The Game Report: Session: St. Petersburg, Igloo Pop

Session: St. Petersburg, Igloo Pop

July 14, 2004

Taught St. Petersburg to my weekly group tonight, and something happened for the first time in... possibly forever. We played three times in a row. Our group simply doesn't do that with anything other than Liar's Dice. Back in the day we might have played two games of Puerto Rico in one night, but I'm not sure we ever tripled up. The novelty of St. Petersburg's newness is certainly a major part of it-- I doubt we'll threepeat again. But the fact that the other players were sufficiently into the game to do so tonight is significant. The first game was extremely close, while the second and third featured more decisive wins (one based on aristocrats, the other on valuable buildings and keeping pace in aristocrats). We ran out all decks but the upgrades in the final game.

I really dug the shaker concept in Zapp Zerapp, but loathed the lame
Parcheesi game it was saddled with. Igloo Pop shatters the shackles on the shakers and puts them center stage, making for a lighter and more entertaining game. Now the game's all about matching the shakers to the
proper value (or value range) as quickly as possible. Fun, frantic, fast, and fluffy-- fabulous! A great closer.

Posted by Peter at July 14, 2004 03:46 AM

Comments

Not only BBW has St. Petersburg, but now there's a freeware version of the game. Look at boardgamegeek for the link and how to install the English translation overlay.

There's also some heady analysis of the game now, but so far it's only available in German and French.

The power curves and game length are really balanced for the 4 player game, with average scores clocking in around 40-70 points. But if you play 2 player, we usually fetch over 200 each player. You'd expect 2x the average 4 player score, but instead you get 3-5x as many points thanks to the different power curves at work.

Posted by: Innovan on September 3, 2004 06:31 AM