Acquire is a nice stock and building game. It isn't quite as luck dependent as Shark, since the tile draw in Acquire isn't as critical as the dice roll in Shark is.

A shorter version of Avalon Hill's Civilization.

This game looks intriguing. I'm looking forward to trying it again. Second try, last place in a 5 player oops. Ended with 31 pts, first place was 37pts. First had 5 family, I (last place) had 3 family for a 6 point difference.

Notes: Increase family size quickly. Need a child and 5 food for first jump. There is not one path to victory. You must start with harvesting and then go hearding, or vice versa. By the end you have to have planted, hearded and increased family size.

Decent game some variants might improve it.

A nice well balanced game with multiple victory paths. A good combo auction and building game with a slight luck element.

Nice cards with a great theme but the game needs some tweaking.

I think this game would be a lot better with the expansion.

This is a game with a theme tacked on, but still a good game.

Played two games back to back. This seems like a good game boardering on a great game. However, the rules we had were abysmally written and I'm still not sure we were playing everything right. I played both games with two players and am still waiting to see if the game plays well with 4 or 5 players. If it does I'll probably bump the rating to an 8. Well, I played my first game with 4 players and the rating stays a 7. I was dealt a hand at the start with no cards higher than an 11 and was not able to take any tricks on the first round. One player took 3 of the 5 tricks and went on to win the game handily. Played a 5 player game, it's a good game, but the rating stays a 7.

A classic game, I've played 150+ games of it. (Yep, a little overboard)

It is definetly better balanced and they took most of the more popular house rules and roled them into the game. Wow a major game company that actually took the advice of the players of their product!

Nice board and good scenario, but not as open ended as most of the Axis & Allies games.

Good variant on the original and has a better map for a risk variant.

Not really worth the money, unless your a hard-core Axis & Allies fan.

A Games Workshop miniature game with cool ships.

This seems to be a nice blend of the "Battle Cry" card area system with a medieval/fantasy setting. I just bought it and played through the Battle of Agincourt a couple of times, so I haven't tried out the fantasy aspects yet.

Excellent thematic game. A classic American style with nice plastic parts and lots of chrome.

The card board miniatures suck! I played a basic version at Origins (2006) with a friend). The minitures are nice, but the basic game seems dull.

Another case where I bought an expensive game without having played it first. Well hopefully I can get another Halloween play out of it.

The Bean Game! A nice little card game with quite a lot of replay value.

Very nice production value and a unique theme make this a pleasant diversion. How many games actually come with plastic trucks and gangsters? Eagle games I'll miss you!

I came in last place in my first game, but still enjoyed the game enough to buy it. LOL

I like classic sci-fi and this is a pretty decent wargame as well. It has an interesting system of orbital mechanics where all of the planets move forward in their orbit each turn. The game is over when the Earth completes a single revolution (12 turns) around the Sun.

Cute filler game. A good one to own.

I wasn't impressed with this game. It didn't seem to have but 1 dimension. It comes down to a follow the leader strategy, whereby everyone is forced to group together behind 1 or 2 stocks for mutual protection, while the other 1 or 2 stocks at best languish and usually get pummeled.

If you have this, make sure you download the expansion to make it Grand Canyon! It adds a new dimension and makes the game quite a lot more fun.

A Building game

Arrg! Tip: It's better to be the first player with all of your pieces out of the cell than to be the first one into the boat. Game Motto: Leave no man behind!

This is a light dice game, in the yahtzee category with a Catan theme. It runs a little long for its simplicity, but to shorten it all you would need to do would be to cut down the number of turns.

The new board fixes is the color issue, so I bump the game to a well deserved 8 rating.

I really like this game, but I had to ding it pretty hard for its color blind gamer unfriendliness. Could they have made the color squares on the tiles any smaller? Or used less distict colors? Who thinks picking colors consisting of grey, brown, pink, purple and yellow is a good idea?
Oh well the game itself is great, but I made several blunders because I mistook one of the small colors on the board for a different color.

It's the kind of game that you don't want to ask somebody what color a critical icon is, because you will invariably give away your intentions and allow someone else to thwart them.

I loved how this game simplified Caylus while keeping the basics of the game intact. Indeed I was all prepped to go buy a copy until we got to the end game and suddenly the provost mechanism broke. It seems like at late-mid game there is no longer much incentive to add buildings to the road and so the provost has no where to go. With the extra money available at this stage it becomes pretty easy to keep the last 2-4 buildings from being in play. So basically, those buildings are going to be worth a lost less if they are never used. It seems like there needs to be a mechanism to enhance buildings at the end and keep the road building going.
In a three player game I played the provost again ended up bouncing the end of the street. However this time new buildings were periodically built and the provost would lurch forward to the new end of the street. It definitely played better but still has a problem.

Very basic, somewhat humorous card game.

