Pauls Essen 2009 31-Oct-2009   Paul Let's start with the standard disclaimer. We may well have misread, misheard or misunderstood rules in any or all of the games we played. Whilst a wrong rule is unlikely to convert a good game into a great one, it may well turn a good game to a poor one. So bear this in mind whenever I describe a game in less than glowing terms. Also, most of my opinions are from a single playing of a game. This might be an outlier, and the game may usually play better or worse. This year only myself and Oggie went. So we played a few games with just two players, but in most cases joined with other people. We also decided to fly for the first time in a few years. This limited what we could bring back, which concentrated the mind on trying to find good games. Egizia This is a worker placement game based in Egypt. Workers are placed in spaces along the Nile. About half of the spaces have a fixed purpose on each of the 5 turns, the other half being made up from a deck of cards. The cards laid in later turns tend to be more powerful than earlier ones. You have eight workers but usually won't have the opportunity to play them all. The innovation in this game is the river placement mechanism. Each worker you place must be downstream of all of your others. This results in players pretty much leapfrogging over each other when placing their workers. The basic idea is to try to build up a balance between the two primary resources in the game, which are men and stone. Then use these to generate VPs. Most victory points are earned throughout the game, though a not insignificant amount come from bonus cards which may be collected each turn. Men come in four colours and you may have up to nine of each. You can only use the men of each colour once per turn, and each man uses one brick. These are primarily used to take bonus cards and to build monuments. We played it twice. Once as a two player in the halls with a couple of obligatory rule misteachings and the other time back at the hotel as a foursome. Nothing revolutionary here, except perhaps the restriction of only taking actions downstream of earlier ones. Nicely done though, and we both thought it was one of the better games we played this year. There’s some German on the cards – particularly the bonus cards, which all have text – but a cheat sheet will sort that out. There’s an English version due out, but I believe it’s fairly far down Rio’s priority list. Finca This one has been out for a few months now, but was new to us. The board is split into two areas. One area is a rondel. This has around a dozen spaces, each showing a fruit symbol. Players move around this picking up donkeys and bits of fruit. Your movement around the rondel is determined by how many men share the same space as you. The number of fruit bits you get depends on how many men share the space you end up on. The other part of the board has a number of demand tiles. These show demand for between one and six fruits. Some are for particular fruits whilst others show wildcards. Any type of fruit may be substituted for a wildcard, though the same fruit must be used for multiple wildcards. In a turn you do one of two things. Move a man on the rondel or satisfy a demand. You do the former to collect fruit and donkeys. You do the latter to score VPs. You may only do the latter if you have both a donkey and have collected the required fruits. Each tile is worth a VP for each fruit on it. It may also contribute to bonus VPs. We thought it would be a light little game when we saw all of the colourful pieces but it turned out to need a bit of thought and planning. It played well with two players. In fact, I could imagine this to be the optimum number of players. A nice game, though neither of us felt the need to buy it. Assyria This is played on a board which represents two rivers and the area around them. Well, more accurately it has two wavey blue lines going across the board. The board is broken down into hexes, each of which has a food symbol in it. Each turn, a number of cards are revealed. These each have one or more of the food symbols on them. Players each take a pair of cards and then place wooden huts on the board. Huts must be placed next to one of the players other pieces on the board. The huts must then be supplied with food. This is done by playing cards with symbols matching those in the same hexes as your huts. Any not supplied are removed from the board. Pieces on the board then earn VPs and action points. Action points are primarily used to earn more VPs. I wasn't hugely impressed with this one. It was okay, though I’ve already pretty much forgotten about it. I wouldn’t be too concerned if I didn’t play it again. This was played four player with a couple of Belgian guys. Shipyard We played this back at the hotel. Myself and Oggie were just about to crack open my copy when we noticed a couple at the next table were reading the rules for it. They’d already finished punching out a mountain of tiles so we invited ourselves to join them. As the name suggests, the game is based around a shipyard. Actually, each player is running their own shipyard. They will create and supply various ships which will then be sent out for a shakedown cruise. Most of the action is based around a rondel which players use to choose actions. In a development from the standard rondel, actions are represented on tiles which move around the rondel. You take one free action from this rondel, and may purchase another. Your free action cannot be one which another player has taken this turn. Actions allow you to obtain sections of ships, people and equipment to put on ships, cash, and canal tiles. Canal tiles are required to sail completed ships around. This is the primary scoring mechanism in the game. A ship will score a number of points when it is completed. It will get more by moving over symbols on the canals, usually depending on what the ship has been equipped with. Bonus points are scored at the end of the game. You are given six bonus cards at the start of the game. Four of these must be discarded half way through the game. The remaining ones get you VPs at the end. These can be worth quite a lot of points so are worth pursuing. This allows you to tailor your strategy through the game, and should avoid people following a pre-canned plan each time. There’s a lot going on so it took us a few turns to get a grip on what we were doing. And we spent a little while figuring out exactly how to calculate ship speed and points. We had heard claims of fiddliness before playing and I can see to some extent where these claims come in there. But once we got that down pat it was plain sailing. It turned out to be a long game, clocking in at three hours. But the box claims 30 minutes per player and I’d believe that to be accurate after you’ve got the mechanics all straight in your mind. There’s not much you can be doing between turns so three people might be the sweet spot in this game to shave off half an hour. Anyway, we all enjoyed it. Which was just aswell given I’d already bought a copy. Fabrik Manager The idea behind this one is to purchase tiles to place in your factory. This is done across a number of turns. Each turn has a number of phases. Some of these will be familiar to players of Powergrid - auction and bureaucracy - and some of which are particular to this game. The basic flow is to auction turn order, make machines available for purchase, buy the machines, install them in your factory, and then earn profits. You are juggling six resources – money, factory space, workers, manufacturing, packing, and energy. Workers are used to man machines, bid for turn order, and to determine how many tiles will be available for purchase. Money is used to purchase the tiles, which fit into a player board with a limited number of factory spaces. And the other three resources are used to determine income. The key resource is your workers. You don’t have many so they must be used wisely. We joined three other people so played as a table of five. One of the demo guys told us they usually recommend only playing with four for people learning the game. A fifth player introduces additional turn order tiles into the game, and some of these give (larger) discounts for purchases. These can be used to grab a lot of tiles cheaply if the other players aren’t careful. He decided that we’d be fine as we were all Powergrid veterans. It’s a decent game which moved along quickly, though I could see you’d want to avoid people prone to analysis paralysis. It’s not as good as Powergrid, but then I wasn’t really expecting it to be - it’s a while since we had a really top drawer game from Friedemann so I set my expectations accordingly these days. Oggie thought it was good enough to buy though. Insula A friend had mentioned this one to us so we stopped to have a look when we saw the stand. The designer started explaining it, and then a table freed up so he played it with us. It’s a cooperative game, but which only one person can win. Players explore an island made up from tiles. Each turn they may move, use a spell card, use a curse card, or rest. Some of the tiles have monsters on them which players may fight. Fighting uses energy, which resting replenishes. It’s not a standard dungeon bash as players are free to wander off on their own. The cooperative bit comes in clubbing together to fight monsters, and to try to finish the game within a slightly variable turn limit. If time runs out, everyone loses. But at the same time, curse cards can be obtained and used to hinder your fellows. Actually, it's difficult to avoid using your curse cards as each one you hold limits the actions you can take in future turns. We hindered a bit too much and lost. The designer explained that we’d played only the basic game, which players usually won. Oops. There was also a trickier advanced version. I think the designer wondered whether it was worth even explaining that one to us as we'd failed to beat the basic version. It was quite a quirky game, with slightly disturbing artwork. They had two versions of the game for sale, one of which was only 19 Euros. I was very tempted to buy one, despite being convinced my group would never get a win, but just didn’t have the space for it in the end. Kingpin I don’t think Oggie’s forgiven me for this one yet. We got too close to a stand and a demo person caught our eye. I agreed to a five minute explanation of what turned out to be a two player game about gangsters. It was clear after the first minute that we weren’t going to be interested. But we let the guy finish his pitch. And then he smoothly moved one of the bits on the board and informed Oggie it was his turn. And so the poor lad found himself trapped into playing a game he had no desire to play. It has a gangster theme thinly painted onto a fairly abstract game about moving tiles around a board. Some of the tile edges have gun symbols and you can kill opponents