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.      Comment by Àíäðåé   25-Nov-2008 àâîëôàð âëûàâ ûðàëîâð àëîâûð îëûâðà îëâûðà îëûâ   Breaking ties 23-Mar-2007   Paul We had a very close game of Industria this week. I'd held a small lead for much of the game, and everyone else had concluded that victory would be a formality. I wasn't so sure. As it turned out, I did win, but only by a single point. In fact, had Boog had another coin at the end, it would have been a tie. So out of interest I thought I'd have a look to see what the tie break condition would have been. Ties are broken in favour of most tiles played, which I think would have been Boog. Second tie break was most cash, which Boog would definitely have taken. I remembered coming out on the losing side of both of the last tie breaks I'd been involved in - Fowl Play and Keythedral. To add insult to injury, the latter was after informing everyone before starting that we didn't need to worry about ties as we'd not seen one in the game so far. So I got to wondering what my record on tie breaks was. It turns out I didn't have to go too far back to find the last time I'd won on a tie. Only as far as the previous tie in fact, which was in September, in a game of Mykerinos. Looking further back though, that, was an oasis of victory in a desert of losses as I'd lost the previous six tie breaks. Shear Panic after Andy unwittingly turned into a last round Kingmaker. Aladdins Dragon when I made the wrong choice of tiles to take, causing a tie. Our first play of Pompeji, in Essen, when Oggie got all of the omen cards and sacrificed too many of my people to the volcano. Star Fighter, as part of a five way tie. Goa, where Tel had just a bit too much cash at the end. And Industria, back in 2004, due to not building enough tiles. So, that makes it only one win from the last nine tie breaks. A little unlucky, though not particularly significant statistically. And I did win the two tie breaks before that, so it all comes out in the wash eventually. I'm still not particularly keen on them though. They often seem quite arbitrary, so it's quite unsatisfying to have an hour or so's gaming decided on what could just as well be the toss of a coin. While I was at it, I checked the records for the rest of the group. Given the luck warping fields which surround Oggie and Tel, it would have been no surprise to see one of those two coming out ahead. That's not, however, the way it's worked out so far. Here are the tie break records for the group so far - Andy - won 3/5 (60%), longest losing streak 1 Boog - won 2/2 (100%) Paul - won 3/11 (27%), longest losing streak 6 Oggie - won 1/5 (20%), longest losing streak 4 Steve, won 5/6 (83%), longest losing streak 1 Tel - won 7/17 (41%), longest losing streak 5 Board games for the PC 12-Feb-2007   Paul I've recently spent a couple of evenings gaming with Derek Carver's group. They're a good bunch of people, and it's an interesting change of pace to play with a different group. I know the rest of the Piddinghoe Gamers well enough by now to pretty much be able to guage their response to my moves, which is to stitch me up as efficiently as possible. And of course, it's my job to do exactly the same to them. While Derek's group seem to enjoy the art of the stitch up too, I don't know that they'll do it to me - I just strongly expect that they will. Which changes the gameplay enough to keep me on my toes for reasons other than the norm. One of the other members of the group is George Crawshay, who's name will also be known to many of you. I first came across his name a few years ago, when I found a version of Breaking Away on the Fiendish Board Games site which he'd coded up in QBasic . Soon after that his name cropped up again in a copy of Counter. This was in a letter which mentioned that he'd converted a number of other games to the PC, but that they were no longer easily available. Intrigued, I managed to hunt a number of them down via the Wayback Machine, on what I think must have been an old version of his website. Again, they were in QBasic, but undaunted I downloaded a copy of a QBasic compiler and kept myself occupied for a few evenings compiling and playing the games. However, it's no longer necessary to hunt through the dark corners of the Internet to get your hands on them. The good news is that George now has a new web site, from which his games are again available for download. He's even compiled all of them - with the exception of McMulti - so all you need to do is download them and play. The address is http://www.george.crawshay.com. There is just one small thing to be aware of, and that is that you should use the option to download as zip files, not as EXEs. The latter option gives a missing file error. It's well worth taking a look. George has done a good job with these, especially with the AI on a number of the games. You won't find anything released in the last couple of years here, but fans of Sid Sackson games will be very satisfied. Thought I'd give this one a go 01-Feb-2007   Boog Since Paul followed on Tel's "games that made him the gamer he is", I thought I'd give it a stab. I followed the same idea, using Tel's tag lines and trying to work out what applied for me personally. Perhaps unsurprisingly several of mine cross over with both Pauls and Tels. Ah well, here they are. 10 The first game that really got me hooked and responsible in no small way for me wanting to play board games in later life. I didn't really start playing board games until I got to University. Of course there were always the outings with Snakes and Ladders, Ludo and (god help us) Monopoly (involving all the Christmas family arguments about what the rules were and all the rest). Once I got there I got exposed mostly to games sold by Games Workshop, who in those days still sold games they didn't produce themselves. So I got exposed to Risk and Civilisation and Fury of Dracula. The one that *really* did it for me though was Talisman. Me and my mates were mad for that game back then. To the extent that I had the original plus all 4 expansions for it. I even went to the point of buying a load of the lead figurines Games Workshop produced for the game. It'd probably all be worth money if I hadn't thrown away all the expansion boxes (took up too much space) and inexpertly "painted" half the figures in garish colours. Probably not a game I'd get anything out of these days, but I have rose-coloured memories of it. 9 The first german style game I ever bought. I don't have all that many, and most of them are card games. I couldn't tell you what the first one of those might have been, but I know the first proper "board" game I asked for, which was Vinci. Despite only having managed to win it once, it still features as one of my favourites. The variability provided by the different civilisations lends it a lot of replayability for me. Of course the fact that *my* copy has never been opened is not the point... 8 Tap card to be hooked on games for life - my gaming would be much more sporadic without this. Aaargh. I could have killed Paul when he started us all off on Magic. Actually I totally bought into it at the time (and bought and bought and bought), but once I finally managed to kick the habit I could have killed him! I still haven't managed to summon the will power to set fire to the cards though - soo much money spent on them, and I kicked the habit long before the others and spent less while addicted! 7 So you can play 1 game all day without getting bored. Paul suggested Civilisation for this. That would only work for me if you skipped the last 3 words. You can certainly play it all day (and all night as well), I usually lost interest after 4 or 5 hours. I'm not sure I can think of a game I could play all day without getting bored that doesn't involve being an undead priest, but Brittania might fit the bill. We used to play over two evenings (and on the most recent game those two evenings are standing at about 5 years apart and increasing!), and I always found it involving. 6 The game that launched my german revolution. Gonna have to agree with Paul on this one. Settlers of Catan was a radical shift in my view of board games. The first time I played it I was astounded that such a game could exist. The mixture of luck and skill mostly the former in my case), cards, dice, a random board and all the rest left me slightly stunned. Not one we play that much any more, but I have fond memories of the Travel Settlers we played on the ferry across to Holland. 5 An early favourite in the genre and partly responsible for my annual pilgrimage to Essen. Since I've only been to Essen the once, I'm not sure I can comment on this one. Early favourites for me would include Vinci, Settlers and Medici, all of which I enjoyed a lot and which expanded my horizons about what board games outside the UK could be like. 4 Proving that in the right circumstances any game can become a favourite. Tel has the right of this. He'd just had some fairly major surgery, and was still on a drip for crying out loud. And we roll out Limits. Don't get me wrong, Limits was always likely to be the sort of game I like. But with Tel pleading with us not to make him laugh in case he pulled a stitch out, that game session is always going to live in my memory. In a similar vein games like Sticheln or 6 Nimmt are favourites in large part due to particularly unforgetable moments. 