San Juan

Tel went for the quick production route building indigo and sugar mills for fun, so it was no surprise to see a guild hall appear mid game. Andy was going for a hybrid approach with mostly purple cards, but the ones that helped the production route (Well, Aqueduct etc). Tel ran out a 10 point victory margin.

From Koln we hopped onto the train and made our way to Essen, arriving at the Hotel Jung at about 2:30. After a bite to eat, we wandered over to the Messe, said hello to the Warfrog crow, who were a tad worried having not had their games delivered yet. We all bought a few games from the Flea market before heading back to the hotel and a quick game of

Tonga Bonga

One of the attractions of Essen is the Flea Market, and the chance to pick up some OOP of hard to find games. Paul had been interested in this for a while, so snapped up the copy he saw. In the rules it says that if you roll high you're likely to make money but not move too far, whilst low rollers are likely to charge around the board, but make nothing in wages. And this is exactly how it turned out. Paul had his usual dice rolling abilities and rolled low throughout the whole game. He was the first and only player to return pack to port after founding 4 ports. Tel was rolling high and hence only just made the far end of the board, however he was hoovering up all the wages. This in turn meant that Tel won the game with Paul floundering in last. An unusual game for the Piddinghoe group as the usual tactic of bidding low probably won't work for the whole game. Perhaps we've finally found a game to force up the bids.

By this time we were all a tad peckish, so it was time for a trip the the Irish Pub, and a drop of the black stuff. We also managed to get in a game of

Dr Jeckyl and Hyde.

Another unusual outing in Piddinghoe as we don't generally do team games. The team of Tel and Andy mopped up in the first 2 rounds pulling out a big lead. So despite preventing Tel and Andy scoring in the third round, it wasn't enough to allow Paul and Oggie back into the game. And defeat in the fourth round put the nail in the coffin.

Back at the Jung and time to crack open the first NEW game from the show.

Geschenkt

Is one of the Amigo card games and was readily available for about 5 Euros. The box contains a deck of numbered cards and a pile of plastic counters. The cards are shuffled and 7 cards removed (we missed this rule). The top card from the remaining deck is then turned over and players take it in turns to either place a counter onto the card, or take the card and all counters on it. Once a card is taken the next player reveals the next card from the stack and we start again. Once all cards have been taken we tally up. Players organise all the cards they have won grouping any sequences of 2 or more consecutive numbers. These sequences are scored for just the lowest number in the run, all other cards are worth their face value. Add these cards and subtract the total from the number of counters the player has left. This is his final score. Expect everyone to score negative. Chris Kovac joined us for the game of Geschenkt. The game is very simple but also very elegant. At least 3 other copies made their way back to Brighton.

The Warfrog chaps turned up as we were finishing and they were a lot happier having had all their games arrived, with apparently very little wrong. There was rumour of an erratum to apologize for the lack of errata.

Despite all being shattered after the long day we were delighted that Hammy was kind enough to demo the new game to us

Struggle of Empires

The board is a map of Europe, with additional areas for the Indies, Africa and the Americas. Each player is playing as one of the major European countries of the time, and is trying to build up the best empire. The game is fought over 3 wars, though combat is not actually necessary. Wars are contested between to sides, and the first thing to determine in each war is the 2 sides for this war. Allies are not allowed to attack each other for the duration of the war. Determining the allies is done via a bidding mechanism with the highest bidder being allowed to determine 2 enemies in the first round and subsequently who their allies are. Once sides are picked the war begins. A war last a set number of rounds (dependant on number of players), and in each round players can perform 2 actions. This can be to claim a card (once per round), recruit armies/navy, declare an attack or colonise a free colony. In Attacks both the attacker and defender can ask allies for assistance (though in our game they never got any). The size of the 2 forces is then compared and a roll of the dice determines the winner, all pretty straight forward. As in Warforgs previous game PoR, the action cards are where the real power of the game lies. They provide all the meat to the game and it will be through careful selection of these cards that the game will be generally won and lost. The game plays relatively quickly, apparently in less than 2 hours for 4 and in 45 mins as a 2 player game.