tiles by abutting them with enough symbols. The goal of the game is to either claim the centre of the board or to get a tile to the end into your opponent’s “base”. You might also be able to win by eliminating all of your opponents bits. I stopped paying much attention to the explanation once I'd figured out I wasn't interested in it. Demo guy was obviously a bit competitive as he’d have won in about six turns if I hadn’t pointed the threat out to Oggie. He won anyway, and seemed very disappointed when we told him we rarely played two player games. He was obviously a born salesman as he responded to that by trying to sell us two copies so that we could “have a tournament” with four players! Tobago Oggie was keen to try this one, so we patrolled the Rio stand until a table came free. This is a treasure hunting game played on an island made up of various terrain types. It has a clever mechanism for narrowing down the locations of treasure, melded with a largely pointless mechanism for driving a little vehicle around the island to pick the treasure up. We didn’t have time to finish this in the end, but played for long enough to get a feel for it. The island is made from sections which can be put together in different ways. Thus the board should be different each game. It is made of hexes, each of a particular terrain tiles. The core mechanism is to play cards which narrow down the possible location of a treasure. A card may say that the treasure is in the largest forest, or within two spaces of a statue. Once a location is narrowed down to a single hex, players may drive their car to that spot to obtain he treasure. Treasure is made up of a number of gold cards. Each player may get one or more of these, according to how many cards they played to narrow down its location. The player who retrieved the treasure will normally get an additional gold card. Most gold at the end of the game wins. The people who freed up the table told us they wouldn’t be buying it but that it was certainly worth a play. I think that was a fair assessment. Imperial 2030 Quite by coincidence, after borrowing this, we found two of the players from our game of Fabrik Manager sitting a couple of tables away from us also with a copy. So we joined them to make a foursome. As most people already know, this is an update of Imperial, from a couple of years ago. I've not played the original so can't really comment about how similarly or differently this plays. This version is played across a map of the whole world instead of the original's map of Europe. The chap who explained this to us did mention a couple of rule tweaks from the original. One is that players with no country may invest each time there is an investment action. The other involves action selection. This is a rondel game, with the standard move three spaces and pay for additional moves mechanism. The rule change is to combat a problem in the original where a player may just alternate between the taxation and investment actions on the rondel. That used to be a very cheap way to build up money, which count as VP at game end. Now additional movements on the rondel become more expensive for each country over time. Whilst a casual look at the board would suggest that the game is a Risk variant, in actual fact it's more of an economic game. Players vie for what are effectively shares in various countries. A country use ships and tanks to take control of seas and land areas. Taxation allows a country to generate income according to the areas they control. And this eventually makes it into the hands of players via dividends from their country holdings. This can then be used to buy further shares. A country is controlled by whoever holds the share majority and so can change hands throughout the game. Turns are fast so there is very little downtime. What will take time is figuring out how best to play this game. It took us all a while before we started to see where we were trying to go. All in all, I thought this was a really nice game. I can see it getting a lot of plays. Priests of Ra This was again played with our foursome. You’re surely familiar with Ra. Well, this game has the same framework but a different set of scoring tiles. The big twist is that many of the tiles are double sided. You may decide which side to use when drawing the tile. One of the types of tiles – priests - allows you to flip another to the other side, but only if you have at least three of them. I think the only other difference is that there is no equivalent of god tiles, so player options are restricted to drawing a tile or starting an auction. I’m not Ra’s biggest fan, but I quite enjoyed this version. Not enough to buy it though. Havana This was the last of our games with our newly found gaming colleagues, so another foursome. This is a play cards to get resources to convert into VPs game. Each player has a set of identical cards. Each card has a role and a number from zero to 10. Each player secretly chooses two cards for the first round. The numbers on the cards are used to determine player order, which can be quite important. This is done by combining the numbers to make a two digit number. For example the 5 and the 2 would be combined to make 25, which would go before someone placing the 2 and 6 cards. In subsequent turns, you choose one of the cards to be discarded and it is replaced with another. So you may use the same card for several rounds. VPs come in the form of tiles which need certain resources to be claimed. So you may use your cards to get, say, a blue and a yellow cube and then use those cubes to get a tile worth a couple of VPs. The game ends when somebody gets a certain VP total. The game’s fairly chaotic and had the feel of something which Bruno Faidutti might have designed. In fact it reminded me a little of Citadels. More a filler than a game really, as you can play it in about 20 minutes. It was so short that we played a couple of times. None of us felt compelled to buy it though. Basketball Boss This game is themed around building up a basketball team. It's played over around six turns, each of which has a number of phases. The core of the game is the purchase of players via auction. Each player begins with a mediocre set of players. Better ones need to be bought. A set of players will be revealed, each with a number of attributes. The most important ones are their ability. This will usually differ each turn. A player may also generate income each turn. He will also have a height, which is used mainly as a tie break. These players are auctioned one by one in a normal round and round the table auction. Once this has been done, the teams with the greatest abilities will win trophies. Trophies are worth VPs. Additional VPs are earned according to the teams ability at game end. Highest score wins. We were joined by a German couple for this one so played with four. None of us liked it enough to make a purchase. In fact I think Oggie was close to falling asleep at one point. Strada Romana One of the Belgians who we played Assyria with recommended this one to me. It’s one of those games which pack a decent amount of game play into around 45 minutes. It’s played on a small board showing a path between Rome and … somewhere else, I forget where. The path is basically formed from a network showing connections between spaces. Players move carts over this network picking up wooden cubes and flat squares. These generate cash and are paired to create VPs. One nice touch is that you can use cash to buy special moves, but may only hold onto 4. Once you get to 5 cash, it must be converted into 1 VP. This can be a little awkward when you realise that the cube you have picked up has suddenly emptied your treasury. There is a further way of earning VPs and that is to gamble on which carts will arrive first. Correct guesses earn VPs, bad ones lose them. Each player can only do this three times each game, and each cart may only be selected once. It turned out to be a nice little game which felt a bit different to the norm. Not great rules though – we had at least three questions which weren’t covered by the rules and needed clarification from someone on the stall. We only played with two, but I think it would scale well to more players. Islas Canarias I didn’t have high hopes for this one as Clementoni aren’t exactly a top rank publisher. But we needed a sit down and this was the first free table we saw. However, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s an abstract game with a thin theme of settling an island. It came across as sitting somewhere between a game and a puzzle. Each player has a hand of cards which are used to place buildings. They also have a player board, representing an island, on which the buildings are placed. The islands each have a set of attributes, which differ slightly on each island. For example, one might have a road which is adjacent to three spaces whilst on another island it may be adjacent to four. Cards show a building, then a set of priorities. So it might show a red house which should be built next to a road if possible, then beside a green building if not, then beside a sea area if not, etc. One is chosen to play to your island each turn, and one played to a communal pot. Cards in the communal plot are used against whichever island best meets the criteria. So if road is the first priority, it will go to the island with the most road spaces currently free. If that’s a tie then you work down the chain of priorities. The trick is to place in such a way as to maximise future options. The more buildings you have, the less spaces are available for further building. Fortunately, sets of houses may be upgraded to palaces or cities. For example, three red houses may be converted into a single red city. Aswell as netting additional VPs, this frees up some spaces on your island. I liked this, and it didn’t really remind me of anything else. Again we played this just with two, which played slightly oddly as players alternate having two turns each. It should play nicely with three or four in under 45 minutes      Comment by buy strattera   12-Dec-2009 this is a cool news. Thank you.        Comment by buy strattera   13-Dec-2009 this is a cool news. Thank you.        Comment by name   31-Dec-2009 comment2,        Comment by Quiyzkgf   09-Jan-2010 comment6,        Comment by Cialis   04-Mar-2010 JDJCM4 Thank you for the material. Do you mind if I posted it in her blog, of course, with reference to your site?        Comment by SmithJ   20-May-2010 91iRpc Lol lol lool lol ha-ha! Lol lol lol?        Comment by Zozizazc   06-Aug-2010 iqcwp5 Kobz zhqrne dxvgamhcue cqfby rmtgl ozhbuqxnu jlaof qlhitfezo qeqcq qbbjli.   Best Game of 2008? 01-Oct-2009   Frank Yes, you read right. I am wondering what your favourite game was last year. Can't do this year yet as it hasn't finished or at least Essen 2009 hasn't happened yet... I reckon Pandemic was my favourite last year. And yeah, I know I can have a look at Stats but this may have changed. Frank.      