New to Me: Summer 2019 — Others Enjoy Them More Than I

These lists have always been a quarterly summary of the new games that I played and what thought of them, as a medium-weight eurogame-focused player. That don’t necessarily represent if these games are good or bad, just if like them. And that fact felt like it was on particular display this summer, when I played a number of games that were very good in the abstract, but less enjoyable for me specifically.

But I’m going to start off with the one game that may have be the opposite case …

The Very Good (“I Would Keep This”)

Blood Bound (2013). This is a pretty light and simple game that’s more about experience than strategy, and that’s not a category I usually love, but this one was pretty good. It was sort of the deduction of Love Letter meets the gameplay of Bang! There are two teams of players, and each team is trying to capture the leader of the opposite team: but you only know the probable identity of one other player — and nothing about whether they’re a leader.

The cleverness of the hidden teams part of this game is that its deduction comes in two parts: you have to guess both the affiliation of each player, and their rank within the team — and the second part can be quite dicey since there are nine potential ranks in each team, and many of them will be out of play, so the level “7” character will usually not be the leader, but could be.

The Love Letter aspect of this game comes from the fact that each player has a special power that they can use once. These can be cleverly played to help fellows and hurt opponents … if you can guess who’s who.

For a game that’s over in 15-30 minutes, this one has a surprising level of depth, and its two levels of deduction make it more interesting than many in the hidden teams category. Continue reading

The Alea Analysis, Part Ten: Saint Malo (M#9), Bora Bora (#15), La Isla (M#10)

This article is the tenth in a twelve-part series that analyzes the entire original Alea line of games. For past articles you can read about: Ra, Chinatown, and Taj Mahal in Part One; or Princes of Florence, Adel Verpflichtet, and Traders of Genoa in Part Two; or Wyatt Earp, Royal Turf, and Puerto Rico in Part Three; or Die Sieben Weisen, Edel, Stein & Reich, and Mammoth Hunters in Part Four; or San Juan, Fifth Avenue, and Louis XIV in Part Five; or Palazzo, Augsburg 1520, and Rum & Pirates in Part SixNotre Dame, In The Year of the Dragon, and Witch’s Brew in Part Seven; Macao, Alea Iacta Est, and Glen More in Part Eight; and Castles of Burgundy, Artus, and Las Vegas in Part Nine.

In many ways, I feel like Castles of Burgundy, Artus, and Las Vegas, in Part Nine, marked the end of Alea, or at least the end of its (second) height. Though original games continued for a few more years, they were lesser efforts, and that’s before Alea became a house of reprints and regurgitations (as we’ll see in Part Eleven). And, we’re also moving in on the end of this phase of Alea: Part Twelve will mark the end of their classic releases, before the imprint started reprinting products with better components — hopefully resolving a long-standing issue with Alea’s releases.


Medium Box #10: Saint Malo (C-)

Author: Inka Brand, Markus Brand
Publisher: Ravensburger (2012)
Alea Difficulty Scale: 2
My Plays: 3

Saint Malo is what’s nowadays called a “roll and write” game. Players roll the dice and then write the results. But they only keep one set of results among everything they roll, so they wants an excess of a specific die face.

Players are building a city with those results, filling it with buildings, goods, people, and the inevitable city walls — which altogether gives Saint Malo some nice variety over typical city building games where you’re only concerned about the structures.

The individual builds of Saint Malo also have some interesting variety, as each of the different write-types has different rules for what it generates. For example, with a high roll a player could generate lots of goods or city walls or a really good church or one of several different high-value people. Continue reading

The Alea Analysis, Part Nine: The Castles of Burgundy (#14), Artus (M#7), Las Vegas (M#8)

This article is the eighth in a continuing series that analyzes the entire Alea line of games. For past articles you can read about: Ra, Chinatown, and Taj Mahal in Part One; or Princes of Florence, Adel Verpflichtet, and Traders of Genoa in Part Two; or Wyatt Earp, Royal Turf, and Puerto Rico in Part Three; or Die Sieben Weisen, Edel, Stein & Reich, and Mammoth Hunters in Part Four; or San Juan, Fifth Avenue, and Louis XIV in Part Five; or Palazzo, Augsburg 1520, and Rum & Pirates in Part SixNotre Dame, In The Year of the Dragon, and Witch’s Brew in Part Seven; or Macao, Alea Iacta Est, and Glen More in Part Eight.

By 2011 and 2012, Alea was deep in Stefan Feld land, but that was only the big box series. The medium boxes proved that they were still publishing very interesting games from other designers. Continue reading

New To Me: Spring 2016

It’s been a weak quarter for new gaming for me. Because of a business trip and a vacation, I missed out on about a month of my normal gaming. Still, I managed to get in plays of almost a dozen new games, expansions, and variants — just barely enough to people a new New to Me article. 

As usual, this listing is games new and old that I’d never played before, rated according to how much liked them. Continue reading

Anatomy of Three Conversions: Burgundy, Ra, and Galaxy

Games can be defined in a lot of different ways. They can come in different styles, from American take-that to Eurogames, from party games to abstracts. They can can in different fictional genres, from science-fiction to history, and in different mechanical genres, from worker placement to auctions. Finally, games can also be parts of different mediums, primarily including board games, card games, and dice games.

Gaming mediums are particularly interesting because they seem to encourage conversions. Board games  become card games or dice games, and vice-versa. This trend seems to have been growing in the last few years, as Intellectual Property has become a byword of the eurogame community. Alea is currently be the poster child of IP conversions, with Broom Service (2015), Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game (2016), and Broom Service: The Card Game (2016) all being conversions of this sort. The last is particularly notable, since Broom Service: The Card Game began life as Witch’s Brew (2008) … a card game!

So are medium conversions good or bad?

Too frequently they result in a game that’s a pale shadow of its originator. I know I’ve played Euphrates & Tigris: Contest of Kings (2005), but I barely remember it, while Shadows Over Camelot: The Card Game (2012) and Bang! The Dice Game (2013) were more interesting, but in no way overshadowed the original. But, in some cases you get games that are quite exciting. San Juan (2004) is obviously the vest example of a game that managed to massively innovate its predecessor, creating something that was as good, in its own way.

This week I’m going to take a brief look at three games that were converted to new sorts of dice and card games: one of the newest entrants to the field and two that I think really worked.

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The Dice Games of Stefan Feld

Last week, I got to play Die Burgen von Burgund (The Castles of Burgundy), alea Big Box #14. It’s yet another game by Stefan Feld and yet another Feld game that uses dice as part of its mechanical engine.

I wrote about game designer Stefan Feld just last year (part 1part 2). At the time I found him to be one of the brightest rising stars in the eurogame field. A year later, I still hold by that assessment. In my personal gaming pantheon, he’s replaced Wolfgang Kramer as the designer who produces somewhat abstract medium-weight gamers’ games just for me. (Thanks Stefan!)

My discussions of dice games (part 1part 2part 3) date back a bit further to 2008, which was the last time we had a glut of dice games on the market. As I wrote at the time, there are quite a few interesting game mechanics that tie those dice games together … and also some ways that they differentiate themselves.
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