Katzenjammer Blues. This game has played well with 2, 3 and 5. It is fast and elegant. This is definitely a good little filler game.

Elfenland. We played this and it's good. The game playedin a little over an hour. It retains a lot of the feel of Elfenroads.In general, I enjoyed it. But there were some 'back of my mind' questions that bothered me. The first was an observation that some modes of transport are just better. For example: Dragon versus Trollwagon. The dragon can go everywhere the trollwagon can (and more) and is always as cheap or cheaper. But there are exactly the same number of dragon token/cards as troll token cards. In Elfenroads, you had auctions for control of the tokens, which gives a sort of internal balance. Here, there is a bit more luck. Also, both games have the "Your cards are mainly of type X, but no X tokens came up this turn."

This game at least has caravans (use 3 cards on any route with a token) which is painful but less painful. The other thing I'm wondering about is victory conditions. On turn three you win if you have visited all 20 cities. On turn 4 (normal victory) you take cities and subtract distance from your 'destination'. I'm just wondering why it isn't cities with distance from destination as a first tiebreak. No real issues with it, I was just wondering. On a pragmatic design note. Little Wooden Cubes. Elfenland doesn't use them. It uses Little Wooden Cylinders. That tend to fall down and roll away from the city they are marking.

SiSiMiZi. Despite the predictions of doom this game took 20 minutes, the winner only needed one crossover. I would have needed one to win (a turn later). One player needed two and I don't remember for the fourth. We had a simple "No discussions" house rule and that was that. I'm not sure it would have been a problem with discussions, but no discussions certainly sped the game along. While I admit that theoretical stalemates could occur, I don't think it's a practical issue in a four player game because if I block one player at my expense, I'm hurting myself and one other player, and ignoring two players, so reasonable play seems to be to focus on your lines(trying to ensure you don't need crossovers) and hurt other players opportunistically.

Golem. A game introduced by Steffan (not part of the London games). A reasonable little game. Amusing. You build golems and have them battle. Hardly a classic but I'll probably play it a few more times, given the chance.

Groo. Fun, chaotic.

Ransom. An interesting little negotiation game. It doeshave a problem with victory conditions and expectations of what constitutes reason able play. The basic idea is you buy land, labor, equipment and then bid on contracts for buildings (but the contract bids come up randomly, so quite often you have a contract and then scrounge for supplies). Fine idea...but when you start getting to the end, should you make deals thathelp you but help someone else more? In our game, I won the bid for the empire state building and then couldn't trade for a key plot of land. I was offered a secondary deal that was fairly horrible. I could build a building (smaller than empire state) which let me turn my land and equipment into money, but I had to give the empire state contract to someone who could fulfill it. So, the choice: sit on my stuff and wind up losing money for the game, or make the trade, meaning I'm positivefor the game, but giving the other player about twice as much money? My decision could have swung the game between the player I dealt with and a third (uninvolved) player.

So, if your group has a different idea on what rational play is (Should I take the loss to avoid throwing the game, or should I play for my best personal position?) then I'd avoid this. But I think the game is a fairly good, tense little negotiation game.We'll just have to see if that situation is common or not.