Spotlight on Games
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1001 Nights of Gaming
- G -
- Galaxis
1999 game by Oliver Igelhaut and small publisher Glücksritter
for 3-4 players is sort of a combination of
For Sale
and
Hornochsen.
The deck is comprised
of planets and modifiers. Planets come in three different
colors and have different point values, apparently from
-1 to +3. Modifiers affect planet point values by multiplying
by zero, one or two. Each turn the first player turns up three
cards. Then each player in turn places face down up to three
stacks of bidding cards. Initially each player has an
identical bidding hand of cards 1-6. However, after all
bidding is complete, each player's used cards are passed
to the player on the left. But going back to the bidding,
the players all reveal their cards. Whoever has the highest
value (ties go to the earliest player in turn) chooses one
of the cards and either keeps it for himself or gives it
to another player. Then the second highest value chooses,
then third, etc. Cards can either be placed singly or
combined with another card already in front of the player.
Pairs are complete and cannot be added to. Only pairs
score, either positively, negatively or zero, but in
addition, players have their aggregate score for a particular
planet color multiplied by the number of pairs they hold
of that color. Only last about
twenty minutes and very good for that timespan, although
perhaps it could in some sense be "broken" if someone
consistently refused to ever bid, in which case he might
eventually get all of the cards?
- Game of Life, The (The Checkered Game of Life)
Invented and published as the first game of a Mr. Milton Bradley in 1860,
one of the very first commercial games in America. Originally,
movement was along a line on a board made for
Checkers,
either one or two spaces left, right or diagonally, the player
traveling from "Infancy" to "Happy Old Age".
Earlier editions were much more concerned with social mores
e.g. the path from "Idleness" leads to "Disgrace",
than those produced since 1959.
In its time considered a great technological advance in printing,
taking advantage of new chromolithographic advances
which put an end to thirty-eight years of hand-illustrated box and board artwork.
A pocket-sized version, probably the first American "travel edition",
was marketed to Civil War soldiers. Playing today shows its age as
there is very little skill beyond simple spin-and-move. One starts
by opting for business or college and then moves through spaces which include
marriage, children, stocks, insurance, calamities, promotions, etc.
In a conclusion befitting pure capitalism, the player who ends life with the most
money wins. Has appeared in many different editions, some with rules changes,
over the years. More information is available at the Hasbro
website which long ago acquired Milton Bradley, not to mention Parker,
Avalon Hill, Microprose, Coleco,
Wizards of the Coast (and thus indirectly TSR and SPI) and
many others. Just to show how far things have come, the latest update is called
The Game of Life: Star Wars Edition.
- Gang of Four
Climbing card game apparently derived from the The Big Two, a Chinese game
played with traditional cards, whose relatives are
Zheng Fen,
Tichu,
The Great Dalmuti
and
Frank's Zoo.
Here the card combinations played are
Poker
hands (in only three suits). This has more sophistication than
The Great Dalmuti
because it's less about memorization and more about choosing which combinations to
use when. As each participant plays for himself, it misses the extra interest inherent in
Tichu's
partnership play. The fact that a combination has an absolute value regardless of size
and shape has a downside too: it emphasizes luck of the draw and reduces the chance
that
Tichu
offers, that even low cards can be quite valuable. It also retains that old notion that
the round loser must give up a card to the winner, fostering the kind of rich-get-richer
syndrome inventors should avoid. (While
The Great Dalmuti
also keeps it, it is eschewed by
Tichu.
Frank's Zoo
transforms it into something much more intelligent, and also introduces the novel concept
of a circular hierarchy.) This is a late entry into a crowded field. Although it is more
satisfying than
The Great Dalmuti,
it's hard to see a reason for playing it in a world that already includes both
Tichu
and
Frank's Zoo.
Title is a reference to the takeover attempt of Madame Mao and her cronies in the 1970's
following the death of her husband.
Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium
- Gartenzwerge e.V. (Garden Gnomes Society)
Multi-player card game from new small publisher
Argentum.
The spirit of the 1970's – its groovy colorfulness and
socially-forward topics – inform this game of garden gnome
breeding. The format is "choose one from several options per turn"
and the goal to ultimately breed the golden gnome, or buy one.
Yes, money plays a large role as gnome maintenance costs a lot,
as do stud fees. The only ways to raise the cabbage are by
entering gnome competitions or "pimping out" – this phrase is not
in the rules but seemed very apt during play – one's valuable
gnomes. Inventor Roman Mathar gives us not one, but two fairly
novel mechanisms here. The first is essentially the sealed bid
system used by governmental agencies the world over – with its
challenging need to bid neither too high nor too low. Then there
is the breeding mechanism, resolved by random card, which provides
for a result that is uncertain, but which is based on the better
of the parents. This is interesting to play with, but probably
also the logical equivalent of turning a random tile in a map
exploration game, i.e. rather luck-prone. This can be a problem
for play balance as those achieving especially good results can
probably subsist wholly on winning competitions and need never
share their good fortune before eventually winning. There is
also some fragility as an uncooperative player can harm others'
chances, even while dooming his own. There are special rules for
two-player situations that add a somewhat random third player
–
these work well. This is a logistical game in which victory is
achieved bit-by-bit rather than by a single grand stroke. If this
is your preference and you don't mind occasional randomness, this
is an attractively-illustrated package on an unusual and slightly
goofy topic that doesn't take too long to finish – might make
an amusing gift, for example. After all, how many games feature
hermaphroditic dwarrows, as apparently the design was unable
to solve the extra problems engendered by gender. Actually, it
seems any of that cats, dogs or thoroughbreds might have made
a more successful theme, and one that would have better avoided
the social darwinist implications. But there are some very good
ideas here and we'll be looking to see how Argentum presents
them more effectively in future offerings.
- Geister (Fantasmi, Ghosts, Die guten und die bösen Geister, Jekyll & Hyde, Spökelser)
Abstract with bluffing contested by two on a square grid.
Each player has four good and four bad pieces. A turn is just
one piece moving one square orthogonally. Players try to avoid
taking the opponents' bad pieces and to have one of their good
pieces escape via the far corner. Strategically there are various
approaches one can take – defensive, bluff, agressive – but
the best policy is probably the one that takes best advantage
of whatever weaknesses the opponent's position is leaving.
Abstracts fans should enjoy, but doesn't sufficiently escape the
form to draw significant attraction to others. At least tends to
last only about ten minutes or so. Most versions have centered
around a theme of good and bad ghosts, but the theme is rather
easily dispensed with.
Alex Randolph; 1985
- GemBlo
Pure abstract for up to six, made in Korea. As the gaming
cafe scene thrives in that nation, it's good to see
new home-grown inventions appearing as well. This one's
task is to link one's pieces and block out others',
quite similar to
Blokus,
but employing hexagonal rather than square grid and
shapes. Who would like to be known as the inventor of a
game so similar to its predecessor? On the other hand,
there is one bit of mitigating cleverness. Here
connections are made not via the corner, but across the
short lines which extend out from the corner. This
unexpected decision enables just the right amount of
flexibility in play, neither restricting options too much
nor permitting them to be too easily made. Still, the
game's inventor remains anonymous. Like
Blokus,
this is on the aggressive and contentious side. Players
seek to lock others out and if a couple combine to do it
to you, your options and fun become rather limited.
Except to true
Blokus
aficianadoes, this does not substantially differ, so
these as well as those who are frequently five or six
(or three which Blokus does not handle well)
should be the primary audience. By the way, there is
apparently even an attempt at a theme relating to the
struggles of competing powerful families in Korea and
extra bits reflecting this theme are available from the
manufacturer.
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Low
- Gerüchte Küche
"Gossip Kitchen" is a card game is on the party game end of the
scale as well as reminiscent of
Go Fish
with a logical deduction feature thrown in. There are cards
showing ten types of rumors. At the start one card is removed
from play and the rest distributed. Players try to collect or
ascertain the locations of full sets of each type to deduce which
card is missing by asking another about their hand, e.g. "Do you
have three widgets?" If incorrect, players answer either "more"
or "less", but if correct, the question gets those cards.
Collecting a set of six scores three points and removes the
cards from play. Correctly guessing which card is missing is
worth ten (minus five for a miss).
Probably too chaotic for more serious players and requires memory
skills to boot. Rumored to be
re-released at Essen 2004 with new artwork.
- Geschenkt (No Thanks, No Merci)
Games come in many different durations: the short, the medium,
the long and in the American scene: the super-long. This one
makes the case for the very short, as in five minutes. Such
a plan has the undoubted advantage that it can never try
player patience, and a concomitant problem: how to put in
enough to elicit player enjoyment. Like another very short, Falling, this gains benefit from
the classic mechanism of the random order of cards in a deck.
