A Cache About Games & The People Who Love Them
This is a cache based around my other passion, board games.
The name of the cache comes from my personal favourite podcast,
The Spiel.
From iTunes:
The Spiel is a show about games and the people who love
them.
Each episode, we review and discuss a new board game or card
game from our massive collection.
We also highlight overlooked classics and play a stump-the-band
style quiz, the Game Sommelier, trying to match the right game with
the right crowd.
The Spiel takes a long hard look at fun and games by having fun
playing games.
Our goal is to expose our audience to the wider world of
games.
I've brought many a game after hearing a review and game play
discussion.
These are some of the games that i've brought after hearing the
reviews:
Focus
Focus is an abstract strategy game for two (or four playing as
partners) in which players attempt to make moves and capture pieces
in such a manner that their opponent(s) have no moves
remaining.
Scotland Yard
One of the players will take on the role of Mr. X. His job is to
move from point to point around the map of London taking taxis,
buses or subways. The detectives, the remaining players acting in
concert, move around similarly in an effort to move into the same
space as Mr. X. But while the criminal's mode of transportation is
nearly always known, his exact location is only known
intermittently throughout the game.
Hare & Tortoise
Hare and Tortoise or the German Hase und Igel (for Hare and
Hedgehog) will always be regarded as a classic game. It is a
cunningly designed race to the finish in which your fuel (carrots)
must practically run out (all but 10 carrots or fewer) at the
moment you hit the finish line. You also have three lettuce cards
you must spend during the course of the race. The farther you move,
the more carrots you spend, and there are a variety of ways to gain
or lose carrots as you go around the track. It's a very clever
exercise in arithmetic which David Parlett has fashioned into an
entertaining and unique perennial favorite.
Enchanted Forest
One treasure is hidden under each tree in the forest. As you move
from tree to tree, you get to peek at the treasures you find. Can
you remember where each one is hidden? When the king asks where one
of the treasures is, players race to reach the castle with the
right information.
Elfenland
Elfenland is a redesign of the original White Wind game Elfenroads.
The game is set in the mythical world of the elves. A group of
fledgling elves (the players) are charged with visiting as many of
the twenty Elfencities as they can over a short period of time. To
accomplish the task they will use various forms of transportation
such as Pigs, Elfbikes, Magic Clouds, Trollwagons, and
Dragons.
Rummikub
The game is based on the traditional middle-eastern game of Okey.
First created in the 1930's and sold in hand produced versions
until the late 1970's. Similar to the Rummy that you play with
cards - you try to get rid of all your tiles by forming numbers
into runs of 3 tiles or more, or 3 to 4 of a kind. The colors of
the numbers on the tiles are like card suits.
Um Reifenbreite
Translating as "By the Width of a Tire," this game covers a Tour de
France-type of bicycle race. Each player takes control of a
four-member racing team, and the goal is to score as many points as
possible for the whole team. Movement is primarily handled by dice,
however a limited card set partially replaces die results. Once you
add unique rules which allow riders to draft one another and
multiple kinds of road surfaces, this game has much to offer race
fans.
Auf Achse
Auf Achse translates roughly to "On the Road", an appropriate title
for this game which has players delivering loads of commodities to
various German cities. Supply cities and demand cities are
determined through card play, and players attempt to get delivery
contracts by bidding against one another. Movement is accomplished
by rolling a die and then moving little rubberized trucks around a
highly abstracted map of Germany, which depicts lots of
interconnected roads and cities.
Carcassonne
A clever tile-laying game. The southern French city of Carcassonne
is famous for its unique Roman and Medieval fortifications. The
players develop the area around Carcassonne and deploy their
followers on the roads, in the cities, in the cloisters and in the
fields. The skill of the players to best develop the area will
determine who is victorious.
Niagara
Niagara is set in the not particularly safe world of rushing
waterfalls. In the late 18th Century, the Shawnee and Iroquois
Indians pointed white Desperadoes, Mercenaries and Adventurers in
the direction of hidden caches of valuable jewels, in the hopes of
turning them against one another and away from their territorial
expansion ambitions. Players play as some of those Adventurers. The
first player to be able to claim ownership of five jewels is the
winner. But the chase after the riches has some snags. The speed of
the river is always changing, since the speed depends on the
decisions of the players and the changeable weather. And once a
canoe goes over the walls, it's a hefty investment to replace it.
And there are also the Desperadoes to contend with, who aren't
above trying to plunder the riches from Adventurers returning home.
Niagara is distinguished by an innovative movement mechanic as well
as a beautiful three-dimensional rendering of the waterfall
setting.
I highly recommend listening to the podcast (This is not a clue,
it's a just great show).
Also boardgamegeek is a
great resource for all things board games. Many an hour has been
had scouring over the site looking for games to track down and
buy.
All the game descriptions come from boardgamegeek.
Checksums: S17 E28
UPDATE!!
The cache seemed to have been muggled. Its' been relocated
10-11m south from original coordinates, in the likely spot.