Top sellers

I never quite trust the statistics produced by my webshop's software, however checking against other records my mistrust is misplaced.

My current best sellers (based on the last 90 days) are:-

1) Runewars
2) Agricola - Farmers of the Moor
3) Twilight Sruggle
4) Summoner Wars - Orcs v Elves (if i added in the other base set this would be no 1)
5) Municipium

Numbers 2 and 5 are no suprise because they are sale items - Esdevium (the UK distributor) has deeply discounted these games and i have bought them by the truck load and passed the savings on to my customers. Farmers is an excellent expansion for Agricola, to my shame i have only played it once, despite my having played the base game over 50 times. Municipium is, from gaming buddy reports, a decent game. It suffers by comparision with the Essen 2008 competition and a very steep RRP of £45. However, the cheap copies have all gone now. I have yet to play Runewars, depite excellent reports. I am not suprised Summoner Wars has been so popular - it's quick to play, easy to learn and could be described as 'Magic the Boardgame'. The new edition of Twilight Struggle seems to have brought a whole new generation of players to this amazing game, and i see it played a lot at my gaming clubs - which is unusal as 2 player games aren't common on public nights.

Without counting Dominion and its progeny, bubbling under the top 5 are Thunderstone (love it but it needs an expansion ASAP), Carson City (there seems to be a resurgence in interest in this game after initial so so reports, Hansa Teutonica, Dungeon Lords, Republic of Rome (see comment re TS above) and Vasco da Gama.

I'm sure Campaign Manager 2008 would be a top seller if i could get some more!

FITS and Ubongo

Its not very often that I have FITS or ubongo in stock and to have on the shelf at the same time is a first.

FITS, short listed for the sdj last year, is (basically ) 'tetris the board game'. Ubongo follows the same principal of fitting odd shapes into a pattern but is played against the clock and has an additional game element as you collect gems, which gems you collect depending on how quickly (compared to your opponents) you complete the puzzle. Ubongo has spawned ubongo extreme and Ubongo 3d. Both add exponential levels of difficulty to what is a challenging game to start with. FITS ('fill in the spaces') has seen some unofficial expansions. When I first played FITS I thought it could benefit from a timer. Though having played Ubongo I am not so sure, as what makes Ubongo shine is having to complete the puzzle, shout 'ubongo!' And then select your gems. Of the two games I prefer Ubongo because it feels more competitive, FITS has a winner but works just as well solitaire, I have found both games to be very popular with non gamers who like the puzzle solving element of the games. However they are not gateway games, more of an end in them selves. The games prove popular, if relatively unknown, with gamers as warm up or warm down.