We played through the first of the 3 wars, before the long day finally caught up with us all. As a group we are not big fans of the war game genre, and although this is not a true wargame, it still has a foot in the camp and as such is unlikely to see regular plays in our group. That said a copy made its way back to Brighton so we could give it a second chance when we're all more awake.

Skaal

Each player takes charge of a team of dwarven gold miners with the aim of making the most money by the end of the game. Money can be earned in 2 different ways, collecting the gold found or enterprising dwarfs can make a lucrative living selling beer to the thirsty miners. The game board is divided into a number of territories, all connected to 3 of its neighbours. On his turn a player has 1 action which can be taken from the following. He can place a new dwarf onto the board, move a dwarf into a neighbouring area, prospect for gold, mine gold, start a pub or move a pub.

Placing and moving a dwarf is self explanatory. To prospect the player rolls a die, on a 1 to 5 that many gold pieces are placed into an area of the players choice. However if Ooops is rolled then a red marker is placed into an area with no gold, this prevents that area from ever producing gold again. Whichever area is chosen for the dice roll attracts the attention of the surrounding dwarves, so one dwarf from each neighbouring area is moved into the target area. Whenever a player prospects the prospector token is moved along the score track. After a set number is reached, no more prospecting is allowed. A player can take as much gold in a single area as he has dwarves, and scores that many VPs. If this causes all the gold in a region to be taken then a red token is placed into the area, preventing further gold strikes. If a player has the most dwarves in a region and they don't currently control a pub they are allowed to place a pub into that area, placing one of their dwarves in charge. At the start of a players turn any pub they control scores them VPs equal to the number of opposing dwarves in areas containing pubs they control. If at any point an opponent has more dwarves in an area then the controller of a pub, the control of the pub switches. Finally a player may move a pub he controls to any other region on the board. The dwarf in charge stays in the original area. The game ends when all regions contain a red token, with the player with the most VPs winning.

Tel opened up a huge lead by grabbing an early pub, then prospecting for fun to attract all the neighbouring dwarves. Paul made an unsuccessful attempt at wresting control away. Meanwhile Oggie and Andy were fighting over another area. Eventually Oggie built a large enough lead to risk a pub whilst also managing to steal control of Pauls pub and slowly started to cut into Tels lead. Oggies pubs went from strength to strength whilst Tels floundered, allowing Oggie to claim the lead just before the end of the game.

Nobody was totally enamoured with the game with Tel probably enjoying the game more then the others. Andy got hung up on the fact that due to the vagaries of moving the prospector token it seemed possible for some players to gain a 1 VP advantage over others. One thing we found with the game was the difficulty 1 player had in evicting another player without help. Paul was trying to muscle in on Tels area, with Andy trying to get into Oggies, with neither have much luck until other players started to help out. Not a great game and not one that is likely to find its way into any of the Piddinghoe collections

A walk past the Winning Moves stall found a bit of empty floor space. Any space is always at a premium in the stand, so we quickly grabbed it, and tried a game of

Karabik

The board is a map of the Caribbean split into a number of areas. Some of these areas contain ports, with some of the others being colour coded to represent the players home bases. The playing pieces are 6 beautiful looking ships. Each player gets a deck of 7 tiles numbered -1 to 5 and a rack to hold them. The game starts with treasure placed in some of the ports, and each round 2 more treasure added to the board. The game ends after all the treasure has been placed on the board. Players distribute their tiles onto their rack, which has 1 space for each ship, placing the remaining tile beside the rack. Everyones tiles are simultaneously revealed for each ship in turn. Whoever has the highest numbered tile for that ship gets to move the ship that many spaces minus 1 for each -1 card played. In the case of ties players may reveal their 7 tile and use this to break ties. This tile does not add to the movement of the ship, but is only used to break ties. It can only be used once per round. If after using extra tiles there is still a tie, that ship doesn't move. Whenever an empty ship moves into an area containing a treasure tile, it can pick up that treasure, earning 2 VPs for the player. When a ship laden with a treasure enters a players home base, the treasure is removed from the game and the player receives the indicated number of VPs. The winner is the player with the most VPs at the end of the game.

