Tonight the temperatures leveled out after the storms, so we threw open the windows and sat down at the dining room table for a Michael Schacht game, Paris Paris. You can end that double “iss iss” or “ee ee.” Since Dana studied abroad in Paris, and I majored in French, we tend toward the “ee ee” version. And not calling it the “Center Pompidow.” Schacht talks about this game being a rough draft of Hansa, a much heavier game.
I thought it might be good to set the scene a little bit for you. We have a heavy dining room table of pale wood with painted white legs. We’ve set it deep into one end of the rectangular room—both rectangles are oriented the same direction—so that there’s space for a Wendy play area. After dinner, and after Wendy’s in bed, we sponge off one half of the table and lay out a piece of light blue, acrylic felt. For game days, I lay down a bit of clingy runner and unfold the felt over the whole table. For these nights, I leave the felt folded and we play on the smaller area. We have two three large bookcases around us, with one of the bookcases devoted to hobby material and, of course, books.
Paris Paris (photo from BoardGameGeek user Jouslare) is a quick, interesting little game in which players set up businesses at bus stops in Paris. Each round scores one or more business. Occasionally, a “grand tour” is triggered and an entire route is scored. It was much more interesting than Castle Keep, and beats Monopoly hollow. Not the most challenging game on the shelf, but it took a lot more attention than I’d expected.
As I look back over the post, here, I notice that this is the first time—maybe?—I’ve used the designer’s name. But the fact that we know the designer of the game that this type of small-batch, high-production-value is why many people call these designer games. As opposed to the anonymous games you can pick up at Target or Toys-R-Us. In fact, we have his SdJ winner, Zooloretto, on the bookcase overlooking our game table. This focus on the designer, or the design team, is another reason that some people argue for the art label to be applied. I’ve talked about that, so I’ll add that I’m very interested in the rise of the designer, a topic I’ll have to get back to. It’s getting too late for much more typing. The cats are asleep, the temperature’s dropping, and there’s work to do tomorrow (though I’m happy to report that the office looks good and I’m catching up on the lost hours).
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