Comment by Tel   04-Oct-2009 Since I've had to seriously reduce my game playing time, it is a lot harder to choose a game of the year. I haven't managed to play too many games from last year and those I have played only got limited plays. The obvious contender was Dominion. Now I only managed play this the once and I suspect it needs a few games to be able to see how the cards work together. Given how well its been received (ranked 7 on the geek), it seems churlish to criticize it. But I felt I was forced to spend too much time shuffling and not enough time following what others were doing. Le Havre is another possible contender. I think the game works well and I've enjoyed both games I've played of it. But I think it just plays too long for me, on the whole I tend to prefer games that play in 45-90 minutes. I dont know what you lose playing the shorter version, but it may be worth giving that a go at some point. A couple of Treefrog games also in the running, the first being Tinners Trail. After my 1 game of this I was expecting it to be a regular visitor to the table and am very surprised to see it has only been played once. Going to have to rectify this. Steel Driver is the other Treefrog contender and that has had a couple of games. I've found both games interesting and entertaining but that last round can be prone to be a tad slow. Finally the Fragor offering for 2008 was Snow Tails. A race game with nice movement mechanism. Gievn that I've only played each game once or twice its a tough call, but I'd probably give the nod to Tinners Trail.   Is THIS the card that Oggie always has in his hand? 16-Dec-2008   Frank Found this on BGG tonight. I am assuming you guys have seen this before... http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/309642?size=medium LOL! Steve      Comment by Boog   20-Jan-2009 That would indeed explain a lot. Of course, Oggie would have it on a permanent basis so it would break the game...   Essen Buys 2008 16-Dec-2008   Frank The Guys very kindly brought me back: Wasabi Sushizock im Gockelwok The Princes of Machu Picchu Space Alert I loved Wasabi and it has played quite differently the few times I have played it, which bodes well. Sushizock I think I prefer to HeckMeck but I think that is because it is a quicker game and doesn't outstay its welcome and offers more opportunities to steal dominoes. I have still yet to play the other two but suspect Machu will be played next as I have read the rules and it doesn't seem as foreboding as trying to play Space Alert despite my excitement of a co-op game. We shall See Steve      Comment by Paul   22-Dec-2008 Don't worry Steve. Princes and Space Alert aren't as daunting as they look. You're clearly mad though. The Sushi game better than the Wormy game? Heresy!   Pauls Essen 2008 01-Nov-2008   Paul Let's start with the standard disclaimer. We may well have misread, misheard or misunderstood rules in any or all of the games we played. Whilst a wrong rule is unlikely to convert a good game into a great one, it may well turn a good game to a poor one. So bear this in mind whenever I describe a game in less than glowing terms. Also, most of my opinions are from a single playing of a game. This might be an outlier, and the game may usually play better or worse. Dominion After a bit of wandering, exploring, and balking at the queue for the Lookout Games stall, we sat down to play our first game of the show. There had been a lot of hype about this game prior to its release. This had made me wary of shilling, but curious to try it. Early descriptions suggested that its basic mechanic was a bit different to anything out there. In these days of seeing the same mechanism spreading from game to game like a cardboard based life form I’m always on the lookout for something different. I guess anybody reading this is unlikely to have avoided the hype and so will probably be familiar with the basic idea. So I’ll forgo a detailed description. The basic idea is to use cards in your hand to obtain more cards. These all go to your discard deck, which is reshuffled to form a new draw deck when your current deck runs out. The ultimate aim is to add as many victory point cards into your deck as possible by the end of the game. But those cards are useless until the end. In fact they’re worse than useless as they get in the way of the useful cards which you need to get hold of more victory point cards. The obvious question is does it live up to the hype? In my opinion, no. What ever does? But I certainly thought it a good game and the deck building mechanism is fresh and clever. It was considered by many to be the best game of the show. I know I didn’t play any better. I do have a couple of reservations though. First, there is very little interaction between players. I believe that only three of the twenty five card sets impact other players. We used two of them in the two games we played; neither was a big deal. I don’t really care that you can’t easily influence anybody else. The issue is more that everybody else’s turn is pretty much just something which stops you from getting on with your next one. The main thing you’re interested in during an opponents turn is whether they’re picking up VP cards. That doesn’t take a great deal of attention. I’d probably prefer everybody taking their turns simultaneously, which may actually be a possibility with most of the cards. Second, I don’t know how much long term appeal there will be in this game. It strikes me as the sort which will get a lot of play in the short term, then people will burn out on it. Extra expansions will no doubt be produced but I don’t think that’s really the point. Still, it’s not as if we play any game hundreds of times so that’s unlikely to be much of a loss. Strozzi First we had Medici. Then came Medici vs Strozzi. Here comes the game to complete the set. I’ve not played Medici vs Strozzi so I can’t compare it with that. Fortunately we’ve a number of games of Medici under our belts though. One of Knizia’s trademarks is a scoring system which makes your head hurt. He obviously decided that Medici wasn’t causing nearly enough headaches. And decided to do something about it. So what we have here is basically Medici with a more complex scoring system. We still have the ships and we’re still collecting goods. But this time we’re only working with one ship at a time. Probably the most significant difference is that we no longer have an auction game. Ships are instead claimed via a set of flags, each player having an identical set of three. Each ship comes with goods on it; some also bring the right to claim a tile. Points are won according to the value of ships and goods collected. Get enough goods and you get the familiar 5 / 10 / 15 bonus points. And majorities of types of tiles bring further points at the end of the game. All in all, it’s a decent game. Quite good in fact. But not as good as Medici. The extra fiddliness of the scoring doesn’t really add much to the game. If anything, it detracts from the elegance of the original game. I don’t see any reason to pick this one up whilst Medici is still readily available. Hopplido Hopplida It’s always handy to have a little game or two that slips into the pocket and can be played down the pub. Especially if it caters for up to seven people. This game comprises of seven dice, so meets the criteria admirably. It also has a little cardboard tile to make it easier to remember past rolls but that can be left at home. In essence this is a push your luck game. Each of the six sided dice have the same images on them. A rabbit, two rabbits in hutches, three, four and five hutches, and a carrot. You start by rolling all of the dice. You must roll, and bank, at least one rabbit (or, roll and bank all carrots). You may bank one hutch, starting with the double, then the three, etc, too. The hutches are multipliers, so a double hutch doubles your score; a triple hutch triples it, etc. You may then keep rolling the dice not yet banked, banking at least one rabbit, until you either fail to roll a rabbit or you decide to take the score. If you’ve banked all of your dice, you get to take all of your rabbits bank into your hand and carry on rolling. Further rabbits add to those rolled before picking these up. The reason this is a push your luck game is that if you fail to roll any rabbits, you don’t score. This is what makes the game interesting A novel twist to the game is that once a player decides to score, the next player has a choice. They may pick up all six dice and start again. Or they may take over the dice, and position, of the previous player and carry on from there. If the latter, they must roll the unused dice at least once – they may not take over the position and immediately stick to grab free points. I wasn’t sure about this when we started playing, but it turned out I’d misread a rule. The addition of the correct rule, and some beer, turned it into a fun little game. It’s already spawned it’s own catchphrase in the form of “It’s a 50/50 chance”. Sushizock im Gocklewok Our game of choice for bringing down the pub over the last few years has probably been Heckmeck. So we were all interested to hear that this year there would be a follow up to it. Like it’s older brother, this game reveals it’s pub credentials in the form of a set of dice, and a set of dominoes. Well. Strictly speaking, two sets of dominoes. The first set is in blue and these are worth positive points. The other set is in red and is worth negative points. Players take turns to roll the dice and take a domino. Dice can be rerolled up to three times (some must be banked each roll). Dominoes may come from the red or blue collection, or be stolen from another player. Whilst those negative points are a bad thing, they’re also essential. Colours are stacked together, so when you get a new blue tile it goes on to of your blue stack. All of your red, negative, tiles score. But blues only count if they’re matched with a red one. So if you have two reds and a blue, only your bottom blue will be worth anything. The game has a bit more meat than Heckmeck and gives you a bit more to think about. Most people seem to prefer it to Heckmeck. But we’re bigger fans of the original game than most groups, so I think our general consensus is that the original is still the best. For me, dominoes don’t get stolen enough in the new game. One thing we’re definitely in agreement about is that the rules aren’t very good. Despite there only being three or four rules, everybody seemed to be mangling them. We played by four different sets before we finally figured it out. In particular, an example which contradicts the rules is not helpful. Stone Age This wasn’t a new Essen release, but it’s new this year and was certainly new to us. So I’m including it. This proved to be just the first of the place a worker to get a thing to get VP games which we found