Austrian Ramblings

New Year.....New Blog!!

2012-01-04T15:35:00.000+01:00

Well I decided that I would cut my losses on 'Austrian Ramblings' and start a new blog so I could customise it as a wanted. I have called it 'Austrian Rumblings'.... You can find it here.

http://dogger136.blogspot.com/

There are many years of archived posts here and I don't want to lose them. They are so nice to look back on, all my gaming sessions with the 'Billygamers', I really enjoyed them. So give the new blog a look and let me know what you think.

Happy Gaming!!!

Still looks naff!!

2012-01-02T13:04:00.001+01:00

Long time since my last post, seem to have lost interest a bit since the cock up I made altering the look. Ah well, anyway, hope everyone had a good Christmas and I wish you all a Happy New Year! We a had a quiet time here in Austria, enjoyed the Advent Markets and had some snow so it was very pretty. I do quite a lot of reading and so Tina bought me a Kindle for christmas.....very nice. I've already got a few books on it. We had no space for more paperbacks so it will come in handy. I still prefer the touch of a proper book though.

Had a couple of boardgames too......what a surprise. Union Pacific and Im Reich der Wüstensöhne. Both solid games and they play with two as well.

I still haven't found a way to change back the look of the blog, so may have to start a new one. Shame really, have been doing this one on and off for a number of years. Anyway, we will see how it goes.

Dynamic views......no thanks

2011-11-04T09:48:00.001+01:00

Blogger ask you to play around with dynamic views. All dancing, with bells on and wonderful. You'll never want anything else. Well, I didn't like it and can I find a way to change back to how it was.......you guessed it. So I'll have to stumble around trying to fix it. I don't like how it looks at the moment though.!!

Ankh-Morpork first plays

2011-10-27T10:31:00.002+02:00

Ankh-Morpork is Martin Wallace's venture into the family market as regards game design. It's by far his lightest game and has a fair amount of random chaos in it. This in itself will turn a lot of hard-core gamers off as they cannot control everything that happens on the board. I myself can play both types of game, you have approach them with a different take that's all.

It plays from 2-4 and Tina and I have played four games so far. The games premise is basically that you are trying to control the city of Ankh-Morpork. There are 7 personality cards and each has it's own victory condition. For example, Commander Vines wins if the card deck runs out and the Dragon King of Arms wins if there are 8 or more trouble markers on the board......oops, sorry not supposed to mention the number between 7 and 9. In the collectors edition, which I have, it is never mentioned. Even the 12 sided die has 7a instead of it. Each player draws a random personality card at the start and so each player has (maybe) different victory conditions. As I said, we have played 4 games, I have won 3 and Tina 1. My wins were as Lord Vetinari (who needs minions in 11 areas to win), two of the personalities that need control of 7 areas to win. There are three of these in the game. You have control of an area if you have more pieces (minions and buildings) than anyone else in an area. Tina won with one of these as well.....I wasn't concentrating and she sort of crept up on me.

As you can see Tina is playing red and won quite easily. The game is primarily card driven. There is a deck of over 100 cards depicting the characters and places in Terry Pratchett's fantasy world of Discworld. Your turn consists of playing a card, doing what it says on the card and drawing back to a hand of 5. Easy, eh! Well, there's a bit more to it than that. There are 12 areas on the board and each has a corresponding card. If you build a building in an area you get the card for that area and that gives you a special ability. It may be once a turn take 2 dollars from the bank, or pay 3 dollars and place a minion in that area or an adjacent area. They are all beneficial to some extent. Then there is trouble, trouble happens when there are more than one minion in an area. You place a trouble counter in that area if you add, remove or move a minion. You cannot build a building in area with trouble in it. There are also Trolls and Demons just to spice up the game a bit.

That cannot be said for the event deck. There are wizard cards in the deck, well, there would be wouldn't there. If you play a wizard you must draw a card from the event deck.....all events are bad. Fire, flood, murders it's all good fun. All in all I really enjoyed Ankh-Morpork. The randomness will increase with the number of players so will the fun I think. There is always a lot chaos and trouble in the Discworld books so it's true to the theme.

Happy Gaming!!

Essen time again

2011-10-19T17:16:00.000+02:00

Well, I have been to visit England for a couple of weeks, been back a week now. I was waiting for my copy of Anhk-Morpork to arrive before I went .....but it didn't. It was waiting for me when I got back though. I love it. I am a great Terry Pratchett fan so I was biased I think. Been looking at the live feed on BGG today, great quality. I shall be watching over the next few days, next best thing to being there. I know a few of my old gaming buddies will be there.....lucky them.

The weather is starting to get colder here, the tourist season is nearly over. A lot of the hotels and restaurants are closing for a short break. Soon it will the Christmas Advent market, that starts November 18th and I am looking forward to that very much. We will soon get the snow I expect, I don't care for it much but Tina loves it.

Jersey Tiger Moth

2011-09-01T16:38:00.000+02:00

I have been keeping an eye on the Buddlia bush in the garden, on the lookout for any different butterflies that I could photograph and I spotted this little beauty. I took a few photos and tried to identify the species. Well, it took a bit of research but I finally found out that it's called the 'Jersey Tiger Moth'. Apparently quite rare in England, but not in ....ahem, Jersey, or hereabouts apparently.

Quite a striking fellow I think. I have also seen about, and I later identified it as, the Hummingbird Moth. I haven't been able to get any photos of this one yet, but I shall be on the lookout.

Got the little bugger!

2011-08-06T11:49:00.000+02:00

In an earlier post I mentioned that a beautiful Emperor butterfly was visiting our buddlia bush, but that I hadn't been able to get a decent picture of it. Well, the other day, it was there again and I managed to get a few photos. I did a bit of research on the net, and although it is called 'Kaisermantel' here in Austria, I looked up the latin description 'Argynnis paphia', in England it is called 'Silver Washed Fritillary'. Anyway here are the pics.

I also managed to get a few pics of a nice Red Admiral in the same session.

Hope you like them.

On the boardgaming front I have been able to play 'Tikal II' a couple of times now and will report on this soon.

Going, Going.....Almost Gone

2011-08-01T09:05:00.000+02:00

What is almost gone, I hear you ask. Premier sporting events on terrestrial TV, that's what. So the BBC has lost half the F1 races next year to Sky, what a surprise. Soon the sports fan will have no option but to subscribe to Sky as well as pay a licence fee. Premiership football has gone, test match cricket has gone and now half the F1 races as well.

Here in Austria I don't know how that will affect us. At the moment F1 is shown on the number 1 austrian channel, ORF1. Two years ago we had german Bundesliga matches on german TV channels....now it's only available on german SKY. Last year we had Wimbledon tennis on Eurosport....this year only available on german SKY....see the pattern. Sky is gradually devouring all the major sporting events and the fans are very low on the priority list. Football clubs couldn't give a toss, as long as they can pay obscene wages to the foreign stars they employ, and apparently F1 teams don't give a toss either. I read that they didn't want TV coverage to go from terrestrial TV for fear from the sponsors....but hey, when the money hit the table they had a change of heart.

So the sports fan is expected to pay through the nose to follow the sport that they love. Soon the World Cup will be on Sky and every other major sporting event will be on Sky......sad, but true.

I pay a fee here in Austria for the TV, like a TV licence in the UK. I get umpteen channels, german, austrian, spanish, italian etc. I can't understand any of them because I can't speak the language well enough. We do get Sky News though, what a wonderful channel. We also get BBC World News, well that is what it says it is, news from around the world. But Sky, supposedly should cover news across the UK as well as the world. Apparently it's been voted 'News Channel of the Year' at some point. Sheesh, they are so obsessed with american politics, They seem to broadcast every speech President Obama makes live. Plus, when they get a story, boy, do they flog it to death....I'm fed up with phone hacking, day after day after day, bleeding phone hacking. Then there was Libya, a world story no doubt, but day after day after day after day.

Anyway, that is my rant for today......:)

Some photos of butteflies taken in the garden

2011-07-30T12:22:00.001+02:00

We have a large Buddlia bush in the front garden which is a magnet for butterflies. Here are a few shots taken with my Nikon.

Small Tortoiseshell

Swallowtail

Brimstone

Peacock

There is also an Emperor butterfly, but he's a sneaky little bugger and I haven't been able to get a shot of it yet.....but I'm patient......:)

Soooo Hot here

2011-07-12T16:56:00.001+02:00

Really hot, been really hot for a while now. Of course, we get quite a few thunderstorms as well. Anyway, we have had Tina's sister to stay with us for a few weeks and she is not averse to playing a game or two. We played TTR - Switzerland, London and Khan a few times.

Last weekend here in St. Wolfgang it was the Scalaria Air Challenge. Lots of seaplanes land on the lake and there are displays, hot air balloons, helicopters etc. I was pretty active with the camera so here follows a few pictures.

We had a day in Salzburg yesterday. Very nice, very warm. Takes us about 80 minutes on the local bus. Of course I paid a visit to the game shop and had a browse. Came away with Tikal II, haven't played it yet but have read the rulebook and was impressed with the production of the game. Super box insert to store all the bits. I will give you my impressions after a few plays.

Happy Gaming!!

Who Knows Where The Time Goes....

2011-06-01T15:36:00.001+02:00

....So says the old Sandy Denny song. It's been over a month since my last post....where does it go? Anyway, I have been pretty caught up playing a couple of Facebook games, Warstorm and War Metal Tyrant. Both collectible card games, Warstorm is fantasy themed and Tyrant is warfare, tanks, planes etc. Unfortunately they are both pretty addictive and I spend much too much time playing them (you can say that again, says Tina).

You can spend actual cash on these games but I don't. You can progress by winning battles and gaining experience and gold (or silver in Warstorm's case) to purchase more cards. There are several missions or campaigns that you can undertake and when you achieve certain goals you are rewarded with gold/silver or new cards.

So on the boardgame front not a lot has been happening, I am tracking Ank Morporkh and The Road to Canterbury on BGG, as they look interesting, but not a lot of news at the moment.

I did find an interesting music app from Google called mflow which is pretty good. Apparently it doesn't work too well in Europe, but I have found that some tracks play OK and some only play once then you can only play a 30 sec clip. You can play the tracks as many times as you want in the UK though.

There are quite a lot of things happening here in St. Wolfgang and we have been to a few concerts lately. The local choirs had one a couple of weeks ago, 8 choirs from around the lake and a guest choir from Sweden, very good.

I will try to post a bit quicker next time :)

More Spring Photos

2011-04-29T09:37:00.000+02:00

Well, the weather here has been a bit up and down, some lovely sunshine but also some cooler days with a bit of rain. Anyway, I was able to get out and find some alpine flowers to photograph.

The meadows are starting to look wonderful filled with all the flowers and blossom trees.

Needless to say, boardgames haven't been at the top of my list at the moment. As I write this, the television is on constantly.....why, Prince William is marrying Kate Middleton and Tina is glued to the set. :)

Palm Sunday and London

2011-04-21T14:57:00.000+02:00

Well, last Sunday was Palm Sunday here in Austria. At 9.30am it looked as though all the village had assembled in square by the priests house, everyone in traditional Austrian dress and all carrying large poles with fir branches, apples, ribbons and flowers attached to the tip. After the priest has given a blessing one of the local bands leads a procession through the village centre to the church. I took a few images of the occassion.

A very colourful affair with lots of opportunities for photos.

London is becoming one of my favourite games now. Had an opportunity to play a couple of 3 player games with Pauline and Stephen over the last couple of weeks. They were over here for the Easter hols. There is a bit of a learning curve for the first game as you get to see what all the cards do and how they interact. As this was the first time I had played with more than 2 it was interesting to see how different cards became more or less powerful with more players. The omnibus for instance is very powerful with 2, not so with 3. Anyway, I managed to win the first game on a tiebreak with Pauline (I had less poverty). Stephen got hammered with poverty in this game. In the second obviously having learnt a painful lesson in the first Stephen had an easy win with only one point of poverty at the end game. This time it was Pauline and myself that succumbed to the poverty trap!

Spring and all that

2011-04-01T09:44:00.000+02:00

Well, spring is upon us and I haven't posted for awhile. We have been to England for a couple of weeks in March, visiting family, friends etc. Back here in St. Wolfgang the weather has been fine and sunny, well, except for today which rainy and cold. We have been able to have lunch sitting on the balcony and had to wear hats because the sun was so hot! A lot of the spring alpine flowers are starting to show their faces as well.

We have been for a few walks up into the forests and along the lake, it's been really nice. Of course my new camera has been doing stirling service and I have tried to photograph some of the flowers. Don't know what a lot of them are called but they are very nice anyway.

Regarding the gaming front, I must admit I haven't played much lately, Tina and I tried the 2-player variant of Seafarers posted by Dave65tdh on BGG go here if you would like to have a look...

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/442180/2-player-variant

It seemed to work very well and we enjoyed it. I also noticed that the Martin Wallace release at this year's Essen is to be 'Ankh-Morpork' a game based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. Set in the city of Ankh-Morpork....(where else) the premise is that Lord Vetinari has disappeared and certain factions are trying to take over the city. Each player has a secret personality with a specific victory condition. Sounds intriguing, and as a bit a fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books it becomes a bit of a no-brainer for me. Apparently it will be available for pre-order one month before Essen and there is to be a De Luxe version as well, and this won't be limited so anyone who wants it can get a copy. No news on how the De Luxe version will differ from the standard version though.

More news anon...... happy gaming........ and don't forget Mum on Sunday....Happy Mother's Day mum!

Boardgames and Photography #4 Tobago

2011-02-26T11:05:00.000+01:00

Tobago designed by Bruce Allen and published in 2009 by a number of publishers, my copy is Zoch Verlag, is basically a treasure hunt. The modular board depicts an island with various types of terrain on it. Beach, grassland, forest, mountains and lakes. Players control an 'all-terrain vehicle' to journey around the island. The island also has some other features, namely, three palm trees, three huts and three stone statues which are really sturdy and well crafted items.

f5 1/30 ISO320 38mm focal length

As you can see they are nicely produced and give the board a really nice look when set up. Players have clue cards which they can play to reduce the likely location of the treasure. When it is reduced to just one possibility they can move their ATV there as fast as they can to retrieve said treasure.

f5 1/30 ISO280 46mm focal length

The stone idols are really nice, resin cast and have a nice weight. Whenever a treasure is raised the idols turn 60 degrees and an amulet is thrown up in a straight line on the coast of the island. Players can pick up these amulets, which have various powers and use them later in the game.

A very nicely produced game, with top class components which photograph well.

Creative effects with the computer

2011-02-16T14:55:00.000+01:00

Well, some might call them creative, others tell the truth! Here are a couple of pictures that I messed around with on the computer. I must admit I do like black and white images, but only certain subjects lend themselves to this treatment. On this picture I added a sepia tint and some grain to simulate a rather aged look. I like it, tell me what you think!

