One of the few games I bought for the theme, and one of the very few I keep for the theme. I wish it were better balanced and developed as a game design.

What do you mean when you said: "No war in Germany" as the reason for the theme being changed. I don't understand.

Oh, I didn't know this was re-themed. Too bad, the original theme probably would have made much more sense.

One of my favorite Moon games - especially for the theme!

Game director Joe Nikisch did a wonderful job!

I'm actually not only very fond of the game itself, but it probably would never have caught my eye if it had been yet another Japan themed game.

Yep, but it would have made a cool looking alternative to that chipboard tower.

The Trojan Horse would have been awesome.

Better to be inside a Trojan Horse than in a horse Trojan.

So this could be re-themed again, but this time with paratroopers?

Before the Himalaya theme there was also the normal trading theme, am I right? In the free print-and-play version.

Ha! I love it!

"We've got this game submission that's pretty good but it's got a scifi theme."
"No way, that'll never sell."
"What if we made it about... oh, I don't know... trade in the Himalayas?"
"Hell yeah!"

Seriously though, aren't cultural variations fascinating? It's stuff like this that makes the hobby extra interesting.

Concerning SeaLab, just fyi:

http://www.adultswim.com/shows/sealab/

I had had my eye on this one for ages so when I spotted it when I was on holiday in Prague at the end of August I couldn't resit picking it up. Played a couple of times now and really enjoyed it.

Now I want the expansion too.

Why??

Agreed! But same for the elephants below.

Apparently there were volcanoes in the area back in Sumerian times and earlier... I didn't know that before now, either.

Indeed, I've just been told that there were active volcanoes in ancient Mesopotamia, and there were much more forest and fruits than now. So, the theme change is not bad, though an historical survey telling the ignorant gamers about trhese volcanoes and forests could have been welcome at the end of the rules!

See some details here : http://rbedrosian.com/mythint.htm

Except none of the volcanoes mentioned in that article are located in Mesopotamia.

Maybe Magdar can chime in with information about volcanos. He's very knowledgeable about such things.

I think this is more about 1800ish India. I believe I read that Knizia wasn't too hot about this thematic change. Contrary to popular belief Knizia does care a lot about the theme of his games.

Although I haven't played the prototype with the original theme (obviously) I do think the conversion is slightly succesful. The current theme is more original, even though in the end it doesn't matter a whole lot. I love the game anyway.

Independently of how well integrated the present theme and mechanics are (most people's answer would be: not at all), the Taj Mahal and medieval India do have alot of esthetic allure, and definitely add to the appeal of the game for me.

Although medieval England would have also been really cool...
!

No problem with this theme change at all (I'd probably love this game with any theme). Still, a version played on the map of Britain would be interesting too.

The Taj Mahal was built in the 17th century.

My biggest problem with the theme is that the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum and not a palace.

I get to slaughter Care Bears? Damn. Right on. That's one of the few things I can think of that might persuade me to play Doom.

Interviewer: Those were excellent responses Bill, and I think you'll make a great CEO. Just one more question and we're through here. What can you tell me about the role of elephants in the trojan war?

Bill: They played an important part, along with catapults and colorful cards.

Interviewer: Did I say CEO? Bill, can you operate a fry basket?

There aren't any mythical beasts in the Iliad, either, though there are plenty of gods and the Chimaera is mentioned twice.

The Odyssey, of course, is chock full of 'em.

Actually, if I remember this right, that Doom mod was an hommage to an infamous Castle Wolfenstein 3-D mod called Castle Barneystein. Basically, the Nazis became Barneys, which you could then gun down to your ornithoscelidaphobic content. Castle Barneystein had further notoriety because some versions had a nasty Trojan Horse grafted onto it -- which somehow magically brings us back to "Iliade".

Maybe it's so you can relive the amazing life of Captain Jean-Luc Picard... 's brother the crotchety old vintner.

The Loire theme seems more romantic than the Mississippi one, but then I grew up practically across the street from a cotton field.

Steam boats on the Loire?

I just don't picture paddlewheel boats that can explode racing to ferry wine up and down the Loire. This has coal stokers (really, piles of coal you use as fuel) and boatswains.

And when people think of wine they think of different value vintages from different quality vineyards, not as all of them the same value. Really the generic "barrel of wine" in this game makes much more sense as a bale of cotton of the same value no matter where it comes from.

Mississippi Queen was a fine game and a fine theme, only improved by the Black Rose expansion. The publishers were silly to change the theme here ...but the game comes off weak compared to Mississippi Queen.

I am guessing they changed it because of the name. I mean, it got mispelled, but it obviously means Die, Wine Handler, so I can see why they changed it from cotton. I mean if you have a game called Die, Wine Handler and it doesn't have wine in it, that would just be really stupid.

I don't know why they want the Wine Handler to die, though, since I never played it. Maybe he charges too much for the wine or something.

I've carried wine up the Loire .... in a bicycle pannier bag!

We pulled over, broke open the baguettes and cheese, pulled out the wine cork .... very pleasant indeed!

It's so obvious that the salute to Caesar was originally intended as a pitstop for a car racing game. By the way, wasn't this lately rethemed as a space racing game?

It was recently re-released in Japan as Q-Jet 21XX with futuristic sci-fi a racing theme.

And don't forget Ausgebremst which is Ave Caesar with the racing car theme (and a few tactical rules). Yet which theme is most in demand.

