Essen Spiel, in pictures
Okay, so I failed at getting all of my pictures out before BGG.CON. Sigh. Well, I do have some stuff from Essen still in the hopper here, so here's some of the gamery goodness!
Early o'clock at Interlaken Ost, where the train starts its day and I am among the first to board.
I didn't take many pictures during the train trip because there wasn't too much to see and my transfer in Mannheim was nothing exciting. So let's get to the gaming!
Okay, well first, let's get to some whimsy:
The hotel bathroom had a little guest for me. :)
Overall a nice room, and the internet was sufficient. I will probably try and stay there again.
Okay, NOW to the games.
I wasn't alone in my desire to get in and see all the new hotness!
This was just prior to opening on Friday, but pretty much was exactly what it looked like at open every day.
One of my favorites of the new crop was Dungeon Lords.
Don't let the cute art fool you: below the exterior of those cute imps and goofy monsters is a deep (and brutal) economic and resource building game. The adventurers will come into your dungeon and OWN it if you're not careful!
I later got to play this one, but it caught my eye early:
Tobago. You play clues to narrow down where various treasures are, sort of deducing by deciding... the mechanic is just FUN. Once a treasure is located, you race to it in order to collect the most loot, avoiding the cursed treasure with the magic power of amulets! The game is a complete winner in my book.
Plus, they have cool statues!
Here's a game I just had to pick up for the parts:
A la Carte. You're chefs who have to make dishes using your burners and little metal saucepans... too cute! This was my must-have impulse buy of the show. :)
I WOULD have bought this, but it's not out in English yet:
This is Macao, #13 in the Alea big box series (other favorite classics from that series include Puerto Rico and Notre Dame). At the time all I understood about it was that the dice give you resources in future rounds, but I didn't know more. I would later get a chance to play at BGG.CON. More when I get to that post.
By the end of the first day, I had made a few purchases...
...and so you begin to see (if this is day one) why I ended up needing to buy a new bag.
Day two started with a demo of Power Grid: Factory Manager:
No maps or locations here. Each player has a factory board and people to work it, and you buy stuff from the common market to Make Stuff and Get Money. I enjoyed it!
Here was my domain at the end of the game we played.
If you're familiar with Ticket to Ride or Small World, then you'll know this company:
Days of Wonder was mostly showing SW, but as you could see it was popular.
Sometimes you see a game that just has some cool THING associated with it.
In this 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea game there's this. I have no idea how it works or how you use it in the game (other than to assume it has some bearing on the status of the Nautilus), but it sure does look neat all set up!
And more cool things...
Just a stool in a booth, but kind of cool.
Speaking of cool bits, here's something nifty:
Viking-styled pieces for Settlers of Catan! I actually kind of like those, so I may put them on a gift list or something.
Not all of the games with interesting components are games that I'd be interested in playing:
It's a team game, Aarg!Tect, where one person has a diagram of the blocks in a structure and must tell the rest of their team what to do using the caveman grunt-and-gesture language printed on the cards. When their teammates do something wrong they hit them on the head once with the inflatable club: right, twice. Silly, and not my bag but people were having fun.
While we're on the subject of inflatable things, two old favorites were of course back:
Balloon jousting...
...and human-sized kid foosball!
Lest you think that all the kids have to do is play on inflatable things, there are kid-based game companies:
This poor guy got broken on Saturday sometime: when we left that night there was a stump on the pedestal. :(
And of course, THE kid company had a presence:
They were showing several games, including this:
I haven't heard great things about the games. These aren't the quality of Haba or anything, but they're apparently okay for kids.
More into the adult realm were some other games I played:
...Endeavor, for example. Basically you're putting your discs out on the board to represent where your agents are and get you points. It's a great game that's not too long and has been fun to play.
I tend to like Martin Wallace games, and the mechanics of this one are no exception:
Last Train to Wensleydale is a bit of rail building and a bit of resource management and set collection all thrown into one. It's got good play...
...but there are a lot of bits that sometimes don't fit on the board spaces or that can be easily knocked out of place. So I'm kind of waiting on this one. If someone else picks it up and does better components I'll probably get it.
Speaking of components, the other game I ragged on for components was Shipyard:
And what you see here is only HALF the board!
The game itself is neat and has some very clever mechanics, but I feel like there had to have been a way to do it without so many bits that slide around and get messed up so easily. Anyone who knows me knows that I'll probably end up buying it, but I'm actually on the fence just because I feel like there should have been a better way to do the bits...
But here is My First Ship! Isn't it pretty?
On to other things:
In the "random game" category is Donna Leon, a game set on a board that's a map of Venice. I almost got this game just because I'd been there on this trip, but too many components are in German, so I left it be.
One game I didn't leave alone when I got back to the states was The Adventurers:
Take the first 15 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark, make a game out of it, and this is what you get. It's really quite fun (I got a chance to play it later). It's not deep, but it has a good press-your-luck feel like Diamant.
I got to play this on Saturday night:
El Paso, a light game with a bidding element and a press-your-luck element. It's cute and light and I could see it coming out every so often if I got it.
One game I didn't get to try was the new mega-box game from Queen:
Colonia. It's apparently very Euro, with lots of cube-pushing and some pasted on theme. I don't mind that, so we'll see if I end up with it at some point.
