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At one point it looked like we would have a mega-meetup, but then everyday life intervened. A christening, a birthday party, a busy work schedule. In the end we were only at most six around the table. No matter, the peeps of Aftersweat were gathered and we were going to have fun. Brother Jens and better half Linda offered their table to host, and veteran Jan, Linda’s kid brother Fred and newcomer Matias showed up, as did I.

Before Jan made it through the snow, the remaining five of us set up and played a session of Pandemic, more specifically the recently acquired expansion pack On the Brink. The only part of the expansion we actually used were some new role cards, so I won’t pass judgement on OtB as a whole. The new roles were interesting, but I still think I prefer the original roles. They feel more meaningful and balanced somehow. I really look forward to trying out the other variations, like the bio-terrorist role and mutations. Pandemic remains the best by far co-operative game I’ve experienced.

Jan showed up just in (“the Brink of“) time to see us run out of time and losing the battle against disease. He was quick to proclaim himself as the winner of the game, as the king of ze Germs. Next up a six player game of Citadels. This is a classic game I enjoy every time I play it. The past few times we play it to one less (7) district than the rules state (that would be 8, for the mathematically challenged), which in my opinion makes for a better and faster game. The version we have of the game comes with The Dark City-expansion in it, but here too I think the original roles are more interesting than the new ones. The game, however, was just as fun as it always is. We always do it with a whole lot of role-playing and poorly executed funny accents, which leads to hilarity and adds to the experience.

Next up was a quick game of the Cheapass-classic Kill Doctor Lucky. As I have the Director’s Cut-edition of the game, we played with the two-story house and the optional spite-rule, where you gain a spite-token for every botched murder-attempt. These tokens add to future attempts, and can also be used as failure-points. These modifications make it a faster game, and let’s face it – the game is both smart and the humor is spot-on (which is a feat extremely few boardgames pull off successfully!) – but it can drag out to be a bit too long as standard. As the good (?) doctor, having survived numerous assassination attempts, finally met his demise from a Civil War Cannon, in the White Room, at the hands of Jan.

We had time for a quick game before Matias had to be on his way, and as I was eager to try out TransEuropa with the Vexation-expansion, that was next on the table. Vexation doesn’t add anything other than colored tracks that can’t be used by other players, a total of three tracks per player. But it changes the game, even makes the game. Previously, playing TransEuropa I always felt a bit let down, as if it wasn’t really a complete game I was playing. I think it’s a good thing that new copies of the game (at least the Finnish version “TransEuropa+”) come with the “expansion” included. I don’t see why I would ever play it without the colored tracks again.

One man down Jan expressed an interest to try out the classical (lots of classics this time!) racing game Formula D, and especially Jens is an eager fan of the game, but we were all quick to accept the challenge. Jens owns both the old version (Formula Dé) and the new (Formula D) as well as the mini (Formula Dé Mini) but we played a single lap race of the Chicago-track with standard Formula D-rules. I still like the game a lot even after a handful of races, but I still haven’t found any track that even comes close to the Monaco-track and this one didn’t change that. There’s nothing like a good three-stop turn or a two stop-curve immediately after a long straight.

Being on a racing vibe we continued with Snow Tails, which is a lot more of a brain-burner than Formula D, yet still having that proper racing-feeling. Jan, Jens and I went down the slopes while Linda and Fred played Warhammer: Invasion on another table. As that game seemed to be a bit longer than our dog-sled ride we had a quick session of Jens’ newly acquired Monkey Lab as well. Monkey Lab didn’t really inspire me personally. Sure it was smart, but I didn’t really have much fun playing it. In my opinion it was about twice as long as it should have been. Especially the two final cages dragged on unnecessarily. I had grabbed some high scoring cages early on and though I had a good grasp of the lead (which I had) so I spent some cards, exhausting the deck before the final cages were claimed and won. A typical “meh“-game in my book.

