Archive for the ‘games’ Category
The seven wonders of the world, or was it really eight wonders?
At the last Spiel Knights board game night, we played a game called “Tower of Babel
The game is basically a race to finish as many wonders of the world as possible. Everybody can work on any wonder, but not all of them will actually be finished.
The game is a bidding game. Reiner Knizia’s name is on the box, so of course it is a bidding game! Every turn you can bid an amount of cards to help work on the current wonder. If the player who’s turn is chooses your help, you will get markers on the wonder. If it finishes, you will be scoring some points.
Every turn you are given another card that you can use to bid with later on.
I liked the game, but I did quite terrible at it. I’ll need to play the game again in the future and try a different strategy.
I would recommend playing the game with your friends, but let one of them buy it.
Tags: rio grande, tower of babel
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Jun 21st, 2009
Frag – First Person Boardgame?
One of the more popular games that I saw at Miscon this year is called Frag. The game came out origionally back in 2001 as a funny little gag to make fun of the first person shooters. For some reason, Steve Jackson Games decided that it would be a good idea to make a new ‘Gold Edition’ with a big board, a big box, and a big pricetag.
Had this game been around in the late 90′s It would have been great. The game has kind of a Quake 2 feeling to it… well as close as a board game can get I suppose. Instead the jokes and cards make you feel like you’ve gone back in time to where computer games were sketchy and connections were unreliable. This is 2009 baby! Wake up!
I do have a couple gripes about the gameplay itself. All of the movement is on squares and feels ‘chunky.’ There are not a lot of freedoms. I wonder if a hex board would be better? I have no idea!
Secondly is the lag… the time spent waiting between your turns is just staggering. Especially considering a fps game is supposed to be cooking along. It would be cool to have 2 turn tokens that get passed around. When you get one, you can move and blast people. Then pass the token. Of course this would need some playtesting to see if it would even be feasible in the first place.
From some of the SJ games I’ve played, I wonder if ‘playtest’ is in their vocabulary.
Filed under AmeriTrash, Miscon, games : Comments (0) : May 30th, 2009
Monopoly Killer: Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre
Are you ready to settle the island of Catan?
Check out this article recently published in Wired magazine all about the game. It kind of gets me inspired to get to work on creating my own board games again. Since the WGM store closed down, I honestly haven’t been as excited about board games. It is nice to be pumped up again.
Filed under eurogames, games : Comments (0) : Apr 5th, 2009
Playing Board Games in Missoula
I just wanted to update you on the Spiel Knights board game group. We’re currently meeting on thursday nights at the Break Espresso. It’s a nice little coffee shop in downtown Missoula.
Usually we play one or two games and there are a handful of folks who show up. You are certainly welcome to stop by, introduce yourself, and join in a game. We’ll always go over the rules of the games so don’t worry if something looks a little foreign.
I can’t wait to play another board game.
Filed under games : Comments (0) : Mar 23rd, 2009