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
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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!
 

Expo 2007 18-Jun-2007
 
Paul
"Who fancies a weekend in Birminham?". We waited for the punchline. "There'll be games. And beer!"

And so we decided to visit the UK Games Expo. And some pubs.

None of us fancied the journey from the south coast to Brum during the Friday night rush hour(s). We weren't too keen on rising at the crack of dawn to get up on Saturday morning either. So up we popped on Friday afternoon. No gaming to be had that day of course, but we were a stroll away from the centre of Birmingham. Which has pubs. So we drank beer and played Perudo.

We were an even shorter stroll away from the Expo, which was very handy on Saturday morning. We'd been discussing where to set our expectations, and the general consensus was that we expected enough to keep us busy for a couple of hours. Tel, ever the optimist, was fervently wishing for a gaming wonderland that would keep him occupied all weekend. We were keen to see who was right.

The Expo had a small queue outside, and signs that there was no more parking. A promising start then. Entertainment was provided outside in the form of people dressed up in their finest Star Wars gear. Darth Vader was suitably tall, but appeared to have taken a liking for pies since his last movie appearance. One of the Boba Fett's was obviously having the time of his life, randomly haranguing small children. And making Oggie's day by accusing him of having a Jedi beard.

Entrance was handled efficiently and we were inside after a couple of minutes.

We headed straight into the boardgaming section. Judging by the size of the first room, our two hour estimate was looking optimistic. A few stalls around the outside selling various stuff and tables in the middle set up to demo miniatures. On further reflection many of the stalls around the outside were selling miniatures, RPGs and demoing PC games. Two hours was looking extremely optimistic.

Fortunately the board game stuff was actually scattered across a number of rooms. Fortunately we had handfuls of items to mark our passage through the maze of twisty passages.

The next room was more promising, looking more like a miniature version of the small publishers halls in Essen. Warfrog were there with a demo version of Brass and Mordred. I’d heard good early mutterings about Brass and was interested to find out more. Sadly I got distracted with other things every time I went near the stall so I’m still none the wiser. I did note a large stack of tiles next to the board though, so I can confidently state that it’s a boardgame with some tiles.

JKLM had Phoenicia set up next door, minus a few bits. We spotted Sebastian Bleasdale, designer of last years random component fest, On The Undergroup, and thought to tease him about quality control again. We'd had a fine old time at Essen doing exactly that. He's obviously learning as he refused to meet our eyes.

Further along the room, the Ragnar Brothers were doling out upgrades to Canal Mania for purchasers of the first edition. Copies of the second edition were piled up for sale, and copies of the French edition of Viking Fury were being knocked out cheaply. A poster advertising their forthcoming game – Monastery? - adorned one wall. One of the brothers noticed us having a gander and filled us in on the broad details. It’s going to be a tile game where you score by collecting letters of a Latin phrase. Sounds odd. Hopefully good odd, but we won’t know for a few months yet. Their artist broke his hand; obviously a bit of a drawback, this has delayed release by a few months. Look to the end of the year for this one.

One of the more noticeable items in the room was an enormous, 3D, Settlers of Catan. Oggie seemed fascinated by this. Apparently the players weren’t very fast. Perhaps he found some kindred spirits.

Outside the main room, part of the hallway had been called into action for additional table space. A couple of smaller companies were set out here. Surprised Stare was showing a prototype of their forthcoming Essen game, Scandaroon. Somebody tried to encourage me to play, singing its praises. I figured him as part of the demo team, and besides they didn’t have room for all of us to join. I did get a short explanation though, and it appeared to be a trick taking game with special powers. Probably worth a look at in October.

Across the hall and into another room, we found the bring and buy table and a few more retailers. That, we assumed, was that until we wandered up the main staircase to see if anything was up there. Indeed there was. The top floor had another couple of rooms. One looked like the tournament room so we ignored that. The other had a café and a scattering of even smaller publishers than those showing their wares downstairs.

For those wondering, our couple of hours estimate turned out to be about on the nose. We were done by about half noon. I’m sure others stayed longer. There were a number of tables set up for people to play demos, and unlike Essen they weren’t all filled 10 minutes after opening. Most people seemed happy enough just poking about and browsing though.

All in all, a good effort first time round. Whether it was worth the distance we traveled is debatable, but the time we were there was enjoyable enough. It was a good opportunity to catch up with various UK gamers that we usually see just once per year too. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next year.

So half noon and we were done. But fortunately the hotel had some big tables, and we had a copy of Canal Mania. And we were near the centre of Birmingham, which has pubs.
 
 
 Comment by Geoff   22-Jun-2007
I feel you are doing them something of a dis-service with regard to "only 2 hours of entertainment". What they actually managed to achieve was somthing on their first try which was about 25 times bigger than the first ever Essen. What they now have to do is build on that. They need to expand their core base, so it's no use inviting you lot as you will probably go anyway, or me, or Wallace, but what they DO need to do is send out 20,000 free tickets for all the kids in Birmingham. Obviously, should there be a 10-15% take up of their offer the kids will come....with paying parents.

if 20% of those kids become involved in the hobby then thats a good thing. Next year do the same. Eventually you will end up with an Essen. Once the ground has been broken and the rush starts you will need both hands to hang on.

I too was very skeptical with regard to the show, however, I was made to eat my words by the fantastic results I believe the organisers acheived. I can only hope that it didn't cost them too much money.
 
 
 
 Comment by Andy   22-Jun-2007
Hi Geoff,

I think as a group, and having visited Essen for the last few years that we are somewhat spoilt. Personally, I agree 1000% that there was far more than 2 hours worth there it's just that the bits that drew us to the show as a group lasted 2-3 hours. If you take into account the competitions - which there were plenty (and none of us entered) and the minature wargaming stands (which we are not into) and probabally a dozen other things that I've missed then there was at least a day's worth there.
 
 
 
 Comment by Iain Cheyne   02-Jul-2007
That was a really nice write-up. I hope I can make it next year. I am sure the organisers will improve the convention with their experience.
 
 
 
 Comment by Paul   04-Jul-2007
Thanks for the comments guys. Cor, we have readers!

What I'd like to see more of next year is tables to play the new boardgames. They were a bit thin on the ground this year. And that's not meant as a criticism of the organisers. It's just a comment on the state of the British gaming industry at the moment. You can't supply what doesn't exist.

I noticed here that this is exactly what they're hoping to achieve next year. Here's hoping they manage. It's a very encouraging start so far. If they can keep the momentum going, and encourage the industry to grow, they'll make a lot of gamers very happy.
 

Who's turn is it? 01-Apr-2007
 
Paul
I've just found a cartoon generator, and thought I'd have a play with it. Fortunately it has a lot of pre-drawn characters and so forth, which avoids me needing to use my "considerable" artistic talent. That just leaves the small matter of words. So I thought I'd cheat, and draw on this for inspiration.

Who's turn?
 
 
 Comment by Àíäðåé   25-Nov-2008
àâîëôàð âëûàâ ûðàëîâð àëîâûð îëûâðà îëâûðà îëûâ
 

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