Time for the one “big” game of the evening, as Jan had brought his copy of Container. This is a game I’ve considered buying ever since Valley Games even announced they were doing it, but for some reason or other it has always remained on the store shelves when I’ve visited. Container is a really simple (where’s that sarcasm/irony-punctuation symbol when you need it?!) economics game. (1) You build factories to produce goods. (2) You buy goods that other players have produced in their factories. (3) You sell these goods in warehouses in your harbor. (4) You send your containership to other players’ harbors to buy goods from their warehouses. (5) You ship those goods to a central island where you’ll auction these off to other players, hoping to win some auctions as well, (6) all the time making more profit than the other players in all the aforementioned steps. In the end, the goods you’ve acquired on the central island is worth different amounts of money to all players, values that are kept secret until the bitter end. To further spin things around, in case you hadn’t lost consciousness already, the type of goods (out of five different) you have acquired the most of, you get nothing. So you want to get the most of the type of good which to you is worth the least, and second most of the type of good which to you is worth the most. Confused?

At least I was as we set off playing the game. Factories and warehouses cost a set amount to build, becoming more expensive the more you have, and actually producing from your factories costs a single currency unit, but payed to the player on your right (union fees). But once you’ve produced your goods, you set the price. Set it too high and others won’t buy, set it too low and you’ll lose money. After you’ve bought goods, you again set the price at which you’ll sell it to containerships. This being our first playing (only Jan had played once before) it was difficult to know what price to set. You are just constantly looking what the others are selling the same goods at, trying to be cheaper than them. As a loaded containership finally reaches the central island there is an auction among the other players for the entire load. The auction is blind, which means everybody simultaneously selects the price at which they are willing to pay for the shipment. Whoever offers the most can pay that money to the seller, who also gets an equal amount from the bank. If the seller feels the price was too low, he can buy the shipment himself, paying an amount equal to the winning bid to the bank.

The game is smart on a ridiculous level. I didn’t even dare to try to figure out the mathematics behind it, playing mostly on gut feeling the entire game. Jan tried a very different strategy to the rest of us, having only a single factory throughout the game. He seemed to concentrate on the central island, buying crazy amounts of containers. Jens seemed to have the most action from start to finish, producing and selling more goods than anybody else – or at least this is my perception. I thought I was doing horribly. I failed miserably in the auctions and couldn’t secure very many containers at all on my spot on the central island, but during the last couple of turns I made crazy money selling goods off my containership. Your final score is your value of the containers you’ve bought on the central island, plus the money on your hand, plus lesser amounts for containers you have on your ship or on your harbor. The money I had on my hand alone was more than some other players’ final total score. This secured the victory for me.

I really like the game. No. I really want to like the game. No. I really really do like the game. But. But there is a big part of it I hate. I simply despise blind auctions. In every game. And every time I play a game with significant blind auctions, I hate it more. For a really deep and intricate economical game it really bugs me greatly that the final (and arguably the most important single) step of the game comes down to guessing. I know this is a personal issue, and that there are people (freaks) who actually like blind auctions but I think that they are particularly misplaced in this game. With a standard auctioning system instead of the blind bidding this would be a fantastic game in my book. Now it’s not. And it makes me sad.

But the evening was a success. Even though I didn’t love every single game played, I had a great time throughout the day. Until the next time.

Two months have passed since our last boardgame-meeting took place. Since then there has been work, work, work and… let’s see… work. Oh, and then there were this crazy thing called “Christmas” as well… Time to get going again, so I proposed a meeting at my place this Saturday. Brother Jens and his fiancé Linda showed up, as did Tom from the neighboring town of Lohja.

Tom was first to show up, and as we waited for the others we managed to play a game of Crokinole, almost to completion. Crokinole is without competition the most played game in my collection (ok, so it’s without competition the most expensive as well, but who’s counting?) and the one game I’ll play any time, and with every session my appreciation for it grows even further.

