Essen 2016

We're a couple of weeks on, but no reason not to briefly glance back at what I learned in Essen this year.

 

It was a relaxed trip for me because I didn't feel I had to buy anything except simple games to play at night. This saved me a panicked last minute chase along the stands of companies that I'd missed. There were some good games and bad, but nothing that stuck out for me.

• Barcelona, The Rose of Fire, a hefty game about the late 19th century development of the city, pitting influential families against each other and homeless poor. I almost bought it but finally left because I hadn't seen the end game.
• The Grizzeld/Les Poilus, very nice cooperative game about survival  on the WWI battlefield (picked up by a friend so I've had a chance to try it again). Sad trivia: the guy who did the artwork was killed in the January 7th attack on the premises of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
• Beer Empire, a development from a previous version. A pretty streamlined eurogame that let's you brew specialist beers (to win prizes) as well as shitty lager in cans that brings in lots of money.
• Fabled Fruit, a very simple game with subdued graphics that I felt was overpriced
• Topoum, a nice tactical game, but overpriced
• London Markets, a pretty standard but pleasant worker placement game.
• Lincoln, an unpublished Martin Wallace design for a strategic game about the American Civil War. It's mostly card play and could use some more play testing. 

In the end I arrived home with: Pax Pamir - Khyber Knives expansion, Treatment, Lord of the P.I.G.S. and Rock, Paper, Wizard.

We played Treatment and Rock, Paper, Wizard at the hotel and restaurant in Essen. And I repeated that feat recently with friends. Treatment is a conventional card game with a nice theme. Rock Paper Wizard is 15 minutes of fun, and a nice cross of Cash 'n' Guns with a pumped up version of Rock Paper Scissors (as the name implies).

I've also managed two games of Lord of the P.I.G.S.. It focuses on the struggle between the conflicting interests of politicians, industrial and financial elites in the economically challenged countries of Southern Europe (ie Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain). The game proves a bit tougher to occassional gamers than I thought, because the turn order isn't intuitive, but I like it.

Only Pax Pamir Khyber Knives remains to get it cherry popped, but this is a promising score so far so I don't feel the need to pursue a project Spiel 2016. I'll focus on playing some stuff that's been gathering dust on the shelf. In fact I've been clearing out quite a lot of stuff from my shelves, but it needs to leave the house as well ;-)

Kicking Off The Essen 2015 Project

So with Essen 2014 project accomplished, we can turn to the Essen 2015 loot. I kept it down to six games.

The Ice and the Sky as well as 1714: The case of the Catalans were already tried in Essen, while Luchador was proofed in the week following Spiel. You be seeing that review in time.

But enough to do the coming months: my game group is clamouring for Pax Pamir, especially since they have good memories of Pax Porfiriana. It can take up to five players so should hit the table some time.

Migrato and W1815 are both two player games. The former for the kids, so should find a spot on a Monday afternoon. The latter looks like it will first need a try out sometime and then get a few more plays as I rope in other players.

Don't worry about me running out of games to play. First objective is to play my Secret Satan gifts before Christmas. That means Knizia's Beowulf, *and* the Remember Tomorrow RPG. I've got a nice job on my hands!

Spiel Essen 2015: … And I Played

This year I played more games than before.

• The best playing experience of all was Blood Rage. The game has the variety, screwage and unrelenting direct conflict that makes it a thrilling experience. It allows you to profit from defeat and steal the smiles from the victors. Add the visual appeal of the miniatures and components and this has the potential to become an Ameritrash classic.

• We tried Ships by Martin Wallace and although the game seems to work fine, it really is a development of many other games by his hand. Many mechanisms are familiar, some new and interesting. But in combination with the lack of player interaction, I finally decided against buying it.

• The Foreign King is an good microgame in the 8 Minute Empire school. Good interaction. Interesting theme of industrialisation of Belgium.
• Space Cadets: Away Missions proved an interesting game, with great miniatures. I guess the only thing lacking for me was conflict between the players. There’s so many full coop games, that it gets a bit too much for me.

