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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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In which I collate for the interested reader a few recent snippets of information about Divinare. Or rather, in the absence of an interested reader, purely for my own predilection and delight!
For example, over at Asmodee HQ, the company has added the game to their online catalogue, and posted a French publication date of 27th April. I have no definite information on when the game will reach other markets, but I shall keep a weather-eye out for news of its arrival overseas.
Asmodee have also now finished publishing a series of four ‘Making a Game’ articles about the development of my original prototype Oracle Pathway into Divinare. They are, of course, in French, but some translations have also appeared on the company’s Spanish and American websites.
* Chapter 1: From Prototype to Project — French, Spanish, English
* Chapter 2: Finding a Theme — French, Spanish, English
* Chapter 3: From Vision to Reality — French, Spanish
* Chapter 4: The Finishing Touches — French, Spanish
The game was on display at the Nürnberg Toy Fair at the beginning of February, where it was photographed by Daniel Danzer for BoardGameGeek News. His article boasts ‘94 pictures of 36 games’ and Daniel’s photos of Divinare really show off some of the amazing artwork by Benjamin Carré and Asmodee’s visual production work. (Great pics, Daniel!) The game was also snapped for the Milan Spiele website.
Elsewhere in Europe, Asmodee took the game to the recent Cannes Games Festival, where the game was shown off by a demonstrator in full costume, fully equipped with divination props! The teapot, in particular, was a lovely touch. Asmodee reported direct from Cannes, as did Guido for the German Tric Trac site.
And I cannot end without passing on the generous words of Bruno Cathala who, commenting on the French Tric Trac TV site, had this to say about Divinare:
It made me think of a Knizia at his best!
- Bruno Cathala
And you can’t really say fairer than that, now can you?
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
— Sun Tzu
How does change happen? That’s the question that’s been occupying me, in amongst the many recent playtests of my and other designers’ games. The initial creative spark is remarkable enough, but no game arrives fully formed, and so all games once created go through a process of change. Playtesting is the method we rely on to both initiate and validate those changes, and it is the very blackest of arts.
For one thing, it can be incredibly painful. Reaction to a new game can range from elation to derision or — which is demonstrably worse — indifference. As a designer you have to learn to suffer these slings and arrows and emerge unscathed, even if your game does not. But what happens then? If playtesting reveals that all you ever had was a bad idea, that’s one thing: throw it out and start over. But if playtesting reveals that you gave a good idea a bad execution — signalled by the playtester’s familiar refrain: “I like it, but…” — then the designer’s work is only just beginning.
First, the designer must learn to properly filter the playtesters’ comments: to tease out, as dispassionately as possible, some degree of genuinely objective meaning. And, assuming that’s possible, the designer must then have the gumption to actually do something about it: to embrace change. However, it is the received wisdom about the nature of that change that I would seek to challenge.
The risk is that game design is perceived from the outset as a process of necessarily iterative, evolutionary change: small, inevitable steps taken along a path that, if through nothing more than plain, plodding perseverance, will eventually reach its goal. But this approach, with each step taken to address a detail not the whole, can, perhaps paradoxically, often excise the heart of the game while leaving the surface scarred but intact.
My advice then is this: that radical, truly transformative change is, far more often than not, the only way forward. It will feel unpredictable, unstable, counterintuitive, dangerously uncontrolled, but the simple truth of it is that anything more timid is just death by a thousand cuts.
No, that’s not the truth of it. The truth, as Wilde observed, is never simple. But I see the result of timidity in my own designs and in those of others: I see it as a palimpsest of carefully placed, well-intentioned footprints, each one obscuring a little more precisely that which the designer was seeking to reveal.
Change is necessary; a journey is demanded; and if you take big enough leaps the footprints disappear.
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
Thu Jan 26, 2012 12:24 pm
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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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A few days ago I included information about the forthcoming Europa Ludi contest in a list of five international board game design contests — little did I know that I was preempting the announcement by a matter of hours!
Details of how to enter, and information about its schedule for 2012, are being posted on the new Europa Ludi website. So far the information is only in French, Spanish and Catalan, but Matthieu Nicolas, the Europa Ludi contest manager, has confirmed that the English and German information will be posted in the next day or two.
If you are a budding game designer and would like to enter, you need to be quick: Submissions must be received by 15th February.
Good luck to any and all entrants, and also to the organizers during the inaugural year of the contest. The Boulogne-Billancourt and Granollers contests have both had a successful history, and surely now have a bright new future together — and a rather fine logo, to boot!