The one “big” game we had decided on for the meet-up was Rails of Europe, the official but unlicensed expansion to Railroad Tycoon: the Boardgame. I really wanted to love RT:tB but it had some issues, the worst being it’s size. I could barely fit it on my table, leaving it sticking out on all edges, which meant there was a constant risk of game-stopping “earth-quakes“. Playing the full game we always skipped the operations cards as well, as they were always so far away that few people could read them. Skipping the cards meant the auctions were unnecessary, so we’d always skip those as well, and that’s already not playing half the game.

Not this time! I had bought Rails of Europe a long time ago, and was eager to give the game system another try – this time utilizing all rules. The board is smaller, although still big, but it fit snuggly on my tabletop, leaving a narrow strip of table for each player to store cash, shares and locomotive tiles. The map is more evenly laid out as well, no region really that much more valuable than the other. The rather poorly executed Western Link-system (personal opinion) from RR:tG has been changed to a handful of bonus “Major Lines”. A vast improvement as well!

I made some poor judgement calls early on, missing some good opportunities for valuable links, and had a difficult time recovering. I’m usually the one issuing the fewest shares but not this time. I was trailing, selling shares in desperation to catch up, but never got even close. I had a pretty good grip over northwestern Europe, controlling all links around France, but when I urbanized Bordeaux I drew all the wrong cubes and wasn’t really able to make good deliveries.

Jens, however, was on fire! He was in the lead, having also issued the very least shares. He was on a fast track to victory. Halfway through we noticed we had all forgotten about the Major Lines, we probably all secretly remembered them about the same time, but Jens and Tom were the ones who managed to take the best advantage of them. Towards the very end Tom sprinted away, taking the lead. As he had issued a lot of shares, however, I still thought Jens would  win in the end. Well, the game ended, and as we counted down the shares in the end (every issued share is a negative point at game-end) Tom did manage to claim the victory by a single point!

I can’t begin to say how much this is an improvement over Railroad Tycoon! Now I can again look forward to playing this game. With the base game, it was just too cumbersome. Laying all this track made us hungry, and after my macaroni casserole (improved with bacon) we were fueled up for more. Next, Tom had brought the old Ravensburger game Lotus. There’s not much to say about Lotus, except that it’s a nice, and quick filler. Every player has six pawns (at least in a four-player game) which you try to get through a track to the goal. First one to get all pawns through wins.

If more than one pawn occupy a space they stack on each other, later arrivals stacking on top. Only the pawn on top can move, and you always move as many spaces as there are pawns in the stack. A very smart and simple system that makes a nice game to play over after-dinner coffee.

Again Jens took an early lead and we were all sure he was going to win, but an early lead isn’t always good here, and Linda managed to pass us all and snatch the win. With coffee still in hand it was time for another light and fast game – 10 Days in Africa, a rummy-ish card-ish game where you try to organize your hand of tiles to get a sequence of countries in Africa. Being the only one of us who has spent any time over there I claimed victory when Jens unwillingly handed me Uganda.

At this point time was running out, we knew Toms father was on his way to collect him, so we continued with fast games. And he did show up, during the mid-game of Dominion. This game suffers a bit from the fact that there are “killer strategies”. But as long as it’s not played too often it’s quite fun. Jens and I tied for the victory here. I can’t remember the tie-breaker – is it money? Whatever it is, we forgot to count, and were quite pleased to call it even. A quick session of the speed stacking game Monumento (Make ‘n’ Break), won by Linda later and we called it a night.

It was good to game again, and I’m very happy that I might be able to play the great Railroad Tycoon-system again, now that there’s a version of the game that’s actually fun to play!

Surfing on the wave of print-and-play games, the second one I printed was the solitaire (or co-operative) game D-Day Dice, by Emmanuel Aquin. Differently from the previous game I tried, this one doesn’t need any assembly. Just print out the rulebook (4 pages), a battle map (2 are available – Bloody Omaha and Gold Beach) and a score-sheet for that battle map. To play you need… Dice. Six dice (preferably a seventh for landmine-, machine gun fire- and inspiration-rolls) in three different colors.

