Weed

Cannabis, also known as marijuana or marihuana, or ganja is a psychiatric medication extracted from the plant Cannabis sativa, or more often, Cannabis sativa subsp. indica. But that’s not the topic…

I’m talking about card game that was released in 2002 and where players compete each other to grow the most pot plants. At the same time You have to watch out that others wouldn’t go too far a head. Sending thieves, hippies, cops and weed-smoking monsters to each other’s greenhouse players try to grow plants that would have the most THC (tetrahydrocannabinol – the magic stuff).

The quality of plants varies from one to six (only one six-pack in the box), but the greenhouse only houses five plants without alarming local authorities. And since removing plants from Your own field is always painful You have to consider very carefully which seeds You sow into ground.

Dandelions and Hippies are the most friendly screw-cards in the deck. Dandelions may also be one of the most depressing cards since it takes much room in Your greenhouse and getting rid of it might be a problem. But Hippie comes on Your field, settles down comfortably and starts smoking. Luckily he only takes what he needs – smokes only the lowest-value plant. Of course this might be a issue if You only have the hard stuff…

Cops and Robbers are a bit nastier cards. Cops take away Your most precious plant and skip Your next turn as You are writing an explanation why did You own narcotic substances… If only Estonian laws were so soft… Robber card allows another player take one of Your plant at his/her own choice. We still haven’t figured out if dandelions may the the subject for robbery…

The last but not at all the least is the meanest card of the game – Potzilla. Evil weed-addicted field vermin who doesn’t stop at nothing. Potzilla may smoke Your whole greenhouse with just one breath.

Even though the cards look like as someone had draw them while being rather drunk they match with the point of the game and enchant it further. The deck contains 54 cards (plus the rules), average play time might be about 30 minutes. Official number of players is 4 but I don’t think anything bad would happen if someone sits for the fifth…

In 2006 new edition was released: Weed Deluxe. The number of weed-growers advanced to 8 and many new cards were introduced:

7/10

P.S. Game is not tested under the influence of the corresponding narcotic substance – haven’t had a chance…

On the back of the box there is written: “This game is for fun and not meant to encourage drug use. Be smart and don’t smoke pot. It’s illegal for a reason.” Go figure….

P.P.S. Oh-Yeah…Jon Lajoie has made up a new song…

Gangster – Godfathers of Chicago

© 2006 Ludoart Verlag, Emilienstr. 43, 42287 Wuppertal, Germany

Wild Chicago in the 20′s where four gangs compete to gain control over this fruitful city of crime. With the help of their gangsters players battle each other to be the leader of the Chicago underground – Godfather Al Capone.

Game is really simple – too simple as it seems in the beginning. Board is 6×6 square piece of cardboard that resembles the city of Chicago. Beside that there’s also score track where all the points from the game are recorded. Players take turns to place gangsters into the city. You can choose to take the gangster from the deck, from the two up-wards gangsters or from Your personal guards (3 chosen men). You can also move a gangster or shoot one. When the row is full (6 gangsters), the strength of different gangs are calculated and the strongest one naturally wins.

There are 36 gangsters all together (9 of each different color). Every tile has number of bullets in the upper-right corner. That one shows the strength of the corresponding gangster. The lead bullets are for shooting other players of course….

The score track is for recording each player’s score as the game continues. The player who reaches to 17 points first will become the new Al Capone and wins the game. Usually the leader’s life isn’t made any simpler…

The game is nice and rather good. At least for people who don’t tend to sit behind the table for hours as do I. First thing that distinguish this one from the most of the games is the WOODEN box. Even I was suprised. This game was meant to last.

7/10

Boardgamegeek

P.S. The lasting thing reminded me this:

Live Stock Games

Whole weekend I was doing digging. We changed the floor of the band room of Witches Brew. I’ll be big.  We took away 28 tons of dirt and stones, drunk 3 boxes of beer (approximately 30 liters), 2 bottles of Jägermeister and 3 cans of gin. And we still didn’t finish… Wonder why…

On Friday eve we played Agricola. This was the result:

Am I the nasty one of is the game???

Beowulf: The Movie Boardgame

It’s about time to take on this one. It has been in queue for too long. The game is published by Fantasy Flight Games and is developed by Reiner Knizia. It’s one of those games where the best way of winning is screw on others. The cover may seem frightening but the game is rather nice. To be honest it’s pretty good entertainment.