ourselves playing. It didn’t hurt though that it was probably the best. Given the name, it takes no leap of the imagination to figure out that the game is set in the Stone Age. Each player has a set of Stone Age people which they take turns to allocate to different areas on the board. Some areas allow for harvesting of resources. Others allow these resources to be converted into – primarily - VPs. The three areas which saw most action in our game though are those to gain another person, reduce food costs, and improve the ability to adjust die rolls. The die rolls come in when claiming resources. You roll a die for each worker you try to harvest a particular resource with. Add the numbers, divide by the cost of that particular resource, and that’s how many of that type you get. The ability to adjust comes in handy if you’re just short of being able to claim another resource of that type. I’d not seen the resource rolling mechanism before but pretty much everything else was familiar. Take the worker placement from any of a number of games, add gaining another piece from Leonardo, food management from Agricola, and gaining resources from too many games to count. So not much new then. It was also a bit processional .The rush for the three limited areas each round – food, extra person, adjust die – was a bit predictable. And it’s a shame the game only scaled to four players. But having said all that, it was a good example of the genre. I’d be just as happy to play it as Pillars of the Earth or Leonardo, though it felt a little simpler than those two. I just don’t need it in my collection, especially with the four player maximum. Palais Royal And here we have the second worker placement game of the day. The second of the morning in fact. This one is themed around recruiting nobles in France. At least, I think that’s the theme. The playing area is made up of two things – a park, in which various nobles are standing around rooted to the spot, and the Palace of the title. The latter is made up of a 3x3 grid of tiles. Curiously, the entrance to the Palace is the central tile. Perhaps visitors have to parachute in. Each noble has a certain cost to recruit. This is made up from money and favour from both the King and the Queen. Once recruited, nobles contribute VPs. Some also contribute a benefit, such as providing a sum of money each turn or generating favour. The amount of money necessary drops as adjacent nobles are bought up, leaving those remaining as Billy No Friends. Actually, it’s probably a little inaccurate to call this a worker placement game. It’s really a worker placement and movement game. Each player has a number of pieces. Some of these are brought into the Palace each turn and a limited number of movements can be made to put them into particular rooms. These rooms provide various benefits. The point of the exercise is to move the people into the combination of rooms which will allow you to obtain the desired nobles. Once used, the workers come back to your hand. The game continues in this fashion until only a certain number of tiles are left. VPs are then summed. Additional VPs are granted by claiming a majority of nobles along edges of the park, so giving a bit of strategic flexibility when deciding what to claim. I’ve already spoiled the surprise somewhat by describing Stone Age as the best of the worker placement. So this isn’t as good as Stone Age then. At the risk of spoiling future surprises, I’ll say this was the second best worker placement game I played. I liked the fact that the noble placement is random, so there should be plenty of replayability. And the various rewards offered by nobles suggest different strategies to try out. However, the game did feel rather dry. There was a definite abstract feel to the proceedings. Also, the amount of downtime felt a bit much, even for a four player game. There’s not much you can do until your turn comes around again, though to be fair a player doesn’t do a huge amount in a turn so it’s not an enormous wait. As I’ve just mentioned, the game maxes out at four players. Not a positive point for us. And last but not least, balance. There are plenty of options to take nobles for abilities and try to gain majorities. But the winner in our game simply bought the most expensive noble he could afford each turn. Certainly a reasonable strategy, but it does ring a little alarm bell at the back of my mind. Heads of State This is a new game from Z-Man. It’s themed around nobility in Europe a few centuries ago. Players have a set of tiles representing various types of nobles which they are trying to place in different regions. The game is driven by two decks of cards. One has various resources. This is used to produce nobles. The other has various methods of killing. This is used to remove nobles. Cards may be drafted, or drawn blindly, from one or both decks. Each of the nobles needs a particular combination of resources. Achieve the right combination and you may create a noble. This must be immediately placed onto the board, which represents a map of Europe. Points are earned for being the first person into a particular region. Others are gained by placing a noble in each region in a country, by having majorities in a country, and by building complete sets of the different nobles. The game is usually played over three turns. We only played the first one, where by and large we could place nobles as we wanted. By the time we had completed it, most areas of the board were filled. Further turns would have seen us resorting to the traditional historic method of promotion, namely murder and assassination. By and large we had no need of this in the turn we played so that’s not a side of the game we saw much of. Which is a pity as the game would probably have started to get more interesting at that point. All we really saw was yet another majority placement game. None of us were enormously enthused by it. Those of us with reasonably large game collections just don’t have a need foe another game like this. Chicago Express This is the new Queen version of last year’s Wabash Cannonball. As far as I’m aware, the only difference is the graphics. In other words, it has some. Given the heritage, what we have here is fairly obviously a train game. It’s a short, less than an hour, game of network building and share auctioning based East of Chicago. Players take turns to either auction a share, extend a network, or develop a hex. Auctions put money into the companies which are used to fund the other two actions. Once enough actions have been taken, a dividend round is triggered which feeds money back to the players. Which is just as well as that’s the only way for a player to get more money. And more money is good as that’s how you win the game. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this one. On the basis of a single game it seemed quite light. But I could see hints of a deeper game underneath. I can certainly see the potential for stitching up other players, always a popular sport around here. I wasn’t convinced enough to buy it, but I can imagine myself making a purchase in a future year. What I’m not keen on is the size of the box. Whilst not of packing crate dimensions it’s certainly a lot bigger than it needs to be. A Castle for all Seasons And here we have the third, and final, worker placement game. And reading between the lines, I’ve already told you that it was the worst of the three. This one is themed around building a castle. The game board is double sided, each side showing an identical view of the castle in question. The only difference is the colour scheme. One side is white, representing winter. The other represents summer. A set of cards is sued when the board is in winter mode. We played the summer side on the advice of the local, friendly demo person. I have thus no idea what the winter cards do. The board represents various parts of the castle being built. Much of it is made up from various buildings such as huts, blacksmiths, etc. Tiles are placed over these buildings showing the cost, and VPs, for building them. Each player has an identical set of role cards. The various roles allow for collecting money and resources, building, and obviously for placing men on the board. Men are placed into the castle to claim VPs at the end of the game. They may only be placed in a building after it has been built. The different buildings grant various ways to gain end game VP bonuses, so there is certainly scope for different strategies. Opinions varied upon how good or bad it was. I didn’t think the game was dreadful, though others did. It did drag a bit though and just wasn’t particularly exciting. Roles are selected simultaneously, so clearly there is an element of both tension and luck there. Neither seemed to be particularly prevalent though. Probably the biggest issue was the downtime. Like other games mentioned above it wasn’t massive, but there’s not much to see or do during other players turns. If I was going to pick up a worker placement game at Essen this year, it wouldn’t be this one. The Princes of Macchu Picchu This is the new game from Mr. Rondel. It’s loosely based around Aztecs hiding from the Spanish. Players each control an Azten Prince, which they move around a city. The city is split into various districts, each of which allows a particular action to be taken. These actions include collecting resources – hmm, that sounds familiar – deploying farmers, and making sacrifices. In a small divergence from traditional historical teachings, priests and virgins band together to sacrifice llamas. The purpose of all of this is to collect sacrifice cards, which are converted to VPs at the end of the game. VPs are earned primarily for collecting tiles representing various gods, and for placing farmers into particular resource growing areas. This is easier said than done as the cards are not easily earned. It will take the cumulate effect of a number of actions to gain one. Effort to collect new ones must be balanced again that needed to meet the criteria to earn VPs against those currently held. And on top of this, there’s the two possible endings. The game can end in either a Spanish or an Aztec victory. This depends on what runs out first – cards, gods or time. In an Aztec victory, the person with the most VPs wins. In a Spanish victory, VPs are manipulated according to who has the most gold. Now, given that gold comes from sacrifice cards, I’m not sure at the moment if this actually makes much difference. After all, the more sacrifice cards gained, the more VPs are likely anyway. I also think a two player game is more likely to furnish a Spanish version and a five player an Azten version. So the variable endings may turn out to be a bit of a red herring rather than something to worry about. All in all though, this adds up to a fairly meaty game. Probably one of the better games of the show if the Fairplay rankings are to be trusted, and certainly one of