I tried a similar treatment on one of the pictures of the rats from Hameln. Didn't add the grain but put a vignette on it. Don't like it, it doesn't really work I think. Anyway have a look.

This one isn't BW, but I have played around with the colours and used a graduated filter on the sky. The lake is partially frozen and the sun reflected on the ice looks good I think. I like this one.

Just a few pictures I have been playing around with. Hope you like them. The next Boardgames and Photography post is Tobago....coming soon!!

Boardgames and Photography #3 Shear Panic

2011-02-08T11:30:00.000+01:00

Boardgames and Photography #3 Shear Panic

Shear Panic, published in 2005, was the first game from Fragor to have the resin figures for game pieces. In this case of course....sheep! The original version of the game from Fragor had laminated player sheets and tiddlywinks for counters, very much a home produced effort. The sheep figures, which included 8 sheep, 1 black sheep, 1 sheep shearer and 1 ram were great.

f5.3, 1/40, ISO 200, lens at 48mm

Here we have the flock of sheep, each sheep has a dot of colour on it's back denoting which player it belongs to. The photos for all these games were taken on a table placed by the big balcony window with my green felt player cloth on it. Consequently the exposure info is pretty much the same, but I've included it anyway for those of you interested.

f5.6, 1/30, ISO 450, lens at 55mm

This is the black sheep of the family. Points are scored at various points during the game. There are four fields for scoring, the team field, Roger the Ram's field, the Black Sheep field and the Shear Panic field. In the team field you score points for your own sheep being next to each other. In Roger's field your get most points for being nearest to Roger. In the Black Sheep field for touching the 'black sheep', and lastly in the Shear Panic field you can lose sheep for being nearest the Shearer Sheep.

f5.6, 1/30, ISO 400, lens at 55mm

Here is the shearer, if you are in the row nearest to him your sheep are 'sheared' ie removed from the game.

f5.6, 1/30, ISO 360, lens at 55mm

And finally.....Roger the Ram. Looking very amorous with his red rose to intice the ladies!!

Hope you liked this little tour around the game pieces for 'Shear Panic'.

Boardgames and Photography #2 Hameln

2011-02-04T14:35:00.001+01:00

Boardgames and Photography #2 Hameln

Hameln, published by Fragor Games carried on from Shear Panic by using resin figures for important game figures. Gordon and Frasier Lamont have released one game a year from 2004 starting with Leapfrog to their latest Antics. Three of these games used resin figures, starting with Shear Panic, then Hameln and finally Antler Island. I own Shear Panic, which I pre-ordered and was collected for me by Richard from their stand at Essen when it was released. So it is the original version with laminated player sheets and tiddlywinks as counters! And also Hameln, which I again pre-ordered and picked up at Essen myself. As games go, they are OK, not outstanding, but the resin figures make them games that I am glad I have in my collection. Let's start with Hameln. Basically the game involves buying houses, marrying and having children earning a bit of cash. However of course, there is a plague of rats that makes life difficult.

Here we have the king rat, front and centre, and his ratty buddies, ready to infest your houses. Photo info, f.5.3, 1/30 and ISO1400. The focal length was 48mm. These figures are great. As Chris Brooks commented on the last post, a fast prime lens would probably be better for this type of photo......I wish I could afford one.

And here he is.....the Pied Piper himself, along with his buddy the cat. He drives the rats away and you score points for being in possession of the cat. Photo info, f.5.6, 1/30 and ISO1600. The focal length was 55mm. I have great fun messing around with these photos on the computer, you have so much control. My wife calls it 'cheating', I call it enhancing!!

Look out for Shear Panic ...the next instalment.

Boardgames and Photography #1 Norencbec

2011-02-03T15:14:00.001+01:00

Boardgames and Photography #1 Norencbec

I was thinking after the last post, there are lots of games that have interesting and colourful components, so why not do more posts about them. I can combine my two hobbies together and have some fun.

As I took some pictures of Norencbec the other day I carried on and took a few more.

Norencbec has the largest meeples I have seen in a game, and all on parade they make quite an interesting picture. Again the ISO was 1600 and f5.6 at 1/30. The lens was the 18-55mm at 48mm.

There are six types of commodities in Norencbec, and they are represented by hefty wooden bits. From left to right, hats, cloth, cakes, boots, beer (mmmmmm beer!!) and sheets of paper. Makes owning the game a must just for the beer meeples lol!!
Taken at ISO1600, f5.0, 1/30 and the lens at 34mm. Didn't like this picture as much, but it's not too bad.
Norencbec is a decent game as well, plays well with just two which is a plus for me.

Norencbec is published by White Goblin Games (http://whitegoblingames.nl/en/home.html) and designed by Andreas Steding. It was released at Essen 2010.

Look out for the next post which will be Hameln by Fragor Games.

Nikon camera + Boardgames = Boardgame Pics

2011-02-01T17:41:00.002+01:00

Why not, I thought. A lot of boardgames are very photogenic....well, I think so. So I got out Norencbec, which has some lovely high quality components and started to take a few pictures. The ones taken with flash were hard and not very flattering, so I upped the ISO and tried taking some like that. Here are a couple of results.

The ISO in these pictures is 1600 so the shutter speed is quite slow, but they don't seem too bad. This one was shot at f5.6 and 1/15 sec. I shot them in RAW and processed them on the computer so I could reduce the grain and noise a bit.

When you are focusing this close and with a wide aperture the depth of field is very shallow. As you can see in this picture, the foreground is sharper than the meeples at the top of the shot. Again shot at f5.0 and 1/25 sec. I didn't use a tripod either, mainly because I don't have one, even so I think sharpness isn't too bad.

Anyway, I shall be experimenting with more games and more camera settings in the future.

Oh Deer!

2011-01-24T10:18:00.000+01:00

At the back of our apartment we have a very steeply upwards sloping garden, dotted with a few apple trees. Behind the thin line of trees at the top there is a meadow, then a stony trail which leads on into the forest. Quite often deers come out of the forest and across the meadow and find their way into our garden. Whether it's for the fallen apples or not I don't know, but there they are.

Well, yesterday was such a day, a young male and a female. They stayed in the garden for most of the day, feeding, sleeping and more feeding. Too good a chance, so I fitted the Nikon 55-200mm lens and took quite a few photographs. As fellow photographers will understand most of these weren't very good, but a few of them were'nt bad. I post a couple here.

This is the female, pausing a moment from her constant feeding. She was also keeping a close eye on the young male, whether she was it's mother or mate I do not know.

This the young male, still with his immature furry antlers. They came really close, only 15 feet or so away and didn't seem unduly timid.

London calling
I also played a game of London with Tina. We both really like this game and I agree with several posters on BGG that the game tends to run to a pattern. Buy boroughs, get cards, lay cards, when you have an almost empty hand run city....repeat. I also tend to focus on cards that produce income in the early game and on cards that reduce poverty in the middle, late game. Neither of us relied on loans a great deal, I only took one and Tina none at all. I find the school invaluable and the hospital very useful as well. The game was fairly close, I ended up on 96 pts and Tina on 78 pts.

Happy Gaming!!

My first venture into DSLR photography

2011-01-18T09:59:00.003+01:00

Lucky me, I got a new camera for Christmas.....a Nikon D3000, which is an entry level DSLR . It has plenty of features for me though, my last camera was a digital compact which took good enough photographs but I wanted to have more control and options available to try different things. Luckily I have got a programme so I can play around with the images I produce and either enhance them or, as Tina says, cheat.

Here are a couple of the first images I have taken using the Nikon. The seeds photo was taken using aperture priority. I used the RAW format and post processed them on the computer. There is so much to learn with this programme, luckily there are hundreds of tutorials and tips out there on the internet to help the beginner like myself.

I shall post new photos as the year progresses so you can see if I get better or not.....lol!!

On the gaming front, Tina and I had a game of Khan yesterday. It plays OK as 2 player, but I would think it gets a lot more tactical with more players. The production of the game is first class, I have seen some comments on BGG that the art and names of the rulers etc aren't strictly right for the period...but this is a game right, and how many gamers are fluent in ancient mongolian?

Happy Gaming......and photography!!!

First post in a while

2010-12-24T09:47:00.000+01:00

So, Christmas Eve, my birthday.....which at my age I am trying to forget!! Things have been a bit up and down here, that's why I haven't posted for a while. My mum hasn't been very well, so we have been in England for a few weeks to help look after her. Didn't like the snow there, we have enough of that here in Austria. We managed to get back home early December (despite the snow closing Gatwick 3 days before we were due to fly), and have been busy preparing for my sister-in-law's visit. She came over a week or so ago to stay with us over Christmas.

It's been very Christmassy here, we have had a lot of snow and we have been visiting the Advent Markets. In St. Wolfgang itself, St. Gilgen and Strobl and of course the one in Salzburg.

Tina's sister, Janet, quite likes to play games when she's here, and a couple of days ago we played a game of London. There's quite a learning curve for the first game, not knowing what all cards do. But we had a laugh and didn't make too many mistakes in the rules. I'm sure the next game will go a lot better, as it was the first one only took 2 hours. I'm sure we'll play a few games over Christmas. So, may I take the opportunity to wish anyone who reads this a very Merry Christmas and a Healthy New Year!!

Happy Gaming!

A couple of games of Norenberc

2010-10-31T10:21:00.000+01:00

Having got Norenberc before Essen on pre-order (gotta love the printers that White Goblin use), yesterday me and the wife played a couple of games. We used the brewer (obviously), the printer and the hatmaker. In the first game the price the guildmasters set was high all game. We was both struggling for money throughout the game.

We had both noticed that the guild shields would be a big scoring factor at the end of the game and tried not to let the other get to many. I think in a game of more than 2 the impact of shields would not be as great. Tina got the townsman that gave you money during the income phase depending on how many craftsman you had. Tina (wife) chose the brewery, she had 6 I had 2, that eased her money problems a tad.

That game ended, me 34, Tina 31

The second game was a little easier regarding money, when you have a guild master at 2 and you see the next one up is 7 gives some opportunities. The shields came out about even over the two games. Score for this one was, me 29, Tina 23.

I must say that this game plays fairly quickly with 2, first game was under and hour and the second 45 minutes. The game gives you some good decisions to make but is in no way a brain burner. Tina likes this game a lot so will get some more plays :D

Essen is here

2010-10-20T11:40:00.000+02:00

Well, not open to the public yet, but press day. And Boardgame Geek has live streaming for game demos. Go here for gaming goodness.....

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/essen-2010-geekbuzz#

I have been playing Norenberc and Rattus and Rattus: Pied Piper. Tina liked Norenberc best but I think the character tiles we used for Rattus were not the best for 2 player. Another game with different characters I think.

Essen 2010.....comes to me.....early!

2010-10-16T09:46:00.000+02:00

For those of you that read my post of Sept 1st you will see that I pre-ordered a bunch of Essen games from White Goblin Games. According to White Goblin these were to be dispatched after Essen had finished. Imagine my surprise yesterday when a big parcel arrived on my doorstep filled with gaming goodies. Fantastic.....after my wife told me to wipe away the drool I proceeded to rip the shrinkwrap off of them and....drool some more. Seriously, I opened all the games and punched them out and checked that all the bits were there, as I did this I noted that all the components were really first rate. Thick cardboard, crisp punching, colourful clear printing and solid boards not warped.

As I pre-ordered I also got the extra bits that were going to be available at Essen, for Rattus: Pied Piper, four more characters, for Khan, golden yurts, for Norenberc some more townsmen and for Aztec Empire, four sun cards. All present and correct.

So a big round of applause for White Goblin Games, I can enjoy my Essen a week before Essen.....if you know what I mean.

Happy Gaming!!

Oh, by the way, as this was supposed to be a Christmas present Tina said 'you can keep 2 games but 2 are going away, you can have them on Christmas day'.....Doh!!

London is not only the capital of England!

2010-10-10T10:11:00.000+02:00

It's also what looks to be a really good game from Martin Wallace. As usual I have been checking all the up coming new releases on Board Game News for this month's Essen. One of the games that caught my eye was the new Martin Wallace game, London. I downloaded the rules and read them through and was impressed enough to place a pre-order. I missed the Limited Edition version but what did that give you, a few wooden bits so no great loss. I have always liked card games and this is essentially card driven and it also plays 2, a big plus for me. Martin Wallace games have generally passed me by, Age of Steam, the Wallace classic was raved over by the group of players I used to play with, they collect all the maps and generally think it's the bees knees. It made my head hurt every time I played it and I didn't enjoy it at all. I also owned at one time, Princes of the Renaissance and Byzantium, both of which I sold. The BGG video feed from Essen looks great, I watched last year and it does give a great impression of the convention without actually being there....no substitute really though.

More impressions of FIFA online from EA sports. There was a major update and the end of September and ever since then all I seem to get is disconnections midway through matches. The problem is pretty wide spread with many players getting frustrated because each disconnection gives you a 0-3 loss, not even the option to replay the game. So we will wait and see what happens...I know this is still Beta so can't complain too much.

The weather here in St. Wolfgang has been glorious for the last few days and today there is a walking day with 4,000 walkers gathering for a walk around the surrounding area and lunching in St. Wolfgang....more beer and wurstl!!

Just found a great game!

2010-09-25T10:00:00.000+02:00

Here we are, back from a 2 week visit to family in England. Had a great time and the weather was really good. Haven't played many board games lately but have been playing a few on the PC. While trolling around looking for a decent free game I found EA Sports FIFA 2010 online. Wow! If you like football games this is the one for you. Great graphics, easy controls and you can play against the AI or other online players. Best of all it's absolutely FREE!! Check out the promotional video and sign up here....

http://fifa-online.easports.com/web/guest/

I am only still finding all there is to know about the game, but I have played England through to the World Cup Final.....I know it could never happen. But this is just fantasy..right! Anyway, I beat Germany, Argentina and Brazil on the way and beat Switzerland 3-0 in the final. I'm sure if you like football you will like this. There is a major update coming on the 28th September so sign up before then because I think there will be some rewards for existing players.

I just played my brother head to head, I'm Spurs and he's Arsenal...classic derby. He scored first, but then late in the second half I got a penalty and blasted it home to finish an honourable 1-1 draw. Give it a go, it's very addictive, as Tina will tell you....are you still playing that bloody football game....

Happy Gaming!!

