So...any Eurogamers out there?

[GreatWolf]

It's all Ralph's fault.  One day in 2002, he brought over this game called Ra, designed by some German guy with a funny name.  Something like "Reiner Knizia".  Now I am hooked.  Tigris & Euphrates, Carcassonne, Blue Moon, Tikal, GIPF....

So, am I alone in this addiction?  Any others out there who share this obsession?  Or are you all just artsy roleplayers?  (duck)

[Jon Hastings]

Hi Seth,

I'm a big fan of Eurogames in general and Knizia in particular (although I don't get to play as much as I'd like to).  My current Knizia faves are Modern Art (on the lighter side) and Amun-Re (for heavy duty play).

I'm always kind of surprised that Knizia isn't more talked about around these parts: I think a lot of his designs have mechanics which could be, umm, borrowed for use in rpgs.

-Jon

[GreatWolf]

Funny you should mention Amun-Re.  Are you familiar with SpielByWeb?  I play Amun-Re and Tikal there fairly frequently, and I'm always looking for more opponents.

[Jon Hastings]

Ooh, neat - I hadn't seen SpielByWeb before - thanks!  I'd definitely be up for some Amun-Re.

[Valamir]

I think there's a ton of board game influence embedded in many of the indie RPGs around here.  Certainly in mine.  I know Clinton plays a bunch of them.

I even got Ron "boardgames...meh" Edwards to play Puerto Rico and he had to admit he liked it...Although he did fall asleep part way through RA cuz it was past his bed time ;-)

As an aside...I consider Acquire to be the first "Euro-style" game and it predates the rash of French and German imports by a good couple decades...

[Matt Snyder]

Oh yeah, a few in the Snyder closet. It's about as close as Mrs. Snyder gets to geekery (Hey, I DID get her to play Dust Devils in March ... with MY MOM!). We've got the obligatory Catan (settlers, spacefarers, card game) and Carcasonne. Lately, I'm hooked on Ingenious, which I think is a Knizia especiale, but can't remember for certain. Always looking for more fun stuff. (Just got Memoir 44 and Vincent's Bane, aka Ticket to Ride -- Mrs. Snyder loves Ticket to Ride.)

[Jon Hastings]

Hey Ralph,

I agree with you about Acquire, but I like to think of Sid Sackson as one of those American artists who's much better appreciated in Europe than he is in his own country.

-Jon

[Shreyas Sampat]

I love Carcassonne. (My inner designer is saying, "There's a roleplaying game in there somewhere" and I think my inner Common Sense Ninja is about to attack him.)

[Graham W]

Yes, I've been taken to the pub by Americans and made to play those games. It was fun. I particularly liked the one about evolving cells. Can't remember the name, but you had to evolve attack and defense things.

Graham

[rafial]

I've definitely felt the Eurogame love, although my inner consimmer has been reasserting itself lately.  But there plenty of Euro-hybrids that satisfy the full palate.  Memoir '44 (and now Command & Colors: Ancients), Friedrich, Bonaparte at Marengo, Wallenstein, Struggle of Empires.

On the not-so-consimmy front, I just discovered and fell in love with Railroad Tycoon, and got introduced to a wacky game called H2olland, in which you try to grow and harvest the most valuable tulips.

Folks around here might be interested by Hunting Party from Seaborn Games, which is strange American Fantasy/Euro hybrid with a strong RPG element buried in it.  You have to soldier past the appalling graphic design and illustration to appreciate it though.

Oh.  Mall of Horrors (Asmodee).  Just played it for the first time at Gamestorm.  Sure its sold as a board game (with lovely components and a horribly translated rulebook) but with a slight change in emphasis and packaging, it could have been somebody's zombie survival "story telling" game.

[GreatWolf]

Lately, I'm hooked on Ingenious, which I think is a Knizia especiale, but can't remember for certain.

Yep, that's a Knizia.  He is far and away my favorite designer.  Ingenious is cool, because it can be a light "tea-and-biscuits" game or a brain-burner.

[Julian]

Yes, I've been taken to the pub by Americans and made to play those games. It was fun. I particularly liked the one about evolving cells. Can't remember the name, but you had to evolve attack and defense things.

Primordial Soup?

[Shreyas Sampat]

Yep, that's a Knizia.  He is far and away my favorite designer.  Ingenious is cool, because it can be a light "tea-and-biscuits" game or a brain-burner.

This game sounds cool. Tell us more?

[GreatWolf]

Let's see.

First, I must sprinkle you with pixie dust.

Ingenious is a bit like dominoes crossed with Tigris & Euphrates.

Still with me?

You'll probably want to look at the pictures from BoardGameGeek to understand this.

Each player has a hand of six tiles, which are shaped like two hexes stuck together.  Each hex has one of six colors on it, like this.  (Each color also has a shape to go with it, in case you are color-blind.)

You take your turn by playing a tile onto the board.  Ideally, you play so that you form lines of identical symbols on the board.  So, for example, you play a tile so that you make a line of four blue hexes.  You would score one blue point for each symbol in the line, except the one on the tile that you just placed, giving you three blue points..  Of course, since each tile is capable of forming up to ten lines (five per hex, excluding the side where they are stuck together), it's possible to get quite a number of points from a single play.

If you max out your score in a single color by getting to eighteen, you say "Ingenious" and take another turn.

When you're finished playing tiles, check to see if you have any tiles in your lowest scoring color.  If not, you may discard the rest of your hand.

Then refresh your hand to six.

Of course, you need the classic Knizia twist.  In Ingenious, it's the old "lowest score is your score" trick from Tigris & Euphrates.  In other words, at the end of the game, when the board is full so no more pieces can be played, whichever of the six colors you scored the least in is your final score.

And that's it!

Except, it's not, really.

The game is fairly subtle.  There tends to be a lot of jockeying for good scoring position, and an important part of the game is knowing when it's time to begin blocking off profitable scoring lines from your opponents.  About half-way through the game, since scoring is open, it becomes obvious which colors everyone needs, and then the real blood-letting begins.

But it doesn't have to be cutthroat.  Like Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, or even Scrabble, the game supports whatever level of bloodthirstiness you want to have.  So you can play it intensely and focused, or you can play it more loosely and conversationally.  My wife and I have Ingenious in our antechamber (nope, not our bedroom) with the other two-player games that we often play.

I have this nagging sense that I botched that description, but oh well.  You can play Ingenious on Brettspielwelt under its German name of "Einfach Genial"

[Joel P. Shempert]

The only thing i have to say in this thread is:

I want to have Reiner Knizia's babies.

There, I said it.