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This is the first blog post to this site, and I will do it as a librarian trying to convince everybody to ask their local libraries if they have a boardgame collection allready. And if not, why? :-)
Today we got our most recent order, and it looks so good! (Allthough I need to take better pictures, qualitywise)/pic2872882.jpg)
This is only some of the games that were ordered, and this batch is focused on gamer's games. Some of these we allready have in our collection, and those are just extra copies.
But there's Rum & bones, which will be interesting! And Mombasa and Istanbul are completely new to me also. Have to at least skim through the rulebook to see if they´re good. Would love to hear some recommendations, if they're worthwile.
I've noticed a tendency in our customers towards Uwe Rosenberg's games, and after trying Patchwork I was curious to check out other one's also. Patchwork is just so smooth a design, really well balanced and thought out game. And the puzzle is nice bonus to old Tetris fanatic. So I grabbed one of our copies of Fields of Arle before I cataloqued it, arranged a quick game, and next day send it to our customers. There's been a line waiting for it ever since. So one new copy is a good add.
Fields of Arle was an excellent game, there really was a feeling that both of us players managed to build something. Something of our own, and completely different than opposing player. There seems to be many paths to victory, but all really well balanced. Okay, I have only played two games of it so far so... And for something negative I prefer there to be little more battle about those worker spaces, somewhat more tight feeling. Now there was always something good available, and everything you did wass giving you something that will be useful at some point. That might also be a good thing, depending on the mood, and this time we were just in the right mood. So, it left us with a good feeling.
After that we've also tried Caverna and Glass road in our gaming group. Both of those hit really well, especially Caverna. In our first game of Caverna one of the players was 8 years old, and still managed to play a good game and enjoyed it. Allthough it took a while, something like three hours. Glass road was only a two player game, but so good that we played another straight away. Something I think will happen to most people trying it, it was so fast even for new players. Both of these in our collection are also always in loan, and there's a line of reservations waiting for them. I think our customers have a good taste!
After testing those games, I thought that we should have more of Uwe's games in the library, that man has such a wide ludography that it might be worthwile to check those out. I got a couple of copies of Bargain hunter (I stumbled upon it in our local gaming store by accident), which I don't have any previous knowledge about, and am curious to find out if it finds our customers. Didn't really interest me in the first sight, but there's Uwe's name on the box so...
Oh yeah! Forgot to mention my background. I work at the Helsinki city library, and we are trying to build world's best collection of loanable board games in public libraries. With the help of my colleaques of course. I got the idea of this blog through facebook-group lautapelifanaatikot (in finnish, and thanks!). If you have any questions related to the subject of libraries and board games, I, and this profile might just be a good place to start. I will try to think and write about subjects related to questions that come up in my work, not forgetting the actual board games, hopefully this was just a start.
Librarian trying to convince everybody to ask their local libraries if they have a board game collection already. And if not, why?
- [+] Dice rolls