• At Galeforce 9 we tried the new Homeland, which was quick and an interesting challenge with hidden objectives, but not altogether visually appealing. Then continued onto the Firefly game, which is very much a multiplayer solo pick up and deliver game.

• If you are hooked on Mad Max, you can’t ignore Waste Knights. The game makes no effort to hide its inspiration. Scenarios and quests make it a kind of adventure game. You want to like it, but there doesn’t seem to be a thread holding it all together.

• Better in the post apocalyptic genre is Raid & Trade which is exactly that. Your character runs around the board ransacking houses for resources to either turn into useful artefacts or trade with others for resources you need. I think there is a lot more interaction possible than we had, and I think it is better when you go after each other.
• La Glace et le Ciel (The Ice and the Sky) looks good, but showed some hickups on forst play. Need to try again soon

• 1714: The Case of the Catalans. Five allied nations face the combined might of France and the Spanish Empire. Don't let the old skool hexagon board fool you: this card driven game is good. Designed by a sick mind, as we have observed first hand. You will learn more about this game when we play it again.

And again it showed what a difference it makes to have good people explain the game with enthusiasm. The guy who taught us Blood Rage and the designer of 1714 both went out of their way to get us going. Likewise the guys at Galeforce 9 and Badger's Nest. It really helps to sell a game. Again the East Asian publishers seemed to fail in this respect. It may not be entirely fair to judge them on lack of language skills, but you only get one shot to sell a game. It's a tragedy if you miss because you can explain it well enough.

Spiel Essen 2015: I came, I saw...

This year's visit to Spiel was the most relaxed and pleasant in years. I hadn't prepared much, I didn't tweet and I didn't feel the need nor urge to play reporter. This meant that I chose my own path rather than to check out what might be hot. My list of games that might prove interesting was even slightly shorter than before. It may also have helped that we went home after the second day which saved us a lot of fuss in buying and preparing games for the second night and third day. 

Tomorrow I'll go into the stuff we played, but let's kick off with the stuff I only saw. Very much first impressions!

• Peeked at Shakespeare, but it looked like any Ystari solo puzzle. Nippon looked good, but also felt more like a puzzle, although I am open to be convinced otherwise.
• Bloody Inn and Scythe looked promising, but I didn’t get round to trying it or having it explained.
• I got Euro Crisis explained to me and it really sounds like a good game with the appropriate level of cynicism. As an international bank your goal in the game is to buy up as many national assets (the Akropolis of course!) as possible.
• I didn’t see Churchill of Triumph & Tragedy played, but they look like a lot of work to get in to.
• Waterloo: Enemy Mistakes came across like yet another tactical hex & counter game about the battle, with a hefty price tag attached. On the other hand W1815 provides the essentials in a 15 minute game with a refreshing new approach.
• Lembitu is a cooperative challenge, but the fact that it was advertised on the strength that the wife of the designer was so good at it because she is a mathematician put me off.
• Celestia is beautiful, but I already had my fix of kids games by the time I saw it
• Had a quick look at Haspelknecht, which seems fine.
• Sapiens has some interesting ideas, but the design seems to suggest it’s a kids game. I don’t think that’s the target audience.
• Bad Medicine is a party game which is more about smooth talking. But the fact that you are a marketer for a major medicine corporation gets you in the right mood.
• I think I would like Raptor, but too bad it’s two players only
• Fabulous Beasts was being demoed and looked okay, but I felt the addition of a tablet didn’t fulfil its potential.
• I was looking forward to the Age of Conan expansion, hoping that it would somehow breathe new life into the game. It was not available for demoing, but it seems to include a number of new miniatures, which were on display

It also dawned on me this time why East Asian designers are unable to conquer the European market on their own. We played a couple of turns of the disappointing Generalship, which remained stuck in abstractions and a generic game board without much added value.

And I would have been happy to buy Tank Hunter on a hunch if vital rules text on some cards hadn’t been in Japanese. To add a sheet of white stickers, which ruin the visual design, is not a solution.

The most promising was the medieval zombie game by the very friendly guys from Hong Kong, which was a whole lot of fuss in the wrong areas. There is no lack of talent and interesting takes on interesting themes, that much is clear, but so far only western editions of East Asian games have been successful.

