Two Days At Spiel 2007
Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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This is a brief (well...) report on what I saw, played, experienced at Spiel 2007 on thursday 18 and friday 19 October. Please be forewarned that while I try to be as objective as possible, it is very hard to disentangle objectiveness from my personal opinion. Make sure you understand my gaming preferences (there's over 200 rated games with comments available from within my personal profile) before you decide on a title for yourself.
And please excuse the spelling mistaykes. I wanted to write everything down before it fled my mind, and sometimes sentences came out different than I originally envisaged. Only it is such a large volume of text that I didn't catch all of them. The rather funny squiggly things are accented letters which my computer / browser ate for some reason. I'll be slowly correcting these.
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1.
Board Game: Cuba
[Average Rating:7.30 Overall Rank:161]
Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Righty ho. When we (= myself and my sweetheart) arrived in Essen, we made the decision to check out Cuba first. We chose Cuba because of a favourable reading of the rules---barring the odd error in the text---and because I knew that Eggert Spiele had two booths in the hall close to Eingang Ost. One is always a quiet forgotten corner, so we walked over there, but unfortunately only Space Dealer was on display there. So off to the main booth we went, only to find it packed with people already. Shit. Clearly a popular title.
Anyway, after doing a lot of stuff elsewhere we eventually got a go in a 4 player game in the early afternoon. Basically, the game revolves around the construction of a resource engine. Players have a small board where various resources are depicted, and they can only gather them by playing one of their 5 character cards. Resources can be sold using another character, shipped using a third, transformed into buildings using a fourth, and with the last character you can use those buildings. A single round requires four of these characters to be played; the fifth is used to establish how many votes you have in parliament where various laws are passed. Some laws are helpful---government support---others are just plain taxes---pay money or resources---and some are just annoying---no more market. The person who bids the most money in a blind bid gets to chose two new laws, which become effective immediately. However, since there are four groups of laws, it can happen that laws from earlier rounds are 'carried over'; this is a nice touch. Players score points along the way, and after the sixth round the game ends.
There will be lots of comparisons to Puerto Rico, Die Säulen der Erde, and plenty of other games of this type. I'm not overly fond of them as experienced players know efficient paths to victory already and leave newbies coughing in the cloud of dust their start whips up. In Cuba, this effect seems a little less because of the blind bid to establish which laws get enacted; and because of the relative uncertainty in what goods the ships can carry. Nevertheless, it is a game you play mostly on your own. I sort-of liked it, but my gaming partners were not so enthusiastic about it---a bit of a 'Is that it?'-response. Me and my sweetheart spent many hours discussing whether we should take this game home, and in the end we decided not to. But why we didn't is hard to explain. In the end it boiled down to a perceived lack of direct competition. The blind bid is of course an exception, but the result of the bid is basically just another boundary condition to your own small economy. It is hard to directly target another player with it, anyway. We will play the game when asked though, it's nice enough for that.
I should note that we did not play Cuba to completion---we broke off halfway. Therefore we couldn't really establish what the effect of a growing economy would have on the game. That is important in this sort of game.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Since all Cuba-tables at the eggertSpiele-booth were occupied when we first walked over there, I looked for Hamburgum instead---behold my surprise when there wasn't any Hamburgum to be played at the stand at that time. The only other game on offer was Guatemala Café. I wasn't best pleased about that. So we walked off to other tables and other games to play. We quickly reached Rio Grande Games, and being blissfully empty at the time, we spotted a couple opening Hamburgum. A-HA! We walked over, and prepared to sit down. A RGG-official came along, so we greeted him in German. He replied by asking us where we came from.
Well, the Netherlands.
Ah, you know German very well then.
Yes, we do.
Well, that was a problem. Because RGG's stand was primarily meant for people from outside Germany.
So?
Well, you speak German fluently, so I'm going to ask you to leave. Please find the German booth where you can play this game. You see, we rent this floor space, but will not make a sale with you because you'll just buy the German edition, so therefore we're just wasting our time explaining the game to you.
I couldn't believe what I had just heard. I was asked to leave a near-empty booth for speaking a language too well, and for possibly threatening the sales output of RGG. We complied, but my temper was dangerously close to boiling point. A nice beginning to Spiel 2007 after the Cuba-mishap!
Anyway, we flipped to bird to this stupid policy---which was not written down anwhere---by returning when the tables were packed, and finding a couple from Belgium who did not speak German. After a brief explanation from another RGG-official, we set off. The core of Hamburgum's mechanics is of course the infmaous rondel. The game itself is also a resource engine where the three main goods in Hamburg's golden age---beer, sugar and cloth---are produced and sold. By buying construction materials you can buy factories to increase the amount of goods you produce (and thus get more money selling them), but you can also donate these materials to the clergy. The clergy rewards you with tiles with points on them, or ways to obtain points later on in the game. The delay allows you to set up, for example, as many ships as possible so that the tile gives you the maximum amount of points for that. The game ends when 6 churches have been built---or rather, when 30 donations have been made to the clergy.