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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In which I can finally, with great excitement and not a little pride, take the wraps off ‘Divinare’ — the new name for my game Oracle Pathway!
Yesterday, Asmodee made the first public announcement of the game by featuring it in their 2012 schedule, and included this not-quite-100%-final-just-yet box artwork. I have been bursting to share more about the game with the world for months, and now I can!
Divinare — Latin for “to foresee” — features the most wonderful and evocative artwork by French illustrator Benjamin Carré and is set in Victorian London at the very end of the 19th Century. Players test their predictive powers of chiromancy, crystallomancy, tasseomancy and astromancy, and take the part of one of four colourful characters to compete in the illustrious ‘International Contest of Mediums’.
My game will take its place in Asmodee’s line-up alongside Bruno Cathala & Serge Laget’s Mundus Novus: The two games share not only Latinate names, but Asmodee’s stylish new compact box format too! I am honoured, truly, to be in such distinguished company.
Philippe and the team at Asmodee have taken the greatest of care to craft my little game into something that can take on the world, and I cannot adequately express my gratitude for all their hard work and creative, thoughtful endeavour. Not that their work is done yet! There is still much to do before the game can be published in April, but for me that date cannot come soon enough. Stay tuned for more details soon!
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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In which, primarily for my own reference, I collate the details of five board game design contests that are all open to international submissions. If you know of any other regular contests that I’ve missed, do let me know!
Europa Ludi (France/Spain)
http://www.ludotheque.com/spip.php?article583
Europa Ludi has been newly formed in 2012, and combines the existing Boulonge-Billancourt and Granollers contests. The schedule for this year’s contest has not yet been announced.
Hippodice (Germany)
http://www.hippodice.de/AWB.html
The 2012 contest is already underway, and the winners will be announced in March. Submissions for the 2012 contest were made in November 2011, with shortlisted prototypes requested in December.
2013 contest details
Deadline for submissions: November 2012
Winners announced: March 2013
Premio Archimede (Italy)
http://www.studiogiochi.com/en/p/premio-archimede.html
The Premio Archimede contest is run every two years by studiogiochi in Venice.
2012 contest details
Deadline for submissions: May 31st 2012
Winners announced: September 29th 2013
Lucca Comics and Games: Gioco Inedito (Italy)
http://lucca2011.luccacomicsandgames.com/index.php?
The contest is only for card games, and each year the contest organizers choose a theme, with is typically only a few words. For example, the themes for the 2009, 2010 and 2011 contests were ‘Nessun Dorma’, ‘15 Minutes’ and ‘Jungle!’.
2012 contest details (not yet confirmed)
Deadline for submissions: July 2012
Winners announced: October 2013
Ludopolis (Portugal)
http://ludopolis.pt/en/
The contest is being run for the first time in 2012 as part of the Ludopolis games festival held in Lisbon in June. Deadline for submissions has already passed and this year’s winners will be announced in June.
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
Mon Jan 16, 2012 12:09 am
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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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Things have, I admit, been a bit quiet here at BrettSpiel Towers of late. But worry not, dear readers! There has been lots going on — I’ve simply been neglecting to write about any of it. So, what’s new?
Oracle Pathway: Le chat est sorti du sac
The Big News is that Oracle Pathway is coming, and it’s coming fast! I can’t tell you (yet) what it’s going to be called or very much about the theme, but I can tell you that Asmodee are doing a top-notch job. The publishing contract was only signed last September, but since then the team at Asmodee have been working flat-out to get the game ready to show at Nürmberg in just a couple of week’s time. And, as a way of teasing out the big reveal, Asmodee have so far published two ‘behind the scenes’ articles (in French) documenting their development of the game. Your French may be better than mine, but if not then you can at least enjoy Google’s entertainly odd interpretations…
* Behind the scenes of a game — Chapter 1: The prototype [original]
* Behind the scenes of a game — Chapter 2: Towards a theme [original]
There is some information in these articles about the exciting thematic direction Asmodee have taken, but the main visuals are all of my original prototype. (The only clue to the new look is the little ‘eye’ graphic connected with the second article.) I have seen all the key component artwork and, just this week, the first sketches of the cover artwork; I hope to be able to share some of this soon. I just need clearance from Asmodee HQ!
’Twas the season to be gaming!
