Kategorie: Messebesuche

Three days in Essen

by Moritz Eggert

Oh, how I dread to write yet another Essen report that is filled to the brim with how many games I bought and how I’m the all-round greatest gamer guy.

No, I won’t go down this road, and instead avoid completeness and detailed info (others do that certainly better) and simply give an incomplete, lazy and totally personal account about how Essen was like in the year of the Lord 2006.

DAY ONE

For the first time I was able to actually manage to come on Friday, not only on the weekend, which usually is crowded as hell, if only for the late afternoon.

I decided to not rush to every booth, but simply wander around a bit, taking in the scenery. As this time Essen didn’t fall together with a German holiday during the week days of the fair the attendance wasn’t as extreme as usual during the weekdays (although in the end they had yet another visitors‘ record), so it was possible to linger without being pushed in the back by a trolley laden with 578 new games and a baby that looks like Gollum in diapers.

I always savour the moment when one first enters the halls – somehow everything feels exciting and it’s like entering a monty haul dungeon from the early (or late) days of D&D. What treasures will I bring home this time?

I quickly got into what I will describe as „the circle“, which means moving clockwise through the succession of halls (reaching the huge hall filled with trampolines and screaming kids throwing popcorn at you usually means you have ventured „too far“), making a turn to the right at hall 6 (which contains the most „weirdo“ stuff like small publishers with obscure role playing games but also the Scientology Nazis from Warhammer) and then making your way back to the entrance hall which one usually recognizes because of the huge Kosmos booth.

How often you will be able to finish this „circle“ while avoiding crashes or mishaps and STILL finding something interesting every time around will greatly determine your enjoyment of Essen (at least mine). I knew that I wanted to meet Rick Thornquist, my esteemed colleague from the Dice Tower, and he had told me that he was to be found at the Rio Grande booth. I found lots of flags with the name „Rio Grande“ on it, but no booth, just a huge open space with dozens of gaming tables. But sure enough, Rick was there, and it was the Rio Grande booth indeed! Congrats to Rio Grande for catering for the most desperate need anybody encounters in Essen – the need for a table where you can actually play a game! They never had to worry about too few people at their stand because of that ingenious idea…

Basically the fair was over after my first „circle“ and the meeting with Rick (I arrived in the late afternoon, and the fair closes at 7 p.m.) so there was nothing else to do but arrange a dinner together with Henning Kroepke (who works for Phalanx, and is a long-time gaming colleague who has sadly now left Munich), his girlfriend and Rick, in the „Chinese place where everybody goes to“. We tried to explain some complicated German cultural phenomenons to Rick, who seemed to enjoy it as he asked for more and more.

Rick Thornquist is – as has to be said – one of the greatest gamers I ever met. Well spoken, incredibly knowledgeable (he seems to know every game in existence, I can tell you) and full of humour. I was also excited to learn that he actually played trombone in an orchestra for a while, so he actually understands my profession – great!

So it came natural to follow him to a game in one of the many hotels around the fair – when we entered there were already some gamers playing the new offerings. Rick approached a pile of interesting new games that lay around, and picked – with sure hand – the later-to-be-hit-of-the-show „Die Säulen der Erde“.

„Who does this copy belong to?“ Rick asked. The answer was „Martin Wallace, but he isn’t here right now, he’s having a drink at the bar.“

„Well, Martin won’t mind“ was Rick’s answer, and so we played „Säulen der Erde“ using a shrink-wrapped copy of „the man“ Wallace! Martin appeared a little while later, and Rick was right – he didn’t mind. More about the enjoyable „Säulen der Erde“ in my review on this site.

Unfortunately this had to be the only game this evening, as Rick had a huge program of preparing infos for his website ahead of him, and I was a bit tired after a long night in Berlin with a very fascinating opera director (Christoph Schlingensief).

So that was day one.

DAY TWO

One of the duties at Essen is to get up early to avoid the huge crowds which completely block everything at around 10 a.m. so one can come a bit before that. Luckily, with my sneaky press ticket, I could enter early and meet Rick for a scheduled demo of „Battlelore“ at the Days of Wonder booth.

It’s funny how my press ticket says „Games International“ when the magazine is of course defunct and Brian Walker – again – vanished from the face of the earth.

On the way I encountered some gaming luminaries like Scott Nicholson (from Boardgames with Scott) and Jason Matthews (co-designer of the excellent „Twilight Struggle“) as well as Greg Schloesser, who actually inspired our „Westpark Gamers“ with his former „Westbank Gamers“.

In my feeble attempt to describe how my wife always beats me with her Russians in „Twilight Struggle“ game it somehow came out as me describing it as a „wife-beating“ game, which created great laughter.

We headed over to „Days of Wonder“. For me it was the first „Memoir ’44“ style game experience (although I have played similar games), but being a veteran of card-driven games in general I didn’t have a lot of trouble.

Although Rick’s and my armies clashed almost immediately, there was a strange lull in both our dice luck which meant that several turns of the game passed without any hit at all. The deluxe-rules-explainer from Days of Wonder (Eric Hautremont) became increasingly desperate in trying to say that „this is not normally so“, as he was scared we wouldn’t enjoy the game. But finally the ban was broken and my two cavalry units drove into Rick’s lines, while a surround attempt on his left flank brought great problems for him. Well, the battle was soon over,
with a satisfying win for my army, but I secretly knew I had just been lucky…

Now it was time to meet up with Aaron from „Westpark Gamers“ who always tries to come to Essen with his son and look at all the new 18xx games (and other things of course).

In contrast to our last visit, which was just a blur of press meetings and dates with publishers, we decided that we wouldn’t be bothered with that this time around and rather enjoy the fair and arrive at the booths unannounced. It turned out that this was much better anyway!

We met at the Surprised Stare Games booth, where Aaron was already talking with the famous Alan E. Paull with two „l“, who enjoyed that I called him that on the Dice Tower podcast. A wonderful and mad nice guy, and the first review copy to be procured (Tara).

Right next to Surprised Stare was the Czech Board Game Company who presented their interesting looking games „Through The Ages“ and „Graenaland“. The latter was kind of sold out as they had some problems with the game manufacturers and had to assemble the copies by hand during the night before. I procured „Through The Ages“ and Aaron got „Graenaland“ the next day.

During the next two days Aaron and I met at certain intervals to check what we had got and what we still should get. The good thing about three Westpark Gamers visiting Essen (Günther Rosenbaum was also there, although we failed to meet him) is that three people can manage to acquire a good-sized sample of everything that’s on offer. And as our tastes differ we usually manage to buy different games.

Next was a visit to the fabled „Savoy“, perhaps the most legendary hotel in Essen. The „Savoy“ is not at all a grand hotel like the name suggests, but actually a little „Kneipe“ together with a „Pension“ (small hotel). But the owners are legendarily friendly. We played „Space Dealer“ (together with Valerie Putman and John Palagyi) being the only people in the hall, and the landlady came up and gave us hand-made cookies – for free! This is also one of the few hotels in which you get hugged by the waitress, simply because you’re a gamer. I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s so popular :-)

Anyway, „Space Dealer“ felt like hell to set-up and get accustomed to (these are not rules you want to „sight-read“), but once the game started we were all drawn in by the „cube frenzy“ and the coolness factor of moving little spaceships around via a timer. Valerie, you kicked our ass!
Back at the fair I gave a visit to my old friend and study colleague (from my one year at the guildhall in London) Myee from CMK partners who presented their game „The Game Ned Kelly“, a Hnefatafl variant with extremely cute pawns (one faction has little blue police helmets, and the „Kellys“ have the famous „bucket-

helmet“). Myee played the game with me and explained how some little but well-thought changes to the old rules of Hnefatafl actually make it a more interesting game (and she was right).
Another visit was paid to Anders Fager, designer of the Hell Game and famous Essen personality who showed me his prototype of the R.A.F. game (no, not about the royal air force, but about the „Red Army Faction“ which terrorized Germany in the 70’s) which I hope to review soon. As „The War on Terror“ was actually banned on the show (as well as on other game fairs) this seemed to be the only controversial game on the fair.

The booth of the GHS (Gesellschaft für Historische Simulationsspiele) is one of my favourites at Essen. There one can also meet Udo Grebe (game designer and publisher) and among cries of „no bloody elves“ directed at the nearby Warhammer Scientology Nazi booth one can find the best prices for Wargames and Cosims.

And again, a visit to the Savoy for a long night of gaming, together with Rick’s fellow Canadian (and great gamer personality with excellent German language skills) Patrick Korner and the man Rick himself, later to be joined by various (drunken?) theatrical appearances by either Alan Moon or Richard Borg. I wonder why the latter never had the idea to call his website „The Collective“ – why hasn’t he?

We played „Die Baumeister von Arkadien“ (excellent), „Im Bann der Pyramide“ (ok) and again „Die Säulen der Erde“, this time with four players. Rick again had to leave early to perform his editorial duties in the 5 star suite he called his home (I was especially impressed with the 50″ inch flat screen he had ordered as a TV).

That was day two.

DAY THREE

We had made yet another date with the famous Alan E Paull with two l, who explained exclusively his new game about ancient Chinese bureaucracy which looked very interesting. I was happy to make a little rules suggestion that he couldn’t decline…

Before that came a prolonged trip to the hell of bad games – a game of „Alhambra-The Dice Game“ which prompted the 3 players (Rick and Patrick and me) to always invent new ways to describe how bad the game was. A sign of Essen was the 4 people interrupting us and asking when our table would be free. When we said „in 2 hours“, probably thinking the game would take that long, they said „ok, we’ll wait“, only to disappear into the crowd and never to be found again.

Rick has done a wonderful description of this game at „Boardgame News“, which you can find here. The „graph“ was invented right there, at our table!

Next came a long interview session about the great games of Essen with Rick that I wanted to do for the Dice Tower. Unfortunately our fantastic report was destroyed by some unknown alien force – although I had checked the recording equipment before and after the recording, and listened and re-listened to the recording, when I came home I had found that the complete mini-disk had been erased. An explanation still hasn’t been found, as I had put the „hold“ switch (which prevents unwanted overdubbing) in the right position. Perhaps Angelo Porazzi took revenge on me, I don’t know (I should mention here that Angelo presented his 10th anniversary edition of „Warangel“ and his new game „Wrestangel“ at Essen, thank you for your interest).