Essen 2015 - What I Will Be Checking Out

Okay people,

I got my BoardgameGeeklist of interesting games ready for Spiel this year.

There's a couple of games with interesting (historical) themes: 1714: Case of the Catalans, Apollo XIII, Bloody Inn, Churchill, DRCongo, Foreign King, Germania Magna, Lembitu, Manifest, Nippon,  Race to Berlin, Schinderhannes, Tesla vs Edison, Thunderbirds, Trenches of Hell, Triumph & Tragedy, Waterloo: Enemy Mistakes, €uro Crisis,

A few from designers that I keep an eye on: Raptor, Pax Pamir, Ships,

Some expansions for games I already have (or other guys in my game group): Age of Conan, Concordia: Salsa, Metro 2033,

Some games which I have heard positive things about and wish to check: Agents of SMERSH, Arctic Scavengers, Battle at Kemble's Cascade, Luchador, Space Cadets,

Stuff that the kids might like (and me!), or some friends: Celestia, Flock, Tank Hunter, Tiger Leader,

Games that attracted my attention for no clear reason: Bad Medicine, Dogs of War, La Glace et le Ciel, Haspelknecht, Predator deck builder, Raid & Trade, Sapiens, Scythe, Shakespeare.

Not all of my interest is serious, and quite a few of them could easily be rubbish or good but not brilliant. However, at least some of this should appeal. Especially not too sure about the games on display for crowdfunding, but I think it is a great development that people can actually try out these games. Too many kickstarters have been sold on theme and juicy bits alone. I'm not sure that many of them have actually made much of an impression in terms of gameplay.

Last year there were a couple of games that were cheap and I bought on a hunch. Not too impressed with most of them, so I might not do that again. On the other hand, I like to have a game ready to play on Thursday night. So some simple game will probably be bought, but I hope to have a better idea of what it will be like.

Only three more nights before the fun starts. I just hope I can sleep!

First Impressions and Final Thoughts on Spiel 2014

There was some stuff that I hardly saw but quickly formed an opinion about:

Good impression: Historia was very much enjoyed by my friends. It offers a two-axis take on civilization with room for conflict.

Undecided:

Battle of the Five Armies: looks great as ever (but many of the miniatures are the same), and similar to Battles of Middle Earth. But maybe we should play those more before buying this one.

Greenland: the premise is great, but it’s three players.

Quartermaster General: this could still be Axis&Allies with less combat

Raid & Trade: didn’t see it played or explained but looked as if it had a lot of numbers on counters and the board. Excellent minis and artwork though.

Lord of the Ice Garden looked great, but the unpainted miniatures expansion adds €40 to €55 for the basic game.

Bad impression: Athlas, Empire Engine (cube producing micro game), Swedish Parliament (although the policy axes were nice), The Walled City (looked like Carcassonne the City and ignored the contentious history of Londonderry), 8 Minute Empire expansion (there is something contradictory to a micro game expansion)

Missed: Night of the Grand Octopus (but it will be in stores at some point), €uro Crisis, Airborne Commander, Fantastiqa, Fief: France 1429, Luchador, Nothing Personal, Pamietne Historie, Patchistory, Pocket Imperium, Samuari Spirit, Shinobi Clans, Stimmvieh, Tiny Epic Kingdoms, Wir Sind Das Volk, Battle at Kemble’s Cascade

It seems like I’ll need to play less to see more. I did that the last few years but I think I prefer playing to running around.

So how did I feel about this Spiel?

Even though I’m no longer excited by this year’s euro offering (Arler Erde looks too much like Agricola and Panamax might be another multiplayer solo hit) and Sci Fi and Fantasy have become mainstream (almost everybody has by now jumped on the zombie bandwagon) there is still room for excitement and surprise.

The Polish publishers have blossomed by adopting euro mechanisms but they keep applying them to historical theme. Now Greek, Romanian, Spanish and even Indonesian publishers are following in their wake. There is still so much unused and unique theme around one might despair of the next generic fantasy game. Wallace still produces interesting games, even if they are occasionally flawed. And there are still publishers wanting to take risks.

It’s been a good year.