And that was my Essen. Over on the right you see my hotel, and on the left you see the Galleria Kaufhof (where I bought my duffel bag) in this final shot taken from the railway station as I moved on to London...
Early o'clock at Interlaken Ost, where the train starts its day and I am among the first to board.
I didn't take many pictures during the train trip because there wasn't too much to see and my transfer in Mannheim was nothing exciting. So let's get to the gaming!
Okay, well first, let's get to some whimsy:
The hotel bathroom had a little guest for me. :)
Overall a nice room, and the internet was sufficient. I will probably try and stay there again.
Okay, NOW to the games.
I wasn't alone in my desire to get in and see all the new hotness!
This was just prior to opening on Friday, but pretty much was exactly what it looked like at open every day.
One of my favorites of the new crop was Dungeon Lords.
Don't let the cute art fool you: below the exterior of those cute imps and goofy monsters is a deep (and brutal) economic and resource building game. The adventurers will come into your dungeon and OWN it if you're not careful!
I later got to play this one, but it caught my eye early:
Tobago. You play clues to narrow down where various treasures are, sort of deducing by deciding... the mechanic is just FUN. Once a treasure is located, you race to it in order to collect the most loot, avoiding the cursed treasure with the magic power of amulets! The game is a complete winner in my book.
Plus, they have cool statues!
Here's a game I just had to pick up for the parts:
A la Carte. You're chefs who have to make dishes using your burners and little metal saucepans... too cute! This was my must-have impulse buy of the show. :)
I WOULD have bought this, but it's not out in English yet:
This is Macao, #13 in the Alea big box series (other favorite classics from that series include Puerto Rico and Notre Dame). At the time all I understood about it was that the dice give you resources in future rounds, but I didn't know more. I would later get a chance to play at BGG.CON. More when I get to that post.
By the end of the first day, I had made a few purchases...
...and so you begin to see (if this is day one) why I ended up needing to buy a new bag.
Day two started with a demo of Power Grid: Factory Manager:
No maps or locations here. Each player has a factory board and people to work it, and you buy stuff from the common market to Make Stuff and Get Money. I enjoyed it!
Here was my domain at the end of the game we played.
If you're familiar with Ticket to Ride or Small World, then you'll know this company:
Days of Wonder was mostly showing SW, but as you could see it was popular.
Sometimes you see a game that just has some cool THING associated with it.
In this 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea game there's this. I have no idea how it works or how you use it in the game (other than to assume it has some bearing on the status of the Nautilus), but it sure does look neat all set up!
And more cool things...
Just a stool in a booth, but kind of cool.
Speaking of cool bits, here's something nifty:
Viking-styled pieces for Settlers of Catan! I actually kind of like those, so I may put them on a gift list or something.
Not all of the games with interesting components are games that I'd be interested in playing:
It's a team game, Aarg!Tect, where one person has a diagram of the blocks in a structure and must tell the rest of their team what to do using the caveman grunt-and-gesture language printed on the cards. When their teammates do something wrong they hit them on the head once with the inflatable club: right, twice. Silly, and not my bag but people were having fun.
While we're on the subject of inflatable things, two old favorites were of course back:
Balloon jousting...
...and human-sized kid foosball!
Lest you think that all the kids have to do is play on inflatable things, there are kid-based game companies:
This poor guy got broken on Saturday sometime: when we left that night there was a stump on the pedestal. :(
And of course, THE kid company had a presence:
They were showing several games, including this:
I haven't heard great things about the games. These aren't the quality of Haba or anything, but they're apparently okay for kids.
More into the adult realm were some other games I played:
...Endeavor, for example. Basically you're putting your discs out on the board to represent where your agents are and get you points. It's a great game that's not too long and has been fun to play.
I tend to like Martin Wallace games, and the mechanics of this one are no exception:
Last Train to Wensleydale is a bit of rail building and a bit of resource management and set collection all thrown into one. It's got good play...
...but there are a lot of bits that sometimes don't fit on the board spaces or that can be easily knocked out of place. So I'm kind of waiting on this one. If someone else picks it up and does better components I'll probably get it.
Speaking of components, the other game I ragged on for components was Shipyard:
And what you see here is only HALF the board!
The game itself is neat and has some very clever mechanics, but I feel like there had to have been a way to do it without so many bits that slide around and get messed up so easily. Anyone who knows me knows that I'll probably end up buying it, but I'm actually on the fence just because I feel like there should have been a better way to do the bits...
But here is My First Ship! Isn't it pretty?
On to other things:
In the "random game" category is Donna Leon, a game set on a board that's a map of Venice. I almost got this game just because I'd been there on this trip, but too many components are in German, so I left it be.
One game I didn't leave alone when I got back to the states was The Adventurers:
Take the first 15 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark, make a game out of it, and this is what you get. It's really quite fun (I got a chance to play it later). It's not deep, but it has a good press-your-luck feel like Diamant.
I got to play this on Saturday night:
El Paso, a light game with a bidding element and a press-your-luck element. It's cute and light and I could see it coming out every so often if I got it.
One game I didn't get to try was the new mega-box game from Queen:
Colonia. It's apparently very Euro, with lots of cube-pushing and some pasted on theme. I don't mind that, so we'll see if I end up with it at some point.
And that was my Essen. Over on the right you see my hotel, and on the left you see the Galleria Kaufhof (where I bought my duffel bag) in this final shot taken from the railway station as I moved on to London...