|
The Saga Continues: The Madman's Diary on the Loose
-
My precious Diary:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/34188
I started the above "diary" 2008-08-23 and now it has 10 pages (250 geeklist items) of play sessions /short reviews /lists / stats /opinions /random musings /etc.
* grammatically lazy.
* not much planned / not well edited / does not contain too deep stuff.
* reveals that I am quite egocentric... 
Now it time to move on with the 2nd iteration of my diary. Pretty much the same shit will continue I suppose.  .
-
1.
Board Game: King Of History
[Average Rating:6.21 Unranked]
[Average Rating:6.21 Unranked]
 -
Technical Specifications a'la short history of my boardgaming:
- My Magic: The Gathering hobby started 1995....which still continues if during the recent times in a kind of "sleep" mode (for example I am going to the next prerelease end of this month and I occasionally play highlander).
- This real boardgame hobby started with Settler of Catan (incl. Cities & Knights expansion) first play 2001 Spring.
- Soon afterwards I bough my own copies. And as expected: my wife got hooked as well!!! Soon we had a respectable player pool around us.
- I joined boardgamegeek 2003-05-06.
- For a while I actually made living with offering tournament organizing services (Magic the Gathering mostly), importing and selling boardgames and doing freelancer technical writings and translations (2004-2005): A nice and well-needed break eventhough it naturally was not financially as beneficial as continuing in IT world would have been.
- However IT world again sucked me back in 2006. I continued to run MtG tournaments for another two years however.
- Naturally boardgaming things have slowed down a bit during the last 3-4 years. Players get married  , some have had children  , some have moved, some have gotten just old  
.mikko
-
-
 -
...and the pinnacle of my recent EPIC plays. Twilight Imperium 3rd edition with all the expansions (though we did not use all the feats).
- 6 players? Check!
- Empires rise, Empires fall, Empires come back, Empires go extinct? Check!
- 7 hours of war, broken promises, nail-biting combats, frustrating moments, falling into depression when you empire is no more? Check.
- Close finish where 3 players were separated within an inch by events and actions out of their control? Check!
- Thus...EPIC? Check!
The rule explanation round took 1h as we had virgin TI3 players (and I needed some rules refreshing as well).
Some notes:
- Antero won after being pretty innocent for hours. He quietly had built tons of fighters and later rounds they provided the missing VP sources.
- Henkka wouldacouldashoulda won at several occasions but he did hit the wall due to the combination of his own hesitation, bad luck and other players' seemingly innonent actions which actually indirectly slowed Henkka's progress.
- Tuomo definitely wouldacouldashoulda won but but but....he did hit the wall by similar fashion as Henkka did.
- I was tied last (6p) with MattiM. I think we both started strong but around 3rd turn our mutual decline started and we both went gradually into the verge of extinction.
OK. After my lone play (year ago about?) I declared this with a) rating of '7' (but impossible to rate) and b) the best worst game there is.
That practically still sums it up. TI3 drags. TI3 frustrates. TI3 annoys. TI3 angers. TI3 bores. TI3 just does not play well....
...but the other side of TI3 coin is smt. different. TI3 is EPIC, In TI3 you care, In TI3 it is you out there not your plastic ships nor cardboard chits. It is incredibly thematic and at times it just sucks you in. The best moments are tier1 at any play experience scale. The feeling is just there. It combines everything, it fails there and there and also evenmore there but TI3 knows it...and does not care what others think. 
I still find this impossible to rate. It is too "racey". It is slow and drags like hell. Some expansion features are just time consuming gimmicks. It is just not a good game....but again TI3 is not a game but experience.
My geekrating of '7' holds. It actully is a notch closer to '8' than yesterday. But for this game....ratings do not mean anything.
Thanks guys (I do not remember what was our 6th player's name btw...sorry about that!  ).
.mikko
-
-
 -
Rolling in the Deeee-eepp....
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7UFm6ErMPU
It counts as real work if you do print&play, right? I knew about Rolling Stock project and it had popped into my mind every now and then and I had added it to my personal radar as a background process...
Well...I happened to check out its current status and now I have printed all the material. Now some crafting is needed to turn those xxx pages of paper into real game.
I have a mixed record of my previous tinkerings/craftings but maybe this time I aim for the maximum quality...
Baltimore & Ohio play few days ago has haunted me somewhat...afterwards I realized that we all played this pretty badly, mediocre at best. I came up with some fascinating strategies  I indent to apply the next time we play....
Before I leave Finland for two weeks (1st of March) I want to play atleast once some 18xx (the larger the better).
