Saturday, December 25, 2010

Review: Linja

Hop, skip and win!

Linja is one of the older abstract games from Steffen Spiele. First published in 2003, it's an abstract efficiency race game somewhat reminiscent of a diceless backgammon in which two players attempt to race their pieces towards their home space, taking advantage of other pieces in the way to make big leap-frogging moves.

Review: Rat Hot

Stacks of Rats

Rat Hot is the Queen small-box release of Michael Schacht's Dschunke: Das Legenspiel, an abstract tile game that was developed from the goods-tile-laying element of Dschunke. In the game, players stack 3 by 1 tiles with crates on them to create large connected areas of goods in their own colour while trying to avoid (or cover up) rats.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Review: Mijnlieff

Tickle your tactical toes

Mijnlieff was an unusual (and somewhat difficult to spell) abstract game brought to Essen by Prime Games. Among the copies of Great Fire and 1860, this simple abstract stood out a mile and I ended up ogling it from a distance several times as I crossed the hall. Mijnlieff also won the UK games expo Best Abstract Game prize earlier this year.

What's this all about?


I'm a fan of many types of abstract strategy games, and I'm continually surprised by how little attention many of them attract. I'm working on reviews and articles to get the many modern publishers of these games a little more attention.

This blog will be updated when I've posted a new review or article on my site, The Abstract Rat