Reaction speed is not an issue here, however. Instead, on his
turn the player chooses whether to accept the current card or
put a chip on it and pass it to the next player. At the end the
player with the fewest card points, subtracting chips, wins. The
clever rule is that if cards are collected in sequence, only
the lowest one counts. What makes it so fun are the different
approaches one can take. Try to never take a card? Try for only
low cards? Try for a sequence in a particular range? Try to
monopolize chips? What are the players to your immediate right
and left doing? And how can you measure a good deal? What might
make it eventually tiring are the cruel vagaries of luck that
can make it feel totally unfair. But for at least a while this
should be great fun for any audience. This clever invention
comes from Thorsten Gimmler who among others has previously
created Cape Horn and Odin's Ravens. Title means
"given" (as with a gift).
[Frequently Played]
[Top Ten Gateways]
[Holiday List 2004]
- Get Bit
Very simple card game illustrating the old joke about how it's
not necessary to outrun the bear, but only to outpace one's
fellows. But in this case the "bear" is a shark, the runners,
swimmers. These latters are arranged in a line ahead of the
shark and each turn players simultaneously choose cards from
their identical hands (ranked 1-7). After revelation, players
who chose unique numbers, and in order from lowest to highest,
move to the head of the line. Whoever is last in line loses a
limb, represented by detaching such from the cute (robot-resembling)
plastic figure. This system is quite similar to that of
Würmeln,
but with the fascinating analog blocking component. In
that system the particular numbers therefore have more
meaning, which can be a problem here as there is little to no
predictability to the opponents at all and so random
collisions are frequent. There are some very simple games which
remain fun to play over and over again, but this one, despite
its fancy components, is not likely to become one of them.
Apparently some sets also come with a plastic shark to use instead
of the normal shark card. Cards are printed left-handed only.
[6-player Games]
Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 4
Dave Chalker;
Robot Martini;
2007; 4-6
- Giganten
Game about oil prospecting and selling which really requires
exactly four players. Trucks drive about prospecting for oil
which is shipped to three oil markets via player trains. At first
play the black train cards which represent the game system will
seem out of control as the end of the board is never explored.
Although contrary to player expectation, this is actually wise
as otherwise matters would go on too long for the possibilities
offered, not to mention making too obvious the nature of the as
yet undiscovered oil strikes. There is the appearance of multiple
strategic paths, but in reality is decided in the oil auctions,
leaving mysterious why players are forced to walk through all
the rest of it. Not for everyone, but should work well for
players who love auctions, get really turned on by very fancy
plastic pieces and don't mind the price tag.
- Giganten der Lüfte (Airships)
Sometimes it would be nice to use a lie detector on game inventors.
The particular question would be, "what game did you
fundamentally dislike, but nevertheless enjoy just enough to
create your own similar one?" It seems there must be a recent
one for how else to explain the current plethora of dice games
around, many of them combining dice and a technology tree.
Or perhaps a lot of inventors had this type of prototype
hanging around, but it took one breakthrough product to
convince other publishers that they needed one of the same
type as well?
Yspahan
perhaps? Whatever the case, probably it will be years
before this group can be evaluated in complete fairness simply
because of marketplace fatigue with so much of the same thing.
Yes, as you've gathered, this is another effort in the same
category, this time revolving around the perfection of airship
technology like that of the Hindenburg (wartime uses
carefully sidestepped). But this is one of the few examples where
the inventor – not surprisingly considering his track
record – shows at least a modicum of interest in theme.
The four players represent Germany, France, Italy and USA
and the play materials reflect that (though this is not really
a variable powers game). Also thematically nice is
the separation of cards the players can acquire into six types:
engines, pilots, scientists, tools, hangars and funding. All
of this is realized in some quite lovely artwork by Jo
Hartwig, the faux "designer's notes look" being especially
fetching. What's more is that the internationalized
communication design is clear and well done. Along with
these materials, there are some unusual dice in three colors.
White dice show results in the range 1-3, red – 2-5 and
black – 4-8. A number of cards are laid out, each
specifying the types of dice and the total needed to acquire
them. To the total the player may afterward add a bonus chit;
failure grants another such chit. Turning in three chits
permits a double turn. A player can only hold one of each type
of card which means there are sometimes difficult decisions
and also that the order that new cards appear is a bit of
randomness perhaps more decisive than that of the dice.
Eventually players try to create actual dirigibles by taking
the more difficult cards which grant victory points. Doing so
gives the nice wooden blimp piece and another dice roll bonus.
Starting work on the major airship overrides all lesser ones,
however. The fact that this ship may never be finished and
that the game ends not when all four of lesser airship stacks
are depleted, but when each is down to just one card shows
judicious wisdom that prevents matters from going on past the
point of fun, something less often seen in American games
where normally, come hell or high water, every last possibility
must be played out long after Fun has left the building.
Often the winner is the one who was most often able to roll
an 8 on a black die as it always seems that that will win the
prize while failing to roll an 8 will lose it. There's a bit of
strategy – low-risk/low-reward v. high-risk/high-reward
– but the main skill is evaluation of probabilities.
On the other hand it's short enough and the choices and setting
otherwise interesting enough to make this one of the better
possibilities in the dicing sphere.
Strategy: Medium; Theme: High; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 6
Andreas Seyfarth; Queen; 2007; 2-4
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Gin Rummy
Very amusing two-player card game whose influence can be seen
in games like Lost Cities. Players must often decide whether
to pursue sequences or triplets, how quickly to discard face cards,
how to read opponent discards and gauge how close the opponent
is to going out.
- Gipsy King
"Tile placement" game by Corné van Moorsel in which
the "tiles" are largish, wooden recreational vehicles (RVs,
cavarans). A gridded board is formed by fitting together
multiple-hexagon pieces. Hexagons are either land or pond, some
of the pounds containing varying numbers of fish. The ponds are
also numbered and in numerical order players take turns placing
around them. An interesting wrinkle: a player may decline to
place when it is his turn and thereby keep first place in line
after the next placement. Goals are twofold: to have majority
control of scoring ponds, which provides the minority of points;
and to own a large number connected tiles, which pays off per
the triangular numbers scheme. Important skills are lookahead
ability and understanding of the blackmail/take-one-for-the-team
blocking move. There can also be some kingmaker effects as well,
depending on whether or not certain blocks occur in the late
game. The same game is played twice – the second time
in reverse numerical order and permitting a couple of double
placements. Despite this, it finishes in good time and features
good replay value. Of concern are the thematic elements which
seem to suggest a prejudiced view of the
Roma
who here seem to be swarming public parks and stealing all the fish from
the ponds. Is the reason for misspelling "gypsy" in the title?
Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 6
Corné van Moorsel; Cwali; 2007; 2-5
- Girl Genius: The Works
Card game by James Ernest is really a reworking of
XXXenophile for the PG crowd. A somewhat
interesting idea is marred by the usual problems one finds
in American games. Card art is too busy; there is too much text
whereas icons could have been used; and the text is too small to
be readily read. This last may not sound a problem, but when up to 12
cards must be carefully scanned and at least half or more are on
the table facing away from you, it really becomes a serious one.
Add to this unworkability rules which force players to look through
and carefully read all hand or score cards. If his opponents are
not yet asleep, they would still wait longer while the player must
carefully select hand cards to play as replacements. Put all of
this together and one winds up with not a strategy, but a skill game,
the winner being the one most successful at noticing all the little
bits scattered here and there on the very busy display.
- Giro Galoppo
This horse-racing game is by the creator of that other G-G game,
Gulo Gulo.
Like that one this is a good candidate for play both by adults and
children (down to about age six). The board depicts a path
that winds through the countryside, crossed by rivers and swamps.
To these obstacles each player adds another in the forms of
walls, bushes or barriers, so this is not merely a horse racing,
but also a horse jumping event. Each player has an identical
set of cards numbered one through six. For those not yet able
to read, there is also a form of horse counting: the same
symbol repeated a number of times equal to the value of the
card. Players choose their cards privately and reveal at the
same time, the lowest card moving first. That's when things
get tricky. If one lands on another, the landed on is sent
back to the first clear space. If one would land on an
obstacle, there's no move at all. Thus there's a lot of
guessing and outguessing with the overall goal being to be
sent backward less distance than the other players. The
colorful map shows attractive, pastoral scenes and the
oversized wooden pieces easy for even little hands to manipulate.
The separable riders can be paired with any horse, each of
which is differently colored. Moreover the whole thing can
finish in ten minutes without any turn lacking in either dilemmas
or excitement. Probably variants such as picking up the cards
after only five plays or giving special powers for playing
low-numbered cards could make the game more complex should
adult-only players wish to do so.
Jürgen P. Grunau; Selecta Spielzeug/Rio Grande; 2006; 2-5
Strategy: Medium; Theme: High; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 7
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Give Me the Brain
Card game about a group of zombies having only one brain between them
working at a fast food restaurant. Players attempt to get
rid of their cards, but many cannot be played unless "the brain" is held,
which can usually only be done by play of certain cards.
