Archive for the 'Essen Spiel 11' Category

I read the rules for Village when I was at Essen last year and as soon as I saw the meeple laying in the history book or in the unmarked graves I knew I wanted to play it.  I pre-ordered it and I’m glad I did as I’ve really enjoyed every game I’ve played of it so far.  More recently it rightly won the complex Spiel des Jahres award too.  The reason it’s a great game is due to an interesting mix of some unusual game mechanics – none are complex but there’s lots of variety – so I shall attempt to summarise the main elements.

GAME OVERVIEW
In Village, players use their villagers (meeple) to do various tasks and the goal is to earn the most respect (victory points – VPs).  There are two key mechanisms in the game – time and actions.

Time
The first core mechanism is time – many actions use up time which each player tracks with a marker around the edge of their player board (their farm).  Quite often, the player has a choice to spend time or use resources to do things like making a plough, but many options require time like travelling, or training a craftsman.  When the time marker completes a circuit of a player’s board, one of the eldest villagers of that player passes away and is either placed into the history books or in an unmarked grave (more on that later). Read the rest of this entry »

In Power Grid: The First Sparks, players have stone age clans trying to expand into new areas.  The First Sparks is a simplified (and differently themed) version of the very popular game Power Grid – I’ll talk about how the two compare at the end but will write this review from the point of view that you haven’t played, or know, Power Grid.

THE GAME
During the game, players need food to feed their clans so they can expand into new territories.  Food is gained by clans in areas using tools and knowledge.  Food comes in various forms and each token of each type is worth different amounts of food  (crops=1, berries=2, fish=3, bears=3, mammoths=4).  The board is a landscape of hex zones each with a food type in the centre and split into 3 areas. Read the rest of this entry »

In Stalag 17, players are prisoners of war assembling their escape plans – the first to have all 3 of their POWs escape wins.  At the start of each escape attempt, some dice are rolled which determines what equipment (food, uniforms, maps,etc.) will be required for this escape attempt as well as a normal dice (1-6) which is the runaway score that a player needs to equal or beat too.

Players take turns taking, discarding and placing cards.  One their turn a player can:

• Play 1 card from their hand in front of them face-down (taking a replacement card from the draw deck)
• Draw 2 cards (both from the draw deck or 1 from the draw deck and 1 from the discard pile)
• Discard: any 1 card, or 3+ cards that are the same, or 5+ cards that are all different
• Escape Read the rest of this entry »

In Drum Roll, players are putting on circus shows with the winner scoring the most prestige points (PPs) after three performances.

To score PPs, players need to hire performers (which costs cash) and give them the enough equipment, costume, etc. (represented by colour cubes) so that they can give great performances.  Each performer can give a 1-, 2- or 3-star performance; however, each performer needs a specific colour cube for each level of performance – so a 3-star performance requires 3 cubes of the exact colours.  Each of the 5 types of performer give different benefits (gaining cubes, generating cash, reducing salaries, etc.) and the better the performance, the better the ability.  Instead of delivering their 3-star performance benefit though, the player can flip that performer’s card which earns PPs (and reduces their salary each round) but means they player can not use their ability any longer. Read the rest of this entry »

Not be confused with Krok Nik Douil’s game also called Mammut, this Mammut is a game by Queen Games.  Players try to gather tiles which all score in different ways.  This sounds very normal but the way the tiles are gathered is a very interesting mechanic delivering a funny and humorously evil game.

The game is played over several rounds – scoring occurs after each round and the player with the most victory points (VPs) wins.  Each round 31 double-sided tiles are mixed up in a bag and then dumped onto the table and spread out.  The tiles show fur, claws, axes, meat, fire and animals.  Some tiles have question marks on them and these will only get turned over to reveal their actual value when scoring starts.

