Friday, January 2, 2009

New Games

Some of these were Christmas presents; several we purchased to console ourselves for being unable to visit (and game with) our relatives in Oregon while they were snowed in.

The Princes of Machu Picchu — Mac Gerdts's latest, and we are very taken with it. Strongly recommended!

Ice Flow — An interesting semi-abstract with nice bits. Might be a bit dry.

Set — A light, quick filler. Helen has wanted this for a long time.

EuroRails — We're fans of the crayon rail series, and already have Empire Builder and Iron Dragon.

Le Havre — Only played this once so far; we're looking forward to more plays. Lots of unique cards to become familiar with.

Stone Age — A straight-forward worker-placement game that's proved to be a lot of fun. Recommended as a mid-weight Euro.

TransAmerica — We liked TransEuropa when Helen's Mom brought it, so we got this for ourselves. Includes the "Vexation" expansion.

Galaxy Trucker — Looking forward to trying this, but having a little trouble with components.

Dominion — Everybody raves about this; I hope it lives up to the hype. (Do we really need 500 card sleeves for this game!?)*

Fresh Fish — A strange and interesting game about managing negative space.

Silverton — A heavy-duty, long-running rail game suitable for one (!) to six players. I'm eager to try this one.

* Postscript: It's now 11:30 pm. Yes, we did need 500 sleeves. I have just finished sleeving them all. I also spent a couple of hours this afternoon putting 200+ stickers onto little plastic poker chips for Silverton. Not as bad as the ~700 stickers for Commands and Colors: Ancients, but bad enough. Never let it be said that I won't suffer for my hobbies.

2 comments:

Seth Jaffee said...

Great haul! I am a fan of Stone Age, I love Set, and I like Dominion pretty well. I haven't had the chance to play most of the rest, though I did play Fresh Fish once or twice (I recall not liking it much) and Transamerica (which I really dislike).

For what it's worth, I wouldn't bother getting sleeves for Dominion. My cards have held up very well, and I shuffle a lot. For the cost of sleeves you could get a 2nd copy of the game!

Rick Holzgrafe said...

Heh. Helen and I have enough OCD between us that the thought of allowing our precious games to possibly wear out is highly unpleasant. We don't usually sleeve cards, but in Dominion they get shuffled over and over and over within a single game.

Also we needed to go get sleeves anyway, for Galaxy Trucker. We aren't the only owners who found that the cards stuck together when first unwrapped, and swapped ink as they peeled apart. They're perfectly readable but the backs have recognizable damage patterns. We'd write to the maker for replacements, but others who have done so had the same problem with the replacements, so we're settling for sleeves.

You really should try Princes of Machu Picchu if you get a chance.