Essen 2010 gets ever closer

2010-09-01T10:10:00.000+02:00

But I'm still not going! Still looking at all the new releases though and in this respect Board Game News in invaluable. There column detailing all the new releases, constantly updated as well, is great. As I mentioned before Inca Empire interested me and another game from White Goblin, Norenberc, looks interesting as well. So I checked out their website and found Khan, another game slated for Essen release. Both of these are 2-4 or 5 player so fall into my category. They are also releasing an expansion for Rattus, a game already released, again it plays 2. Well, they all look very tempting, then I find that if you pre-order you get exclusive bits only available for Essen. Hmmmmm, I'm crumbling. I mention to Tina that they have a deal that if you order the whole bunch, that is Inca Empire, Khan, Norenberc and the Rattus base game and expansion, you not only get the Essen goodies but a discounted price as well.

OK, you can have it for your Christmas present then......whoo hooo! Straight onto their pre-order page and bang. That's blown my games allowance for this year and next I should think.

Happy Gaming!!!

Essen....and Sci Fi!!

2010-08-16T10:21:00.000+02:00

As October approaches I guess thoughts of board gamers turn to Essen. Whether you are going to make the trip or not it is always an exciting time for gamers as a whole crop of games, good, bad and indifferent emerge into the public domain. I am no different and although I am not going this year have been checking out the prospective new releases on the excellent 'Boardgame News' website. There is an indepth preview of every game slated for release at Essen, and it is constantly updated. That must mean a lot of work, and I for one appreciate the effort.

Being on a limited budget and as most of the games I play at this time are two player I have to keep a tight rein on which games I am interested in. At the moment on the list is 'London' from Martin Wallace and this is how he describes on the Treefrog website.

London lies devastated after the Great Fire of 1666. This is your opportunity to build a new city on the ashes of the old. It is up to you how you employ the talents of the people of London to this end. Will you favour the business classes, who will earn you money? Or would you prefer to spend more money than you can rightly afford on grand monuments and sumptuous palaces? You must also deal with the problem of rising poverty and how to employ the many paupers of the city. Throughout the game you will be forced to make tough decisions. To achieve one aim you must sacrifice another, which may open an opportunity for a competitor.
Almost 250 years of the city's history is recreated in this game. Many of the most famous buildings and monuments are captured in detail on illustrated cards. These elements are presented in a relatively simple game that can be played easily within ninety minutes.

Sounds intriguing....and can be played by 2!

Next on the list is 'Great Fire, 1666' a game by Richard Denning and published by JKLM games. Sounds pretty similar to the Wallace theme eh! Well here is the description from the designer.

September 1666. A careless baker in Pudding Lane forgot to put out his fire and it spread creating an inferno which would destroy 13,000 houses and make 70,000 of London’s 80,000 population homeless. The Lord Mayor fails to act and it is down to the trained bands of militia led by a few worthies to fight the fire and finally put it out. To do so they must decide which districts to demolish to protect others. These same individuals own much of London and making such choices is painful. In the end though it is an opportunity for many. Someone is going to come out of this with the most property intact and someone will be seen to do the most to fight the fire. Could that someone have enough influence and popularity to become the next Mayor?
The players are men of wealth and standing who own property around London. They can use the trained bands to fight the fire, use demolitions to destroy blocks of housing to prevent the fire flowing or turn a blind eye and allow the fire to spread and damage rival’s property. Victory can belong to the player with the most property left but putting out fires can give you a boost. In addition each player will have several hidden objectives which might include helping another player or protecting parts of the city.

Only drawback for me is that it's only 3-6 players.

Triumvirate is a 2- player card game from Travis Worthington, originally released in 2009 as a self published game of 350 copies. It now gets a professional production and looks interesting.

7 Wonders is getting a lot of buzz. A card development game along the lines of Race for the Galaxy or Dominion. Again only 3-7 players.

Lastly, Inca Empire. The board and components look gorgeous in this new edition and the gameplay sounds interesting. No 2 player though.

So, most of the games I am drawn to because of gameplay or whatever don't play 2....doh! Still looks like I won't be spending a lot.

Now for something completely different. I have a liking for fifties sci-fi movies and have just bought a great collection on DVD. From Universal Studios it contains one of my all time favourites...'This Island Earth'. It's the only movie in colour in the collection, the other titles being, It Came From Outer Space, Tarantula, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Creature from The Black Lagoon and The Thing From Another World. Body Snatchers is presented in the original B & W but also in a colourised version. If you like this type of movie it's a must have. Tina is not so impressed and tends to laugh a lot at the creatures!!!

Happy Gaming!!

Another World Cup bites the dust!

2010-07-25T09:42:00.000+02:00

Been a while since my last post, and in that time the World Cup has been and gone. Being retired now I had the time to watch a few games (all of them actually)...and I must say what a disappointment. There was only a handful of games that were any good, the rest were too boring to believe. I can understand why 'soccer' hasn't really taken off in the States if all they saw were games like that. The passing was 'sideways-sideways-back to the goalie-backwards-sideways' you get the drift. Especially in the opening group games, no one wanted to lose so the games were booooring.
Ah well, there was always England's performances to brighten the day.........I wish!! What a load of over-paid, under achievers. I heard a comment say that it wasn't the managers fault. He just took the wrong players......what!! Didn't he choose the squad then. OK, that's my rant. Oh, and if Sepp Blatter doesn't think we want goal line technology after the couple of awful gaffs in the tournament there's no hope for the game at all.

Anyway, on the gaming front, now the footy's finished I have been playing a few. I have been playing Army of Frogs and San Juan with Tina. She had played Frogs before but not San Juan. In the first game of SJ she was a bit overwhelmed by all the cards, but by the 3rd game she pretty much had it down and we had some enjoyable games then.

St. Wolfgang is pretty busy right now, height of the tourist season. The weather has been very hot, up to 35C on some days. We had an air show over the weekend of 10/11th July with displays by the Red Bull aerobatic champion Hannes Arches. They also had a giant video screen on a float on the lake and showed the World Cup Final on it.

Anyway, happy gaming all!!!

World Cup and stuff

2010-06-19T12:26:00.000+02:00

Well, I have been watching a lot of footy and not playing many games the last few days. To be honest most of the games have been a load of rubbish, only a couple of good games. USA v Slovenia and South Korea v Greece were quite exciting. But, England, well they are just awful. Heskey just makes up the numbers because he doesn't contribute a thing to the team. Rooney might just have well stayed in the dressing room for all the good he did, Lennon looked scared to death and passed the ball as soon as he got it. What about running at the defence and going past people, he does that week in and week out for Spurs (and I am a Spurs fan).
Unfortunately Capello hasn't got the bottle to drop Rooney and a few of the others. Still I can see us going home early if we put in a performance on Wednesday with no passion, no skill and no desire.
Well, that's my rant, and as to games, the only ones I have been playing have been online. Well, when I can because I have been having a torrid time with my computer. For a week or so now I have been getting blue screens, freezes and crashes. I went online on my laptop and tried to get some suggestions as to the answer and the general consensus was it may have something to do with corrupt RAM. Today I went into the case to check it out and found that the RAM sticks had been cemented to the slots with something like bathroom sealer......WHAT!! After a lot of huffing and swearing, Tina, who has smaller fingers than me, managed to free them up and I took out the 2 512Mb sticks and left the 2 1Gb sticks in. Hoovered out all the dust and connected it all back up and booted.....holds breath.
Well, it's been on for an hour or so now and no problems so far (keeps fingers crossed). Just have to wait and see....for the computer and the football.

Happy Gaming!!

Really cold here....in May!!

2010-05-19T14:47:00.000+02:00

Well, since my last post the weather has really got cold. For over a week now the temperature hasn't risen much above 7C, and has mostly been around 4-5. We have had a lot of rain to go with it so it hasn't been much really. There are a few tourists around now, and I feel sorry for them if they are only around for a couple of weeks, it doesn't show St. Wolfgang at it's best that's for sure.
Most of the football is over now, well until June 10th when the World Cup starts. Spurs, after a super run in finished 4th and qualified for the Champions League qualifiers next season. Terrific wins against Chelsea and arch rivals Arsenal set them up and a battling performance against Manchester City away sealed their position. ORF the austrian equivalent of BBC are showing all 64 games live apparently, much to Tina's dismay. Still we have the Champions League final before then this coming Saturday, with the 'Special One' trying to add another trophy to his CV with Inter Milan.
Tina a I played 3 games of TtR Europe with the 1912 expansion this week. The extra tickets are a welcome addition to the game but I'm not sure about the warehouses and depots. Perhaps with more players they might have more of an impact.

Happy Gaming!!

Long time.....no post

2010-04-22T16:49:00.000+02:00

Yes, it's been awhile since my last post, since then we have been to England for a couple of weeks to visit friends and family, which was nice. Tina has got into crafting her own greetings cards so we visited the local Hobbycraft store to stock up with all sorts of bits and bobs. I must admit I have found it interesting too and have ordered a couple of CDs from Joanna Sheen's website and can't wait for them to come so we can make some cards together. I think Tina became interested when our friend Pauline showed her some of her cards. It's nice because it's something we can both enjoy.
We flew back to Austria on April 13th, which was just as well as they closed the airspace on the 15th because of the volcano in Iceland spewing it's ash cloud all over northern europe. Pauline and Stephen were over here when we got back so we managed to get one game of Stone Age in before they 'flew' back....well they didn't fly, they had a protracted rail journey to Ostend then ferry to Ramsgate.
The weather here has been a bit weird lately, sun, rain and snow would you believe, sometimes on the same day! Today has been lovely though, we went on the bus to Bad Ischl, about 14km away, for some shopping. I got the first series of Rome on DVD for 14.99, which wasn't bad. We have just walked along by the lake and sat in the sunshine watching snow covered mountains in the distance.
Anyway, that's all for now.....Happy Gaming!!

Stone Age - The Verdict!

2010-03-23T08:05:00.003+01:00

As I said in my last post, on our visit to Salzburg last week I purchased the game, Stone Age. Richard who was with us had said that it was a very good worker placement game. Well, I like the mechanic of worker placement so bought a copy. And I must say that I haven't been disappointed. The production quality of the game is excellent, all the components are top quality and the board and player boards are very in keeping with the theme with excellent graphics.

I won't go into the game in too much depth here as I expect a lot of you have played it but suffice to say it is a very clean design and everything falls into place very easily. Tina and I played 3 games over the last week and enjoyed them very much. Tina picked up on the rules very quickly and our games were very competitive. In the end I won 2 and Tina won 1. I also play online at Yucata.de and they have Stone Age. I played a 2 player game and won! The implementation on Yucata is also very good.

Players who also own maybe Caylus or Pillars of the Earth (like me) may hesitate to get another worker placement game but in my opinion this one is very well worth adding to your collection.....

Happy Gaming!!

A Trip to Salzburg

2010-03-17T09:18:00.003+01:00

Last week I had an email from a pal, Richard, that I used to play games with in the UK, he was in Austria skiing and wondered if we could meet for lunch and chat. Well, that sounded fine to me so last Saturday Tina and I caught the post bus and journeyed to Salzburg. The weather had been snowy on and off all week but Saturday it wasn't too bad.

We had arranged to meet at the game shop near the Mirabell Platz (where else). The shop has two doors, a small one for children, and a larger one for more children (ie adults!!). After meeting we of course went into the shop and had a look at what they had to offer. After my last post I had to be careful as space was getting a bit tight, but what the hell, you can always fit in another game right!! Richard was definitely tight on baggage allowance so he resisted the temptation, but I succumbed and picked up a copy of Stone Age. An excellent worker placement game that Richard had played and warmly recommended.

Then we walked towards the old part of Salzburg, crossing over the River Salz and had lunch in a very old traditional Austrian restaurant, the Sternbrau. After a very leisurely couple of hours, we took Richard to visit the English Shop which is run by Chris Clee. They sell lots of typical things that you can't get in Austria, like Cheddar cheese, suet, English beer and loads of other stuff. When we arrived Chris was watching Spurs v Blackburn on his computer. Oh no, Tina was hard pushed to drag me away, Spurs being my team. They were winning 2-0 when we left so that was OK.

We then strolled back towards the bus and train stations. It had been a very enjoyable day, we hadn't seen Richard for two years or more, so it was great to catch up. And I bought a game as well!!

As we travelled back to St. Wolfgang on the bus the snow started with a vengeance and by the time we got home it was set in.

Now.........let's tear that shrink wrap off....he! he!

Happy Gaming!!!

A Bit of a Dilemma

2010-02-17T09:32:00.006+01:00

My game collection seems to have grown a bit since coming to live in Austria. When we first came we bought two bookcase like units that I thought would house my collection and leave plenty of space for it to grow. Well......it seems to have grown alright.

My very full game units
As you can see from the picture there isn't a lot of space left. Tina said that once the units were full, that's it. Mmmmm, I've wiggled the games around to fit in what I have got and can't see anyway to make more space. Now that means, a) don't buy any more games or b) work on Tina to buy another unit. The first option is not an option, and the second option is not likely.......as I say A Bit of a Dilemma!!!

Some thoughts on Justinian

2010-02-02T16:04:00.003+01:00

Justinian was a game I purchased recently, at only 2.99 Euro. As you can see from the picture the theme is Roman....primarily trying to get more influence for the characters you hold in your hand. The mechanics are pretty straightforward and can be learned fairly quickly. Basically you place influence tokens face down on the characters on the display you wish to influence, either positively or negatively. Or you place tokens on the display under the main one to gain enough points to trigger a scoring round. This is where the problem lies, and has been discussed on BGG. The number of points you need to trigger a scoring seem to be much too high. As you can see in the picture it's 5 for the first round, then 9 and lastly 12.

When we played at first we ran out of tokens either in the second or third phase before having enough points to trigger a scoring round. After about 3 games of this we just adjusted the numbers down, to 3, 5, and 7. This seemed to make the game flow much better. The look and quality of the components is top class and for the price I paid I am happy to have it on my game shelves.

Today we played a couple of games of Oltre Mare. Tina hadn't played before and we shared a victory apiece. This game was one of Emanuele Ornella's first offerings and is still a good game. Again the rules are fairly straightforward and after a couple of turns it all becomes clear.

Happy Gaming!!

2 More games of Tobago!

2010-01-19T10:55:00.004+01:00

The excellent Tobago bits!
Well, Tina and I had two more games of the excellent Tobago yesterday. As predicted the game time came down to around 75 minutes. I have to admit that I haven't won a game yet...Tina beat me all 3 times! This session the power of the amulets became very apparent, giving lots more options than previously thought.

The cards from my last treasure...with curse!
The second game had an interesting ending, Tina was well in front I think and there was 3 cards left in the treasure deck one of which I knew was a curse. I had a treasure map with all my cards on which I elected to raise. I had to reshuffle the discarded treasure cards and draw from that to make up the difference needed. I said I bet the first card is the curse! I shuffled those cards 3/4 times and....yes, you guessed it, the bloody curse was the first card drawn....Doh!! Well, Tina thought it extremely funny. I wouldn't have won, just made the score a bit more respectable. Ah well...

Happy Gaming!

Tobago hits the table!!