D-Day Dice is a resource management game. You roll dice to gather soldiers, specialists, courage and items, which you need as you advance on the battle maps in order to take out the bunker to win the game. I played Battle Map#1 – Bloody Omaha, and boy was it bloody. Your soldiers are mowed down by the dozen every turn, and your only objective is to make sure there’s at least one guy left alive to advance. You start every turn by rolling your six dice (two red, two white and two blue), after which you must keep at least two of them. You may the re-roll any or all of the rest two times, claiming resources from the final result.

Ones are skulls, canceling out another die (though not another one), twos provide stars, with which you recruit specialists. Specialists are soldiers with specific abilities – sharpshooters (cost two stars) can ignore one skull, medics (cost four stars) save one soldier per turn etc. Threes provide one extra soldier to your unit, fours provide two. Fives provide courage, which you spend to advance and finally sixes provide tools with which you acquire items – one time power-ups, like the mine detector which ignores mine fields or the whistle which lets you advance without spending courage.

The really clever thing about having the dice in three colors is the fact that if you roll three identical dice, but all in different colors, you get a “Red, White and Blue“-bonus, depending on which number is rolled. If you roll three threes or fours, for example, you get an additional six soldiers. Roll three twos you get to use a seventh “inspiration”-die which you can make any color you want.

After you’ve rolled (and re-rolled) your dice you manage your resources; add your new soldiers to your unit, place stars for recruitment and spend tools to find items. After this you move your unit. It may move sideways or advance (which costs courage) but may never retreat. It may (unless otherwise stated) spend up to three turns in place, but may not return there once it moves out. Moving into certain areas have special requirements, such as the presence of a specific specialist. Crossing over landmines costs you as many soldiers as the result of a six-sided die, unless you negate them with an engineer (costs three stars) or a mine detector (costs seven item points). Last but not least you perform combat actions, which basically means losing as many soldiers as the defense value of your sector, plus the result of a die in case you receive machine gun fire. Repeat until victory or death.

I spent my first three turns in the starting sector, gathering soldiers, specialists and equipment. Knowing my luck with dice I quickly recruited a Noncom (2 stars, allows an extra re-roll of one die) and a walkie-talkie (5 item points, gaining 2 soldiers) and moved onward. I side-stepped on the second row, again to collect resources before the defense values really start to hurt.

But advancing into the third row meant I had to make a choice. The land-mines wasn’t a problem, as I had recruited an engineer, and the other requirements didn’t matter either, as I managed to roll a Red, White and Blue-bonus of Battle Cry (three fives, lets you ignore courage and sector requirements for an advance), but the question was if I wanted to keep to the side, at a sector with a defense value of eight, or step into the middle where the value was four but the machine gun fire would reach me.

I decided to try my luck with the machine guns and advanced into the middle, where I would also collect courage more easily (that sector provides a free courage per turn). I had such luck dodging the enemy fire that I spent the full allotment of three turns here, recruiting further specialists and soldiers. I recruited a sharpshooter because I knew I had to sacrifice a specialist at the next sector and a veteran (3 stars, gives an extra soldier for every red, white and blue bonus). My unit had grown to include 27 soldiers (you start with four) and I had calculated that I had all the courage I needed in order to advance all the way into the bunker.

Then the sh*t hit the fan, as I advanced further on turn nine. My good fortune avoiding the enemy machine gun fire didn’t last and I took a severe beating. I considered side-stepping to gather troops, but thought I was too far ahead for that. I would lose more soldiers than I would be able to collect, so bravely I carried on. Luckily I recruited an officer as I just then noticed that you need to sacrifice one to advance to the final sector. So I did, but was again badly hurt by the machine guns. After their blast I was down to one soldier, standing bravely at the mouth of the bunker. Needless to say – he didn’t make it.

