Running out of shelf-space is something that you will definitely run in to if you are an active Boardgamer. It is inevitable that you will, at some point, by that x+1th game that now no longer fits in the space you have. What to do? There are 2 obvious solutions : keep your collection fresh by getting rid of old or common games, don’t buy games everyone in your game club is also likely to own.
Previously I had mentioned BrettSpielWelt as a great way to play boardgames online. I neglected to talk about all the other forms of online gaming out there. This time I’d like to talk about VASSAL. VASSAL is a Java engine-based system for building, and playing board and card games.
As of this writing VASSAL is at version 3.1.14, is available for Windows, OSX, Linux, and has approaching 800 game modules. While early games ported in to Vassal often included scans of the mapboard and pieces, newer versions use high resolution files and custom graphics. Games are often now ported with the permission of the publishers: most notably GMT Games allows and supports many of their games for online play using Vassal.
In my quest to find games online that I can play with some frequency, I stumbled across an old Avalon Hill Classic called Victory in the Pacific.
The big hurdle, besides not owning a copy of the game (yet), was that the map is so awful by today’s standards. I think if I’d played this game back in the early 1980s when it was still new I wouldn’t feel that way, but that’s not the case. In addition, I needed another small project to fill some time.
If you love Eurogames and are not familiar with BrettSpielWelt than you should be. BrettSpielWelt (or BSW) is a free online portal and application for playing many of the most popular board and card games available today. It can be intimidating at first because BSW is primarily in German, but people of all languages populate the site and help and translations abound.
BSW covers game from the very popular Carcassonne (Game, BGG , BSW) or Settlers of Catan (Game, BGG, BSW), to games popular with more dedicated boardgame enthusiasts like Power Grid (Game, BGG, BSW) and Imperial (Game, BGG, BSW).
Commands and Colors: Ancients is a great game and system by Richard Borg available from GMT Games. It depicts battles in the ancient world from 3000BC to 400AD of varying scale. Much more can be said and is at BoardGameGeek.com, so I’ll let the great content there speak for the game.
For me the only real downside to C&C:Ancients for me is the portability: the base game has over 340 5/8″ wooden blocks, and there are currently 6 expansions for the base game. While not horrible to carry, it is a touch on the heavy side so it’s only likely to make it to the away table if pre-planned. Read the rest of this entry »