2010-01-17T09:39:00.004+01:00

Well, my games from Spiele Offensive came last Thursday and I must say all the hype I have read about the Tobago bits is fully justified. The idols, palm trees and huts as well everything else is top notch. I had read the rules before online so yesterday Tina and I sat down to play our first game. We had a bit of a struggle working out how the clue cards related to each other at first, and the site markers went off and on the board a few times until we had it sussed. The Amulets are also a lot more useful than first appears, as the game progressed and we got into the system more we could see the various options that the amulets afforded.
The game took 2 hours, but I think that about half that was learning curve, I am sure our next game will be much shorter....and the good news is that Tina, after some initial doubts, liked the game and said she would play again! Whoo Hooo!!
I also like the presentation of Justinian, another of the games I purchased, the graphics and production is also very high. Haven't played that one yet though, will report when we have played a game. The final purchase was Hector and Achilles, a 2 player card game from Phalanx, again haven't played it yet but looks interesting. Again will report later.....

Happy Gaming!!

First games of 'Through the Desert'

2010-01-06T16:28:00.003+01:00

As I said before the local library has a good selection of games and 'Through the Desert' is the second game I have got out. This afternoon Tina said she would like to play, so we played 3 games off the bat in about 90 minutes. After the first game and she got into it a bit the games became very enjoyable. I remember playing years ago with the Horsham gamers. With two players there are 10 camel trains on the board, with 4 players there are 20! I can't remember back when I played before, but the board must be quite crowded!!

Anyway, we had a good time and here are the scores.

Game 1
Tina 103 Colin 110

Game 2
Tina 109 Colin 103

Game 3
Tina 111 Colin 121

It's all over now!

2010-01-04T10:26:00.004+01:00

Well, that went pretty fast. We had a quiet Christmas here in St. Wolfgang, no snow then, but plenty now. Typical a week late.....ah well! There's always next year. Played a couple of games over the festive period, Tikal and TtR Marklin. Took Tikal back to the library and got out 'Through the Desert', only played that once or twice a few years ago, so looking forward to getting reaquainted.
My online game store of choice 'Spiel-Offensive' has some great deals on at the moment, loads of games for under 10 Euro. I had some money for my birthday (Christmas Eve!) so thought I would treat myself. I have been reading good things about Tobago and it looks great so that went on the list. Then a couple of cheapies to make up the order, several to choose from but I went with Justinian (2.99 Euro) and Hector and Achilles (2.99 Euro). They may not be games in the top 10 but they look great and for 2.99 are a steal.

Happy New Year to all and Happy Gaming!!

Snow, Snow, Snow

2009-12-21T16:23:00.003+01:00

Well, it snowed all last night and looks very pretty this morning. Surprisingly not so cold as yesterday....only -2C. We went for a walk through St. Wolfgang, unfortunately the Advent Market isn't open today, but I took some photos anyway so you could see the snow.
Go here to see the snowy pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Colin.Jen/AdventMarket2009#

Our Local Library

2009-12-19T10:21:00.002+01:00

After living in St. Wolfgang for nearly 2 years we decided to join the local library. We hadn't done so before because our German was hopeless and thought that they would only have german books. How wrong! Our friend told us that not only do they have some english books but also rent out DVDs and.......games!! Ah...well, I thought, that would only be 'Spiele für Kinder', you know Bob the Builder and Spongepants whotsitzname. Wrong again, they had a few 'games'. Keltis, Tikal, Fossil, SoC, Carcassonne and Mississippi Queen to name a few. Only a few titles admittedly but how many libraries in the UK would have even heard of any of them.

Tikal is a game that I played many years ago and liked. I have played a few online games at SpielbyWeb but nothing recently. So I thought I would rent it out for a couple of weeks at the outrageous price of 1 Euro and reacquaint myself with it. A discovery and treasure hunt game that looks good and plays well. I'm sure Tina will like it. I have been looking at Tobago, another treasure hunt game that looks impressive. Oh, by the way, it's snowing as I write this, the weather forecast for next week is warmer so I don't if we will have a White Christmas or not. Be ironic if the UK is white and we aren't.....

Happy Gaming!!!

Caylus finally arrives along with the Krampus

2009-12-04T10:05:00.006+01:00

Well the postman finally brought last game I had ordered from Spiel-Offensive, Caylus, I have been playing this online and can't wait to tear off the shrink wrap. I played the game I think 2 times when it first came out and wasn't too impressed, but now I think it's a great game.

We went for a walk round the Advent Market yesterday, I had some gluhwein, hot spiced wine and it was quite strong. As we were standing there we heard a bit of a commotion, all these bells and shouting.....well, the Krampus had arrived. It is a tradition in parts of Austria that the young men of the village dress up as Krampus and terrorise the local young ladies (officially supposed to be virgins), they would put sacks over the girls heads and drag them away. Then at some point a chap dressed up as St. Nicholas would come and banish the Grampus and save the village’s virgins.

The Frightening Face of the Krampus!
I grabbed the camera to get a few shots of the great costumes but didn't get out of the way quick enough and got whipped with birch twigs......great fun.

You can see more on the Krampus here......http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krampus

And I've put some more shots of the Krampus on my Advent album on Picasa here

http://picasaweb.google.com/Colin.Jen/AdventMarket2009#

Must go now, got some shrink wrap to destroy!

Happy Gaming!!

More Advent Pictures

2009-11-29T13:50:00.003+01:00

Just a quick post to say that I have added a few more pictures to the Advent album on Picasa. Also, two of my games have arrived......hooray!!! Posted on Wednesday and arrived on Friday..not bad. So been getting into Assyria and Il Principe and must say like both a lot. Just waiting for Caylus to arrive now.

Happy Gaming!

Christmas Advent Market

2009-11-22T09:59:00.004+01:00

The Advent Market opened on the 20th November. Even on the first weekend there was a lot of people visiting, I have created a Picasa Web album where you can see the pictures I have taken so far. I will be adding more as we go. The atmosphere is really great! There are all these little wooden huts selling everything from soup in a loaf! to Christmas decorations, Krapfen (like doughnuts filled with apricot jam), Gluhwein (of course) and loads more. Everywhere you look there are Christmas trees and candles.

St. Wolfgang produces a special mug each year for the Advent Market and if you buy some Gluhwein it comes in the special mug which you can keep after you have drunk the Gluhwein. We tried the soup in a loaf, it comes served in a hollowed out loaf with the top cut off to form the lid. I had green pea with sausage and Tina had Garlic soup....mmmmm....very tasty!! After the soup I had a beer and we bought some lovely roasted Maroni....chestnuts!

There are horse and carriage rides available round the town, they are decorated with lights and lanterns and sleigh bells that sound wonderful as they pass by. The passengers are wrapped up warmly with blankets and the route takes them past the Schafberg train station, the ferry point and along the lakeside. The boats are all lit with lights and decorated inside with decorations, you can have a ride on the boat from one end of the lake to the other. At the Northwest end is St. Gilgen, they have a wonderful Advent market as well and as well as all the usual huts they have a special display of wooden carvings, especially Kripps, depicting the navitity scene. At the opposite end of the lake is Strobl, again they have a great market with whole tree trunks burning in the streets providing a wonderful atmosphere. The emphasis at Strobl is animals, they have deer, goats, sheep and cows all in pens in town centre providing a great treat for the children who can pet them.

Hope you have enjoyed a little taste of what the Christmas markets are like here in Austria, you can find my Picasa album here for more pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Colin.Jen/AdventMarket2009#

Christmas is coming and my games aren't!

2009-11-18T13:07:00.003+01:00

Well, here in St. Wolfgang it is very busy at the moment. Everyone is getting ready for the Christmas Advent Market which starts on the 20th. There are Christmas trees everywhere, little wooden huts are being readied with fir branches, stars and decorations. There is a huge lantern floating on a pontoon out on the lake, which will light up and look great. Logs fires are burning in the street, with chestnuts roasting and gluhwein everywhere.....we can't wait.

News from the gaming front. I have found a great online games store....spiel-offensive.de They have some great bargains on older games and even the very latest Essen releases are very competitively priced. Even better, orders over 40 euro are post free to Austria. I put an order in for 3 games, Assyria, which I read a lot about during Essen, Caylus, an old game I know but a classic and Il Principe. The last one was only 7 euro so quite a bargain. The only trouble is that Caylus was out of stock and I am still waiting for it to arrive in the store. My german being very poor, while I was looking at my order I accidentally clicked the cancel order button.....Doh!! Anyway, I sent an email off and within 30mins I had a reply, in english, saying no problem they would just ignore the cancellation and any more problems get in touch. Good service I think, I just hope the games arrive soon.

Hopefully when the Advent Market is under way I will post some photos....stay tuned.

Happy Gaming!

First game session for a while

2009-10-28T12:50:00.005+01:00

Last night I had the chance to play some games with Pauline and Stephen who were over for a week. I thought we would give a cooperative game an outing so Pandemic hit the table. I don't think they had played this type of game before so it was a new experience for them. We played the Normal version and played with open hands to get the feel for it.

Pandemic....so close the victory
These were the roles we drew, Pauline was the Dispatcher, Stephen was Scientist and I was Operations Expert. We started off fairly well managing to keep the infections down, I managed to meet Stephen a yellow city to pass him a that city card to enable him to cure the yellow virus. Soon after we eradicated it altogether. Well, not too shabby. But then we got an epidemic, and few cards after another. We were so close to victory, we had cured the red and black, eradicated the yellow and on the next turn or two Stephen would be in a position to cure blue and claim victory. Unfortunately it didn't quite work out like that. The outbreaks had been steadily increasing and finally with the 4th epidemic card we were finally overwhelmed and the world succumbed to multiple outbreaks and defeat. We all enjoyed the game and found it a real challenge, hopefully we will save the world next time!

Canal Mania is a game by the Ragnar Brothers about building canals across England. I hadn't played it for years and Stephen and Pauline hadn't played at all. I ran through the rules quickly and off we went. This game could just as easily be about building railways, but there are so many railway games out there I suppose canals is different. You are, to a certain extent, restricted to what contracts turn up in Parliament as to whether you can get a viable network going. Unfortunately fortune didn't favour me this time and my pathetic attempts resulted in a fractured and very inefficient system. On the other hand Pauline and Stephen both had decent networks and were starting to move goods cubes for some good points.

Canal Mania
As the game developed Stephen managed to get a decent lead and when the time came to transport all the goods cubes he kept it to get a very convincing win, Pauline was a close second with me trailing along dismally at the back

Final Scores
Stephen 128, Pauline 104, Colin 73

Essen is here already!

2009-10-20T17:34:00.002+02:00

Well, I see I haven't posted for a while .....again...and Essen has crept up on us again. Unfortunately I won't be going but that doesn't stop me reading the blogs, sussing out the new games, reading the rules, following the news stories...phew, it's almost as tiring as actually going. Being on a somewhat limited budget now that I am retired I have to pick any new purchases rather carefully. Also as my playing partners are also very limited, Tina, and Pauline and Stephen when they come over to St. Wolfgang, this does limit the type of game I can pick.
Definitely must be able to be played by 2, definitely must NOT be a wargame, must have pretty bits and not lend itself to AP (analysis paralysis). So, I have been looking at a few games, Colonia and Assyria being I suppose the top of the list. Cyclades also looks interesting, Bruno Cathala's games always worth a look. Will I actually buy anything, again this depends on a number of factors, but I am sure that I will buy something....after careful analysis of all the available information of course, not because of all the pretty colours :)

2 Player Alhambra.....with expansions

2009-09-09T10:20:00.004+02:00

Yesterday Tina and I played a game of Alhambra and we thought we would use the latest expansion that we had bought and hadn't tried yet. Expansion 3 has 4 modules as usual, the Thief cards, the 1pt coins in a bag, the trader meeples and the extra wall cards. We used just the thief cards the coins in the bag and the wall cards. Another player joined us for this game....Dirk....he always turns up for 2 player matches. I explained the rules for the additional modules and play started. When you don't pay exactly the right money for a tile you usually get nothing, but with the 1pt coins in the bag for every 2 you pay over the price of the tile you get to take 1 coin from the bag. This helps you to pay the correct money for tiles and get extra turns, very useful.

Alhambra with Expansion 3
Dirk always seems to get good tiles in our games and this was no exception, he led in purple for the first 2 scorings. In the rules for the thief cards it says that you cannot use them before your own turn....well, in 2 player that is a bit difficult, so we just played it that you could. But really we didn't find that we used them much and both had cards left at the end of the game. The extra wall cards we did use, although not until near the end just before the final scoring. Tina had led for all the game I think and with a couple of tiles left in the game she could see that she would win and played a tile card to complete her wall. Her Alhambra was now completely surrounded! For the last couple of turns she denied me tiles that I needed, so I managed to play tile card to complete my wall also, we now had both surrounded our Alhambras.

Tina celebrates victory
We didn't use the traders this time, you get a trader stall with 3 meeples on it which you place anywhere round your Alhambra, if you build a tile of the same colour as one of the meeples on the trader tile you can place it on the just built tile. You can then put another meeple on the trader tile to bring the number back up to three and place it somewhere else round your Alhambra. You then score points depending how many colours of meeples you have in your Alhambra at the end.
All in all I think this is a good expansion, we will try the traders next time. We don't use to many modules, 3 is max, I think it over complicates the game. I also really like the city gates from expansion 2.

Final Score
Tina 150, Colin 112, Dirk 104

St Wolfgang's First Beer Festival

2009-09-01T10:31:00.004+02:00

This past weekend was the first beer festival in St. Wolfgang. I think this is just a reason for beer, music and sausage, and that's good enough. On Saturday the weather was just awful, rained all morning and into the afternoon. The Burgermeister was supposed to be opening a keg at 5pm but we didn't get there until nearly 6.30. The rain had stopped and we must have missed the keg opening because we didn't see anything. So we had a beer and listened to the bands for awhile, there were people about but because of the weather the attendance could have been better.
So Sunday dawned.......lovely and sunny....ah, this should be better. Today was the priest's turn to open a keg after a parade through the village of both local bands, choirs and various organisations, all in traditional costume. The place was packed with tables and benches lining the main street, beer stands everywhere, with bosna (local sausage) and bratwurst being consumed with gusto. The parade came at around 11pm and the priest, after a little difficulty with his hammer, opened the keg.

We walked out of the village to a little hotel alongside the lake for lunch, which was very pleasant. We sat on the terrace and watched the ferryboats pass by. After lunch we walked back to the village where the party was still in full swing, the little video clip may give you an idea of the atmosphere. This is better than commuting everyday to smelly London!!

