Tonight we brought another couple of classics back to the table. Union Pacific is long out of print, having been superseded by Airlines Europe. Still, it has a great set of mechanics and can be a very tense game. This is especially true when the final scoring round happened one turn too soon, and almost immediately after the second last scoring round. As it is, I would have won (surely you believe me, dear reader)!

As it was, I ended up in last place, but had a great deal of fun with this game.

After that we played a few rounds of Die Sieben Siegel, a wonderful trick taking game with some neat features. It has come to the table so many times that I’ve had to sleeve the cards. Sadly, the version I like is out of print and the current version has such terrible artwork that I refuse to play the new one. Yes, it;s that bad. Nevertheless, here is another great game that doesn’t come to the table often enough.

But tonight both games were back!

Tonight we tried out the three player Japan board for Steam, one of my favourite train games.

It was an extremely challenging board but it reminded me how much I like Steam. This definitely needs to get to the table more often.

Here’s our tryout of Eclipse. It’s a great space opera style game when you don’t want to pull out Twilight Imperium III.

It’s arranged! In a couple of weeks I will have a bunch of friends over and we will have another go at that monster game Twilight Imperium III.

I’m looking forward to it, while still being a little overwhelmed about the rules.

Still, it will be fun…

Today Rafael and I had a chance to play 7 Wonders with the two player variant. 7 Wonders is a great game with a neat card draft mechanic, can play up to seven people and plays in about 40 minutes or so. My game group likes it a lot.

Many Eurogames that are designed for 3+ players have a two player variant. These are often rather undesirable because they seem tacked on to the rules as an afterthought, usually as a marketing decision to sell more copies.

The two player problem is often solved (poorly) through the addition of a fake third player. This was done most stereotypically in Alhambra, where the fake third player is called “Dirk”, after the designer of the game, Dirk Henn. After encountering the fake third player in that game, we now exclusively refer to that fake third player in a game as Dirk, no matter what the game.

Due to the usually poor integration of Dirk into game rules, I was reluctant to try the two player variant in 7 Wonders, but Rafael persuaded me to try it. The completed game is below with Dirk on the right hand side.

I was surprised at how well the play went with a Dirk player. In the Dirk variant for 7 Wonders, players exchange their hands with each other every turn and the lead player selects one extra card from Dirk’s pile. The lead player then plays one card to his board and another card to Dirk’s board. Next turn the opposite player becomes the lead and repeats the process.

This leads to many interesting variations such as: forcing Dirk to buy resources from you, arranging cheaper resources for yourself, and causing Dirk to pay less to your opponent than yourself. These underhanded techniques may cause your opponent to glare at you when they work in your favour.

We will probably play with Dirk more often, at least in 7 Wonders.

If you have the game I urge you to give it a try.