138 Games: From Taj Mahal to ZERTZ

Posted on June 5, 2013 by

Today the 138 Games series finishes out the year 2000 with five more games from that year that you’ve just got to try.  We have two more Knizia games for you this time, but only one more to go for the rest of the series.  Rounding out today’s five recommended games are a Schacht classic, a Burm abstract, and another Joe Huber obscure special.  Make sure to check these games out and then check back next week for the games from 2001 that you simply must play.

- Taj Mahal -

Rick Thornquist:  Here’s an indication of how good I think Taj Mahal is: it’s my favorite game.  Why is it my favorite game, you ask?  Well, there’s tons of strategy, almost no luck, lots of player interaction, almost no downtime, and with the card draw and sequence of provinces changing every game it’s always a new challenge.  What more could you want?  My favorite thing is that after almost every game I see a strategy that I hadn’t seen before – that always keeps me coming back.  I played it again just a few days ago and though it’s my zillionth play of the game, I still found it to be awesome.

Nathan Beeler:  Taj Mahal is not my favorite game, but I do love it.  I’ve heard many folks complain that the game comes down to whether or not your opponents decide to fight you over the critical things you need for your plan.  I can understand what they’re saying, and it can be annoying when things don’t come easily.  But in my experience that always seems to happen to everyone at crucial times.  Subsequently, the game becomes entirely about picking your battles.  If you’re paying attention, there’s plenty of warning when a major showdown is going to break out.  Players generally have time to plan for it, or to duck away and fight again later from a position of strength.  To me, this is fun.  Whatever the case, Taj Mahal contains a lot of experiences you can’t get from other games, and must be tried at least once.

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Meeples Choice Awards Process Beginning on Spielfrieks

Posted on June 3, 2013 by

Just wanted to let all the OG readers know that we’re beginning the Meeples Choice Award process on the Spielfrieks user group.  Every year, we select the three games that we think are the best from the previous calendar year and we’ll be doing it again for 2012.  We just posted an initial list of games that we’ll be considering, together with a request for alternate game suggestions.  If you’re interested in joining us, come on over Spielfrieks (
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/spielfrieks/
) and check out the posting.  If you’re not a member of Spielfrieks, you can join us by sending an email to spielfrieks-owner AT yahoogroups DOT com.  Thanks!

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Tom Rosen: The Kramer Exception

Posted on June 3, 2013 by

The Spiel des Jahres has a peculiar knack for honoring great designers for some of their worst games.  This would simply be amusing if it didn’t also have a real world impact on the financial incentives motivating these people’s creative output.  Time and again designers that used to create a broad and varied output of interesting releases are encouraged to focus their limited time and energy on an award-winning success.  Obviously the Spiel des Jahres is aimed at a family audience and seeks to honor relatively simple games, but unfortunately in doing so it appears the award diverts designers’ attention from their more innovative and enduring creations.  Wolfgang Kramer is the exception, but unfortunately the only one.

Lost Cities: The Board Game – Das Kartenspiel

This hypothesis originally struck me in 2008 when Reiner Knizia won his first Spiel des Jahres for Keltis.  It was ridiculous.  The man had designed hundreds of games, many of them exceptional and foundational to the hobby, but was being honored for the board game reimplementation of an old 1999 card game.  I think it was widely viewed as a lifetime achievement award for someone that had contributed so much to the world of board games, but it looked awfully silly being attached to the game Keltis.  It’s an okay game, but is patently unoriginal and derivative, and more importantly mundane and forgettable.  The game added nothing new whatsoever to the world of board games.

Knizia had previously designed such enduring greats as Tigris & Euphrates, Ra, Through the Desert, and Stephensons Rocket.  Sure Tigris is too complicated to ever win the Spiel des Jahres, but there’s no way games like Ra and Through the Desert were.  The first is a premiere pure auction game that quickly sets players on divergent paths, making valuation an engaging and ever-evolving affair.  The second is a masterful take on Go that makes it family friendly, accessible, and colorful in the process.  But he was honored for Keltis and what does that inevitably mean?  Of course we now have such classics as Keltis: Der Weg der Steine, Keltis: Das Orakel, Keltis: Neue Wege, Neue Ziele, Keltis: Das Wurfelspiel and my personal favorite Keltis: Das Kartenspiel.  Seriously, a card game version of a board game version of a card game, how meta.

