After a long sleep, Wallenstein sees a return to our gaming table. When I first got it I was afraid my family would not be willing to play it due to it’s long length. How wrong I was! It was a smash hit, even my older brother’s wife loved it so much that they bought it as well. We played it almost every Sunday. This year we haven’t been gathering together for so long and thus not being able to play Wallenstein. Yesterday was an exception and I took my copy of Wallenstein with me just in case.. and it worked! We had a very nice and tight game.

We had one new player who figured out the rules fairly quickly, rest of us have had 10+ games played before. Jyri found a nice eastern corner and scored a massive 30 points for the first year and it was looking like he is winning easily. The rest of us where fighting in the wheat-heavy region (Gft Mark/Luneburg/Paderhorn). Our points were 22 (me), 17 (Ed, the new guy) and 13 (Vesa).

Things got a little better when Vesa declared that we should strive for a peace and try to strike Jyri the best we could. I took the offer straight away – Vesa was so much behind that I didn’t consider him so much of a threat, but something needed to be done to Jyri. Luckily Jyri ran out of money on turn 4 and missed getting extra troops. Because of that we were able to capture some of his buildings, but we were not sure if it would be enough.

The end points were 49 (me), 48 (Jyri), 42 (Ed) and 41 (Vesa). So after all, a very close game with many agonizing decisions. When we asked Ed how he liked the game, he said: “It was fun, annoyingly fun”! I think that summarizes it for me too. There were many times when I was frustrated and sure I don’t stand a chance to win or when I just didn’t have enough actions to execute all that I needed to be done. I think therein lies the greatness of this game for us.

Other than that, my game week was a disappointment. I guess the summer is having an effect to gaming as well. I played a couple of For Sale’s again and it is still lot of quick fun. It was quite random with 6 players, but then again, I think it was more fun as well. I guess it depends on what mood do you play. Do you play to win or do you play to have fun. And for me quick fillers should be played more with the “have fun” -attitude.