09-19-2007, 10:34 AM
PEVANS reports from the biggest boardgames fair in Europe...
IF IT’S OCTOBER, it must be Essen. Spiel ’02 took place at the Essen Messe (Exhibition halls) on 17th-20th October 2002 and, as usual, featured an awful lot of new games. I attended for three days: enough time to play just a small fraction of the games. Here are the highlights - you can find the full version of this piece on my website.
Friedemann Friese of 2F Spiele did us proud with Fische, Fluppen, Frikadellen. Players are trading to collect fetishes (little wooden things from the South Seas). Scattered around the board are a dozen shops and traders - selected from the total available. Players move round the board, seeking to buy and sell or trade goods with the various merchants. The aim is to build themselves up from nothing to having the various sets of goods needed to trade in for a fetish. First to collect three fetishes wins, but getting them is progressively harder.
This is a clever, entertaining game that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was also a very close result. The unique feature of the game is that it can be played by up to 15 people across three boards. There are three ‘flavours’ of the game, each different in detail, so that they can be put together without confusion. One of the actions available to players then becomes moving to a different board - though without scouting it out first. I can see this creating complete chaos, so I look forward to trying it out.
Clementoni is not a company I have associated with boardgames, let alone good boardgames, but they seem to have a winner this year. The game in question is by Wolfgang Kramer and is called Wildlife.
This bears a superficial resemblance to Evo, as the board features an island divided into half a dozen different terrain types. Each player is a creature, adapted differently to the terrain. Some areas are inhospitable, some the creature can move through, some it can breed in (and move through) and some it can attack in (and breed in and move through). Players play cards to do things - getting additional pieces on the board, moving around, attacking the others, change their adaptation to the terrain and even evolve (gaining special abilities). There are several ways of scoring points, but essentially each player wants to expand. This is a clever game that requires some thought, some decision-making and taking account of what other players are up to - a typical Kramer game. I liked it.
Cwali is the vehicle for Corné van Moorsel’s games and, in Cwali’s usual drum-shaped box, brings us ZooSim. Like van Morsel’s other games (or at least those I’ve played), this is a very abstract game, with thinking required. However, it is very accessible: the complexity lies in the options and tactics that the rules make available to you.
In the game you are trying to build up the most popular zoo. You do this by laying rectangular tiles (sections of your zoo), carefully linking them by the paths shown. Tiles are auctioned to the players one at a time. After each five, players score the current position (weighting the scores, so that later rounds are more valuable) and gain more money. The game ends once all 25 tiles have been sold and the player with the most points wins. This is a sophisticated little game with a lot of subtlety in it, but relatively easy to understand.
DaVinci Games is an Italian games company that is distributed by Heidelberger and their game Bang! was to be found on the Heidelberger stand. This is a card game themed round a Spaghetti Western. Each player starts with a character, giving them a special ability and a number of ‘hits’, plus a role.
Only the Sheriff reveals his role: his job is to get rid of the outlaws. The Deputies support the Sheriff and win (jointly) if all the bad guys are dead. The Outlaws win if the Sheriff is killed. And the Renegade wins only if he is the last man standing! In turn, players draw cards and then play. As many as they like, but only one ‘Bang!’ (unless they have a special ability or card that lets them play more), which is a shot at another player within range. Each successful ‘Bang!’ reduces the targets hits by one, and you’re dead if you run out of hits. The game is reminiscent of Family Business, but is its own game and is great fun to play.
Eight Foot Llama (no, really) was another of the American contingent and publisher of Jim Doherty’s games. On show were last year’s game, Who Stole Ed’s Pants?, and this year’s title, Monkeys on the Moon. Who Stole Ed’s Pants? is an entertaining card game of trying to pin the blame for the eponymous crime on other players. This is done by planting evidence on them or changing the facts. When the game ends, the player in the middle of the frame gets the blame. It’s good fun, but I found I kept having to think about the mechanics of the game.
Monkeys on the Moon is a different kettle of fish (or barrel of monkeys?). The game defies succinct description, so let me just say that it’s a game of multiple levels. That is, you do one thing, in order to be able to do another thing in order to get what you need to win. Except that this is also influenced by what you did in the first place. Very clever stuff with intriguing game play and a truly silly theme: what more could you want?
Well, a bit more of a challenge. After the success of Carcassonne last year, Hans im Glück had both an expansion set and a new version of the game. The expansion set adds extra features to the original game. The new game is Carcassonne - Jäger & Sammler (Hunters and Gatherers).
In this game players are laying square tiles to build up a map of a prehistoric landscape, divided between grassland, forests (the equivalent of towns in the original), rivers (roads) and lakes (which divide rivers). As in the original, players gain points by having pieces on completed rivers and forests and in grassland at the end of the game. However, the points for grassland depend on the number of animals shown on the tiles - except for tigers (sabre-toothed, of course), which eat deer, reducing the score. There are also different pieces to play: huts that go on river and lake complexes. At the end of the game, these score for the fish in the interconnected lakes. The final difference is that incomplete forests and rivers do not score points at the end. So, an intriguing variant of the original game, but not really that different.
