Shock New Additions

At the risk of coming over tabloid - what a shocker! I really hadn't expected to be putting Stronghold in a sale just months after it being all the rage at Essen, and having played and enjoyed it myself. A temporary price reduction resulted in several being sold to the Colonies but still no hint of interest in the UK. A Brief History of the World was a welcome return of an old favourite, and only the other week we had a game of the original "tea towel" version - the linen playing board was a Ragnar Brothers characteristic for several years.

I know that the 2nd edition of Ideology was keenly awaited so can only assume that price is the issue - well, it's cheap now. Railways of the World is a hefty box but perhaps there too the price has been the problem. Certainly with Dungeon Twister it looked like a huge price hike compared with the very popular original version, but it has 16 rather good plastic miniatures in it, and 16 of the Fenryll resin miniatures available for the original version cost more than the new game! We have not been helped by the Pound's dive against the Euro, of course.

I must admit that when I bought a batch of Widlife Rescue because I liked the look of it and it is not only designed but actually printed in England - a real novelty - I was already aware that wildlife games have been out of favour for several years. I haven't heard a theory advanced for why that is, but the best one I can think of is that the young girls who used to be the obvious market are only interested in vampires these days. One of our customers who works in a knitting shop tells us that any wool shade that is given a vampirish name sells out in no time, so it is not just Emos who are following that trend. We live in strange times.

I thought that Ants would be a good family game for Christmas, I still like the look of it but some are less forgiving of the ant puns than I am.

I know nothing about Montego Bay yet, but it is likely to be added to our board games library soon if the cheap copies are not snapped up. That is already the case with Garibaldi, which we have had going cheap for ages - it is a cross between Scotland Yard and Fury of Dracula, that sounds good to me...