Essen 2013 Challenge Completed

With Essen 2014 fast approaching, I can draw up the result of my self imposed Essen 2013 challenge. What games did I manage to play that I bought there?

Rats in the Walls (at Essen 2013)
Strajk (Christmas Offensive 2013)
Concept (January 2014)
Sigismundis Augustus (19 september 2014)

Which means I have actually managed to play all four games I bought, but only just in time. These weren't the toughest games to learn, so you can see how hard it is for me now to make the effort. But I can go to Essen knowing my hands are free to buy games.

But the sad story is that the past few months, I haven't played many games. Only 5 since the end of June. Apart from Sigismundis Augustus there were the familiar Civilization and Battlestar Galactica. I learned the Game of Thrones card game I had bought for Died's birthday. Newly bought Pathfinder was also good, but doesn't really count towards my NYR because it wasn't my copy.

In terms of getting 13 unplayed games from my collection to the table this year, I'm now at 7, so behind schedule.The sterner among you (and who can remember the New Years' Resolution) will note that I also played Eight Minute Empire, which although I didn't buy it at Essen was also mandatory to play before the deadline.

Sigismundus Augustus

Managed to play a new game last Saturday! I bought Sigismundus Augustus last Essen from Polish publisher Fabryka Gier Historycznych Fundacja Niepodległości.

King Sigismund of Poland was best known for his acquisition of Lithuania by the end of his reign, while Poland itself in the early modern periode is best known for its chaotic politics. It is exactly the latter part of history that this game focusses on. Players are powerful families within the Polish Diet (Sejm), vying for the most profitable offices (governors, ministers, clergy).

The game is won on victory points, for the most part derived from holding offices or from diplomatic relations with neighbouring states like Moscovia, Lithuania and Austria. There's three important phases in the game: the policy, the action and the Sejm phase.

In the policy phase, players can play one policy card. The cards allow you to attack another player,
Perhaps the most important action is to activate a neighbouring state so that it will be scored at the end of the turn. In the foreign policy phase each player can at least place one token on a neighbouring state. The VP are scored by the player with the most and the second most tokens on this state.

The action phase is based on worker placement. Each player has at least 3 clients to take actions like taxing, diplomacy in a neighbouring state, gain influence among the nobles or magnates or make an office available to bid upon in the Sejm phase.

There is another randomising element to the game in one of these actions: the deck of Polish characters from the age. These can be enlisted by the players for their direct advantage or victory point bonus at the end of the game. Since the deck is much larger than the amount of cards drawn in a game, this helps increasing replayability.

The Sejm phase is the heart of the game, although it doesn't hand out any victory points. It starts with collecting the votes you can cast from your position on the noble, magnate and royal support tracks. Some ministerial offices and discarded internal policy cards offer extra votes. Next, players can blindly bid money for votes, and then blindly bid votes to sell. The highest bid of money is exchanged for the highest offer of votes and so on. A neat mechanism.

Players first vote on each office that has become available. Next, the Sejm commits itself to fulfilling the royal demand. The king desires money, troops or just votes. Again all players bid blind. This determines the amount of royal favour (ie votes) for the next turn, with the player spending the most resources becoming the king's favourite which gives you the valuable right to decide on all ties.

Finally, each turn after the first, the players also vote on a piece of legislation, which changes the game rules, for example restricting the number of offices that can be held. All votes here are open and players just indicate whether they agree or disagree with the proposal.

The turn the ends with the scoring phase and the upkeep of the troops.

First impressions a largely positive. In one game, we found it hard to figure out clear strategies. There's so much happening that it seems hard to focus on one aspect. But the mechanisms feel to have been integrated well.

One odd thing is that in the last turn several parts of the game lose their meaning. There is no reason to worry about the upkeep of your troops, or even to fulfil the king's demand, as the result has no effect on the game.

It is not an easy game to learn. The rules are written pretty densely, there are a lot of mechanisms that tie into each other and how this works out only really become clear by playing. But it is worthwhile. Leave it to Polish designers to integrate euro mechanisms with historical themes. I'm pretty sure we will have another go at this one.

Which 12 games for 2014?

Okay, if I want to play 12 of my games in this coming year, I had better prepare a shortlist. I will give you a choice from my most recent acquisitions in 2012 and 2013: 

From Essen

Concept

Sigismundus Augustus

(I already played Strajk at the Christmas Offensive 2013, and Rats in the Walls at Essen)

Signum Mortis (Essen 2012)

From Secret Satan

The World Cup Card Game

Ascalion (aka Borderlands, got in 2012)

Mission Red Planet (got in 2012)

Collision

Mag Blast

Scarab Lords

Isle of dr Necreaux

Red November

Lord of the Rings card game (not the CCG)

(I already played Pass the Pigs on New Year’s Eve with the kids. Success.)