This is a cute quick game that still has a nice bit of strategy involved.

This is a nice game with great bits! The production value gives it a bump up in my book.

Decent two player game. Card game and a little luck based.

A variant of chess with 70's military units. Plays a little different.

Italian mercenaries in a Machiavellian world.

Interesting chess like variant.

A light card game with a pirate theme. Arrgh.

A mixed crowd game, mostly for non-gamers.

An auction/collection game.

Still waiting to play, looks like a good drinking game.

A good kids/drinking game.

A classic big, game. You really need 5-7 players and 50-150 hours of play. Yes that's right. I use to play this game in college, one night a week, 5-7 hours per night. It usually took about a quarter (3 months) to finish a game.

Naval, fighting card game.

Fun, dinosaur game. Evolve your dinosaur to the must survivable species until the giant rock hits the Earth and the game ends. (yeah everybody dies!)

This game almost qualifies as a party game. It's light, fun and great for a Halloween/horror theme. I'm still waiting to play this as a drinking game.

Another classic game that takes 50+ hours to play. I'm currently involved in an ongoing series of email based games of this, which really stretches the game out.

I bought this not so much to play, but as for a source of ideas to generate rules for a simplified version of Federation and Empire.

I finally broke the shrink wrap and played this game for the first time. It's not bad, sort of reminds me of Carcasonne.

A nice little double auction game.

Another Gamemaster Classic. It's a 'Red Dawn' themed game. The evil communists are attacking from every side with overwhelming superiority, but you've got Bubba with a huntin' rifle and a 12 pack on you're side.

Essentially this is a fairly complex kids game. I don't really like how the partnership rules work, since there is no strong incentive to help your partner out.

CCG card game, based loosely on Star Fleet Battles. Uses different races than SFB does. Doesn't play out of a common deck very well.

A game I've always wanted to play but didn't have another player. F&E overshadowed this game.

A game with an irrelevant theme.

I like this card game enough to buy it after my first play. The Roman theme is pasted on, but the mechanics are solid.

Note: Obtain a laborer and architect as clients early. Increase hand size is a priority. Use the vault. (I won with high vault value over a much superior building strategy 14 vault + 6 bonus = 20 total vault). Get a Merchant into the client pool near the last third of the game.

This is a must download for anyone with Canyon. It makes Canyon a much better game.

Fun, short card game. Some cards are a tad vulgar.

A game I need to play more!

Spearmen and Riflemen C (1)
Knights Templar C (1)
Fiends and Vampires U (1)
Heroes of Elswin U (1)

Aquilla's Alliance (1)
Heroes of the Quagmire (1)

Shades & Orcs (1)
Zombie Horde (1)
Archers & Kyrie (1)
Missing 1

Soldiers & Wolves (1)
Missing 3

Fortress (2)

Heroes of Nostralund U (1)
Kilts and Commandos C (2)
Monks and Guards C (2)
Gorillas and Hounds C (2)

Grut Orcs (1)
Snipers & Vipers (1)
The IX Roman Legion (1)
Heroes of Bleakwood (1)

Road to the Forgotten Forest (4)
Heroes of Laur (1)

Heroes of Lindefare (1)

Tundra Landscape (1)

Ninjas & Samurai U (1)
Soulborgs C (1)
Warriors and Rat Soulborgs C (2)
Gladiators & Agents U (1)

Ticalla Jungle (1)

Drones & Minions (2)
Knights & The Swog Rider (2)
Minute Men & Wolves (1)
Heroes of Barrenspur (1)

Volcanic Wasteland (1)

Greeks and Vipers (1)
Soulborg and Elves (1)
Lawmen and Samurai (1)
Heroes of Trollsford (1)

A great light, miniature war game that's fast paced and quick to play.
Base Set U (3)

Swarm of the Marro (1)

A double auction game, yum! We actually had a game last night with red cards in a row. No numbered cards were ever drawn, and the game ended with a 3 way tie for first (all with 0 points) and the fourth person losing due to least money.

Nice game, but I don't think it works as well with a lot of players. Six players is pushing the system.

Never played. I think you really need a group of Star Trek fans for this game, as well as, a mixed sex group. These are somewhat contradictory goals

It's the Card game for Illuminati. I find it a fun game if everybody is playing out of a common deck.

More cards.

More cards.

After one play I'm still not sure about this game. It's going to take at least one more play to see how it shapes up. Unfortunately we played slow and didn't have a chance to finish the first game. We played with the Investor card which seems to slow the pace of the game down. Next time we play we'll play without it and see if the game plays better.

Overall, I liked it.

