Board Game Review: Clans

I normally try to follow a pattern of two-weeks-of-random-topics-then-a-board-game-review, but I'm going to change it up a little bit this week and next; I'm going to do two board game reviews in a row.

This week, I'm going to review Clans. Next week, I'm going to review Asphodel. This is a game that a very good friend of mine has created, and last night, I got to playtest it for the first time. He gave me a protoype copy for myself, and I'm going to take this to the board game club I attend on Tuesdays to get other people to playtest it as well. After I've had a few good playtest sessions with it, I will write a review here.

But I want to wait until I've had a few chances to play through it before I do that, so I'm going to stick to my normal schedule for this week. That means that I'm going to review one of my favourite board games (and honestly, I can't believe I haven't reviewed it here before): Clans.

First, the numbers:

Strategy: 5
Randomness: 1
Complexity: 2
Humour: None
Attractiveness: Useful
Expected Length of Gameplay: 30 - 45 minutes

Your input needed for the direction of this blog

As I mentioned last week, I've been getting a fair amount of traffic from around the world. But one thing I've noticed is that, by far, the posts that are getting the most views are the Board Game Reviews. I've published 85 entries in this blog so far (this entry is number 86).

Entries	Number of entries	Percentage of total entries	Number of views	Percentage of views
Total Entries	85	100%	2201	100%
Board Game Reviews	19	22.4%	1647	74.8%
Other entries	66	77.6%	554	25.2%

Anyone can see that there is clearly a massive disparity there. Obviously, people are coming to my blog for the board game reviews (interesting note: so far, my review of Storming the Castle has the most views, with 358, followed by Anima: Shadow of Omega with 340, then Three Musketeers: The Queen's Pendants at 221). Not many people seem to care about my other entries (the largest page views on the non-Board Game Review entries are the ones I wrote about new GURPS divination spells (part 1 had 38 views, and part 2 had 121).

So my question for you good people is this: Should I stick to writing only board game reviews? Or do you think I should keep doing what I'm doing and let the traffic go where it will regardless of what I'm writing?

Please leave your response in the comment section below. I'm really looking forward to hearing what you lovely people have to say!

Until next week,

Game on!

Mature themes

Don't be fooled by the title of this post. I'm not referring specifically to sexual topics. I'm going to be talking about anything that might be considered 'adult-oriented,' including violence, advanced social issues, and the like.

Before I go on, I want to mention something very quickly: I have noticed a continuation in the trend. My Board Game Review entries are still getting, by far, the most traffic. This week, the majority of my traffic seems to be coming from Russia. Fascinating...

Anyway, I'm going to talk about that more next week, but this week, I wanted to talk about something that I noticed whilst watching the latest episode of Wil Wheaton's Tabletop. The latest episode is about the game Five Tribes. The game is set in the world of 1,001 Arabian Nights, and so contains viziers, camels, palaces, assassins, djinns, and slaves.

Mr Wheaton started out the episode with a little speech, in which he points out that some people have an ethical objection to the concept of slavery being included in the game, and that the publishers chose to include it because, moral or not, it was part of the culture being depicted in the game, and they felt it was important to portray the setting accurately. But as Wil Wheaton personally objects to the concept of owning another human being, he was going to refer to the slave cards as 'assistants' throughout the game.

Board Game Review: Dominant Species

It's relatively simple.
I recently got to play Dominant Species for the first time. I was introduced to this game by an old friend. As he said about it, 'This is a game I love to lose.' This game is very much intended for people whose idea of a good time is to think really really hard. So, of course, I loved it.

Let's see what we have in store for us, by starting first with the ratings (and of course my rating system):

Strategy: 5
Randomness: 1
Complexity: 4
Humour: None
Attractiveness: Ideal
Expected Length of Game Play: 2 to 3 hours
Gamer Profile Ratings:
  Strategy: High
  Conflict: Medium
  Social Manipulation: Low
  Fantasy: Medium

Golden Age

People are fond of pointing out the 'golden age' of things. There was the golden age of comics, the golden age of cinema, the golden age of television, the golden age of aviation, and so on. Normally, a golden age is identified in retrospect. People who study a particular topic look at the history and say, 'Look at the innovations that were made during this historical time period. Look at the great people who made a difference in that time. That was the golden age of [insert topic here].'

Rarely does one get to identify a golden age whilst it is occurring.

But that's exactly what is happening with board games right now.

I remember as a young boy in the 80s, reading Games Magazine. I enjoyed solving the puzzles, doing cryptograms and rebuses and other word games and visual puzzles. But there was a section in the middle of each issue that I always skipped: board game reviews. That seemed silly to me.

Back in the 80s, board games included staples such as Monopoly and Scrabble, as well as party games like Scruples, Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, and Balderdash. Those were your options. I was familiar with a few games from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which populated my grandparents' cabinets: games like Life or Payday. All of these were fairly simplistic. They may have had an interesting theme, but there wasn't a lot of meat to the mechanics. Roll some dice, move a pawn, draw a card, follow the instructions.

Board Game Cafe

I recently learned about Thirsty Meeples Board Game Cafe. This is a shop where you pay a cover charge (the Thirsty Meeples cover charge is £6.00 for three hours, £5.00 for children, with a discount of £1.50 if you order something from the food/drink menu). If they're slow, they'll let you stay beyond the three hour limit. You are then welcome to come into the shop and play any of the games they have available (over 2,000 titles, according to the website). It's not the sort of place you go when you want a meal; their food offerings are a handful of cakes, snacks, and sandwiches. They're there mostly for people who want to play board games.

Thirsty Meeples is far from the only one. Board game cafes are popping up all over the globe. There are some in New York, at least one in Beijing, another in Toronto, a few in Australia (Brisbane and Melbourne at least), even one in Malaysia. There doesn't appear to be one in the state in which I live, unfortunately; that might be good news though, as I'd probably bankrupt myself if there were one.

The staff have to be well versed in board games. They're responsible for helping people find the right game for their group, and ensuring that they know how to play. Of course, this sounds like a fantasy job to me; spending all day showing people how to play board games and getting paid for it would feel like it was too good to be true!

Board Game Review: Hanabi

I've been keeping an eye on my site traffic, and something I've noticed is that the entries that are getting the most views are my Board Game Reviews. Apparently, those entries are generating some international traffic, which I think is excellent! I've been getting visitors from India, Germany, Australia, even the Ukraine!

I'm a little disappointed that people don't seem to be reading the other entries as much. But I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the proverbial mouth, should I?

So with that in mind, I think it's high time I wrote another board game review. Although to be fair, this one will really be a card game review, as the game I'm reviewing this week is played entirely with cards, aside from a handful of tokens. That's right, it's time to review Hanabi!

Let's look at the ratings, and the system:

Strategy: 3
Randomness: 3
Complexity: 2
Humour: None
Attractiveness: Pretty
Expected Length of Game Play: 30 minutes