Just in time for Christmas I took delivery of a big shipment of lovely new games, which represented part of my spoils from last year’s Concurs Ciutat de Granollers de creació de jocs — the very contest that put Oracle Pathway on its path to publication. While I was away with my family I was able to try out some of the new games, which meant repeated plays of HeckMeck Barbecue, Zooloretto Mini, Level X and The Spiecherstadt — plus our first experience of the curious delight of Geistesblitz. In the New Year I also picked up a cheap copy of Fast Flowing Forest Fellers (thank you: The Works!), so my collection continues to grow. Alarmingly.
I was pleased with all my new games, and although switching from the regular HeckMeck mindset to the new demands of Barbecue was a little jarring at first, the game certainly grew on us. The components are wonderful and the gameplay rather more subtle than it at-first appears — the cunning Doktor does it again!
Zooloretto Mini was a hit, but I am now curious to try the original. There was quite enough game for us in the Mini version — does the bigger box really deliver anything more? Level X played less well with the others, although I rather enjoyed it’s simple brand of combinatorial dice-based tactics.
The Spiecherstadt was a step up from the other games, but went down surprisingly well with my mother and sister, with whom Pickomino has gotten the most plays in the past couple of years. I wasn’t sure the little Stefan Feld brain-burner was really going to hit the spot, but they were both up for the challenge and more than capable. (I, with all my gamer sensibilities, floundered about and lost both times.)
Geistesblitz was a lot of fun, although somewhat bewildering at first — I would love to see how kids play this one, since I think we were all a little too sober and cautious. And Fast Flowing Forest Fellers delivered a suitably speedy race game, with plenty of good-natured but ungentlemanly pushing and shoving thrown in.
Saturday 7th January: Gaming at the Grad Pad
The monthly board game meet in Cambridge’s well-appointed University Centre (do come along on the first Saturday of each month if you fancy it!) was another great opportunity to play games old and new. I avoided getting pulled into anything too heavy, and instead stuck to lighter fare: Carcassonne: Hunters and Gathers, 7 Wonders (including Leaders), Dixit and a furious round of Bohnanza to finish.
Given all my Carcassonne experience I was expecting great things, but in our 4-player match, I came last (albeit by a slim 6 points). And, just to compound my defeat, all three of my competitors managed joint first!
I did rather better in our 6-player 7 Wonders match, pulling off a rather stunning, although highly unexpected, win. I’m no 7 Wonders aficionado, having only one previous play to my name, but I was lucky that my Leaders gave me a hint at a strategy which, largely thanks to my demilitarized neighbours, paid off handsomely. I do really like both the base game, and the clever way that the Leaders expansion has been slotted oh-so-neatly into it, but the fact that in a 6-player game I only really ‘played’ with my immediate neighbours, and even then tangentially, is curious. Games that can scale to 7 players are good news for gamers, but I’d rather see them deliver more of a genuinely communal experience.
I’d always wanted to try Dixit, and now that I have I can say that it certainly deserves its success. Because of its openness and creativity, it’s a game that will adapt to almost any group, and the tension and interest created by its scoring design does an excellent job of keeping all the players involved in every round. And it has small wooden bunnies, so what’s not to like?
Bohnanza is another very well-known game that I have played only a few times, and then only with adults. Playing a 4-player game with two experienced under-10s was, in contrast, a delightful revelation. Their own approach to the subtle art of negotiation turned the game into something more akin to the raucous brawl of Pit — and the game was quite the better for it! There was no chance to carefully consider other player’s positions; no time to deliberate on the mathematical consequences of any particular trade. I simply had to brave the storm, knuckle down, up my game, and learn to play by their rules.
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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Last week I went along to the London Educational Games Meetup, and the event proved engaging, enlightening and thoroughly worth the train fare, so thanks must first go to organiser Kirsten Campbell-Howes. Props are also due to the good people at My Note Games who sponsored the event, and oiled its proverbial wheels, by supplying wine and beer.
There were around 50 people at the get-together, primarily computer game makers and educationalists — although I am not sure that those terms really do justice to the breadth of skills and backgrounds in the room — and Kirsten had found some great speakers to entertain us.
