Spiel seemed different this year compared to previous years – not good or bad different – just different.  We went for 3 days of the show as usual, stayed in the same hotel as usual, ate steak in our favourite restaurant multiple times as usual.  However, when asked what was my favourite game so far, I wasn’t able to point at one specific game which outranked the others; instead, there were lots that were very good indeed but too close to pick a single leader.

However, Spiel was the usual gaming marathon and didn’t disappoint as there were many superb games.  Whilst I can’t pick my favourite game of the show, I think think the following (in no particular order) were great.

• Merchants & Marauders
• Black Friday
• Isla Dorada
• Mille Graize
• Mord im Arosa
• Era of Inventions
• Tikal II
• Dakota
• 7 Wonders

Read the rest of this entry »

The prize for the Metagames 2nd Essen Game Giveaway will be Friedman Friese’s Black Friday. It’s a great stock market game without being dry. A lot of fun (and it’s Rio Grande’s English version too).

To qualify for the prize draw, you needed to be following my Twitter durig Spiel 2010 plus you could earn two extra entries too by tweeting about the giveaway competition and by completing the questionnaire about this blog.

Good luck,

James.

The Boss is a gangster-themed game.  Players place cubes on city cards and the player with the most cubes on each city card at the end of each round gains a reward; however, what reward will be gained each city’s winner is only revealed during the round.  The rewards are revealed because each city has a fixed set of possible rewards and players take turns placing cards next to each city which show which rewards are not the one that will be gained by the city’s winning player.  So, the game’s a sort of are control game but the reward to be won is a process of elimination.  Some of the rewards are actually bad things like one of your men (cubes) is killed or out of the game for a turn.

It sounds relatively simple but quite inventive and with a deductive element.  Sounds like calculating when to strike and take control of a city will be important.  I’m hoping it has enough meat to it but the game mechanic appeals to me that I will definitely give it a try.

James.

Boardgame News posted a piece about ‘Mord Im Arosa’, a new game from Zoch.  Players are trying to be the least suspected person during a murder in a hotel.  However, the gameplay is rather zany and different to anything I’ve seen before.  During the game, players drop cubes into a 8-storey card hotel and listen to where they come to rest.   Two of the cubes show on which floors the murders took place and the rest are evidence of the player’s locations when the murders occurred.

The players predict which cubes they will find on a specific level, lift up the storeys above it and look to see which cubes are actually at that level.  If they are right, matching cubes get placed on the evidence board (which are now fixed) and then drop the cubes into the tower again.  If you guess wring then you have to add more of your cubes into the tower.  When the game ends, the closer the player’s cubes are to the murder locations, the more points they score and it is the player with the fewest points (because they’re the least connected to the murder) who wins.

It sounds totally fresh, completely mad and I’m really hoping it’s the fun, light and crazy game it sounds and not just random weirdness.

James.

Valley Games usually has one or two games that intrigue me each Spiel (Container, Municpium, Master Builder) and this year it’s Crows.  Crows is a tile placement game where you try to entice as many crows to the tile which has has your shiny object on it.  Players know how the Crows will move at the end of each round, as they follow a set of rules, so placing the tiles and your shiny object strategically is they key to scoring points.  It seems like attracting crows away from opponents’ shiny objects will be half the battle (and fun).  Plus, there are a few special actions that can be earned and used too.  The games sounds cute and a little bit different plus, for some reason, I like the idea of the crow meeple pieces.  I’m not expecting too much from it and hope it will be one of the lighter games I enjoy from Spiel this year.

With so many new games coming out each year at Spiel, we often give them nicknames to make it easier to remember which one is which.  The game Powerboats is like Formula De but with boats, so got nicknamed as ‘Formula Boat’.  Battlestar Galactica is co-operative with a potential traitor like Shadows Over Camelot so gets called ‘Cylons Over Camelot’.  And Claustrophobia got called Dungeon Hulk (as it’s Space Hulk in a Dungeon).  As there is tile-placement in Crows I’m already calling it ‘Crowcassonne’.

