Well, perhaps not. However, I’m pretty happy because I now have a copy of Martin Wallace’s Struggle of Empires on order. It’s likely to arrive some time next week, along with Poseidon and Merchants and Marauders.
Struggle of Empires was originally published in 2004, and sits at #68 on the list of top boardgames at BoardGameGeek. That’s a relatively high rating, which undoubtedly the difficulty of acquiring the game along with it’s playing time (3 hours) detracts from.
It’s one of those games that Tom Vasel rated highly when it originally came out, although I don’t see it in his current list of top 100 games. It’s a game I suspect I’ll enjoy, but not play all that often. Still, for my friends like Popey (and Greg, if I can wangle him into a game), I think they’ll enjoy it. Diplomacy, wars, and alliances? All good. The strict nature of the alliances – where you can’t backstab someone even if you want/need to – will make this more approachable to a lot of people, I wager, who get very frustrated with Diplomacy.
Another couple of new games that should be arriving are Poseidon and Merchants and Marauders. The first of those – Poseidon – is actually an 18XX game.
The 18XX games are a series of sharemarket and train games that are renowned for their complexity and long game-time. I own one of them (1856), and I’ve only played the basic game and only once with people who didn’t enjoy it much. That’s not really enough to get a hang of the game. When you find that people use computer assistance to get the game to play in a reasonable amount of time, then my enthusiasm for the game wanes a bit. 7 Wonders is a hit because it plays quickly and is fun. 1856 isn’t so quick and requires quite a bit of play to get used to… not a good combination.
Poseidon, on the other hand (and my spell-checker can’t spell Poseidon – shame on it. Does it do better with the Greek? Ποσειδων… yes, that’s confused it. 
) is a much more approachable game, playing in about 2 hours compared to 5 hours. It’s a 18XX game set in ancient times with ships instead of trains, but it still has a lot of the sharemarket manipulation of the 18XX series. We’ve played Chicago Express, we should be able to deal with Poseidon. Surely?
) is a much more approachable game, playing in about 2 hours compared to 5 hours. It’s a 18XX game set in ancient times with ships instead of trains, but it still has a lot of the sharemarket manipulation of the 18XX series. We’ve played Chicago Express, we should be able to deal with Poseidon. Surely?I’ve also got Merchants and Marauders on order. Another Z-Man game (like Poseidon), it runs at 45 minutes per player, which is quite a bit of time. It does, however, come with plastic ships. It really looks like a pretty game:
It’s a fairly involved game (with a 16-page rulebook!), which allows you to choose between being an honest merchant or a not-entirely-honest pirate – and change back and forth during the game. Well, until the bounties on your head condemn you to a pirate’s life! You can ship goods, raid merchants, raid opposing players, trade in port, buy upgrades to ships, go on missions and otherwise enjoy the shipfaring life.
Even with this variety, it seems more approachable than Blackbeard, the revised version of Richard Berg’s pirate game. I guess we’ll find out sometime soon.
Of course, one of the biggest priorities is to play Battlestar Galactica with the Exodus expansion. That’s a complicated lot of new rules there… but it looks fun.
Those are some cool ships. Looks like a nice board too.
It is sad news. I’m not hugely well versed in the UNIT era (For all my years in Who-dom, I’ve only seen a couple of Pertwee stories) but the Brigadier in many ways /is/ Doctor Who to some people, the same way the TARDIS, K-9 or the sonic screwdriver sum up the show.
It’s a shame he never got to do the new series proper, though I’m sure he’s name-checked one or twice. (Isn’t he mentioned in the Sontaran two-parter?)
George Q