5/20 I played a second game, still very slow (4 hours!) with a mostly new crowd. I won, unexpectedly at the end. It's definitely worth it to become country less in the game early and pick up all the low cost Bonds. Even though in this game I Ian and Tim (from Atlanta) beat me to it, I still benefited from being the third person to be country less for a significant time period.
I'm bumping the rating of the game from a 7 to an 8 after the second play, and the Weight from a Medium to a Medium Heavy.

An older space opera game. Earth against an ancient decaying Galactic Empire.

I've recently downgraded this after multiple plays. It's still a great game, but there aren't a lot of paths to victory and we usually play with a house rule for the cost of doing tech upgrades. Generally we charge the standard 5 for a pollution upgrade, 4 for a resource upgrade and 3 for a worker upgrade.

An addition to the Illuminati card game, which I didn't really like much.

Light card game with interesting art. The bidding in this game should be tight. You should never let a set of cards go for more than 1 less than the number of cards. ie. 4 cards should sell for at least 3 other cards.

A fun, quick card game. Quite luck dependent but not bad. This game would sell better if it was named Bling!

Another quick card/dice game. Good for an occasional play.

This was a great game. It's similiar to Princes of Florence. It's only flaw I've seen is for players to get into contention of the same production, but since the value of winning the actual card isn't that great, and since the loser of the auction for the card keeps his money, it's not that great a flaw.

I introduced this to The Game Keep group without much success.

This is one of my favorite 'party' games.

The Life Boat Game or "Each man for himself"

This is a great wife game. My wife and I play this together fairly often.

I like this game, but I find it a little too much luck based. In addition the game has no long range strategy. You just play each turn for the turn's sake. What you've done in the past turn's doesn't matter. Definitely needs another dimension.

A nice, quick 2-4 player wargame.

Decent card game.

Auction game, that a good 1 hour game.

Nice exploration game. The theme seems wrong. The pieces definetly have more of a Mayan feel. How many volocanoes existed in Mesopotamia? But i liked it enough to buy a copy after playing it. Of course, I had a 50% off coupon.

A beautiful game. Needs a big area. Great for a convention type environment where you want to draw people into the game.

An expansion to Mississippi Queen. Adds new rules and an extra boat.

A quick, fun card game.

It's a Godzilla movie come to life. Fast and fun. Another great Halloween/monster theme.

Ship vs Ship card game.

A reasonably quick bash-em game. Not much subtilty involved. It looks like the starting player starts with too little cash. I think 10 would be better than the 8 the rules allow, but I've only played once. After playing several times, I think the 2 player game works well with 8 for the starting player and 11 for the other player, but the 8 is still to low when playing with 3 or 4 players.
We played a 4 player game and started the first player out with 10 bucks and the game seemed better for it.

An excellent card bidding game with enough auctions to prevent luck from being too strong a factor.

Bolo!

Great, quick Co-op game. The games only last 20-30 minutes so we played two games every time we broke it out. I ended up playing 4 times in a single day, the first time I had a chance to play.

I bought this game without having played it. At least it was cheap, that makes it better than Rocketville anyway. It's probably a decent kids game, but it has very little strategy and the plastic penguins are annoying to use.

Caylus light is how somebody described this. That's about right. It's a good building game. I ran away with this last night since I was the only one who had played it before. It's a good game.

Essential expansion, allows Pillars of the Earth to play with 5 & 6 players.

Interesting bidding game. It's important to try and get two of your boats in as many categories as possible, instead of having one in a bunch. Having two guarantees you a bump to the second tier for you lowest possible bid.

Ahh. Power Grid one of my favorite games. Auctions, economics and electricity oh my! Woo Hoo I won the Origins 2007 Power Grid tournament.

I've only played the Eastern Europe side so far, but I wasn't impressed with this new map. The new rules seemed more tedious than interesting. On a second play, the Eastern Europe side seemed a lot better. I think the choice of which areas to exclude negatively my first game with this map

Ahh, more Power Grid loving. I played the France map. It's a little brutal with a large number of mountain ranges combined with a very cheap Paris area. Again, still brutal. I have yet to play the Italy side.

Nice expansion deck. Different enough to be interesting without changing the fundamentals of the game. I've yet to play with both decks combined or with the + cards.

A lot of the extra genes seem like fluff and aren't very useful

A very good building game. Played a game last night and had a bad starting hand. So I decided to play all my cards out early. I managed to pick up one more profession and one more recruiting card to play 6 works, but the early scores I obtained were still so low that I couldn't maintain my early lead and ended up tied for 3rd. Only 3vp from the leader though, it was a very tight game. I didn't present any works on the last round, indeed I didn't do anything, but pay a lot for a Prestige card. This was very in-efficient and cost me the game. I should have avoided playing a work earlier and built up a little more for better scores. It was good to present the first turn, since I was the only one who did and therefore got the 3 vp bonus, but on the second turn I should have held off and built up the components necessary for full works.

A fabulous game, but you probably already know that

A good auction game. This game plays well with 3 players. This game has a high luck factor, but is light enough to get away with it.

