L.a.m.a.

Lama is the German word for llama. No big conceptual leap there. L.a.m.a. is, at least in Reiner Knizia’s vocabulary, an abbreviation for “lege alle Minuspunkte ab”. Discard all minus points. You could translate the title by its abbreviation, but then an eventual English edition would be called D.a.m.p., and whatever depiction you pick for that would be much less adorable than the crazy llama L.a.m.a. has. And so the international publishers have stuck with the adorable tylopod.
Linguistics lesson aside, L.a.m.a. is a small box card game that is nominated for the Spiel des Jahres this year. Not at all bad for a relatively simple shedding game and worth a look what makes it special.

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Spiel des Jahres 2017

Spiel des Jahres 2017

Is it really that time of the year again already? I could swear we just had an Essen fair, and suddenly the jury is announcing Spiel des Jahres nominees. Time does fly when you’re having more new boardgame releases than anyone could ever play. But here it is, and so we’re going to do what I guess most of you want: tell you about the nominees!

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Oltre Mare

Not every that has merchants as a theme need to be a complex trading game. On the contrary, Oltre Mare is a light game where you don’t worry about the price development of olive oil but instead need to think about the best use of your cards.

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Elfenland

This week we have a nostalgic look at Elfenland, a game about the invention of route planner software and a game from the US that made it to the German market before that was a common occurence.

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Wizard

I doesn’t actually take a lot of rules to create a great game. A very small set of simple rules plus one minimal twist is all it takes. A minimal twist like requiring you to predict the future. Welcome to Wizard.

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