I really liked the look of this one, the components were tremendous and the game sounded fairly interesting. Unfortunately the game seemed a little flat when we played it. There was often one big point scorer per round, but this usually attracted at least half the 5s meaning it didn't move. I suspect this is one of those games where a few games are needed to start seeing the game live up to its full potential, unfortunately we're not likely to find out as despite it making it onto at least 2 pre-fair lists, nobody was impressed enough to pick up a copy.

Paul wanted some time to himself to browse a few of the indie stalls, so the rest of us sat down to try a game of

Metalurgy

This is a card game played with a deck of cards consisting of only 4 types of cards Iron, copper, silver and gold. Ideally the cards in the game should've been hexagonal, but this would apparently have made the production costs prohibitive, hence standard cards are used. The cards have to be played onto the table in a special configuration to allow each card to have 6 neighbours. The cards are hierarchical with Iron being the lowest and cannot be placed on top of any other card. Copper comes next and must be placed on top of an iron card, Silver can only be played onto Copper and gold only on Silver. The game starts with the same layout each time and with each player having a hand of 3 cards. On his turn a player optionally reveals the top card from the draw deck and plays it. He may then play any number of cards from his hand. All cards played must follow the hierarchical nature of the cards, and iron cards must be played such that they neighbour at least 1 other card. All cards played in a turn must either be placed in a single stack or must all be the same type of card. A player must play at least 1 card on his turn. Players score points by creating a chain of one kind of metal, the size of the chain needed is dependant on the metal (Iron needs 9 whilst Gold only needs 3). If after playing their cards a player has produced a chain of the required size in a metal they get to remove a number of these cards. The number removed is again metal dependant. 1 of the removed cards is kept as a VP. Removing the rarer metals obviously reveals other metals below, and it is possible to create multiple chains this way all of which score for the active player. At the end of the turn the player redraws back to 3 cards. The game ends near the end of the deck when the end card is drawn.

Andy started well completing the first couple of chains. Tel wasn't far behind and soon caught up. Oggie was very slow of the mark, but had a very strong finish and won the game.

The rules are very simple but it took a little while to get used to the strict card placement rules, but that aside the game played very well. Whilst it is possible to have multiple scoring on a turn we're still yet to see this happen. This one is not likely to win any awards but was interesting enough to persuade Tel to allocate it some of his precious weight allowance for the flight back.

With Paul still off perusing Andy, Oggie and Tel crossed over to the JKLM stall and tried a game of

City and Guilds

The board here depicts a city. The city is split into 8 areas each made up of 8 squares. During the course of the game tiles are placed into these squares. There are 10 types of tiles, buildings and markets in 4 different colours plus some pubs and theatre tiles. All tiles except the pubs are shuffled and placed in piles face down. 3 are revealed as draw tiles. Alongside the city map are 4 tracks matching the 4 colours used on the tiles, these are the guilds in the games name. Each player starts with a hand of three tiles.

On his turn a player will play a tile onto the board from his hand and then draw on eof the 3 face up tiles. The tile played must be adjacent to another tile already in play. 2 squares are considered adjacent if they are on the same horizontal or vertical row and there are no squares between them, irrespective of how far apart they are. If the tile placed is a market then the player advances his cube 2 places on the matching coloured track. If the tile is a building the player puts one of his meeple onto the tile and either advances 1 on the relevant track or places an additional meeple on the tile. For theatres the player may only place a single meeple on the tile. The players that place the eighth tile into the first 4 areas immediately place one of the pub tiles. They are not allowed to place a meeple on this tile.