A game of El Grande

2009-09-01T10:13:00.004+02:00

El Grande board layout...who's nicked the Castillo?
El Grande, one of the first german games that I bought, waaaay back. I have the Rio Grande version so the text on the cards didn't matter. After a couple of years I thought the game so good that I bought all the expansions as well. So, when was the last time I played......good question because I can't remember. That good uh! There are so many games and only so much time to play them that, well that's life.
Anyway, with Pauline and Stephen heading back to the UK, well yesterday actually, we played El Grande last week.

Enjoying El Grande
We played the basic version, this is the classic area control game and I ran through the rules quickly. No one had played before, only me and as I said I can't remember the last time. After the first turn I think the importance of the Castillo had become apparent, because quite a few caballeros went in there. Some of the cards do have the option for some lovely screwage of your opponents but we played friendly....I think! I really enjoyed playing again and the next day started to have a look at the expansions, which I really hadn't done in much detail before, it was just nice to have them. It plays 2 so I think I shall have to get Tina to try some of the expansions with me.

Final Scores
Pauline 101, Stephen 95, Colin 91, Tina 71

Some more Games.....

2009-08-21T11:47:00.007+02:00

Well, this was last week, so I am a bit tardy with my post again. Anyway, 3 player session with Pauline and Stephen, Tina couldn't make it. Accompanied by some tasty plum cake curtesy of Stephen! First up we finally got around to playing Carcassonne - Mayflower. Pauline and Stephen have had this for awhile and this is the first time it's hit the table. Normal Carcassonne rules except that you build from one edge of the scoreboard, representing the coast of the New World I suppose. Exploring Westwards....there are two Surveyor meeples that move West one row every time a feature is scored.....ummmm. Gives something else to think about, because if any of your meeples are left behind the Surveyors on an unfinished feature they get removed. So you could leave a potential scoring opporunity for another player.

Carcassonne - Mayflower layout
As you can see from the picture, we didn't think it through before starting to play because the tiles are going to stretch a long way in one direction. We had to remove the scoreboard and keep moving the tiles so we had enough room to play them all!
We found it difficult to score a farm as you needed to surround it with tiles (a la a cloister in normal Carc), and it was likely to get left behind the Surveyors. I think it adds a nice twist to the basic game and I enjoyed it. As you can see the scores were quite close.

Final Scores
Pauline 107, Colin 93, Stephen 92

We followed up with a game of Thurn & Taxis, Pauline had played this before but Stephen hadn't. I like this game a lot, planning your routes etc. It does get a bit frustrating when the card you really like gets cleared just before your turn though. I had a pretty awful time in this game and came a distant third place. Pauline got a few bonus chits including the Bayern one.

Me, looking reasonably calm considering my performance
Final Scores (Coach Card, Bonus Chits, minus coaches left)
Pauline 10+16-3 = 23
Stephen 10+5-6 = 9
Colin 7+6-8 = 5

Creepy, spacey sound effect whooshes us forward to Wednesday of this week (19th)

Stephen has gone back to the UK for a week, Pauline came round for a chilli and of course, a game. It's been really hot here for over a week now, too hot to sit on the balcony an the only time it's bearable is in the evenings. So what better way to cool down than a nice Chilli!!
I have had Morganland (Aladdin's Dragons) for a few years now and I think I have only played it once up until recently.....little story about buying this one. We went on the bus to Salzburg one year we were here on holiday and went to a shopping mall outside of the city, never been there before. Of course there was a kids's toy store in there, but toy stores over here have proper games in them too. Not just Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly. Anyway I didn't see anything I fancied until, on the way out by the checkout they had a bargain bin, and I saw....Morganland, shrink-wrapped....10 euro. Well, you can guess the rest!!!
So, Tina and I had played one game a few days ago and I thought we could try it tonight with 3 players. The board is quite large and very colourful and the game has nice bits as usual with German games. I explained the rules and off we went. I seemed to be the only one going for the magic spell cards which came in very handy during the game. I think we all underestimated the power of being the start player as there were quite a few ties which are broken in start player order.

Morganland, board layout
We all enjoyed the game, it played smoothly and didn't outlast it's welcome if you know what I mean. I think both Pauline and Tina would go for more magic spell cards next time, they got a bit cross when I decimated a space of their counters with one....he! he! The tiebreaker is the most scroll artifacts, but Pauline and I both had 7 artifacts and one scroll each so we shared the win.

Until next time.....Happy Gaming!!

Games Session - Catch Up 2

2009-07-28T11:29:00.005+02:00

On the 25th Stephen and Pauline reciprocated and asked us to their apartment for a games evening. Of we always have nibbles and drinks but Stephen had baked a nice Victoria Sponge for our delectation.....yummy! This evening we were to play Cleopatra, the rather nicely produced game from Days of Wonder. All DoW games have really nice production values, I suppose that's why they are at the top end of the price spectrum. Anyway, nobody had played this apart from me, and that was awhile ago. I rang through the rules and after a couple of turns I think everyone had more or less got the idea. Collect resources, build bits of Cleopatra's palace, the more bits you build the more money you get. Of course some of the resources are tainted by corruption so you begin to collect corruption amulets which go under your own personal pyramid.

The excellent layout of Cleopatra
There are various bits you can build, Obelisks, Spinxes, Walls, Doorways, Gardens and of course the Throne. There are also 6 different characters you can use to further your plans, they give you certain advantages like collect resources from other players or get a card from the discard pile etc. They are all tainted so you get corruption from them as well. Stephen was doing very well, and managed to build 3 Spinxes in one go which netted a healthy 17 talents. The game ends when 5 out of the 6 bits of the palace are built, you then count the corruption amulets under your pyramid and the one with the most ie the most corrupt, gets thrown to the crocodiles! The corruption count was very close, Tina had 13, Stephen had 12 and Pauline 11. I had 2! I don't know how I managed that. So poor Tina went to the crocs. On the talents count Stephen had 65, and if had got one more corruption amulet would have joined Tina in the croc pool. As it was he had a comfortable victory.

Final Scores
Stephen 65, Pauline 41, Colin 33, Tina...crocs

We still had a bit of time left so we finished off with a game of The Bottle Imp (Flaschenteufel). This is an interesting trick taking card game. The idea is not to get stuck with the Bottle Imp because you get negative points. The value of the bottle imp drops throughout the hand making it harder to get rid of. Stephen and Pauline both play bridge so are no strangers to trick taking games and this showed in the scores. We played one hand to get the hang of it, then played a game of four hands.

Final Scores
Stephen 614, Pauline 507, Colin 338, Tina 114

Stephen enjoying his win at The Bottle Imp

Games Session - Catch Up 1

2009-07-28T10:36:00.005+02:00

So on the 20th July we had a convivial social games evening with Stephen and Pauline. We were going to play Seafarers with the 4 islands scenario. This was the first time Stephen and Pauline had played this version of Settlers. I did a quick recap of the rules with the extra bit about boats and extra points for reaching another island and away we went. The game went OK, with Stephen having his perpetual problem of no brick! The points started to mount and I managed to reach an adjacent island with my boats.

Pauline and Stephen enjoying Seafarers
The winning score was 12 points, I had a development card for 1VP tucked away and was getting close to winning. Stephen had grabbed the longest road at first, then Tina pinched it off of him, but Stephen managed to get it back and keep it for the rest of the game. I had built all my cities and only had to build one more settlement for the win.... I managed to do it and with my dev card claimed the victory.

Final Scores
Colin 13, Stephen 9, Pauline 6, Tina 5

Me...savouring victory for a change

Catch Up Post 2 - What a Coincidence!

2009-07-23T10:07:00.002+02:00

So we were walking through St. Wolfgang after doing a bit of shopping......and, I couldn't believe my eyes, across the road we saw a couple of friends from Billingshurst where we used to live. I think they were as surprised as we were and we spent a couple of hours sitting outside the local coffee shop catching up with the news. They didn't know that we now lived in St. Wolfgang and we didn't know they were on a 6 month trip around Europe in their new motorhome. We arranged for them to come to our apartment the next day so they could update their blog, on which they are keeping a record of their journey, and to go out for a meal in the evening. We took them to the Franz Josef where we had a lovely meal and another chance to catch up. It sounds as though they have been having a great time careering around Europe just doing and going where they fancy. If you would like to follow their progress or see where they have already been you can here:

http://barbersweb.traveleor.com/

They are finishing off their journey with 2 months in Germany and going back to England in October....good luck to them!!

On the gaming front, we had a nice evening yesterday....more later!!

Lazy Me.....Catch Up Post 1

2009-07-20T09:52:00.008+02:00

Well, I haven't posted for awhile so here is a potted version of what's been happening here in St. Wolfgang. Pauline came over on the 1st July, Stephen went to camp with the Army cadets for a week and would be flying out later. Fortunately they were showing Wimbledon on TV here this year so Pauline came round and we watched the men's final, a fantastic performance from both players. Roddick couldn't have come closer to winning but Federer ground out a historic 15th Grand Slam title.
Later in the week we had a games evening, playing Thurn und Taxis and Settlers: Germany version. I got trounced in both games with Paulne and Tina tying with 19pts in TuT and Pauline winning easily in Settlers with 12pts.

Air Challenge 2009
Of course the big event in July in St. Wolfgang is the Red Bull Air Challenge. On the 10th and 11th the lake is dotted with seaplanes of all sizes, from small 2 seaters to the big 3 engined Dornier seaplane. Also lots of helicoptors landed in the field, a big army helicoptor landed in the field just over the road from our house and the downdraft from the rotors filled our balcony with leaves and rubbish.....Tina was not pleased!!

The army helicoptor in the field
As usual they had all stalls there selling beer, bosna, kasespatzle and so on. They also had a Dirndl jumping competition where, girls (and guys) dress in the traditional Dirndl and jump into the lake from the top of a platform!! At 4.00pm there was an air display, with a Red Bull helicoptor performing acrobatics, a bi-plane flew round the lake with a young lady wing walking (that decidely looked hair raising, although Tina said she would like to give it a try!). Some free-falling parachutists dropped in as well. Pauline had invited us to her apartment to view from the balcony and we had a splendid view of the whole show.

One of the big seaplanes flying over the lake

More to follow!

The Weather is Unsettled......

2009-06-16T14:00:00.002+02:00

Well, June has been really funny, a few really hot days but mostly we've all sorts of weather, from thunderstorms, hail, gales but thankfully no snow!! That comes in spades in the winter. I can't really understand Twitter, I mean, I am following a few well known gaming people, but the things they write about......do you really want to share them with cyberspace? It seems to me that there must a million things to fill your day, especially if you are working, where do they find the time to write all that very personal (in some cases) trivia. Well, that's just me.
On the gaming front, still been playing Settlers on AsoBrain and not doing very well I have to say. But I did have a couple of games of Hunters and Gatherers with Tina yesterday, it's one of the games that she really likes. Our gaming friends are due back out here beginning of July so I'm looking forward to getting some more games in then. They are here for 8-9 weeks during the school holidays so we should be able to find time for some gaming. There has been a lot of chatter about Steam on BGG lately. I really hate AoS but love Railroad Tycoon, perhaps the basic game of Steam will be a bit more forgiving and I might actually enjoy it. Do I want to pay about 40 euros to find out though!!

Happy Gaming!!

Games again!!

2009-06-01T09:06:00.004+02:00

A couple of days ago we had a nice evening round our friend's apartment, a few drinks, some scrummy cakes and of course a couple of games. This time I introduced them to the Carcassonne spin-off....Hunters and Gatherers. It didn't take long to run through the rules, Pauline and Stephen had played vanilla Carcassonne before and Lynne picked it up really quickly.

Tina placing her tile in H & G
The tiles and meeples are really colourful and look very nice on the table. The golden nuggets in the forests give the game an added twist and the play goes smoothly, especially if you pick your next tile at the end of your turn so you have time to consider your options rather than wait until the start of your turn.
We soon had the table covered with river networks, forests and plains filled with animals and tigers. The scores were quite spread out, but everybody enjoyed the game.

Final Scores
Stephen 94, Lynne 78, Colin 65, Tina 57, Pauline 46

As Alhambra went down really well last time we decided to have another game. No rules to explain this time and we started straight off. The tiles seemed to come out really badly....for me anyway :) I couldn't seem to get going, I managed to get the majority in purple tiles but not a lot else. I think you have to have at least some second and third places to boost your score up to be able to be in with a chance of winning the game. Well, that didn't happen for me this time. Everyone else seemed to be doing fine though.

Lynne studying the tiles for sale and Stephen looking quite happy with the way things are going

Final Scores
Pauline 106, Stephen 97, Lynne 67, Colin 59, Tina 53

Pauline and Stephen have gone back to the UK now, but will be back in July so I'm sure we have a few more sessions then.

Happy Gaming!!

Another Game Session

2009-05-26T09:55:00.006+02:00

Our friends Stephen and Pauline were over for a week and they brought a friend with them, Lynne. A bridge partner of Stephen, I don't think she had played any euro type games before. Anyway, we decided to play Alhambra first, Tina and I had played a couple of times utilising the intrepid phantom third player, Dirk. After explaining the rules and answering a few questions about gameplay we were off.

Alhambra layout - Jubilee Edition
I found that with five players getting the perfect tile for your Alhambra was a lot more difficult, by the time it gets round to your turn again the tile has often been purchased. The game progressed smoothly enough and after the first scoring the points were fairly close together. By the time we had reached the second scoring Pauline had got a majority in the purple towers and took a healthy lead. Surprisingly nobody used their reserve much, I think Lynne and Pauline did once each.

Pauline enjoying the game and Lynne deciding what to buy
Eventually the final tile came out and the remaining tiles were distributed, Stephen capturing two with most appropriate money. I think everyone enjoyed the game and would 'get it' better with a second playing.

Final Scores
Pauline 88, Stephen 80, Colin 75, Tina 71, Lynne 68

Pauline suggested that we next play 'the game that Janet liked' ie Zooloretto. This is a light, family friendly game involving collecting animal tiles to place in your zoo. Last time we played I did really badly and came last in both games. Again the rules are fairly easy to explain and it didn't take us long to get under way. This time I did marginally better but still managed to get -4 points for animals in my barn. Stephen was doing particularly well with his breeding stock, although he did miscalculate once and had two very friendly male kangaroos!

Zooloretto in progress
Again this game works better with 4/5 players as the options on the lorries are more interesting. I don't think this game works so well with only two players.

Final Scores
Pauline 24, Tina 23, Colin 22, Stephen 21, Lynne 14

I have resisted Twitter for awhile now, but eventually succumbed and signed up. My user name is 'coljen' if anyone is desperate enough to see what my latest tweets are!!

Happy Gaming!!

Two Player Alhambra

2009-04-27T09:38:00.004+02:00

Thumbs up to Queen Games and Ludo Fact, they didn't only send me my missing cards but a complete sealed deck!! Very handy, because now I can keep one deck for two player games and one for more players. Anyway, Tina and I played 3 games of Alhambra yesterday and as we were only two players we employed the excellent services of Dirk the phantom 3rd player.