3 Games can even make commuting enjoyable. Ah so many choices. For a few months Paul Tel and myself were all commuting on the same train. And we arranged to meet at the same carriage (with a table) so we could play games for the hour long commute every day. Needless to say there was a lot of very English sideways staring going on trying to figure out what we were doing, followed by a couple of people introducing themselves and even joining in. We played Mystery Rummy, Al Capone, Lost Cities, Flaschentuefel and San Marco. And probably others. My vote has to go to Flaschentuefel (bottle imp) though. Mostly because it's one of the very rare games that Tel is absolutely hopeless at :) 2 As close to a gaming nirvana currently available. I'm gonna have to go with Power Grid on this one. I'm not sure I've played the same variant more than once, but I've seriously enjoyed every single game of it. It's currently joint top with Puerto Rico (and a couple of card games) as my highest scored game ever. My only gripe with it (and it's a minor one) is that the unpredictability of the really large power stations can be a serious issue if they come out before anyone can afford them. Almost perfect. 1 The next one...or possibly the one after that. Interesting. I'm always up for trying something new, even if it turns out to be pants. You'll never know unless you try. Having said that, it'd take some pretty serious negotiations to get me to play a sequel to Richochet Robot! Who can say what the next big thing will be. I imagine the Piddinghoe game vaults still contain a pile of unplayed games from last year's Essen, so it could be one of those. Or one from this year's Essen. Or even one picked up at random at a jumble sale. Who can say. Gaming highlights of the week, #4 29-Jan-2007   Paul I haven't done one of these for ages, so I thought I'd throw this one in. A bit unfair to Boog on his initial play perhaps, but you have to take your material from wherever you find it. This week we did something unusual, which was to play the same game twice in one week. Okay, it does happen, but usually only for fillers or card games. This time we got Maestro Leonardo into play twice. Now this is where the unfair bit comes in, as Boog had never played the game before whereas most of the rest of us had played a couple of times. One of which being two days earlier. For anyone who hasn't played before, it's important to know that money is VPs. It's also important to know that you start off with 3 cash. You have the option of adding another 5 or 10 to that during the set-up phase. That turns out to be quite handy, as you're likely to have to spend some money in the first turn or so. More money, or VPs, is earned mainly by researching inventions. It's a race to finish research first, as that brings the biggest financial reward. But anyone who finishes an invention will be paid, just not quite as much as the first person. So, enough of the scene setting and onto the game. It all started off normally enough. Tel explained the rules. Steve corrected them. We asked Oggie for bacon sandwiches. He refused. Boog looked a bit confused but generally seemed to have the idea. Paul tried to think of some sneaky rule loophole. All in all, par for the course. We played a couple of rounds. Tel grabbed a couple of inventions. So did Steve. Oggie decided to get in on the act. And then Boog noticed something. Something else which it's important to know is that each invention needs a set of ingredients. These must be tucked under your workshop before you start researching them. It's traditional to pick the ingredients that match the requirements for the invention to be researched. Or at least to pick ingredients which might possibly be used for an invention not yet revealed. Except Boog hadn't. A brick and a rope had somehow translated themselves into a brick and a lump of wood, completely unsuitable for any kind of invention. "Oh dear!" he exclaimed. Now I should note that I'm treading on slightly delicate ground here, having managed to make the same mistake not once but twice so far. So I'm being very careful not to mock. Too much. So onwards and forwards. Realising that the current line of research wasn't bearing fruit, Boog decided to abandon it and start again. Except that he didn't have any ingredients for any of the inventions currently on display. So he set about collecting new ingredients, slightly hampered by the fact that he still only had his original three cash. Being helpful fellows, and noting that Boog had a problem with the inventions on display, we all made a concerted effort to help him by hurriedly researching them all. Usually, completing them just as he gathered the right ingredients, which by a completely mean and unwarranted rule meant he was unable to start researching them. So he set about collecting more. Again hampered by lack of cash. And eventually the game, and the whole sorry episode, came to an end. At which point Boog revealed his score. Zero. Plus nothing for end game bonuses, making a final score of ... still zero. Now, you may remember that he started out with 3. And could have had an extra 10. So in the course of the game, he lost 3 points. Or 13. Whichever way you look at it, the final score was less than he started with. After 90 minutes of play. Passing each turn, and doing nothing, would have been a more lucrative strategy. And I thought I was the only person who discovered such mighty strategies. Still, I have to admit he was a good sport about it. And I suspect he'll try something a little different next time. But for now, his personal best is there for the taking.      Comment by Boog   30-Jan-2007 Pah. Crap game, we should never ever play it again. To be honest I was mostly aiming for a zero score towards the end. I was so far behind I thought it would be funny. I could actually have made one of the things in the last few rounds, but didn't really see much point in it.   Numchucks 29-Jan-2007   Andy I'm glad to say after two months of waiting that I finally have my pre-ordered Nintendo Wii in my now hot sweaty hands. Now some people might be a bit fed-up waiting for two months - especially when the whole distribution of the console proved to be a complete lottery, but I should add that I pre-ordered on the last day of pre-ordering and so naturally I was towards the bottom of the list. It's amazing the way the whole console thing works, people will probably go just as crazy for the PS3 next month as they did for the Wii, but I am just happy to have my Wii at long last - just hope that I don’t put the controller through the TV!      Comment by Andy   30-Jan-2007 It's now Wii arrival+1 and in those 24 hours it has put a big smile upon my face. One of the first things you do is put together a Wii Mii, in other words and Avatar that can be used in some of the games - like Wii Sports (which is bundled with the console). Ironically there are enough choices to get some similarity with ones-self, and that was quite good fun in itself!! So far I have tried all of the Sports games in the Wii Sports pack - tennis, golf, 10 pin bowling, boxing and baseball and a quick go at Rayman Raving Rabbits. All of the sports games are best played standing up and require you to use the remotes to simulate each sport. For example when boxing you hold the remote in one hand and the nunchuck in the other act to act as physical boxing gloves to beat your opponent up with. For RRR, the remotes are used in a variety of sub-games to run, draw and even hurl cows around your head in some bizarre version of the hammer throw from track & field sports. The good news is that this is all pretty energetic, it's a fusion of exercise with computer games and works very well. After three rounds of boxing, I could feel that I had done something physical without getting hurt! One word of caution is that I can see how excessive play could actually cause you to be injured (e.g. pull a muscle), so you need to be wary of what you do with the remotes.        Comment by Boog   30-Jan-2007 Didn't know we were covering computer games here as well! In that case I'd like to bring to the forum my shiny new XBox 360 and an extreme World of Warcraft addiction. I'll post reviews of all three games I currently have on the XBox, and a detailed log of my two year odyssey in Azeroth and more recently the Outlands as soon as I have time. I've got a lot of cameras too, but don't get me started on those ...        Comment by Andy   30-Jan-2007 Works for me ... Cameras? I'd heard about your sort! Wiiiiiii !   Game of the year, 2006 17-Jan-2007   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 Ticket to Ride - Europe. This year, the panel cast their votes for games released in 2006. 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. 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. And I'm pleased to announce that the winner this year is Canal Mania, by the Ragnar brothers. In second place, and only losing by the narrowist of margins, is On the Underground from JKLM. Third place, and quite a long way back, is Leonardo da Vinci by daVinci Games. Congratulations to the winners. The awards are in the post. Honest. It is particularly pleasing this year that the top two spots were taken by British designers and British companies. The British games industry has long been in the doldrums so hopefully this is a sign of better things to come. Let's hope.      