Once the eighth tile is placed into an area it is scored. The value of the area is calculated as 8 + 2 for each market + 5 for each pub of theatre in the area. These points are awarded to the player having the most influence in that area. This is determined by who controls the most tiles, followed by who has most meeple and then who achieved this first. Second place scores half the value of the area, with third getting half again. An additional scoring (which we didnt play at the fair) is that whichever colour is predominant in the completed area scores 4, 2 and 1 points for the 3 players most advanced in that track.

Once all the areas are full we have a final scoring phase. For each colour determine the chain of adjacent tiles that connects the most areas. That colour scores points from the series 1, 3, 6, 10, 15... depending on the number of different areas connected. The most advanced player on that colours track scores this value with second and third scoring half and quarter of this value. Whoever amasses the most VPs during the game wins.

We were joined in the game by one of the chaps from the JKLM stall, but he had never played the game before so didn't spot that we were missing one of the scoring rules. There is a limited choice of tile to draw when replenishing your hand and Tel was choosing markets whilst everyone else was going after buildings. This meant that Tel was not placing too many pieces onto the board, but was flying up a couple of the tracks. As a tactic it was doomed to failure, as by placing market stall after market stall he was increasing the scoring value of the various areas, but not gaining any influence in these areas, hence boosting everyone elses score. Andy and Oggie on the other hand were slugging it out up front, with the JKLM chap just behind. And so the game ended with Tel miles away in last place, his big score from the guilds nowhere near large enough to drag him into contention. Oggie just pipped Andy to the win with the other chap trailing in third.

The game is very simple to play, with very few rules. This became Andys game of the show with both he and Oggie taking copies back to Brighton. There are plenty of decisions to be made as to whether to concentrate on particular areas and/or guilds and where to diversify. Having subsequently played another game I think this one was well worth the money, and can see it hitting the table fairly regularly.

We headed down to the Brew pub and were joined by Martin (Hair), Richard, Paul, Christine, Colin, Frank, Emelli. When we found the Brew pub busy we headed across to the Istra. With so many gamers round a table it was inevitable that something was gonna get played, and the game played was

Werewolf

Only Paul from the Piddinghoe contingent had played the game before. So he was the only of us who was vocal during the first game. Granted that's a little unfair on Oggie whos hairy face can, and indeed were, mistaken for a werewolf. Hence he was killed very early in both games. In the first game Frank was very vocal, taking the lead, and was delighted to be revealed as a winning werewolf at the end of the game. Oggies early demise was a little unfortunate with him being the seer. In the second game we introduced the little girl who is allowed to peek. Not wanting to be caught out again, the group immediately strung up Frank, closely followed by Oggie. Not long after Colin was adamant that Andy had become much more vocal in the second game, his argument was very convincing and the rest of the group voted Andy for the chop, ensuring a victory for the villagers as Andy and Frank were the pesky werewolves.

Im Schattten des Kaiser

The aim of the game is to acquire the most VPs over the course of the 5 turns that make up the game. The game starts with one player randomly selected as Kaiser. This is about the political scene in medieval times with players fighting for control of 3 religious orders and 4 baronies and of course the Kaiser. Each player starts the game with 4 people on the board. People in the game are represented by a double sided tile. On one side is a single man and on the other a married couple. The 4 edges of the tile represent the 4 possible ages of the person. During each turn they will get older, rotating the tile 90 degrees. If this takes them above the oldest age, they are removed as having died.

During the course of each turn leader are chosen for each of the 7 influence areas; players buy cards bestowing powers; players have offspring; a new Kaiser may be elected; and the Kaiser get special actions.

The action cards are the real heart of the game. The cards are either pink, blue or white. Players take it in turn to choose these cards, they all cost money to buy, and each card is in short supply so it's a case of priorities. Once all players have all the cards they want, each player gets a new offspring. If the cards bought are predominantly blue then the player gets a (son) new player token to add anywhere to the board. Otherwise (a daughter) the player can try and marry his daughter off to one of the other players. If he manages this receives VPs and the other player gets to flip one of his player pieces from single to married. Otherwise the player receives cash as she enters the clergy (??).