The game is, I think, a clever resource management game, and not at all like Antike or Imperial (although the resource gathering is of course present in Antike too). This is mostly caused by the fact that in Hamburgum, the action on the rondel is the action you physically do; you do not have to move tons of figures when you select something like 'Movement', for example. There is a good market saturation mechanic in place which reduces the price of the produced goods as more and more production facilities are erected. There is no sense of fighting a lost battle as the tiles can increase their worth over the course of the game. It is by no means a certainty that a player in last place will lose the game. However, as with all of Mac's games, his rondel sets my teeth on edge as the game progresses. At some point you want to be able to take bigger strides, but by doing so you are wasting valuable victory points. Therefore a lot of moves become suboptimal, and by the time you finally arrive at your destination someone else will have nullified or pre-empted your initial idea. A lot of interaction therefore, just not all of it nice once the game heats up.
Added later: What also bothered me somewhat was the rather washed-out artwork. It is all pastels, and on more than one occasion did I grab the wrong tile as I made another donation to the clergy. I really have no idea why I made this mistake as often as I did; I'm not colourblind or anything, and I wasn't overly tired at the time. Nevertheless I had this nagging feeling that the design could have been improved upon; right now it felt a bit like a haphazard jumble of bits and components which worked together to create a game. You might want to consider taking a look before buying this game.
My sweetheart found the beginning rather fluid, but complained about a 'rather dull' and even slightly grating middlegame when everyone is preparing for the final rush to complete the churches, but conceded that it seemed to hold together pretty well. This game will certainly appeal to people who enjoy Mac Gerdts' other designs, is certainly worthy of a look if you're into resource management themes, but be careful if you're a bit iffy about the rondel mechanic. Like Cuba, we also discussed taking this home for hours on end (take away the limitations of the rondel and you have a nice, if not good, game), but in the end decided against it: we'll wait a bit.
This game was played to completion.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Funkenschlag + new cards = must buy.
These cards are interesting. They are much more economic than the original and feature some really big plants like the one shown, and will lead to a completely different game. Now I have to explain that the card shown in the picture is only used in an expansion of the base game when playing to a much higher city count.
Looking forward to giving these cards a go.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Friedeman Friese + a game with cats = must buy.
We have no idea what the game is about. But it came in a cute little box at an affordable price, so we picked this up. For all we know, we bought a cat in the bag  .
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5.
Board Game: TZAAR
[Average Rating:7.73 Overall Rank:137]
Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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The seventh game of the GIPF-series, made to replace TAMSK. We make a point of playing at least one GIPF-game every Spiel, and this year was no exception.In TZAAR, players get 3 sets of playing pieces, which are distributed semi-randomly on a hexagonal board. The idea is that all three types need each other on the board, so the first player to lose all pieces of any given type, loses the game. In a given turn, a player must first take a piece of the other player similar to a rook or bishop taking another piece in chess; and can then opt to either stack two or more pieces together (like in DVONN), or take another opponent's piece off the board. You can also forego your second action; the first (taking a piece) is mandatory, however. Stacking pieces is very useful, because in order to remove a stack from the board, your opponent must attack it with a stack of equal or greater height!
It's a very simple idea, but it makes for some fun and tense play. At first you are quickly hitting on the rarest pieces, but at some point they become so rare that you protect them by putting them in a stack. This costs you initiative, allowing the opponent to catch up to some extent, or focus on the second rarest pieces. As the board empties, your options in taking other pieces or stacks off the board slowly decrease, and if you're not careful your previously protected stacks can all of a sudden be vulnerable to attack. We liked this game considerably, playing it twice in a row, and generally having a good time.
TZAAR fits in right between the other GIPFs, much more so than the somewhat odd TAMSK. The only reason why we didn't pick up a copy is because the production quality was somewhat lacking: the differences are made visible with painted silver rings, and these are too much alike to allow for an easy overview. In addition, the paint had noticable cracks in it---it simply didn't look nice. I understand this was a pre-release, specially made for Spiel: we'll wait until the official edition is available to pick up a copy.
Played twice to completion.
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6.
Board Game: Wadi
[Average Rating:6.25 Overall Rank:3543]
Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Wadi is the offspring of a new Dutch publisher who calls himself, rather stylishly, 'Martyn F'. When we were walking around on the first day, we found him and a big stack of games hidden somewhere in hall 4, and since this game was on our 'to do list', we sat down and gave it a try.
In Wadi, a playing area is built up from bright tiles showing a river (the wadi), and three types of terrain, discernable by the amount of water they can hold. You can build the terrain on your own, follow examples in the rule book, or download them from the publisher's website. The game begins when a flood of water, represented by blue discs, flows into the bed of the wadi; it ends when all of the water has either flown off the board, or has been siphoned out of the wadi by the players. When it is their turn, they can do two things: one is to place a shadouf with respect to a few placement rules, and two is to siphon water off onto a field within the reach of the shadouf. The reach is the 3x3 square grid surrounding the shadouf, but it does not extend across the wadi.
