but I’d also recommend playing with someone who knows the game well, as this visualization seems to stump some very experienced and very intelligent gamers in my experience. And without the expropriation being done correctly – the game doesn’t work. But when it is carried out correctly, the game is unique and incredibly enjoyable. And, due to various randomness that adds variability without detracting from skillful play, one game of Frisch Fisch is nothing like the next one.
OG Roundtable: Legends of Andor
Legends of Andor was nominated for the 2013 Kennerspiel des Jahres earlier this week and unsurprisingly The Opinionated Gamers have some opinions about the selection. What follows is a roundtable discussion on the game and its recent nomination.
* * *
Jeff Allers: Legends of Andor was–and is–my favorite for Kennerspiel des Jahres. The Jury uses the word “innovative” when describing it–alwa
ys a good sign.
Larry Levy: Do you think Andor truly is innovative, or is this more a reflection of the lower exposure co-ops have had in Germany?
Jonathan Franklin: The innovative part is also the part that might be most appealing to Germans.
Building a disincentive to killing extra monsters into the core of the game is quite innovative. It forces you to ask if you truly need to do it, even if you want to.
Jeff Allers: The Jury writes that its “quick-start rules” are innovative, in that the rules of the game are slowly revealed over the course of the game, only when they are needed. They also called it “a game that plays like reading a novel.” Unfortunately, I only know what I’ve read about it, so I can’t make a judgement myself. But it seems to be getting quite a bit of buzz here in Germany. My impression is that it’s a co-op that adds some fantasy role-playing flavor and 1001 Arabian Nights-style storytelling. I don’t think its because Germans don’t have as much exposure to co-op games, as Pandamic was an SdJ nominee several years ago (and the jury recognized co-ops before co-ops were cool: think “Der Sauerbaum”). Have any of you played Legends of Andor?
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