Comment by    19-Jan-2007 CM is aworthy winner for 2006 with a good theme. I would reccomend it to anyone who is a fan of transport games. On the Underground is also a worthy runner-up and no supprise that the result was close.        Comment by Andy   19-Jan-2007 The above gibberish having been written by me! :D   Pasteboard and Plastic. UK games day, Sunday 21 January 13-Jan-2007   Paul Local gamer, Dick Ruck, has organised another games day. This is open to any local gamers, though I'm sure anybody willing to travel from afar will be welcome too. Here are the details - After an absence of over a year we are delighted to announce Saltdean's second games day: Pasteboard and Plastic. Saltdean Scout Hut, Longridge Avenue, Saltdean Sunday 21 January 10:00am 'till late! Location Map: http://tinyurl.com/ybq7ng Cost £3.00 As before, all proceeds from the day go to the Three Deans (Saltdean) Explorer Scout Unit. Hot News! Board Game Club will be coming to Pasteboard and Plastic. No delivery costs, no minimum order, just low, low prices. (Just don't expect any sort of service if they are playing Memoir 44!) www.boardgameclub.co.uk More Hot News: Wings of War: world's largest game record attempt. (26+ planes!) If you own Wings of War, please bring it along and join in our attempt at the largest WoW game ever! The record on the 'geek is 25 planes, surely we can beat that! Please let Dick know if you can bring WoW and how many planes you can 'field' (Sky?) dickruck@dsl.pipex.com Game to commence at 3.00pm. Even more Hot News: Free game (collect on the day) to everyone who emails Dick to pre- register: saltdean@piddinghoegamers.org Please put Pasteboard and Plastic in the subject of your email. Domestic arrangements: The Scout Hut has been redecorated and a new kitchen installed. We will not be able to organise food runs to the local chip shop or Wimpy. However the local Saltdean Tavern has a very reasonable Carvery and is about three minutes away by car. We hope to provide Bacon Sandwiches during late afternoon. Tea and Coffee will be available all day at a reasonable cost. Please contact Dick on the email address above if you are interested. Due to a lack of definite responses, there is a chance that this may be posponed.      Comment by Dick Ruck   13-Jan-2007 Thanks for posting this. It looks (Sunday 13th) that it will go ahead as we now have eight definite players and at least the same again in possibles. The word seems to be getting about! However, PLEASE let me know (email address above) if you can make it so I can arrange for your free game! :-) Dick   10 games that would have made me the gamer Tel is today 07-Jan-2007   Paul Last year, Tel wrote a series of the 10 games that made his the gamer he is today. I thought it would be interesting to take the categories, or tag lines, he used for each of these games to see which games would make me the gamer Tel is. I meant to do this just after Essen, but for one reason or another never got around to it. Oh well, better late than never. So here are the categories, and the games. 10 The first game that really got me hooked and responsible in no small way for me wanting to play board games in later life. I'm tempted to give this to Frustration, which I remember playing a lot of. But that's basically Ludo, so perhaps not gamey enough. Cluedo is another contender, having a bit more game to it. But I'm actually going to give it to Mastermind, which chronologically arrived for me somewhere between these two. As such it was probably the first "real" game I played, and it got played a lot. It also has the distinction that I played a rule wrong all those years, setting a trend which is now a Piddinghoe Gamers tradition. 9 The first german style game I ever bought. I'm not sure, but this might be Roborally, assuming that we're counting it as German style. I found a copy in the local Virgin Megastore, back when they sold games. This was a few years before we started gaming regularly, but Boog was down for the weekend to visit so we played it. Pretty much all weekend. Even after coming back from the pub, when somehow we managed to manouver over conveyer belts with a lot less mental anguish than we have now. Though Oggie shortly afterwards gave us our first inklings that beer and Roborally don't belong together, when we decided to play on New Years Day. The previous night being New Years Eve, some beer had been consumed. And Oggie had had his fair portion. Possibly more than his fair portion judjuing by his showing in this game. We dealt out the cards. He looked at them. For forty five minutes. And when he finally laid down his program and we ran through them all, he ended up in a pit. Lest anyone think another robot had got in the way and meddled with his plan, they hadn't. His program led him straight there. No outside help needed. 8 Tap card to be hooked on games for life - my gaming would be much more sporadic without this. It's difficult to argue with Tel's choice of Magic here. It bridged the gap between RPGs and boardgames for most of us, and certainly had us all hooked for a while. It's also the game that led to the founding of The Piddinghoe Gamers, and a regular gaming group has certainly led to more frequent gaming. Before Magic, gaming was restricted to an occasional weekend when I had a gaming inclined visitor. That more or less meant a handful of games each getting a couple of plays. Instead, I now have a couple of hundred games each getting a couple of plays. Ho hum. 7 So you can play 1 game all day without getting bored. This one, I think, will have to be given to Civilisation. Mainly because whenever we did play it, it really did take all day. And all night. At least I presume so. We never actually finished a game, normally quitting around midnight nowhere near the end. We always decided to play it on a Sunday, which sadly meant we had to go to work the next day. Playing through the night was never therefore an option. I don't remember ever being bored while playing though, more surprised that a whole day had disappeared somewhere. I'd like to play a full game one of these days, but faced with playing half a game - and giving up at midnight - or playing half a dozen other excellent games to completion, it's not something I see happening soon. 6 The game that launched my german revolution. The first German game I played was Fair Means or Foul. The first I bought was Roborally. But the revolutionary one was Settlers. I know, a predictable answer and probably an all too common one. I found it in a bookshop in Woking, put it on a shelf for a bit, heard some buzz from a couple of places. Left it on the shelf a bit more. Then finally had a game inclined visitor and got it to the table. It spent a lot of time on the table after that, at least for the next few months. It also led to the rapid purchase of a number of other games, and the rest is history. 5 An early favourite in the genre and partly responsible for my annual pilgrimage to Essen. I'm going to have to cheat and nominate Settlers again. I'm sure another game would have done it soon afterwards though, as this was around the same time that I discovered that London had game shops. That, you see, was before the days that this sort of information was readily available on the Internet. So instead of typing "game shop London" into Google, the actual method of discovery was to walk down a street for the first time and find a shop called Just Games there. Sadly I only managed to get into it for 5 minutes as it was closing time, and even more sadly it had closed completely by the time I got there again. There was, however, a notice in the window advertising a new games shop near the British Museum. And, again due to the earliness of the Internet, it was chock full of games I'd never heard of. Many of these would have had the opportunity to claim the crown of early favourite and Essen prompter. 4 Proving that in the right circumstances any game can become a favourite. Tel had it easy. He got to pick a game and then invent a tagline. Picking a game to match this tag's not so straightforward. Mind you, with the circumstances Tel described, perhaps he didn't have it quite so easy. Actually, I've a few contenders so it's not so tough. I'm going to go with Royal Turf. The circumstances being Essen 2004, introducing the game to a young Canadian by the name of Chris Kovac. The name will be familiar to any readers of Spielfrieks; he's the guy who regularly lights the touchpaper on a topic then steps back to see what happens. Chris had played a couple of games with us during the previous couple of evenings. He'd probably got us pegged as a little odd but mainly harmless. But this evening was different. Because we'd been to the local brew pub, and we'd been drinking *pints* (think Hobbits and Lord of the Rings for the reference). And so we felt it compulsory to chant "horses head .... in the bed!" every time a head was rolled. Largely, it has to be said, for the expression of pure bewilderment on Chris's face every time we did it. Oddy enough, he hasn't played with us since. We still have a couple of chants in his honour each time we play the game though. 