In hindsight I think I know what I did wrong… I pretty much ignored the items. I only acquired the walkie talkie and a flak vest (3 item points, turning skulls into soldiers). During the game it just felt like specialists were more valuable, as they weren’t restricted to one single time. But towards the end a bangalore torpedo (20 item points, reduces defense value to zero for one turn) would have saved my life. I probably wouldn’t have had to recruit six specialists…

D-Day Dice was a really fun game and I did let out a little cheer every time I managed to roll a Red, White and Blue (even though my dice were red, white and green – so sue me…). It can be played as a co-operative game, meaning all players play simultaneously, and can (provided they have an officer) exchange dice between them, but in essence this is a solitaire game. The second battle map seems more interesting, with more choices – so I’ll try that one next time.

My old printer broke down on me, so I had to get a new one. It was to become a Canon Pixma MP270, color inkjet printer, scanner and copier in one… Why do I even bring up this completely uninteresting factoid? Because after a handful of years with a black and white laser printer, this new piece of kit has rekindled my interest in print-and-play boardgames!

So today, inspired by a glass of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7, I printed out the solitaire game Zombie in my Pocket.
In ZimP, you start your journey having just entered a house. In three “hours” (two reshuffles of the 9-card deck) you have to find the secret Evil Temple-room in the house and the Totem therein, then take it out to the gardens, finding the Graveyard and burying it there. All this while zombies are looking for you with evil intent.

Why “in my pocket”, then? Well, naturally the components all fit in your pocket. There are 16 tiles, 9 cards and a rulebooklet. That’s basically all you need. I recommend a pawn to mark where you are as well, and a piece of paper to track your health and inventory.

Every time you move from tile to tile you draw a card and deal with whatever is on it. A random event, an item or a pack of zombies. Should you survive it, you may carry on. As time passes by the events become more and more gruesome. Combat is ridiculously simple, subtract your attack value (1 plus any equipment) from the number of zombies attacking you, and lose that many health points. You can regain health at any time by “hiding in the corner”, but this takes time which, quite frankly, you don’t have.

Let’s see how I did on my first attempt.

To the sweet tunes of Norah Jones, I set off from the foyer. The first room I entered was the bedroom, where I was happy to find a candy bar, gaining a health point. As I stumbled onward into the bathroom (giving me the very appropriate event: “You try hard not to wet yourself”) I noticed something very disturbing. There were no longer any available exits from anywhere. I was stuck, with no sight of the Evil Temple. This triggered the event Zombie Door, meaning three zombies bashed through the wall attacking me.

Having dealt with these I passed through the hole in the wall, coming to a kitchen, where I was able to find a can of gasoline. This is a good tool in case you also find the chainsaw, or a candle to light it with, but useless on its’ own… I regained a point of health before carrying on, finding the dining room. This is good, as this is the point from which you enter the garden, but first I had to locate the Temple and the Totem, not to speak of killing the three zombies awaiting me here.

I took a left turn and found the storage, where I located two proper weapons. A golf club and a machete. The first hour had passed – two more ’til midnight. I went back to the dining room, killing off the now five zombies with my machete, and carried on finding the family room, where the sense of family (I guess?) raised my health by a point. This warm and fuzzy feeling quickly disappeared as the evil temple I was looking for was just beyond this room.

I killed four zombies and found the Totem, after which I decided I needed to rest for a while. Ok, so I sat in the corner hiding, but it gave me three very much needed health points back. Back to the dining room via the family room and another hour had passed. I had a mere hour to find the graveyard and bury the totem. I entered the patio, where an item was partly hidden. I decided not to waste time collecting it, but carried onward to the yard, where something “icky” (cards’ definition, not mine – probably David Hasselhoff...) made me lose a healthpoint.