A later version puts all card text in Czech and provides only one translation
sheet, available only to the player holding the brain.
Virtually all atmosphere that can easily outlive its humor value.
Follow-on Lord of the Fries
has nothing in common apart from theme.
- Glen More
A first time German inventor brings us a game set amongst the
lochs, wheat fields, sheep, castles and whiskey barrels of highland
Scotland. This is another employing the rondel mechanism, but
this time its shape is rectangular, a "rectdel" perhaps. On a
small board with a market in its middle player meeples
leapfrog one another to claim square tiles. The next player
to move is always the least advanced one, as in
Thebes. Taken tiles are added to
the owner's freeform display. Figuring out the best way to
locate these is a source of a lot of the interest. First there
are restrictions: some tiles require a river or a road; these
must be aligned to the river and road of a player's starting
tile. Tiles not containing either of these features may not
block those which do. In addition a tile must be placed
adjacent to one of the player's meeples. After placement
adjacent tiles are activated. Some permit a meeple to hop over
to an adjacent tile, which one to move and in which direction
being another challenging decision as the display expands.
There is also the ability to promote to a chieftain, removing
it from the display, but allowing it to count in scoring.
Other tiles produce sheep or cattle or butcher them to produce
points. Wheat may be grown and turned into whiskey. There are
also a number of one off tiles providing even more significant
abilities, products or endgame scoring. Available tiles begin
play divided into stacks and an intermediate scoring occurs
each time one runs out. The methodology compares all players
in three categories, in each the most advanced player receiving
points for the difference between himself and the least
advanced, with intermediate players receiving a portion.
This sort of thing also has a reverse effect in special
endgame scoring when the player with the largest display is
penalized in comparison to the player with the smallest.
Perhaps the largest drawback here is the packaging and
presentation. While the wood and cardboard are all their
typical attractive Alea selves (some may not approve the
thinner tiles Alea has been using the past few years)
and there's full appreciation for
the small box, a larger board and tiles would have been very
helpful when trying to figure out what other players are
working with across the table. Unique tiles show white icons which
are meant to indicate that they have associated cards, but
these resemble too closely the whiskey icons. The cards are
quite small as well and feature tiny print. For these reasons
and also because there's too much downtime and too little
ability to plan, avoid this with five players. With four
players there is some downtime, but at least there is less
of the situation of a strategic path that only one player
takes and therefore wins because of it. With fewer than four,
there is a special rule wherein a virtual player takes tiles away
via die roll. This can be amusing, but adds randomness that
some may not enjoy. On the other hand, the downtime issue
disappears at this number. There are some tactical
considerations, sometimes about taking a tile another player
needs, but certainly about timing one's activities to be ready
for the scoring intervals.
HMMH7 (Strategy: High; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 7)
Matthias Cramer; Alea-2010/Rio Grande-2010; 2-5; 60
- Global Pursuit
Published by National Geographic magazine. The geometric
map includes the entire world.
The object is to answer geography trivia, and match map
tiles to earn points and create a world map. Map tiles
show different maps of the earth: political, economic,
topographical and historical. Questions have varying degrees of difficulty.
Since a lot of the information is basically unknowable, at
least in my opinion (how much do you know about Indonesian
trade figures during the 1980's?), the purpose here is more
education than gaming. In fact it has been used quite a
lot in school curricula. Unfortunately there is not much
for the strategist here.
[Party Games]
- Gloria Mundi
The title of this large, multi-player board game from Abacus
by James Ernest and Mike Selinker must be some kind of joke for
how can a meaning like "Glory of the World" describe what the
players are doing here, which is alternately bribing barbarians
not to attack or abandoning Rome as fast as their little legs
will carry them. But just as in the joke about outrunning the
grizzly, it's not necessary to outpace the bear(barians), you
just need to outrun your opponents. In this tightly integrated
design, each player starts his turn by playing a card triggering
production of gold, soldiers or food – for all players, and
the more cards they have of this type, the more they earn. But
this card has a second purpose: providing a build site for
a same-colored card that a player may now buy, a building
which will both permit movement and provide some special
advantage. But should the underlying card ever be lost, there
goes the building card with it. The reason to lose a building is
that some slacker on his turn might elect not to bribe, which
means the barbarians wreak havoc and players take turns having
their holdings ravaged. Initially players are probably reluctant
to take this mutually destructive option, but actually it should
be chosen whenever one is less harmed by it than others. Players
tend to set up extra cards as buffers against destruction and to
specialize in unique colors to avoid damage. They also tend to not
get too attached to anything as fortune make quickly take it away
(but is
Ursuppe
any different?). Most often the key to victory
will be successful assembly of a group of mutually supporting
buildings. Unfortunately these are not all laid out in nice rows
to choose from as in
Puerto Rico.
Instead, they appear one by
one in a draft pool where they are initially too expensive and
later too vulnerable to getting picked off by others, an annoying
situation which may eventually sour some players. Probably these
are the ones who should just forebear from the strategy of buying
a building every turn so as to keep moving and instead save up
to pay more for a really complementary one. The trouble here is
that those cards may show up too late, or not at all. In this
context it should be kept in mind that the more bribes are not
paid, the more cards appear. The cards themselves are lacking
in communication design, but considerable care has been taken
thematically as they all tend to match their functions well.
Each has a diferent Latin name as well, with the meaning being
clear from the illustration. One detects a different theme in
each suit: white legion cards tend to confer glory, food
cards wealth and gold cards more money. It's pretty evident too
that the inventors have played plenty of
Magic: the Gathering,
as some of its modes are apparent here. The production is lavish
and overdone, as is appropriate for the title, reminding a
bit of editor Joe Nikisch's former glory days at Goldsieber. There
are many bits, including pieces in three colors that
remind of chiclets. The joke is present mostly in game play,
not in the artwork, though the too-comfortable Roman lounging on
the box cover gives some idea. Overall the mechanisms are fairly
innovative, grasp of theme is good, but duration is rather long
for its level of chaos. The important skills are evaluation
and lookahead, but tactics and theme are acknowledged as well,
so there is something here for just about everyone. Even if not
entirely successful, this is definitely in the right direction,
the sort of German-American hybrid that it is hoped will appear
more often.
[6-player Games]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 7
- Glory to Rome
Multi-player card game set in Rome, just after Nero's fire.
Players vie for prestige in the rebuilding by use of a huge deck of
multi-function cards – at least 5 functions each. The idea that
one's played cards go into a pool from which players draft on the
next turn is borrowed from
Lamarckian Poker,
but surprisingly never before fully realized. It leavens above the
usual game of this type. But this is also a good example of the
maxim that "it's not enough to have a good idea; one needs to know
how to use it". Too bad then that this design has been tricked up
with several special cards that hugely alter events, having the
potential to end matters after just a few turns, giving the lucky
card drawer the victory. The design seems almost schizophrenic as
how could someone invent the very fine rules permitting players to
acquire permanent capabilities in various categories when the game
can end before they can even be used? Trying out different
capabilities ought to have been part of the fun. On the other hand,
matters here are so chaotic that they can last quite a long time,
much longer in fact than situation and fun afforded warrant. So
this is not recommended unless one wants to tinker and there of
course is no guarantee that anything reasonable can be
accomplished with the materials at hand. But it's good news for
inventors that the idea is still out there, just waiting for proper
application. Card art is cartoonish rather than classical. Note that
post-publication errata restricting the use (abuse) of the Jack
card has been issued.
[Cambridge Games Factory]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Low
- Gnadenlos!
Klaus Teuber game of the Wild West in a surprisingly-small box
(first in the new Kosmos "Games for Multiple Players" series).
The heart of the game is a double auction system. The first bid
uses an adventurer to try to win at either a shootout, poker or
gold digging. An adventurer may be lost at this if too successful
or not successful enough. But the winner gains some advantage, say in
gold or victory points, and
then there is a second auction for adventurers using IOU's. Eventually
the IOU's come due and the players must pay using the gold they have
acquired earlier. Woe betide the player who cannot pay as they suffer
a black stain on their reputation and consequent loss of victory points.
Strategy tip: do not overbid IOU's. The main idea here seems to be
to have perfect timing and balance, but the experience is
overly chaotic due to the vagaries of which IOU cards are pulled.
Somewhat reminiscent of the inventor's earlier
Der Fliegende Holländer
in this respect.
Also unpleasant, unless the rules translation is wrong, is the mild memory
aspect.
Title means "Merciless".
