Crystal Palace – Review by Alan How

Posted on December 31, 2019 by Dale Yu


Crystal Palace

  • Designer: Carsten Lauber
  • Publisher: Feuerland Spiele
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 14+
  • Time: 90-150min on box

The Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851 attracted the great and the good to display their culture, inventions and industry. It was the first of its kind in the world – clearly a forerunner of The Spiel and Essen each year. Crystal Palace the game comes from Feuerland who have produced games at the heavier end of the games market, which appeals to my tastes so I was looking forward to seeing how this game would work out.

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Posted in Essen 2019, Reviews | 2 Comments

Patrick Brennan: Game Snapshots –2019 (Part 28)

Posted on December 30, 2019 by Dale Yu

Playing games at an Essen weekend is like Gump’s box of chocolates. It’s easy to get roped into games that other people are interested in, bypassing all your usual self-selective-bias security alerts, often with alarming results.

more climate pics. that dark brown is apparently the color of 45C.
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Brandon Kempf – Surviving the Purge 1

Posted on December 28, 2019 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!

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Dale Yu: Review of Garum

Posted on December 27, 2019 by Dale Yu

Garum

  • Designer: Ricardo Jorge Gomes
  • Publisher: Pythagoras
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 30 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by Pythagoras

Each year while preparing for SPIEL, I try to seek out two or three games from companies /designers /countries that I haven’t looked at before – this year, Garum was one of the games on that short list.  I’m a sucker for anything about Ancient Rome – heck, I toyed with the idea of majoring in Classics in college – and this one caught my eye.

I have always had a passive interest in going to LeiriaCon – held in Portugal – as I have talked to fellow OG’er Joe Huber and his trip there – so I had at least heard of the company.  Anyways the title of the game is the name of the pungent fish sauce that I have read so much about in my historical fiction novels, and I wanted to give this one a try.

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Patrick Brennan: Game Snapshots –2019 (Part 27)

Posted on December 26, 2019 by pfbrennan

At time of writing, I’ve just finished our Essen weekend here in Sydney with 100 of my closest gaming friends (here’s a shoutout to the glorious Advent Games for organising and hosting), which means I have a bank of snapshots to come, fastly and furiously.

Photo: Eden Hills Country Fire Service (Facebook)

Sadly, much of Australia has been burning with wildfires this month.

I’ve played probably 40 to 50 of the Essen crop now, including most of the ‘name’ Essen games. I’m still missing a few which are lined up for the coming weeks but I think I’m ready to call Maracaibo Best In Show, with Expedition To Newdale a second, making Pfister my Designer of Show. Both have card effect engines at their heart and provide campaign options, elements which vastly improve its chances of holding my interest for longer than a few plays,  and which give cause to get it to the table more than the standard Euro-few times.

Featuring today? How an Essen game earns a 1.

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Posted in Sessions | 8 Comments

The Opinionated Gamers opine about the classics

Posted on December 25, 2019 by Joe Huber

Recently, thinking about the question of classic boardgames, I wondered – what do the other Opinionated Gamers think about such games?  Are they beloved? Warmly remembered? Or barely tolerated?

So, I asked.  And – the answers run the gamut.  But there was a strong response, so I decided to put together this article, allowing folks to share their memories of various games.  Not all of the games I asked about are included here; only those with some reasonable measure of support.

Oh, and before anyone asks: no games first published after 1975 are included, no public domain games are included, and only games from major mass-market publishers are included.  And, unfortunately, there is a US-centric tone to the list; that’s my fault.

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