3 Games can even make commuting enjoyable. An easy one this time. The first Mystery Rummy game, Jack the Ripper. A game which never gets dull. Even after playing it a hundred times, something new will occasionally get thrown up. It's still the only game I've seen somebody win before they'd even had a go. The theme was also great for generating interest amongst other commuters. We got no end of odd looks, and even had a couple of people join in for various games. The only downside is that it doesn't play very well with four people - that makes it far too easy for the Ripper to escape, making the game a bit of a luck fest. 2 As close to a gaming nirvana currently available. Another tougher one, as there are so many good games out there. And I'm not really sure which is "the best". So I'm going to go with Princes of Florence, my higest rated game according to the stats elsewhere on this site. And ironically the game that was supposed to be rendered redundant by Puerto Rico, which was Tel's pick. Lots of different strategies, some of them quite surprising, and lots to think about throughout the game. There rarely seems to be any downtime as most of the other players activities seem to whiz by while plotting how on earth you are going to get these works done. 1 The next one...or possibly the one after that. Well, we'll have to see what this one turns out to be. Interestingly, Tel's almost turned out to be Top Trumps, so I'm hoping for something with a little more meat than that. So there we have it. The ten games that would have made me the games that Tel is today. Any more takers?      Comment by Tel   08-Jan-2007 10 Mastermind - I played a lot of this as a kid. I'm intrigued to know what rule you played wrong. 7 Civilisation. - I'd like to think that I will manage to play a whole game of civ at some point in my life. But then I always was the eternal optimist 4 Royal Turf - HORSES HEAD, IN THE BED!!! - ah memories are made of these. 3 The first Mystery Rummy game, Jack the Ripper. - To be fair this could've been any of 4 games. Mystery Rummy:Al Capone, Mystery Rummy:Jack the Ripper, Flaschenteufal and my original choice Lost Cities. I gave the nod to Lost Cities as that was the game that started our train games. 2 Princes of Florence - PoF, PR, AoS all work for me. 1 Luckily I had to buy some duty free so missed the first game of Top Trumps        Comment by Paul   11-Jan-2007 The rule I had wrong in Mastermind concerned placing the black and white pegs to show how accurate the guess was. I don't know why, but I got it in my head that the pegs had to be placed in the same positions as the guesses. So if peg x was the right colour in the right place, then a white - or was it black? - peg had to be played in the same position to show that. Now the fact that the guesses were placed on a 1x4 row, and the answers on a 2x2 grid, might have been a bit of a clue that something was amiss with this ruling. And indeed I did spot that something wasn't quite right. So at this point I had two options. I could check the rules, or I could declare the game designers to be complete idiots for making such a fundamental error when they designed the board. And invent a mapping between the row and the grid to fix their stupid error. Guess which I did!        Comment by Andy   12-Jan-2007 I believe that same "Horses head" session was also notable for a certain game of Tonga Bonga - once of the sweetest dice rolling moments I have ever witnessed. Me, having been helplessly loosing thought "sod this" and put all my cash onto the board and up for grabs. Tel, seeing that if he got the right roll, could then win the game from Paul became extremely excited!! His subsequent roll was one of the worst possible rolls I have ever seen in TB, Tel almost choaked to death laughing as a result. Three 10s and a 9 were the resulting scores which must put it as one of our highest ranked individual games ever!!!!!   Games played 2006 01-Jan-2007   Steve As another year of gaming is about to start here is a list of the games I managed to play last year. All these are face to face games although I have been playing a few games on Spielbyweb. Fewer games played than last year mainly due to not being able to make as many Sunday games days as I would have liked and also missing a whole gaming weekend due to a family holiday. Well enough of the excuses and here are those games... 5&10 for Stephen 1/1/2006 thru 12/31/2006 297 Games Played 137 Unique Games Played #Plays Game 10 Mystery Rummy: Al Capone 9 Alles im Eimer 8 Trans Europa 8 Thurn Und Taxis 7 Guillotine 7 San Juan 6 Puerto Rico 6 Robo Rally 6 Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck 5 Cloud Nine 5 Funkenschlag 5 Age Of Steam 4 For Sale 4 Perudo 4 Trias 4 Geschenkt 4 Zug Um Zug 4 Das Zepter Von Zavandor 4 Mesopotamia 4 Hacienda 4 Zug um zug:marklin 4 Indonesia 3 Basari 3 Don 3 Hare and Tortoise 3 Ricochet Robot 3 Metro 3 Feurio 3 zug um zug: europe 3 Louis XIV 3 Amun Re 3 Caylus 3 Santiago 3 Ys 3 Siena 3 Battle Cry 3 Gheos 2 Acquire 2 Carcassonne 2 Durch die Wüste 2 El Grande 2 Family Business 2 Flaschenteufel 2 Die Fürsten von Florenz 2 Gods 2 Kardinal und König 2 Offline 2 Pit 2 Wiz War 2 Mystery Rummy 3: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 2 Transamerica 2 Der Untergang von Pompeji 2 Wallenstein 2 Formula De Mini 2 Fresh Fish 2 Wings of War 2 Colossal Arena 2 China 2 Colosseo (Joe) 2 Finstere Flure 2 Jenseits Von Theben 2 Blue Moon City 2 Canal mania 2 Contraband 2 Rise of the Luftwaffe 2 Space Dealer 2 Maestro Leonardo 1 6 nimmt! 1 Adel verpflichtet 1 Attila 1 Babel 1 Billabong 1 Bohnanza 1 Carolus Magnus 1 Cartagena 1 Evo 1 Hattrick 1 HellRail: 3rd Perdition 1 Limits 1 Lost Cities 1 Medina 1 Mississippi Queen 1 Modern Art 1 Morisi 1 Polarity 1 Ra 1 Rage 1 Royal Turf 1 Samurai 1 San Marco 1 Save Doctor Lucky 1 Stephenson's Rocket 1 Tikal 1 Timbuktu 1 Tonga Bonga 1 Vinci: The Rise and Fall of Civilizations 1 Balloon Cup 1 Carcassonne die Stadt 1 Street Soccer 1 Keythedral 1 Reef Encounter 1 Railroad Dice 1 Magna Grecia 1 Oltremare 1 Alhambra 1 Der Turmbau zu Babel 1 Pirate's Cove 1 Industria 1 St Petersburg 1 Razzia 1 Il Principe 1 Byzantium 1 Stimmt So! 1 Aqua Romana 1 Carcassonne: The Discovery 1 Das Ende des Triumvirats 1 Victory & Honor 1 History's Mysteries 1 Diamant 1 Santa Fe Rails 1 Cityscape 1 Gloom 1 Glory to Rome 1 Euphrates & Tigris : Card Game 1 Heave Ho! 1 Flagship 1 Antike 1 Mykerinos 1 Cleopatra and the society of architects 1 Hey that's my fish 1 Metromania 1 Null & Nichtig 1 Hermagor 1 Khronos 1 Hamelyn 1 Fiji 1 Fowl Play 5 & 10 Generated by GameTracker      Comment by Derek Joiner   09-May-2007 Bob has a new game called 'Camp-er Van'. Might be of interest. Has an additional Pots and Pans module!   The Debating Game - Playing Quickly v Taking Your Time 11-Dec-2006   Andy “Playing Quickly” Nobody likes excessive downtime in a board game, in fact many of the most popular games in our group are 4-5 player card games which have little downtime, are great fun and a fair dollop of stitching each other up. Of course it would be completely unfair to suggest that it is just the game speed alone which makes these fun, but it is a factor none the less. Analysis Paralysis – ugh what a term, and what an impact upon games! I don’t think that the average German game was ever intended to be dissected into a million pieces before making the perfect move. Many games are intended to be played in 45-90 minutes, but instead we see people slowing them down just to eek out that extra point or two with the net result that an otherwise entertaining game takes 2-3 hours to play. Of course if winning at all costs is a player’s vogue and they feel that they simply have to evaluate all of the infinitesimal permutations which exist in the multiverse as we know it, then so be it. What such players fail to realise is that they are actually boring the tits off all the other people who are playing the game and come the revolution, they in their sloth-like state will be first against the wall!!! Many games suffer from the player not being able to make their decisions until it is actually their turn – this is fair enough but surely some planning head is possible or, as seems to be the case, they sit there whilst it is not their turn going “la la la la la la twiddle-dee-dum”. Often in game I find that I have already chosen my move long before it’s my turn and only stop to adjust what it is I am going to do if the situation changes markedly. I know that I am not alone in this and many games have enough down time that you can actually figure out a strategy before your go. A five player game with everyone on the ball and taking no more than three minutes on their turn gives you fifteen minutes of total thinking/playing time to complete your go. I think that you could argue that even ten minutes would suffice for many games. So in truth playing quickly is not really about playing quickly – you actually have ages to plan your turn or strategy and making best use of that time is key to not slowing the game down and annoying your fellow players. Anyway I look forward you your counter arguments, just be snappy about it!!      