.mikko
-
-
 -
Ascension has been the recent "filler" hit among our gaming group. It has taken Dominion's spot in the limelight....most probably temporarily but still...not much Dominion played 2012...
Henkka brought his Ascension: Storm of Souls and we played one game. Again I failed to create any engine. I failed to get anything reasonable ongoing....Henkka won easily and I was 3rd = I was last...
Well...it was a nice session again. Everything is gearing up towards the next Saturday when we are going to have a big Saturday gaming session at Henkka's.
Beer + Saturday + Gaming = A combo in the making...
.mikko
(OK - we also played another Baltimore & Ohio but I refuse to tell anything about my newest miserable set of failures someone might call gaming...)
-
-
 -
Henkka had ordered the new 1830 Mayfair reprint and it was time to say goodbye for Henkka's homemade 1830 version.
- 5 players.
- There was a hefty competition over privates and I ended up with 70/15 and Mohawk.
- I played investor early game.
- ...and that was the highlight of my play as I never was a president of any good companies (I formed two companies: C&O and Boston but I never got to utilize them properly...).
- The play ended in Tuomo's bankrupt when diesels arrived. MattiM was an easy winner. I was third. We analysed that had game continued, Antero would have won it most probably and may be I'd had snatched 2nd place.
- I think I played the maximum I could: One minor mistake there and there but my destiny was sealed at private auctions already. I knew that if the play ends up in bankrupt I cannot win unless very lucky. Though I again analysed that I actually was in the best position early game but some player actions indirectly halted my good prospects and I really had to fight for any extra dollar out there.
And there were some heavy drinking going on all the time...
Tuomo left and we played 4p Eclipse. My dry spell period ended with a great win (40p vs Henkka's 38 vs MattiM's 36 vs Antero's pretty much destroyed empire).
- I had a great combat rolls (well I really exploited my good military techs for good).
- I again failed to do Monoliths but I overcome it with great selection of reputation tiles (4-4-4-3) and easily the best board position scores.
...and what a hangover I've been suffering today....
BUT again: After a dry spell: A WIN! Thank you Eclipse!
.mikko
-
-
16.
Board Game: 1846
[Average Rating:7.96 Overall Rank:1003]
 -
...major news here: I found 18xx I do not like...
...naturally this means that I rate it '8' rather than usual '10' or '9'
Henkka and MattiM arrived to play some boardgames.
After 3 minutes pondering we headed to play 1846 which I had not played before.
After 3,5 hours MattiM won.
...what I can say?
+ Semi-random setup and "drafting" of privates was new take!
+ It was 18xx.
- Stock market actions were way too uneventfull.
- Money felt way too easy.
- All new "gimmicks" (like phased out trains) were not 18xx...
Still '8' (and barely). Anytime 18xx will be suggested...I will dig another possible 18xx rather than this....
...OK..(and again)....it was 18xx which means it is minimun '8' rated and it justifies it place. I can play it again but do not let any other 18xx exist in same household.
Things move on...so did we...
We played GOA!
- Henkka never had liked the game.
- MattiM never had played it before.
- I won.
43p vs henkka's 41p and MattiM's 38p.
The key was the experience. To survive through those 8 auctions....
After GOA we eased the playing and played a couple of Dominions....
...hey my wife joined us for the first play...
...and naturally won it quite easily (I was 2nd).
The 2nd game was won by Henkka (as my wife skipped this...apparently she wanted to be polite here).
I did some beers as well....
.mikko
-
-
 -
Quote: 1) Spielbox issue:
Aki had transferred to me his Spielbox (int.edition) magazine order as it would have been apparenty impossible or very expensive to transfer it to Aki's new Canada address. A nice mag. A set of boardgame reviews. A set of boardgame related news....thanks Aki.
And that magazine featured Wallace's civ-lite-lite game (just add 3x1d6 and a bunch of cubes) - Another Damn - and I did read the short (but surprisingly unclear) rules :
- A clear filler (30-40mins).
- Feels like a kind of mix between Kingsburg + Uruk with a dash of Rise of Empires (just RoE feeling - as this Another Damn is clearly just a filler).
- I could give it a try easily.
...and another edition arrived. This magazine is smt. I would probably order it after Aki's deal expires (when it does? Must ask Aki?).
In this magazine: Free Navegador mini-expansion (Pirates & Diplomats)..was included....looked reasonable, not too swingy and actually fixes (or tries to) some (minor) play balance issues I have found in this game (depending on your seat you could get shafted regardless you own actions if market and/or colonize actions by other players play indirectly against you).