I think I should have talked a bit more with Ted Alspach instead (who waited patiently for us outside) and got his autograph, his board-2-pieces cartoons are simply fab.

Another favourite place is of course the Warfrog booth, were Martin Wallace helped me to his new games (always a pleasure to meet him) and also introduced me to Stratamax, where I acquired „Iroquoia“, a game about the Indian Beaver War. Yes, it’s really called like that.

Uli Blenemann from Phalanx, great as ever and a big soccer fan and reader of feuilletons, showed me the new games from Phalanx, of which especially „Italia“ and „Anasazi“ piqued my interest. Phalanx has always something for every gamer’s taste, ranging from family games like the excellent „Hey, that’s my fish“ to complex affairs like „Revolution“ by Francis Tresham.

And I should also not forget our friends from Sunriver Games („Havoc-The Hundred Year’s War“, see my review on this website) who are always a pleasure to meet. I tried out 24/7, the new game which is an abstract and addictive board game with some hints of „Zatre“, but much better (Sunriver Games always does everything „better“ it seems) and nicely produced.

And I also went to meet my old friend Guido Eckhof again, who presented his great game „Big Kini“ for the second time.

The rest of the day was an attempt to procure as many games as possible and to see as many things as possible while talking to as many people as possible.

Ultimately, I failed. I am sure that somewhere else you’ll find a full list of our acquisitions on this site, and I am already looking forward to many nights of gaming trying out the new hits and flops.

All in all Essen 2006 seemed to be one of the best editions of the fair, dealers as well as companies seemed happy, and – even more important – their audience as well.

With the already familiar call of „The next fair will take place from….“ which usually heralds the end of the great show I left Essen to return… next year!

Moritz Eggert’s only semi-alphabetical commented assorted Essen preview which in no way is complete….

by Moritz Eggert

Essen 2006 slowly comes along and with it many new games. I will try to make a more detailed overview here, with some personal comments about the games. I will only talk about games published by Euro publishers.

All these infos are mostly taken from the excellent Spielbox at wwww.spielbox.de and are of course subject to change.

2F Spiele

Friedemann Friese might or might not present a fantasy dungeon adventure game, which is interesting as his last games leaned a little towards the genre, especially Fearsome Floors. There will also be a new expansion for Power Grid or Funkenschlag with new rules and an experimental game board that is, in the words of FF, „not what you would expect“.

I can already suggest the title for the Fantasy game: „Fantastische Festungen“ or, in english „Fantastic Fortresses“. It would be the first FF title that actually makes sense for a change

Abacus games…

will publish the German version of Gloria Mundi, a game by James Ernest and Mike Selinker of Cheapass fame. The game looks gorgeously produced and will make the players fight for survival during the last days of the Roman empire. Is this a new trend: make lavish German editions of American games instead of the other way round?

Amigo…

will publish a heavy line-up of card games to expand their already leading position for card games on the market.: Megastar by Friedemann Friese where one collects rock band lineups, Elefant im Porzellanladen („The Elephant In The Porcellain Store“, which only makes sense when you know that there is a German saying behind it) by Michael Schacht, Null und Nichtig bei Reiner Stockhausen and Sitting Ducks by Keith Myers, the latter a kind of computer game conversion based on the popular „Moorhuhn“ computer game, which paralyzed German offices for years.

Argentum…

will present a new version of Rette sich wer kann, not the Rudi Hoffmann game where you have to save as many sailors as you can from a sinking ship, but the Ronald Wettering game with a similar theme, which will be called Seenot im Rettungsboot. This will be quite a change from their game Fritten aus dem All („Fries from space“, I’m not kidding), which we reviewed not all too favourably on our website a year ago. Still, the guys from Argentum, basically geek gamers who founded their own company, have to be commended for their initiative, and I will certainly take a look at this game.

Bambus Spieleverlag…

might or might not present Greentown (working title), the new Günter Cornett and Michael Uhlemann game for 2-4 players where players have to earn money peddling wares for wandering tourists. As this is a German game one can expect that renting outhouses for the tourists more humane needs could be part of the game design, but I personally always look forward to Günter Cornett’s Games, outhouse or not!

Cwali…

presents a kind of RoboRally without robots. In Corné van Morsel’s Factory Fun players have to control different machines to produce different coloured wares for money. The longer the game progresses the more complicated it becomes, as the connections between the different machines become increasingly intricate. I guess „Sweat Shop Fun“ didn’t sound as intriguing.

Czech Board Games…

have a game with the working title Civilization – The Card Game. With all the troubles of Eagle games recently they might as well keep that name. Graenland is the ancient name of Greenland, and is another card game by this company where players can take over the role of Erik the Red and cultivate an island.

Days of Wonder….

is cultivating a mysterious aura. Of course there will be an expansion for Ticket to Ride, but In their game Cleopatra and the Architects they hid a promo card with a huge footprint on it, but without a game name. It could be „Yeti-The Hunting“, or „Bigfoot and the Builders“ for all we know. Or will it be the German edition of „Monsters Menace America„?

Da Vinci Games…or rather dv games (you might remember the lawsuit by Da Vinci Editrice)…

is presenting a game about, drumroll, big surprise, Leonardo Da Vinci. Players represent inventors who try to score points with their inventions. The art design and game mechanics remind of a perennial favourite: The Princes of Florence, which comes as no surprise when you think about the fact that the historical time is the same. If this game will be rather abstract like „Princes…“ or more thematic remains to be seen.

Figaro is a new game of the ultra-rare breed of Reiner Knizia card games. Did I say ultra-rare? Well, I was joking. In the game players try to reach the throne of the King (or to come close to it) by playing cards of one colour in front of them. The game is thematically similar to Viva il Re by Knizia, which was on the „recommendation list“ of the Spiel des Jahres award in 2004.

Edition Erlkönig…

will show the prototype (only) of a card game with the title Venus Connection. Players have spaceships, build trading routes, expand their equipment…If you think of the old classic Richard Hamblen game Merchant of Venus, then… you’re right, as designer Heinrich Glumpler says explicitly that he wanted to evoke the feeling of that game, albeit in a simpler, more fast-playing game for 2 players. This sounds very interesting, but won’t be available for sale yet, you’ll have to await Tom’s review for this in another year.

Elven Ear Games…

is a small new Dutch company who already presented a small card game at Essen 2 years ago. This time they have Tavern, a fantasy card game for 2 players, where old battle-hardened adventurers open up latrines… eh, sorry, taverns and compete for the most guests consisting of Trolls, Goblins and the like. If this sounds like Dungeonville, where players compete to own the dungeon that has the most visitors, eh… victims, you’re absolutely right. Even the artwork looks a little like Kovalic, but with a Dutch twist. We will see if the game tickles our fancy, I am personally a bit tired of light fantasy card games with cartoon drawings lately…

Eggertspiele…

…again, in no way related to me, are presenting the eagerly awaited follow-up game to Antike, which will be called Imperial, and which takes place in imperial instead of ancient times. Again the mechanics will be diceless and without luck, so this could be an interesting game for Civilization type game fans.

I was personally a bit disappointed with Antike – the action wheel was a fantastic mechanic, but as the game is so abstract and calculable the person who went first always won in our group. Imperial has hopefully a solution to this problem.

Eggert will also have another space trading game called Space Dealer. I wonder if Edition Erlkoenig knows about this? If you go after the name one could deduct that this game is about spaceship merchants dealing drugs instead of wares, so fear not, Edition Erlkoenig!

Fragor Games…

might not mean anything to you as a name, but Shear Panic will. They have a new game with them, called Hameln, for the first time professionally co-produced with Ludofact. Hameln is the German name for Hamlin, so rats and a certain piper do play a role in this game. The rat figures look as sweet as the sheep in Shear Panic, which is quite an artistic achievement. The game looks more involved than Shear Panic and involves a real board and a multi-layered action system. One can be sure that this game will be a huge hit for the figurines alone.

Angelo Porazzi Games…

Is continuing to create Fantasy Sports games after last year’s Peacebowl. This time it’s a game with the unfortunate title Wrestangel , a kind of Wrestling Match with fantasy types. It’s supposed to be a quick, fast-playing card game for 2-5 players. Expect the rules to be… well, in Italian… even if they are supposedly in another language. But seriously, I personally liked Peacebowl, it is a fun „Beer & Pretzel“ game, and we didn’t have a proper wrestling game since Avalon Hill’s Wrasslin‘.

Burley Games…

is a small one-man company, who already produced the pirate game Treasure Island. The new game, Take it to the Limit, is based on the older already published design Hextension by the same author. The game looks a little like a hexagon-cut out map of Transamerica, and unsurprisingly players try to connect lines of the same color to create an ongoing line from one end to the other.

Goldsieber Games…

is one of the more reliable German publishers and also the producers of the infamous pecunia non olet (also known as „that latrine management game“) game, about which I’m joking from time to time. Their flagship game for Essen 2006 will be Die Säulen von Venedig (The columns of Venice), created by the same designers as pecunia non olet. Again this game goes down to the deep and dirty. The game has players select one of 11 venetian personalities, who try do build up the lagoon city from the ground, or rather muddy earth up. It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it! Players secretly select roles from 5 different action cards which are then passed on to the next player. The Lagoon city is built from tiles resembling Carcassonne, but players will also use lots of cards and wooden pieces. Venice is a favourite topic in German-style games, so this new game will have some stiff competition.

Hans im Glueck…

is known to everybody as producers of most excellent and often prize-winning games like Thurn and Taxis and Carcassonne. They will present two new interesting titles. The first one will be Tavula, by Marcel-André Casasola-Merkle, who holds the title of being the game designer with the longest and most complex name. His games are usually very good, though!

Tavula is the second Hans im Glueck game with a strong fantasy element, after Ohne Furcht und Adel. Players build up a mythical island threatened by gods and the forces of nature made from hexagons, which are also placed above each other, a little like in Heroscape. Astonishingly the 2-4 player game can be supposedly finished in under an hour – how about that for an empire-building game?

Kabale und Hiebe is a pun on the name of a Friedrich Schiller’s famous theatre play „Kabale und Liebe“ (Shenanigans and Love, I have no idea what the „proper“ English title is), and translates to roughly „Shenanigans and punches“. This game will also be in the fantasy genre, featuring the beautiful illustrations of the illustrator of Ohne Furcht und Adel („Citadels“). Players compete in a fantasy kingdom populated by Dragons and Wizards, but also this game is supposed to be quick-playing and relatively simple. Game Designer is Lutz Stepponat, of Return of the Heroes fame. Expect both of these games to be very good!