The original Tikal is a classic game of archaeological discover where players send their explorers into the jungle to find tombs and collect treasure.  Each player had an amount of action points each round that they could spend on a variety of activities, and the board consisted of hex tiles that would be revealed and placed by the players.

The news that Tikal II was being released was quite unusual as there are few direct board games sequels and Tikal is some years old (winning the Spiel des Jahres in 1999).  The images of Tikal II that were released looked very nice indeed.  Cool looking little flags and this time the action is set in a single temple.  Until now, the gameplay was a mystery but the rules have just been released.

In Tikal II, players reveal the insides of a temple by placing rooms (hex tiles).  Each room has a few doors on some of its sides (all of the same colour) and a player can move their explorer through these doors if they have the matching colour key.  Read the rest of this entry »

Sobek is a small 2-4 player, Egyptian-themed game where players take cards and lay down sets of 3 in order to score points over 3 rounds.  During the rounds, 3 cards of the same type can be laid down as a set (wheat, cattle ivory, etc.) and you can increase a set already laid down by adding another set of 3 cards of the same type.

It might sound relatively ordinary but there are two game mechanics that caught my attention.  First, cards are taken from a row of 9 – only one of the first 4 cards can be taken by a player but if they take any card other than the first card they must put the others before it into their corruption deck.  The player with the most cards in their corruption deck at the end of a round will lose some points.  Second, the score for your cards is  the number of cards multiplied by the total number of scarabs on each (some have no scarabs) which sounds like a good system.  Plus, there are more scarabs on the less commonly occurring cards (like ivory) whereas the more common cards (like wheat) have fewer scarabs on them – the mathematical part of my mind likes the balance of that. Read the rest of this entry »

Norenberc is one of the three games coming from White Goblin at Essen. It caught my attention because it is designed by Andreas Steding who created Hansa Teutonica – a game that didn’t catch my attention enough at Spiel last year but I discovered afterwards that is was very good indeed.

Norenberc is a worker placement game with some new ideas. Players commit to where they will be taking actions each game turn before simultaneously revealing their intentions. This sounds fun (Fresco did something similar) but there’s an extra twist: Each action requires a worker and if any players have workers left to place at the end of a game turn, then another game turn occurs until all players have used their workers. So, if you take lots of actions in one turn, you may have to wait a few more turns before everyone gets your workers back and you can perform actions again. Read the rest of this entry »

Planet steam is an economic/resource game that was released at Essen in 2008. It was a sought after item in an epic-sized box (like a FantasyFlight Games big box size).  With a steampunk setting, players collect resources (water, ore, energy and quartz) from the available mine shafts in order to earn as much money as possible.  This is a ‘Thoughts On’ piece rather than a review as Planet Steam is a very interwoven economic system and I don’t feel one play is enough for a full review.

Players have a few starting resources and the basic carriers (which are the stores for each resource with limited capacity).  Also, the board shows a grid of mine shafts.  Each shaft can produce any resource depending upon what type of tank is placed on it.  Each player has a few platforms already on the mine shaft grid which means they are the only ones that can add tanks in order to mine from that space.  At the start of a round, players bid for characters which dictate turn order and give them a special power. Read the rest of this entry »

Fifty-seven days to Spiel in Essen and my list of games to check out (ranging from take a look to definitely pre-order) is already up to 44 games.  Two more games definitely stirring my interest are Dakota and Olympus.

Dakota is a game of settlers and natives in the American West.  It caught my attention because players can be settlers or natives in any mix and the the two sides play differently on the same board.  Also, players on the same side may be allied but not a team.  Bruno Faidutti’s write-up was very complimentary and being called the tensest nastiest game just intrigues me more.  The image of the game from Spiel 2009 makes it look quite complex but I’m hoping the 60-90 minutes playing time means it’s not too fiddly as that would limit the people I could play it with.

Olympus is designed by the same guys that created Kingsburg so, for me, that definitely makes it worth a look.  I own the board game of Kingsburg and I played the PC version against the AI a lot so I know it well and like the balance and choices the game offered.  Rather than dice-rolling, Olympus is priest (worker) placement game with difficult choices each turn and no luck involved.  Sounds good, and as it’s from these designers, I’ll definitely check it out.

James.