BoardGames Night Out

Thursday evening in Belgium, after a surprisingly sunny day I met Agnieszka and Andrei and went to the Board Games Shop in Leuven. The place is pretty close to the city center, and the guys there are very friendly and enthusiast about what they do. Of course, how can you not be enthusiast about having a job in a place full of great games? Great games indeed, they had Warriors&Traders both on the shelf and in the demo's room.

We arrived there at around 8 and almost all the tables were full of people playing different games. We were warmly welcomed and invited in the demo's room where we picked our game: Mage Knight.

We heard so many good things about this game that our choice came natural. The game looks marvelous, the already painted miniatures and the map are all pretty amazing. As a design short-coming, I would say that the game is dedicated for people with  excellent vision.

Andrei struggling with the rules :)

The four awesome heroes

We didn't manage to finish our play before the closing hour of the shop, but the two hours spent with the game and the rules convinced us that is a game we want in our collection. Unfortunately, they didn't have it on stock yesterday, so we had to pick something else as our weekly treat. Agnieszka was so excited about this purchase that I cannot wait to play it tonight.

Buying decision "Show me the Dwarfs and I will buy it"

The BOX!

We’ve jumped in our old red automobile and rushed with 20 miles per hour speed to the closest village. It was a sunny morning but then, as always in Belgium (always for the past year), the rain has come and the small wheels of the red old cranky automobile started to make slow slippery movements in the mud. We knew we got stuck. Did I say we were in the wildest mountains and the forest around was even wilder now when the rain got heavier? And did I say that this wilder and wilder with every minute forest and mountains were famous for their hungry bears and poisons snakes? Yes, and we were lost, stuck and …

Good that this is not a real story. Some times I’ve noticed, it’s easier to tell the story straight from your imagination than to actually be honest and write about the truth. I will try really hard this time to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.

So… it was like this.

In the morning, the weather was really great. It was almost sunny and you could even see a little bit of the blue sky!! “What a day!” I said to myself. But after we've jumped to our not-so-old and not-so-new black automobile it really started to rain. We rushed to L., a town which is real and where our friend who we’ve never met face-to-face lives. Did I say why we were rushing to the mysterious L. town? Oooh, I see - I did not. Let me explain to you what was the reason to rush through the rain on the great highways of Belgium! We went to see the BOX, but not any box; this was an actual handmade wooden and beautifully self-designed BOX. One day after buying a wild Warriors & Traders game box, our friend Tassos got so angry with the magically flying components of the game that he decided to do something. He did not want to lose any of the Barbarian units, Army units or - God forbid! - Princesses! He is a wise man, he is an engineer and he has an artistic soul, so he sat down and thought for a few days. And then he made the BOX.

And here is the BOX, handmade, wooden, with burnt out names and logo of Warriors & Traders

Ok, I do not know how he actually got the idea and if what I wrote is in any way related to the truth – but I like this story, so just follow my words for few more sentences and then enjoy the pictures.

Just keep reading… good! : )

We met Tassos in L. and then he showed us the BOX. I’ve seen the pictures a few days back, but it was something totally different to see the real thing. It was just an amazing piece of work. Tassos even took the time to get Warriors & Traders logo printed on the top of the wooden box. He made it himself! And as I was looking at the handmade beauty, I’ve noticed that it can rotate, so the players can get all the resources and other tokens much easier and that all the compartments are the perfect size for every single token in Warriors & Traders. And I could not believe that we’ve found him so easily. It is a big day, a great day and the day to remember and cherish when things are going bad, as we have just meet a soul mate. Whatever was the reason for Tassos to do the BOX, for me it meant - here he seats, a Facebook friend, mailing friend, a Twitter friend – a FRIEND who understands our craziness and passion.

Thank you Tassos – you made our day. And the BOX – it’s just precious!

And thank you all for getting through!

A new prototype

These days I'm in Belgium, with Andrei. After two days of playing Magic: The Gathering and Spoils, we started working on the next generation of NSKN boardgames.