Huch und Friends…

is a new publisher, who will produce a film tie-in game based on the popular German children’s books „Urmel aus dem Eis“ (Urmel from the Ice), a little dinosaur who comes out of an iceblock and has friends like a little pig and a walrus, all of them talking of course. Pictures of the game make this look a little like a variant of Verflixxt by Wolfgang Kramer, a race track made up of octagonal tiles. Designer Klaus Zoch who produced games like Zicke Zacke Huehnerkacke but also Manila will guarantee that this is not the usual bad-quality film tie-in and that this is also a gamer’s game, even if it is designed to be accessible for kids.

JMcreative…

is continuing to revive the crime party game genre with Jenseits der Schoenheit (Beyond Beauty) in which players have to solve the murder of a famous beauty surgeon. Sadly this game will only be of interest for native German speakers.

Kosmos games…

is a big player on the German game market, as they produce Settlers of Catan. They will present Kampf um Rom (Battle for Rome), a Catan-descendant game like Elasund – the first Settlers, in which players try to reach the usual number of 10 VP’s first, by conquering and settling the lands of ancient Europe.

Die Säulen der Erde or „The Pillars of the Earth“ is based on the popular book by Ken Follett, but little is known about the game except the cover. The theme will certainly appeal to Joe Steadman, formerly the Dice Tower, as anybody who has read the book knows that it’s about building a huge cathedral in a medieval city. Joe will be sad that this game doesn’t allow you to nuke your opponents or to destroy the cathedrals of your opponents by attacking them with Waffen-SS-panzers and heavy artillery, but this is a Euro-game after all!

Isensee games…

who will get the price for the cheapest game offered at Essen. Musketier-im Auftrag der Königin or „Musketeer – at her majesty’s service“, no, it’s not a James Bond game, will only cost 4 ,-EUR at Essen. This is a travel game played only with cards, as players try to avoid the evil henchmen of Cardinal Richelieu as they travel to Paris as quickly as possible.

This could give you an idea for financing your Essen trip: If you buy 200 games for 4,-EUR you can later resell them for 10,-EUR, and make enough to earn 1.200,-EUR, enough to pay for the flight and the hotel. Great idea, isn’t it?

Clicker Games…

is a small self-publishing venture by Stephan Riedel. Fliegen naschen (eating flies) is a children’s game and less interesting for us, but Fleet 1715 is a deductive game about the sinking of the Spanish Fleet and looks very interesting. It can be played in a group as well as solitaire, and I have to say that I am interested in how a game about the sinking of the Spanish Fleet can be deductive. So who DID sink the Spanish Fleet? I can only say: Nobody EVER expects the SPANISH INQUISITION!!!

Esagek…

is not the name of a publisher, but a new abstract strategy game that will be presented by Claudio Gelosa. Fans of abstract games will love this, as this seems to be a game that uses rotating plastic hexes that create an ever-changing board, others will be bored to tears by games like this. Like Gipf this seems to be an ongoing project with several scenarios and variants for 1-6 players planned for the future.

Games above Board…

is another strategy game producer. Their game Mojo wins the invention award with the idea of using a mousepad as their board for a strategic game in the Connect 4 vein. Although I have to say that this doesn’t make sense at all -if you want to use the board as a mousepad you can’t play the game or vice versa, but both is not possible. Perhaps there is some deeper philosophy at work here, who knows. What will be next? Dishwashers that double as board games? Wow…

Kronberger Spiele…

who are known for the excellent Lost Valley will present some new variant games on the popular Anno Domini principle. In Anno Domini one has to place and guess historic events in a timeline, in Ausgerechnet Buxtehude (English: Buxtehude of all places) one has to arrange places on a north-south axis, and in Schneller als Kurz (quicker than short) one has to judge the length of events, not their date. Another game which will be called „Dumber than dumb“ in which you have to judge various degrees of stupidity is nothing but a tasteless rumour by yours truly.

Lookout Games…

is working on a new follow-up game to Das Zepter von Zavandor, the successful Outpost variant/reissue. Die Drachenbändiger von Zavandor (The Dragon Tamers Of Zavandor) will feature beautifully illustrated dragon cards, but apart of that little is known about the game except some fantasy background. They will also coproduce a new 18xx game called 1861, which will cover the Russian Rail system. There is also talk of a configuration program that will make bookkeeping for 18xx easier, but this will have to compete with many already existing fan-made programs of course.

Manor House…

is an Italian company that will present an interesting tabletop game that can either be played historically as a wargame or as a fantasy game. The game will be called Mindstalkers, but so far the designers haven’t overcome the seemingly biggest hurdle for Italian game companies: a solid translation of their rules for foreigners.

Mind the Move…

never had this problem, and this is why we are fans of their great games like Oltremare. Hermagor will be the new game by Emanuele Ornella, and again trading will play a role, this time in a loose fantasy realm context. Be excited about this one, I’m sure Emanuele won’t disappoint us.

Pfifficus games…

comes along with a satirical game that actually looks like a really new game theme. In Guru players have to convince other players of their own sect and of the evilness of the other players‘ sects. Members of the Moon sect or Scientology won’t be delighted, and it might hurt some religious feelings if taken too seriously, but I hope there is a good game beneath the idea so Tom Vasel can check it out without using a crucifix for protection.

Phalanx Games…

has a huge line-up or Euro- and simulation titles again, and will be of course very interesting for gamers, as they usually have one of the biggest booths at the fair. After the „Lord of the Rings“ hype has died down they will concentrate again on historical titles. Justinian takes place in Byzantine times and is by Leo Colovini, this will probably be more of a Euro game. Italia sounds very interesting to me, as it is a further development of the famous Britannia system for ancient Italy, designed by the legendary Andreas Steding who is one of the few designers who designs both heavy- and lightweight games. This game will only be available in a special limited edition. Anasazi is the new game by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, excellent designer of Carcassonne fame. Also here the theme is interesting, as players try to uncover the secret treasures of the mysterious Anasazi, a North-American native tribe who vanished in the 13th century.

Finally there is the beautiful looking Emira, in which rich oriental sheiks try to assemble the most beautiful women for their harems. This won’t be family game of the year in the US because of it’s theme, but gamers will be delighted by the wonderful board designed by Franz Vohwinckel. Hey, at least it isn’t about toilets in ancient Rome, folks!

PostScriptum…

will present High Voltage an interesting tile-laying game in which players secretly control Energy Consortiums who try to connect their power lines. The hitch is that each connection gives points to the player who closed the connections AND the players who own the connections . This seems to be a more abstract Power Grid.

Queen Games…

will present the new Wallenstein variant Shogun, about which Rick Thornquist has already reported intensely. Another interesting game will be The Thief of Bagdad by Thorsten Gimmler, in which player compete as the heas of thieves guild’s in mythical Bagdad. There is also talks about an Alhambra dice game, that will be a completely new design in the Alhambraverse which of course lies right next to the Buffyverse.

R&D Games…

will present the expansion for Reef Encounter, Reef Encounters of the Second Kind. In addition fabled Richard Breese will bring along a limited edition of his new Fowl play , again a freshly themed game in which players represent wild foxes who raid farms on a hex based board.

The Belgian Repos Production…

had a lot of succes with Cash’n’Guns, this time they have a card game which sounds a little similar to The Great Dalmuti. Players compete for the best jobs on the pirate ship Santy Anno, whoever plays his cards right will be captain, but the others might end up paying for the beer and cleaning the table, or even worse: write the review for boardgamegeek!

I continue with a weird game,

Hystericoach by Scribabs Games. Here two coaches have to quickly place soccer players as cards on a board, then they have to command the other players to move these players to score a goal, but apparently they aren’t allowed to say HOW they should move, they can just say the name. So if you enter the big halls of Essen and hear a bunch of people scream Ballack, Ballack, Ballack it will tell you that the Hystericoach booth is close.

Pro Ludo…

is taking over Eagle games. At least in Essen – where formerly Eagle games populated a huge area of the Essen fair with giant tables and huge miniature set-ups Pro Ludo will now present it’s increasingly interesting line-up. Of course there is Dungeon Twister and it’s various deluxe expansions, but there are also other games.

There are three resissues of formerly popular games:

Spiel der Türme (the game of towers) is an older Rudi Hofmann game from 1993 which nearly made Spiel des Jahres award back then.

Die Fürsten von Florenz (The Princes of Florence) returns with a vengeance in a graphically and rules updated version co-produced with several European publishers. It’s great that this classic Euro game is available again!

The oldest reissued game in the Pro Ludo lineup will be Ave Caesar, the classic Eurogame of Roman chariot racing. Race on, Sweet Chariot, is all I can say!

And we should not forget the long awaited Tempus by Martin Wallace, which will be embraced soon by Tom in a surely loving review.

Ravensburger…

landed a huge hit last year with Verflixxt, the clever racing game by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling. It now has announced the first of a line of expansions, something that does not really surprise. The title will be extremely creative, it’s called Verflixxt – Die erste Erweiterung.

Sand Timer…

is the name of a new Belgian small company. Tim De Rycke und Sander Vernyns have won last year’s „Games and Toys Award“ in Belgium, which has now allowed them to produce their winning game Experiment, which will be available in Essen in 1000 copies. Let’s hope the game is not only an experiment but in fact good. Little is known about the theme or details yet, so you’ll have to wait for the post-Essen reports, I only know it’s a card game.

Selecta…

Will present a game that has been invented by Reiner Knizia, whose year 2006 will rank as one of his laziest output years, with only 2065 designs published by 289 companies. Reiner- get your act together again – we’re disappointed that you’re so lazy!

This will be a children’s game called Primo Calculino, and it’s about teaching mathematics to youngsters, who have to guide a little shopowner called Johann through the motions of selling his wares. „Advanced Tobruk System“ this ain’t, that’s all I can say.

Singlish Mopping…

Must be the weirdest name for a game company EVER. They present the game Couples, in which you have to find matches for your male or female cards. The graphics of this game aren’t exactly breathtaking, but you might be interested to know that it is actually possible to couple the statue of liberty with German pop singers in this game, so if you ever wanted to do that, go ahead, buy this game (and ask the publishers, where their silly name comes from!)