First up was Phil Stuart from the game studio Preloaded, who gave a presentation based on his post on the studio’s blog: Games that are ‘about’ something. If you want a primer on the studio’s work, their approach to game creation and the meat of his talk, go check out the blog post! Phil spoke about some of the studio’s work in term of four game ‘shapes’ — abstraction, metaphor, simulation and narrative — and gave examples of each. He also introduced their latest game, a commission for Channel 4 called The End, which is a game aimed at 14–19-year-olds designed to engage with some of the moral and philosophical aspects of death and mortality. Quite a heady mixture, and hardly obvious territory for self-identified ‘casual’ game makers.
Phil’s talk was excellent and debate-worthy and it was great to see examples of the studio’s work explained in terms of their pedagogical intent. Phil’s blog post begins by stating that Preloaded “make fun games, with a purpose” and in his talk Phil spoke about how getting the balance right between the two — between fun and purpose — is (not surprisingly) a tricky business. The studio begins by interrogating and understanding the education goals and content of each commission, and then works out from that point to create a learning experience that can be delivered in the form of a game.
The (open) question — and I sincerely hope that I am neither misrepresenting the tenet of Phil’s presentation nor the reaction of the audience — is how overt those educational goals can be before you start to lose the fun, and commensurately how effective they are if their purpose is too well hidden? When does play become work? When does a game become a test?
I shall leave those questions as open as I found them for now, because next up was primary school teacher, mother, gamer, geek and all-round educational evangelist Dawn Hallybone, who spoke with enough enthusiasm to fill a very large assembly hall about her experience of using computer games in the classroom. What I thought was striking about Dawn’s presentation was her seemingly heretical (in the circumstances) rejection of so-called ‘educational games’, or at least her observation that her own students often rejected games that were too obvious or preachy about their educational content.
Dawn, in contrast, makes creative and inspiring use of computer games as diverse as Mario Cart and Myst as a launchpad for all sorts of curriculum-driven outcomes that her (very lucky) primary students clearly have a great time engaging with.
To hear Phil and Dawn speak, one after the other, was fascinating. They stand at different points on exactly the same path. You might say that Phil (to borrow his own phrase) makes games with a purpose, and that Dawn (to paraphrase) uses games for a purpose. That shared purpose is indeed education, but I am left wondering whether the games in either case should really be called ‘educational games’ — and (importantly) I don’t think that either Phil or Dawn did so!
Are we not learning something every time we play? Are not all games inherently educational?
I’m not saying don’t make ‘educational’ games, nor that games can’t encapsulate and deliver deliberately ‘educational’ goals; I’m just wondering aloud whether labelling any such experience as as ‘educational game’ might be counter-productive. The language seems to carve off some games at the expense of others, instantly valuing (or devaluing) one apparent class of game against another.
Both Phil and Dawn spoke eloquently about the value of games within education — and more power to their collective elbows! But it seemed to me that there was a palpable tension between their approaches that the evening left unresolved. If all games teach, then how and why do some games designed to teach succeed and others fail, either as games or as educational tools? How similar or distinct are the essential natures of learning and play? And is an ‘educational game’ a tautology, or a contradiction in terms?
I don’t know. I’m still learning.
This post also appears on my BrettSpiel game design blog.
Mon Nov 21, 2011 10:57 pm
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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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This post has been cross-posted from my BrettSpiel game design blog.
Sun Nov 13, 2011 12:20 pm
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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us: the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path…
— Joseph Campbell
This year was my first-ever Essen, and as a true SPIEL neophyte I was fortunate to have the guidance and wise counsel of John Yianni and Rob Harris. Without them I might still be lost in the abysmal depths of Hall 8 — which, I maintain, wasn’t even there for the first two days, since only that can truly explain its surprising discovery on day three! The SPIEL halls did seem to bend both space and time, and even after four days there was so much left unseen and undone. Here’s to SPIEL 2012!
Pile ’Em High: Rob introduced me to the wonders of the Heidelberger stand, and we gamely joined the procession of people circulating amongst the jumble of boxes, all looking for that elusive bargain. And we made sure to go back every day, just in case!
7 Wonders: Something, surely, that the world needs more of — giant card games!
Dominion: Things seemed to be getting pretty tense down at (what appeared to be) the Dominion tournament. And it looked like these two brave ‘Dominioneers’ were the last men standing. Not that we waited to see the victor crowned; it would have been just too thrilling to witness!
The Unknown Labyrinth: After a whole day not actually playing any games, this was our first: Sidibaba. It felt like an old-school computer game realised in cardboard, and the combination of cooperative play, a ticking clock and the true sense of being lost in a maze meant we all really enjoyed it. This game also marked the beginning of John’s seemingly effortless winning streak, that continued for pretty much the whole fair.