If one of the players selected the "revolt" card during the card phase then we have an election for the new Kaiser. This will be contested between the current Kaiser and the player taking the revolt card. Each of the leaders in the 7 regions gets to vote for who they want to become Kaiser. Backers of the successful candidate get VPs. At the end of each round the (new) Kaiser gets some special actions

The winner is the player with the most VPs at the end of the game.

Our game lasted over 2 hours, but some of this was debating over some of the rules. Oggie was Kaiser for most of the game with Paul and Tel briefly flirting with power. The chap explaining the rules to us explained that you didn't need to be Kaiser to win the game, and our experience tends to back this up with Paul claiming victory despite Oggies lengthy spell in charge.

This was probably the heaviest game we played out in Essen so was no surprise to see this one becoming one of Pauls favourites of the show, and a copy finding its way into his luggage.

It is become customary for Tel to pick up a Bruno Faidutti game at the fair. The game on his list this year was

Boomtown

We were surprised to see one of the 3 demoing tables free with Boomtown on, so immediately pounced and tried the game. This is a Card game where players are involved in the Goldrush in the old west. Each player starts with some cash. The top four cards from the draw pile are revealed. The players now auction off the right to have first choice from the cards. Only the winning bid needs payout. Half the bid rounded up goes to the player on the winners right, with the remaining cash split between the other 2 players. The winning player then gets first choice at the cards, with the rest of the players getting one card each going clockwise from the winner. The majority of the cards in the deck are mines. Mines come in a number of colours, all have a number for 2 to 12 on which they payout, and indicate how much they payout. There are a number of special cards that in true Bruno fashion add a little chaos to the proceedings. Once everyone has their 2 dice are rolled and in true catan fashion the mines matching the sum of the die payout.

Tel get one of the special cards early on that allowed him to skim the top off some of the mines. The were 2 dynamite cards in the deck which could've destroyed this card, but these didn't appear until the very end of the game by which time the damage was done with Tel claiming victory.

As a group I think we all saw this as too similar to Settlers, which although having some of the usual Bruno chaos, somehow failed to miss the mark. No one in our group enjoyed the game enough to pick up a copy. However we did hear favourable comments about it from some of the other people at the Jung. Tel scratched Boomtown from his list and returned home with a copy of Iglu Iglu instead.

Whilst at the stall we also had a browse of the rules to the upcoming game

Ice Cream

The game was so dull sounding that we decided to not even bother trying a game of it. I can't remember anything about the game, having dismissed it as soon as we left the stall.

To end the Friday at the fair we returned to the stall where we'd played metallurgy the day before and played one of their other games

The Garden Gnomes Society

The aim of the game is to get an elusive golden hated gnome. This can either be achieved by selective breeding or by getting enough cash to buy one. Each player starts with 2 low valued gnomes. During the course of the game they can either borrow other players gnomes (paying cash) or hire out their own gnomes to other players (gaining cash). When 2 Gnomes breed there is no guarantee of the quality of the gnome produced. The likely outcome is a gnome of the same rank as the higher ranked parent, but improvements or runts are both possible. Alternatively players can trade 2 identically ranked gnomes for 1 gnome of a superior rank. Cash is available as prizes in 2 gnome contests each round or in desperate times gnomes can be sold.

So in each round the player has to decide how to best employ their gnomes. The bidding mechanism for the hiring out of gnomes was quite interesting. This was a sealed bid affair, but the active player also bid. However he was specifying the maximum he wanted to pay (or minimum he would accept if put a gnome out to stud). If none of the bids met the requirements, then the action fails and the gnome is put on gardening duty for the round. The player must accept the best offer he gets that meets his requirements regardless of who made the bid.