There was a lot of new stuff to see on the Kosmos stand, including several Lord of the Rings tie-ins. One of these was Das Duell, a two-player game by Peter Neugebauer themed around the fight between Gandalf and the Balrog on the bridge in Khazad-Dûm. The game has a little cardboard bridge, which looks good, but doesn’t add an awful lot. However gameplay features a more interesting mechanism: players compare the adjacent sides of the cards they’ve played to see how many hits they score on their opponent. These reduce the characters’ strength on a track and thus indicate who wins the round. Unless one player has an overwhelming win, the game is fought over three rounds, followed by a final duel. The luck element is less than you might think as players will get to play just about all their cards. In each of the three rounds, they take a hand of nine cards (of 27), play six and keep three for the final. In the final, they play all nine.
With the sudden death ending, players have to balance the risk of losing outright against keeping good cards for the final. Of course, you might risk going for a sudden death win if you think you can pull it off. With special action cards in each deck that are similar, but not identical, for each player, there are some subtleties to this game. I like it.
To me, Schmidt Spiele is best known as distributor for Hans im Glück. But they do publish their own games. This year these include ReAction by Maureen Hiron. This is a fast and furious, Racing Demon-type game. Players get a hand of cards, each with a number and letter on. Control cards indicate what players can play. For example, = means same letter or number: so if one player plays D3, others can play Dn or x3. Alternatively, + means one better: so onto that D3, you can play En or x4. The idea is to play quickly - this usually involves much clashing of hands! The first to get rid of all their cards wins.
I think the person who played last has an advantage and can get rid of several cards in sequence before anyone else gets in. However, it’s not a game for thinking about, it’s a game for doing! I’m afraid the Warfrog guys have come up with my game of the show for the second year running. This was Age of Steam, which is the subject of a separate review, so I’ll just say that it gets a resounding 10/10 from me.
I’d like to conclude with my thanks to the organisers, Friedhelm Merz Verlag, for another fine show. The figures show that some 148,555 people attended the fair over its four days. They got to see 578 exhibitors, drawn from 21 countries. I can’t speak for the other 148,554, but I’m definitely looking forward to the next Spiel: 23rd-26th October 2003.
IF IT’S OCTOBER, it must be Essen. Spiel ’02 took place at the Essen Messe (Exhibition halls) on 17th-20th October 2002 and, as usual, featured an awful lot of new games. I attended for three days: enough time to play just a small fraction of the games. Here are the highlights - you can find the full version of this piece on my website.
Friedemann Friese of 2F Spiele did us proud with Fische, Fluppen, Frikadellen. Players are trading to collect fetishes (little wooden things from the South Seas). Scattered around the board are a dozen shops and traders - selected from the total available. Players move round the board, seeking to buy and sell or trade goods with the various merchants. The aim is to build themselves up from nothing to having the various sets of goods needed to trade in for a fetish. First to collect three fetishes wins, but getting them is progressively harder.
This is a clever, entertaining game that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was also a very close result. The unique feature of the game is that it can be played by up to 15 people across three boards. There are three ‘flavours’ of the game, each different in detail, so that they can be put together without confusion. One of the actions available to players then becomes moving to a different board - though without scouting it out first. I can see this creating complete chaos, so I look forward to trying it out.
Clementoni is not a company I have associated with boardgames, let alone good boardgames, but they seem to have a winner this year. The game in question is by Wolfgang Kramer and is called Wildlife.
This bears a superficial resemblance to Evo, as the board features an island divided into half a dozen different terrain types. Each player is a creature, adapted differently to the terrain. Some areas are inhospitable, some the creature can move through, some it can breed in (and move through) and some it can attack in (and breed in and move through). Players play cards to do things - getting additional pieces on the board, moving around, attacking the others, change their adaptation to the terrain and even evolve (gaining special abilities). There are several ways of scoring points, but essentially each player wants to expand. This is a clever game that requires some thought, some decision-making and taking account of what other players are up to - a typical Kramer game. I liked it.
Cwali is the vehicle for Corné van Moorsel’s games and, in Cwali’s usual drum-shaped box, brings us ZooSim. Like van Morsel’s other games (or at least those I’ve played), this is a very abstract game, with thinking required. However, it is very accessible: the complexity lies in the options and tactics that the rules make available to you.
In the game you are trying to build up the most popular zoo. You do this by laying rectangular tiles (sections of your zoo), carefully linking them by the paths shown. Tiles are auctioned to the players one at a time. After each five, players score the current position (weighting the scores, so that later rounds are more valuable) and gain more money. The game ends once all 25 tiles have been sold and the player with the most points wins. This is a sophisticated little game with a lot of subtlety in it, but relatively easy to understand.