This would be fine because you can just ignore these cash-in titles, but the side effect that you can’t ignore is that it means Knizia is spending time working on these that could be spent on more interesting and memorable designs.  We know he can do this; he’d already proven it long before the award came along.  Keltis was what made this downside of the Spiel des Jahres readily apparent, but it wasn’t the first time the award honored a great designer for one of his worst designs.

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OG Review: Bora Bora

Posted on May 31, 2013 by

There are quite a number of new Stefan Feld games coming out this year, and I had the chance to play most of them at the Gathering of Friends this April.  Bora Bora is the newest release from alea (a subsidiary of Ravensburger), and it has been recently released by Ravensburger USA for domestic gamers.  If you hadn’t known yet, Ravensburger/Alea is no longer licensing out the US rights to their games – in the past, companies like Rio Grande Games had been helping co-publish/distribute games from Ravensburger and Alea.  At this time, it does not appear that the full German line will be released here in the US, but hopefully the major titles will make their way here.  This year, Las Vegas and Bora Bora are among the bigger titles that Ravensburger USA has had, and I’m still waiting to hear about Just in Time…

But, enough about the company, let’s get to the game — Bora Bora

Designer: Stefan Feld
Ages: 14+
Players: 2-4
Time: 90-120 mins
Publisher: alea / Ravensburger USA
Reviewer: Dale Yu, with review copy provided by Ravensburger USA, 7 plays

Overview

Bora Bora is kind of a worker placement game, except that the “workers” are actually dice and their abilities change every time you roll them.  So – make your own call if this qualifies as WP.  It also has a geographic expansion element, some engine-building, a little resource gathering, and lots of other stuff.  In other words, it’s typical Stefan Feld, with lots of disparate design elements tied together with a central dice mechanic.  Some people have started to give this sort of game a new moniker – the “point salad” genre.  You already probably know if you like that sort of thing or not, but let me give you a few specifics to further clarify the gameplay.

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Review: Dungeon Venture

Posted on May 30, 2013 by

DungeonVenture1Dungeon Venture
Reviewed by Andrea “Liga” Ligabue

Publisher: Stratelibri
Designer: Mario Barbati
Players: 2-5 ages 8 and up
Playing Time: 30 minutes/scenario
Rules Languages: Italian and English (published in this days)

The Dungeon Crawling genre is an inexhaustible vein of titles: the ideal connection between two genres, boardgames and roleplaygames. What really is missing are titles that could be both appealing for adults but also nice to introduce kids. Talisman is a milestone but has not scenarios, campaigns and it is also quite always the same … we need something more.
I was really happy when Stratelibri announced the production of Dungeon Venture, the hard-copy version of the print & play success from 0onegames. First released in Italian and now also available in English. I got the possibility to play it enough to be ready to review.

You stand before velkan the White, the world’s most powerful archmage.“Welcome, heroes” he says. “You have been chosen to defend the weak and to battle thedarkness. You now serve the forces of the Light!”

One of the players will take the role of the Evil Keeper, trying to defeat the other players using their Heroes. The Heroes must destroy the Boss and all the Monsters in the dungeon using spells, powers and equipments at their best, otherwise the Evil Keeper will win.
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138 Games: From Carcassonne to Princes of Florence

Posted on May 29, 2013 by

The 138 Games series has covered many games so far, but in this entry, we bring you a number of modern classics.  There’s a classic tile-laying game, a classic role-selection game, a classic cooperative game, and a classic Alea game.  There’s also an abstract game in there just to completely round things out.  We’ve got something for everyone as we launch fully into the 2000s this week.  After missing a week earlier in the month, Knizia is back with Samurai last week, a cooperative game this week, and a pair of games coming up in the next entry that you may be able to anticipate.

- Carcassonne -

Tom Rosen:  A board game sans board — Carcassonne is the ambassador of the modern Golden Age of board games.  Carcassonne is the board game you should be introducing to anyone who asks what kind of board games you play and whether they’re like Monopoly. Carcassonne is the “gateway” game if there ever was one and the staple of any fledgling board game collection.  Carcassonne is all that and it’s actually a great game too; one that experienced gamers ought to dust off and revisit.