Andy got off to a flier getting a lucky breed early on. He looked a clear favourite for most of the game, but as the game was drawing to a close Oggie managed to close the gap. Tel and Paul were nowhere in sight, as Andy and Oggie fought it out. Both players managed to acquire the elusive gnome at the same time, but Oggie had the better supporting dwarves (have you ever seen Oggie?) and claimed victory.

The game was well received by the group, with my only reservation being the game time coming in at nearly 2 hours. Paul and Andy were happy to take signed copies of the game home.

In the evening we again visited the Istra and then back to the hotel we started with a game that could handle the 7 of us that had returned (Paul, Andy, Oggie, Tel, Emelli Doran, Gery McLaughlin and Chris Dearlove). Emelli had snagged a copy of the game Frank was selling off the end of the Warforg stall

Starfighters

Now I'm not the right person to be able to say too much about the game as it is an elimination game and Chris Dearlove and myself were eliminated almost as soon as the game had started by an Instant-kill card.

The group of seven was split into 2 groups of 4 with the addition of Martin Hair. Martin, Oggie, Chris and Gery all tried Mall World whilst the rest of us played

Clocktowers

This was on at least 3 of our lists. The pre-fair hype had it down as the card game version of Capitol. The idea is to build clocktowers from storey, clock and roof cards. Any completed clock tower must contain a number of storeys, a clock and a roof. However when a tower is completed it must be a single storey higher than the previously highest tower with that type of roof. There are cats and mice depicted in some of the cards, and these have an impact on scoring.

Unfortunately when we finished the game there was interest at all in trying it again. I am convinced we must be missing something from the rules as the game play was very straight forward, had no difficult decisions as the game effectively played itself.

After a couple of hands of Geshenkt, to lighten or moods we started on

Circus Flohcati

It was getting quite late and my memory is vague again. But this was another game that seemed to be broken. Paul managed to win both game by just collecting 1 of each colour and ignoring any sets.

Der Untergang von Pompeii

The board represents a map of Pompeii with the volcano in one corner. It is split into a grid with some of the squares containing buildings. The first half of the game is an exercise in getting as many people onto the board as possible. This is achieved by playing a card and placing a meeple into a building of the matching colour. The player is then allowed to place as many other pieces onto the board as there were meeple in that building. In the back are some Omen cards, when these are drawn the player is allowed to dispatch any meeple on the board into the fiery volcano. In our game Oggie drew 4 on the trot, the girl demoing looked guilty as she had shuffled the deck, the rest of us just put it down to Oggies infamous card drawing ability. Eventually the volcano erupts and the game is turned on its head. The cards are no longer used, and the aim is now to get as many meeple off the board as possible. Each turn players will draw a lava tile, these have a symbol, and must be placed adjacent to another lava tile with the same symbol. The player then gets to move 2 meeple. A meeple is allowed to move as many spaces as there are meeple in its starting square. The can move into a populated square but cannot continue move out of such squares. They obviously need to avoid the lava at all costs. Trapped meeple are dispatched into the volcano. Each meeple that successfully manages to make their way out of one of the city gates earns the player 1 VP. Whoever gains the most VPs wins, the number of meeple in the volcano broken any ties.

There would be no surprise to see this coming close to next years SdJ award. It is very simple to explain, has quite a light feel to it but at the same time does require thought over some of the moves ie a great Family game, just what the SdJ likes. The question is will it cut the grade with hardened gamers. The initial reaction from around the fair was not positive, but there is a thought that opinion may improve on further plays. The first half of the game is undoubtedly the weaker part of the game, but the second half does require plenty of decisions and trying to second guess other players and what tiles are going to come up. Oggie enjoyed the game to purchase a copy, Tel would have got a copy if he hadn't already blown his luggage allowance (and it was only Saturday morning??)