Snarling Badger Games….

Is another great silly name – although this company is American I mention them because they feature one of my favourite themes: Zombies. And the Zombies put on a marathon in the pacifist, non flesh-eating game called Zombie Rally.

Sphinx Spieleverlag…

has published controversial games like Popeln, where players have to find the biggest boogers in their noses (I’m not kidding). See also our dysmal review of that particular game at our Westpark Gamers site. This time their theme is relatively harmless: in Sport ist Mord (sport is murder) players try to be physically fit without dying from a heart attack. I assume this game is especially appealing to New York stockbrokers, who spend hours at the fitness studio after a gruelling day at the stock market.

Spiel-ou-Face…

…is a French company with yet another game about Metros, or subways as they are liked to be called in the US. The twist is that the city where players build their lines is in hexform and the subway line counters are triangular. You don’t think it’s a big twist? Well, you’re probably right.

Spieltrieb…

Is a German company which presents a game about – hold your breath because it’s so exciting – aluminium trading in Brasil. But this is actually a politically correct cooperative learning game, in which players have to deal with the different interests of the state, the aluminium companies and the natives losing their homes in the rainforest, who of course have the poorest deal of the lot. This game should teach all evil imperialistic capitalist swines a lesson. Unfortunately they probably don’t have time to neither game nor visit Essen.

Surprised Stare Games Ltd….

…is a company founded by the famous Alan Paull (with two „l“, by the way) , who was involved in the great line of Standard Games‘ in the 80’s, and invented games like Cry Havoc!, City of Sorcerers or Thunderin‘ Guns. His new game is called Tara, Seat of Kings and takes place in ancient Ireland, where players try to become the Ard Ri, or „High King“. The game will be published in two language editions and looks very interesting. We used to have an obsession with City of Sorcerers, and if Tara, Seat of Kings is only half as good it will still be a very interesting game to check out. I certainly will.

Tilsit…

Is the only game company that is called like a cheese (Tilsiter is a popular cheese in Germany) – but their games certainly don’t stink. They will present an expansion set for their succesful game Himalaya which makes the game playable for 5-6 players and introduces many variants. Himalaya was on the selection list for the „Spiel des Jahres“, so an expansion seemed inevitable.

Tusbas…

Is a danish company, and they will bring only 160 copies of their gangster-game King of Chicago, so you better be one of the first in the Essen halls. In my opinion there has not yet been a definitive gamer’s gangster game yet, although there were many attempts like Organized Crime or the horrible and heinous Gangland, a game that is so bad that it will burn a hole in your table (and your brain). Let’s hope that King of Chicago will be a valid attempt to create a good game on the theme. The game material looks certainly promising.

What’s your game…

Is going to publish the game Ur by Paolo Mori. In this game you visit old Mesopotomia and build temples to gain more influence. Sounds old to you? Well, it’s not the dernier cris of themes, but as the gameboard looks more like memory than your usual Reiner Knizia game this might mean that the game is actually different. We will see.

Winning Moves…

Is one of the big publishers and has a large line-up of games, among them a completely new edition of the popular Cartagena game. Richard Garfield, probably in an attempt to take over the German market, has created a new card game called Auf die Palme (which means „up the palm tree“) which sounds decisively harmless because it’s about birds finding food on trees. Blokus Trigon is a Blokus variant with triangular pieces, nothing world-shattering of course, but the company knows that at least one missionary in Korea will get a copy, so they took the risk.

Gezanke auf der Planke (or „Panic on the Plank“) is a very interesting looking family pirate game in which players can – in best „Lifeboat“ style – push the pirates of their fellow players over the plank into the maw of a very hungry shark, while saving their own ones. I don’t know if they have to break their promises to other players before doing this…

Winsome Games…

Publishes their usual array of train games or expansions to already existing train games. „New York Central“ is a new card game that has exactly the same theme as the classic 1830 by Francis Tresham, Wooden Shoes and Iron Monsters – interesting title by the way – covers the train building times in the Netherlands, and there is also an Age of Steam-Expansion for the Eastern US and Canada, which might or might not feature a poeppel or pawn or meeple representing Rick Thornquist.

Ystari Games….

is one of the big success stories of the last 2 years, with their games Caylus and Ys. Their new game Yspahan takes place in 16th century Persia and has players represent avid traders and merchants. Rick Thornquist has played a prototype of this game and seemed to be very impressed by it, he will probably tell you this in his section of the show as well. Expect nothing less than a new „gamer’s game“ from this great company.

Zoch-Verlag….

…usually has games with lots of wooden pieces, but the new game Salamanca by Stefan Dorra seems to be an exception, an empire building game that takes place in old Spain. Zoch will also have the hotly awaited German edition of Shear Panic, called Haste Bock. „Haste Bock“ can actually mean „Are you horny?“ and has a very different double meaning than Shear Panic. It’s those bloody perverted Germans again – games about toilets are not enough, now we have games about horny sheep? When will this end?

I end with a game that actually WON’T be featured in Essen, because it has been – drumroll – banned from the show, the game War on Terror which already has incited long discussions on Boardgamegeek because of it’s theme. My personal opinion is that when you can make wargames about the Iraqi wars (and there are many of them) one should also allow to make satirical games about terrorists, but that’s perhaps only my opinion. Interestingly this game has not only been banned on the Essen show but on many other game fairs as well. The true test will of course be if the game is any good, being provocative is not enough in my opinion, the game has to work as well. Have you ordered your preview copy already, Tom and Sam from the Dice Tower? I have….

Your fearless correspondent from Munich, Moritz Eggert

Note: please excuse the missing links, pics, etc., this is meant to be a personal comment on Essen, and boardgamenews.com and spielbox.de already a perfect job of presenting the games in complete fashion, so better go there if you want to read more details.

 

by Moritz Eggert

It’s that time of the year again…. A visit by at least one of the Westpark Gamers at Spiel is obligatory, this time we were three: Günther (legendary programmer of the St. Petersburg computer version), Andrea (legendary gamer and wife) and me (legendary loser of games like Intrige)…. Aaron had compiled an immense press list – since last year the acquisition of review copies of promising games has become a full time job while in Essen, and the time to stroll around and just look at things has become less and less. Still the magic of Essen worked its way. I have long given up trying to see everything, rather trying to spend more time with fewer games. Of course each selection is very personal and can never, ever hope to be complete. But this is what I did:

Saturday, October 15

For some reason I can never attend Thursday and Friday (this time it would have been easy with the press ticket – thanks, Brian Walker!), and I always end up at the crazily crowded days of the weekend, when all „gems“ have already been sold for insane prices, and some inexperienced publishers have already sold out their stock.

My first game on the list was Banana Republika, a parody card game from Cahoona Isle, of which at least the „Schroeder“ and „Joschka Fischer“ card are already outdated after the recent election in Germany. The game is a majority game combined with the players trying to pass laws against a posse of corrupt politicians (and fellow players). I had time to play a few rounds – the first impression was that of a very chaotic game, full of „take-that!“ card play, but we will see how it stands up to more scrutinuous play. Kudos to Cahoona Isle for being totally politically incorrect, a proud European tradition that we try to keep up as long as possible.

I longed for peace and quietness, so I went to Red Omega Studio to see the designer of their new strategy game Daimyo, a game which looks a little like a tiny version of Knizia’s Samurai. In fact this is a hard-core strategy game, where you play cards to recruit and move your armies (an interesting round-robin system makes you always take the cards that your opponents discard).

This looks equally good for 2, 3 or 4 players, and the designer Piero Cioni took his time to explain his game personally. The game I watched seemed to be intense, fast and interesting.

JMcreative was next – we had just received their party/crime-game Im Schatten der Premiere and I wanted to talk a little to Jörg Meissner, creative head and inventor of already three games. He told me that they try to revive the long-dormant market for so called „murder mystery parties“ with reasonably priced scenarios. As their game needs at least 8 people to play it might take a while until we can review it, but we will see. Good luck to them anyway!

Zev Shlesinger from Z-Man Games was next. They had two interesting new „big“ board games: Parthenon and Castle Merchants, as well as the card game Dungeonville, all look like they could be our group’s cup of tea. Zev was nice enough to reserve a used copy of Parthenon for us, as this game seemed to be especially sought after. The booth of Z-Man Games seems to grow each year, so it seems this company is taking the right direction with their line-up of board and card games.

The Eagle Games booth (if you can call two square miles full of hundreds of people and huge gaming tables bursting with gigantic amounts of plastic miniatures a „booth“) was as always incredibly busy. Eagle Games has just published Conquest of the Empire, a long out of print monster game from MB, and the long awaited Railroad Tycoon, so the buzz was huge. Even attempting to watch an ongoing game proved to be difficult, so Pat Braun promised us copies of these games when he comes to Munich in November for the Spielwiesn.

Hans im Glück was a must as always, and it was a pleasure to meet Andreas Seyfarth there, designer legend of Puerto Rico fame. Dirk Geilenkeuser told me of the troubles they had with the printing of their new Kramer game Hazienda (although the game was supposed to have a board printed on either side for variation the printer decided that the back looked cooler in black), but these could luckily be resolved in time for Essen. As usual they also housed a Carcassonne tournament – it’s amazing to see how serious high level players tend to play this game – dropping even a marshmallow next to them would bring out a screaming fit! Dirk also told us that the Westpark Gamers are considered the „intellectuals“ of the game review scene – a very funny description! Perhaps this is a call for more hard-core statistical analyses from Walter!

Amigo is in an altogether different world. Press meetings are not held at their 4 square mile booth which dominates hall 10, but in the press rooms ABOVE the halls of Essen (yes, my friends, there are also halls there, and they are also full of set-up games for photographing but also „empty of people“, as my Italian friend Allessandro Timossi used to say). Amigo is a strange mix for us – on one hand they have excellent card and board games like 6 nimmt, on the other hand they sell crack (collectable card games) to unwitting young children. Gesa Villbrandt – their head of press dpt. – was a bit wary of us. If she can build up some well deserved trust we might perhaps see their new game Drachenreiter, but of course only then. But thanks for the Coke! (and I mean the one with „ola“ at the end).