those we enjoyed the most. I can see a few ways to approach it, so we’ll get a few games out of this one. Beep! Beep! If the name doesn’t tell you that this is a light game, the components will. What your money gets you is a pack of cards and a squeaky toy car. Yes, you did read that correctly. This is a speed pattern matching game. The cards each show a silhouette of an animal in one of five or six colours. Each player is given two cards which are placed face up in front of them. The rest of the deck is split into a number of piles. All of these piles are turned face up, and chaos immediately breaks out. Players try to grab cards from the top of those piles which match either the colour or animal on one of their cards. These are then dropped on top, with the effect that the two cards they start with build up into two piles. The game ends when a couple of draw piles run out. The winner is the person with the most cards in their smallest pile. Astute readers will notice that I haven’t mentioned the car yet. That’s because it's largely superfluous. I expect the publisher had a job and decided to add them to a game. Somehow. Anyhow. The way they were added to this game is by adding an extra rule. If all of the piles are topped by the same colour, a player may punch the car to collect two free cards. Apparently this can be played in a sedate, gentlemanly manner. We didn’t. Gloria Picktoria If anybody has played Get the Goods, they’ll be familiar with this game. It’s the same game, with a fox. This is a card game. There are four sorts of cards. Chickens, wildcards, doubles and score triggers. Players take turns to spend three actions, which are used to take a card, place a card, or move the fox. Cards are taken from a draft and added to your hand. They’re played against sets of the same colour. Once a double card is added to a set, you may no longer extend it. At the end of your turn, you always move the fox onto a set of the next players card. Unless you forget. Ahem. Scoring happens three times during the game, when the fourth, seventh and tenth trigger cards turn up. Players gain points for being the only person to have a set of a colour and for having the longest and second longest sets. Those containing the double cards score double. The set with the fox on scores nothing. That’s about it. None of us seemed particularly enamoured with it. Flussfieber And here we are at the last game we played. Flussfieber is a racing game, simulating lumberjacks racing down a river on logs. Like Mississippi Queen, the course is made up from a number of modular boards. Unlike Mississippi Queen, the board has a number of logs scattered around sa obstacles, each person has a team of two lumberjacks, and movement is card driven. And there is no coal. Or passengers. So not an exact clone then. Players have a small hand of cards. Each specifies a team member and a number of movement points. In your turn, you play a card to move that team member up to that many hexes. Obstacles and other lumberjacks can be pushed ahead of you until either there are too many ahead or nowhere to move, or push, into. First person to get both team members across the finishing line wins. Some of the boards have additional obstacles to progress. We played a fairly simple set with just two boards, one of which had some rapids which pushed players back. We used that a lot. One of our mantras is if in doubt, take the funny move. Pushing somebody else into the rapids and back down the board certainly met that rule. Fortunately somebody decided to win, else we’d probably still be shoving each other into the rapids. Because we only used a couple of boards this came across as mainly a filler. Adding further boards would make for a longer game, but I’m not sure there’s enough thereto warrant playing for too long. An okay game for a quick play, but I’d rather Mr. FF got back to his meatier fare. Essen Purchases 2008 27-Oct-2008   Andy Another year, another Essen! Flussfieber - Missisippy Queen meets Ave Caesar St Petersburg + expansion Hick Hack in Gackelwack Sushizock im Gockelwok Ostia Dominion < reccomended! Funkenschlag China/Korea maps Catan Card Game - Barbarians & Traders Carcassonne Catapault Expansion !!! Here lies Anthony Pratt 03-Jun-2008   Paul Anthony Pratt was the designer of Cluedo. He passed away in 1994. One of the little snippets of information in the programme guide for the UK Expo was that his gravestone includes the phrase "Inventor of Cluedo". Had I been in his shoes, I don't think I'd have been able to resist "Killed by Miss Scarlet. In the library. With the lead piping."      Comment by google   25-Oct-2008 fahjfksah fjksha jfhsajk hfsjkah fashk jfsa        Comment by google   26-Oct-2008 hogyas 43jkdfs hjkfdshjkfdh sjkfhkjdsh fjkdsh fjkdhsfkd hsjfdpodgka pfmb        Comment by Andy   11-Nov-2008 gibber gibber gibber - no I am not google!        Comment by Andrew   19-Nov-2008 fhdajfh sakjfh sjafk ashkfjhasjkfh sjakhfksja sfafsa        Comment by buy strattera   13-Dec-2009 this is a cool news. Thank you.   Expo 2008 02-Jun-2008   Paul This weekend saw the second UK Games Expo. So, how is Britain’s answer to Essen shaping up? Rather well actually. Last year was a great start, well attended by companies and gamers alike. It was going to be interesting to see how they followed it up. The event was again held in the same building. But this year they appeared to have dug out, or glued on, more space. Quite appropriate really given the Doctor Who theme and prominent positioning of a Tardis in one of the rooms. It’s a real warren of a building with halls and rooms leading off every which way. That gives quite a different, more intimate, feel than the enormous halls of Essen. I don’t know if there is further expansion space. If there is, there can’t be much. And all of this space was very much needed as there was certainly more to see this year. Miniature wargamers seemed to be particularly well server. I’d not realised how popular that particular hobby was in the UK. Boardgamers and role players also had plenty to see, and to buy. The number of publishers looked to be about the same but more of them had new games available to try and buy this year. And there were definitely more retailers this year. There was even a dungeon set up in the basement for the live (or would be live) role players to have a crack at. The one thing I thought was on the light side last year was the amount of space given over to trying games. One of the big things about Essen is the opportunity to sit down at one of hundreds of tables and try out some games. We probably spend the majority of our time there doing just this. I believe that several people raised this issue, and this year it had certainly been addressed. There was a lot of table space made available both for playing demo games and for playing games you’d bought. We took advantage of this and played a couple of games. These were Tinners Trail and Scanderoon. The former is the first of the Treefrog games from Martin Wallace and crew. It's a medium weight game about mining for tin, with a little bit of pastie selling thrown in for good measure. Lighter than the usual Warfrog offerings, but then that's rather the point of the new line. Nothing massively new in there, but the intertwining of action point costs and player turn order works very nicely. The auctions for the right to build mines, timing, and contention over limited resources, add some nice decisions. It also turned out to be a very tight game, only decided by the last in a series of tie breakers. If Martin can keep up this quality for the other 14 games proposed for this new line, we can look forward to some good games over the next five years. I think Scanderoon may have been out in time for Essen. I remember seeing a demo copy of at the Expo last year, but can't recall whether it was at Essen or not. Anyway, it's a card game which looks like it will probably offer scope for clever play. Or at least I hope so. I couldn't quite decide if it was as clever as it seemed, as we found ourself ignoring most of the possible options provided. Perhaps that was just bad play on our behalf. Further plays will reveal all. All in all I'd say the Expo team did a great job putting this together. Where it goes from here I don't know. Most of the British board games publishers were there, though I've really no idea how comprehensive the coverage was from the other sectors. I think the gauntlet has now been laid down though. The Expo has done it's bit; it's up to the British gaming industry to rise to the challenge now and grow.      Comment by Andy   03-Jun-2008 This year's fair definitely represented a step up from 2007. It was good to see that board games were well represented along with other types of gaming. I say this not to marginalize the other types of games but just to emphasise that as board gamers there was enough there that we stayed for the majority of the day (unlike last years where we only stayed a couple of hours). It's still not Essen, that's clear but there was a lot to be gained by just exploring the venue. Just be warned that if you take a dwarf along with you that they will be tempted to start digging for gold in all those tunnels, erm, corridors.   Game of the year, 2007 22-Apr-2008   Paul For the last three years, the Piddinghoe Gamers have vote for their game of the year. Past winners have included Amun-Re, Oltremare and Canal Mania. This year, the panel cast their votes for games released in 2007. That's any game. Expansions, re-releases, they all count. The only qualification is that we must have played them. And if a game is to have any chance of winning, most of us need to have played it. We're not particularly interested in fairness, so we don't wait until mid-year to give people a chance to play games released later in the year. Though we are a bit later in the year than usual. We don't need to be fair. Unlike the Spiel des Jahres award, the Piddinghoe Gamers game of the year is unlikely to increase sales by several hundred thousand boxes. Actually, we buy most of our games later in the year anyway, taking advantage of the hugely cheaper prices at Essen, so later games aren't really at much of a disadvantage. So, 2006 is history. The votes are in. And onto the winners. Like last year, it was a two horse race. In fact only one vote seperated the top two. The accolade of first place goes to Agricola, from Lookout Games. This is a game which has been gaining a lot of praise and attention, surprisngly so as it's currently only available in a German edition. With a ton of cards, densely packed with German text. Second place went to Brass, Martin Wallaces latest and one of his finest. In third place, and surprisingly close to the top two, was Caylus Magna Carta. Most of the fun in half of the time. Also rather surprising was the fact that only seven games were put into the hat this year. Make of that what you will. Last year, the top two places went to the Brits. This time, second place was claimed by a different Brit and it could so easily have been first. So another great showing by the local lads. Will 2008 make three in a row?      