Hi everyone,

The moment is at hand, the winner of the "History Repeats Itself" contest is
about to be announced. I'm sending this to the main list without knowing the
author's names, so I'm hoping that Karol will send a follow up email announcing
the actual winning names.

The field was small this contest, with only 5 submissions, which worked out well
because my free time has been in the toilet recently! Of the 5, One was racing,
one was a german game style, two were abstract and one was a negotiation game.
Of the entries, two really stood out, and the group liked both and had a hard
time choosing as both were very different games, both enjoyable for their own
reasons. In the end though, I felt one delved into the theme better than the
other, and deserved the win ahead of the other games.

The winner of the 4th piecepack contest is "Pharoh's Heir", a german style board
game set in the lands of Ancient Egypt. The game is basically a rehash of
Puerto Rico, with elements of Amun Re and the classic scoring mechanism of El
Grande thrown in. While feeling strongly borrowed from other games, "Pharoh's
Heir" changes it up enough resulting in a very enjoyable experience. Two
piecepacks are required to play the game, but it's definately worth it to pick
yourself up an extra copy. Our group enjoyed it because there were some tough
choices to make throughout the game. I love Puerto Rico and this game uses the
main mechanism very well. In fact, one gamer in our group that doesn't enjoy
Puerto Rico, enjoyed "Pharoh's Heir", so there's a glowing review itself. The
rules are a tad repetitive, but this is fine as there is little that's
questionable about them. (That seemed to be a theme this year. The rulesets I
found very clear with low instances of confusing moments) A summary of the
actions would have been nice to add to the playmat, as we were referring to the
rule book a lot early, but that's my only beef. All in all a very enjoyable
experience, and a worthy winner of the 4th piecepack contest. Congrats!!! (On
an aside, if you have a copy of La Cita, use the population tolkens from that
game in this; it's really adds a whole lot to the experience!)

The runner up is a very enjoyable racing game called "Chariots". This is a beer
and pretzels games with some interesting mechanisms. Movement resolution is
inspired by the Starfleet Battles method of movement of dividing turns into
"Impulses". If you've never seen this, read the rules and you'll see what I
mean. It's quick to learn and fun to play and had the group asking to play more
once it was over. For me, what kept it out of first place was that it quite
didn't go far enough. During each lap you get two special actions to use which
are Chariot racing themed. I would have loved to seen more of these.
Basically, it felt like you could put any theme on this game and it would still
be the same game. I would have liked to see more special actions added to the
game to make it feel more Chariot like. I strongly recommend the author to take
the game away and expand it. You have a potential sleeper hit on your hands!
Good job!

For Best Use of Theme I have to give this to "Divorced, Beheaded, Died,
Divorced, Beheaded, Survived", a game in which you attempt to reinact the ways
King Henry VIII murdered his own wifes. The theme has a nice dark humor to it,
which made people really anticipate playing it. The game itself is an abstract
strategy game with the King Henry theme thinly applied. My biggest problem with
it, is the same I have with playing something like Quoridor 4 player; in order
to block the progress of an opponent, you must yourself give up moving forward
to do so, leaving the others players in better positions. Because of this, the
game had a 4 player solitaire feel to it, and I think it plays better as a two
player game.

There were only two game left, so I'll mention each quickly here. The first was
"Berlin" a game involving the destruction of the Berlin Wall. Once again, this
is an abstract game with a very thin theme attached, and it was ok for a couple
plays. The biggest complaint was that you needed to play it with some sort of
grid beneath as it because harder and harder to tell what was a space as the
wall became more and more removed. The game is also heavily dependant on luck,
especially in the intial rounds, though there is some interesting things going
on in the end game.

Lastly was "Black Thursday", (which I believe should have been more properly
called "Black Tuesday") a game based on the '29 stock market crash. You are
investers trying to dump stock as quickly as possible. At first glance it
appears to be a negotiation game, but a few plays made us realize that there no
need to ever trade at all. The task of losing stock through "Windows of
Opportunity" are so easy, that there's no reason that all the players shouldn't
have lost all their stock before exiting the building. On the plus side,
"Black Thursday" had one of the better games, but it really needs *a lot* more
time in play testing. I'd continue to work on this, because I'm sure there's a
very good game waiting to be released here.

So, that's about it, congrats again to "Pharoh's Heir" for a well deserved win.
If any of the authors have specific questions, feel free to email me.

Enjoy your victory and let's get that fifth contest rolling!!

Rob.

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