Other acquisitions

Warriors & Traders

Mice & Mystics

City of Remnants

Love Letters

Pathfinder card game

and some games on Waterloo or Napoleonic wars

Beyond Waterloo
1815: The Waterloo Campaign
Dresden 20
Napoleonic Wars (GMT)
Wellington (GMT)

Most of these are light games, but others require serious study, so they might not make it in the end.

Which one do you guys think I should try first?

Spiel Essen 2013, part 2: the games I played

Here's the second part of my Essen experiences, consisting of the games I played, so with a little more hard info on the games. Look here for Part 1 and the Polish section is coming up.

Nate Hayden after a long day explaining his game
which sold out quickly

Nate Hayden's Mushroom Eaters 3D experience is singular, but the road is the destination. As you progress on the board through your trip, you face numerous challenges costing you physical and mental strength. This can turn your trip into a bad trip. You have some control over where you land, and you can regain strength at some points or learn mantras to protect yourself, but it just ambles along with us finding out where we were going.

There Are No Rats In The Wall! We've been Enjoying this unpretentious but effective bluff poker game with a Lovecraftian twist by Henning Poehl. Perfect for playing in the bar.

At the end of a game of Warlock

I had some fun playing Warlock by Quined, it had some interesting scoring mechanics and the combination of tile laying and deck building. You have to play cards from your hand to be able to place one in the 4x4 grid before you. Where you place them determines how much they are worth at the end. It's mostly multiplayer solo, although you can destroy other players' cards if they're unprotected (by dragons). Rules were not always intuitive but Warlock will play smoothly after one game.

ASiE after a dozen rounds

In a world where royalty are really the Ancient Ones, revolutionaries and anarchists are also saving the world from the return of Chaos. Your agents roam the cities of Europe to assassinate royals and control resources. As your identity is hidden, the other players don´t know which side you are on and since the game is lost by the side with the player with the fewest points, it becomes abit of a gamble who you attack. It’s great to see Martin Wallace slowly exploring the possibilities of combining deckbuilders and boardgames, and it is surprising not more people have latched on to this. I love how A Study In Emerald integrates cards and board, theme is fun, but we only played a dozen rounds or so. Hard to tell yet how good it really is.

Defence value 7, attack value 6  and because
of the double 3,   I got another turn

Masters of Revenge by Serious Poulp has a cool take on the manoeuvering of martial arts. I liked the numbers on the sides of the cards determining your attack and defence values. This created an interesting dynamic as you moved around looking for a weak spot in your opponent´s defence. Regretfully, it was overpriced. Nevertheless, I will have a look at their 7^th Continent kickstarter which is a choose-your-own-adventure-game that uses tiles rather than a book.

Leonardo by Ghenos is a fun light game where you gather resources and build machines by moving one of the three figures around the board. But if you are late in the turn, chances are another has moved that figure first. That makes for an interesting guess, giving you the occasional euphoria of outsmarting your opponents.

Corto got me by the great art work and the direct conflict. There´s character cards and events which allow you to mess with other players tiles and affect the scoring. Scoring is for characters you have killed, groups of characters you control and point particular to a story line. It is really a pretty abstract tile laying game, even if cutthroat, and it irked my friends as it didn’t have a narrative as you would expect from a game about a comic book. But if you don’t care about that bit, this is one of the prizes this year.

Puppets moving out of their spawning points

Although an older release, I don’t want to leave out Puppet Wars, which we played and enjoyed a lot. The miniatures are brilliant, but require some glue and paint to bring to life. The game plays fast and furious (especially if you put your leader out in front). The basic mechanics are pretty simple, but the special abilities of the dolls (especially the combos) make this a challenge to master. I might just buy it some other time for the heck of it.

Nice minises, nicely painted

Spiel Essen 2013 part I

Yes! This was a good year to be at Spiel in Essen. Even if there wasn't a great game to swoon about, and even if we had a last minute cancelation (with Douwe as a great substitution) and others were experiencing distractions form real world troubles.

Well, if you say so...

The new layout in the three halls and galleria was an improvement. It felt more spacious even though there were more people than in previous years (according to the Spiel website).

I must say I was also pleasantly surprised this year with effort made by most demo people. The Poles have made a great effort over the past years, but there were more examples of passionate people trying to win you over. For example the guy at the La Mame booth who really knew how to sell Coup to me. Rare to see such enthusiasm. Small designers tend to take all of that burden upon themselves, but demo people can be worth gold, if only to relieve the pressure.

So, what about the games? I´ll start my Essen report with impressions of the games I didn´t get to play. Next will follow my experiences of the games we did play. The Polish games will be in a third and last post.

Some neat balancing mechanisms in the deck management of Kampen om Norge were explained to me by one of the designers, who hung around the Spielbär stand. The Germans have to win 6 victory positions before their deck runs out, while the Norwegians can reshuffle if they want. The Anglo/French also have a limited deck.

