Dale Yu: Review of Pictures

Posted on April 7, 2020 by Dale Yu

Pictures

  • Designer: Daniela and Christian Stöhr
  • Publisher: Rio Grande Games / pd Verlag
  • Players: 3-5
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 20-30 minutes
  • Times played: 3, with review copy provided by Rio Grande Games

Pictures is a game that I thought I would really not like.  And, in fact, in my first go of the game (at SPIEL in Essen in October 2019), I had a mostly negative experience of the game.  It could have been that I was tired; or maybe there was a language issue, or who knows what. Maybe it was that the overall noise in Hall 2 was too much for me.  In any event, I left the fair without a copy of the game, and I honestly hadn’t thought much else about it since then.

Then, the game showed up on my doorstep… In the intervening months, I also had had a number of very positive reports from people who played it at BGG.con, Lobster Trap and other winter conventions.  Given this, I resolved to try it again. It may have also helped that one of my local gamers (James Nathan) was one of the ones who was gung-ho for the game after BGG.con.

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Posted in Essen 2019, Reviews | 5 Comments

四畳半ペーパー賽系 (Yojōhan Pēpā Saikei)

Posted on April 6, 2020 by xitoliv

Designer: Shimamuranao (シマムラナオ)
Artist: Yamauchi Rock Boy (ヤマウチロックボーイ)
Publisher: ハレルヤロックボーイ (Hallelujah Rockboy)
Players: 1-100
Ages: 10+
Times Played: 7 on a purchased copy

四畳半ペーパー賽系 is a game about how you’ll spend your last year of college life.  Balancing romance, schoolwork, friendships, hobbies, and a part-time job. Who’ll have the most fulfilling time, as they fill in their four-and-a-half tatami mat room with memories.

For me, it was just a final semester. Romance was a fiancee 13 hours away.  Schoolwork was, well, I should’ve followed through better in that computer science class.  Friendships were subleasing Mike’s room while he was in Bulgaria for the semester, meaning Vinnie and Casey as roommates with Sunday trips to the Urbana farmer’s market and friends for dinner. The ceramics work that had started as a hobby had become school work too, and was expanding in both of those arenas. The part-time job was in the “RBX”, the rare book room. 

…but that’s not the intro to this review.  

I can’t focus and the words aren’t coming to me.

Let’s watch a little something.

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Resources for Gamers in the Era of Social Distancing (Article by Chris Wray)

Posted on April 5, 2020 by Chris Wray

Social distancing is interrupting countless game nights and events, and with an uncertain end date, many of us gamers are finding new ways to enjoy the hobby we love.  I wanted to write some of my discoveries and observations.  

Dale had an excellent and fun article about gaming in the era of social distancing a few days ago. I wanted to offer my own thoughts here, and a few more people chimed in below.

As a preliminary matter, many writers here at the Opinionated Gamers serve in the medical field, so thanks to them for their diligent work on the front lines!  Dale, Lorna, Tery, and everybody else I’ve forgotten, thank you for everything you’re doing right now!

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Brandon Kempf – Surviving the Purge 17

Posted on April 5, 2020 by Brandon Kempf

Over the next few months, instead of going with my Three Games articles, I am going to take a look at my collection and try to discuss why certain titles survived the great purge of 2019. During this process I may take a look at some games that didn’t survive, but only as a measuring stick for what did survive. Since I am silly, like a lot of gamers, I use Ikea Kallax shelves to display the games that we own. This makes it pretty easy to break things down cube by cube, so that’s what we’re going to do, twenty-four cubes, plus a top shelf for games that don’t fit in the cubes, over the course of a few months. I hope you enjoy!

If you are a BoardGameGeek user, you can also follow along on the Geeklist I created.

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Chrono Corsairs (Game Review by Brandon Kempf)

Posted on April 3, 2020 by Brandon Kempf
  • Designers: John Brieger & Vincent Hirtzel
  • Artist: Matt Paquette
  • Publisher: Tasty Minstrel Games
  • Players: 2-5
  • Time: 60-75 Minutes
  • Times Played: 2

Groundhog’s Day — the movie — and Pirates, those are pretty nerdy things, right? So when I cast my eyes upon the newest title, Chrono Corsairs, and saw that it combined things from both of those into an area control/majorities game I was instantly curious as I love those things. To top it all off, it was a return to medium box games for Tasty Minstrel Games, which I think they do far better than small box games. 

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Dale Yu: Review of Wizard Würfelspiel

Posted on April 2, 2020 by Dale Yu

Wizard Würfelspiel

  • Designer: Daan Kreek
  • Publisher: AMIGO
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 20 minutes
  • Times played: 7 with review copy provided by AMIGO

In Wizard Würfelspiel, players bid on the results of seven magical dice.  Results are recorded on a paper scoresheet, but this isn’t a typical roll-and write.  In each round, players bid on how many symbols of a certain color will be rolled on the seven dice. The six-sided dice feature blue, red, yellow, and green symbols on four faces, along with a wizard on a fifth face and a joker on the sixth.

At the start of the round, the active player makes a bid for the round on his score sheet, a bid that specifies a color and a number from 1-5, e.g., blue-4. He marks this by drawing a circle in the corresponding spot in the grid on his sheet.  In turn, each other player places a bid that differs from all other bids placed this round. After all the bids, the active player then sets the color that jokers will be counted as in this round.

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Posted in Essen 2019, Reviews | 2 Comments