DaVinci Games is an Italian games company that is distributed by Heidelberger and their game Bang! was to be found on the Heidelberger stand. This is a card game themed round a Spaghetti Western. Each player starts with a character, giving them a special ability and a number of ‘hits’, plus a role.
Only the Sheriff reveals his role: his job is to get rid of the outlaws. The Deputies support the Sheriff and win (jointly) if all the bad guys are dead. The Outlaws win if the Sheriff is killed. And the Renegade wins only if he is the last man standing! In turn, players draw cards and then play. As many as they like, but only one ‘Bang!’ (unless they have a special ability or card that lets them play more), which is a shot at another player within range. Each successful ‘Bang!’ reduces the targets hits by one, and you’re dead if you run out of hits. The game is reminiscent of Family Business, but is its own game and is great fun to play.
Eight Foot Llama (no, really) was another of the American contingent and publisher of Jim Doherty’s games. On show were last year’s game, Who Stole Ed’s Pants?, and this year’s title, Monkeys on the Moon. Who Stole Ed’s Pants? is an entertaining card game of trying to pin the blame for the eponymous crime on other players. This is done by planting evidence on them or changing the facts. When the game ends, the player in the middle of the frame gets the blame. It’s good fun, but I found I kept having to think about the mechanics of the game.
Monkeys on the Moon is a different kettle of fish (or barrel of monkeys?). The game defies succinct description, so let me just say that it’s a game of multiple levels. That is, you do one thing, in order to be able to do another thing in order to get what you need to win. Except that this is also influenced by what you did in the first place. Very clever stuff with intriguing game play and a truly silly theme: what more could you want?
Well, a bit more of a challenge. After the success of Carcassonne last year, Hans im Glück had both an expansion set and a new version of the game. The expansion set adds extra features to the original game. The new game is Carcassonne - Jäger & Sammler (Hunters and Gatherers).
In this game players are laying square tiles to build up a map of a prehistoric landscape, divided between grassland, forests (the equivalent of towns in the original), rivers (roads) and lakes (which divide rivers). As in the original, players gain points by having pieces on completed rivers and forests and in grassland at the end of the game. However, the points for grassland depend on the number of animals shown on the tiles - except for tigers (sabre-toothed, of course), which eat deer, reducing the score. There are also different pieces to play: huts that go on river and lake complexes. At the end of the game, these score for the fish in the interconnected lakes. The final difference is that incomplete forests and rivers do not score points at the end. So, an intriguing variant of the original game, but not really that different.
There was a lot of new stuff to see on the Kosmos stand, including several Lord of the Rings tie-ins. One of these was Das Duell, a two-player game by Peter Neugebauer themed around the fight between Gandalf and the Balrog on the bridge in Khazad-Dûm. The game has a little cardboard bridge, which looks good, but doesn’t add an awful lot. However gameplay features a more interesting mechanism: players compare the adjacent sides of the cards they’ve played to see how many hits they score on their opponent. These reduce the characters’ strength on a track and thus indicate who wins the round. Unless one player has an overwhelming win, the game is fought over three rounds, followed by a final duel. The luck element is less than you might think as players will get to play just about all their cards. In each of the three rounds, they take a hand of nine cards (of 27), play six and keep three for the final. In the final, they play all nine.
With the sudden death ending, players have to balance the risk of losing outright against keeping good cards for the final. Of course, you might risk going for a sudden death win if you think you can pull it off. With special action cards in each deck that are similar, but not identical, for each player, there are some subtleties to this game. I like it.
To me, Schmidt Spiele is best known as distributor for Hans im Glück. But they do publish their own games. This year these include ReAction by Maureen Hiron. This is a fast and furious, Racing Demon-type game. Players get a hand of cards, each with a number and letter on. Control cards indicate what players can play. For example, = means same letter or number: so if one player plays D3, others can play Dn or x3. Alternatively, + means one better: so onto that D3, you can play En or x4. The idea is to play quickly - this usually involves much clashing of hands! The first to get rid of all their cards wins.
I think the person who played last has an advantage and can get rid of several cards in sequence before anyone else gets in. However, it’s not a game for thinking about, it’s a game for doing! I’m afraid the Warfrog guys have come up with my game of the show for the second year running. This was Age of Steam, which is the subject of a separate review, so I’ll just say that it gets a resounding 10/10 from me.
I’d like to conclude with my thanks to the organisers, Friedhelm Merz Verlag, for another fine show. The figures show that some 148,555 people attended the fair over its four days. They got to see 578 exhibitors, drawn from 21 countries. I can’t speak for the other 148,554, but I’m definitely looking forward to the next Spiel: 23rd-26th October 2003.
Pevans
2004-10-05
2004-10-05