The Amigo stall was surprisingly quiet so we decamped onto an adjacent table to try

Razzia

This is the card game version of Ra, that has been re-themed as a gangster game. Some chap came across to explain the rules to us, but I think we'd already deduced most of them. The major differences from RA are: the conversion to a card game, the removal of the disaster tiles, a tweak to the card distribution and of course the theme.

As a card game the game is more portable which gets a plus point, the impact of not having a board will have to be seen as we were playing on one of the printed Amigo tables which had places printed for all the cards. Obviously usually players will have to manually keep track of the number of cards drawn and the number of policemen (ra tiles). As a group we thought the new theme gangster fitted was more intuitive than the original Egyptian theme. The loss of the disaster tiles is without doubt the biggest loss from the original. Granted when we were playing the game we didn't realise they were missing until much later. And I guess if the 2 games were identical there would be no reason to buy the new copy. As it was 3 copies returned to Brighton.

From previous experience Saturday afternoon is the nightmare time of the show. Its usually so busy that getting a table is nigh on impossible. Strangely it wasn't too bad this year but Paul wasn't to know this when he pre-booked a session of

Mall World

The game was explained to us by the designer herself. We were also joined at the table by a German who made it into a 5 player game. The board is made up of a grid that represents a new shopping mall and the players are charged with filling the Mall with shops. There are 4 types of shops represented by tiles. To build a shop the player needs a building permit, this is a deck of cards that allow the player to place a certain type of building onto the board provided it is placed adjacent to a specified type of building. These cards also allow an existing shop to specialise (place a particular coloured block on the tile). A second deck of cards are contracts that specify certain conditions that earn the player VPs. There are 3 types of contracts: the basic ones require two particular unspecialised shop types to be adjacent, the second type earns VPs for each unit that matches either of the specialised shops indicated, the final "special" type pays out for each instance of two particular specialised shops being adjacent.

Each player starts the game with a hand of permit cards and 1 of the "special" contract cards. The top four contract cards are placed face up by the board and one of each type of shop is placed onto the board. A number of payout chips are displayed. These are the cash incentives for playing a contract card. The game is played over three rounds where a round is completed once all the payout chips have been taken. On his turn a player may buy one of the face up contracts. He can then has the option of either playing a contract card or playing a number of building cards. If he plays a contract card it remains in front of him until the end of the current round at which point it is scored. Alternatively the player can play 1-3 permit cards. With 1 card the player gets to action it himself. With 2 or 3 cards an auction occurs. Each player start with a supply of petty cash, and this is used for bidding. The bidding mechanism used is sealed bid. He highest bid gets first choice at taking and actioning one of the permit cards, if there were three cards up for auction the active player receives the highest bid and the second highest goes into a pot, with only 2 cards the highest bid goes into a pot. The active player always gets to build the last permit card. The pot is divvied up as soon as it is large enough. Once all permits have been actioned the player is allowed to draw up to 3 cards, however his maximum hand size at any moment in time is 8 cards.

When the last payout chip is taken the round is over. We now have a scoring round where each player scores for each contract they have in play, once scored these are discarded and the next round starts. The games ends when either the last payout chip is taken in the third round, or when the last contract card is bought. Whoever has the most VPs wins the game.

As often happens in the first attempt at a game there was some suspect decisions made in the game and the game played differently to how I would expect future game to play. Players weren't playing too many contracts early on, and as a consequence the board was filling up quickly. We were also close to depleting the contract cards before we'd actually started the third round. However as players realised the game was coming to an end we started to see lots of contracts being played and the payout chips taken to trigger the third round.

In my opinion this was one of the games of the show. I guess a good gauge on what we thought of the game was that as soon as we finished the game we trotted over to the Rio Grande stall and immediately bought 3 copies, it would've been 4 but Andy decided that 3 copies within the group was enough.