Klaus-Jürgen Wrede burst onto the board gaming scene in 2000 with the release of Carcassonne.  The game quickly went on to win the most important award in the industry – the Spiel des Jahres – in 2001, followed by the most important award to many serious hobbyists – the Deutscher Spiele Preis – a few months later.  Wrede has followed up the game with a handful of additional designs (namely Downfall of Pompeii, Die Fugger, Mesopotamia, Anasazi, and a few others), but has devoted most of his subsequent releases to expansions and stand-alone spin-offs of Carcassonne.  The family of Carcassonne games now bears over 20 expansions and 10 stand-alone spin-offs (some of which include designer credits by such luminaries as Karl-Heinz Schmiel and Reiner Knizia).  The game has even proliferated to a number of virtual implementations, including releases on the Xbox and the iPhone, in addition to the old faithful BrettspielWelt site.

People have gotten married over this game, cloned over this game, set world records over this game, and even traveled the globe for this game.  Carcassonne introduced the world to the iconic component known as the “meeple.”  These small wooden human-esque figures are the most recognizable piece in modern gaming and have been adapted for use in countless other games over the past decade.  For more on the phenomenon of the meeple see this fantastic “Intelligence Report on Meeples” by Dave Lartigue.  Obsession with meeples clearly runs rampant as people have sewed meeples, driven meeples, rained meeples, and even made snow meeples.  This game is a geek-culture phenomenon.  It’s not only a game that people play, but a way of life that many proselytize.  Carcassonne, without a board, is the defining board game of our time.

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OG Milestone – 1,000,000 Hits!

Posted on May 27, 2013 by

Just a short note of thanks to all the writers of the blog and also to all of the readers of the blog – today, on Memorial Day, we reached the 1,000,000 hit threshold according to the WordPress stat machine!

I fully realize that this number of hits would only be a drop in the bucket for some larger boardgaming sites (BGG, I’m looking at you…) – but for our little blog, it’s gratifying to see that we’re getting a modest amount of attention from the Internets.  Thanks to everyone for reading the blog.  Now we can set our site for 2,000,000 hits!

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OG Roundtable: Discussion of the SdJ and KedJ Nominees

Posted on May 27, 2013 by

The announcement of the nominated and recommended games for the Spiel des Jahres was made this Tuesday, and I’m sad to say that we (as a group) did not do such a great job at predicting the games!  Of course, I perhaps did not ask the right question – as I asked the OG writers to tell me which game they thought would WIN the award, not which game will be nominated for the award.

To recap – our top 5 predictions for the SdJ prior to the announcement were:

  • 1. La Boca (60, 9)

  • 2. Augustus (18, 1)

  • 3. Escape (17, 3)

  • 4. Little Prince (12, 2)

  • 5. Rondo (6, 0)

The real list is: Augustus, Hanabi, and Qwixx

At least we got Augustus on the nominee list, and 3 of the other 4 were at least recommended… We clearly think more of the Little Prince than the jury does though!

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The Journey is the Destination: A Review of Wunderland

Posted on May 26, 2013 by

By Jeffrey D. Allers
Publisher: Pegasus Spiele GmbH www.pegasus-spiele.de
Designer: Dirk Hillebrecht
Illustrations: Jarek Nocon
Graphic Designer: Jarek Nocon, Hans-Georg Schneider
Players: 2-4, ages 8 and up
Playing Time: 45 Minutes
Rules Language: English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Polish
Game Language: Language Neutral
Game Played: gift from the publisher
Games Played: two times with 3 players, once with 4 players.

Model railroads have fascinated me ever since I was a child. The opportunity to see an entire world from a bird’s eye view is irresistible when one is barely tall enough to see over the edge of the table.  In a miniature world, children are the giants.

Furthermore these worlds are alive with activity. While adults marvel at the attention to detail in each track-side scene, children follow the movements of the trains as they weave through the model towns and landscapes.  The anticipation builds with each switch and tunnel:  where will they move next?  From which tunnel will the next train emerge?

Like many children, I still remember the Christmas when I was given an oval track and my first electric train.  It was probably as much a gift for my father as for me, and we spent many years expanding the layout together, building bridge trestles and sculpting plaster mountains together.  The project was never finished, but that wasn’t the point. Building model railroads—just like the circular routes of the trains themselves—is about the journey, not the destination.

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OG Roundtable: Legends of Andor

Posted on May 24, 2013 by

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–always 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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