Brian Bankler (brianb@nando.net)

July 15, 1997

I am an unrepentant gamer. After starting to seriously collect games while at graduate school at Carnegie Mellon, I was unleashed upon the business world about two years ago. The sudden influx of real money has increased my gaming purchases somewhat, which has the ironic downside of decreasing my reviews, because I'm usually busy trying a newer game rather than reviewing that one month old game.

In addition to boardgaming, I am currently intensifying my tournament bridge play time over the last few months. I'm somewhat of a bridge snob, and I consider most of the trick-taking, old-style card games coming out of Germany to be crap. Especially a year ago, when every company thought it was necessary to put out a slew of card games. The only exception to the rule is M&uum;, which I think is quite clever.

In recent months, I've also been returning to more "American" games. By this I mean longer, more complicated, full of little card-board counter games. Not full fledged wargames, but games like Age of Rennaissance, Time Agent, Throneworld, Twilight Imperium and the like. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a sucker for 'Space Exploration and Conquest' games.

I've given up on trying to figure out my favorite games. Usually by the time a list is posted somewhere, I have usually changed to playing newer games.

The Game Cabinet - editor@gamecabinet.com - Ken Tidwell