The Labyrinth Revealed: In the cold light of day the geography looks rather less impossible than it felt from the inside. The tricky crossroads was a source of repeat confusion, as was the sneakily placed rockfall, which was only one of the weapons in the ‘dungeon masters’ arsenal. We did get out, just in time, but the Hurrican employee was being awfully nice to us!
“Brett”, “Britt”, “Brett”, “Britt”: We joined Alex and crew from Productief and their friends from The Game Master for dinner at a local hostelry. More drinks, please, barkeep!
Don’t Panic!: Our first game of day two was Panic Station, which had been getting quite a lot of buzz (we had wanted to play Village, but that’s another story!). In the end we dispatched the enemy with relative ease, slowed only by some misplaced paranoia! I was pretty sure about the culprit from minute one; Rob thought it was me — the cheek!
A Vote of No Confidence: Day two passed in a blur (and with little photographic evidence) but we did get in a game of Lancaster at the Queen Games booth towards the end of the day. I felt the game punished me (rightly) for a few poorly made decisions at the beginning, and I never did get the hang of the voting (which, by the end, I was actively beginning to hate), but the others all seemed to enjoy it, so don’t listen to me griping on about it.
A Little Nugget: Back at base camp, John, Rob and I tried a hand of Michael Schacht’s Gold! (a bargain at €4 from the good folks at Burley Games!). This is a twisty little card game for 2 or 3 players in which, interestingly, all cards in play at any time are face-up on the table. We all enjoyed it (did John win again?) and retired earlier than the night before, ready to face day three!
Those Cats Won’t Save Themselves: We were through the doors earlier than the majority of the crowd, but still not early enough to catch a free table for Village. However, directly across from the Eggertspiele stand was Flash Point, another game getting good buzz, even though our expectations were middling. However, this turned out to be a great cooperative game with a really strong sense of actually doing what the game is about: rescuing hapless victims (including cowering cats!) from a burning building, all the while with the risk of the building collapsing and the team failing. We beat the game, but were only playing the ‘family’ version, so our victory was nothing to feel too triumphant about.
Dig for Victory!: Rob and I tried out a quick round of Jurassik at the Ilopeli booth. Colourful and nicely produced, if feather-light, but I liked how the cards were progressively ‘dug up’ which added a little tactics.
Bleasdale’s Better Half: Over at the bustling Surprised Stare Games booth both Tony Boydell’s Paperclip Railways and Sebastian Bleasdale’s On The Cards were attracting the right sort of interest. We sat down for a quick round of the latter, as ably and enthusiastically demoed by Caroline (immortalised in the excellent box illustration as Mrs Spade!).
Timing Is Everything: The good folks at DGT were showing off the intriguing Cube and Pyramid game timers. John stopped for a chat; I got a free Pyramid (for which I am very grateful).
All’s Fair: By this point in the proceedings, the Fairplay rankings were beginning to settle down, although The City (of which, more later) was still inexplicably up there at No 9. Compared to the Geekbuzz list, these rankings seemed more stable and more meaningful, and both Tournay and Trajan had good word-of-mouth throughout the fair.
Standing Room Only: Saturday was the busiest day, which led to some tight squeezes at times, but Essen stalwarts suggested it was not quite as busy as previous years. There were certainly lots of families and children, but almost every demographic was well represented. Where in Britain would you see four teenage girls sitting on the floor to play Dominion?
Not Waving But Drowning?: The bargains on offer were, at times, spectacular, at least to my dark-adapted British gaze. It was a constant scrum at the Spiele-Offensive stand, and I had to repeatedly resist temptation, but the Essen-mania was beginning to take hold within me…
It’s a Jungle: It was starting to become difficult to take in any more information, so although this chap on the Sit Down! stand tried very hard to explain Wiraqocha to us, I’m not sure now that I really understood a word of it. Lovely artwork though, and some nice dice play (I think).
A Nice Sit Down (But No Cup of Tea): At the large Amigo stand we found a table (huzzah!) and were keen to try out The City. The game takes one part of the successful Race for the Galaxy, and (apparently) tries to condense it for a family audience, but the distillation process has been so severe that there is hardly anything left. It felt completely ruled by the luck of the draw and had an obvious runaway leader problem. And yet there was all this tedious and repeated bookkeeping to do, no interaction, and no sense of building anything, let alone a city. Nil points.