At the Histogame booth I met Richard Stubenvoll, our new favourite game designer of Friedrich fame. He seemed a bit critical of the success of Friedrich and disappointed with the reactions at the fair, but I tried to lift him up with some positive words about his really excellent design. It was good to hear that he has some new games in the pipeline, and if they are only half as good as Friedrich they already deserve to be successful. At Essen he presented a simplified Friedrich variant for 2 players (scenario only) and the excellent US wargame Marengo, which brings fresh concepts to the old wargame genre – like Friedrich! A „must visit“ was also the booth of Warfrog – minimalistically set-up as always, but full of crazed geeks trying to work out the new Martin Wallace

game, which unfailingly „delivers“ each year, and not only at Warfrog. Surprisingly, Martin told me that he doesn’t have anything to do with the new version of his fantasy game Runebound („I hate the fantasy genre“ he told me,“ I just developed the basic mechanics and let Fantasy Flight create the story and the world“) and the Struggle of Empires based Conquest of the Empire variant („Eagle Games bought the rights to Struggle of Empires, so they can do with it what ever they like!“). The Warfrog games seem to be Wallace’s dearest projects, and he certainly has created several classics for them. I am already curious about his new game, Byzantium, which looked very interesting.

At the Udo Grebe Games booth I met Anders Fager, designer of the Hell Game. Luckily he didn’t give me hell about our review of the game, as he certainly is very knowledgeable in all the tortures that exist in the depths of the Abyss. An altogether nice chap he even gave me a copy of UGG’s new game magazine, which certainly looks very good and even has a fun game with Russian revolutionaries in it. The picture is proof of it!Not being totally resistant to crack I also visited the booth of the History Channel game Anachronism (semi collectable, you can buy differently themed sets in which you know what you get). In this game you can have Dschingis Khan kick Jeanne d’Arc’s ass, or many more combinations of historical figures. The game looks easy to play, with beautiful cards and with chess like strategies. I conquered three starter sets, and Andrea and I will certainly give it a try soon! Our friends from Funfactory games from Singapore had bought vast quantities of their first two games Giza and Dividends (the latter has already been reviewed on our site), and seemed very excited with their first visit in Essen. They went

very professional ways in advertising and marketing their game, and one can clearly see that their games are beautifully designed as well. Let’s hope it’s not their last visit to Essen. But it was obvious to any visitor to Essen that Asian games in general are up-and-coming, as practically around every corner their was a Japanese, Korean and at least two Singaporean booth.In between I had some time to talk to Brian Walker, my „boss“ of Games International. After several troubles with his magazine he seemed on the up again, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to go to Essen. The magazine seemed to sell well, even too well for some people, but that’s another story…After this hard day I was glad to join Brian and some hard-core gamers from Atlanta at the famous hotel „Arouser“ (or „Arosa“), where we had a chance to try out the new „buzz game of the fair“, Caylus. The game seemed to be excellent, but our tired minds didn’t quite grasp it anymore at 1 am in the morning (I know, it’s not really late, but it was a hard day, as I said), so we didn’t finish it. But intrigued we were….We also wanted to play Lineage II, a Korean adventure game, but this was foiled by the fact that those Koreans had forgotten to give Brian an English translation of the rules.Good night and on to…Sunday, October 16The first date was with Abacus games, but then I found out that they didn’t know anything about this date, so it became a little awkward (Sorry, my fault. Originally it was planned to meet Michael Schacht there, but I mixed up the dates. Aaron). But I didn’t leave without Bang! and Dodge City expansion, a card game that already has a very good reputation but hasn’t been tried at the Westpark yet.The always friendly Uli Blennemann at Phalanx games was totally stressed with promoting Phalanx‚ enormous number of interesting new and already published games, but as always was very helpful in telling me about the new games. We even played a game of Packeis am Pol, the new edition of the cute Pingvinas, where penguins try to flee the melting ice floes in search of fish. Uli won with a one point lead! The new game Mesopotamia looked very interesting, but Uli refused to give me a copy, as there was a slight production problem with the Essen batch. I got Alexander der Grosse and Go West instead, certainly not uninteresting games either. But the War of the Ring Expansion was sadly not finished in time – we can wait if it makes it even better than expected, folks! The demo game set-up already drew the crowds….After nearly leaving with a game called „Aleksander de Grote“ (the Dutch version of aforementioned game) it was off to JKLM Games and Markus Welbourne. At this point I was already careful with taking too many games with me, so I just took Celtic Quest and Fruit Bandits; I hope I didn’t insult anyone with this decision!Doris & Frank have few but very reliable games, so getting a copy of ArchiOptiMix was a must. Unfortunately Doris and Frank are always incredibly busy at their stand, so there was no time to chat.Nearly accidentally I came across KC Humphrey from Sunriver Games, who presented – all charming Buffalo Bill lookalike – his really excellent card game Havoc – The Hundred Year War, which plays like poker on steroids. In fact you might find poker a bore after playing this game. I was lucky enough to be able to play a full game, and I can say that the French did NOT win.Another must was a visit to Yahudo, the Japanese company who publishes an inexplicable and weird card game each year. As always Satoshi Nakamura waited with their new card game, Phantom Rummy. When we understand the weird symbols on the cards we will publish a review soon.

Navigating hall 4 became a little difficult, as it was necessary to avoid the booth of Angelo Porazzi of Warangel and Peace Bowl fame. Dear Angelo, I have nothing against you and your games, but it is not the right tactic to constantly push the poor reviewers to write articles on command, even going as far telling them their review should be „positive“ and translated into several languages and sent to there and there and I don’t know what! I don’t know about others, but this does rather put me off, even if your games are not bad at all.

Speaking of Italians, together with the Asian companies an Italian invasion was clearly visible. And both Asians and Italians showed a clear trend, which was also visible at the show: dungeon exploration games! It would be nearly impossible to list all games on the fair with a definite dungeon theme, from Descent to Dungeonville, Dungeon Twister to Gefangen in der Geisterbahn, dungeons were the flair of the month. As were miniature games – with one of the main trends being WWII themed miniatures, both pre-painted (Axis and Allies) and paint-yourself (Flames of War). The „Lord of the Rings“ hype has somewhat calmed down, as was to be expected. The CCG was still going strong, but the TMG from Sabertooth was totally absent on the show, even though there were a couple of new miniatures. Also absent was Nin-Gonost, which has been called the Advanced Squad Leader of dungeon miniature gaming.

I also visited the booth of Hexwar – newcomers to Essen – who presented their computer-play-by-server versions of classic old SPI games. Keith and Carola are friendly wargamers who treat their business and customers like a big family. If they carry on with their continuous development of new games I foresee a very bright future for them, as there are starving wargamers everywhere! Especially interesting to me was hearing about some old fantasy games like Barbarian Kings and Death Maze that are in the pipeline….

A highlight of the second day was the visit to PlayMe and playing their first published game, Big Kini. Guido Eckhof, a veteran gamer who I know from my time in Frankfurt, has created a true gamer’s game – challenging for geeks, but accessible to anyone. Our test game was very much fun and moved along at a quick pace. The reaction of the general public was very positive as well; when I left the fair Big Kini was still competing with the equally excellent Caylus for „first place of the fair“ at the Fairplay booth.Lookout Games presented their Das Ende des Triumvirats – unusual in that it is a game especially for three players, a rare breed. The authors had dressed up as Romans for the occasion, which looked very funny!Navigating my way through the usual assortment of geeks, stormtroopers, Trekkies (fewer visible than ever!) and LARP’ers (more than ever) I spent the final hours of the fair chatting to friends. An astonishing number of people simply approached me after reading „Westpark Gamers“ on my name card – to all those: thank you for visiting our site and appreciating what we do!And see you next year in Essen!And this was our booty (Andrea, Guenther and me):

• • Alexander der Grosse
  • Anachronism
  • Archioptimix
  • Banana Republika<
  • Bang!
  • Big Kini
  • Big Kini-Erweiterung
  • a couple of Blue Moons
  • Byzantium
  • Cash’n Guns
  • Castle Merchants
  • Caylus
  • Celtic Quest
  • Daimyo
  • Das Ende des Triumvirats
  • Dodge City
  • Dungeonville
  • Euphrat + Tigris Kartenspiel
  • Europe Engulfed
  • For the People
  • Fruit Bandits
  • Giza
  • Go West
  • Gods
  • Havoc
  • Hazienda
  • Il Principe
  • Lineage II
  • Lucca Citta
  • Packeis am Pol
  • Palatinus
  • Parthenon
  • PartnerLink
  • Phantom Rummy
  • Shear Panic
  • Sushi Express
  • Wench
  • Zwergenzocken

by Aaron Haag

Essen was different this year. Why? Well, it all began with a long „must visit & play“ list with more than 50 booths and even more games on it. We’ve never had so many games on our list before and this gave us already an indication of the amount of good or at least interesting sounding games. Clearly, one day would not be enough to even look at every game on the list. In addition, we had decided to spend more time at the booths discussing the new releases with the publishers. Again, that would not help us in making all the visits we wanted. So here’s a report of our visit on Saturday.

R&D Games

We started with visiting R&D Games the moment we arrived. We had been asked to collect our pre-ordered Reef Encounter before 11am and we wanted to make sure that we get our copy before the game is sold out. Quite to our surprise there were still a lot of games available at about 10:30. Unfortunately, Richard Breese was not around so we could not ask him about how successful the game had been so far nor did the two kids appear to be much interested in explaining the game to us. Anyway, just by appearance Reef Encounter differs by a lot from the former Key… series of R&D games. The game comes in a sturdy, large box, the size and quality similar to those of Goldsieber or Kosmos. In the meantime I’ve punched the bits and I can say that the complete game is made of high quality material. The rules are clearly written but the three tier approach of explanation makes you wonder what the game is all about until you’ve completely read through them. Anyway, it’s a game of terrain and resource management and at first glance appears to be of equal complexity and tactical richness as Euphrat&Tigris. Can’t wait to play it.

Yun

Our next stop was the Yun booth in hall 9.1, a hall dedicated to „Comic Action“ in the previous years. This year though, it had to be used to provide extra space for the many new game publishers in Essen. At Yun we had a look at Gruftmaster Director’s Cut, a reworked Gruftmeister with a new movement system. After a brief explanation we decided against playing it – not our type of game.

Rio Grande

We walked back to hall 10 to visit the Rio Grande booth where we met Jay Tummelson himself. We had a quick chat with him about their newest releases. We learnt that the market for German/European type games is still expanding in the US and that some German games even sold better in the US than in their country of origin.

