Swede Trash - Part 1; Damn you, Dan Glimne!

From the country that gave you furniture you pay to build yourself and delicious meatballs - Let me show you the games of my people!

I think most countries has pumped out a fair share of boardgames and traditional cardgames. In this article series I'm highlighting the ones I found interesting enough to waste bandwith on from my home country - The kingdom of Sweden. Its mostly going to be thematic games that people outside the Swedish Empire might not have heard of.

Bondespelet, the Swedish Agricola, a typical game you wont read about in this article.

To get a starting point though it might be wiser to ease you into Swedetrash with the perhaps most famous title so you dont get scared and confused: Drakborgen! The two brilliant minds of Jakob Bonds and Dan Glimne plunked out the title in 1985 and kids everywhere in sweden played the living shit out of the game. It had you chase treasures, falling into traps, fighting monsters, rolling dice and there was even a dragon in the game! 

in 1987 a random game company called Games Workshop picked up the title and renamed it DungeonQuest (which is more or less the accurate translation, but it should really be "the Dragons Keep". I guess quest sounds more epic And dungeon is preferable over dragon?). Since I was only at the tender age of 2 at the games original release in Sweden I didnt try it out until it was the second edition version in somewhere of the year 2002. The second edition was called Drakborgen - Legenden and was never released outside Sweden, but its very close to our modern times version of DungeonQuest, at least as a game system. Even to this day the box cover art for Legenden gets my dungeon crawl senses tingling with sensation.

The first thing that hit me when we played the game was that it was hard. It really hated you as a player on a personal level which was something unique back then in my hobby gaming group where we played mostly rpg's and monopoly with wicked free parking space rules. It wouldnt let you just jank out treasure from that cave without exposing you to every nasty thing it could possibly throw at you. Me and my mates invented new kinds of curse words while playing this game and we even destroyed most of a  copy of the game in sheer frustration. Ah, the joy of being a parent to teenage boys.

I still prefer Drakborgen Legenden to the new reprinted version from Fantasy Flight Game, which might be for nostalgic reasons more than anything. The old boardgame had a very cheap and robust feel to it that I like.I do like the reprint on a principal level though, because this is a game that should be played in every generation to teach a life lesson or two. When a dragon and his traps and minions comes back from my childhood to rape my face I'd rather it not to be under glossy and shiny circumstances, Wich the third edition from FFg brings plenty of. The new Fantasy Flight Games version also include a kind of stupid card driven combat system as a variant to the basic dice rolling one that allowed you quicker access to more game sessions (ie getting your butt handed to you more times per night) and that I dont really care for. 

Dan Glimne, one of the designers of DungeonQuest and the main topic of this article, also designed a superbly made area control and intrigue game called Svea Rike depicting the Swedish history from 1500s to the early 1800s. Svea Rike has not been release outside of Scandinavia, but there is resources to convert the cards to english and the rules have been translated by fans. The game also got a reprint and is widely available in Sweden (which in turn makes it easier to get a copy for foreigners). The game is basicly an action point driven game that gets you lots of choices to fetch different resources and position yourself well on the game board and contains lots of more modern era gaming mechanics (the game was released in 1997) we are more used to today then when this game first was released. This was a beast of a game for us more casual non-wargamers To tackle back then. It had a diplomacy style table talk layer to it that was completely lost on us at the games release, other than the odd backstabbing and the occastional dealing for a small piece of the victory point pie. Now when I play with more (relatively) mature gamers we appreciate that aspect of the game much more.

One of the interesting parts of the game is the war with foreign countries everybody could pay to get in on and if Sweden was victorious everybody who pitched in resources got some war loot Depending on how much you helped, so you always had this mind game going on how much you thought you had to sacrifice for that stage of the game.

Svea Rike is an event card driven game with a lot of randomness and more modern designs with the same mechanics are better at not being so chaotic. But, I've found that this is a game that rewards the flexible player that is good at adapting to a game state and that is rarely seen in games these days. Game design nowdays focuses more on balance or to make stuff within a game "even ground" so its refreshing to play something unpredictable once in a while which there is in spades in a session of this game. It also play out a historic era that no other game describe and that will give it some history buff points, for sure. I  will likely make an indepth review of this gem at the first opportunity I get.

Continuing on the Dan Glimne trail of games with fantastic setting we have a cartoon IP game:

Masters of the Universe is your classic roll-and-move + racing game, but here you could decide which way to move around the board a'la talisman, but you actually get more choices in direction here over talisman - and that makes the first part of the game a redicilous minigame of everybody rolling dice, counting squares of every possible direction they can go to before moving and then decide to move. That takes essentialy 80% of the time you are playing this game, for real. The goal of the game is to beef up with equipment, go to Castle Greyskull (in motherfucking 3D!!! Okay, its just one cardboard piece) and defeat Skeletor first to be able to shout "I HAVE THE POWER!" and win the game. No, you dont have to shout that phrase, but the theme, man! The theeeeme.  FYI Im writing this wrapped in leather and blasting the intro song to he-man in the background.

The equipment is cardboard chits you place around the board randomly so you have to poke around a little to try and find them. The rules are printed inside the top box lid, a true blast from the past. Do you remember the last time you played one of those? There is so much dumb stuff in the game, from the graphics on the chits to the rules, but its still an enjoyable ride with a couple of kids you want to bully with an 80's cartoon character they wont relate to.You can also play as Teela and ride battle cat and that is gold star in my nerd book. The game was released in 1984 in sweden and has also a danish, finnish and french (!) version. It has not been reprinted since the 80's but I have spotted several copies of it on the swedish auction site Tradera.com for a fair sum if you wish to pick one up for your collection.

Masters of the Universe lack variable player powers, but if you seek the build-up-a-dude character feeling in less than 20 minutes (which is my avarage game lenght of this) why not give Eternia a chance? This is a perfect game for Flip the Table podcast to dissect if I end up with a spare copy and have the heart to hear negative stuff about my precious. If I ever get a chance to interview Dan Glimne I'm going to ask him so many questions about this game its not even funny.

 This will round up the first part of the trip, next part will be about a gaming company starting with the letter Ä and a couple of more games.