It is only because I can’t be fooled into buying another 2 player wargame that I didn’t buy it, but this game genuinely seemed to tackle the most difficult campaign to wargame: Norway 1940. It combines sea, air and ground troops, in a very big area. It is probably hideously expensive to order it from Norway. So it will probably never gain a wider audience. I think that’s a shame.

Origin from Matagot is a civ game, where the shape (length, colour and thickness) of your figures determines their characteristics as you expand over the world. Didn’t hook me though.

Concept from Repos is in the line of guessing games such as Pictionary, but here you have a board of images that helps you to describe your subject. There are hardly any rules in the box and very little stuff. It’s just that I am fascinated by communication between different cultures and the problems of translating abstract concepts, so I bought it anyway.

My friends tried Uwe Rosenberg's new game Caverna, and it is mostly an easier, fantasy version of Agricola. Resources are not so tight.

Canalis from AEG continues the Tempest series. It is a tactical tile laying game.

Northwest Passage from Matagot looked interesting, with the retreat and advance of frozen ice driving the players on... or back. It’s tile laying and action taking. I would have liked to try this.

Russian Railroads lacks armoured trains to make it interesting. But then again, I don’t like train games. If you want armoured trains: buy Corto!

The guy at the Asyncron stand did a great job explaining l'Aeropostale to me. You run one of the first airline companies to encompass the world in your network of postal and passenger services. Nice theme & artwork, but would have liked to try it. That might have clinched a buy.

Hard to figure out why Madeira was making such an impact. It looked like the next ‘trade to impress the prince’ game. We couldn't fit into a table to try it. Probably for the better.

I only had a quick look at Ace Detective by Richard Launius. The investigation issue is dealt with by you putting the most clues on the suspect with the most clues at the end of the game, a mechanism we also saw in Android. The story-telling aspect is just the optional addition of players rewarding each other for story telling and this is also a well known mechanism. But both mechanisms have their weaknesses and didn’t fire me up to come back and find out more.

Had Suburban Dispute explained to me, and the background story is interesting enough, but I just couldn’t see it being fun for the full length of the game (2-3 hours)

Seven Swords (based on the classic Kurosawa movie Seven Samurai) by Xenos looks good and sounds good. The mechanics are interesting and seem to create a nice dynamic and tactical options. However, I just fear that the rulebook will be as badly written as Luna Llena and others from this company. Guys, get your ffing act together! You have interesting themes in the Ameritrash genre, but if you can’t write a decent rulebook I just can’t bring myself to recommend you to others. Bloody shame!

Off to Essen 2013

The day before Essen. We have a drop out for medical reasons but a promising replacement. It will be a little bit weird this year, with probably a couple of games back home on Saturday.

Check me out on twitter @jurdj the coming days as I play stuff and post images.

It's been some time since I set up my watch list for Essen 2013, but I've been watching the updates and there's some good stuff out there for the Ameritrash minded.

The 10 games that I look forward to most are:

Ace Detective. Richard Launius + 'noir storytelling card game that rewards imagination'


Corto. I love the Corto Maltese comics, so I'm certainly going to check this one out. The fact that Seb Pauchon is involved is a good sign!



Coup. The buzz is good, and some new editions are on the way.


Duel of Ages. The new edition has been very favourably reviewed by two Mikes! see for Mike 1 and Mike 2.

The Mushroom Eaters. A game by Nate Hayden (of Cave Evil and After Pablo fame) is bound to be special. I'm interested in the action path mechanic and of course the highly original theme

Pathfinder. See Michael Barnes' rave review


The Rats in the Walls. Henning Poehl´s fun games, great artwork and the Lovecraft setting might just be awesome.

Sigismundus Augustus: Dei gratia rex Poloniae. The theme of the game appeals, but it's quite heavy and worker placement, not a stand up conflict game. There's a favourable review at Little Metal Dog

A study in Emerald. Gaiman + Wallace + Lovecraft. It's almost to good to be true. Either elation or deep disappointment

Veto by Kuznia Gier. Polish 17th century history, political infighting an intrigue! However, the company is going through a rough patch and is unlikely to attend the show. I'll check anyway.



On the Essen 2012 front, I managed to get a game of the Lupin III expansion set in as evidenced by my review. But I will give myself a pass for Signum Mortis, which was late in delivery anyhow. That is also a good warning for me to trim down the loot to the absolute necessary this year and forget about games that I don't have the time for to learn.

Of course, time is a matter of priorities.

Essen 2013 watch out list inaugurated

I´ve put up my list of games to watch out for in Essen at boardgamegeek.com.

Serious gaming: playing King of Tokyo in bed

I have started with Pete Ruth's excellent report on GenCon and will add games from Eric Martin's preview list later.  I'm also adding opinions and reviews from some people who've played the games in the run up to Essen, so you might want to check back once in a while. Your suggestions are also more than welcome!

I will be tweeting from the show as @jurdj on the Thursday and Friday and post a few pics if time allows. And Saturday on the way home we will play a few of the games we bought. In the run up and afterwards I will also post here at Rear Guard Action.