Agric-o-lah

It's here. Possibly the greatest game in the world, Agricola (apparently pronounced "Agric-o-lah", latin for "farmer").

First play at Kevin's on Wednesday, 3-player "family" game, plus 3-player "occupation/minor improvement deck" game. Kevin, Jared and I faced off in Northampton.

I was thrilled after the first game, and immediate felt the influence of Princes of Florence, Caylus, and Puerto Rico, as well as a little Age of Empires. Had the same desire for replay as I did after my first game of AoE, with no negatives like I felt with Caylus (length, dry).

The pieces were excellent. Kevin had the highly controversial "pre-order" edition, with the extra cards (called "z-cards" for "z-man games" edition), and the "ani-meeples", or animal pieces. His instruction was outstanding, I didn't pull the manual once, and only had to ask a couple of clarifying questions during the game. The game felt very "natural", and the theme was very rich and made actions very intuitive. Your goal to enlarge your farming family, grow cattle, sheep, enlarge your farm and plant fields for victory points was interesting and fun.

Playing my second game with the expansion deck was not quite as impressive as I hoped, in that it made the game somewhat more "solitaire" than it felt in the family version. Each of us chose our own path and I can only remember one move in the entire game that one player could dramatically affect another (and he ended up choosing a different space anyway). In the first play, because of more limited choices (no cards), it felt that your move choices could block out those of your opponents, making the game more like Caylus or even Puerto Rico in that respect.

In any event, I rate the game an "8" immediately, and suspect it could climb to a "10" and take out Puerto Rico (or at least tie it) for me.

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There is more "buzz" about this game than any I can remember on the 'geek. The number of forum posts, reviews, articles and photos for the length of time this game is on the market is unbelievable. As I write this the game is battling for first place on the boardgamegeek ratings, a legitimate contender to take out Puerto Rico for number one in the world, a feat that I would have thought impossible for several reasons.

There is a site that apparently will be producing more of the wooden animal pieces, which do a lot of richness to the visual nature of the game, and make it more conversational for non-gamers here. Apparently, you can purchase plastic animals from Target, and maybe from craft stores as well.

State of BSC

Here's what's been going on this year at Brett Spiel Cafe. I originally built this site for three basic reasons: 1. To provide a place for friends to gather and discuss boardgaming. 2. Provide a central location for game news that I uncovered during my routine surfing and scouring the web. 3. Provide an outlet for my creative writing "itch", and exercise my web skills.

In the last several years, there has been a huge increase in the amount of material available on the web about boardgaming. A google search today nets 214,000 hits just on the word "boardgaming", and 89,000 on Klaus Teuber (of Settlers of Catan fame). NOTE: I used the "10-year anniversary" google search on 10/08/08, and 10 years ago, there were only 1,080 hits on "boardgaming" and 3,590 for Klaus! Boardgamegeek.com has improved tremendously as a resource for gamers, and has had some major technological improvements that make it not just the best boardgame site on the 'net, but one of the best catalog/archive/information/community sites on the internet.

Boardgamenews.com is another fantastic site that has had a major facelift, and now supported by advertising and a large list of news contributors has done a fantastic job on highlight what's new and upcoming in the hobby.

During the last few years before these sites really took off, I would use them and others as a place to find news and nuggets of gaming info, linking to them from Brettspielcafe. Eventually their content grew to a point where I could not keep up with them, and it seemed they were a better source of regular direct news for myself and our readers here.

I made a decision to close Brettspeilcafe.net to outsiders for a while in 2006, and it seemed that this eliminated several regular readers, and comments on my posts began to disasppear even after I reopened the site as an open one a month later.

Time has limited my "creative writing" this year significantly, and has even cut my actual boardgaming down one session perhaps once a month now.

What's the future hold for Brettspeilcafe.net?

I hope to keep the site open as an archive for our past events, and some opinion pieces and post-mortems I am proud of and would like to stay up. I suspect that in the next year or so there will be a resurgence of "Euro" or "German" style gaming in my home and in my group of friends. This might give me the "boost" that I need to start writing again.

In the meantime, please check us out at least once a month. Feel free to comment on any posts you enjoy. Create a profile on boardgamegeek.com and join me there for a game of Tigris and Euphrates!