Some review snapshots: Upon A Salty Ocean gets 6-7-7-7 from four reviewers...numbers are about right - my own is '7' - but actually the actual review content lists some things negative I have found positive...dunno...
Uwe's Ora et Labora gets huge praise....
...I read it and my opinion about it is now even stronger....What I was thinking when I actually considered this back in Essen 2011 times...??? "Medieval Merchant Mediocrity Mentally Messy"
Funnily there was one dice building game in review (I jokingly said several days ago that "why there is no dice building game?")....
(cannot recall the name but it did not get any too good grades).
Gaming next time in our place: Sunday 1.4...2.pm...My wife will be in Helsinki/Turku so most probably something heavier hits the table? 
.mikko
-
-
 -
My calendar has been FULL. Social commitments, work etc have taken its toll big time. This has prevented the most of the gaming actions during these last several weeks.
Luckily now it looks like I have some possible evenings next week (wed-thu-fri). 
This naturally means that I have had no real content to write here -> I have to create this item from the total scratch. I use obvious material,
I list non-sense stuff, I present plans with no value, I talk jargon with no beef. I do the same I usually do but now I do not have any real
excuse for my writing. No reviews. No sessions to report. No nothing. I just try to turn null into boardgaming related sentences.
Dialogue of Doom:
- "...eh...this is hard task to do...phew..."
- "Why, you are apparently creative, right?, Try something!"
- "I like 18xx!"
- "Well, that was one desperate and obvious start."
(5 mins passes)
- "I am going to ESSEN SPIELE 2012!"
- "better...but just damn old news..."
- "RETURN OF EURO!"
- "That's some real stuff, good! What does it mean?"
- "After (relative) long term dissing of PURE euros I have kind of refound their qualities"
- "Really?"
- "..eh..it is hard to explain but for example I have really enjoyed all my recent London plays eventhough it really has been played A LOT"
- "So you are ready to play Princes of Florence or even some Knizia?"
- "I refuse to go that low!".
- "You are using one London example to determine your overall urge".
- "I played one 2p Agricola two days ago, how's that?".
- "Did you enjoy it?".
- "...not really...I was actually bored."
- "So what real EURO urge evidence you have?"
- "eh.."
- "This discussion is just waste of time with null value content"
- "I said at the beginning that this will be a hard task!"
- "No excuses...next time: Save the bandwidth".
- "I give beer if you take my POV".
- "one - two - three - SOLD, null turned into real value: BEER -> EURO IT IS!"
.mikko
-
-
 -
Finally some real gaming.
Henkka, MattiM and Antero arrived so it was natural to play smt. with stocks and trains.
And Baltimore & Ohio it was. We used all but '7' tech level expansions.
This was the 1st time we actually played Robber Baron expansion well. At earlier play we had used them as a random money sink from other players. Now we auctioned the items more planned way and that made some difference. Minor but still....jury is still out there whether this expansion is actually needed as it just adds some play time without maybe giving anything significant back? Dunno? At least it is not "norton coal" expansion which is apparently unusable without tech level '7' expansion? Dunno part II?.
- I started well....only to stagnate badly when I misinvested in Henkka's companies.
- Antero started his roll with B&O (2x'3' trains) and made the biggest bucks midgame.
- Henkka never recovered from his ho-hum start though he managed to get his companies rolling pretty OK at later stages...but too late. Too much uphill battle still.
- MattiM won....I still do not know exactly how but he did. Not bad mistakes apparently and some wise investing to better companies around. Suddenly he just had all the good money there.
- OK...I got stuck with useless Pennsylvania which I got from Henkka. It just survived and tied my assets. That was the key I think.
- I also faced some hate and bad luck at later stages as I miscalculated once my Erie cubes...
- Henkka concentared on coals mainly but they were just too slow at crucial occasions.
- Antero subcumbed a bit at later stages but then managed to get '5' train for his B&O (in addition to his 2x'3' and that made huge money obv.):
- MattiM won with about 4080, Antero had about 3950, I had 3885 and Henkka about 3350?.
I have always liked B&O and when I take a broader look: this was easily the highest quality game of our five or so plays. Four hours well spent. Tense it was. B&O is no 18xx but close still and its own unforgiving nature creates even more ruthless environment than in your average 18xx - while you cannot go to bankrupt you can play yourself out if you are careless at the constant crucial moments. No free rides here. No easy gameflow taken as a snack.
Fine gaming it was. Next time Sunday. See ya then.
.mikko
-
-
|
|
|
)
that I won't touch again.
through those plays (my PR cup is FULL!!! 
