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I did get some interesting games in this week.
On Thursday I visited Leppävaara's game club and began the night with Navegador. This was the one game I really did want to play since it's one of the games in the European Masters tournament which we'll be attending during Spiel 2011. I had not had too many opportunities to play the game and there's not that much time left before the tournament so I was glad that three other gamers joined me to play the game.
I was even more happy when we finished the game and I won it. I did not have strategy and I made mistakes but I suppose other players did more of them. Navegador is a game which I probably don't play after the tournament because I find it to be much too dry and themeless for my taste. Mechanically the game is superb and theres' a lot of meaningful choices throughout the game but it just isn't fun enough.
After Navegador I ended willingly to play prototypes (the other choice would have been Eclipse but I probably have several chances to play it in the near future). First we tried Paul's card game proto which was interesting and felt quite ready to be published. Game was a card placement game which had some interesting choices in a short playtime.
Next there were two prototypes from Touko - a trick taking game and a work game with cards. I had played the trick taking game and the small changes it had undergone were good. Game has quite unique card playing mechanic but I don't know whether this mechanic alone makes the game interesting enough for continuous play. Word game was very interesting mix of classical word game and a speed game. It has potential and I suppose it's going to be published some day.
Last game of the Leppävaara night was Kosminen kierros by Jani and Tero Moliis. I have had this sitting on my shelf for some time and it was great to have it on the table. Kosminen kierros is a game in which players are scientist on a mission to travel around the sun and gather as much information as possible. Each turn players visit one department of their space ship and trigger the action attached to it. Players can turn the ship, take resource cards, take information cards (which score in the end of the game) or fly the ship one space forward.
Idea of the game is to fly the ship back to Earth and obviously there's a high chance that ship crashes before it reaches Earth. The biggest problem in the game is that it is a collaboration game in which each player tries to gather their own points. This leads situations where some of the players don't actually want the ship to finish because they don't have any chance to win the game. With children this might not be such a big problem but because it's fun to reach the final destination but gamers play to win and if they can't it's better to not let anyone else win either.
I also got a chance to try out the new 4X space game Space Empires 4X which I've waited for almost a year. With three players the game took 4-5 hours and we did not even play until extermination (which would have taken several more hours). Playing time is definitely the biggest problem with this game and I don't see a clear reduction of the duration even when players know the game. There are other issues with the game as well like the fact that you probably never have a chance to develop all the technologies in the game (they are just too expensive) and the fact that once someone has taken a clear lead in the game other(s) have no chance to come back (and the game might still last several hours).
Fortunately there's variation and scenarios available for the game and you can play the game solitaire which offers a chance for longer games. Obviously I also need to try the game out with different amounts of players and maybe a bit smaller map and other additional rules. I hope that these changes will make the game better.
After the very long Space Empires we still had time to play one short game. Hessu wanted to play Lemmings Mafia and I had no objections since it is a solid game. I actually think that this game is a hidden gem which has gone under the radar for most gamers. There's gorgeous components, fun game play and some interesting decisions in the game in the 20 minutes it lasts. Obviously it's not a very deep game and there's a lot of chaos in it but as much as I don't like these characteristics in many games, in Lemmings Mafia they fit the theme and mechanics very well. Solid filler and a very good game to be played with families and non-gamers.
Great week of gaming behind and probably a bit quieter week ahead. I hope I can get some games in but even if I don't, it's soon going to be Essen time and I'll be off to Germany to play a lot of games!
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