Argentum Verlag

On we went to Argentum, a new games publisher from Cologne, Germany. Argentum has been founded just 6 months ago by three gaming enthusiasts, Roman Mathar, Petra Brandenburger and Maik Hennebach. Maik explained their three new games to us: Gartenzwerge e.V. designed by Roman, UFOs! Fritten aus dem All designed by Petra and Metallurgie designed by Maik. Gartenzwerge e.V. (The Garden Gnomes Society) is a bidding game about the breeding of garden gnomes. UFOs! Fritten aus dem All (UFOs! Chips from Outer Space) is a boardgame about the invasion of earth by aliens trying to establish fast food restaurant chains. Despite these rather weird themes both games offer new game

concepts and from a first look seem to provide lots of possibilities for developing winning strategies. Both games provide much more challenges than you might think at first glance.The third game Metallurgie is an abstract card placing game which belongs into the same category as Ebbe und Flut from Adlung – it’s a similar real brain teaser. For a small new game publisher the quality of the components is more than remarkable, it’s the best I have seen since a long time. These guys know what gamers like; even the Ziploc bags for counters are provided in sufficient quantity. Expect reviews of these fine games here soon.

Sphinx

Our next visit was to Sphinx Games, also in hall 5. There we met Henning Poehl who demonstrated his two new card games Popeln and Hexenhammer to us.

Popeln tries to prove that size does matter as it is a game about an activity many players should be familiar with – nose picking, a theme that I didn’t come across in gaming before. As we all know the action of nose picking requires appropriate „tooling“: depending on the type of nose you need a finger with the best possible fit in terms of length, width and tilt to get at the much desired booger. The game caused some comments of disgust by onlookers because of the – in their opinion – unsavoury subject, but then isn’t it all a matter of taste? Hexenhammer (Malleus maleficarum) uses an equally controversial subject: witch hunting. Because of this Henning decided to give it an R-rating (16years and up.). The game itself is an adaptation of Tyler Sigman’s Witch Hunt released 4 years ago as a game kit. This time it comes with professionally made cards in a proper box and with improved rules. While Hexenhammer appears to be a tactical card game, Popeln seems to be a more light-hearted game living from the subject proper. Both games will be reviewed here soon.

Spieltrieb

Spieltrieb was next on our list. They mainly develop game as contract work for larger firms. We were interested in Windschatten, developed for „Gerolsteiner“, a German mineral water & soft drinks company. The game is about bike racing with each player controlling 3 bikers. We learnt from Till Meyer and Nicol Stiehl that they are planning to release a second edition of this nearly sold out game sometime next year.

Kronberger Spiele

Next in hall 5 came Kronberger Spiele. We had a go at their new game Frantic Frankfurt only to find out that the attribute „frantic“ is to be taken literally. Speed is the essence to win the game, both in identifying the right spot for placing a card and in lightning fast placement of cards. Moritz and I were way to slow to have any chance against the guy presenting the game to us (who claimed that he learnt the game only the day before and that a bit of practice is all that is required to play it that well). We were a little concerned about a possible flaw in the game: because of the speed in which the game is played and the fixation on one’s own cards there is not really a chance of identifying illegal moves by other players, which could spoil the fun in some groups. We decided that Frantic Frankfurt is not a game for us.

Angelo Porazzi

As usual there were many interesting independent publishers in the „role-players dominion“, hall 6. Among them we found Angelo Porazzi, who presented his games Warangel and Peacebowl for the first time in Germany. Warangel has proven to be an immense success in Italy, garnering prizes and recognition. It is a fantasy wargame which stands in the tradition of the old „International Team“ games (IT were legendary infamous for their bad rules and translations, but renowned for their themes and love for visual detail). It even uses some ideas for fantasy races from the IT game Zargos Lords (one of their best efforts), but improves greatly on it. So far there are an immense number of races with well-balanced special abilities (also available in expansions) that can duke it out on the hexmap. A great plus of Warangel are the simple and accessible rules, clearly a labour of love. Another interesting game is the new Peacebowl, which one could recommend to the Mr. Bush as an alternative to invading other countries. In the future of Peacebowl conflicts are solved quickly with football games!Peacebowl plays amazingly fast (a game can be completed in 10 minutes) and is a lot of fun. A „beer and pretzel“ game, clearly, but with enough decision making to keep it interesting.

Angelo is representative of the new gaming generation in Italy, and he clearly is in love with his products. We’re sure we will see more of him!

Phalanx Games

Back in hall 9 we visited Phalanx. On our list of „must haves“ were Francis Tresham’s new game Revolution, Andres Steding’s Ins Innere Afrikas and Herr der Ringe – Der Ringkrieg. Unfortunately, all tables were taken so therewas no chance to play any of the games. Instead, we had a chat with Ulrich Blenneman from Phalanx about their new games. While Ins Innere Afrikas and Der Ringkrieg will both be available in the shops we learnt that Revolution is actually released as a limited edition only available at the fair and later directly through Phalanx.

Eagle Games

On we went to Eagle games, also in hall 9. There we met the very friendly Pat Braun who told us about their new game Bootleggers. Bootleggers is set the period of prohibition in the United States and players control a mob of bootleggers who use their muscle to convince speakeasies to sell their whisky. Several types of resources need to be managed properly: whisky crates, trucks and mob members, influence, muscle and last but not least money. It’s what Eagle Games term their „first Euro-American hybid game“. Since all tables were occupied and we didn’t have the time to wait he immediately offered to reserve a table for us for later in the afternoon. When we returned we not only found a table reserved for us but Pat had also arranged that Steve Gross (SDR Games), one of the designers of Bootleggers, was there to play the game with us. Perfect! Steve did a very good job in leading us into the game and we had a lot of fun playing 4 complete rounds with him. In retrospect I’d say we did rather well against him as Sebastian managed to play a „double wham“ on him, a possibility he had hinted at us earlier in the game (Sebastian played a Thug card on him to steal all crates from his truck and then another Thug card to steal the now empty truck. You should have seen Steve’s face after that – okay Steve, it was three players against you, but it was real fun). Anyway, Bootleggers made a very good impression of us not only because it is a very nicely produced game with lots of components that add flair to the game but also the game mechanics seem to provide enough depth for challenging game sessions. It will be reviewed by us soon.

Pro Ludo

As Pat Braun had suggested we passed by the Pro Lodo booth in the same hall to have a look at their new Hispaniola designed by Michael Schacht. Hispaniola is trick taking game about pirates – pirates being the „in theme“ for games in Essen this year anyway. We will play and review this game soon. In addition they reprinted Der Ausreisser, a bike racing card game which we played a lot in the 90s and Keythedral by Richard Breese, the latter one with an improved board layout.

Yuhodo

On our way back to hall 10 we passed the Yuhodo booth, a Japanese game publisher. Already last year we had a chance to play their Masquerade card game, which had some serious rule translation problems. This year Satoshi Nakamura told us that he had changed his translator, who now is native English speaker. We played their new game Fairy Tales later that night in the hotel and yes, the English rules are written quite well. In the game players try to collect valuable sets of character cards. Characters either support each other or hinder each other; both represented in victory point bonus or malus. The cards are beautifully drawn but a little heavy in terms of information provided on them.

KidultGame

Despites last year’s Coyote experience we could convince Sebastian to join in on our visit to the Kidult boot in hall 12. We wanted to have a look at their card games released this year. Druids is a new release from Essen and we played it twice later in the evening. This card game has some surprising challenges which it reveals only after you’ve played it several times.

We particularly liked the clever combination of timing and bluffing the game asks for. Waz Baraz has been released already earlier this year but was new to us. Compared to Hexenhammer by Sphinx with its scary looking drawings, the sparingly clothed witches in Waz Baraz look more like having been drawn by the Barbie designers of Mattel: A-size brain, D-size boobs. The third game Fab Fib is a bluffing card game. Its game mechanics suggest that it could be a card variant of Liar’s Dice and as you may know this is one of our favourite game session closers. We’ll let you know how it compares to Liar’s Dice once we’ve played this one.

Face2Face

Bruno Faidutti’s games have always been a „must have“ for us. Therefore his new Boomtown was high on our wish list. It is an auctioning game about gold digging, where players try to make the most money out of their gold mines. As with many Faidutti games, some chaos elements were thrown in by adding action cards (the text of the German version not always being comprehensible).

The Realm of Fantasy

Last year’s surprise Atta Ants received an expansion pack which adds three more terrain features. There is a tunnel allowing shortcuts to the nest and across the board to the other end of the tunnel (provided that card has been placed) and twigs, which can be used to build „transportable paths“ between tiles making it possible to enhance the already possible bucket chains to a high speed version. The third type of terrain feature is stones, which can be used to block paths. According to Richard de Rejk the expansion sets adds more tactical possibilities to the game. Black Molly comes in the same type of plastic box with the same sized cards as Atta Ants. We only had time for a brief explanation of the game concept by Richard: players have four fish each and their task is to keep the fish alive as long as possible in the fish tank. But two threats eventually lead to the death of the players‘ fish: a Black Molly, trying to eat them and stationary machines, squashing the poor animals. A steady current in the fish tank adds a level of difficulty to manoeuvre the fish.

Fairplay/Games International

We had pre-arranged a meeting with Brian Walker at the Fairplay booth to have a look at his revived Games International magazine – issue #17 had come hot from the press to Essen. We learnt that the magazine has been received very positively on the fair and quite right so. It’s a full colour magazine printed on high quality paper and maintains the style and quality of the editorial contents and reviews of the first 16 issues released almost 15 years ago. The printed version of the magazine can be subscribed online and is delivered via air mail outside of the UK.

While we were talking to Brian the guys from Fairplay were conducting an interview with Günther about his PC version of Sankt Petersburg. Much to our surprise the Westpark Gamers were pretty much known amongst the game publishers and rather often we heard the remark „Oh, yes, you are the guys who did the Sankt Petersburg thing“. By the way, rumours tell that Günther is working on an update, which fixes the bugs reported so far and adds a better 2-player AI.

daVinci Editrice

Brian Walker told us about daVinci and their second expansion pack Dodge City for their much praised Bang card game. The brief explanation of the new cards was followed by a short introduction to Dancing Dice, which caught our attention because of the similarities with Liar’s Dice.