- Gnip Gnop
Game for children first published in 1971 by Parker Bros.
takes its name from Ping Pong spelled in reverse. Each
of the two players has three levers which are used to propel
a ball through a hole to the other's side. First to get all
six balls to the other's side wins. Although mostly a game
of speed, a player can attempt something smarter by watching
the opponent's hands and trying to time a shot from the
corresponding lever at the same time, or slighly earlier,
thus both getting a ball through as well as stopping a ball
from coming through. Overall, the frantic action becomes
more fun than such a simple idea would seem to deserve.
[picture]
- Die Gnumies (Gnumies)
David Parlett card game for children of silly, fantasy characters
reminds of Raj in which players
each put a card face down to bid for a revealed points card.
Fortunately here only the winner pays. Other added twists are
the bonus points for set collection, a wild card and instead of
negative cards, seven cards which destroy part of the
collection rather than improve it. Finally, a special card does
not participate in bidding, but instead permits the player to draw
an extra card from the deck, which he either keeps by paying his
special card or gives away. There is some strategy and interest
in trying to figure out how much to value each card. How many
low cards do you need to save to avoid the negative cards?
How much should you spend to keep an opponent from collecting
the third or fourth card of a set vs. building such a set
yourself? Etc. But it can be quite frustrating if the entire
deck does not get used (usually it is not) and the card ranks you
are collecting are all stuck at the bottom. This is not bad as
an introductory game for children, but not one that adults will
also prefer for themselves. Instead, they should try something
like Drahtseilakt.
[Holiday List 2002]
- Go (Baduk, Weiqi)
Traditional game apparently invented in Japan at least
five hundred years ago, possibly a lot earlier. Introduced
to Europe and the United States in the 1880's (the similar
British game Annexation was
invented around the same time), one of the most challenging
of two-player games abstracts. Even computers do not so
far play it as well as masters do. Rather devoid of color,
however. After decades of decline, is apparently again on the upswing
in Japan.
[Periodic Table of Board Games]
- Go Fish (Authors)
This simple card game may seem beneath interest, but it does
have some strategic features. One must decide whether it
is wiser to ask for the card that one has only one of or for
the triplet that you're holding. The best decision will vary
depending on the number of players as well. The Authors
version of this game, featuring famous writers with each card
showing one of their more popular books, was invented in 1861
by American August Smith and published by Whipple & Smith.
Apparently it was not copyrighted as over the years many game
companies produced their own versions. When we were kids, I
introduced a variant to make this game more interesting. As
the pictured authors had clearly different hair colors (white, brown
black, yellow), we make it legal to ask yes or no questions such
as "Do you have an author with white hair?" and as along as the
answer was yes you could keep asking. We also had a tiny-sized
version from a Cocoa Puffs cereal box.
- Go to the Head of the Class
One of the original trivia games, it was invented in 1936
by Milton Bradley. After having made several games for the
classroom, they apparently decided to put the classroom into
a game. Board depicts a home room with desks numbered "1" to
"100". Players take turns answering questions from a booklet
and either advance or fall back. Some desks require drawing
examination cards which pose a second question. Other desks are
labeled "Luck" and a card with random effects is applied. Progress
on the last five desks is one desk per question. A nice feature
is that questions are rated at three levels, equalizing play for
unbalanced groups. Also interesting are questions which involve
all payers in consecutively naming items from a well-definied
category. Almost no strategy, but the trivia is interesting,
particularly in the older editions where it's surprising how
quickly the trivia of yesterday has been forgotten.
[Party Games]
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Goa
It's possible that in his head every designer, or even every
player, has a Platonic ideal of the perfect game, but being
perfect, it's entirely possible that this game can never exist,
or at least not in playable form. Meanwhile, what do exist are
various different approaches to that ideal. I mention
this here because with this game one starts to discern what the
Platonic ideal of someone at Hans-im-Glück must be. The
company's 2004 Spring big game of Renaissance Portuguese merchants
in India features once-around auctions of items, nominal ownership
of which are assigned to players by a grid-traversal method
reminiscent of Restaurant.
This type of auction is very light and is not far from drafting.
The items purchased mostly contribute to production of one of
the five wares or give colonists or ships. Along with money,
these are the currencies of the game that permit advancement
on the five tracks each player pursues. Track advancements give
more capability in the areas of money, ships, colonists, wares or
special cards as well as the majority of victory points (special
cards and tiles providing the residue). Thus, just as in this
publisher's St. Petersburg,
it's a game of acquiring materials and managing them to
get small efficiencies to outstrip the competition. But a
very similar structure can even be seen in some unexpected
places like Amun-Re
and Morgenland (Aladdin's
Dragons). Just the details and complexity change from
release to release. The complexity here is on a high end and
often one wishes for a piece of paper on which to write out
a plan simply because there are too many different tracks and
costs to consider. Fortunately the tiles and cards appear to
be well-balanced, if a bit bland, which is perhaps an inevitable
consequence, leaving the contest mostly a fair one, appropriate
for its heavier nature. Component design is up to the company's
usual high standard including a superfluous main board. Special
kudos are in order for the attempt to create language-free
international cards, although they only succeed as a mnemonic
rather than in the loftier goal of original communication. A
tighter grasp of the theme is lacking – here the player
in no way feels any sense of historical experience and the game
could be about anything. Overall, this is a worthwhile effort,
slightly annoying for offering yet another auction, but a healthy
repast for the master strategist.
- Gods
Freeform hextile-placement game of gods trying to find the most
tribal followers. The system is clean and elegant, player turns
comprising just two actions from a short list of possibles. They
tend to build their own branches to establish nations, earn points
cards and then cap the ends with waste lands for defense. The
most powerful play – placing a new temple – must
paradoxically be mostly avoided, both because of its high expense
and because the player with the most loses a significant
number of points at the end. Unfortunately not enough
seems to have been done with the unintended side effects
of placement.
Euphrat & Tigris
and
Café International
are just two diverse examples which
have done much better in this regard. And the mere two
up tiles to choose from are really too few to relieve the
problem. The result is that most plays seem to be obvious and
uninteresting. [summary]
Michael Schacht;
Spiele aus Timbuktu;
- God's Playground
Volume 1 of
God's Playground
is the title of a history of Poland from its origins to 1795.
The game picks up the action in the 1400s with players
vaguely representing rival factions or magnates within the
country. Although it depicts wars, this is not a war game; the
players do not fight one another, but do combat foreign invaders
while trying to gain maximum advantage at home. Although this
situation resembles somewhat that of
Republic of Rome,
there is no equivalent possibility that the country will fall
or that all players will lose. What's well-designed here are
three strategic paths that exist under a coherent thematic
context. Players will enjoy discovering the details for
themselves, but one path is to concentrate on owning as much
land as possible, including taking over others' holdings here
and there. Another is to concentrate on making money and thus
controlling the king
and the power it confers as well as constructing (and then
defending) the rare but valuable cities. A third involves
having influence dispersed everywhere which permits valuable
victory point purchases (representing establishment of
religious schools). Even better, players are not completely
locked into these approaches and can mix and match a little,
particularly when it comes to trying to prevent whoever is
leading. As in many games, but particularly here, it's not a
good idea to look like a leader as he will be targeted,
whether it's taking over his lands or letting invaders
(Teutonic Knights, Prussians, Swedes, Russians, Tatars, Turks
and Hapsburgs) ravish his lands. Speaking of the invaders,
their strengths not fixed, but vary slightly depending on dice
rolling, so there is no perfect planning. Even more
chaotically, invaders who overwhelm their region of entry
overflow into neighboring ones. Combat is handled simply.
There are three types of units – infantry, cavalry,
artillery – and a "to-hit" die is rolled for each.
As a refreshing change, the map communicates quite clearly; it
is attractive as well. There is a veritable country-load of
wooden bits to go with it. There are a few rules glitches, but
nothing that cannot be handled. The most serious issue
is that the patches and
jerry-rigging needed to provide balance are all too apparent.
Certain actions can only be performed in certain turns –
some only once per turn. Costs vary depending on when they are paid.
Some powers can only be used depending on relative score or
relative influence in a region. Etc. All of these inelegant exceptions
can cause mistakes, either in obeying the rules or in playing
optimally or both, and can ruin play to a small or even large
extent. Other issues are that the entire game could break if
the kingship auction results in a tie (suggested deciders: fewest
points, then fewest pieces on board, then randomly).
Another is that it's an open
question whether there are enough die rolls to be fair in a game
of this 3+ hours. On the other hand, the final result can be very
balanced, with scores between all players being less than 10%
of the total.
HHHH7 (Strategy: High; Theme: High; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 7)
Martin Wallace;
Treefrog-2009; 3
- Going Nutz
Very simple party game in which players must take turns naming
an item from a randomly-drawn category in order to advance on a
track. Often fraught with debate or even difficulty if players
cannot agree on what
is and is not a legal answer. Actually, the game is rather superfluous
as this could be played without any implements whatever.
[Party Games]
- Gold!