A Reversal of Fortune: Luckily, the next Amigo game we tried was 23, which is reminiscent of the excellent No Thanks!, but does something interesting and new. Its workings were a little opaque at first, but I think there would be lots to enjoy with repeated plays. It’s not as elegant as No Thanks! — which really is a thing of beauty — but it was certainly a blessed relief from the formless morass of The City.
RAWR!: John broke out his new copy of King of Tokyo in the evening and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. The game has great artwork and production values, a fun mix of dice play, power-ups and push your luck — and the phrase “slap the Meka Dragon” will live in infamy.
All Roads: We elbowed our way into the halls as early as we could manage on day four, so that we could guarantee a free table to play Fortuna The core action-card-swapping mechanic was clever and interesting, and we enjoyed our game. However, a clear-headed rereading of the rules reveals we made several key errors (I benefited far too much from my early wedding, for example!) and even misread how the scoring worked (although I actually rather liked our misreading!).
Best Till Last?: Here’s what you need to know: Sticky Stickz, presented on the Korean stand by publisher Happy Baobab, is unalloyed joy, which had deservedly sold out by the time we discovered it on day four. It is an example of the grail of games: a great idea brilliantly executed. We laughed our heads off (and, I think, screamed a little too) while playing, and probably caused a bit of a ruckus, and what better endorsement for any game could there be?
Triangulation: Next up at the Korean stand was Rich Assets (sorry, no link), a (sort of) triangular take on the classic game Acquire. It looked more interesting than it turned out to be, but we were only playing the base game, which was tile-placement without the bells and whistles.
Dominos + Memory=Domory: Domory is the brainchild of Silke Kegeler (pictured), who was at Essen to show off her fascinating and colourful 3D game, although it seemed just as much a work of art or visual design, so perhaps the word ‘game’ doesn’t do it justice.
Rome Demands Coffee!: Over at the Cambridge Games Factory stand, Wakefield Carter was showing off samples of, amongst other things, the ‘black box’ edition of Glory to Rome.
No Man Is An Island: Another game that was getting a lot of buzz was Vanuatu, and we stopped by the stand to get an explanation, I believe from the designer himself (may be wrong on that). Now, I really was starting to lose a degree of intellectual grip, so the game made little sense to me (to be completely fair, I did wander off!), but reports are good.
Of Smugglers and Coves: Our last game was a quickly snatched play of Cargo Noir on the Days of Wonder stand. For a big box game, the mechanics seem simple (too simple?) but DoW’s trademark excellence in terms of production values definitely lifts the game. And it’s nothing to be taken too seriously. Indeed, by the end we were on our feet (well, I was) cheering on our new German friends as they attempted (quite literally) to pull a win out of the bag. That a one-hour-plus game could all come down to a round of lucky dip may seem absurd (and you’d be right), but we did have a good time of it!
And So It Comes To An End: In the gloaming of a German evening, we finally retreated, our four days of gaming adventures at an end. Inside the fair was immediately folding itself up into nearly nothing — while forklift trucks whizzed about amongst the stragglers; the Germans, clearly, have no truck with nanny-state health and safety nonsense! Farewell, Messe “Place of Events” (as the posters put it)! To the next time!
…Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence, and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the World.
— Joseph Campbell
This post also appears on my regular BrettSpiel blog, which you are, of course, more than welcome to come visit!
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Brett J. Gilbert
United Kingdom
Cambridge
Divinare — Coming from Asmodee 2012!
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Late last night I got back from my first-ever Essen, having had my mind thoroughly blown by its scale and glorious absurdity. I’d spent almost the whole four days at the fair, but there was still so much that I’d not got a chance to see or do. Fortunately, my more experienced comrades, John Yianni and Rob Harris, shepherded me through the fair’s more obscure rituals and byways, and I cannot adequately express my gratitude for letting me join them.
I shall post more news of our time at the fair shortly, but for now I’ll just take a quick look at the sizeable amount of gaming schwag I returned with. Not that this paltry amount in any way compares to what some other fair-goers must have returned with! You could have spent, spent, spent, and then happily spent a whole lot more. And some were clearly doing just that!
But, without further ado, and in no particular order, here’s what I got (total spend: €38.90, less than the price of your average big box Euro!):
Bought games
* Kontor, Michael Schacht — Goldsieber Spiele (€5)
I’d always liked the look of this one, and €5 for a decent second-hand German copy seemed too good to pass up. I think (details are now blurry) that this was my first purchase, up to which time I had protested (too much, you might say) that I was not going to buy any games.
