|
Essen 2005 Report: Saturday, October 15, 2005 (Day 3)
Posted on Oct. 15, 2005 by Rick Thornquist
By Rick Thornquist
Saturday, October 15, 2005
 Today is Saturday, probably the busiest day of the fair. I got in a bunch of new games today including two new ones from Queen, the new version of Manitou, new games from Adlung and Cwali, and more.
Before we get started, I wanted to mention one more thing about Euphrat & Tigris - Das Kartenspiel. There is one more major thing that differentiates the card game from its board game progenitor - that's the playing time. The card game plays in only 30 to maybe 45 minutes. That's means if you need a Tigris fix but have a limited amount of time, you might want to check out the card game.
After getting up and doing yesterday's report, I headed to the Messe. A group of us had talked yesterday about making a plan for this morning. We knew this was going to be a busy day and table space was going to be hard to come by, so we planned to meet at the Queen booth early and grab a table. We did, and went onto play two of the new Queen Games Aqua Romana and Raub Ritter.
 Aqua Romana
Aqua Romana marks Queen's return to their big box line, which includes Dsjunke and many others. This one is about building canals in Rome.
The gameplay bears more than a passing resemblance to another Queen game - Metro. Each player starts with a few pawns at the edge of an empty gridded board. In turn, players play Metro-like path tiles with straights, crossovers and a couple of types of curves. You play a tile in front of one of your pawns and then, unlike Metro, move your pawn along the path right away.
You are restricted in which tile you can choose. A set of spaces circle the board and on them are markers, each one representing one type of tile. For each of your pawns, you look horizontally and vertically to the edges of the board - if there's a marker there, you can only use the represented tile to move that pawn. Whichever marker's tile you use, you then move that marker one space clockwise.
The idea is to make your paths as long as possible. When a path ends, or before if you want to, you score your pawn - you get points equal to the number of tiles in the path (or less, the scoring mechanic ensures that usually only one player can get a certain score).
In a nutshell, I thought of it as an advanced version of Metro.
I actually liked the game. It plays fairly well and while one could overanalyze your moves, the choices are limited enough to keep things moving while having enough choices for the game to be interesting. The production is quite nice with nice tiles and wooden markers. My only real concern is the box size - if I buy this baby it's going to take up a fair amount of space in my luggage!
 Raub Ritter
Our next Queen game was Raub Ritter, designed by Rüdiger Dorn. This is the newest in Queen's small box series that debuted earlier this year.
This is a light to medium weight tile laying game. Each player has their own big stack of face down tiles. The tiles each are one of three different landscape types - plains, forest and mountains. The tiles are also one of three different building types - castles, villages and towns. Each player takes three tiles from his stack into his hand.
On a player's turn, he can play one to three tiles, replenishing as he plays. The tiles are played onto the table adjacent to each other and pretty soon a countryside starts to form.
If a player plays a castle tile, he's allowed to play up to five knights (round markers) on the tile. These knights may be walked to neighboring tiles in a straight line, with one or more knights being left behind (depending on the landscape type). This bit is similar to another Dorn game - Traders of Genoa. If you put a knight on a space where there is already one or more knights, yours goes on top.
The idea is that if you have the top knight on a space at the end of the game, you get to score the space - 1 for castles, 2 for villages and 3 for towns.
I'm not sure about this one. I could see a bit of strategy, but placing knights from the beginning to the middle of the game is mostly useless as they are going to get covered up anyway. That meant that the best strategy seemed to keep your knights back as much as possible and then jump them all in towards the end.
The game is also conducive to downtime as people take time to analyze their moves. In our game there was lots of downtime as people considered their moves.
I don't want to criticize the game too much - I may have missed something - but it really didn't wow me. I'd like to try it again sometime to see if it gets any better.
Between games I wandered past the Hans im Gluck booth and saw something that really made me laugh. The company was giving away packages of, believe it or not, gummi meeples! The package had the Carcassonne logo on it and in each package was a bunch meeple-shaped gummi candies. I just had to pick up a couple of them. Hmmm… I wonder how much one of these would fetch on eBay?
 Big Manitou
After a break, it was time for another game. This time it was Big Manitou from What's Your Game?, the new version of Manitou, originally published by Goldsieber. I always like Manitou and was looking forward to see what What's Your Game? had done with it.
First things first - the rules do have some ridiculous typos in them, but in the end they do make sense. Someone really should have given the rules a once over before printing them. Making up for the rules is the production of the game. The production is very nice with very sturdy tiles and quite nice art.
I won't go into the gameplay, as it's very similar to Manitou. In this version you are trying to win tiles instead of cards and some additional tile types have been added to the mix that give you special abilities if you win them.
As mentioned, I always liked Manitou and I actually may even like this version of the game even better. The production is nice and the additional tiles make for even more strategic decisions on the game. I picked up a copy and am sure I'll be playing it a lot!
 Daimyo
My next game was Daimyo from Tenki Games. This one is a fairly abstract simple wargame. Each player takes control of an army, represented by wooden disks, that wage war on a map made up of small hexagons. Each player has a leader, their Daimyo, which has special powers. The idea is to eliminate the other players' Daimyos - whoever is left standing is the winner. Editor's Note: This is not correct - as soon as one player defeats another player's Daimyo he wins the game (you also win by occupying your opponents home spaces with a certain amount of armies). Thanks to Johan Berglind for pointing this out and apologies for the error.
The game plays by way of cards. Each player gets two actions a turn which can be selected from his hand cards. The actions are things like creating new armies, moving your armies or your Daimyo and adding or moving board hexes. In an interesting twist, the two cards that you use in a turn are given to your opponents so they may use them in later turns.