Apparently gold has just been discovered, but requires donkeys
to extract. That must explain why each of the six suits in the
60-card deck contains cards worth -2 (the donkeys) as well as
the ranks 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. In reality the theme is pretty
thin, but the rest works so well it's forgiven. Reminiscent of
Coloretto,
each player begins with a donkey in a different color. To
start each round five cards are laid out. On a turn the player
either drafts the lowest-valued one, trades in a donkey for a
better card or trades down a held card to get a
less valuable one. The latter can be worthwhile because the goal is to
acquire three cards in a suit, which then get removed to the
player's score pile. But before doing so, this player steals
one card from another player, but not one from any color
already held. When the cards run out, the player having the
highest total in each color gets to score the best of these
cards only. Then it's just a matter of adding up scoring
piles to see who won. So this is an affair of simple rules,
but tricky decisions. For each possible action, what are
others likely to do? Which are more needed at any given
moment, donkeys or high-value cards? By retarding the progress
of the round, how close is it possible
to get to being the first to draw when the new cards appear?
And are enough donkeys held to be prepared for that?
What cards are needed to play defense against others and
what other cards should be spent to get something that
matches, especially considering that some of them are just
going to be stolen anyway? Etc. In terms of graphic design,
these cards should show a symbol as well as the number to help the
color blind, but it's not that bad since all cards in play are
visible to all and someone else can always be asked. The
simple artwork, showing only a gold coin and number, could
have been made more exciting, but these are mere quibbles.
This decisionmaking here has the quality of a new Coloretto
with that immediate "let's play again!" feeling and is one
of the best new games from 2011 tried so far. The only real
downside is that it only supports up to three players, but
it seems likely that with his design practice of constant
improvements, the inventor will overcome this eventually.
Meanwhile we have this to enjoy for all of those two- or
three-player situations that inevitably crop up.
The Gold! Promotional Scoring Card expansion
changes the game by adding one of three possible end conditions:
(1) the player with the most donkeys automatically loses;
(2) red card sets automatically count 15 points;
(3) "3" cards are tripled in value.
LLHH7 (Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 7)
Michael Schacht; Abacus-2011; 2-3; 20; 8+
- Gold der Maya, Das
Board game in which players participate in blind bids
to acquire either an eighth-, sixth- or a quarter-sized
wedge of a circle in two colors, one of which is unknown.
High bidder pays off the low bidder. Only certain types
of wedges may be placed next to other types. Points are scored for
completing a circle, for having a circle all of one type,
for the intrinsic value of the wedges and for remaining
coin. The design of the wedges is problematic. The most
valuable wedges usually have the second most valuable form
on the back. But some player will be forced and locked into
a strategy with not very valuable wedges.
According to Sylvie Barc, its inventor with her ex-husband Jean Charles Rodriguez,
it was originally about gods creating planets and called "Stardust".
- Goldbräu
In lieu of a new mechanism, this game of selling beer
presents several old ones combined together in a new
way. There is the simultaneous option selection of Basari, the grid expansion of Löwenherz, the majority
of cubes in an area from many games and the proportional shares
from a few others. But do they all add up to something greater
than the parts? Well, Basari detractors will be happy
to learn that unlike that game there is no negotiation and that
one always gets to perform an action, even if others also choose
it. Instead, being the only one to choose an action type means
one gets to do it twice, or in the case of getting cards, for
half price. In this beer setting, this card option seems to be
king of beers, however, and it's likely the best strategy is to
almost never choose anything else. That's because it's generally
possible to use cards to get into nearly anyone's business. Unlike
Löwenherz, where territory shifts between opponents,
here it only gets traded between two areas owned by the same
player, so most often there is little point. Moreover, the young
lady and the old man who provide significant point shifts are also
controlled by the cards. So even though its course runs smooth,
most strategists will want more of a challenge than this one
offers and those with a design perspective, more innovation.
This may appeal somewhat to non-gamers – the beer garden
theme may help there – so long as they are not put off by a
fair amount of accounting at the end of each round. Also the need
for players to be alert to playing "defense" may be problematic
for this group, especially given the simultaneous blind bidding
situation. If no one thinks to "bell the cat", watch out! Poker chips, if you have them,
make a nice alternative to the paper money by the way. There may
be some extra humor intended in the depiction of the old man
(lecher?) and the (rather severe looking) serving woman that
German residents alone can fully appreciate.
Franz-Benno Delonge; Zoch/Rio Grande; 2004; 3-4
- Die Goldene Stadt
In a lot of games about building up a position, one starts
with practically nothing. With
Martin Wallace
games it's even necessary to take loans, both early and often. Many
Sierra Madre
games have such meager starting positions that the player is in
danger of being knocked out by the system before its even over.
These are Cinderella stories in which by the end a profound
transformation has occurred. But there's another style.
In this class of games players begin with substantial
positions, receive lots of "free" stuff and thus steadily
progress to better positions, without ever experiencing much angst.
Sort of like an early Tom Cruise movie. It's not clear whether
it's because that's what they attract or because their game
development process makes it so, but a lot of such games are
produced by Kosmos. It happens in the
Settlers of Catan
where everyone starts with one-fifth of what they'll
eventually need to win and continues all through that series
as well as in similar vehicles like
Elasund.
It works for the Settlers, of course, but this
scenario needs to be employed judiciously, lest it rob the
affair of all drama and sense of accomplishment. The conceit
here is that merchants have arrived at "The Golden City"
and compete at acquiring goods, establishing centers and
receiving letters of recommendation. The colorful map divides
a large island into four quadrants – mountains, meadows,
woods, desert – which is crossed by crooked roads all
ultimately leading to the city in the center. Pairs of
quadrant cards permitting placement of the ubiquitous Catan
houses in associated lands are set out for players to claim
in turn. In a cute graphical turn these claims are handled
using special hand-shaped tiles. Less cute are the rules by
which players compete over cards. If someone wants an
already claimed one, he can do so by just paying one gold to
oust the current claimant, who is then unable to re-place his
hand until every other player has had a chance, probably
meaning that he will then need to pay two to get something
useful. Players need to be particular because buildings need
to be chained along the road and once in a quadrant, sites
types are limited. On the other hand, matters are mitigated
somewhat by permitting pairs of matched cards to act as a wild
card, but that too is limited because hand size maxes out at
five. Each building confers some sort of reward as printed on the
board. Scoring occurs each turn based on a random public
scoring card which indicates which part of the board will have
its holdings rewarded. There are also multiple set collection
games evaluated at the end of play, based on various types of
cards players have collected for buildings.
Depending mostly on how the cards come up and turn order, but
only a little on cutoffs resulting from building decisions, some
players will be advantaged, others not. The problem
is that when it happens, there isn't much players can do to
catch up. Someone needs to put their hand over that of the leader's,
but who is going to do it? The second placed really ought to
be the one, but then the cards he would receive might not be
useful to him at all. On the other hand maybe the
fourth-placed player does need the leader's cards, but he has
troubles enough already and can he be expected to go to
extreme lengths? Why, just to be a kingmaker? Probably this whole
card distribution mechanism is ill-advised and should have
been a different sort of auction or distribution mechanism
entirely. As is, it tends to make for an orderly procession
rather than a competitive contest. Which is a shame as this is an
attractive production with many cards and bits and which does
not last overlong. Some of the roads are difficult to discern,
but this might have been deliberate trickery. Besides the unique
hands pieces, it also has a
nice key piece to indicate the starting player. It is limited
to a small player range, however, something Kosmos has been
getting away with for too long, and does not have an English
edition, though there are no language-dependent components.
This might work in some cases as an introductory affair for
players who want to avoid too much direct competition, but
is probably too bland to earn many repeat plays.
MMMM6 (Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 6)
Michael Schacht; Kosmos-2009; 3-4
- Goldland
Exploration game by Wolfgang Kramer set, much like Legend of the Lost Dutchman,
in the world of the early American Southwest. Like that game,
and like last year's Africa,
is a matter of turning up random tiles and then trying to do
the best one can with them. Here the tiles are satisfyingly
large, thick and very attractively illustrated, including
American Indians, canyons, lakes, deserts, bandits and mountain
lions which look much too nice to shoot. And unlike Coronado's
real-life experience, the gold of El Dorado really does exist,
particularly in the far corner of the board. The communication
design deserves high marks with no textual elements and
a well-designed card showing pawn speed based on how much
is being carried (a nice idea basically borrowed from Serenissima). Gold provides
points, but in addition there are various races, akin to the
roadbuilding contest in The
Settlers of Catan, in which players attempt to overcome
the most of a particular type of tile. This heavier-than-usual
treatment of an exploration game is a noble experiment that
unfortunately will often not turn out well. Because there is so
much luck in what is turned up, and in what order, some players
often have an unfair advantage. Adding weight and length to the
affair simply increases the misery in these cases. In addition,
there appears to be a unbalancing strategy in simply traveling
along the outside border to be first to reach the gold corner.