Comment by Garry   12-Dec-2006 Andy Relax. Take your time. A great game is like a fine wine and needs to be savoured, not gulped down at breakneck speed. Playing games is a leisure activity and should be conducted at a leisurely pace, not a chore that you need to get over and done with at the soonest opportunity. I mean, it's not as though there are so many games to play that you couldn't possibly get through them all if you didn't play quickly. Err, scrub that, there probably are that many games! Seriously, I know what you're saying and agree that AP is not a good thing. However, when I'm playing a game for the first time, I am more willing to allow people the time to think about what their next move might mean. Sometimes, if you just play without thinking, you miss some of the subtleties and may dismiss the game unfoundedly. That said, playing a well known game like Settlers in the same way won't make you any friends (especially me). In truth, I think it is a question of balance and who you are playing with. If someone is, uncharacteristically, taking longer than they should, tell them - hopefully they'll take notice. If someone always plays too slow for your liking, more fool you for continuing to play with them in the first place.   Essen Lists 31-Oct-2006   Tel I was going to do an Essen Report but I was very tired after this years fair so left it for a few days. That was a mistake as with my bad memory I can't remember half of the games already. Plus Paul has already written his and since we played the same games i'd be just repeating him. So instead i've decided to give a few "top five" lists. Games that didn't work. Justinian A big disappointment this one. Looked interesting with a different mechanic. But I won the game by hoarding cards in the second round and rushing the last round. The demoer said that it was rare to see games go the full distance go I guess we got caught by some newbie errors but it left a bad taste. I'd like to give it a second go but not enough to buy it. Ansazi We were supposed to be connecting islands together. But it descended into trying not to leave the next player anything useful. Was never going to work with our group. Top or flop Once the chap explaining it said "the predicament is whether you should use a big card to increase your holdings and then see everyone else make the film flop, or increase the films ratings and see everyone else take shares in the film" we all saw the third option of using it to trash others films. It then became a game of who could draw the most -3 cards. Hence all luck and by real decisions. Gheos This one has potential and a copy did make its way back to Brighton BUT... Any game that involves drawing tiles has to take the Oggie factor into account. As usual he managed to bypass the laws of probability and end the game very early by drawing all the scoring tiles before half the tiles has been drawn. Cockroach Poker Some people may enjoy this sort of game. Perhaps beer will help, perhaps more then 2 players are needed. Personally i'm in no hurry to find out. Must visit stalls Fragor 2 genuinely nice guys wearing kilts. Just forget about buying the game - its sold out. Better pre-order next years now. Warfrog Another good bunch of people this time all wearing yellow shirts. JKLM They've usually got at least one decent game out each year. This year On the Underground looks a true winner. Rio Grande So many tables with games with English rules. No idea what the company is called. But the Japanese chap with the potato chip game. Ok the demo was from the year before but it was such a hoot that it never failed to raise a smile every time we walked past this year. Lessons learnt for next year. Driving was so much easier then flying. The cost was about the same and travel times were similar. But we had much more flexibility, getting an extra 90 mins on bed before we started was a huge help. Avoid the chinese on Saturday night, it at least take games to restaurant. We were stuck in there for almost 4 hours, half of it without beer. And the only game we had with us was Top Trumps. We will know better next year. One day is not enough recovery time. I've learnt from previous years that taking the Monday off work after the fair is essential. Whether it was the additional driving, the heaving crowds on Saturday or my advancing years, I found that it took me much longer to recover this year. Inform your bank you are going to Europe. One of the group was struggling for cash during the end of the week as his bank stopped his card. Games I'm looking forward to trying. Hameln. Its a fragor game and there appears th be the chance to switch people up. What's not to like? Space Dealer Bit of a cheat here as we played this the first session after we got home. It was a bit chaotic with 6 and the variable speeds of the egg timers was a disappointment. We alsomissed a couple of rules. So I'm still looking forward to trying it properly. Graenland. Picked this one up as a pre order. Haven't heard anything about it since but it does sound interesting. Chronos This one sounds like it could fry my brain. But at the same time sounds like it could be a corking game. Tempus I've been waiting a year to get this. I just hope its worth the wait. Top 5 games of the fair. On the Underground JKLM game based on the London underground. Probably my favourite game of the fair. We played it 3 times during the week with varying numbers and it seems to work just as well with each. Fairly simple rules and relatively quick to play so I can see this getting plenty of play. Now why didn't I pick up a copy? Maestro Leonardo Slightly heavier and longer game then On the Underground. I need to play this more to see if it is balanced. Each player starts the game with a radically different setup, some of which seem more powerful then others. But I guess time will tell. This is certain to see some table time as 5 copies made there way back to Brighton. Die Staulan der Erde The first on the list were our first 2 new games of the fair, so everything was looking so good early on. We had to wait until the last game played in the Messe for the next best game. This was by far the heaviest game we played. Possibly a sunday game rather then a tuesday night. Die baumeister von Arkadia A small but crucial missed rule from the lovely lass that taught us this one means we can't be completely sure about how this one really works, but I liked it enough from the game we played to pick it up. Null & Void Every year there is a light game that catches our imagination. This year its Null and void. This is a trick taking game where its only really important what's in the last trick you win. Not sure if we'll be playing this in 6 months but it will provide plenty of fun while we are still playing it.      Comment by    31-Oct-2006 Personally I enjoyed Cockroach Poker :D Actally no it was pretty awful with 2 players. I'll reserver judgement on Gheos in case we played it wrong or something, but game over after 40$ of the tiles were drawn was disappointing.        Comment by Tel   31-Oct-2006 Yep - Gheos nearly also made it onto the looking "forward to playing list", as we certinaly didn't do it any justice in our one game.   Pauls Essen 2006 - part 2 29-Oct-2006   Paul Note - this is the second half of this years Essen review, the first part of which can be found at Part 1 Friday Another breakfast, another day. Fortunately, despite the threat of rain, it was dry when we turned up this morning. For instead of allowing us all into the entrance hall beyond the ticket offices we all found ourselves locked out. Fortuntately the main doors opened at 10.00am on the dot, quashing any speculation about radioactive spills or other disaster scenarios. Die Baumeister von Arcadia Each year there seems to be a particular theme which pervades Essen. A couple of years ago it was pirate games, last year was of course the Year of the Sudoku, and this year seemed the be the one where every company had invented a four player game called Die Somethingorother. All looked to be interesting but there were concerns about the amount of German text in a couple of them. I'll be coming back to that later. This one looked to be free of any text at all, and closer inspection showed the only German to be on the back of the player shields. Looking at the components, you could be forgiven for thinging that this one is a combination of Torres, Princes of Florence and some sort of free-form toy soldiers game. It actually turned out to be a surrouding game and mainly felt quite fresh. The point of the game is to score points by surrounding buildings to complete them. Its completely abstract but has a tenuous castle building theme bolted on which goes some way to hiding that. The game thus becomes an exercise in placing little men on the board, trying to position them adjacent to as many buildings as possible. Surrounding a building triggers a distribution of tokens, which at some later point can be converted in points. The distribution is largely proportional to the number of men each person has surrounded the building with. Whoever finishes surrounding gets a bonus token, and the ability to slightly influence the value of all of the tokens not yet scored. The game ran a bit long, coming in at somewhere over an hour, but that was a consequence of a small rule mistake. We pointed out to our teacher that we were close to manouvering the game into a state where we would not be able to finish it so she hurried off to find the