Fantasy Flight Games

No, Doom – The Boardgame was not the reason we visited the booth. Instead, I was mainly interested in FFG’s reprint of Titan – The Arena since I like the game a lot and never managed to buy a copy before it went out of print. FFG now call the game Colossal Arena. The game rules are basically the same, but Colossal Arena comes with 12 creatures with special abilities of which 8 are selected randomly for a game. Another new game is Senator, which I unfortunately confused with Kingdoms that I bought instead. Kingdoms is a reprint of Knizia’s Auf Heller und Pfennig, a game I never liked very much. I only realized my mistake back in Munich and can only hope that Moritz has bought a copy of Senator himself.

Z-Man Games

Just before 7pm we reached our final stop for the day: Z-Man games. There was too little time to have a detailed look at their new games so Moritz, who was going to stay another day, arranged a visit with Zev Shlasinger for Sunday. Zev is known to release games with rather weird subjects, some of which found their way on our table, with mixed receptions. Their new game Camelot Legends, which is „not a collectable cards game but plays like one“, caught our attention and I am sure Moritz brought back a copy for him.

Summary

Despite of other reports I believe that Essen 2004 has seen a lot of good games, in fact a lot more than last year. Okay, there’s no real scoop by any of the larger German publishers. But the overall quality of games especially by the smaller publishers has improved significantly. In fact the fair was so packed with good games that we missed a lot of the good stuff on our list, notably: „Ys“ by Ystari, the much hyped „Oltemare“ by Mind the Move, „Große Geschäfte“ by BeWitched (I really hate that I had to skip this one) and „Das Zepter von Zavandor“ by Lookout Games to name just a few. Conclusion: one day of Essen just isn’t enough.

Sebastian and I travelled to Essen on Saturday, which means getting up early to catch the first flight out of Munich. This year our plan was to search for and play games of foreign or small publishers as all games of the major German publishers would be available soon through plenty of online stores. And coming from Munich we will have the chance to play these games at the Munich „Spielwiesn“ beginning of November anyhow.

Due to very good connections at Düsseldorf airport and Essen main station we arrived earlier than usual at about 9:40 at the Gruga gates. Queues had already developed outside, but quite to our surprise not at the ticket offices as in the years before but rather at the entrance itself. We guessed that a lot more visitors were making use of the possibility to buy tickets in advance.

At 10 o’clock sharp the doors were opened and the crowds started to rush inside. Except for a brief visit at some of the game material suppliers‘ booths looking for small wooden disks to complete my „Marchants d’Empire“ (to no avail – none were small enough) we decided to ignore halls 12, 11 and 10 for the morning and moved straight in to hall 9.

There we found the booth of „Eight Foot Llama“ and a very friendly Jim Doherty, who played his „Monkeys on the Moon“ with us. Sebastian liked it very much while I had some minor doubts because I got the impression that the game didn’t have much depth (having played it twice since I have changed my mind, though). Nevertheless, I decided to buy a copy in addition to Jim’s first game „Who stole Ed’s pants„, which I remembered having had a favourable review in the print edition of „Spielbox“. Jim’s latest release „The Penguin Ultimatum“ didn’t attract our attention as we believed it to be a children’s game – wrong, as we now know.

Our next visit was to the Lookout Games booth where we had the chance to meet Marcel-André Casasola Merkle, who was busy with explaining the English release of „Attribute“. At that time hall 9 had become very crowded already and it was time to move on. We decided to go to hall 6 – the hall of fantasy games and role-playing. Sebastian wanted to check the various sellers of „Magic the Gathering“ cards in order to strengthen his card deck. Our first stop was at the Fanpro booth – not only because of the spray painted barely dressed girl posing as a warrior but also to have a look at their „Mageknight“ offerings. As always, the hall was crowded with people in fancy, fantasy style clothes looking anything from frightening to rather cute. Have a look here and you will know what I mean…

While Sebastian was flipping through lots of Magic card folders at the various booths I roamed the hall in search for some interesting games when my eyes caught sight of the „The Real of Fantasy“ booth. They had their fantasy game „Anera’s Arena“ on display plus their new game „Atta Ants“ by Richard de Rijk. After a brief explanation we had a game with three players and I was immediately fascinated by the game. Since the game material is of high quality and the game comes at a very reasonable price I bought one immediately.

My next stop was at the „DragonLords“ booth which took me some time to find (the numbering system of the booths seemed to me to be not always intuitive). There I wanted to have a look at „Crystal Powers“ the expansion set to „Quest for the Dragonlords“, which actually was playtested by some of the Westpark Gamers. The guys at the booth were very friendly and enthusiastic about their game and judging by the amount of visitors they had I think they were quite right to be so.

Feeling hungry – it was 2 pm by now, we started our way back to halls 10 to 12 to grab some food there and to rest our already aching legs. On our way we passed the Winsome Games booth where we hoped to meet Helmut Ohley. As we were told all of the 1844 game copies he brought to Essen had been sold by Saturday and apparently he was now roaming the halls himself.

On our way to hall 12 we passed by a little booth (can’t remember who it was) where they sold the German „Cosmic Encounter“ Avalon Hill/Hasbro version for a mere 15 Euros. At that price I could not resist as I like the game a lot. And not being a real collector I am more interested in the game itself rather than being upset about the ugly and cumbersome game material AH/Hasbro decided to use as „enrichment“. The only unfortunate thing is that this release is a four player game only (as opposed to the original EON release).

Having had something to eat we started to look for a free table to take a little rest and play one of the new games of the major German publishers. But not really to our surprise we had difficulties finding a place to sit. During our search we met Günther, also one of the Westpark Gamers, playing „Die wilden Fussballkerle“ at the Amigo booth (booth really is an understatement as Amigo always covers a big part of hall 10 with lots and lots of tables). He and his companion were not really happy with the game, which came as a surprise to me as it got some good reviews. Sebastian and I were lucky to grab a free table at Amigo and found ourselves playing „Coyote„, which was explained to us by one of the „KidultGame“ hostesses there. The game requires that all players wear a headband (photo) making them look rather funny and Sebastian became very embarrassed about the way he looked and was glad when the game was over.

Then I remembered that „Doris & Frank“ were supposed to have published an expansion set for their „Urland“ so we continued on to their booth. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that the expansion merely was a set of new genes, so we moved on to Cwali’s booth to have a look at their new games. We had a brief look at „Logistico“ with an explanation by one of the guys at the stand (not Cornel) and decided that it’s not something we want to buy.

Opposite the Cwali booth was Mike Lasher’s „Globopolis“ on display – much smaller than last year’s. Mike didn’t look all that happy and a quick chat with him revealed that sales figures of Globopolis still aren’t what he had expected.

At the other end of the hall I had a look at Friedmann Friese’s 2F booth and his new game „Finstere Flure“ while Sebastian decided to play „Magic – The Gathering“ against a few rookies at the Amigo stand. Since all playing slots for the rest of the day had been booked I had to content myself with just watching a group play the game with Friedemann providing instructions and hints. The game definitely looked interesting but since I had seen a copy in Günther’s bags I decided against buying one.

By now it was 6 pm with just one hour left and I picked up Sebastian to have a look at the „BeWitched“ booth right next to 2F’s. In the morning I had seen Andrea Meyer there explaining and playing her new game „Schwarzarbeit„. By the time we arrived at the booth she had left but the very friendly folks from Drübberholz were still available. First we got a short introduction into „Schwarzarbeit“ by Martina Hellmich after which we played a shortened version of the game with only cards from A to M. Maybe it was because it was already quite late (we had gotten out of bed at 5 am that day) but neither Sebastian nor I were able to follow the game enough to make good decisions. I suspected that the game really is a brain teaser with the amount of deduction and good memory required. Although I won in the end, „Schwarzarbeit“ did not convince me to be a game I’d like to play often. Martina was then joined by Thorsten Gimmler and Hartmut Kommerell and we decided to have a go at their game „Ludoviel„. This card game about games requires a good amount of knowledge about games to be able to play it and I believe that it may be very attractive to real geeks.

By the time we had finished „Ludoviel“ it was time to leave as the fair was about to close its doors. Again, the „Spiel“ fair was a very enjoyable but also demanding event for us. We didn’t see as many new releases as in some of the past years but the general atmosphere was rather pleasant and it seemed to be more relaxed than in earlier years.

Wie immer bin ich in Essen auf der Suche nach Spielen, die es in unseren Münchener Spieleläden nie geben wird, ganz im Gegensatz zu den großen deutschen Neuerscheinungen, die einem dann in jedem Obletter um die Ohren gehauen werden. Und natürlich interessiert mich besonders alles, was mit SF, Fantasy, oder Horror zu tun hat. Hier also mein kleiner persönlicher Bericht…

Leider konnte ich nur einen einzigen Tag auf der Messe verbringen, und das war ausgerechnet noch der Sonntag, der schlimmste Tag bei dem schon alles ausverkauft ist, und sich Massen von LARP’ern und kreischende Kinder durch die Hallen drängen. Da mein Zug auch noch Verspätung hatte, verlor ich noch gut eine halbe Stunde, also versuchte ich erst mal im Schnelldurchgang einen Eindruck zu bekommen. Natürlich führte mich mein Weg sogleich in Halle 6 (wo die meisten ausländischen Spiele präsentiert werden, und sich vor allem die Fantasy Fans aufhalten), um mein alljährliches Ritual zu beginnen: Die Suche nach dem Spiel „7 Ages“ der australischen Firma ADG, eine Art „Advanced History of the World“ mit riesigem Spielplan und tollen Regeln, das schon seit Jahrzehnten angekündigt wird, aber nie erscheint. Diesmal waren noch nicht einmal die ADG’ler selber da, sie ließen sich von ein paar Kosimfreaks vertreten, die dann auch fröhlich verkündeten, das Spiel erscheine „ganz bestimmt“ nächstes Jahr (so wie auch schon die letzten 20 Jahre- nun gut, ich übertreibe). Nachdem dieser wichtige rituelle Teil also über die Bühne gebracht war, hatte ich den Kopf frei für anderes, und konnte mich in Ruhe umsehen. Alte Bekannte wie „Kenzer & Company“ („Dwarven Dig“ war schon ausverkauft, aber gut, es soll nicht spitzenmäßig sein…) und die Jungs von „Quest for the Dragonlords“ waren natürlich wieder da. Letzte präsentierten stolz ihr neues Expansion-Set für „Quest for the…“, und siehe da, da sind auch die „Westparkgamers“ verewigt, als Spieltester!