Comment by Steve   22-Apr-2008 Agricola and Brass were my top two votes. I've enjoyed both games but in the end had to give the nod to Agricola as I have played it a few times now and have played Brass only once. However I hope this changes in the not too distant future.   Pauls Essen 2007 - Part 2 14-Nov-2007   Paul This took longer than I'd planned, but I've finally finished the second and final part of this year's Essen report. This covers Friday and Saturday. Chang Cheng The idea of this game is to build sections of the Great Wall of China. This is built over a series of boards, representing spaces to build the wall over a number of territories. The demo games were only using half of the player boards so our game wasn't completely representative of a full one. What we have here is basically an area majority game. Whoever builds the most pieces in a district scores the benefits of the distinct. Benefits are points, each district being worth a particular number. Of course the Wall was built to keep out barbarian hordes, and so the game has these too. The board on the "wrong" side of the wall is divided into a series of areas, each containing barbarians. Wall majorities on this side of the board are important too, as the majority holder - usually - scores negative points from the barbarians. Each player has a set of wall pieces, along with a set of action tiles. A turn consists of two actions, an action being placing either a wall piece or an action tile. Action tiles mess with other action tiles and wall sections. Each district is scored as it competes, and the person with the most points at the end wins. I don't think any of us were much impressed with this one. There's nothing particularly wrong with the game, it just feels a bit mundane and lacking in any real tension. Played with only half the boards it had the feeling of a filler, but I think the full game would take it out of that category. This might be for the better, but I suspect it would just prolong a dull game past its welcome. Owner's Choice This is a short and simple stock market game. Probably a bit too short actually. Players vie for control over four different companies. Control is a matter of owning the most stocks of a company. Turns are simple. First decide if you wish to buy any stocks. Then move a dobber along the track of a board that looks a little like a Monopoly board at first glance. The track is made up of various symbols, mostly representing the four different companies. If one of the company symbols is landed on, the director of the company decides which of two dice to roll. One costs money but tends to improve the company, with the other doing more or less the opposite. Once the dobber hits the last space on the track, everyone sells off their stocks at the current price. Most cash wins the game. Not a bad little game, and probably okay as a filler. Reasonably replayable too as the score track is made out of a number of double sided sections so can be constructed in a variety of ways. There was some scope for clever play, though the dice obviously injected a dose of luck into the game. The game was pretty much decided around the half way mark when I managed to bankrupt a company that Andy and Oggie had invested in. In the Year of the Dragon In previous years there would have been a buzz, positive or negative, about a new Alea game. We'd heard nothing about this game at all though, which didn't bode well. This may or may not be the year of the dragon. It's certainly the year of the games about ancient China. This turned out to be the second of three games we'd play with this setting. I would summarise this one as a combination of a role/action taking, resource management and special powers game. In each turn, an action will be selected. Actions cover such things as getting cash, building up your palace, and getting VPs. After this, each player chooses a person to select to their palace. Like actions, people grant benefits. In most cases, the result of the benefit will be to boost the power of the actions. For example, the more builders you have, the more you will be able to entend your palace if you take the build action. Recruitment also has a secondary purpose. They grant movement along a secondary score track. Well, score's probably the wrong word. The only effect of the track is to determine player order during the action selection phase. This is important as actions are "grouped". Once an action in a particular group has been selected, other players may only select an action in the same group by spending a very limited supply of money. Each turn represents a year, and a year is completed by actioning a disaster. Disasters are determined at random at the start of the game, so you will know when disasters will crop and can plan for them. The disasters usually drain resources or kill some of the people you have recruited into your palace. Points are gained throughout the game, with bonuses granted at the end. Most points wins. This turned out to be a reasonably interesting game to play, but not an outstanding one. It's the sort of game that we'd have snapped up three or four years ago, but none of us felt any need to buy it this year. The need to pay attention to the player order track, and prepare for disaster, sounds like it should be quite interesting. Sadly though the effect was to make the game feel rather restrictive to me, limiting the choices available. League of Six Back at the hotel again, we managed to grab a table, so time for more gaming. League of Six is themed around tax collecting. Not an obviously attractive theme, but never mind. The game's played over a number of rounds each of which has a number of phases. Firstly, players each claim a land. This is done by placing six land tiles into a circle, and having players bounce around them, displacing each other in a semi-Amun Re fashion. Then comes the tax collecting. Each tile has a number of different types of resources, but only a portion of them will be collectible. This is done in quite a clever way. A hex shaped tile is placed in the centre of each of the land tiles, with pointers on some of the edges. A player may orient this tile whichever way he sees fit. He will receive the items which the pointers indicate. Items come in three forms. Soldiers are used in the land picking auction phase. Goods are used to score points or end game bonuses. And horses determine who gets first dibs at claiming points. Goods are placed onto a row of two grids. Each give points when an item is places in it, and filling a row in one grid grants bonus points whilst doing so in the other grants cards which give an end game bonus. The person with the most horses places first. If they cannot fill it, the next person gets to contribute. And so on. Once a row in a grid is filled, the bonus goes to whoever started the row. The person with the second most horses then starts a row, and the process continues until no more items can be placed. And then the next round begins. This continues until the end is triggered, which is when all of the item grids have been used, if I recall correctly. End game bonuses are then added, and the person with the most points wins. Sadly the game didn't go over too well. We had a fair bit of fun in the auction phase, but the rest all felt a little bitty. One player commented that it felt like a bunch of mechanisms looking for a game. It seemed to lack a certain spark. However, we had just consumed most of a pig and a large quantity of beer between us so it may just have been us. Lascaux This cardgame comes across as advanced Geshenkte with a bit of Don thrown in. A set of cards is revealed each turn. Each card has three attributes - two colours and a type. Players will be bidding for these cards. The bidding system is quite straightforward. Either you pay a token to stay in, or drop out and take all the tokens paid so far. If you drop out, you secretly play a tile showing a colour. Once everybody has dropped out, colour tiles are revealed. The last person to drop out takes all of the cards matching the colour tile they played. The second last then takes any remaining cards matching the colour they played, and so forth. As each card has two colours, pickings become increasingly slim as the pecking order is worked down. Another round then starts, and the process continues until there are no cards left. The point of all of this is to collect majorities of types of cards. Majorities are worth points, and points win the game. I'd have probably liked this a lot more if I'd not already played Geshenkte. Instead, it just seemed more of the same. The components are a lot nicer, but not nice enough to make me want to buy a game so similar to one I already own. Oregon The board is a grid, with each element in the grid having six spaces. Players - usually - play a pair from a hand of four cards to play a card into the grid. Each row and column of the grid is marked with a symbol, as are the cards used to place them. The same symbols are used on the row and column, and the cards allow a piece to be placed into one of the empty spaces in the two slots - again usually - at the intersection of the symbols on row and column. Each player has a pair of tiles which allow for an extra turn, and for a card to be used as a wildcard. Once used they can be "recharged" for later re-use. Most German games are thinly themed. Given that I've not referred to the theme at all so far, you can see that this one is even more so than normal. Actually, I'm not entirely sure what the theme is. I think it's about colonising Oregon in the days of the cowboy but it could just as easily be about colonising Mars. You are attempting to place men and buildings next to each other. Doing so gives you points, and sometimes refreshes your special tiles. It's an okay game, which some scope for good play, but you're very much restricted in your options by the cards you have. Your hand size is only four cards, and picking up any duplicates really limits what you can do. In our game there was often a high scoring opportunity that you had no access to, having instead to watch somebody else snap up. Portobello Market This one’s been out for a few months now so again I'm not going to say much about it. It's another one we quite liked. It was quite short but with a bit to think about. There looked to be potential for kingmaking at the end though. Ming Dynastie And here we have the third of the Ancient China games we played. At heart this is a majority scoring game, but well done. The game's played over half a dozen rounds, of which every other is a scoring round. Each round has multiple phases. In the first phase, you place men in one of six holding areas. You then draft a hand of cards, with choices restricted by the