designer. That's such a handy feature of Essen, if only the designer was always in the next room, ready to be summoned. Anyway, she came back looking very apologetic and explained that she'd gotten a rule ever so slightly wrong. We were having a pleasant enough time that nobody minded, which is always a good sign. A nice, medium weight, game though surely with some superfluous components. This one made it on the purchase list. Augsburg 1520 With the move towards lighter games in the bigger boxes, we've been looking to the smaller ones for a vintate Alea hit. This game was actually released at Nuremberg, but we hadn't played it before. Given the difference between prices in Essen and back in the UK, we usually do wait until we're in Germany before trying out many Nuremberg games. This one is themed around the activities of Jakob Fugger, who has already appeared in a number of games. But in case you've missed his earlier exploits, he was mainly known for having an awful lot of money and for parlaying that into positions of influence. It's obviously handy when Kings owe you a favour or two. But back to the game. Strictly speaking, it's based around the activities of Jakob and one to four similarly wealty people, all trying to climb the greasy pole towards power and even more riches. Given this theme, it's quite appropriate that the game revolves around an economics engine, where cash is converted into cash generators and a nice curve to try to stay on the right side of. Cash buys cards. Cards are used in auctions. Auction rewards are used to progress up tracks gathering more cash, more cards, and VPs along the way. So if you hate auction games, or economics games, you'll not find much to like here. Otherwise it's a solid game. Well, that's my opinion. But remember the curve I mentioned a few minutes ago? Two of us fell foul of it and declared this a terrible game, two came out ahead and liked it. I'm putting the differences in outcomes down to inexperience with the game. Certainly none of the 136 ratings currently on BGG for the game are as low as the marks awarded by the pair who weren't keen, so there appears to be nothing fundamentally wrong with the game itself. Be that as it may, none of us were sufficiently interested to buy a copy. Top oder Flop This was the point where we lost Andy, so from this point we played a number of games three player. The Argentum stall had been a happy hunting ground for us a couple of years ago so we were pleased to see that they had a couple of new games out this year. Well, one new game. One was a re-issue of Rette Sick Wer Kann, which did look very nice. The other, Top oder Flop, was a card game themed around investing in movies which might turn out to be a hit or a flop. The idea of this game is to play numbered cards to change your influence in, or the value of, one or more movies. Influence can go up or down. It appears that the usual way to play this game is to play cards so as to increase both your influence in and the value of one or more movies. Negative cards would be used to throw an occasional spanner in your opponents works. But of course it's much more efficient to decrease the worth of your opponents holdings that to increase both your holdings and the value of your interests. And so we set about doing exactly that with great gusto. Only to find out that there really aren't many negative cards at all. Now this isn't a problem with the movies as positive cards played to the flop side of a movie are effectively negative. But there's no such concept with personal holdings, where a positive is a positive however you look at it. So faced with a clean board of terrible movies, we found ourselves at the mercy of the draw, desperate to find a negative cards to dump influence. The chap who demonstrated the game to us (actually the designer of the much more interesting Garden Gnome Society from a couple of years ago) walked us through the scoring at the end. He told us that nobody had ever played the game like that before. Sadly, I think that included the play testers. No purchase. UR UR came as a bit of a shock to the system. It's a very abstract boardgame, themed around building up a civilisation. Mechanically it didn't feel like anything I recognised. The board is made up from a randomised grid of tiles. Players tussle for control of these tiles. Each of the tiles is also coded with two colours, each of which equates to an action. Every turn, a player will have a tile in his sweaty palm and will decided to perform some, all or none of the actions it allows. These actions manipulate the control of the tiles in the grid. The tile in hand then goes back into the grid somewhere, the tile being replaced being taken to hand. So, fairly straightforward you may think. Perhaps. But we didn't have a clue what we were doing. Some of it started to make sense about half way through the game, but we were still scratching heads up to the end. It's partly our own fault really. I'd been warned that it was a bit of an odd one, so trying it out immediately after making a dent in a keg of beer was perhaps a bit reckless. Maybe it will make more sense in a beer-free environment. But for now I really don't know if it's just far too clever for us, or we just think it's very clever and looking for things which aren't even there. I've heard on the grapevine that we're by no means the only group to have struggled with this one, so I have some hope that we're not quite as dumb as the game made us feel. One to try before you buy, but unfortunately you might need to try several times. Fortunately then it plays in less than an hour. Saturday We knew today was going to be busy. We weren't wrong. It was fiendishly difficult to get a table to play anything, and you could guarantee a stream of interruptions from people wanting to know how soon they could get your table. Fortunately we had gotten in early enough to grab a table on one of the Hans im Gluck stalls. Taluva A number of us had liked the designers Attika, so we were keen to give this one a try. Unfortunately conversations later revealed that we probably hadn't been taught one of the rules correctly regarding the use of the different types of terrain but the game was still robust enough to work. Players take turns to lay a tile, eventually forming a 3D landscape. They then play one or more pieces onto an area of the landscape. In a diversion from Carcassone, pieces do not have to be laid onto the tile just placed, though we probably found ourselves doing to more often than not. Each person has three types of pieces, with various rules for placement, and the first one to get rid of two types wins. Overall it's quite a nice game, plays quickly and looks very, very pretty. It does suffer a bit though from a tendency for players to pretty much play a solitaire game. You can take action to interfere with another person, but this largely seemed to be to the advantage of the other players. I'd still have snapped this one up a few years ago, but didn't feel the need today. I think one of the other guys might have bought it though. Mauer Bauer Another Numremberg release, but again it was new to us. This is a Colvini game so not surprisingly it's a little in the abstract side. The theme, for what it's worth, is about building walled cities on a strip of land. In a turn you will be building a wall section between two points in a hex gridded board, them building houses and towers adjacent to the wall. The purpose of this of to achieve particular patterns or situations to take advantage of your land of scoring cards. It came across as a nice medium to light weight game with a bit more depth than first appears. I'd put it in the group of games like Web of Power which give you a nice amount of decisions in less than an hour. Another one which would certainly have been a purchase had my collection been smaller, but which I'm fairly sure another of the guys picked up. Die Saulen der Erde And onto the meaty game of the day. There'd been a little bit of buzz about this one, but being a Kosmos game we hadn't found anyone who had played it. Anybody who has ever been to Essen will me familiar with the ever crowded Kosmos area. It seems to be full every time you look, regardless of time of day. We were very lucky in the end, seeing a table empty just as we walked past. Within seconds of sitting down we'd been joined by a symbiotic pair of Dutch players who filled the fourth player slot. That turned out to be very handy as there's a bit of German in the game. That came as a bit of a surprise as we're used to language independent components these days. The good news is that it is limited and presented in such a way that a translation sheet will suffice. Those with a fear of coming onto contact with foreign words may prefer to await an English edition though. Anyway, onto the game. The theme is about building a cathedral. In play, there's quite as bit going in, but the basic idea is to gather cathedral ingredients and convert them to vp's. This is largely done by drafting cards and playing dobbers to areas is the board to claim actions or resources. Most areas can only have one dobber, so it's first come, first served. Thus you will find yourself predented with some interesting choices. Money management is also important, as you'll need cash to acquire certain cards