On your turn, you can either (a) take some (or all) of the tiles in the centre (if any remain), or (b) you can take all of another player’s tiles but you must put one of them back in the middle.  Read the rest of this entry »

Tournay is a card-based game where players aim to score the most prestige points (PPs) by building their own town.  It’s by the same designers as Troyes (which was why I pre-ordered a copy) but, whilst it uses the same art style as Troyes and a couple of similar-ish elements, Tournay is very different to Troyes and not the card game version of it at all.

In the middle of the table are 9 decks of cards – levels 1, 2 & 3 in colours red, white and yellow.  The cards are buildings and characters – buildings can be activated to use their abilities; whereas, characters have effects when buildings are placed or triggered in the same row/column as the character card.  For example a character card may earn a player cash when they activate a white building.  Whilst you can build over placed cards, as your town can only be 3×3 in size, it is plain from the start that you need to find a good balance between buildings and characters and place them so they have synergy. Read the rest of this entry »

Dragon Rampage is a clever, dice-driven game by Richard Launius who has created games including Arkham Horror and Defenders of the Realm.  Dragon Rampage though is a bit more light-hearted as players are running from a dragon’s lair with as much treasure as possible.

On their turn, a player rolls the 7 special dice in a way similar to Yahtzee as a player can use 2 re-rolls to re-roll as many or as few dice as they wish (apart from dragon results which are instantly locked).  When the player stops rolling, they record how many of the 6 different results they scored.  The round ends when all players have had a turn and each of the different results is evaluated.  The players with the most of each result get a benefit.  Read the rest of this entry »

Some years ago a friend of mine who is a teacher told me about a co-operative exercise he’d created for his students where they organised search-and-rescue operations.  It sounded great and we discussed how it had potential for a board game as he plays some Eurogames.  So, I was very interested when Meltdown 2020 was announced.

In Meltdown 2020, players are trying to evacuate their meeple from the area where reactors are starting to meltdown.  Each player starts with 3 vehicles which each have a speed (spaces it can move) and a capacity (max number of meeple it can carry simultaneously).  The vehicles are a bus (spd:2 cap:4), car (spd:3 cap:3) and a helicopter (spd:4 cap 2). Read the rest of this entry »

Tschak! is a small card game where players are trying to gain treasure and avoid monsters but the gameplay offers something rather clever.

The 40 cards consist of wizards, warriors and dwarves with different values on them.  Each player is dealt 3 of each, plus one artefact card making a hand of 10 cards.  Players will assault 4 towers (one per round) and the player with most victory points (VPs) at the end wins.

Each tower has 3 levels played in order and each level has a random treasure and monster placed on it.  For each level, players play a total of 3 cards and the player with the highest combined value of cards gets the treasure (VPs) and the player with the lowest gets the monster (negative VPs).   A couple of the cards have special abilities: one wizard’s value is only the same as the most powerful wizard played by another player, and the artefact card doubles your weakest card.

Each level is played slightly differently.  On level 1, players simultaneously play 1 card at a time from their hands three times to make their total.  On level 2, players simultaneously play 2 cards and then 1 card.  On level 3, players play all 3 cards simultaneously.  This leaves each player with 1 card and these earn their owners 3, 2 and 1 gold based on the highest card values (gold being worth 1 VP each too). Read the rest of this entry »

Initially, Trajan looks like a complicated game but it isn’t really – it just offers choices all built around a clever, but not over-powering, central mechanic.

GAMEPLAY
Players are trying to score victory points (VPs) by fulfilling the people’s demands and furthering Roman power.  Each turn, a player gets to perform one of the 6 actions: building, shipping, forum, senate, military, and Trajan.  So, the overview is simple, but the mechanics and choices are what really deliver a great game.

Determining the Action to Take
On their turn, players can not simply choose any action they wish.  Instead, each player’s player board shows 6 pots each relating to one specific action.  In these pots are 12 coloured pieces (6 coloured pairs).  On their turn, a player takes all of the pieces from any one pot and distributes them one at a time into the next pots going clockwise from where they took the pieces from.  (This distribution game mechanic is widely known from the game Mancala – a traditional game in Africa and some parts of Asia dating back as far as 600 AD). Read the rest of this entry »