Game includes one two-sided gameboard (for 3 phases), lots of playing pieces, three different sort of tiles and bunch of “money.” As I mentioned, game takes place in three phases – for each there’s different tiles and board. There’s only board of the second phase on the picture but the third peeks under the edge…

There are four different type of playing pieces: ships, fortresses, warriors and the hero Beowulf himself. On the base of every piece is their strength. The ship has 1 diamond, warrior has 3. It shows how many times you have to multiply the points the piece collects.

There are also many different kind of tiles. First of all are they grouped by color – in the first phase the gray ones are used, in the second yellow and in the third red ones… There are also numeric value on the tiles. This value is added (or subtracted) to the figures in the same row and column.

So the aim of the game is to get your figures into to rows and columns with the most bonus tiles and at the same time giving minus points to your enemies. It’s not that simple as it seems since opponents try to do the same thing to you. There are also many tiles with special abilities. For example Good Counsel allows other player to move your figure from blissful pile of boons into the depth of perils (I exaggerate of course). Some tiles allow you to exchange other tiles (like mead and drunkenness tiles). Gorge may cut your way to many good boon tiles etc…

Beowulf is simple and fascinating game. Perfect for those who hasn’t played at all…

Number of players: 2-4 ; Average playtime: 30-60 min

Nice artwork 7/10

Power Grid

Since stealing pictures from Boardgamegeek is for some mystical reasons impossible for me I’ll have to praise all those different arguments that convinced Tella to buy us camera. Thus I’m forced to take my own pictures – may them be as good as from BGG…

Funkenschlag aka Power Grid is very good economic-strategy boardgame where playeres take the roles of electricity-companys who try to attend as many clients as possible. For that one have to buy powerplants, build electricity lines, obtain fuels and prevent other players to do the same thing…

Game board is double-sided – on one side there’s the map of U.S, on the other side there’s the map of Germany. Both maps are divided into six areas, each containing 7 citys. Division of that kind allows players to use different parts of the map with different number of players. It’s rather easy to follow the borders

There are many kinds of power plants and fuels. For plants there’s importance of price (upper left corner), consumption and type of fuel (down left) and amount of citys this plant can supply with power. WIndmills produce green energy and therefore don’t need fuel. The last of them should be thermonuclear powerplant which neither doesn’t need any further investment after purchase. The price in the upper corner is not the final price but rather initial price. When player had decided which powerplant he/she would like to buy an auction starts. The initial price may be set higher than base price on the card by the player who put it on auction. Oftentimes green power is rather valuable and that kind of plants are sold for massive price.

There are four types of fuel in the game – coal (brown), oil (black), garbage (yellow) and uranium (red). When purchasing fuel one must consider the current price and future market. Often it’s not very wise to buy crapload of coal when You are about to swich Your old plants for new ones (unless they use the same type of fuel). Uranium is rather expencive at the beginning but later on that changes.

Game is very well balanced – when someone is left behind with buildings he/she has massive advantages when buying power plants, fuel and buildings. It’s not nice to be the first. All the fuel will be bought right under Your nose… Not nice at all…

I also brought the expansion from Essen that contains bunch of power plants that can be added to the game. There’s some really brutal plants there. Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to play with them yet. The plant on the right is the one I got for free (well, I did have to donate at least an euro to get it but that doesn’t matter anyway). But I’m afraid it’s only a requisite since the background is a bit darker tone than the rest of the cards. I would be perfect when playing in the dark room.

Very nice game. Takes exactly the right amount of time. 8/10

P.S. We also got us a brand new washing machine – that surely brought this to my mind….

Random Acts of Minor Chaos

How to spend a fortune aka Essen game-fair ’08 – Day 1

As soon as I found out about possible trip to Essen game-fair I had an urge to go there. First the plan was to go there by bus but some days later I had an offer from my board-game company where I’ve been working for couple of years. The offer was to go there as a work-trip. It’s so good to work with board-games

The trip began 0030 on Friday night when I started from Tallinn to Riga. After 4 hours of bus-ride I reached to Riga’s Airport where I flit to Dusseldorf. Since it was my first trip by plane I took lots of pictures. In Dusseldorf I discovered that it was an unfamiliar city (surprise…) and all of the sign were in strange language. After many attempts to find my way to Essen I discovered friendly police-officer who helped me out – many thanks

While waiting the right train I met very nice U.S. game developer John O’Neill who had had this kind of adventure yesterday. Only thanks to his kind guidance I finally reached to the fair.