Mythotopia and Spiel 2014 shopping

Saturday's 'one more for the road' game was Mythotopia, Martin Wallace's new offering. It's a bit of a cop out, really, to apply a mechanism to a fantasy (or sci fi) theme, but it works out well enough. As in A Few Acres of Snow the deck building mechanism is subordinated to the map manouever. You build the deck from 4 basic cards and 6 area cards, which gives every player a unique set of resources (grain, gold, bricks and military goods). You can add to your hand by conquering new areas and buying cards from the market for gold. What cards are for sales changes from game to game.

Another familiar feature of Wallace games is that you can take two actions, chosen from a wide variety of options. Some of the cards in your hand provide extra options (instead of playing them for resources). Most actions require playing resource cards from your hand. When you invade an area, the war is only resolved by a player ending it as the first action of her turn. This can protract wars as players keep adding resources to an area and tipping the balance.

There are challenges to your hand management once your deck grows, but the game offers the opportunity to place cards in a 'reserve' so you can use them for permanent effects or to save them for a better opportunity. But placing cards into the reserve counts as an action. There are also a few cards that help you draw extra cards or search your discard pile. Let's see about killer combo's...

You score victory points for the number of areas you hold and a range of achievements, the standard three being castles, cities and roads, and possible other special conditions: areas conquered, successful defense or dragons killed. However, for every type of achievement, there is a limited amount of times they can be claimed.

Victory is determined by a player claiming victory as the first action of his turn. Any running wars are resolved then, but you can only claim victory if you end up with the most points after resolution. We ended up very close to each other which made it impossible to clinch victory in the end. So we decided on a four way tie. I hope this is a one off bug, and not a feature. Despite the ending a good finish to the gaming side of the weekend! With the varying selection of cards available on the market and the changing set of victory conditions ensures a fair amount of replayability.

So what did I buy?

My buying strategy this year was focused on games I was pretty sure would make it to the table. I think I’ve managed that well. I’ve shied away from the overly complicated, and 2 and 3 player games, leaving micro games and multiplayer. Lost Legacy: Starship, Unicum, Auge um Auge, Mat Goceng and Verone have all been dealt with in the previous posts.

 Lost Legacy: Flying Garden looks very much like the Starship game, but with another ending. The cards of Flying Garden and Starship can be mixed for variation.

I was torn between First to Fight and Race to the Rhine. The latter is a game that is very close in design to what I had in mind myself about the breakout from Normandy to the Rhine in autumn 1944, as a logistic struggle between three allied players, rather than two player campaign. It also looks good, but I didn’t take time to see how it plays because there were always people playing the demo.

First to Fight has all the players controlling Polish forces over the course of WWII. Because the Polish forces were few and widely scattered, I felt it is a great challenge to get all that into one game in a coherent way. In the end the decision was based on Race to the Rhine being three players which made it unlikely to hit the table regularly.

Marchia Orientalis and 15 Dias are both games with a strong historical theme, which I like. Maybe they end up being forgettable additions to the genre of tile laying respectively influence building games, but I’m eager to find out. 

Just another day at Spiel 2014

After our pretty successful first day in Essen, we returned still burning with curiosity and enthusiasm.

Our first stroke on Friday was to try out Fire in the Lake at the UGG stand. We were quickly into the game as we’ve already played Cuba Libre. But while the mechanics are familiar, FitL is much more complex. There’s more units, more areas and possibly longer scenario’s. So we did a couple of enjoyable rounds, but not really knowing what would be a good strategy for each faction.

We then split up as two of us had arranged to play a prototype of Mahardika. This game about the Indonesian independence struggle has the feel of Pandemic, with a similar engine running ‘the Enemy’ (ie the Dutch colonial state and its allies) as the outbreaks. The main interest is how it ties in the history into the objective cards. You either solve two series of objectives, or you get defeated by the Enemy. It is hopeful to see this game coming from Indonesia.

Mahardika will not be published until later this year, but the publisher had Mat Goceng available, a simple card game where you duel your opponents with hidden identity and hidden objectives as the catch. I hope to play it soon.

