The Game Cabinet

The Game Cabinet was last updated on April 1, 1995.

The Game Cabinet holds rules, rule variants, reviews and random information about board games from around the world. Some of the articles were written for the Game Cabinet and others have been culled from the net.

The Game Cabinet covers family, beer and pretzel, and strategy games. War games, miniatures, and roleplaying are well served by other information sources.

Usage statistics for last month may be of interest to contributors and the curious.

If you have information to contribute to the Game Cabinet just drop me a line at the address listed below.

Letter from the Editor

Woosh! I'll never translate anything this large again but the translation of Reiner Knizia's New Games in Old Rome is finally done. The original rules weigh in at 120 pages, with ample illustration, to be sure, but still amount to a mountain of German text. I had originally hoped to have this done by the Ides of March but alack and alas, here it is one week late.

Peter follows up with Revolution, Reiner's look at the French Revolution, and Merfyn Lewis forwards on an anonymous translation of High Society, one of Knizia's most recent games. Catherine translates Alan Moon's Mush into French. And Tim sweetens the pot with a PostScript rendition of the event cards (including Alan Moon's variant events) for the game of chocolate manufacturing, Schocko & Co. (complete rules are also enclosed).

A hearty welcome to Dirk Bock, our man on the scene in Germany, and Julie Prince, who promises to get more American games reviewed in these pages. Dirk has the skinny on several of the games released for the Nuremberg Toy Show. Julie opens with Robo Rally, the controversial new game from Garfield. Is it a multi-hour programming grind or an exciting and different race game? Read Julie's review and find out. (But watch this space for rebuttals!)

The Living Room Floor

Gaming News

• Bits and Plays - an infrequent, and informal, gaming news report
• The Nuremberg Toy Fair - capsule reviews of some of the new games

Game Reviews

• Galopp Royal - sedan chair races brought to you by Klaus Teuber
• Robo Rally - race or programming excercise? the jury is still out
• Sternenhimmel - a game where you can truly read your fortune in the stars
• Waldmeister - a technically accurate forestry management game

Game Bits

• RoboRally - racing robots variants
  • Random Damage
  • Board Layouts
• Schoko & Co. - PostScript files for various bits in English, edited and rendered by Tim Trant
  • the event cards including the variant cards by Alan Moon
  • the record sheet

English Rule Translations

• Barbarossa - a chaotic quest for the identities of clay blobs
• High Society - try to keep up with the Joneses in this Knizia bidding game
• New Games In Old Rome - the rise and fall of Rome in fourteen new games
• Revolution - Knizia mans the barricades
• Schoko & Co. - a great business game featuring chocolate manufacturing and sales

French Game Translations

• Mush - la fièvre et le défi d'une course de traîneaux tirés par des chiens d'Alaska

Traditional Games

• Go - the University of Texas page seems to have gone but this may suffice in its place

Other Places

• The Games Page - featuring these great games from Bones Games
  • Bones - the game of domino domination
  • Sovereign Seas Lite - a light wargame set on the high seas
  • The Way - a nice little path finding game
  • Barons of Fyn - a light hearted, Whamesque political game
• Ishi Press - one of the premiere publishers of books on Go
• The Miniatures Page - complete guide to miniature gaming
• Worldwide Club Listing - complete guide to gaming clubs throughout the world
• Worldwide Convention Listing - complete guide to gaming conventions throughout the world

In (And On) The Cabinet

These drawers and shelves hold the bulk of the stuff in the Cabinet. Have fun rooting around in them!

• The Front Door - or, rather, the odd collection of ads stuck to it
• Game Shelf - original games, rule translations, commentary, and extra bits
• Review Drawer - reviews of games, books, and magazines
• Ludography - index cards listing designer/inventors and their games
• Book Shelf - board and strategy game books
• Magazine Rack - traditional print periodicals that feature game news and reviews
• The Phone Book - always a good place to look for phone numbers and addresses
  • Clubs - well organized spielfreaks and how to find them
  • Manufacturers and Distributors - folks that make and move games
  • Shops - merchants that sell cool games and accept phone/mail orders
• Web Games Terminal - various human and machine opponents await you
• Out The Back - if you go right out the back you can get to all sorts of other places
• Back Issues Shelf - holds everything in the order in which it was added to the Cabinet
• The Cabinet Makers - can often be found inside (strangely enough)

The Game Cabinet - tidwell@kaleida.com - Ken Tidwell