Alhambra layout - Jubilee Edition
Tina had never played Alhambra before and I played quite a few years ago, but she picked up the rules very quickly and soon managed to complain about me not shuffling the money cards as they were coming up c**p! Still, she didn't do too badly in the first game, I managed to get the win. After thoroughly shuffling the money cards, I didn't want anymore complaints :) we started our second game, I know you are dependent on what tiles appear to buy, but how you position them is also very important, Tina was getting better at positioning her tiles in this game, especially regarding the walls for more points. She played really well in only her second game and won. I was even beaten by Dirk!!

In our third game, it was very close, right down to the last tile. When the tiles were handed out to the player with most money at the end of game, Tina got a purple tile which I thought gave her a share of first place. I had 4 and with her tile she had 4 as well, but looking again at her Alhambra I noticed she had five!! That gave her a close win by two points......at least I beat Dirk to second place.

Tina victorious after the 3rd game!

Happy Gaming!!

A Day in Salzburg

2009-04-21T14:40:00.005+02:00

Last Wednesday (15th) we had a day in Salzburg, my wife's sister was on holiday so she came with us. It was a lovely sunny day and the bus ride took about 90mins. Well, I can't go to Salzburg without having just a peep in the game shops there. The first, by the Mirabell Platz is really good, it has two doors, one for adults and a small one for kinder, my wife insists in going in by the kinder door!! Anyway, I saw the Jubilee Edition of Alhambra there and I had been meaning to get get this for some time, grabbed it. Walking back towards the old city you have to cross the river Salz and just over the bridge is another fairly good game shop. Browsing around in there I saw the Settlers of Catan Geographies: Germany. I had read good reports of this and seen Tom Vasel's video review (although the camera work gave me a headache), so I purchased this one as well. Our day was great, nice lunch, my wife and her sister did some serious shopping, finished off by coffee at one of the many cafes, ours was just by Mozart's birth house.

The board and game pieces are superb
I must say that the production values of the 'Germany' edition are extremely high. If you like Settlers this is a great edition to add to your collection. I haven't actually played it yet but it sounds great. The monuments and cathedral pieces clip into a special moulded box insert which keeps them securely.

Close up of the high quality playing pieces

I wasn't so lucky when I opened Alhambra, the Jubilee edition has some special playing pieces which is nice, but I was short one scoring card and 9 money cards. Doh!! Very frustrating when that happens, it hasn't happened to me before though so I guess I've been lucky. Anyway, a quick email to Queen Games on the Thursday elicited a reply yesterday with an apology for the inconvenience caused and a promise to mail the missing cards which I thought was pretty quick. I played Alhambra many years ago with my game group in the UK and I thought it would be ideal for the players I play with now in Austria.

A couple of game sessions

2009-04-19T13:18:00.005+02:00

I know this is a bit late but we had my wife's sister staying with us for a couple of weeks so this is the first time I have had to write this up. Pauline and Stephen were also over here so we had a couple of game sessions. In the first one we played Zooloretto, my wife is not keen on this, but we have only played as a two player so I was hoping it would work better with five. Janet (wife's sister) is not really a gamer, we've played Army of Frogs a couple of times and that was it. Anyway, everyone picked up the rules fairly easily and they seemed to like it. I couldn't get going really and played terrible.

Janet and Pauline study the tiles
We played two games and had a good time. I didn't fair well in either game coming last in the second.

Final Scores
Game one - Pauline 23, Stephen 21, Colin 16, Janet 15, Tina 13

Game two - Tina 23, Pauline 22, Stephen 20, Janet 19, Colin 11

A few days later we adjourned to Stephen and Pauline's flat and played basic TtR. Again we played a couple of games, Janet was the only one who hadn't played before. In the first game the bonus card was for longest train route, but in the second we changed it for most routes completed, it's surprising how different you play when it's most routes.

Ticket to Ride
Tina and Janet played together on this one and couldn't seem to get the routes they needed so ended up getting a pretty big minus score on the second game.

Final Scores
Game one - Stephen 136 (didn't record the other scores)
Game two - Pauline 141, Stephen 107, Colin 91 Janet/Tina 36

Settlers.....online!!

2009-03-20T10:55:00.006+01:00

Well, there hasn't been much happening on the gaming front over the last few weeks. Except I have been playing a lot of Settlers online. I may have mentioned before that I play, but I have just been looking at my stats and I didn't realise quite how much. Anyway I thought I would write a bit about the site and tell you of my experience of it.

http://games.asobrain.com/index

Sign up is free and they have a few games other than Settlers, by the way Settlers is called Xplorers here. Toulouse, which a Carcassonne clone, and two other games, Match and Roadblock. I haven't played any of these so I don't know what they are like.

You can play basic Settlers or Cities and Knights, ranked or unranked. If you play ranked your games get recorded and you get...well a ranking! You can opt to play against real players or bots to get a feel for the interface. I play basic almost all the time. One of the good things is that there are multiple maps to play on, not only the default island but many others created by the players themselves. My favourites at the moment are Fifth Element, Discovery and River Runs Through It.

Start of a basic game of Explorers - Discovery Map
As you can see from the pic, there are some white hexes, you don't know what resource these will produce until you build a road to them. Also the multicoloured hexes produce any resource, you choose when the number is rolled. This is the start of the game, the players have just placed there starting settlements. I am white (Coljen), I wanted to go on the multi at the bottom left but the other players tied that up!

Middle phase, I am up to 9 points - Discovery Map
You can play games to 10, 13 or 15 points, this is a 13 point game and is well developed now. I have got 2 cities on the multi and got a wood port as well. The other two players kept dropping the robber on the multi though.

Final score, I am victorious! - Discovery Map
As you can see there are still some undiscovered hexes and another multi was discovered middle left.

Here are a few stats of my play:
Dec - Played 20 Won 3 2nd 6 3rd 11
Jan - Played 3 Won 0 2nd 3 3rd 0
Feb - Played 66 Won 21 2nd 24 3rd 21
Mar - Played 63 Won 22 2nd 24 3rd 18

Maps
Fifth Element Games 51 Won 15 Lost 35
River Runs Games 35 Won 7 Lost 28
Forest Escape Games 29 Won 8 Lost 21
Discovery Games 21 Won 9 Lost 12
Christmas Games 14 Won 4 Lost 10
March of the Penguins Games 1 Won 1 Lost 0
Default Expansion Games 1 Won 1 Lost 0
Golden Circle Games 1 Won 1 Lost 0
Dutch Empire Games 1 Won 0 Lost 1
Default Island Games 1 Won 0 Lost 1

I didn't realise that I played that much!!! Anyway it's good fun and most of the players are friendly. I have met one or two that have a real problem if you drop the robber on them.....so I do it even more :) Give it a try you might like it.

Happy Gaming!!!

It's Finally Stopped Snowing

2009-02-26T11:25:00.006+01:00

The Lions Head
It has been snowing for 16 days or so here, and today it finally stopped. I don't think for good as the sky looks full of it. Anyway here are some snowy pictures for you all.

Walking Round the Lake
Sunshine in Winter
The Schafberg Railway!
In the first picture you can see the very distinctive outline of the Sparber, or Lions Head mountain, it features a lot in my pictures because it dominates the lake and is so picturesque. In the next we have been on one of our walks, the road follows a route above the lake, then turns and comes back along the lakeside. A lovely walk and only takes about an hour. This walk offers wonderful views of the lake and mountains and if you take the camera you are guaranteed some beautiful pictures.
The next picture was taken on the same walk. On the opposite side of the lake to the Sparber, ie the side we live on, the Schafberg mountain rises to 1,783 metres and in the last picture you can see, or rather you can't, the cog railway track that winds its way up the mountain. It only runs in the summer months because as you can see the track is deep under the snow.

On the gaming front there hasn't been much happening, I have played some Settlers online and that's it really. Been to busy walking and taking pictures!!

Happy Gaming!!!

Second Games Session in 2 days .....

2009-02-18T10:04:00.005+01:00

Today Pauline and Stephen found there way through the snow blizzard to come and play some more games....with the occasional glass of wine! Talking of snow it hasn't stopped today, snowing constantly and very heavy at times. The snow plough is in constant use, driving past our house at regular intervals.

I thought Settlers would be a good choice for this evening, a classic euro and a decent gateway game. After explaining the rules and dishing out a crib sheet for the improvement cards (my copy is in German), off we went. Of course placing your initial towns is crucial to get off to a good start and Stephen (blue) thought he could have done better when he realised that he had no source for bricks. Everyone else seemed OK and the game developed smoothly. After we had played for a bit Stephen's initial disappoint diminished somewhat and he had a nice little development going. Unfortunately Tina (Red) got really blocked in with little room to build. I thought that I (White) wasn't in a very good position but it turned out not too bad. Pauline (Orange) managed to build a nice road right round the edge of the board and claim the longest road tile.

I was also running out places to build and as I had placed my four cities started to buy improvement cards to try and get some VPs that way. I did get caught with the robber rather badly having 17 cards in hand! What made it worse is that I actually rolled the 7. I did get the VP cards that I wanted and having 9 points on the board I played the 3 VP cards I had to claim the victory (we played to 12 points).
I think everyone enjoyed the game, Stephen said he didn't enjoy it quite as much as TtR, but I think next time everyone will get a better start as they have more knowledge of what's going on.

Final Score
Colin 12, Pauline 9, Stephen 9, Tina 4

Next up was Carcassonne, Pauline and Stephen have the Mayflower edition which they haven't played so I thought we could play the vanilla version first so they could get a feel for the gameplay. After a short rules explanation we jumped in. I couldn't seem to get going at all in this game, just didn't seem to get the tiles (that's my excuse anyway!!) The others were all scoring decent points and getting right away from me. I didn't actually score anything until about halfway through.

I think this was another game everyone liked, again another classic gateway game.

Final Score
Stephen 77, Pauline 66, Colin 59, Tina 45

Here is a picture from our balcony so you can see the snow.

That was taken over a week ago, it's much thicker now!!

Happy Gaming!!

First Games Session for a while

2009-02-16T13:11:00.006+01:00

Ticket to Ride - Marklin
We have had plenty of snow here in St. Wolfgang, almost a foot this past week. And quite cold as well, -4C or thereabouts. We have been settling back into a routine after being in England so much over the last 3 months and looking forward to our next gaming session. Pauline and Stephen are over for a week during half term so we hope to get a couple of sessions in. Our first was yesterday, Pauline and Stephen had a copy of TtR Marklin which they had played a few times over the Christmas period so that was first on the table. I have played it once a few years ago and Tina had not played at all. It's most involved of the the TtR series involving passengers and another train card for 4+ routes. The bonus card is not for longest continuous track but for most completed route cards. Stephen started off early collecting passenger cards and not laying too much track. I concentrated on completed the routes I had initially drawn and then getting more route cards, taking 1 long and 3 short most times.
In the end I had 11 completed route cards for 83 points plus the bonus and surprisingly came out the winner.

Final Score
Colin 182, Pauline 167, Stephen 144, Tina 130

Enjoying TtR Marklin
The next game we played was Metro. This Dirk Henn game by Queen Games was published in 1997. Basically each player is trying to construct rail routes and trying to make them as long as possible while restricting their opponents as short as possible. Each tile in the route is worth 1 point, tiles can be counted more than once if the route doubles back upon itself. Again I had played this several years ago but everyone else had not played. We played the first game, and it was a bit of a learning curve.

The board for Metro
We decided to play a second game as everybody had a bit more idea what to do. I don't think we liked this game too much, you have to restrict your opponents routes to low scores as much as trying to score as much as possible yourself....ie stuffage. It's a nice little game but probably not our first choice for table time.

Final Scores
Game 1 - Colin 62, Pauline 54, Stephen 52, Tina 45
Game 2 - Stephen 57, Colin 50, Tina 48, Pauline 43

We are having another session tomorrow, report to follow.

Happy Gaming!!

Post Christmas Blues

2009-01-16T09:23:00.004+01:00

Winter in St Wolfgang
First post for a month, we have been in England over Christmas which was nice. We came back on the 11th of January but then we had a bereavement in the family so we are going back on the 17th. Not a great start to 2009!! We had a little snow and I took a walk with my new camera, a Canon Ixus 80, to capture some snowy winter scenes.

6 Foot Icicles!!
On the game front not much is happening at the moment, had a few games of Army of Frogs with my sister-in-law over the festive period but that is all really. Playing a bit of Guild Wars and Settlers on the computer. When we get back this time we can start to settle down for this year and sort ourselves out. Until then.....

Happy Gaming!!

Salzburg Christmas Market and Games

2008-12-12T13:09:00.004+01:00

We went to Salzburg last Tuesday to see the Christmas Market. The atmosphere was great, lovely Christmas Trees with lights everywhere the horses and carriages adding to the festive scene. Hot Gluhwein, Grostl and lots of other goodies to eat and drink. As the light faded the lights twinkled brighter and it was so nice. We got a lot presents for family and some chocolate for us (yum!).

Of course there are game shops in Salzburg so I couldn't go without just having a little look. Well, I picked up Kreta, a game I have played online quite a lot, for 10 euro. Also Thurn & Taxis, Tina likes TTR so I'm hoping she will like this one as well. I had read about Toledo in the Essen posts so snapped that up as well. Tina also saw Pingu Party, a small cardgame from Knizia, the penguins looked cute so picked that on spec. That's all my Christmas game shopping I think :)

Merry Christmas and Happy Gaming!!

Advent around the Wolfgangsee

2008-12-06T09:17:00.009+01:00

Christmas shop in St Wolfgang
At this time of year St Wolfgang and the surrounding villages are transformed into a paradise for all lovers of Christmas. Each village has a Christmas market which is alive with people drinking gluhwein, eating grostl and generally taking in the wonderful atmosphere.

Musical Nutcrackers
The ferry boats are running and you can buy a round ticket to visit all the markets, at Strobl, St Gilgan as well as St Wolfgang. It takes about 35 minutes to St Gilgen

Stall at St Gilgen
Open fires in St Gilgen take off the chill

After an hours boat ride to the other end of the lake we arrive in Strobl.

Stalls in Strobl
In Strobl there are many wood carved figures with a lovely crypt scene in the music pavilion.

Hot gluhwein and chilly weather
Nativity scene in the music pavilion
Well, I hope that gives you a taste of Advent here in the Salzkammergut, wish you could all be here!

Happy Christmas!!!