We then reconvened to play Euphoria, a worker placement game that owes most of its appeal to the brilliant application of the theme to the board and game pieces. Brilliant green and orange, suitably dystopic locations such as the Incinerator of Historical Accuracy (it sounds even better in German).. It is also neat that the workers are dice and you roll for their value every time they are taken off the board. Some of mechanisms neatly tied into the theme such as the risk of too much knowledge leading to workers escaping, but the layer of theme remains thin overall. So if you like worker placement games, this might actually be one of the more fun to have around.

Then Tragedy Looper. One that has good reviews from folks at Fortress Ameritrash so I wanted to try it out. I was cast as the MasterMind, ie the bad guy/gm. I think it is a wise move that Z-Man have included a introductory guide for the Mastermind in the first game because it really is tough to play it straight off the bat. I still made a clumsy mistake on the second day of the second loop which cost me the game. The players did well in deducting several of the character roles but not all.

As a treat we got to play the prototype of Conan Hyborian Quests, which will Kickstarter in January. The mechanism seem fine for a skirmish game, with the players spending energy and deciding whether they recover fast or slow. As all the scenarios have a time limit these are important decisions. The Bad Guy/Mastermind has a similar mechanic, and he uses energy to activate units or to roll emergency defense.

The evening was started with a quick game of Lost Legacy: Starship. It is strongly modeled on Love Letters with a slightly different ending (players having the opportunity to guess who has the ‘starship’). Nice, but I’m not sure that it will be worth it having several of these.

The main feature was Onward to Venus, a solid Martin Wallace steam punk fiction design. Ranging between Venus and the Kuiper Belt, the great European nations of the early 20^th century take to the exploitation of these planets’ mineral resources, and some occasional big game hunting. The joy is in the possible crises on the planets (eg Martian attacks) and the bonus cards. After a tight finale we retired to bed well satisfied with another long and hard day’s work.

Spiel 2014 day one

I went to Essen with a rather long list of games I looked out for but it always proves hard to check everything you want and luckily you also run into happy accidents

Hyperborea was a great start to the show. It allows for different strategies, offers some interesting events and sets up for conflict. It’s rightly been likened to Eclipse. We went through a few rounds and then decided it was a winner.

Run, Fight or Die is the umptiest zombie game and I realized I was suffering from zombie fatigue after a decade of exposure. And although there is some kind of a challenge in there, it is mostly multiplayer solo.

Spartacus is one of the first games by Gale Force Nine and although it probably isn’t the edgiest design, the intrigue is fun. Trash talk flows naturally and you find yourself booing gladiators that don’t try hard enough.

Theme and the fact that it is published by a Greek company drew me to Gothic Invasion. How can you not get excited for the war that inflicted one of the heaviest defeats on the Roman Empire and saw the death of an Emperor? The designer gave us an overview. Play is card driven with 2 or 3 options per card. Forces and objectives are asymmetric, so there is a lot of maneuver on the map. You can see there is a lot of promise in there. Although it can be played with more than two, there is no rivalry or separate objective. It just didn’t do it for my friends so I was faced with buying a game that wouldn’t get played.

Time Masters tries a new approach to deck building by making time the key unit. It works, because the game speeds up and slows down. But I didn’t feel like I was achieving anything worthwhile by building the deck. Somehow I couldn't find a way to hold the cards due to the horizontal design. And who asks €35 for a card game these days? [edit: apparently I was misinformed at the booth or I misunderstood the price: the publisher has informed me the price in stores should be €30 and would have been €25 in Essen] 

The evening in the bar and restaurant was spent with Unicum, Verone/Council of Verona and Auge um Auge. All three are excellent for beer and pretzels. Unicum offers a small box for a short game with a neat betting war hidden in it. This is fun, but I just wish the ‘uniqueness’ argument mattered a bit more. If you can get into the spirit of bogus arguments that helps.

I think that Verone is a truly great microgame, with all trying to influence the outcome of the feud between the Montagues and Capulets. It is worthwhile getting the French edition because I like the art better (and it automatically includes the Poison expansion, which is a neat addition). Pic above is the English version.