Combat is a simple affair - whoever has the most pieces between the two warring armies wins. The defender loses all his pieces and the attacker loses the same number that the defender lost.
This kind of game has been seen a fair amount before, but I do like the way this one works. The way the game is driven by the cards is pretty neat. It is an elimination game, however, that is one strike against it. Editor's Note: As noted above, this is not correct - it isn't an elimination game. I only played one two player game (it plays to four) and it was just okay - I'd really have to play this a few times to see how it goes. We also played the basic rules - the advance rules add more cards and chrome. On first blush, though, it looks pretty good.
 Rotundo
One of the nice surprises at last year's Essen was the Adlung card game Im Auftrag des Königs. I picked it up just as a lark and found inside a pretty good little game for my six euros. This year I decided to take a flyer on another Adlung game, Rotundo, and again I found quite a good little game in that small card box.
Rotundo is actually a fairly simple game, but, strangely enough, it's a bit hard to describe. It's a set collecting game where you are trying to collect sets of balls. Yes, I said balls. Not those kind of balls, but balls made up of various things - burlap, platinum, etc. I've seen a lot of game themes in my life, but never one about balls!
The game is actually simple, but I think the rules may be missing a sentence or two because they are a little hazy (though I may have missed something). This caused a bit of bafflement for a minute or two, but we eventually figured out how it was supposed to go.
Each player has a hand of cards and on their turn may turn over a card (if one hasn't been turned over already). The card then may be taken and a set melded onto the table, it may be auctioned and taken into a player's hand (bidding with your already melded cards), or you can pass. The next player then goes. If all players pass, the card goes into the discard pile.
The first few turns were a bit strange as we were figuring out what was what but we soon got into the swing of things and started really enjoying it. At the end of the game I actually wanted to play it again - that's the mark of a good game. It's an interesting little card game with some neat little strategies. I'm glad I picked this one up.
 Aloha
After another break it was back into the fray with the newest game from Corné van Moorsel and Cwali - Aloha.
I'll just give a quick impression on this as I only played about half a game and I just played with two players (it plays up to five).
The game involves playing hex tiles that represent the coast of a tropical island (there actually seems to be a lot of tropical island games this year). On your turn, you place your guy on a hex and then turn over a new tile and place it. If you can place it, you can put a little beach chair marker of your color on it. You can then continue to turn over tiles and place beach chairs but beware - if you can't place a tile, you lose all the beach chairs you placed this turn! This part of the game is sort of Can't Stopish.
At the end of the game you score the beaches with the longer beaches worth more points than the shorter ones. Whoever has the most beach chairs on a beach gets the points for that beach. Whoever gets the most total points wins.
This is definitely a game that I'll have to play a time or two to get the hang of it. It seems simple, but there also seems to be more there than meets the eye. I'm looking forward to getting in a full game.
After Aloha, it was time to wander the halls and get my shopping list ready for tomorrow. I got a chance to chat with quite a few people and get the buzz on what games to buy that I haven't played yet. I'm going to be putting together my list later tonight or tomorrow morning. At the same time I'll have to compare my list with how much luggage space I actually have left!
The fair then closed for the day. I headed back to my room to do a little bit of work and then, after a quick bite, headed to the Jung hotel to play a game or two.
 Skyline of the World
I was looking to play Skyline of the World for the last few days now, but every time I went past the publisher's booth the tables were always full. Just as I was about to leave the fair today I swung by the Rio Grande booth and saw that Jay Tummelson had a copy of the game - I begged him to lend it to me so I could play it tonight. Sure enough, I did.
Skyline of the World bears a bit of resemblance to Manhattan. You have a board that is divided into squares and each player has a set of plastic building pieces they use to build skyscrapers. You start with a couple of building pieces and on your turn can build them, with certain restrictions, on the board. One big restriction is that you can't build on top of one of your own pieces - you have to build on someone else's. When you do that, you pay the other player your building costs. After you've finished building you can buy more building pieces to use on your next turn.
The idea is that you are trying to build the penthouse, the top floor, on as many buildings as you can. The game ends when one player builds three penthouses. Each penthouse is worth a point (or maybe two if it's built on a special space) and you can also get bonus points. Whoever has the most points wins (and it may not actually be the player who built their third penthouse).
The game a fairly straightforward, medium weight, and interesting to play. In our game, one player looked like they were running away with the game but in the end only actually won by one point. There's some interesting strategy here and I liked the game. I hope to pick it up tomorrow.
With that, I headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep. Tomorrow I'll get a few games in, Siena will be one of them, but much of the day I'll be shopping. I'm not sure when I'll be posting tomorrow's report - it'll depend on how busy I am on Sunday night - I may not be able to post it until I get back home.
Stay tuned!
| Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version |  | A game I played yesterday - Techno Witches |  | Onto the games played today - Queen's Aqua Romana at the beginning |  | Aqua Romana midway through the game |  | Aqua Romana close-up |  | Some Aqua Romana markers |  | Raub Ritter early in the game |  | Raub Ritter midway through |  | Raub Ritter towards the end |  | Big Manitou |  | Big Manitou close-up |  | Daimyo |  | Cwali's Aloha at the start of the game |  | Aloha further into the game |  | Skyline of the World |  | Skyline of the World close-up |  | Some pictures from around the fair - the Saturday crowds |  | More Saturday crowds |  | Even more Saturday crowds |  | Z-Man Games |  | Castle Merchants at the Z-Man Games booth |  | Bambus Spielverlag |  | Kidult |  | KC Humphrey playing HAVOC: The Hundred Years War |  | The Fairplay tote board on the third day |
|
Got a news item or idea for a GameWire?
Email GameWire's editor, Rick Thornquist, at gamewire@gamefest.com.
|
|