and to pay for the piviledge of making the first choices of actions on the board. It's quite a long game, probably about two hours. I heard some people making comparisons with Caylus, but it's but a Caylus clone. It shares a similar theme and a board placement for action mechanic but that's about it. Mechanically you could also draw parallel with Maestro Leonardo, in placing dobbers for actions and collecting ingredients to convert to vp's. And I'd put Die Saulen in there with Leonardo as one of the best games I played at the show. Despite the length it moves along at a brisk pace and constantly presents interesting strategic choices. Certainly good enough for a purchase. And that turned out to be almost the last new game of the show for us. We did have hopes of trying one or two more out back at the hotel, but a meal at the slowest restaurant in the whole of Essen scuppered that plan. To make the meal worse, none of us bothered to bring much in the way of games to the restaurant. To spare their blushes, I'll not mention which two designers and which three members of a games company found themselves reduced to playing Top Trumps. Sunday and later We had a vague plan of heading over to the Queen stands this morning, but by the time we'd finished packing and checking out of the hotel we were a bit late turning up. Fortunately it was a lot quieter than yesterday so there were plenty of tables elsewhere. We had to leave by noon so didn't have much time, but spying an enpty table in the massive Rio Grande area we decided to check out Formidable Foes Formidable Foes This is Friedeman's dungeon crawl, completing his recent loosely collected trilogy. The board depicts a dungeon, complete with rooms and passageways. PLayers individually work their way around the dungeon, slaughtering foes. By this they gain in power, get magic spells and collect treasure. And the treasure is the nub of the game, as most treasure at the end wins. We didn't play a complete game, bailing out after 15 minutes due to lack of time. From what we saw, it seemed rather lightweight but pleasant enough in its own way. Personally, I'm hoping that the conclusion of this trilogy will see the designer working on something to match his earlier masterpieces for next year. And that was about all we had time for. We have, however, managed to fit in one game since returning. Space Dealer The demo tables for this were constantly crowded, and copies were flying off the shelves. Although we didn't manage to get a place at one of the tables, we did get an explanation of how it worked. We liked the sound of what we heard enough to buy two copies. These, we were informed, could be combined to handle up to eight players. And this is exactly what we did in our first games session upon returning. The gimmick in this game is that everything hapens in real time. But to eliminate the Pit-like chaos that could easily ensue, actions are controlled by egg-timers. Each player has two. When they take an action, they start a timer. When one runs out, they can choose another action. The game is strictly limited to 30 minutes, and the egg timers are roughly one minute each. Note the use of the word roughly; some of ours were significantly out. The purpose of the game is to generate infrastructure to supply and demand goods. This roughly translates to building mines to produce goods, loading them onto a spaceship, and jetting around the universe delivering them to other players. The game turned out to be quite good, certainly novel, but hampered by the mis-timed egg-timers and the luck of the blind draw when "choosing" which buildings to produce from a card deck. Combining, and seperating out, the sets proved to be very time consuming so I think our games of this will be restricted to a single box from now on. Odds and sodds For the second year in a row, there seemed to be a lot of decent games but nothing generating a great deal of excitement. I suspect this will go down as a good Essen but not a great one. Part of this, I think, is that most of us now have reasonable collections already. We've been there, seen that, and have games as good as if not better than most of those being released. Looking beyond the newness factor, there just wasn't a compelling reason to buy many games which would have found themselves snapped up in earlier years. And in many ways that's a good thing, as buying less new games means more time to play those excellent but slightly older games. Noticeable this year was that the heavy discounting of the last few years was a lot less apparent. Some older games were being reduced, and bargains to be had, but not as many or so drastically. I'm taking this to be a sign of a healthier gaming industry. Something else we commented on was that the number of stalls only tangentially related to gaming seemed to be on the up this year. And finally, as I've done for the last few years, here are my top - or at least favourite - five games of the show. Let's see how they stand up in a years time. Maestro Leonardo Die Sauled der Erde On the Underground Die Baumesiter von Arcadia Null & Nichtig These have been selected from a smaller pool of games than previous years as we didn't really manage to play very many games this time. No doubt then I've excluded many good games as I just haven't played them yet. Pauls Essen 2006 - part 1 28-Oct-2006   Paul Wednesday 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 is the norm, four of us headed out to Essen this year. Only three of us, however, came back. Some friends of Andy had decided to get marries at the weekend and summoned him to the wedding. Some friends. Usually we take advantage of cheap flights between the UK and Germany, but this time decided it would be easier all round to drive over. One big advantage of this is that we didn't have to get up at 3am again. That killed us last year, and I don't think any of us really recovered from the early start during the show. Okay, this wasn't much better as we ended up heading off at 5am, but it was a lie in compared to last year! Another advantage is that we'd decided to take the Dover to Calais ferry, which is about a 75 minute crossing. And crossing time obviously equates to gaming time, which is never a bad thing. Now the downside of this is that we end up taking games *to* Essen, which cuts into luggage space on the way back, but there's always room to cram a card game in somewhere, so that's what we bring. And so we had our first game of Top Trumps of Essen 2006. Oggie had bought a copy for me as a joke present a couple of years ago - at least I think it was a joke present - and the thought of playing Top Trumps at Essen just had a peverse appeal to it, so along it came. The journey proved to be remarkably trouble free, so we found ourselves pulling up at the hotel early in the afternoon. Off we went then to the Messe to help some friends setting up. And obviously to have a bit of a nose around. As is usual on Wednesdays, stands were in various stages on construction. Most were done though so the morning must have been a hive of activity. We spotted On The Underground being played at the JKLM stall and wandered over to have a quick look. It turned out that the designer was teaching one of the other people from the stall how to play in order that he could demo it, and they very kindly invited us to join them. So enough of the scene setting, and on with the games. On The Underground I'd heard this being compared with Ticket To Ride, but the games don't really have anything in common. On The Underground is a game about route laying and passenger movement. One of the ways of scoring points is to connect to certain spots on the board, which is perhaps where people find similarity with Ticket To Ride. However, all players can make these connections, and it is not necessary to link two locations. Also, your routes must all be connected. Well, that's not quite true. You have route markers in two colours, and all of the markers in a colour must be connected. The other primary scoring method is from a passenger moving over your tracks. Winning the game is thus a matter of finding the right balance between laying routes for connections, and laying to make sure passengers will use your routes. All in all, this comes across as a nice medium weight game which feels polished. I wasn't suprised to find out that it's been in development for a while so it's had plenty of testing. One of the nice things about it is that when you look at the board at the end of the game, it does look like a map of the underground. It works with up to five players, but works better with less - there's more control with three or four. This was one of the better games I played, and a nice way to start the show off. Being considerate guests, we let the designer win. Well, it was only fair. It was his game, he's a nice guy, and he was much better at it than us. We liked it enough to buy a couple of copies. We have made a little change to the game though by adding a set of orange cylinders picked up from one of the dobber suppliers at Essen. This makes it a little easier to tell the different sorts of stations apart when determining where passengers will be travelling to. We liked this one enough that we gave it another go in the evening, a combination of early start and beer meaning that nobody