I’m not sure about Auge um Auge though. It is mostly a dice rolling fest with an alliance system. There are some abilities that help you create series, which you need to inflict black eyes on your opponents. But the alliance system is what makes the game interesting, because ganging up and keeping the front runner out of fist fights is the key. It may be a bit long for the amount of fun it holds. Art work nice, as always with Sphinx games.

Spiel 2014 longlist

Having browsed the lists of games coming out at Spiel this week, and with some suggestions from others, I have come to this list of games I will be looking for. It's adding up to about fifty, so I've narrowed it down to over a dozen games that I really would like to know more about and the rest would be nice. Of course I've now got an idea what they are about.

Stuff that gives me a good feeling

• 15 Dias. My old time friend: el Conde-Duque de Olivares
• 1944: Race to the Rhine. Always been fascinated by the logistics of this campaign. Check out Matt Thrower's review
• Coup: Reformation. I just loved Coup.
• First to Fight. will be interesting to see what they can make out of this
• Gothic Invasion. great subject, plus multiplayer. And good to see Greek publishers attending!
• Luchador! Mexican Wrestling Dice. Dice rolling, and looks good.
• Battle of the Five Armies. The guys from War of the Ring at it again. Not an Essen release but who cares?
• Mahardika. Fascinating to find a game about the Indonesian War of Liberation. As a Dutchman I'm used to watch it from the other perspective so I should learn a lot from this (maybe more about current perceptions of the war in Indonesia than what actually happened). But I'll be curious about their handling of British troops, Dutch internees in camps, Dutch atrocities, Moloccans etc
• Marchia Orientalis. As a fan of the Holy Roman Empire (although I do not seek a return to it), this could be right up my alley
• Mat Goceng. Interesting piece of Dutch/Indonesian colonial history from the Indonesian viewpoint.And good to see Indonesian publishers attending!
• Mythotopia. Wallace's multiplayer version of A Few Acres of Snow
• Raid and Trade. theme and minis promising
• Samurai Spirit. The 7 samurai in game form, with a very postive review from SU&SD
• Tragedy Looper. See Charlie Theel's review on 2D6
• Wir sind das Volk! Interesting to see that somebody thinks East Germany could have beaten West.

Check out my list on boardgamegeek if you want to have a closer look at the games. 
And the Spielbox overview of all the games released at Spiel. So you can figure out stand numbers if you intend to visit yourself.

I will be tweeting @jurdj as always.

Stuff that might be good, but perhaps not

I might pick up one the cheaper ones

• €uro Crisis
• Abraca... what?
• Abyss
• Airborne Commander
• Athlas: Duel for Divinity
• Conan: Hyborian Quests
• Corto: The Secrets of Venice
• Cyclades: Titans
• Dixit: Daydreams
• Empire Engine
• Fantastiqa
• Fief: France 1429
• Fresh Fish
• Greenland
• Guatemala 1954
• Hyperborea
• Illegal
• Lost Legacy
• Memorable Stories
• New Dawn
• Night of the Grand Octopus
• Onward to Venus
• Patchistory
• Pocket Imperium
• Quartermaster General
• Romans Go Home!
• Stimmvieh
• Swedish Parliament 2014
• The Walled City: Londonderry & Borderlands
• Tiny Epic Kingdoms
• Unicum
• Uruk II: Die Entwicklung Geht Weiter
• Vérone

Essen nearing

And with Essen nearing, I've made my first draft of the list of games to look at.

Some interesting stuff like 15 Dias, which is about my old friend the Conde-Duque de Olivares, or a game looking at the logistics of the Normandy Breakout. New stuff from Martin Wallace and Phil Eklund, a rondel microgame, more Polish military history.

And one game that sounds just to strange to be true. The Walled City: Londonderry & Borderlands has you populate villages 'with loyal peasants and nobles who share your view of this new city'. This means: Protestant settlers in Northern Ireland in the 17th century, so a highly contentious part of history. This might not go down will with (Northern) Irish catholics who understand Londonderry as a Protestant colony. Let's see if the game shows that sensitivity.

I was afraid I would be a bit meh about Essen this year, having been out of the gaming loop so long, but going through the new crop has wet my appetite.

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