holding areas you have played into. After that you move a Prince piece around the board transferring men from the holding areas to wherever the price is. Movement is via a system ripped out of Elfenland, playing cards to move over boundaries marked with symbols. The point of all of this movement and placement is to achieve two things. One is to put your men into temples. The board is divided into provinces, each of which has three districts. Each district has one temple, with room for one man. Each man in a temple scores during a scoring round. They do, however, restrict your abilities to achieve the second thing. And this is to obtain first or second place majorities in areas, which again are a route to points. In the scoring phases, temples are scored and the majority holders have men moved into the city. There is a city in each province, a third of the city in each of its districts. Getting a man into a city grants you a token in the colour of the corresponding province, and may score you some points. Sets of these tokens are traded in for points. A second set of cards is used in a blind bid to determine whether to leave men in the cities or move them back out. If they stay in, they will score some points. If they move out, they will contribute towards majority calculations in later scoring rounds. This was one of the better games of the show. Plenty to think about, but it moved quickly so downtime was minimal. The different scoring methods encourage you to move around the board to grab tokens and cheap majorities. But at the same time you want to hang around to protect your existing majorities. Also, you would like to move men into temples, which reduce your chances of scoring majorities. Decisions, decisions. We originally played with three, but have since played with four. Yup, we liked it enough to buy a copy. The four player game forces a lot more player interaction, not least due to the rule that your prince cannot end in the same district as somebody elses. Summary And that's about it. We popped briefly into the show on Sunday, but didn't try anything else. We did play a couple of games of R-Eco on the way home, but that's last years news. Well, almost. We played the new Z-man version, which is new this year. Not a bad little filler, with a couple of nasty twists. As ever it was a very enjoyable few days. Worryingly, we purchased very few of the games we tried. None seemed to offer much different to games we already had. in fact I didn't buy any games after trying them. I think though that that reflects our growing game collections as much as anything else. We'd have happily bought many of these games a handful of years ago; now we can afford to be more choosy. Usually I list my top five games fo the show at this point. This year, I have a top three with most of the other games milling around in a general pool below that so it's trickier than normal. Of course, this is from the pool of games which we played. We didn't try Agricola, Making of the President, or other games which seem to be garnering a lot of interest. Anyway, ignoring anything released prior to Essen, my top five were Tribune Brass Ming Dynastie Seiao Oregon The order's probably about right too. Like last year, there wasn't much evidence of rampant discounting. I'm taking that as a positive sign of the health of the industry. Also not in evidence were the huge crowds of last year. This, I think, was partly due to a rail strike in Germany. It certainly made wandering the halls a more pleasant affair. Pauls Essen 2007 - Part 1 28-Oct-2007   Paul Let's start with the standard disclaimer. We may well have misread, misheard or misunderstood rules in any or all of the games we played. Whilst a wrong rule is unlikely to convert a good game into a great one, it may well turn a good game to a poor one. So bear this in mind whenever I describe a game in less than glowing terms. Also, most of my opinions are from a single playing of a game. This might be an outlier, and the game may usually play better or worse. As I'm way behind in writing this this year I'll not mess about with trivialities like how we got there and what we played on the ferry. Let's get straight onto the new games. Brass I'd decided to approach Essen a little differently this year. Usually I do copious research and turn up knowing quite a bit about the games we'd see. This time I decided not to do any, and just wing it. Brass was one of the few games I knew anything about so I was keen to give it a go. It supports four people, which was a bit of a problem as we had four and a half. The half was one person who'd obviously had an early start and slept through much of the game. That was soon solved by Andy and Oggie teaming up, and the judicious use of a finger to wake the sleepy player from time to time. Brass is all about the industrial revolution. It's set in Lancashire, with connections at the edges of the board to foreign places like Yorkshire. It's a game of two halves. The early game is largely about trying to build up infrastructure to generate some profits. This mainly involves building mills to produce cotton, canals to move it, and ports to ship it. As the game goes on it becomes necessary to build coal mines and foundries, especially in the second half where rails replace canals and - along with more advanced buildings - require materials for construction. The rules are laid out well. The core rules get you up and running, with a separate section explaining things in more detail. This got us started without much rules reading, but did slow us down a bit when we needed to look things up. Swings and roundabouts really. It did contribute to the game running on the long side though, clocking in at the best part of three hours. That was too long, especially as you can't do anything during other people turns. I think we'd complete future games in nearer two hours, which is fine. Overall we all liked it. After hearing the rules I though there might be a solitaire feel to it but that didn't turn out to be the case. Buildings can only be placed in a limited number of places which forces competition for them. Moreover anybody can use your buildings so you may - for example - see your cotton shipped off to somebody elses port. Not the end of the world as you still get points for it but likely not as lucrative as shipping it yourself. For my money, this is Martin Wallace's best since Age of Steam. I'll happily play this one again. That seemed to be the general opinion of everyone else I spoke to about the game too. 1001 Karawane This is by the guy who did the game about breeding garden gnomes a few years ago. We really enjoyed that one in Essen, but it seemed very average the only time we played it since. But 1001 Karawane looked rather pretty, and we were ready for a sit down. It turned out to be a lightweight exploration game with some (small) elements of memory and deduction. Players put together caravans to explore the desert. These consist of various combinations of water, guards and trade goods cards. Water is used each turn and guards are needed to protect against bandits. Trade goods can be sold for cash should a city be located. The board consists of tiles which are placed face down. Each turn you can move your caravan over three of these tiles, secretly looking at the underside as you do. Most of them are blank but some have cities, oases etc. The purpose is to find the three tiles which have magical items. The first person to find these and get them back to base wins. The game looks attractive and plays quite quickly but there's not a great deal to it. Tribune I know that a lot of people have been looking forward to this one so we were happy to see that one of the two demo tables was free when we wandered past. The game is themed around old Rome. Victory goes to the first person to achieve a certain number out of six possible victory conditions. Most of these are obtained by building sets of cards to take control of seven different factions. Taking, and holding, control confers various rewards. Each round, the board will be populated with cards. Players then take turns to place their pawns into various areas of the cards. Most placements will be to take cards, others will be to try to take control of factions or grab items to contribute toward victory. Mechanically it's not a complex game but each area of the board plays a little differently so there's quite a bit to explain. I don't fancy typing out a ten page explanation so I'll leave the game summary at that. Play is quite quick as players just take turns to place a pawn. The actions activated by this are almost all triggered after all placements have been made. This means that downtime is almost non-existent. The game took about an hour and a half with four players, which felt about right. Though not complicated, this is a gamers game and not a family game. It reminded me a little of Pillars of the Earth, which is a good thing in my book. It was certainly one of the better games we played at Essen. We have, however, played again since getting back. In the latter game we had five players. The goal cards told us that we needed to achieve three of the six victory conditions with five. Unfortunately though this didn't seem to work out so well. The game seemed to be over before it had started which was quite disappointing. We'd probably fix this by simply playing to four victory conditions next time we try with five. Despite the second game not working out too well, this was certainly one of the better games we tried at Essen, and one of the few we tried and buyed. Burg Appenzell This is a kiddies game about moving mice around a castle in search of cheese. It's an action point game where players take turns to move mice, peek under roofs, and modify the board slightly by sliding tiles. Tiles depicting various types of cheese are scattered across the board. If you can get two of your mice onto the same cheese symbol, you take a token. The first player to get a certain number of tokens wins. The main word that springs to mind to describe this game is fiddly. The board sits on top of the game box, which has holes to trap mice and slots to allow rows or columns of tiles to be pushed. The most interesting part of the game is sliding a row or column of tiles and it seemed quite difficult to do this without pushing against bits of the board you didn't want to be pushing. Moreover, should you wish to play a second game, getting captured mice out of their holes requires more or less demolishing the board. The other word that springs to mind is luck. All of the cheese tokens are hidden under roof tiles. Thus you don't know where they are until you go peeking under them. If you find a pair in easy reach of your mice, you're quids in. I shouldn't be too harsh about it, as after all it is a kiddies game. Not one I would have any desire to play again though. Seiao While patrolling the halls we spotted an unusual looking game which was