Back from England

2008-12-02T09:38:00.003+01:00

Been a while since my last post, had some family things to do so have been away a bit longer than we thought. When we got back there was snow laying around so and it was a bit colder than Gatwick when we left. While we was in England we went in a Lakeland store to buy some Christmas presents and I saw they were selling Army of Frogs....
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31449
....great I thought, I already have hive so that would a good addition to my collection. We played it a couple of times and it's a nice little game with a bit to it. Nice for non-gamers too, ie my sister-in-law. Now we are back in St. Wolfgang and the Advent Markets are in full swing, every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The village is transformed with open fires, Christmas trees and candles, little huts everywhere selling gluwein, grostl, krapfen, handicrafts, wine, cheese and loads of other stuff. I will try and get some pics before we go back to the UK.......Oh! yes we are flying back on the 17th December to spend Christmas back in the UK. I will try and get a few posts in before that.

Happy Gaming!!!

A Successful Games Evening

2008-10-31T15:53:00.002+01:00

Well, I think that our first gaming session with Pauline and Stephen was a great success. We may have two more converts to the world of Eurogaming. Yesterday they made a trip into Salzburg and visited the gaming stores I had told them about and bought a bunch of games including, Ticket to Ride, Ticket to Ride Marklin and Carcassonne A New World. We have another session planned at their place next monday, with Ticket to Ride Europe and Settlers of Catan on table. Looking forward to it!!!

Happy Gaming!!

Ticket To Ride gains 2 more converts

2008-10-29T10:33:00.004+01:00

Our friends Stephen and Pauline came round this evening for a few drinks, nibbles and of course a game or two. They had never played anything like a eurogame so out came TtR, the definitive gateway game. I showed them a few of the games I thought might be suitable for a first time play, Thebes, Settlers of Catan and of course TtR. We decided to give TtR a try and they liked it I think right from the start, the rules are easy to get to grips with so you can start playing pretty much straight from the off. I explained that in the later stages of the game it might be good to take more tickets because you might already have the connection or part at least. Stephen went a different way, after connecting his initial routes he went for all the 6 train routes, scoring a hefty 15 points a pop.
In the end it was pretty close, Stephen closed out his last 6er to leave him with 1 train and me one route short of making two tickets and a large minus. Pauline had the longest route to get the extra 10 points, so the final scores ended like this.

Final Score
Stephen 89, Colin 83, Pauline 81, Tina 80

After TtR I brought out Reiner Knizia's Spiel des Jahres winner, Keltis. This didn't go down so well, quote from Stephen 'tame'. Plus the fact that I forget a crucial rule that the game ends when the last card is taken from the face down deck....ah well, you can't win em all.

Final Score
Pauline 37, Tina 20, Stephen 18, Colin 14

As the time was getting on now I thought we could finish the evening with a little card filler, Geschenkt (No Thanks!). Rules are easy, plays quick and has a bit to it. I think they quite liked this as well, Pauline was definitely on a roll now, just look at the scores for this one.

Final Scores
Game 1 - Pauline 51, Tina 55, Colin 61, Stephen 74

Game 2 - Pauline 59, Stephen 66, Tina 84, Colin 92

Game 3 - Pauline 49, Tina 65, Colin 66, Stephen 99

Game 3 - Tina 36, Pauline 55, Colin 62, Stephen 87

All in all a good evening I think, well, Pauline and Stephen wanted to know where they could buy TtR and took down some names of other likely games. Hopefully 2 more converts the great world of Eurogaming. Can't wait to play again.

Happy Gaming!!

Thebes and Things

2008-10-26T11:54:00.004+01:00

So after reading the rules and having a solo run through I finally persuaded the wife to give it a go. I had been reading on BGG how it played 2 player and quite a few couples found it an entertaining game. No such luck, Tina found it quite boring and said what have I got to do with all these cards, well that was her first impression. I know most of the time she only plays to humour me as I have no other opponents at hand. It got better as the game played out, she liked the drawing of artifacts out of the bag, and she laughed a lot when I drew a load of rubble!!
In the end she said it was OK, and she even beat me by 2 points. I think she liked Settlers better, I know Settlers is an old game but it's easy to get into and if she likes it...it's fine with me, I'll play.
Well, Essen is almost over for another year, I didn't go, but I have been reading lots of reports, lists of what people bought and so on. Kulkmann's report is always a great read (and he has prizes), of course loads of stuff on BGG. I also found 'Obsessing about Everything' by Melissa, a good read but I don't understand all this OMG stuff, I expect it's an American thing.

Here is another misty autumn picture of St. Wolfgang for you. Our English friends are back over here for 12 days and we have actually arranged a gaming evening for next Tuesday. They seem quite interested in my game collection, but I don't think they have played anything resembling a Euro game before. I think I have a gateway game or 2 that I can tempt them with....here's hoping anyway!!

Happy Gaming!!

A Day in Salzburg

2008-10-15T12:40:00.006+02:00

Monday last we went to Salzburg for the afternoon, had some shopping to do and while we was there I thought I might as well just pop into a couple of game shops. The weather was fine as it has been for the past week and the trees looked wonderful.

There is a shop run by an english chap called, amazingly, the English Shop. They stock most things that you can't get in Austria that you miss from home. We paid him a visit and bought a few things that we needed. Then we sat in the square and had frankfurter hotdogs and beer, very nice indeed. We looked in the game stores and noted that they are already getting the Christmas toys and games out. Oh oh....I spotted Thebes, a game I had been reading about on BGG and that appealed to me quite a lot. I love games with ancient themes, Roman, Greek or Egyptian, 'you said you weren't getting any more games before christmas', says the wife. Ah...well, this is game I really would like. Oh, go on then, but this is the last one!!

So, I have been reading more about the game on the geek, about the luck and so on. I have tried a sort of run through of the rules and can't wait to play. Tina likes Egyptian stuff too, so she maybe might like to try this soon.

Happy Gaming!!
PS if you want to see more pics Austria and Salzburg go here:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/Colin.Jen/Autumn2008#

More pics of Autumn in St. Wolfgang

2008-10-12T16:35:00.002+02:00

Here are a few more pictures of the lovely scenery around where we live in St. Wolfgang. The weather has been lovely and sunny for 4 or 5 days now, almost too hot, we are going to Salzburg tomorrow so I hope it continues for at least another day.

Autumn in St. Wolfgang

2008-10-09T09:12:00.000+02:00

The weather here is fantastic at the moment, bright sunshine with folks in swimsuits sunbathing by the lakeside. The autumn colours make the scenery pretty spectacular as well. We went for a walk yesterday and I took the camera to record some of the autumn scenes, the cows have been brought down from the mountains so they add to the overall picture and make the scene typically 'Austrian'.
I have also been looking at the Essen threads on BGG and going a very pretty shade of green. Some of the offerings this year look pretty interesting, but I keep thinking of all the money I will be saving by not going. Well.....I keep thinking it, but it doesn't seem to be working!! I know Richard, Garry, Steve and Jo are going and hopefully I will get a report on how it was from one of them. Ah well.....I'll go and look at the lovely scenery one more time.

Happy Gaming!!

3 Games of Settlers

2008-10-03T17:38:00.002+02:00

Well, 2 posts in two days. We actually sat down and played 3 games of basic Settlers straight off the bat today. Tina picked it up really quickly and quite enjoyed it I think. The score was 2-1 to me, but this game may actually make the table again in the future. When our English friends come over in October I think this could be the game to try them on.
The weather here is pretty depressing at the moment, rainy and cold, still at least there's no snow yet. This weekend they are bringing the cows down off the mountain and make quite a big thing of it. Bands and beer I think, and the cows have a pretty good time too!!

First Post for Ages

2008-10-02T10:14:00.003+02:00

Well.....I never realised that it was 2 months since my last post. Tut! Tut! must do better. Anyway, what have I been up to, well, we went back to the UK for a couple of weeks in September to visit family which was nice. Tina's mum is 92 and not in the best of health and my mum is 84 so it was nice to see them. We haven't been on any more trips to shows or anything and I am getting really twitchy now as it comes up to Essen 2008 and I am not going. I know all my gaming buddies from the UK plan to make the trip and I am really jealous.
I have been playing mostly online, loads of Settlers and Knights and Cities some Hacienda and Year of the Dragon. I had bought the Settlers card game ages ago in the forelorn hope that the wife would play it, but no luck, anyway I have just bought the expansion sets so that's more games that will not get played lol. I seem to be getting into a Settlers mood just lately, I must admit that when I first played it way back when I first started boardgaming, I was not all all impressed, I just didn't get the dice rolls and my first placement of towns was useless. Which of course is half the battle when trying to get a good start. So when we were in Bad Ischl shopping last Tuesday I thought I would just have a look in the one game shop they have to see what was about and I came out with.....you guessed it, Settlers of Catan, the boardgame. I definitely hope the wife will play as I have found some interesting looking 2 players rules on BGG. Well pigs might fly I suppose, but you never know.
On a more opimistic front, we have made friends with an English couple that have bought a flat out here. Both teachers, one retired, one not, they come out about 10 times a year and when they saw my boardgame collection expressed an interest in them. They both like boardgames they said, but I think that maybe not german boardgames as they didn't recognise anything in my collection. So, a chance to introduce another couple of people into the wonderful world of Eurogaming. Next time they come over (October) we have scheduled a games evening....what to play, what to play. Should it be Ticket to Ride, Settlers, Pandemic.....I don't know, still it looks promising, so fingers crossed.

That's all for now...happy gaming!!

Opera in Morbisch

2008-08-05T10:26:00.001+02:00

On August 1 and 2nd we had a trip to Morbisch, which is Burgenland in the east of Austria. We were going to see a performance of the operetta by Ralph Benatzky 'The White Horse Inn', set in St. Wolfgang in the Salzgammergut, which is of course where we are living now. The stage is built over a lake, the biggest lake in Austria in fact, and is open air. We travelled by coach and as it rained in the afternoon we were hoping it would clear up by the evening. It did and the performance was very good, we had terrific seats and at the end there was a fantastic firework display. They are very big on fireworks in Austria, they seem to have fireworks at the drop of a hat.
The next day we stopped at a very old town called Rust, it is a big wine area and there were a lot little 'Vinotec's', where you could sample the local wines and purchase them too. Another feature of Rust is the White Storks, because of the proximity of the lake and abundant feeding grounds they build their nests on the chimneys and the town is awash with Storks roosting or on their to or from the feeding grounds. At the end of August after producing their young they fly off back to Africa.

White Storks roosting in Rust, Burgenland

I have been looking a bit at the Print and Play games on the Geek, first I printed out and mounted Pocket Civ. For my next game I tried Sword and Sail, which is found here: http://www.biglittlegames.com/
A simple design concept, really nice graphics and it only took me a couple of hours to print, mount and play my first game. There seem to loads of these self produced games around, many of them on BGG. Some are obviously better than others, but some are well worth investigating, Sword and Sail is one I think.

Sword and Sail from BigLittle Games

Opera and Pandemic

2008-07-23T10:26:00.002+02:00

The open air arena at St. Margarethen

First post for a while, the weather here has been alternately very hot, thunderstorms and like today wet and chilly. Still, I'd rather be here than working in dirty old London. On the 13th of this month we went on a 2 day trip to see 'La Traviata' at St Margarethen, which is in the east of Austria not far from Vienna. It's performed in an open air arena that was a quarry, and believe me it was pretty spectacular! We kept our fingers crossed for the weather because it had been raining earlier in the day, but our luck held. The set was amazing and the actual performance was superb and at the end there was a fantastic fireworks display.

On the boardgame front I am still playing every day on the play by web sites. At the moment I have games of In The Year of the Dragon, Tikal, Amun-Re, Kreta and In the Shadow of the Emperor on the go. A week or so ago I played 3 games of Pandemic with the wife, lost all of them. Two were on normal and one was at heroic. The last game was pretty close only one cure to get but the outbreaks got us.

In a couple of weeks we are going to another open air concert, this one is in Morbisch, which actually isn't far from St. Margarethen. This one is in the middle of a lake and it is a performance of Ralf Benatzky's 'White Horse Inn' operetta. I think we are stopping at a wine tasting on the way back so that is something to look forward to. Report to follow about that.

The group that I used to play with in Sussex, UK have got Agricola fever, I think they have played it 10 times in 2 weeks.....some going.

Happy Gaming!!!

My First Games of Pandemic

2008-06-20T09:38:00.001+02:00

Well, my copy of Pandemic arrived this week I couldn't wait to open it and save the world. My friend Jo back in the UK had recommended it and he was right it's pretty cool. I have read a few comments that the cubes and dobbers are a bit big, well they are a tad on the large side but we had no problem with them. I had already downloaded the rules from Z-Man and had read them through and the wife decided to help out and rid the world of those nasty diseases.
You can play this game in easy, normal and heroic modes, for our first game we chose easy, just to get into the gameplay. The wife drew the researcher and I was the scientist, the ability to cure a disease with only four cards is pretty powerful. We were both feeling our way into the game when....bam!! The outbreaks just kept coming and we lost pretty decisively.

For our second game I had the scientist again and the wife had the operations expert. Now I thought this may be a pretty good combination....but we shall see. We started off pretty good and had cured the black disease before too long. But once again the game surprised us and the outbreaks came thick and fast and we ran out of cubes for the loss. We both really enjoyed the experience and will play again soon I am sure. Well, I couldn't wait and the next day I thought I would try a couple of solo plays. I played on easy again and took on two roles. First game I had the operations expert and the scientist, I am drawing these random by the way. I didn't do that bad, I had cured 3 diseases and only needed the red cure when I ran out of cards....doh!!

For my second solo play I drew the researcher and the operations expert. Well the operations expert definitely makes getting around a lot easier, and the researcher can use those research stations to hook up with the OE and pass cards. That made getting the required 5 cards of the same colour a lot easier. It was still pretty tight though and I discovered the last cure with only four cards left in the draw deck. Hay!! a win, but only on easy, I'm sure it will be a lot more challenging on normal and heroic. Can't wait to get the wife to play again and try for a co-operative win. If you get the chance and are not totally opposed to co-operation games this is definitely a winner.

Happy Gaming!!

The Scientist poised to wrap-around the board and emerge in Sydney

Euro 2008 and New Games

2008-06-18T12:42:00.003+02:00

Well we are just about finished with the group games in Euro 2008, here in Austria there is great interest even though Austria has just gone out of the competition. I went the Salzburg for the day last week and there was a great atmosphere there. Salzburg is one of the host cities and they have a Fanzone in one of the squares by the Cathedral (see pic), with massive screens so you can watch the games. Also loads of stands selling beer and sausage and of course plenty of football stuff as well. The place was packed with fans from all countries, especially Swedish and Greek. Of course I had to visit the game shops while we was there, I picked up the new Renier Knizia game 'Keltis', this is a multiplayer version of Lost Cities. Well, I don't think I'll ever play it multiplayer here, but the wife and I both like Lost Cities so I thought this would add a few twists and be worth getting. We played 4 games off the bat and both thought it was OK. Like the idea that you can lay your cards in ascending or descending order, gives you some more options with the cards you have in hand.

