Pot15pouri

It has been drawn to my attention that in my last blog posting I merely listed the boardgames that I played rather than describing them and giving readers the benefit of my much sought after opinion. I shall rectify that immediately. I didn't like Phase 10 terribly much whereas I did like Tikal a lot. The former is a proprietary version of a Rummy variant (a brief trip to the mighty Wikipedia reveals it to be Liverpool Rummy) in the same way that Uno is simply a publisher's version of Twizzle. It passed the time, but one would have to be very bored - probably in a tent in the rain - to play all ten phases. It also seemed odd to me that the later phases are easier to get that the earlier ones. Shome mishtake shurely?

A random Liverpudlian plays Rummy

Tikal on the other hand appealed to me and not just because I won rather handily. Like most Eurogames the theme is rather lightly applied on top, but having been to both Chichen Itza and Tulum I am down with the Mayans. And explorer placement also floated my boat a bit more than worker placement even though it is quite clearly exactly the same thing. Add to that hex tiles and volcanoes reminiscent of Survive! and I was sold.

I have been ploughing my way through more wargames magazines; this time Wargames Illustrated 313. The theme of this edition is the Franco-Prussian War and I enjoyed those articles. I have only ever played one FPW game - which from memory involved Mark suddenly announcing that the gates of the city I was defending had been thrown open by the citizens - and don't know much about it. I do however know that no human has ever adopted the posture of the German officer in the painting on the front cover. There is also, fittingly, another fine tribute to Donald Featherstone and, not unexpectedly, a lot of guff about Flames of War.