very much "about" Japan. Firstly it was played on a map of Japan. And secondly, all of the playing pieces sported characters of the Japanese alphabet. The designer told us it was a Civilisation based game so we decided we'd best have a go. Each player has an "army" of tiles. The first one to get all of them onto the board wins. This can be done by building them in provinces of Japan whose names contain the characters, or by trading them with another player. So the first thing we did was to spread out across the board grabbing territory, then swapping bits with our neighbours. That worked fine for a bit until we ran out of space to "breed" in so we started to eye each other's territories up. This inevitably led us to combat, which is resolved simply by taking pairs of tiles, one each, off the board. All well and good, but where does the Civilisation bit come in? In the shape of another set of tiles. You may spend your turn flipping one of these over. Hopefully you can then build it, as otherwise it becomes available for anybody else to build. Each of the tiles confers a benefit (ships, cannon, universities and so forth) but can only be built in particular provinces. If somebody else beats you to building it, you can either wait for another copy of that tile to be turned over or send your army over to attack it. It was quite an interesting game, but did have a couple of issues. The main one was fiddliness. Did I say Burg Appenzell was fiddly? Not as fiddly as this one. Well, perhaps fiddly isn't the right word. Perhaps awkward is a better one. The problem was one of character recognition. At the start of the game you have to put all of your tiles onto the right spots on a player mat. That takes a while trying to match the correct characters. Then throughout the game you're faced with the issue of trying to match character on mat to character on map. The second issue was one of length. It's a four hour game. That's actually a pretty good length for a Civilisation game but I couldn't see any of our group sitting down to a four hour squiggle matching exercise. Which is a shame. Darjeeling Back at the hotel, we were invited by a pair of Americans to join their game of Darjeeling. The game is about tea growing. Each person has a little man which they move around a grid of tiles. These tiles represent parts of crates in four different colours. In your turn you move your man to a tile, take it, and then optionally "ship" a number of crates. To ship crates you must play (and then discard) a set of tiles which form complete crates. Doing this scores points and sets you up for further points in future turns. The future points come from crates on ships on the main board, which sit around in the harbour until displaced by other ships. The longer the crates have been sitting around, the less - on average - they will be worth as time goes on. Well, none of us were hugely impressed with this one. Options were limited and decisions seemed obvious. Teh game seemed overproduced for what it was too. Part 2 to follow soon.....      Comment by Andy   29-Oct-2007 Well as I am not going to write a report, I’ll add some comments … Brass What can I add – nice game & free frog with every purchase!! 1001 Karawane Wasn’t taken by this, as Paul says, minimal strategy, lightweight and luck driven with a memory element. A good game for younger folks though. Tribune I liked it and was glad that Oggie bought a copy. Paul told me about the 5 player game not going so well but I recalled the demo guy saying something to the effect that the rules were a bit different for 5 players (our demo game was with 4). I hope that I am right about this otherwise best played with 4 by the sounds of it. There is also an English language edition due out in a few weeks time apparently. Burg Appenzell We only tried this because the Geek comments said that there were strategy elements for adults. Sadly, and unless we missed something, then this did not seem to be the case – cute mice though! Seiao I don’t want to be too harsh on this game because it was an interesting idea. Basically you had the Japanese alphabet superimposed upon a vague Civilization type theme. Unless you are really into the language, then it’s more likely to frustrate as you try to match the squiggles. Darjeeling This was an OK game, with a bit of strategy. The main reason to mention is that it should be noted that the three British tea drinkers beat the two American coffee drinkers. Goes to show that the Boston Tea Party was a big historical mistake :).   Essen Purchases 2007 22-Oct-2007   Andy Another Essen has come and gone and this is what I came back with: Moai Hamburgum Portabello Market Notre Dame Mordred Brass Funkenschlag + expansion cards Caylus Magna Carta Ticket to Ride - Switzerland Tiket to Ride - Computer Game and 2 card games for 1 euro each : Yoyo and Porca Miseria Gaming hightlights of the week, #5 13-Jul-2007   Paul I've been meaning to put this up for a few weeks now. Better late than never. This highlight involves Pickomino. That's the game that you'll regularly see Brits bringing a dozen copies of back from Essen for friends. £20 to buy in England of 7 Euros in in Germany. Not really a hard choice. Anyway, back to the point. If you've never played, here's a very brief summary. It's a push your luck dice game. You roll eight dice, some of which will be saved and others rerolled. You may save all of the dice showing a particular number, but only if you haven't already saved that number. All dice not saved so far are rerolled. Any time you save some dice, you can stop. You're aiming to total a high enough number to take a scoring tile. There are also a couple of particularly pertinent rules. First, these aren't quite normal dice. They're almost normal d6, but instead of having a 6 on one face, the dice sport a worm symbol instead. These count as fives for scoring purposes. Second, if you don't save any worm symbols before you run out of dice to roll, you bust. And finally, if you can't save any dice, you also bust. So there we were, stuck in a pub waiting for the rain to stop. Oh, the humanity of it! And as you've no doubt gathered, we were playing Pickomino. Boog to roll. He gets ... five worms among the eight dice. Five worms! Cue a big grin on his face, and rude words from everybody else. Twenty five points already, and he has his worms. Obviously, he saves the five worms and rolls the other three dice. And gets .. three more worms! Bust! Cue rude words from Boog and big grins from everybody else. Huge grins. In fact, cue victory dance from everyone else.      Comment by Boog   18-Jul-2007 I still can't get over the injustice of it! I rolled FIVE worms. Then I rolled THREE worms. What are the odds? To add salt to the wound I had a tile at that point and had to give it back. Pah - stupid game.   Chess 11-Jul-2007   Andy I played a lot of chess when I was young, starting at the age of 7 with friends at local chess clubs though to when I left secondary school having played regularly for all three of the schools chess teams one of which I captained for 2 years. I wasn't the best chess player in the school by far as we were lucky enough to have a number of very strong players who helped the school be top dog in the local school league at that time. Anyway a recent game of Bilabong made me realize what an influence chess has had on my play style and even to some extent preference for games as a boardgamer. Bilabong itself has a couple of similarities with chess in terms of the board (i.e. a grid - although larger than 8x8 and with a no-go area in the middle), and the piece movement (i.e. Queen like movement, except you're jumping over pieces). But the main difference is really the thought process of figuring out your moves as you negotiate your kangaroos around the board. Basically nine years of training as a chess player has equipped me to win more than an average number of games of Billabong and it’s interesting to note that the other person who has won a number of Billabong games was also a chess player in his youth. There are a couple of other games we like to play which I believe share this trait - Ricochet Robot for example and possibly even Robo-Rally, both of which I tend to do well at. Anyway it's just interesting to me that something I enjoyed when I was young is still influencing my life today. Too dumb to game 04-Jul-2007   Paul I've never been accused of being an idiot by a designer before. Though I suspect that would rapidly change if they saw the way I murder some of their games. But now that's all changed. A few years ago, Andy was given a game for Christmas. It's not really important which so I'll keep the name anonymous, even if it does spoil my punchline a little. So we made a space among the turkey and trimmings, cracked it open and gave it a go. Being Christmas, we'd had a beer or two. Perhaps more. So it's likely that we got even more rules wrong than we usually do. But the basic gist was a roll and move game. We weren't enthralled by it. This was back in the days before the birth of The Piddinghoe Gamers website, and we were still putting session reports on Boardgame Geek. So of course I popped a session report up for this game. We'd added a whole bunch of reports between us. Some positive, some negative, and most of them likely riddled with rule errors. Either Knizia wasn't reading them, or he didn't really mind. But out of the blue I got an email from the chap who designed this particular game. He wasn't very happy with the session report. Seems we'd played the game wrong and missed all of the subtleties of his strategy masterpiece. And to be fair I doubt I'd be happy if some fool got the rules to my game completely wrong. And then trumpeted to the world how bad the accidental variant was. So we exchanged a few mails and I posted a summary of his corrections. I noticed this evening that he's now posted up a more extensive summary, which is what I should probably have done. Fair enough. And amongst them he's included his own little report on the gamer - "Doesn't sound like the sharpest stategy brain in action to me!" Cool! I've never had a report on me before. Maybe I should get a badge. Or better still, I could get a t-shirt printed up with "Too stupid to play *** ******" on the front. And "But not stupid enough to play it twice" on the back :-)      Comment by Iain Cheyne   05-Jul-2007 And via the magic of Google: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Doesn't+sound+like+the+sharpest+stategy+brain+in+action+to+me!%22+boardgamegeek :-P        Comment by Andy   05-Jul-2007 Tis bizarre indeed that the author is still defending himself 5 years after the session report. Anyway - would someone like my copy, free!!! just pay postage .... ?        Comment by Andy   06-Jul-2007 p.s. I told you that you should have had it out with him at Essen last year despite walking past the games stand several times. Sharpened meeples at dawn I say!     Next page