This issue contains the rules for more new games than usual. There is a new Checkers variant in which draws are impossible, a connection game, a territorial game, a Mancala game, several 3D Chess games, and four games of simultaneous movement from the competition. I doubt whether many readers will have the time to try all of these before the next issue. However, there is enough variety that you can choose the type of game that suits you best. There are also articles on Camelot, Grand Chess, and Jetan, old favorites that we have covered a number of times before.
The next issue will have a different focus. For example, there will be an article on different ways to construct your own sets to play games for which equipment is not commercially available. We may also have a piece on abstract games for more than two players, and why, in many cases, they are not as effective as two-player games.
Readers may remember that we have run e-mail
tournaments in Kyoto Shogi and Onyx. A tournament on Croda was planned, but it did not happen because we
decided after all that we had better maintain our concentration on the magazine itself—there are plenty of venues on the Internet already for playing games. Our apologies to the Croda players.
Perhaps we should make an exception and run a tournament for Sid Sackson's game Focus. Sid Sackson's passing was noted in the last editorial, and there is a response in the letters of this issue. As far as I can tell from Internet searches, there is no activity at all in Focus currently. That is a shame. I propose a "Sid Sackson Memorial Focus Tournament." Interested readers should contact me before the end of May. If Focus can be included on one or two e-mail game servers, such as Richard's Server or Ludoteka, so much the better, as it would make the tournament easier to organize.
I discovered a new game shop in Vancouver recently, called Drexoll Games.
I have always found game shops to be magical places. When I was growing up in England, I made frequent visits to The Games' Centre in London, traveling to the capital on the train to make a day of it, and including a visit to a specialist science fiction bookshop. Sadly, both shops no longer exist, and in our trips back to London from Vancouver these days I have to content myself with a lesser pilgrimage, to Just Games.
Entering Drexoll Games for the first time I got that familiar, comfortable glow. I could browse for hours, reading the backs of game boxes. Nowadays, of course, most of the games on sale are the German thematic games, half of which are by Reiner Knitzia, it seems.
Drexoll has a games evening every Friday,
and I have joined in several times already. Mostly I have had to play the German theme games,
but at least one other abstract game fan attends these evenings, and so I have managed to play a few
games of Pagoda (or more correctly "Pagode"—see page 3 in this issue).
On the other hand, I did wind up buying a copy of Bruno Faiduti's Citadels after playing it at Drexoll. It has become a favorite with Connie and me, and we are looking forward to introducing it to some friends. I'm considering picking up a copy of Elfenlands, and maybe I should give Settlers of Catan another try . . . .
One of my correspondents, to whom I made this confession, comforted me with, "You shouldn't feel guilty about playing non-abstract games. My wife and I play many non-abstract games, too!"
I suppose the point is that many of the German theme games are really pure abstract games dressed up with a theme to make them more palatable for the general public. Nevertheless, there can be something austere and beautiful in an abstract game. I think game publishers are underestimating the general public, as we have discussed in this magazine before.
Themes don't always work. One game we played had the board spaces distorted from a basically regular tessellation in order to represent tribal territories and accommodate the thinnest veneer of a theme. I felt this detracted from the game, as the connectivity of the spaces was difficult to determine at a glance.
One example of a game with a theme that
adds to the playing experience is Nibelungenlied. If you play no other new game in this issue, I really
urge you to give Nibelungenlied a try—ideally while listening to Wagner!