Here's how one of them looks like, at the moment:

The game will have a large map and it took us a while to get to the same place and have some battles

As we work on it for the following days, you can find more pictures on the facebook page of NSKN.

Cheers, 



Love it or hate it

So, it's been a while... we haven't been lazy, just so busy working on getting Warriors & Traders to board games enthusiasts and, of course, playing.

As one might guess, we're playing also other games besides Warriors & Traders. We put passion into it, we even fight and, ultimately, we learn and we enjoy.

Last Week I had the chance to play for the very first time 3 new games, all famous and all intriguing. The first and the best one was Sid Meyer's Civilization. 

It started slowly, with a 2 hours setup and with failing to understand what is what. So, we hated it, actually I will only speak for myself, I hated it. It seemed to me that if a game takes more than 180 minutes just to set up the game board, cards, armies and players, it's just too long. After a short break, I started over, this time trying to understand what I am doing. After only 1 hour, we stormed past the setup and started playing. Three hours and two liters of water later, I decided that I love this game. 

Usually board games are more interactive than single player computer games, but the later play much better. There's just more design space when you're not limited by the physical size of a box. I expected the same with Sid Meyer's Civilization, but I was wrong. It is the very first time that a board game plays better than the computer game. For all those looking for a complex strategy game, this is the answer. With the low amount of randomness and the huge amount of options, guided by one of the four possible ways to win, this game offers big space for re-playing and. This reminds me of Warriors & Traders.

I am so enthusiastic about this that I will not even say what are its minuses, very few, but noticeable.

Secondly, I got to play an incomplete game of Britannia. It was, least to say, one of the best war games I've seen. A big Bravo to the team making their way through Britain history and putting it in a box full of surprises. I will not comment more as I did not even get to finish the game (yes, it's long but it's worth your time), but I can say one thing for sure, it does not punish harshly the new player who makes a mistake in the very beginning. Even as a new player, you have a decent chance of winning or, at least, coming close.

Last but not least, I tried out Alien Frontiers. Although I am not a big fan of games with a lot of random, I had fun. We played twice, we spent three hours and we were laughing half of the time. It's not for strategy fans, it's for fun fans.

All three games have one thing in common, they generated strong reactions, some of us loved them and some of us hated them, for various reasons, from length of play, to heavy rule book or fear of loosing. But we all agreed that, whether loving or hating them, these games are from the special "make a difference" category.

This concludes my review for tonight with two promises, we'll write more often about the games we like and  soon we'll bring more news about Warriors & Traders.

Going places

First thing I did after Essen was sleep. I slept on the plane back to Romania, I slept a bit on the bus from the airport, and at home I slept a bit more. Then, for the rest of the week, I just went to work and then back home to sleep.

Then on Friday Alex was in town and wanted to play W&T...

We played a 5 player game on the Central Europe map and we had a very nice war in the Balkans. Serbia attacked Bulgaria early in the game and got it down to just one princess. However, in the process they left Vidin empty, and this allowed Romania (who had completed military development by then and was just getting unified with 7 provinces) to attack Serbia in most of their provinces and cut the retreat for some infantry. In the end, Serbia was left with just the capital and one princess and Romania got about 12 victory points in one turn. It turns out double strike is really effective against princesses and small armies.

After that, we played a few rounds of Wings of War, which I got back from Spiel'11.


I have no pictures from the W&T game (light was really bad) but here's one from WoW:

On Saturday, we played again: more WoW and finally I got to try World Without End, a game we had in the group since summer.


Sunday I went to the Red Goblin's lair to demo W&T. We played for a couple of turns and they liked it.

I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the goblins redecorated since my last visit - I find the new layout more comfortable and welcoming than before.

After the demo game, I stayed a bit more and played some D&D. I even got to met a dragon

And finally, today I got to visit Taraba de Jocuri where we played a demo game in which Mihai managed to wipe my country out completely ...

... and concluded the evening in Ceainaria Tabiet where I didn't take any pictures but promise to do so next time. I also noticed they have a copy of Shadows over Camelot in their library, which is on my "to be played" list.

Anybody want to join this weekend?

Cheers,