[Brian,
Friday May 15, 2009 at 10:58am]
Where have all the cowboys gone?
I have that song stuck in my head, so hopefully I'm not alone anymore.
Over at SABG, folks are discussing new game orders and I realized -- I don't have new games I'm pining for. I mean, I'd like Dominion: Intrigue (but I haven't bought Dominion: Dominion yet). The Race expansions is obvious. But ... I already have Vinci. I'd like to play the Martin Wallace new stuff, but I'm lukewarm.
Part of this, no doubt, is just showing my street cred as a curmudgeon.
I think I'd buy Shadow Hunters (if it were to suddenly appear on the store). That seems like one of those games that will survive 10-15 plays, even if it doesn't set the world on fire. But that hardly qualifies as pining.
Should I be pining for anything coming out? Anything recent?
Space Alert is great as well, the real time aspect is good for cooperative games, makes it harder for one person to control everything.
Shadow Hunters I would recommend finding somewhere (online?), its a great, short, werewolfish game. I dont think its particularly balanced as written, but I've posted a variant which its pretty well balanced.
Automobile is the only reason I bought into Wallace's subscription plan this year. I did his first subscription and it was, as you say, lukewarm. The games are "okay", but missing something.
I bought Space Alert as soon as it was available in Europe and I sold it a month later. It just requires too much time and energy investment. There are so many little rules and things you can do in the game, that new players are essentially required to be put through a few tutorial missions. After teaching the game to a bunch of people but getting little return on my time investment, I decided it wasn't worth the $100 I was able to get for it on BGG.
As for Space Alert, played once at the Gathering, admired it, would play again, couldn't stand playing 10 times unless we were roleplaying and were always playing with the same group of people. Too stressful.
"There are so many little rules and things you can do in the game, that new players are essentially required to be put through a few tutorial missions."
My take is different. I would say: While Space Alert is relatively easy to learn, it is made even easier by the tutorial missions that are included in the game, which are an excellent way to quickly teach it to a new group, while having fun while your learn.
When I first played it, we played it 11 consecutive times before running out of time at game night, 6 hours later.
The last game before that I played 11 consecutive times in a row after learning was Dominion. (The last game before that I played for at least 6 straight hours after learning was Through the Ages - played twice in a row, then slept, woke up, and played again)
I just think its awesome.
Regarding Steam, the changes may well prove to be improvements for me and I'll be eager to try it if someone in my group picks it up (and I suspect at least one person will). But if I only get to play vanilla Age of Steam for the rest of my life, I don't think I'll be too unhappy, so it isn't a real priority.
Looking forward to Essen, Z-Man should be releasing Endeavor. That looks very interesting and might be a required purchase. There's a lot of info on it at the Geek if you think it might work for you. Uwe Rosenberg will release the third game of his "Harvest Trilogy" :-), At the Gates of Loyang. Sounds like you're 1 for 2 with his heavier games, so you'll probably want to try before you buy. And if you're a fan of Union Pacific/Airlines, Airlines 2009 might be ready by Essen. I liked my playtest of it, but it's certainly more of an update of the earlier games than something brand new. Again, you'll probably know whether it's winner for you or not.
I just got an order in from Germany, and I'm actually pretty excited about the Keltis expansion and Keltis Kartenspiel. They both seem cool (I've played the Kartenspiel once, and it was gratifyingly different in feel from Keltis and Lost Cities and Lost Cities: The Boardgame, and interesting in its own right.
At this point I've basically written off both Martin Wallace and FFG as folks who are just never going to produce a game I'm going to like, but you never know - FFG's Lord of the Rings game coming later this year could be good, although the odds are obviously rather against it. I certainly won't be buying any of it, but you never know.
Current favorite by a mile is Planet Steam. I'm currently thinking about coming up with some M.U.L.E. inspired random events for it.
Die Keltis Kartenspiel just seems wrong.
Snow Tails is decent, but nothing really special, I think. It's a quick light racing game with a twist. It's fast, and it's pretty random. On the upside, it's a light racing game which will play with fewer than six.
Finito looks like a winner to me. We played 20 times in a row. Of course, we couldn't stop until Ralph won one :)
I just got a batch of games, so I'm not really pining, but I'm looking forward to the spate of expansions coming: Rebel vs. Imperium, Innsmouth Horror, Pandemic, Tribune, Dominion. Of course, expansions are nearly always disappointing, so my expectations are tempered. Won't stop me from getting them.