* Mozaika, Adam Kałuźa — Kuźnia Gier (€2.50)
I’m a sucker for tile games, and this little box (brand new) with such a little price appealed to me.
* Deukalion, Arno Steinwender & Wilfried Lepuschitz — Parker Spiele (€2.50)
This one is a curious historical artefact: evidence laid down in the boardgaming strata of Hasbro’s short-lived foray into Eurogames. And it’s none-too-shabby either! Great graphic design and components — the 40 meeples alone are worth more than €2.50 — so tempting, indeed, that all three of us bought a copy!
* Hab & Gut, Carlo A. Rossi — Winning Moves (€10)
Like Kontor, this is another game that I had always hankered after, so how could I pass up a brand new box for €10? It turned out I ought to have done since we saw it going for €8 the very next day! You live and learn.
* Gold!, Michael Schacht — Abacus Spiele (€4)
Schacht’s quirky little card game for 2 or 3 players packs, it turns out, quite a pleasing punch, so was definitely worth the cash.
* Medievalia, Michele Quandam — Giochix Edizioni (€2.95)
Half-remembered details about the card play made this one a relatively blind purchase, but the nice art direction and a quick scan of the rules suggests I’ve not entirely wasted my money.
* Circus Maximus, Jeffrey D. Allers — Pegasus Spiele (€3)
Allers has a pretty good reputation as a designer, so the €3 price tag seemed all-too reasonable. Plus, it came in a rather swanky tin!
* Tatort Themse, Reiner Knizia — Pegasus Spiele (€3)
Knizia in a tin. Going cheap. Kinda hard to resist.
* Carcassonne: Das Gelfoge, Klaus-Jürgen Wrede — Hans im Glück (€2.95)
I love me some meeples, so six funky transparent ones packed into an equally funky larger red transparent one was a no-brainer!
Promotional items
It took me a while to tune into the whole Essen promo malarkey — small expansions for existing games that are often simply unavailable elsewhere — but you can’t really argue with ‘free’ can you? (Or a small charitable donation, for that matter.) I was pleased to get the Mr Jack Pocket expansion, and, of course, am always happy with more Carcassonne tiles! I don’t have a copy of Dominion, but am sure I can find a good home for the cards.
* Gold! promo (free) — scoring variants postcard
* My Jack Pocket: Goodies (free) — new tile and character card
* Red meeple baggie (€3 donation, in aid of Rainbow Over Ghana):
— Carcassone: Die Schule expansion
— Dominion: Carcassonne expansion
Personal gifts
And everything else, as they say, is gravy!
* On The Cards, Sebastian Bleasdale — Surprised Stare Games
Alan Paull insisted I take a complimentary copy of On The Cards with me since I had helped him and the team at Surprised Stare with the rules, something I had been only too happy to do as a way of repaying a little of all they’ve done for me during my fledgling game design career. Many thanks, then, to Alan, Charlie, Tony and Sebastian!
* DGT Pyramid
Here’s the thing: John Yianni, along with being a highly successful game designer, is an all-round nice guy who knows lots of other nice people at the fair. This means that, if you are not too careful, said nice people give you free stuff, principally because you happen to be standing next to him. It was rather humbling, to be honest. Thanks, then, go out to the good folks from DGT!
* Logan Stones, John Yianni — Productief BV
See above! Alex, one of John’s Dutch distributors, gave me a copy of Logan Stones in the dying minutes of the fair as we were chatting and playing on the Productief BV stand. If you don’t know the game, it’s a great little ‘filler’ abstract with beautiful pieces: Check it out! So thanks are due to Alex and his team!
* Die Pyramide des Krimsutep, Ralph Sandfuchs — Krimsus Krimskrams-Kiste
Pete Burley is another gent of the boardgaming world, and he was at the fair this year with his sons Johnathan and Freddie. I am interested to give this little game a go (once I’ve sourced the English rules). It was great to meet you, Pete: Thanks for everything, and good luck at Nuremberg!
* Junkyard Races, John Yianni — Gen42 Games
John wouldn’t let me leave without giving me my own copy of his latest game, a new edition of a game he first published way back in 2003. I played this back in June at the UK Games Expo and is was a blast! Thanks again, John!
This post also appears on my regular BrettSpiel blog, which you are, of course, more than welcome to come visit!
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