This game is a more complex version of San Juan. It may be excessively fiddly for a card game. I'll rethink my score of a 6 after a second play. It's likely that this game is much better after a few plays.

I upped the score to a solid 7 after two additional plays.

Adds some extra bonuses and additional starting planets.

A classic, but I prefer Monopoly.

I like this game a lot, but I think the observatory card is unbalanced. If it comes out early the person that gets it has a big advantage. I knock a point off of my rating for that. In addition, some of the very high price aristocracy can be unbalancing if they come out on the first turn.

I played a second game with the new Banquet cards and I firmly don't like them. St. Petersburg is a very tight game with little room for missteps and these cards completely disrupt that flow.

Another classical Gamemaster game. Good mechanics.

This game is a light version of Puerto Rico and is also a pretty good two player game. A good filler, but with enough strategy to interest hard core gamers.

This game doesn't have much luck, but on Sunday I felt the full brunt of bad luck in being last possible pick in every case but 1 in the entire game. Still I was only scored last place by 1 point in a three player game, so the luck wasn't completely decisive.

This is the Classic Eurogame.

I'm not a big fan of Settler's, but I do like this variant along with Starfarer's.

A great game, but a little long.

A solid, stock game. There is quite a bit of a luck element, but overall it's a very good game.

Decent remake of Vinci. Very tempted to buy it.

Pretty fun miniature game. Plays quick.

A Cheapass TM game. I bought it for the name. No regrets. It was cheap.

Geez, I bought it without playing it first. I never learn. Well on my first game, I thought it played a little slow. Still I'm looking forward to another play at Tenn Game Days.

Great game, but the plastic ships consisently break when mounting the engines.

Nice game, seems like a cleaned up "Age of Steam"

Someone gave this to me, I have yet to play it.

This game doesn't play well when a sharp group of gamers, refuses to buy any commodities.

Nice precursor to Jenga.

An auction game, with a nice board. Also a press your luck game. You've got to know when to fold a bad hand and when to press your opponent.

Too long, but can be fun for non-gamers too. Particulary with alcohol.

This is a good game. It's variant Ticket To Ride Europe is even better.

A decent tile laying game.

A tile laying game.

A great game, except for the end game. At that point your reduced menu selection makes the game largely luck based.

A cute theme and good mechanics. A great filler game. I finally got a copy of this game! Woot.

Classic space opera. I like this game and it's got a decent timer, though it still may take 6-7 hours with 7 good players.

A great game, but my last game was 9 hours long. We had 6 players and 4 of who were completely new and I had only played once. We also took a 1.5 hour dinner break, but still it was to long a game. It is hard for new players to resist the urge to turtle, which makes the game drag and in this case led to a easy victory for the Jol Nar.
This last game was much better, in that it only lasted about 5 hours with 5 players. That seems about right. Got to play another 5 player game as the Winnuu (an expansion race). Woot.
5/19 Played another game with 6 players that took 9 hours again, it was too long and this was mostly an experienced group. We played without the character card that grants 2 victory points a turn so it took a long while to get moving on the victory point track. I played the Borg (i don't remember their real name) and won. Woot!

I played two more games this weekend (9/28-29/2007) I got crunched as the Federation of Sol, but did pretty good as the barony, but not close to winning.

Played a game as the Yssaril (gollums). Great race, won the 5 player game.

Expansion to Twilight Imperium.

This is a really nice building & stock trading game.
The train theme is incidental as it just forms the building mechanism. The real action is in the stock acquisition and stock deployment mechanism. The game requires the user to not just obtain stock, but to spend a turn deploying it out of your hand in very limited quantities and the timing of this is critical. Optimally you will deploy your stock just before the stock is scored, however the stock scoring is a card flip so it can come earlier than anticipated.
Enjoy!

An enjoyable card game that is quick. I was explaining it to two new players and it's the kind of game that makes no sense from the rules explanation, but makes perfect sense once you start playing. Though I'm admittedly pretty poor at explaining the game.

Quick wargame (1.5-2.5 hours) set in the 100 years war.

This is a pretty good war game. It is hard to set up due to the miniatures and tiles looking too much a like, but the game itself is nice. I'm looking for a chance to play as the Shadow side after loosing badly as the Good side. A good portion of the loss was due to poor play on my part. Some recommendations I'd make, Get Gandolf the White and Aragon quickly as you need the extra dice. Push the quest for the ring as much as possible, early. Get your companions out on the board away from the Fellowship and doing some good in some battles.

A non-quick wargame, but good My favorite Eagle game.

Game Workshop miniature game.

Game Workshop miniature game.

The quick play rules seem a lot better, though the game still tends to drag. Plays much better with the Quick play rules. Still a simplistic game that's almost entirely luck based.