Brian, if you're at all into Keltis, a number of people have recommended the expansion (Die Erweiterung), which provides a new board with intersecting paths. The gameplay is supposedly much more interesting.
Or maybe you were just reacting to the card game version of a board game based on a card game!
Yes, in a Julie Andrews and Robert Preston sort of way.
Le Game Hot!
Of the released games, I haven't been impressed by this year's crop. Alea Iacta Est is good enough that I will buy it when it's out in English, and I think Keltis: der weg des Steine is a clever little filler - one of my favorite new Knizia offerings in a while. But I'm not convinced that I'll enjoy either as much as Hanging Gardens, last year's mark for "Wow, is this really my favorite game of the year?".
That said, the 2009 crop has been much better than the 2008 crop overall. No big - or even medium-sized - hit, but nothing awful.
Yeah, it does, and Kim mocked me for picking it up. But she changed her mind after playing it :)
If it were Michael Schact or something, it would be basically the same game but with cards. But Knizia manages to make it feel different and new and a worthwhile addition to the family. It's got a different deck makeup from Keltis and Lost Cities (two cards in each suit available in the middle of the range, but only one in the high/low cards), plus some sort-of restricted "wild" cards, a way to discard pairs, and slightly different scoring. If you didn't like Keltis/Lost Cities it's unlikely this is going to do anything for you either, but if you were a fan, it's worth picking up.
Alea Iacta Est was OK. I like it, it's clever, and it might grow on me. Solid but unspectacular - but too many games fail to even achieve that level.
Seems like something like that happens just about every game. Is that not "pretty random?" Some games you can plan pretty far ahead and not have to rely on any draws, but on courses with lots of trees, by the end there are usually a few random draws needed to be able to keep to a plan.
The skill needed to play pretty well seems easy to come by, but maybe I've not played enough to get to the next level. Paying attention to what's in your deck is pretty important, but not particularly difficult with a 20-card (?) deck. I don't know if the rules allow looking through your played cards or not, but it's pretty easy to remember and not, for example, put oneself in a position to need a five when all of them have been played.
I just purchased Genial Spezial from Knizia/Kosmos. Despite the tie-in to Genius, the games have very few similarities apart from the win condition (max-min score wins). Haven't played it yet, but from the rules, it reminds me more of Through the Desert. If Keltis hadn't won last year, I'm pretty sure it would be a contender for the Spiel des Jahres.
Fits is "Knizia Does Tetris" and works much better than you'd think from that description. If you liked the original PC game and have good spatial reasoning, this is a fun, addictive filler. I don't fall into either category, but still found it enjoyable.
Another Reiner title that works better than you'd think is Masters Gallery, which is effectively Modern Art without the auctions. It's obviously lighter than MA, but is still quite good. It's from FRED, so it costs more than it should, but is still a nice, and even somewhat meaty filler.
If you're a fan of the Mystery Rummy series, I'd recomend the long awaited Bonnie and Clyde. The production values suck, but the game plays as well as any of its predecessors.
Confucius is a fascinating game, based around a unique gift-giving mechanic. There's also a nice amount of Oriental atmosphere. The game could probably stand to be slimmed down a bit, but it's one of the few titles to appear recently with something truly different, so that alone may make it appealing.
Masters of Venice, a gamer's game from heretofore party gamish R&R Games, also is a bit overstuffed. But it does provide a nice market-based system that will take a while to master.
Cities is another filler, a Take It Easy-style game with some mechanics reminiscent of Carcassonne. But I like it better than either of the two games it resembles. With enough copies, it can play as many gamers as you want, just like Take It Easy.
Finally, another Essen game on the horizon is what will probably be the latest from Vlaada Chvatil, tentatively titled Dungeon Lords. It's a twist on the classic dungeon crawl (you can probably figure out the kind of game it resembles) and is just as challenging and humorous as Chvatil's other designs. Definitely one to keep an eye on.
I will still probably end up playing it at least a half-dozen more times (as it is pretty popular at my FLGS at the moment), but we will see if it lasts beyond then...
I could also just be bitter because I have not won a game yet.
Good news is that plenty of stuff on my shelf hasn't been played nearly enough. So far, 2009 looks really weak, unless you're a huge fan of Wallace (never had much luck with his stuff here, overall impression has always been "some good ideas, but clunky").
Cool! Vlaada is on my 'buy everything he makes' list right now, and a dungeon crawl theme is promising. All 3 of his games that I have played (TTA/GalaxyTrucker/SpaceAlert), have had both great theme and mechanics, which is important for a dungeon crawl game.