Quiet

It has been a while since I've posted, and there's a reason for that... I have not been boardgaming very much! Some different things going on have kept me away from it, unfortunately. A game of Chess here or there, played Probe the other night with the family (Tammy crushed us). That's about it. Agricola is on it's way apparently, that will no doubt inspire a get-together.

Texas Hold'em has been popular, and our once-a-month gathering with 6-8 people has taken care of a lot (most?) of my table time I suppose. I keep finishing in second place, I think 4 of the last 7 times we've played. I cannot seem to figure out how to win the game 1-1.

I still played Tigris and Euphrates on the 'geek, checking that site every day. It is one of my two
"perfect 10" rated games, along with Chess. My"9's" are: Bridge, Twilight Imperium 3rd Ed., Puerto Rico, and Mare Nostrum.

Ticket 2 Ride: XBox Live

Yet another boardgame conversion. Another good article on the subject, thanks to BGN.

Check out the early review of Ticket to Ride, Xbox Live edition here.

Lost Cities : found on Xbox Live

Excellent Knizia game, Lost Cities, is coming to Xbox Live.

Thanks to BGN for the tip - apparently Knizia's name is nowhere to be found on the game. Also, the card game is 2-player, but it appears to be "vision enabled" and up to 4-players on the Xbox 360 version.

No word on how many points, but I will check it out for sure. It's supposedly available on Tuesday, April 23rd.

Mike Doyle

Thanks again to BGN for this link to a cool interview with Mike Doyle on his thoughts about boardgame design.

Boardgamenews

Boardgamenews.com has done a fantastic job of keeping me up-to-date on the latest in the world of "brett spieling". When I started the Cafe back in... 2004? there were a few sites with board gaming information, but they were spread all over and even Boardgamegeek was perfecting it's content.

Anyway, looks like Lost Cities is making it's appearance on the Xbox, and there's no way I'd ever have know about this without it being pointed out by BGN. Thanks guys!

Giveaway... of the day!

This site was giving away a free copy of Ingenious (by Knizia), and see other cool stuff on here now.

Play Catan?

Play Catan is Klaus Teuber's answer to Catanonline and Catan Xbox, and is launching in English sometime this spring.

There are many ways to play Settlers of Catan online for free right now, so I am not sure hope popular this will be ultimately, but they claim to have 12,000+ players, and 1500+ paying members.

The one that catches my eye is the ability to play Seafarers and Cities and Knights, which can be done if you are a member of Play Catan apparently. Perhaps Teuber cleverly withheld these expansions from Microsoft and Brettspielcafe to create interest and addiction in the series.

Ultimately, I am glad to see Catan in the mainstream of gaming. The more the merrier, and the better for all of us boardgamers!

Gathering of Friends 6

GOF 6 POSTPONED due to illness.

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Previous GOF winners:

GOF 1: Michael S., March 21st, 2004
GOF 2: Doug F., December 24th, 2004
GOF 3: Taber O., Novermber 11th, 2005
GOF 4: Caleb O., March 4th, 2006
GOF 5: Kevin F., November 11th, 2006
GOF 6: ???, ???, 2008

The activities are tentatively:

Gathering of Friends 6 Tournament

Grand Prize: Choice of Age of Empires Deluxe PC game or Louis XIV (board game)
Second Prize: Louis the XIV or AoE PC

Three rounds, winners advance to more complex games in 2nd and 3rd round.


Round 1, 3:00 PM
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Settlers of Catan, 4 player, 3 tables

Winners from round 1 not play at the same table with each other in Round 2.

Round 2, 5:00 PM
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Power Grid (1-2 tables)
Puerto Rico (?)
Acquire / Vinci / Antike (depending on who he can talk into playing, Dave will run one of these)


Dinner @ 6:00 PM


Round 3, 7:30 PM
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GOF 6 championship

Age of Empires (5 player) -

Winner of this game wins a copy of AoE for the PC Deluxe Edition, or Louis XIV
Second place wins a copy of Louis XIV or AoE PC.

5 players for the championship determined by players who have won 2 games, plus player(s) who have won at least 1 game and come in 2nd in another.


Depending on who's left, remaining players will play for enjoyment:

Power Grid, Railroad Tycoon, Tigris & Euphrates, Risk 2210, Alhambra, St. Petersburg, Ticket to Ride, Scrabble.

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Thoughts, comments, etc. are welcome! Click "comments" to post!