fancied reading up on any new rules. We must have been knackered. We even played Top Trumps again. Thursday Today was much better. Armed with sleep and a slap up German breakfast - the latter is obviously a lie, oh for a full English - we were ready for some serious gaming. This turned out to be the best day for gaming of the show, being a bit quieter than Friday and much, much quieter than Saturday. It was thus fairly easy to find a table. Spying a free table at the Rio Grande stall, we decided to start the day with one of the games which had been attracting a lot of early buzz. Maestro Leonardo This was one of the meatier games we played. It's one of those place a dobber in a position to claim an action games. It's themed around creating inventions, so naturally actions revolve around buying ingredients, doing research, improving lab facilities and what not. In an interesting twist, you don't start with all of your dobbers and have to use up actions to claim them. In a not quite so interesting twist, claiming actions is married with an area majority mechanism so being the first to place in an area doesn't necessarily give you first dibs at the action. Fortunately you will usually still be able to take the action, albiet it with higher cost or more restricted choice. It reminded me just a little of Princes of Florence. I'm not sure why as the games are quite different, perhaps it was the artwork and theme. As I consider PoF a very good game though, comparison is high praise. The game took a couple of hours to play, but that involved setup and rules reading. As each person starts with a different set of cash, cards and labority facilities, setup wasn't trivial but neither was it awkward enough to be a chore. One player complained that his starting items didn't seem as useful as some of the others, but I imagine more familiarity will reveal better ways of playing each position. I think thae setup was only one recommended for beginners anyway, so we'd probably not bother with it in future games. Certainly this was one of the best three games I played, good enough that we picked up four copies to bring back to Blighty. We made sure to get them from dV, da Vinci as was, to get the free expansion which adds a market to the game. But as none of us have played with that, I can't say much about it. Fiji So, two games in and this was shaping up to be a very good Essen. Naturally, then, the wheels started to come off as we conspired to find a sequence of indifferent games to play. And the first of these was Fiji. It's a Freideman Friese game, and they're all worth a look at. This one sounded like one of his lighter affairs, and so it transpired. The game's themed around collecting shrunken heads. It could be about collecting kippers for all the difference it would make. Take a handful of gems from behind your screen as a blind bid, compare them to everyone elses blind bid, perform a set of actions which will hopefully increase the worth of the gems you have kept. Rinse, repeat, see how many kippers your remaining gems win you. It's billed as an auction game. However, the use of a sequence of action cards made it feel more like running a computer program. Take input. Run program. Check output. But the inputs are blind bids so it all felt a bit random. Not one of FFs best. We declined to make a purchase. Justinian This one looked very clever. The board is covered with a line of tiles, each with little holes in them. Look through the holes and you see numbers. Move the tile in one direction and the numbers go up. Move in the other and they go down. So obviously then the game revolves around moving the tiles in one direction or another. The reason you might want to do that is that you have an interest in up to eight of the tiles. At certain points of the game, you will score one or two according to where they are in the board. And what are the scores? That's right, it's the numbers in the little holes. So you want to get your tiles up to the high numbers and everyone elses down to the low numbers. And you do this by playing numbered chits beside each tile. Some chits are positive, some are negative, and the total dictates which direction the tile is going in. But chits are played face down. And you have no idea what anybody elses cards are. And they can change some cards between rounds. So it's probably not a good idea to get too attached to the thought of having a great deal of control. This one didn't work out so well for us, not really wowing anybody. Another pass. Anasazi This was just never going to work. Players take turns to extend one or two shared pathways by placing cardboard matchsticks. The pathways snake over a number of tiles, hopefully hitting little wooden cubes and cylinders. hitting and grabbing cubes gets you points, grabbing cylinders reduces the value of cubes. Or you can place camp tiles which, if touched with a path, allow you to steal a cube from someone else. Each player scores double points in one, secret, colour. And that's about it. The girl who explained the rules to us looked concerned when we asked if you can measure distances. She seemed worried when we placed two pathways back and forth precisely on top of another. When we started crossing paths back on top of themselves and heading them as far away from any cubes as possible, all the better to prevent anyone else from scoring, she bolted in horror. The third pass on the trot. Experiment Onwards, forwards, and down to the pub. And fortunately we'd picked up a couple of card games to bring with us, so were saved another round of Top Trumps. As the name suggests, Experiment is themed around the idea of experimenting. In this case, with different coloured chemicals. It should really have been themed around combining primary colours to make secondary colours as that's what the game is really about. This is done by drafting goal and colour cards and pairing them to score. This is married with a largely pointless auction mechanism to determine card draft order. Looking back, I can't see any reason for not just collecting things at random and pairing of as many cards as possible right at the end so turn order doesn't matter much. On the positive side, it's quick and the cards look nice. Not over 20 Euros nice though. If it hadn't been for a pre-order, I suspect this might have been another pass. Nobody else was sufficiently enamoured to buy it after playing. Gheos Back to the hotel, so time for something a little meatier. Mechanically, this reminded me a bit of Carcassone but played with triangular tiles. Actually, Carcassone with a twist as tiles can be replaced with others. It didn't feel much like Carcassone in play though, as the scoring mechanisms are completely different. Unforunately I think we were all just starting to get the hang of the game when it came to a sudden end. One of the types of scoring is triggered when a particular type of tile is picked up at random. Once all of these have been picked and actioned, the game ends. Now this feature probably works well when the tiles behave and come out in a more or less linear fashion, adding a bit of uncertainty to when the game will end. But in our game they decided not to cooperate, and we'd found them all well before the half way point. This was thus a rather short game, perhaps twenty minutes or less. Which was a pity as it was just starting to look interesting. It didn't exactly inspire confidence though - this is a problem which should have been caught and fixed before the game was released. Null & Nichtig Our little jaunt back into a meatier game over, we headed back to a card game. Null & Nichtig is a card game which has something of the feel of Sticheln, a bit of David & Goliath, and a dash of Flashenteufel. It's a standard German trick taking deck, with numbered cards in five colours, with one twist - each colour has two zeros. The trick to the scoring with this one is that you only score for the value of the last card you capture in each colour. Remember those zeros? They have an unnerving habit of appearing towards the end of the game, reducing perfectly good scores to nothing. So it becomes a matter of timing a quick raid for some good cards and then trying to avoid taking any more. And you'd better save some decent cards for getting rid of the lead. Because if you poison a trick by leading a low card into it, you can bet your bottom dollor that a lot of low cards will be coming to play havoc with your score. It's nasty, and we like nasty card games. I don't see it having the staying power of a Sticheln or a Flashentuefel, but we'll easily get 5 Euros worth of play out of it. Part 2      Comment by Andy   31-Oct-2006 It was a slightly surreal Essen for me this year as I hardly had time to catch my breath and I was going home. I think that the first game tried (Maestro Leonardo) set the standard for us, and unfortunately, nothing else on this day seemed to come anywhere close to that standard. With regards to Fiji, there are some interesting little mechanisms there, but I simply didn't fancy paying 14 Euros for such a light game. Ten euros and I'd have taken a punt as there was enough there to make it a light filler. The highlight of my Essen trip was constantly stearing Paul towards the Cat Attack stand since he is not exactly a huge fan of that game.   Previous page   Next page