After short brief from Audrius (my boss) me and Andrius (co-translater) went to the stand of Dr. Wood where we played Kingdom Quest. Amazingly I managed to win…

Next we sought out my new acquaintance John who explained us his very cool game Paradice.

After that we had nice time with Medievalia and One More Barrel. In the latter players are oil-barons who fight with rebels and try to acquire the most money.

Seven o’clock the fair was closed so me and Andrius headed to the bar to have couple of beers

Day 2

The morning came like every rational day – with rational breakfast. We had to eat as much as we could since it was a long day ahead and buying food at the fair would have resulted in basic loss of at least 2 games.

After breakfast Andrius had great idea to play Pickomino with dice we got yesterday. So we did. These dice are exactly the right color for Arkham Horror

After 10 we started rolling towards fair halls. On Saturday there were simply vast masses. At least I saw one guy with the shirt of Tenacious D – He made my day

According to pictures it seems that we were just wondering around – many different games we didn’t played. One of them – Carpe Astra – is surely worth mentioning since it’s made by Jackson Pope and I have much confidence in that man. His second game – It’s Alive – is one of my favorites.

Meanwhile I also took pictures of the people around:

While wondering around with Seili we stumbled on this rather fun and interesting game Ranabag. Frograce. And since it was French game there was also a warning sign on the wall – Do not eat these frogs.

Vor Dem Wind (Before the Wind) suprised me with it’s simplicity and excellence. We were taught by the author himself who explained the rules much better than many on that fair

I even got myself a signed copy – one of the two…

There was also Agri-cola. What else will they do for marketing…

In the evening we drank some good german beer (something like Estonian average) and played Weed. Poor Andrius only grew dandelions. After that we moved on to this nasty game of rabbits – Hoppladi Hoplada… It was really dirty

Day 3

There was also lots of LARP stuff. The prices were truly brutal, but appearance was respective. For 6€ You could get anything Your zombie needs from cudgel to frying pans. Many found that the court between fair halls was ideal to beat each other. If I had any kind of weapon I would have done the same

I also played pingu-game with Allan and Andrius. Later on we were racing with two French guys. I was first for a long but eventually I lost badly. Sh…Bad things happen…

Andrius introduced me a game of airboune battles of WW I – Wings of War. It’s very interesting flight simulator-boardgame. Basically it’s card-game – miniatures are only for fancy. Even then I bought 4 of them. Till now I’ve only managed to win once…

Looking for fun we found one stand with rather beautiful girls. Using the rare advantage Andrius picked up one of them and they started playing Parachute – I was talking with one of the guys about some boardgames – suprising eh? The games weren’t the best but the girls were sweet

Since it was late already we needed to hurry to get all the games we wanted. Unfortunately the game prices on the last eve didn’t met my expectations and stayed rather high. At least I got 5€ down from Fairy Tales

When we arrived to the hotel Andrius had a great idea – he laid out all the games we had aquired from the fair. They took all the space on the bed…And it was large bed

The next morning was rather dull – especially if you wake up 0530 in the morning. Even the flight was deferred. Since we got bored we decided to take out the planes and utilize the situation. I lost again….

I arrived to Estonia something about 9 P.M. It was really good to breathe Estonian air again knowing that there are about 400€ worth of games among the luggage of the bus.

It was quite an adenture – I hope to repeat it next year

But I woun’t buy games for long now…

In Dusseldorf airport we saw this hilarious sign – seems like it’s famine in Germany

I’d like to thank Kadabra thanks to whom I could attend to this splendid fair, Estonian and European government who both make traveling so much easier and Tella who’s camera I could use to take such a smashing pictures. Special thanks to Higgins who introduced me to this magnificent world of board-games.

Boardgames in Estonia

As many people have demanded me to also create a boardgameblog in English I’ve decided to do so. Mainly it’s because this year’s Essen trip where me and my comrades had great time. But about that soon…