SpielByWeb

Huge kudos to Mikael Sheikh for his gaming web site SpielByWeb. Unlike "online" gaming sites like BSW, SpielByWeb allows you to play "offline". By this, I mean that you connect to the game using your browser, take your turn, and go away. When it's your turn again, you will receive an email.

There are many advantages to this style of gaming. You don't have to all stay logged into the server and play in real-time. You can play with people who have different schedules (or live in a different time zones) from you. You can play heavier games for any length of time, because it doesn't matter how many days or weeks the game takes. You can play many games at once since you don't need to play quickly (no one is waiting for you minute to minute). And you can take your time and carefully plan your moves for the same reason.

The one downside is that you lose some of the flow of the game from day to day. Why did I make this move? What was I going to do again? Fortunately, SpielByWeb even provides you with a little "notepad" area to keep track of things.

The games currently available to the public are: Amun-Re, Bus, Hoity Toity, Reef Encounter, and Wallenstein. The interfaces are graphical, very intuitive, and come with a chat so players can "talk" to each other, and a game log of all previous moves.

I am presently beta testing Santiago. La Citta and El Grande are in the pipeline. Great stuff.

Please check out SpielByWeb, and slip Mikael a few GG if you can.