Robert Johannesen (Spieldesigner) war über unsere detaillierten Spieleberichte immer noch so begeistert, dass er mich sofort zum Essen einlud, und dabei gleich so nebenbei fragte, ob ich nicht Lust hätte, einige Tausend Spiele für ihn zu lagern und in Deutschland zu vertreiben. Es könnte ja sein, dass ich Lust hätte, mich „beruflich zu verändern“. Nun, vielleicht ein anderes Mal, lieber Robert ;-)

Aber im Ernst, ich freute mich zu hören, daß „Quest for the Dragonlords“ so ein riesiger Erfolg ist, denn hier handelt es sich nicht um eine große anonyme Firma, sondern um ein echtes Freakprojekt, in das viel Liebe und privater Schweiß hinein geflossen ist. Tatsächlich war der Stand der „Dragonlords“ geradezu umlagert von Fans, die Expansion-Set wie Basis-Spiel in Mengen kauften, und das nur wegen des positiven „Word of Mouth“. Ich hatte Glück, überhaupt noch ein Spiel zu bekommen!

Insgesamt war ohnehin zu beobachten, dass nach den 2 letzten eher mageren Jahren wieder ein deutlicher Auftrieb im Spielgeschäft zu beobachten war, was mir auch alle Aussteller, mit denen ich sprach, bestätigten. Dieser Erfolg hängt natürlich auch mit vielen neuen innovativen Spielkonzepten zusammen, die sich erfolgreich vermarkten lassen, aber nicht notwendigerweise Sammelkartenspiele sind. Zwar dominierten letztere immer noch das Geschehen, vor allem „Yu-Gi-Oh“ (das neue Pokémon) und „Lord of the Rings“, weniger war dagegen vom Genre-Veteranen „Magic-The Gathering“ zu sehen (und auch deutlich weniger Einzelhändler, die Karten zum Tausch anboten). „Lord of the Rings“ allein hat wohl der Spielebranche zu dem jetzt spürbaren Aufwind verholfen, denn sicherlich sind viele über die Filme überhaupt erst in das Hobby eingestiegen.

Gestiegen war auch die Zahl der „Verramscher“ – an einem Stand wurde das zugegebenermaßen üble Sammelkartenspiel „Star Trek – TOS“ sogar zum Preis von 2,-EUR pro Boosterschachtel angeboten (also zu ca. 2% des alten Preises). Manche etwas älteren Spiele waren sogar überhaupt nicht mehr existent, noch nicht einmal bei den Sammlern und Privatverkäufern!

Am interessantesten unter den neuen Sammelkartenspielen wirkte das Spiel „Cnihee“, das sich auf den zweiten Blick als ein extrem textlich überdesigntes „Behind“ (fishtank games) entpuppte (falsch rum von mir gelesen).

Die „andere“ Sammelszene dominieren dagegen momentan eindeutig die „Wiz-Kids“ mit ihren inzwischen 4 Sammelfigurenreihen „Mage Knight“, „HeroClix“ etc., aber diese Spielidee bekommt auch Konkurrenz vom „Lord of the Rings Collectable Miniatures Game“ und dem neuen „Dungeons & Dragons Collectable Miniatures Game“, die beide allerdings noch eher bescheiden auftraten. Von ersterem ließ ich mir ein paar Packungen aufschwätzen, leider sehen die Figuren toll aus!

Das groß gehypte „Shadowrun“-Figurenspiel war dagegen nur mit der Lupe zu finden (obwohl die Figuren riesig sind).

Tiefpunkt des Sammelwahns war irgendein doofes Spiel mit Plastikschlüsseln, die man ineinander schraubt, und dann ist einer der Schlüssel kaputt. Den Namen habe ich Gott sei Dank vergessen.

Zu bemerken war weiterhin der Vormarsch der „LARP“er, also der Live-Rollenspieler, selten sah ich so viele Plastikschwerter und selbst gemachte Kettenhemden wie diesmal! Irgendwann wird ganz Deutschland nur noch damit beschäftigt sein, Fantasywelten zu „leben“, das ist sicher. Ich hab das ja früher auch gemacht, aber irgendwann ist man zu alt dafür.

Was gab es nun spielerisch zu entdecken? Am meisten fiel „Rückkehr der Helden“ von „Pegasus Press“ auf, eine Art Versuch, ein neues „Talisman“ zu kreieren. Auf einem modularen Board versuchen Spieler Abenteuer zu bestehen und Unholde zu besiegen, mit dem Ziel, so stark zu werden, dass die „Namenlosen“ besiegt werden können, die den Spielsieg bringen. Das ganze klingt bekannt, ist aber hier wohl mit Liebe umgesetzt worden, und sieht gut aus, Erinnerungen an „Magic Realm“ werden wach (obwohl das Spiel sicher nicht so kompliziert ist ist, und sich eher an ein junges Publikum wendet). Auf der Messe schien es sich gut zu verkaufen (es gab verschieden teure Versionen zu erstehen, manche sogar mit bemalten Figuren), und Pegasus sei der Erfolg gegönnt, denn viele gute Spiele dieser speziellen Gattung gibt es leider nicht.

Ähnlich sah das Spiel eines mir bisher unbekannten Kleinverlages aus („Giochi Rari“ aus Italien), das Spiel „Mamoonia„, scheinbar eine Art Wiederbelebung des legendären „Wizards“ von Avalon Hill, wurde in einer gigantischen Schachtel mit reichhaltigem Spielmaterial zum erstaunlich billigen Preis von 39,-EUR angeboten. Der recht große Stand war aber stets wie ausgestorben – die beiden Spieledesigner saßen grummelnd und unkommunikativ in der Ecke – ob sie wohl was verkauft haben? Ich musste natürlich auch hiervon eine Exemplar haben, vielleicht war ich der Einzige, der was kaufte….

Komplett ausverkauft war dagegen „Warcraft – The Boardgame“ (Fantasy Flight), das zweite von gleich drei neuen Computerspiellizenzen (die anderen zwei waren eine Brettversion von „Age of Mythology“, und Klaus Teubers (!) „Anno 1503“). Seltsam auch, dass man von allen 3 Spielen fast nur Gutes hört!

Ein weiterer Blickfang bei „Fantasy Flight“ war auch „A Game Of Thrones“ (nach einer in Deutschland nicht ganz so wie in Amerika bekannten Fantasybuchserie), das einen sehr guten Eindruck machte. Auch hiervon musste ich eins mitnehmen, ist doch klar, hat doch „Fantasy Flight“ in letzter Zeit doch sehr an Qualität zugenommen, immerhin ist sogar ein Reiner Knizia mit mehreren Spielen im Verlag vertreten (die er in Deutschland, immer noch Fantasyentwicklungsland, vielleicht nicht ganz so leicht raus gebracht hätte, basieren sie doch auf recht liebevoll ausgearbeiteten Fantasywelten).

„The Hell Game“ (veröffentlicht bei „Udo Grebe Game Design„) ist wiederum ein Fanprodukt – das Spiel war in den letzten Jahren als Prototyp beworben, man bemühte sich um 1000 potentielle Käufer, und voilà, hier war es. Erfreulich war zu bemerken, daß sich der Autor sehr viel Mühe mit der Gestaltung der Karten gegeben hat, auf das Spiel darf man auch wegen seiner dämonischen Thematik gespannt sein. Kritik folgt in Bälde!

Dass ich mich auch dazu hinreißen ließ, „Zombie 3.5“ („Twilight Creations Inc.“) zu kaufen – mehr Ereigniskarten für ein Spiel, das gerade wegen seinen Ereigniskarten nicht funktioniert, mag hier kontrovers diskutiert werden, ich tat’s trotzdem. Immerhin hatte „Twilight Creations“ einer Art Messepremiere, die wohl auch nicht erfolglos war.

Auffällig war, dass Wargames im Kommen sind – Es gab erstaunlich viele und äußerst professionelle Neuerscheinungen in diesem Gebiet, und man bemüht sich wohl auch, immer mehr von den altbekannten Regeltextwüsten und Hexfeldorgien wegzukommen. Auffällig waren aber auch „Zwitterspiele“ wie „Nero“ oder „Das Zeitalter Napoleons„, die neue Konzepte umsetzen, und auch politische und wirtschaftliche Simulationen sind. Großer Trend sind einfache, aktionsreiche Kartenspiele zum Zweiten Weltkrieg – und das auch aus Deutschland! Vor einigen Jahren wäre das noch als extrem „politisch unkorrekt“ empfunden worden.

An einem skurrilen japanischen Stand redeten zwei rührende Japaner in vollkommen unverständlichem Englisch auf mich ein, doch ihre tollen Fantasy-Kartenspiele anzuschauen (die mit üblicher Manga-Graphik daherkamen). Das eine war allen ernstes auf Japanisch, „but with English translation of cards on shit of paper“ – Die Vorstellung, dieses Spiel zu spielen, und irgendwelche Hieroglyphen mit denen auf zahllosen kopierten Blättern zu vergleichen, schreckte mich aber doch etwas ab. Das andere Spiel war allerdings zweisprachig auch auf den Karten selber, das erstand ich dann auch: „Masquerade“ von „Yuhodo“. Die beiden Japaner hörten gar nicht mehr auf, vor Freude mit dem Kopf zu nicken über diesen Verkauf. So kann man Menschen leicht glücklich machen!

Ãœberall stark beworben wurde „King Arthur“ von Knizia (das „sprechende“ Ravensburgerspiel mit Computerstimmengimmick), aber das Teil war mir doch zu grosse zum Schleppen. Und es wird eh bald überall zu haben sein. Genauso wie wohl auch Martin Wallace’s „Der Fluch des Pharaohs“ von Kosmos. Sein neues Spiel „Princes of the Renaissance“ (Warfrog) dagegen wollte ich mir auf keinen Fall entgehen lassen. Wallace wird immer mehr zum fleißigsten Designer neben Knizia, und seine Spiele können mit dem „Meister“ auch sehr gut mithalten (und es sind auch schon erstaunlich viele „Klassiker“ dabei). Wallace war wie immer erstaunlich uneitel als Spieleerklärer am Warfrogstand tätig.