We left the fair and returned to the Jung we wanted to be sure of getting into the Brew pub so had time to go through the rule to Oltremare so that we could play it on returning from the pub. At the Brew pub we had a couple of games of Don which was been sold for a bargain price at the fair. We would have probably played a couple more games down the pub, but some of the Warfrog guys turned up and as there was a distinct lack of tables at that point, we gave our table up to head back to the Jung for more games. When we got back the Jung was almost deserted with only Chris Kovac ther so we invited him into a game of

Oltremare

The game comes in a very small box, yet still contains a 4 piece board, some tiny harbour counters and a deck of cards. The board represents a map and all the harbour chips are placed onto the matching place on the board. Some of the cards have the name of one of the harbours and each player randomly gets one of these cards as there starting card and places their ship on the corresponding harbour. Each player also has a starting hand of cards. Each card has a number of attributes: a trade good, the number of cards a player can draw, their maximum hand size, how far their ship can move and how many pirate cards they must take.

At the start of their turn a player must discard down to the hand size indicated on their face-up card. They are then allowed a trading phase. Here they can trade whatever cards they wish with any other players. Players have to be honest when specifying the type goods, but may lie about any of the other attributes. Any player that trades with the active player gets a prestige point. During the trade phase players may also buy cards from either the draw pile or from their personal pirate stack. After completing their trades the player plays up to 3 cards. The attributes on the cards are summed and the player gets to draw the relevant number of cards, add cards to his pirate stack and moves his ship the specified number of places. If the player ends on a harbour token he takes that as his active chip. These chips bestow additional abilities. If the player ends on an empty harbour his current harbour chip is turned face down. The cards played are now placed face up of the players discard deck in any order his likes.

Midway through the deck is a Venice card. When (if) this card is revealed prestige points are scored then reset.

At the end of the deck the game is over. Prestige points are scored again. Players then go through their played cards pile without changing the order. Points are scored according to how many cards of each type are clumped together. The winner is the player with the most VPs.

We'd had a few beers before starting the game and hence details of how the actual game panned out are a little hazy, but suffice to say we all enjoyed it, and can see this becoming one of the favourite games of the Essen purchases. For a game that comes in such a small box, there is a lot of game here. Luckily when we bought it they offered us a small discount if we bought multiple copies, never ones to turn down a bargain we picked up 3 copies, which was just as well since they'd sold out of the 700 copies they'd brought by Saturday.

We also managed to rope Chris into a game of

Royal Turf.

By this stage the beers were taking there toll and Chris must've wondered what he'd let himself into. No detailed description needed for this old but great game.

With Chris deciding to call it a night, we embarked on a another game of Tonga Bonga. The game scored the highest scores the group has ever given to a game. Though this was largely down to the fun caused by the tactics employed by Andy and the beer we had drunk that evening.

After that we had time for a quick game of one of the new Adlung games

Flix Mix

Its customary to pick up a few of the adlung games each year, hidden amongst the mundane game they often produce is often an absolute gem. Unfortunately Flix mix was not the gem we were looking for. It's a real time race to get rid of all the cards in your hand. To do this you must place a card onto the ever growing structure of cards matching all the spots that are covered which must be at least 2. Probably a good game for kids to improve colour/pattern recognition, however it failed to impress 4 drunk 30 somethings.

We wandered round the Hall on Sunday morning but we all managed to resist the urge to buy more games and the only game we managed on the journey home was Four Dragons at the airport.

Firstly we have to offer a huge amount of thanks to Geoff Brown for organising the Jung Hotel and again letting stay there. The fair itself was as much fun as ever but there seemed to be a decided lack of a real quality game this year. My personal favourite games of the show (in no particular order) would have to be Mall World, Pompeji, Oltremare and Geschenkt.

My Purchases this Year:

• Mall World
• Oltremare
• St Petersburg
• Fuerio
• Um Reifenbrite
• Hattrick
• Leapfrog
• Iglu Iglu
• La Strada
• Razzia
• Geschenkt
• Carcassone Die Stadt
• Metallurgie
• Ricochet Robot
• Transamerica
• Carcassone - Count
• Ticket to Ride booster
• Puerto Rico Booster