25.2.2005 (Spuiratzn): Coloretto – Amazonas, Australia, Viking Fury

Coloretto: Amazonas
The main question that arises after playing this boring and totally luck-of-the card-draw driven game is: Why did they bother? “Coloretto” is a wonderful light, quick and anything-but-dumb game, so if you want to profit from it's name, why invent a game that a) has nothing to do with coloretto except vague similarities in card scoring b) is reminiscent of the most basic rummy-like card games one remembers from your misspent youth? Players draw cards and put them in collecting rows, if you don't have anything that furthers your collection you play a card in an opponent so he loses cards. That's about all the strategy involved in this game. The cards are nice though, and kids up to 10 might like this game because you have to look for cute animals.

Australia
This game does to Australia what “Africa” did for Africa. Which means – nothing at all, at least regarding the slapped on theme. This is a quite cerebral exercise of area enclosure and scoring, certainly not without it's charm, but with little to none theme flavour. The system is very elegant and unfussy and the game is quickly under way, but the more geeky the players are the slower the pace. Choosing your actions carefully is the main brain teaser in this game, and there are many scores to calculate and decisions to make before you do the “perfect” turn. But undeniably this is a game that works well and for that it can't be really faulted.

Viking Fury
Super new game by the legendary Ragnar Brothers. Epic in scope with astonishingly short playing time, this game recreates the life of the Vikings in a strangely entertaining way. Many interesting game mechanics (finding the best possible move with limited actions is a lot of fun), the only aspect of the game which might turn off some is the immense power of some rune cards. Our solution is to simply leave away some of the more harmful cards, which is easily done.