I read the rules for Village when I was at Essen last year and as soon as I saw the meeple laying in the history book or in the unmarked graves I knew I wanted to play it.  I pre-ordered it and I’m glad I did as I’ve really enjoyed every game I’ve played of it so far.  More recently it rightly won the complex Spiel des Jahres award too.  The reason it’s a great game is due to an interesting mix of some unusual game mechanics – none are complex but there’s lots of variety – so I shall attempt to summarise the main elements.

GAME OVERVIEW
In Village, players use their villagers (meeple) to do various tasks and the goal is to earn the most respect (victory points – VPs).  There are two key mechanisms in the game – time and actions.

Time
The first core mechanism is time – many actions use up time which each player tracks with a marker around the edge of their player board (their farm).  Quite often, the player has a choice to spend time or use resources to do things like making a plough, but many options require time like travelling, or training a craftsman.  When the time marker completes a circuit of a player’s board, one of the eldest villagers of that player passes away and is either placed into the history books or in an unmarked grave (more on that later). Read the rest of this entry »

The Spiel des Jahres winners have been announced.  The Spiel des Jahres goes to Qwirkle (which is the one I hoped would win that one) and the Kennerspiel des Jahres goes to 7 Wonders which is a deserving winner.  You can click on the links to read my reviews of these games.

The competition has now ended and the finalists have been picked.  (Finalists were picked at random and the winner was picked at random from the 4 finalists.)  The 4 finalists of the Strasbourg competition are:

• Yvan Norsa (via bdg.ms)
• Geocentrix (via Twitter)
• Ernie Lai (via Metagames Blog)
• Keith Bryson (via BoardGameGeek)

AND THE WINNER IS… Ernie Lai who will receive a copy of the SdJ-nominated Strasbourg.  Congratulations, Ernie.

My thanks to Pegasus Spiele for providing the prize for this competition and to everyone who entered by all the various means.

James.

To celebrate reaching 500 Twitter followers, Metagames is giving away a copy of Pegasus Spiele’s SdJ-nominated Strasbourg this week.  I reviewed the game a few week ago and really enjoyed it.  You can read the Strasbourg rules here.

HOW TO WIN
The winner will be randomly selected from one of 4 finalists.  Each finalist will be selected by a different method giving you 4 ways to earn a chance to win:

TWITTER
Anyone who is following @Metagames twitter account and has re-tweeted the competition phrase that I tweeted (which says I would like to win a copy of Pegasus Spiele’s SdJ-nominated Strasbourg).

– It’s important you re-tweet the @Metagames tweet so that I can see your entry.

BDG.MS
Anyone who shortens a board gaming link using bdg.ms from Monday 20^th June to Midnight PST Sunday 26^th June 2011 (you will need to register which is free and takes 20 seconds – simply click on ‘Register’)

– What’s bdg.ms?  It’s like bit.ly and tinyurl.com but just for boardgames with a list of all the latest links
– Only board game related links will be allowed
– Shorten a link to your site, a recent article you saw or your favourite board game (please don’t just shorten the link to Strasbourg on BGG)

METAGAMES BLOG
Anyone who posts a comment on the Metagames review of Strasbourg saying, “I want to win a copy of Stefan Feld’s Strasbourg”.

BGG
Anyone who has entered the competition using the competition page on BGG (being made live in the next 30 minutes)

To maximise your chances of winning, you can enter using all 4 methods described above.  The finalists will be announced on Monday 27^th June and the winner selected at random on the same day.  Note that multiple entries using the same method (i.e. re-tweeting multiple times, adding multiple comments) will not count.

My thanks to Pegasus Spiele for providing the prize for this competition.

Good luck,

James.

REVIEWS
The Spiel des Jahres nominees were revealed last week.  Below is a list of the nominees with easy links to reviews of most of them.

Spiel des Jahres
Asara
Qwirkle
Forbidden Island

Kennerspiel des Jahres nominees
Strasbourg
7 Wonders
Lancaster

Luna was also on the list of recommended titles.

THOUGHTS
As far as my thoughts go, Read the rest of this entry »