Would Capello Pick Leo???

Well Essen is almost upon us and pretty soon Jimmy will be arriving with a whole host of new games that will take a few months to whittle through and it being October and Christmas decorations are about so by the time Jimmy’s Essen fest is beginning to shrink to a manageable level no doubt the rest of us will have acquired the odd game.

So time is running out for a popular NBG favourite, he has been brought down to games club a record 99 times and is about to make his 100th cap. Will the perennial ‘Leonardo Da Vinci’ ever get played?

It was 2 Essen’s past that Leo was released and initially praised. So I rushed out and in a spending fit as befitted the time, purchased myself a copy. I brought to the complete angler and proclaimed how much I wanted to play it where upon Jimmy declared ‘oh its broken’ shaking his head in his vigorous definite way. I was distraught, would I ever get to play it.

I continued to bring it down and having previously vanquished a level 15 Dragon in D & D I had managed to acquire from the freed dwarfs a magical bag of holding. Which allowed me each week

to bring down my chosen games I wanted to play that Tuesday but also bring along Leonardo Da Vinci just in case.

Occasionally I would get it out and try and drum up interest and over time Jimmy’s anger towards the game cooled and he became tolerant and then agreeable to ‘giving it another chance’.

I was further encouraged fourteen months back when Jimmy kept bringing Kogge and then kept bringing ‘key harvest’. These games eventually getting played, but not poor Leo (currently ranked 180 on BGG by the way Cockroach poker is ranked 1169 and that’s amazing fun).

Now my bag of holding has been lost to the ravages of ‘no car’ a distant horrible land and I must bring fewer offerings each week. Once Leo turns 100 I’m not sure how much longer he can continue….. Please think of him as you play Taj Mahal.

Kogge, Kogge, Monkey Snogger

Kogge. I am at a loss. I am trying to come to terms with the fact that Kogge not only classifies as a game, but that a certain subsection of society (who really ought to be spending their free time under strict supervision) actually get some enjoyment out of playing it. Bewildering. I was left floundering during my two hour experience, two hours of fumbling around, blindly attempting to decipher what I was supposed to be doing. Two hours of utter grim despair, wondering how to associate the theme with the concepts of gameplay. The theme, oh the theme. It is not so much pasted on as affixed with a dab of spittle and a healthy dosage of prayer. I could relate nothing to anything, as events developed and oh wait, after 20 minutes of twiddling my thumbs it was my turn again. An attempt to make a move that would advance my position would be forthcoming but rarely was I aware of the impact. Did I mention this game was dry by the way? Dryer than the hair of someone who has stood directly in the path of a jet engine for a thousand jahre. And the clock ticked on. And my will to live was sapped. I understand that in the business this kind of game is referred to as a 'brain burner'. It was not so much my brain that was on fire by 11pm, rather my fevered imagination, picturing every copy of Trade on Jerky Seas going up in smoke, thus denying the unsuspecting board gamer the prospect of accidentally taking part in a game, ever again. There was a time that when I wanted to bemuse non-gamers with the utter ridiculousness of board gaming, I would mention that the other week I spent a good portion of my Tuesday evening playing Canal Mania. CANAL MANIA EVERYBODY! Because who doesn't get manic at the merest mention of a canal? Well, Canal Mania has been usurped in the order of games that I have played which I could never hope to explain to my mother the concept of someone voluntarily committing valuable hours of their life to. Kogge. Truly unfathomable.

The other gaming event of the evening was Zooloretto. This was a simple, fun, family game that couldn't be further removed from Kogge if it tried. Nobody was blown away, but I suspect that if I had an inkling as to what was to come then I would have appreciated it more, and been grateful for small mercies. Also, after two beers I think I got on everyones nerves by repeatedly making "jokes" about the animal mating, uh, mechanism. Anyways, Matt won with 35 I believe, I got 25 playing very conservatively, Mike and Jimmy got a bit less. I am not completely sure because my Dad phoned up during scoring and asked where he could get 5 meters of network cable.