Not just that you need to make a pit stop, you can obvioulsy run out of fuel (when you don't have any more cards on your hand).
And additionally, no roman race track had so much curves and narrow passages. The circus maximus just didn't look like Silverstone or Hockenheim Ring.
"The most important event at the Circus was chariot racing. The track could hold twelve chariots, and the two sides of the track were separated by a raised median termed the spina. The spina was set slightly diagonally. Statues of various gods were set up on the spina, and Augustus erected an Egyptian obelisk on it as well. At either end of the spina was a turning post, the meta, around which chariots made dangerous turns at speed. On top of the spina, there were rotatable metal dolphins that were turned down to mark laps around the course. In one race, only one out of 12 chariots made it through the race; the other chariots broke, ran into walls, or crashed one way or another."
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_Maximus

Why??

Alright for what it is - and would be about the same whatever theme it was...

Who designed this one, Bruno?

I know it feels moch Schachtesque than Faidutti-esque, but the designe was really half and half, common work from the very beginning.

Don't you talk about the medieval version? I can not understand the humor behind those actors that makes the game a silly theme.

i think that this is a great theme change. i mean, creating movie scripts is what makes this game worthy of being played. I can´t think about this one without the theme, it would be a litlle senseless and much less funny.

Haven't you been trying for Parliament of the Fairies for some time? (See Democrazy.)

Moo,
Frank

Who's there?

I have to disagree with you here. Atlantic Star is still fun. But you make strong points on many of the other items.

The problem with Atlantic Star/ShowManager and Ausgebremst/Ave Caesar is that both exist. Now I'm forced to choose between an theme that I enjoy more and improved gameplay (extra player or more courses). This way I can be unhappy no matter which choice I make.

This is one I disagree on. This new theme is very unique and the art is great. I already had Traumfabrik and was not interested in Show Manager, but was interested in this. I bought this and I like it a lot!

The problem with Atlantic Star is not simply the goofy theme - it's that they took a perfectly good mechanism (the sliding scale for buying actors/ships) and screwed it up!

In Showmanager, the agent board is in a straight line - remove an actor & slide the rest down. In Atlantic Star, it's a U-turn... which means you are ALWAYS fiddling with the cards. Sigh.

I bought Atlantic Star over Showmanager because I can't stand the artwork in Showmanager. It reminds me of those caricature artists at the county fair.

I thought I heard somewhere that this was about building golf courses. No way that would have sold.

Gave us one of my favorite all time bits, the pastel camel...so tasty looking.

The game definitely does well, and I love it -- but something where encircling property for benefit (and locking your opponent out) makes sense would be more thematic. Kinda like Hey! Thats my Fish -- you know when you have locked your opponent out, that those fish will later be eaten by the penguin, but trekking through desert and then counting those points of empty sand as "victory points" doesnt make a whole lotta sense! Maybe French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, etc caravans staking out parts of Central/North America would make more thematic sense here.

Don't forget the Rockefellers....

Island resort development is thematical ground he already covered, to a certain extent. Just check out his "Letzte Paradies".

That explains a lot.

Forgot to mention Starfarer of Catan is one of the great sci fi games in my collection.

I'm from Germany and all the folks I play with love Sci-Fi. I don't understand this "don't sell"-thing either. Would be nice to see something new for those who like Sci-Fi and are forced to play the convoluted TI3.

I've had no interest to play this game due to the theme. As a scifi game, I'd probably buy it.

SCI FI is the best theme ever! No questions asked.


Checkout the sci-fi guild here on the geek for all your sci-fi goodness:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/guild/151

No matter where the castles are, I think you can consider this one an abstract.

Indeed.

Isn't that true of most every "Gamers Game"? Except for those games I call "Dweeb Games*" (theme rich, like Shadows over Camelot or Descent or HeroScape, etc), most games are pretty much non-themed (call it abstract, if you like). Take away the theme from Rheinlander or Chinatown or whatnot, and you still have the same game. In my book, at least.

* I am not trying to offend with the term "dweeb," but "Geek Game" wouldn't make sense on this site.

I don't think Heroscape has a theme, unless "put everything and the rest together and shuffle well" is a theme.


On the other hand, I think that some games can be considered mostly abstract, but really not all of them, and certainly not the best ones. When there are rules, cards, effects that wouldn't make sense in the game out of the theme, like for example in my Valley of the Mammoths, Mission: Red Planet or Mystery of the Abbey, it's definitely not an abstract.

That's probably where some publishers, mostly german, are wrong in their approach of game theming. They consider that theme is just a trick to help you present and explain the rules of a game that is, at its core, abstract, and therefore they consider that it's easy to change the theme. The theme is much more, it's part of the fun of the game, because it brings player into the theme's mood, and because it is a pretxet for all the jokes you can make during the game.
This doesn't mean that theme never ought to be changed, but it means that changing the theme, when dealing with a complex gamer's game, ought to cause some changes in the mechanisms to make the new theme fun and relevant, and therefore means a brand new test campaign, which is usually not done. It's easy to see with games like Wongar and Big Kini - when something doesn't make sense with the theme, just think of the original theme and you will usually immediately guess what it originally meant.
Of course, lighter games usually have lighter themes, so with them it's usually not necessary.

Interesting comment. I guess that's a separation of gamers. I don't really like games to have cards and components and rules that tie the game to a particular theme. For instance, Tigris & Euphrates is fine and doesn't in any way tie to the board or components. There are no cards that say "River confluence...do X" and that's good.

The games I seem to like less and less these days are the ones that render the game downright unplayable as an "abstract." I guess I've grown to prefer games where the theme doesn't get in the way.

Huh... well, I completely disagree, and submit Dune as an example. Can anyone claim it is a bad game? I don't think so - and the most problems you can tie to it have to do with its being almost 30 years old now. However, its theme is integral to the play. At least half of the rules would make absolutely no sense if you don't take its theme into account.

In a perhaps a bit weaker argument, the same is true for most american-style wargames. And I have no idea how Cosmic Encounter would work under any other theme (Baltic Encounter? Venetian Encounter? Sahara Encounter? I don't think so )