A gaming buddy of mine in the UK had recommended 'Pandemic' I checked it out on BGG and thought it sounded pretty cool. The cooperation gameplay would be good I thought for just the 2 of us. Well I couldn't find it in any european shops, bricks or online so I ordered it from Shire Games in England. Took a week to arrive but the wait was worth it, we played a couple of games yesterday on easy and lost both. Once to outbreaks and once we ran out of cubes. Looking forward to playing again, which is always a good sign. Still playing on the web at MabiWeb and michaelschacht.net, and enjoying all the games there, especially Kreta.

Happy Gaming!!!

Lotus Cars and Play By Web

2008-05-30T09:52:00.002+02:00

Well the weather here is really hot, 32C, and has been for a few days. Lots of tourists now although my Austrian friends tell me it gets worst in July and August. Last week there was a Lotus Car rally in the town centre. Lots of very flashy sports cars that I could never afford or would want to.

Lotus Sports Cars looking very....well, sporty

There is a hotel in St. Wolfgang called the Scaleria which has won the award for the best Event Hotel in all of Austria. They are always having conventions and promotions there and to celebrate their award they had a Red Bull bi-plane doing acrobatics over the lake.

Having a severe dearth of live opponents here I have been looking at other ways to scratch the boardgame itch and have found a couple of sites where I can play boardgames by web. These are Michael Schacht's site at

http://www.michaelschacht.net/pbm/index.php

and MabiWeb which is at

http://www.mabiweb.com/index.php

At Michael's site there are two games, Patrician and Hansa, and at MabiWeb there is a bigger selection, including Samurai, Shadow of the Emperor, Mykerinos and Kreta.
I have enjoyed playing there, even had a game with Michael Schacht himself and he was very friendly and helpful. If you fancy going there for a game look me up, my user name is 'dogger' on the Michael Schacht site and 'coljen' on MabiWeb, I would be happy to play you. I know the biggest online boardgame playing site is BSW, but the interface is a bit daunting and the games are realtime and I don't think the wife will relish me sitting in front of the computer playing boardgames all day. I think I will take the plunge for the odd game, I really like Notre Dame and they have that on there. Anyway I hope you are all getting plenty of gaming in.

Happy Gaming!!

Picnic by the Lake

2008-05-19T09:55:00.002+02:00

Last week the weather here was lovely, sunshine all the way. The place is starting to wake up after the winter season, the flowers are all in bloom in the meadows, the ferry boats have started cruising around the lake and the little train that wends its way up the Schafberg mountain is chuffing once again.
Last wednesday it was a lovely day so we decided to take a picnic across to the nature reserve on the other side of the lake. Boarding the ferry boat which is just a few minutes walk from our apartment it takes only 15 minutes to get to the other side. Then a lovely 30 minute walk through meadows filled with spring flowers brings us to the nature reserve. This is an area with picnic tables, pedalos on the lake, swimming and water skiing all available. We spent a lovely hour or so having a leisurely lunch, with local cheese and fruit and of course some cold beer!
Then another pleasant hours stroll along to the end of the lake and the village of Strobl. This is a lazy village with lovely restaurants and bars and of course all the watersports available here as well. We caught the ferry back to St. Wolfgang to round off our day....very pleasant indeed. No boardgames in sight for the day but there's always another one!!!

Happy Gaming!!

Looking back to St. Wolfgang from the Nature Reserve

A day trip to Salzburg

2008-04-26T13:04:00.001+02:00

Last thursday (24th) we went to Salzburg on the post bus, a pleasant journey taking about 90 minutes. The day was fairly hot which was significant because the main reason for going was to visit one of Austria's main department stores and that was situated on the outskirts and we planned to walk. I looked at a map and thought it would take about 20 minutes, in fact it took 40 minutes. When we arrived the first thing we did was look for the English Shop, we had found this on the net a few days ago and wanted to buy a few essential things you can't buy in Austria. For instance, Branston pickle, Daddy's Sauce, Marmite and Custard powder.
Well, we found it alright, it is run by Chris and Simon Clee, and it is a veritable Alladin's Cave of goodies. Chris was in attendence and was very helpful and we had a great chat. As we had a specific purpose for visiting Salzburg there was no time to visit the game stores this time, in the picture you see me in one of the best, obviously taken at another time. We finally made it to Leiner's (the dept. store), luckily they had a nice restaurant and cold beer waiting. After a nice lunch we spent a very profitable (but expensive) couple of hours browsing around. They have practically everything you need for the home on four floors. When we returned to the centre of Salzburg to get the bus home we took a tram ride, a bit easier on the feet!!

Eating out at College

2008-04-18T13:39:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we were invited to have lunch at a Cooking School on the lake. The name of the school is Ferienhort and the building is very impressive. It was a navy school before the 2nd World War, then it became a college for cookery. Every so often the students cook a wonderful 4 course meal and if you are lucky you can go and be served by the students. It is good training for them and they performed really well for us. The food was very good and it included four courses and wine and beer included for 10 euros. Definitely needed to go for a long walk afterwards to get those calories off.

Summer is Coming

2008-04-09T10:06:00.000+02:00

First post for a while. Haven't played a lot of games lately, mainly because we have been back to England for a couple of weeks to visit family and such. Still have things to do in the flat, looking for some bits of furniture to store stuff that we still have in cardboard boxes in the spare bedroom. Still, the weather is looking up and the little steam train that wends its way up to the Schafberg mountain has woken up from its long winter sleep has made several trips up ferrying supplies to the restaurant that is at the top, ready for the summer season. We can see the train as it goes past from our balcony, lovely to see steam again rather than all these anonymous diesel and electric trains we have in the UK.

Snow and Games

2008-03-13T09:43:00.001+01:00

This is a scene not far from us, very picturesque, but everywhere you look it's like that. The snow has all gone now, but apparently there is more on the way. Had another game of Pillars of the Earth the other day, followed it up with a game of Mystery Rummy: Jekyl and Hyde. Tina likes that one and wiped the floor with me :)

We seem to be settling into a some sort of routine here, the pace of life is very different compared to the UK. I suppose it makes a difference that I don't have to get up for work at 6.00am every morning! We are coming back to the UK at the end of March for a couple of weeks to see family so I probably won't post during that time.

Anyway.....Happy Gaming!!

We finally get registered as residents of Austria

2008-03-05T15:07:00.001+01:00

Well we went to Gmunden yesterday, bus to Bad Ischl then train to Gmunden then a little tram to take you to the centre by the lake. We had to go the district headquarters of the authorities to register for residency. This took about 2 hours, but we finally got the piece of paper that said that we can stay in Austria. Then we had a nice lunch in a restaurant overlooking the lake....lovely.
Today is a bit different, this was the view from the balcony this morning. It had been snowing all night and it is about 6 inches thick, good job we decided to go yesterday!

Some more gameplay and a trip to Bad Ischl

2008-03-01T09:59:00.003+01:00

As you can see from the picture we got to play Arkadia. I had read the rules beforehand and Tina picked it up pretty quickly. Basically you use the cards in your hand to build buildings or place your workers on the board during your go. When a building is completely surrounded with other buildings or workers the player who completed the move takes the coloured seal that is on the building then any player with a worker adjacent gets a seal as well. You then have to build a section of the castle. Each castle section has a coloured seal on it so depending on which piece you build you can influence the value of the seals. Each player has 4 banners which you can use at the end of your turn. If you play one of these you get 2 more workers from the pool and can cash any seals you have won for gold. Most gold at the end wins
I like the game, plays well, doesn't take too long, has nice components (apart from the banners and player screens which are a bit flimsy) and has some good strategy to it.

Then on Friday we went to Bad Ischl, takes 40 minutes on the bus. The main reason for the trip is that we have to register for residency within 3 months of arriving in Austria, and to do that you have to go to Gmunden. Well, we wanted to do the trip on our own this time so had to check out the train times from Bad Ischl. Looks pretty straightforward really so we are going next Dienstag, sorry Tuesday. You have to take all the relevant documents with you, health insurance, passport, tenancy agreement and so on and hope that they say yes!!

Keep you posted.....happy gaming!

A Trip to Salzburg and some more games

2008-03-01T09:15:00.002+01:00

Here is the picture of Gmunden, the Schloss out on lake Traunsee can only be reached from the little causeway you can see in the picture, and the formation in the mountains right in the centre of the pic is known as the sleeping greek!

On tuesday last week we went to Salzburg on the local bus for the day. It was a really nice sunny day and the bus trip takes about 90 mins. Salzburg is a wonderful city, especially if you like Mozart, there are numerous sights to see that are linked to the famous composer. The house he was born in, which has a wonderful multi-media exhibition. We have seen it a lot of times so this time we didn't bother, as we have never been to Salzburg at this time of year before it was interesting to see it without the major bustle of tourists. There was a few of course, but it was very different.

There are also 3 good game shops in Salzburg (not the main reason for the visit I hasten to add), but I always like to have a look. Tina liked the look of 'Die Baumeister Von Arkadia', I hadn't read anything about it, but if Tina liked the look of it she might want to play it so I bought that for 30 euros (about £21). We also picked up Hive, for 18 euros.

We were pretty tired after all the walking so decided to catch the 3.15pm bus back, boy was it crowded, and we had to stand for a while. But all in all a very good day.

A Trip to Gmunden and lucky bargain too!

2008-02-22T10:36:00.004+01:00

As I reported in my last post we went to Gmunden on Monday. We had a couple of hours to look round the town. It's on the lake Traunsee, very picturesque with mountains and snow on them all around. We had some lunch first then we had a look at the local church, all the churches in Austria are very beautiful. I did take some photographs and I will try to post one when I have the time. We had a look around the local shops and one, called Libro is like WH Smith. Books, stationery, CDs a few computer bits.....and some games. In Smiths that would be trivial pursuit and UNO, here it is Settlers of Catan and Zooloretto and such. And as luck would have it all the games were 30% off! I showed great self control and only bought Zooloretto for 16 Euros, just under £12.

I have now downloaded all the expansions from Michael Schacht's site...just got to get Tina to give me a game now....

Anyway, that's all for now
Happy Gaming!!

Boardgames at St Wolfgang

2008-02-17T16:02:00.001+01:00

Well, we have played a few games now, havn't had a chance to look for any local players yet but we have played a couple of games together. Last weekend we played Fagins Gang and The Pillars of the Earth, Tina won both. And yesterday we played 2 games of Ticket to Ride Switzerland which I won. Today we got the games out again and started off with Carcassonne - Die Burg, which Tina wasn't that keen on, I won by the way. Then we had another game of TTR Switzerland, which Tina likes quite a lot. Our games have quite close but this one was a disaster for Tina as she took some tickets and pondered over which one to keep, only to throw the wrong one away!! Anyway, it was an enjoyable game.

Tomorrow we are going to Gmunden with our Austrian friend, Franz, it's about 45 minutes away on a lake and is very picturesque. We hope to have some lunch there and do a bit shopping.

That's all for now.....happy gaming!!

Lake Wolfgang is frozen

2008-02-13T10:44:00.001+01:00

As you can see from the picture the lake is partially frozen at the moment. The weather has been brilliant for the last few days. Lovely sunshine but very cold, ideal for lovely walks around the lake. We are going to Salzburg for the day on friday so we are hoping that the weather is going to stay the same. No boardgames for now, the weather is just too great.

Today is hairdresser day (for the wife)

2008-02-09T09:33:00.000+01:00

Things are still going well.....sort of. We had a few problems getting online, Telekomm Austria weren't very helpful and I had to set up the connection myself. Did that last Monday, and on the very same day the satellite tv went wrong. We get tv from a satellite, astra, I think, and we had just bought a new sat. receiver. Oh doh! I hope that hadn't gone wrong....but no it was a connection from the sat. dish on the roof. We had an engineer in and he sorted it. So we can get our 100+ german and austrian channels again.

We do get some english channels, only Sky News, BBC World, CNN and Euro News. But there is a lot of sport on, much to the wife's dismay. She has gone to the hairdresser's for the first time this morning dreading the worst. She expects to come out like a hairy coconut....she's got a thing about hairdressers, she's had the same one for 20 years.

Anyway, I was looking at my site meter and I see there are still a few of you having a look now and then, thanks for that. I shall post some more photos when I get some good ones.

That's all for now, happy gaming!!

In Austria at last

2008-02-07T13:33:00.000+01:00

Well, we finally made it. We arrived in St. Wolfgang on the 3rd January, but had to go into B&B for a fortnight as our furniture hadn't arrived from the UK yet. It didn't actually arrive until the 17th so that's when we moved in. We have been in now for just over two weeks and everybody has been so helpful and friendly. We have just about sorted out all the paperwork necessary but the second bedroom looks like a tip as we haven't got around to sorting everything out yet. Still it will take time.

As you can see from the picture there is some snow about and it is quite cold, but it is lovely just the same. There is a town called Bad Ischl about 14km away and they have a small game shop. In England that would mean Boggle and Trivial Pursuit, but I bought The Pillars of the Earth there for £23 so that can't be bad. I might even get the wife to give me a game sometime.

I have been reading Green Dobbers the blog which Garry has started to track the games that they have been playing. It's the skiing season, so Richard is away quite a bit at the moment so they have been playing quite a few two player games. Have a look, it's at......http://greendobbers.blogspot.com/

Anyway, that's all for now.......happy gaming!!!

Our Austrian Adventure - update

2007-12-18T12:11:00.000+01:00

Wow, I see that I haven't made an entry for almost a month now, well we have been a bit busy. We finally moved out of our house and into the Mother-in-Law's. We flew to Austria for a few days to view a 2 bed apartment owned by our friend's brother, right in the centre of St. Wolfgang, exactly where we wanted to be. It was snowing a blizzard when we arrived and with all the Christmas trees and decorations ready for the Advent Market it looked very festive. Well we looked at the apartment and liked it straightaway, having done that our friend was so helpful, taking us everywhere in his car. Sorting out bank accounts, looking at furniture and kitchen stuff. So we are all set now and are spending Christmas with the family then flying out to our new life on January 3rd.

Hopefully once we get things a bit sorted out I will start to look for local gamers, but as you can imagine that is not top of the wife's priority list. All my games have been in storage along with all our other stuff and that is coming over in early January. We have to go into BB for a couple of weeks as the apartment hasn't got a thing in it until that arrives.

That's all for now, have a great Christmas and I will keep you updated in the new year.

Happy Gaming!!

Green dobbers - the new game blog

2007-11-22T12:22:00.000+01:00

Garry has decided to carry on writing up the reports for their games...carrying on the Billygames torch. He's called it Greendobbers and you can find it at....

http://greendobbers.blogspot.com/

I have also put a link on this blog so you can find it as well.

Happy Gaming!!!