Overall, Knizia had the right idea with Africa: if it's to
be an exploration game, best to keep it fast and light. Players
who are not fanatics for exploration games or the Southwest
should stay with that one. When it comes to the truly satisfying
exploration game, master strategists are still searching.
- Goldrush-City
This card game which plays like a board game is set in the gold
rush era, but rather than dig and pan, players pursue a surer
source of income: providing services, including the naughty ones,
for the miners in the form
of various buildings.
Players take turns revealing event, resource and bandit
cards from the deck. After events are resolved,
players bid for the resources. Then the active player uses
action points and resources to acquire building permits and tools
or erect buildings which differ in their
resource costs and advantages conferred, including
action points. Bandits may also be used to counter others.
Then players engage in a sub-game somewhat akin to group Blackjack – but with a
greater range of results – to distribute gold useful for
the next auction. This is an economic game with considerable
chaos, an unusual mixture which will probably cause fans of only
the former to blanch, used as they are to steady forecasting
and manageable risk. But I don't think this was invented for
them. Rather it should appeal to those with a great appreciation
for theme and a tolerance for the ups and downs of Lady Luck,
while still retaining some important strategic decisions.
The wood-themed artwork on the 120 cards is atmospherically fun,
although the throroughness of the "look" sometimes makes the
three kinds of cards tricky to distinguish. The only sub-system
which might need further work would be the end scoring. It seems
almost certain, at least in a five-player game, to generate many
ties, for which the rules do provide a solution, but fewer ties
in the first place would have been much preferred. There are
also four expensive, one-of-a-kind buildings, but they do not
provide any flavorful benefits. Perhaps one day the publisher
will consider a variant which endows them with special powers?
There is little German text to bother English-only players, but
one "gotcha" is that in terms of their capabilities, there are
five different types of bandits. Unfortunately, these are detailed
mostly in text rather than pictorially, but players should be able
to quickly acclimate. Note also that scissors are needed to cut
out tool and dynamite chips (fold these into the rules for easier
storage). Overall, my second favorite from this publisher,
after Strand-Cup,
and better than many in the Wild West genre.
[Krimsus]
- Gomoku (Go-Moku, Renju, Go-Bang, Spoils Five, Noughts and Crosses)
Ancient Japanese abstract similar to Tic
Tac Toe except played on an infinite board with the
goal of getting five or more tokens in a row. Usually a 19 x
19 Go board will suffice to complete
a game. Most strategy revolves around trying for four tokens
in a row with a blank at either end, an unbeatable situation.
A good way to move into more sophisticated gaming after Tic
Tac Toe, it is more strategic but still has the flaw that
with perfect play the first player must win. A derivative is
the Swedish game Pente which adds capturing pieces as
another way to win. Introduced to Europe around 1885, it was
originally called Go-Bang. It was first published in the
United States just two years later by
McLoughlin Brothers (a company later acquired by Milton Bradley).
[Periodic Table of Board Games]
- Good Guys and Bad Guys
Cadaco game from 1973 for children about a classic Old West
battle between good and evil as four white-horsed
law-enforcement cowboys pursue four black-horsed lawbreakers.
Players roll the dice one by one deciding to which horse
the roll should be allocated. Sometimes if particularly
unlucky one of the outlaws can be captured on the first
turn or three. At a certain point the trail splits into
three paths, each with its own advantages and disadvantages
and the outlaw must choose based on how many and how close
the lawmen have come up to their heels. Often it is wisest
to split up while the lawmen are probably best off to let
at least one of the outlaws escape so as to be sure of
catching the others. Certain vague rules need
some pre-game discussion. One of the more flavorful an intriguing
entries of its time and type, mostly for the intricacies of the map.
- Good, the Bad and the Munchkin, The
Surprise has been expressed over the years at the lack here of any
commentary on the Munchkin series of games. Had they
really been avoided for so long? Actually no, but what had
happened was that after it came out seven of us sat down to
try it. After a few rounds of complete boredom, I asked, since
there were plenty of other players already, to be excused.
That said, three others immediately asked the same thing and
the entire playing disintegrated. Many years have passed since
then and with no fewer than thirty-one products out so far, the
line must be succeeding at some level and so I resolved to try
it again. What I found once again is that really the selling
point is humor. These text-heavy cards could have been a book
of humor, but reading's a solitary exercise whereas in a game
context you can read to one another, something that's not
normally acceptable, except in the context of parents to children.
The game itself is nothing new. One draws a card to find out
what happens. Some negotiation can occur and others can play
"take that!" cards to work against whomever they like, even
the person in last place if they don't happen to like them
that day. It's not exactly unbalanced, but forget about any
strategy or tactics. There is a good deal of fiddliness,
detail buried in text and difficulty in remembering to use all
of the various abilities one has acquired. It's sort of
strange too that the
Dungeons & Dragons
ideas of encountering monsters (here other gunfighters, grizzly bears,
etc.), classes (dude, cowboy, Indian (possibly offensive?),
outlaw, etc.) and levels are preserved instead of coming up
with something new and more appropriate for this setting.
Don't get this if you're looking for a game about the
Old West; do get this if you're the type of person who enjoys
endless repetitions of dialog from Monty Python and other
genre humor. By the way, back in 1983 I helped create a
humor piece that may have spawned this whole line
of Munchkinism. If that is true, I would like to humbly apologize.
Also published in German as Spiel mir das Lied vom Munchkin
(Play Me the Munchkin Song.)
Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 3
Steve Jackson; Steve Jackson Games; 2007; 2-6
[Buy it at Amazon]
- G.O.O.T.M.U.
Isomorphic grid tiles are assembled in random fashion to form the
board, becoming a maze which is often difficult to navigate. Populating
the maze are a number of hazards and tools in the form of both
inverted counters and printed text. These include things like fires,
snakepits, cave-ins, locked doors, involuntary slides, trap doors,
tight squeezes, etc. Also present are each player's
Get-Out-Of-The-Maze-Units. The first to successfully acquire all
three of these units wins. While an interesting concept and rather
different than most games, just as in
Dschungel
the chief challenge is simply trying to
decipher how to navigate the board (which like
Wiz War
wraps at the edges) rather
than plan any strategy. There is also a large reliance on luck of
the dice as players roll for movement and only with a "6" can a player
rotate a tile and even then it may not be possible to do anything to
slow down a leader. Some spaces are too strong such as those that when
landed on require losing two turns. Similar frustrating effects
also occur because players are not allowed to discard unused
movement points.
[Jolly Games]
- Gouda! Gouda!
A racing game in which the object is fragrant cheese and the racers
eager, climbing gangs of mice. Special dice show results of either forward,
backward or "no effect" and the player decides which mice,
including those of others, move where. First to the cheese wins. An
advanced version adds two more cheeses and three secret chits per
player which allow them to alter the normal course of play in various
ways (up/down-grading dice, cancelling rolls, forcing re-rolls,
changing venue, etc.). Rules and presentation are easy to understand and use.
There is a bit of a tactical element in that
one tries to roll dice where a lot of other mice are already present
and also to escape the side paths where few mice congregate.
Includes very pleasing stylized wooden mice
and cheese pieces. Intended for children, hopes that it would be as
appealing for adults as similar vehicles
Igel Ärgern,
or even
Ausbrecher AG
are unfortunately dashed, leaving one to wonder at the tininess of the
gap between success and disappointment.
Progress is too random, with mice often
travelling quite high only to fall seriously out of contention, and the
outcome too long in coming. The
advanced version only accentuates these flaws. The attempt is applauded,
but the cute theme and presentation are best left to the younger
audience, and even they can probably do better elsewhere.
- De Gouden Eeuw (The Dutch Golden Age, Die Goldene Ära, Le Siècle d'Or, Holdenderski Zloty Wiek)
Games with multiple strategic paths are very popular and
admired, but does it work for you if there is plenty of luck
attached? After all, despite the luck, those strategic
decisions are still there to be made. Maybe the answer is a
question of length. How long would you be willing to to play
such a game? Set in 17th century Netherlands, this one's first
strong impression is a large and beautiful map of its
provinces. Around the outside is a track over which via dice
roll a pawn moves to start each player-turn. Each landing
space contains two province names; players having a piece
there receive some small income. This isn't a big part of
play, but is clever because it's an easy way to add some
unpredictability to player activities as well as bailing them
out a bit when their investments have gone sour and they're
desperately strapped for cash. Speaking of investments, there
are two main forms: the tulip market and overseas
colonization. Tulips tend to be very risky, but the overseas
investment even more so. These ventures are pursued by drawing
cards which, reminiscent of
Risk,
can be turned in when a complete set is drawn. Some cards pay
off as singles, but others only in a set of three, which can
take rather too long. One bug is that there are only five of
the latter type in the tulip deck which could result in nobody
being able to cash them out. But how are these cards acquired
you ask. There is a color scheme to the board. There are five
colors of provinces and four corresponding colors of decks.
