| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Saturday 15 November 2003: |
| There will be a series of board game reviews occurring as and when nothing else springs to mind to blog about. This is because we have a big pile of games Holly purchased from Germany. The first of these is 6 Nimmt! which appears to mean "Take 6!" but is funnier to say in German because it sounds like "sex nymph". A surprisingly skillful game considering the "ten random cards from a deck of 104" each player is given to work with. The relatively low random factor is perhaps because a large portion of the gamestate is known; you know more than 50% of the gamestate at the beginning (in a two-player game), and the percentage goes up as the round proceeds (though your choices become more limited too, with your cards being played out). It seems about on a par with somewhere between Bridge and Canasta, in that regard, and without any of that horrible teamwork stuff that Bridge insists on. It's a nice game for playing in a short period of time, since though the rules say "the winner is the player with the lowest score when someone reaches 66" (albeit in German), you can just play (and we have been just playing) to whatever number you feel like - 33, in our case. It has the "blind" element of all players making a turn simultaneously, a-la rock-scissors-paper or Warlocks, which is nice in a half psychology half odds-playing way, a little like Poker. So, in summary, it supports any length of game, any (within reason) number of players, has a reasonable-sized random factor (ie. not too much), and a smidge of psychology. Pretty bloody good for a game that basically consists of 104 sequential numbers printed on cards with cow heads. Holly has also written a review. [16:59] |
| SpasmodicMonk |
| Germans love their card/board games. They have absolutely loads of them and a large number of the award winning card games come from there. I seem to remember playing the cow head card game myself but don't remember it too clearly as a) it was about a year ago that I played it, b) I was at a house party and drinking copious quantities of alcohol. |
| RavenBlack |
| Mm, all four of the ones we've played so far have been obviously much better than anything I've seen elsewhere, bar Icehouse and the classics (Scrabble, Chess and so forth). |
| James |
| Germans make bloddy games. If you haven't yet, try the german "Lord of the Rings" board game. You play hobbits, and work together to try and beat the game. The game often wins. As Eric F. commented "We just lost to the AI of a board game. That's impressive." |
| James (shades) |
| Yerg. As RB pointed out to me in e-mail, when I said "bloddy" I really meant "bloody good". Monday. |