Crystal mountain

"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves." - George Mallory

I continue to play boardgames from time to time, but seem to have got out of the habit of writing about them. I certainly haven't come across any that cry out to be recommended to wargamers, but it's also because I only ever seem to play games once, which isn't enough to form a proper opinion. Hard-core boardgamers (which doesn't include me) are obsessed with the cult of the new. They buy games play them two, three, maybe four times and then the games are never seen again. I only play two or three times a month, those I play with tend to game three or four times a week and so everything tends to whoosh past me in a blur. 

However, I do feel the need to mention 'Mountaineers', if for no other reason than because I love a 3D game. Unsurprisingly given that it's made out of cardboard, the thing isn't that stable, especially when you try to push the little plastic climbers in to the holes. The game's owner - that's him in the picture - has come up with a variety of designs for stabilising it; indeed you can just see some aluminium corners which he has fabricated and which, it has to be said, don't work at all. I may be the classic man with a hammer who sees every problem as a nail, but I can feel some laser cutting coming on. Is the game worth it? Probably not; we are doing it because it's there.

I must also mention another addition to my portfolio of one player games. 'Crystallo' is a tile laying, pattern matching game which requires a large amount of table space to play. It's very well designed and produced, but not the sort of thing I am likely to be any good at. The theme is rescuing magic animals and slaying dragons, with a sort of quest overlaid on it. I have so far risen to the level of Impoverished Commoner, which seems about right.