Presence in a color gets you the ability to buy a card in the
corresponding deck. The fifth color is used to introduce new
pieces to the board. But this is not all. There are also five
color tracks with ascending numbers. A player unable to get
onto the board can instead buy his way into a color by ousting
the player currently on the track of the color he desires; of
course each oust costs more than the last one. The decks
not yet described include an arts and culture deck in which
players endow paintings and the like for victory points and an
interesting gray deck which is a real grab bag of items
including special one of a kind powers plus cards normally
found in other decks. As a result there's a mostly monetary
path to victory, an arts and culture one, an exploration
one and the gray deck, plus the possibility of mixing paths
together, admitting that some mixture is probably necessary
anyway, especially in the early going. But one has a limited
number of pieces to place which is definitely a limitation
going into the endgame. Obviously though, drawing cards, and
therefore luck has a large effect on play. Thematically the game
isn't bad, if one can accept the distillation of many things down
into just a card. At least the cards are attractively illustrated
and well made. There are both wooden and cardboard counters as
well as dice in orange, still the color of Holland. Both map and
cards clear communications-wise, though the instructions, at least
in English, can be a bit confusing at first pass and should have
had another edit. Turns are entirely a free-for-all in which the
player can do whatever he likes so long as he can pay for it and
sometimes this causes confusion. It is unfortunate that it only
works for such a small player range. But with experience this
offers intriguing sets of choices and only lasts about an hour,
which depending on your tolerance for luck, just might make this
one golden.
Leo Colovini & Giuseppe Baù; Phalanx/Mayfair; 2008; 3-4
[Buy it at Amazon]
HHMM7 (Strategy: High; Theme: High; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 7)
- Grænaland
A few years ago we had the year of the
pirate game,
but lately we seem to be overrun with vikings games, this being one of
the examples. At the same time, while the Catan series seems to be
headed in warlike directions
(Struggle for Rome),
games like this one could as easily carry the title "The Settlers of
Greenland". But we don't get much of the island here, only the coasts,
which are represented by two rows of placards, each representing one
of five terrain types. A terrain type produces a resource card per
turn, drawn from decks containing three different types, in different
proportions. The types overlap so there are only five types overall.
Each turn features accumulation for all players, but the right to
building (which passes clockwise) is available only for one (who does
not move on this turn). As in Catan, players use resources to build
new control structures (houses) which can earn more resources, but
also – here the game more resembles
Puerto Rico
– they upgrade their abilities or those of the areas they dominate.
Catan detractors who feel that dice and/or trading ruin the game may
be pleased that neither apply here. Instead, each player has a chance
to propose a division of spoils for one area. Then, explicitly without
any negotiation, players vote on it, some having more votes than
others as they depend on local holdings. What becomes quickly apparent
is that in such situations it is wiser to propose the other player as
a recipient, hoping he will return the favor. In this way both players
at least make progress against the others where as othewise both are
falling further behind.
It may appear prima facie that some starting positions
–
those centrally-located – are more favorable than others
–
those located at the edges – but there are two ways to look at
this. If those in the center have better access, they also tend to
be in the midst of more contention whereas those at the edge tend
to be left alone more.
The artwork in this game is photographic
rather than cartoonish and some of the terrains look a little too
similar to one another, but they become clearer with practice. The
communication design is well done, including the informative player
aid cards which feature a clever way to secretly indicate movement and
graphics on the back of each resource card indicating the mix of its
deck. This game features both new mechanisms as well as new
combinations of mechanisms. It should earn quite a few replays as
different starting positions and various advanced capabilities are
tried. It has a nice fit with its theme, which is thankfully an
unusual one to boot. In short, recommended for anyone seeking
something more than just a light outing who doesn't mind a ninety
minute game.
Strategy: High; Theme: High; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 7
Vladimír Chvátil; Czech Board Games; 2006; 3-5
- Grande, El
Multiplayer game designed by Wolfgang Kramer and Richard Ulrich is
set in medieval Spain, apparently in the era of the weak-willed
monarchy of Ferdinand and Isabella. Players represent powerful
magnates vying for power which consists of a number of races, one
for each province in Spain and one for the court. Competition is
in the basic form of having more wooden blocks than the opponents
while cards layered on top of the system permute the system and
create a myriad of special conditions to create a game which
needs a great deal of detailed lookahead. Too weakly tied to its
supposed reality for my taste and more suspectible than most to
psychological attempts into diverting players to competing with
someone else.
[Spiel des Jahres Winner]
- Grande, El: König & Intrigant
Expansion kit adds an identical card deck for each player inducing
even more considerations. Lends more variety if one already
likes the vanilla game, but does not salvage matters otherwise.
- Grass
Card game about the hallucinogenic lifestyle of the 1970's
is essentially a specialized version of Milles Bornes.
One twist is the Paranoia type of card that one must not be caught
with at the end of the game, but which is passed around the
table and so are difficult to avoid. The rules are a bit vague
and house conventions probably unavoidable.
[Take That! Card Games]
- Great Balloon Race, The (Himmelsstürmer)
Game of bluff, each player favoring three secret balloons to win the race.
Although movement is based on the luck of the die, the ability to bump
others so as to provide another turn or temporarily strand them adds
considerable interest. The need to figure out other's motives is a third
solution to the general "down time" problem that afflicts most games
(others being very short turns or non-player reactions).
Rather enjoyable, certainly much more so than it might first appear.
Bright and charming presentation helps considerably as well.
German title can be translated "sky stormer".
[Balloon Aviation Games]
[6-player Games]
[rules translation]
- Great Dalmuti, The (Der Große Dalmuti)
Card game with a medieval theme another in the family of climbing
games which includes
Zoff im Zoo
and others, probably all originating in a traditional game from China,
the best known version of which may be Zheng Shangyou
(not described here, but see
P).
This version take its theme more seriously than most, forcing the
player who has done worst to act as the servant for the other players
and seating rearrangements based on rank after each deal. Often the
best strategy is to draw a good hand. A good memory for what has been
played certainly does not hurt.
[6-player Games]
- Green Ghost
One of the plethora of weird and wonderful-looking games that
sprang forth in America during the 1970's. Components glow green
in the dark, but it never works quite as well as in the television
commercial which cheated by filming under black light. Plastic
board is a raised platform held up unsteadily by plastic pillars
and only somewhat stabilized by three cardboard boxes over
which it is fitted. Boxes contain feathers, guts and bones,
though the latter two are really rubber bands and lengths of
hard plastic. Players move their spooky pawns around the board as
directed by the finger of a large host spinner., trying to land
in the right spot to fish out the majority of ghosts from the
boxes. Involves very little skill and is really too fragile for
the intended age group. Remains a uniquely-interesting artifact
of its time.
- Greentown
The latest Günter Cornett design reworks the 18XX series
(of train games), managing to finally make one worth playing, at
least to this reviewer's taste. For one thing, the stock market
is completely jettisoned. Instead, this game of leading tourists
around the ever-changing Greentown and its many attractions is
one of route planning and tile (re)placement. Players have no
choice in the tour demand cards they receive; thus they often
must help opponents even while competing with them. Victory goes
to the one who can best intuit how routing is likely to change
and who can best imagine what the effects of new tiles will
be. Although the rules are simple, decisions are not. Still,
duration is only about forty-five minutes. Greentown
appears to be the place where Age
of Steam, fanatics and "soft core" game players
can happily rendezvous.
[Tourist Games]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: High;
Tactics: High; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 7
Günter Cornett;
Bambus;; 2006; 2-4
- Große Geschäfte (Mall World)
Andrea Meyer tile placement game of outfitting shops and targeting
customers for them. Actually, theme is very slight as various colors
are meaningless, only prevalence, adjacencies and pairings count.
Points are mainly earned by creation of board situations which
match goal cards drafted during play and getting these played
–
timing is everything. The trouble is that whenever you play a card
you are not improving the board. You can try to play cards during
others' turns, but who knows which ones they will put on offer
or whether you will bid high enough in the blind auction to get the
ones you want. Another dilemma is that most placement cards have
about three different ways they can be played. If a player puts
three such cards up for auction and there are ten different
potential board locations for each (all different) you get an
idea of the amount of cross-referencing that's required. Although
not overly long, this logistical outing should be best appreciated
by those who usually play longer and very detailed games where very
slight facts and moves can make a big difference. Memorization is
helpful. There is often a feeling of too little control as well since
one is at the mercy of two draft pools which the player must somehow
synthesize together. Artwork is attractive and avoids color blindness
issues. Theme is at least innovative, if humdrum and not strongly
grasped. The nature of play is new in many ways as well. Coming from
the inventor's previous detailed game,
ad acta,
I wanted to like this one more, but found it not as appealing as its
very satirical and elegant predecessor.