Oh, the luck when I found the graveyard on the next tile! All I had to do to win the game was survive the punishment of two cards. Oh, how I would have wanted another candybar… But alas, I was first brutally attacked by four zombies, who inflicted one damage to me, leaving me with two left. The next card of fate – another five zombies! These would cost me my final two health points, killing me. I concidered my options, there were two. One – fight the zombies and die, failing the mission. Two – bravely run away from danger, which would have cost me one health. I could then return, if only I had the time. I didn’t. I would have had to rest on the next tile, and the return for another attempt. This would cost me three cards. There were two left in the draw deck. Of those two options, both of which led to failure, I chose to fight and die, very appropriately, in the graveyard…

ZimP is a fun fifteen minute distraction. There’s really not much in it, but it never tries to be more either. Success or failure depends pretty much on how quickly you draw the key tiles – the evil temple, the dining room and the graveyard. In my game, I had exhausted the entire deck of indoor rooms before finding the evil temple, which basically also could be the very first room you enter. But all this doesn’t bother me, as it is just a fifteen minute game. I did play it again immediately, this time dying even before finding the graveyard.

Is there much replayability? As much as you can get from 16 tiles and 9 cards… I expect I’ll play it a handful of times more, which means it’s more than worth the price, which in case you hadn’t figured it out, is nothing except ink, paper and the time you spend putting it together.

About a week or so ago I was contacted (naturally, in the midst of a meeting) by a journalist by the national broadcasting company YLE, Erik Snellman, who expressed an interest in my interest. Boardgames in particular. He had been ordered by his boss to do a “thing” about boardgames, but knowing that he didn’t know very much (the foremost proof of wisdom is knowing what you don’t know…) about the subject he sought people to enlighten him.

At first he just asked me questions on the phone, including where to go to find people with answers. I told him about the Finnish Board Game Society and about my F.L.G.S. Lautapelit.fi, but a few days later he contacted me again about the possibilities of an interview with me. I accepted and offered to drive into Helsinki, bringing a handful of representative games with me, but he graciously declined, wanting to come out to the deep, murky woods of Siuntio so that he could see my entire collection.

This would be an interview for national (swedish language) radio, and this presents a problem. You try to explain why (modern) boardgames are so fun! Or explaining a boardgame without being able to show it! I’ve listened to a handful of boardgaming podcasts, including the early years of The Dice Tower and later on The Spiel, and they do a good job at it, but these are aimed (at least it’s their core audience!) specifically for people who are already boardgamers, probably even avid boardgamers, and these podcasts are usually over two hours long. I was doing an interview about gaming in general, for a general audience in an interview which will probably be cut down to some five minutes.

Erik came to my home this past monday and we did about a twenty minute interview, standing before my gaming bookshelf… It started with some general knowledge about me as a person – why a young guy with a good job quits and moves from the city center of the capital Helsinki, to the deep, dark and murky woods of Siuntio. (The answer to that is the abundance of parking space available here, by the way…) Then we went on to games…

I tried to explain how the games on my shelf differ from the games he knew – Monopoly, Hotels and Risk mostly… That they, most of all don’t last an eternity and a half – that I have memories of playing these games as a kid, but having no memories of ever finishing a single game, that we always just gave up after x hours…

When he asked me to show a game the first one I grabbed was Carcassonne, mostly because it was the game that made me a gamer some years ago, but also it’s probably the one game that can best be explained to an uninitiated in a short period of time. I also showed my copy of Modern Art, and then the coloful box (and probably title) of War on Terror: the Boardgame also caught his eyes…

Our own boardgaming “club” Aftersweat was also mentioned, as an answer to his queries about the availability of fellow gamers out in the “outback”. “If you can’t find fellow gamers, you play with friends and they will become gamers“, I replied…

We’ll see how the final, edited version will turn out. I’ve been interviewed once before about my gaming hobby, by the youth-oriented radio channel of the same company, and that left a bit of a bad taste, as the questions I was asked weren’t very… mature… “Boardgaming isn’t very manly, like sauna and vodka. What’s the manliest thing you’ve done?” Way to keep the incorrect stereotypes alive and kicking, dumb**s! This guy, however, was “old guard” and the interview was conducted professionally. It hasn’t aired yet, but I’m looking forward to what they do with it.