[Bewitched Spiele]
- Grosse und das kleine A, Das (Einer ist immer der Esel, Uno deve pur perdere, Who's the Ass?)
Card game by Wolfgang Kramer is another in the family of
climbing games which includes Zoff
im Zoo and others, probably all originating in a
traditional game from China, the best known version of which
may be Zheng Shangyou (not described here, but see
P).
One important difference here is that the trick is only once
around rather than the usual continuously rolling version.
Essentially the deck is formed by combining two traditional
card decks including jokers. Added are two special cards,
one showing a large "A" the other a small "a". Climbing
is only by means of exceeding rank of matched set, not by
exceeding the number. Jokers are treated as the highest rank,
but also have wild card status. Tricks are removed from the
game, with one exception. The first trick taken puts the "a"
in the taker's hand. The second trick taken puts the "A" in the
taker's hand. These cards only come back out if the player is
able to lead them. When they are led, a special round is held,
the high card taking the "A" card. If it was the "a", the player
must take it and all the cards with it as penalty points. If it
was the "A", it may be re-introduced later, but the last holder
is penalized by twenty. Others are penalized to the extent of
the cards they are holding when someone has cleared their hand
by the end of a round. An improvement on games of this type
because both low and high cards are valuable, but at different
times, but without introducing a power cycle as in Zoff im
Zoo. The overall result is a challenging exercise full of
vicissitudes to track and difficult decisions in a deceptively
simple setting. One of a very few games that comfortably handles
3-9 players.
[translation]
[Holiday List 2004]
Second Edition:
A new edition of this most worthy game has appeared from the
unlikely source, Phalanx, heretofore a vendor only of war and
complicated works, proving what Avalon Hill long ago learned, a
complany cannot stand on this type of game alone. Herr Kramer's
second thoughts make for a more elegant game, removing the
appendage-like first two special tricks and actually dealing the
large "A" into someone's hand. The small "a" card is gone, replaced
by a joker. Finally, now it's the last tied player rather than the
first who takes the special trick, which doesn't change it too much
apart from keeping the trick's outcome longer in doubt. Although I
think I still slightly prefer the extra machinations of the first
edition and their ramifications, either way of playing is fine and
the components of either edition permit either rules set. The new
artwork, replacing faces resembling human posteriors with donkeys,
offers less (naughty) fun, but probably makes it more acceptable to
some kinds of audiences. This marvelous gem remains highly
recommended for all.
[6-player Games]
[Top 10 Games for 7 or More Beginners]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium
[shop]
- Guatemala Café
It's surprising that a game on coffee production in Guatemala hasn't
appeared before this. Visiting the place I was told that Germans had
been instrumental in its early cultivation and since they left
it's never been quite the same. This is a make-as-much-money-as-you-can
game with three distinct approaches: growing on the coast for export
(high cost-high reward), growing in the mountains (low cost-low
reward) and growing in between (medium cost-medium reward). The
terrain is a square grid on which plantations, meeple workers,
ships and roads to them are placed. This part of the game is
generally well done, though not particularly innovative. What's
more unusual is the means of acquisition of these items, all of which
are distributed on a separate grid, one per space. À la
Kupferkessel Co.,
a single pawn moves up to three spaces a turn – more if you pay
–
and the player drafts three items from the pawn-facing row or
column. These items are replaced with roads so that they don't
show up until they start to be needed. The final type of item to
take is the coffee sack which generates scoring for plantations
of its color, usually helping two different players. So the
nature of the competition is cooperative. The only other
draftable item is the coffee sack – representing a harvest
–
which is not replaced with a road, but with a coffee sack from
the player's hand, providing influence over what can be scored in
the future. Tactically, one tends to avoid putting out one's own
colors in the first third of the game when they may be scored
before attaining full worth, but chooses nothing but that during
the latter stages. In terms of placement, some may be tempted to
try bringing cheaply grown mountain grown coffee all the way down
to the harbor, but this turns out to be a nearly impossible task
(well maybe not if there are less than four players).
Rather than pursuing such quixotic goals, players should be
watching what others are drafting and preventing them from
monopolizing a particular color. The drafting board is two-sided,
by the way, one being pre-programmed, the other permitting a
random distribution. There doesn't seem to be much wrong with
using the random side – in fact it seems to start the game up
faster whereas the programmed side may be fairer, but prevents
drafting workers and plantations on the same turn. Production
here is quite good, featuring quite a number of largish wooden
pieces not seen in other games. In what must be an attempt at
differentiation even a small bag of real coffee beans is
included. Whether gimmicks like this or the musical CD provided in
Space Dealer
really improve the experience is in the eye of the beholder.
Thematically everything fits pretty well though and if the mechanisms
are not intrinsically unique, they are so in combination. This should be
acquired if a game where careful attention to the activities of
the player to the left and not leaving them anything good is
acceptable. Probably best when played with at least four, however.
Strategy: High; Theme: High; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 7
Inka & Markus Brand; Eggert-Spiele; 2007
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Guesstures
This party game resembles
Charades,
but adds a time limit. The information to be conveyed to
teammates via gestures alone comes from pre-printed cards
which come in two varieties, easy and difficult, and which are
worth either one or two points. A standup plastic device meant
to resemble the clapboard used in moviemaking holds four of the
cards, the actor choosing which end of each card to use. Once the
mechanical timer has been wound up, bringing down the top
starts the time and a rotating device inside which causes the
cards to fall one by one. Thus, once a correct guess has
occurred, the actor must pull out the card to score it. Thirty
seconds is all a player has before all four fall through.
All clues are single words. Among the easy ones are "shirt",
"garbage", "face". Harder are "suitcase", "touch" or "big".
There are a number of weird things going on here. Why the
moviemaking association when there is nothing here about
movies? Why must the buyer apply some stickers while some are
already applied? And why is there a faux awards statue which
really has no strong use in play? No matter, this is an
entertainingly fast version of
Charades,
especially for the attention deficited. For even though rules
permit pulling the ear to connote "sounds like" and other tricks,
there really isn't time. Another version of this was later
released as Electronic Guesstures.
[6-player Games]
LLLM6 (Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 6)
Jeffrey Breslow; Hasbro-1990; 4-24; 8+
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Guillotine [card game]
In the Barbu family of card games for four players in
which the dealer chooses one of six different games to play.
Each dealer will choose each game once. Deciding what type of
game each hand is best for is quite interesting, even if not
every game is of that much interest.
- Gulf, Mobile & Ohio
This railroad game set in the American southeast sort of
works. There is a hex map dotted with cities and around the
board are littered a pair of cards for two to three dozen
little railroads. Before play scores of cubes in various
colors must be laid out in rows, a different color for each
row. On a turn a player either auctions some train stock and
possibly builds track with the money or builds more track with
an existing stock he holds. Each railroad has one or more
specific locations where it must begin. The color it must use
is set when its preferred stock is sold, i.e. the color of the
longest row of cubes, which are then pulled out and put on the
board to represent track. Color is important because the
players are ultimately not attempting to earn money, but
victory points and whenever a player manages to expand a
railroad so that it joins with cubes of a new color, extra
points are earned. From this rule arises the main problem:
there is little to no incentive to invest early, but if no one
does so the game cannot continue. Early investing players can
accrue only a few points compared to those that later entrants
can garner just by connecting to the railroads that are
already present. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that
by the time the early investors are ready to return to the
board, colors tend to be already connected and no additional
such opportunities are available. There is little that can be
done to a leader either, except to sell the second half of
their stock, but this tends to be a fairly minor effect. In
terms of graphics this is a typically drab Winsome affair.
There is little use of color to help the communication design
either. The important map abbreviations only appear on half
the cards. There is also a rules ambiguity, namely once a railroad
has started, can it only be continued from its existing track
or are its other starting locations still valid? Thematically
this is okay, but why doesn't connecting to an existing railroad
benefit both railroads instead of only the joiner? Instead of
naming it after the Ohio, maybe this should have been called
"Ol' Miss".
Eddie Robbins; Winsome Games; 2008; 3-5
LHMM5 (Strategy: Low; Theme: High; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 5)
- Gulo Gulo
Dexterity game for children down to about five has them
removing wooden eggs from a small bowl without unbalancing the
weighted stick in their midst. Components are wonderful and
the rules so elegantly simple it can be explained as one goes
along. Yet it can also be played in a thoughtful way
if one cares to calculate probabilities. This has the potential
to be the best of its type since
Würmeln.
"Gulo" is German for the egg-stealing wolverines that players portray.
[Holiday List 2003]
Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 7
Jürgen P. Grunau, Hans Raggan & Wolfgang Kramer; Zoch/Rio Grande; 2003; 2-6
[Buy it at Amazon]
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