So?, you may ask. Well, players can also siphon off water from other players provided it is in reach of their shadouf. This very nasty mechanic can put water outside the range of the other shadouf, much to the chagrin of its owner. Now if you consider that you score points for any watered area in the vicinity of your shadoufs, and you have a surprisingly fun and tactical game on your hands, with a bit of take that which we both found very appealing. It is fast (barely lasting 20 minutes), and you get much more game out of it than you'd expect at first. We played the game to completion, and bought a copy too. We're looking forward to more games from this designer!
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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This year, some publishers were given a place in the 'Galeria', a section added to the main buildings of the Messe. A lot of children's inflatable playgrounds were situated here too. As was our next stop: Czech Games Edition. I'm a bit confounded about their raison d'être, as it is easy to confuse them with Czech Board Games. Either way, the Czechs are back in full force with a double offspring (and more if you count that from the other company): League of Six, and Galaxy Trucker.
League of Six piqued my interest because of the unusual board and extremely clearly written rules. They are a notch better than I would write them, and that is saying a helluvalot. We were a bit dismayed by the size of the crowd in front of the small booth, but we soon found out that many people were simply there to talk, and not to play. We managed to get a table rather easily---something which we succeeded at doing remarkably well over the course of the convention, I should add. We rarely waited more than 5 minutes. Due to the acoustics of the 'Galeria' it was difficult to follow the explanation, but we got the gist of the game easily enough.
In this game, we are competing against other players for victory points which are obtained by delivering goods to the stores of the king. These goods, as well as guards and horses (plus one or two other things which are also important, but not for this brief overview) are obtained by 'taxing' one of the six cities which are laid out along the central haxagon. In order to be able to tax a city, you must be the sole tax inspector / noble in that city. The way this is established is very much like the bidding process in Amun-Re (something I see Greg Schloesser picked up as well). When overbid, you get a number of 'guards' from the overbidder---but are forced to spend these as you travel to another city. In other words, you'll be forced to pay through the nose, and then some more. Very good stuff. Once everyone is alone in a city, you can rotate a little tile in that city to determine what you will get: new guards, horses, and goods. Guards are obvious, goods too. Horses determine who gets to deliver the goods to the king first---but if you don't have goods, you are still eligible to make a choice where another player must make his delivery. Tons of ways to make other players pay a bit---make that quite a bit---more through his already scraped clean sinuses.
Although we only played two rounds of the total of six, we were much taken in by this game. It packs a lot of punch in a simple package, and excells in one-on-one battles to determine the 'right' price for both the city to tax and who gets to devliver the goods first. We bought a copy and look forward to playing this with our regular gaming partners: they love this sort of conflict.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Unfortunately, there wasn't any room to playtest Galaxy Trucker (the stand was rather small), which I liked more and more as I dug deeper into the rules. My sweetheart was a bit so-so about the simultaneous grabbing for tiles, but after playing League of Six she was willing to give this game the benefit of the doubt. We bought it unplayed. It hasn't been played yet, but will be quite soon.
I should note that this game is surprisingly heavy. Think Antike-heavy here. Upon opening the box, we discovered why: a lot of cardboard playing areas (9 of 'em) plus a lot of material. The price-to-weight ratio is rather good with this game .
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Making our way back through hall 5 to drop off the games we'd bought up till that moment (including a few at the infamous dump stand of Heidelberger Spiele in hall 10---Alexandros for EUR 3, Caprice for EUR 8 and Pyramids of the Jaguar for EUR 5), we stumbled onto Valleygames with their booth babe Alesia Fieldberg, a.k.a. Miss Canada 2008. She ought to put on a little weight---she was a very fragile thing, especially between all these tall Canadian blokes from VG. And no, Kevin doesn't look at all like his avatar .
I was a bit digruntled to see this game on sale here, still not having gotten my pre-ordered copy, and felt a pang of jealousy a few hours later when I saw someone from my gaming club in Amstelveen opening his freshly bought copy, but I must admit that Valleygames did a beautiful job with this game. The board could have done with lighter colours (pretty dark and deep), but the contrast with the playing pieces if sufficient. The box is pretty small especially if you know how large the board is, but I don't mind this one bit. It's acutally kind-of cute.
Hurry up, you stupid mailman.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Buried deep within hall 6 was the stand of Portal Publishing, who were selling their new edition of Neuroshima Hex. We had forgotten to look up the plan of the halls, so it took us a a good while to find them, so we were treated to a huge show of costumes, card games, and other fantasy equipment. I still find it amazing that people can actually make a living off of this , or, perhaps even more amazing, that people will actually wear it, and play 'games' with it. The regional TV network had a feature on Spiel, and about half of their newsitem was showing two 'knights' 'fighting' against each other. They made complete idiots of themselves and probably set back the rest of the convention back years.
But I'm babbling. Neuroshima Hex is not a game I would normally play: it's bizarre theme does not particularly appeal to me. However, while researching what I wanted to see while at Spiel, I opened up some reviews out ot mild curiosity and got intrigued. Small board, various factions dishing it out, fast furious play, and so forth. It takes the expression 'knife fight in a phonebooth' to new levels, that's for sure. Players take control of one of four (or five) armies and attempt to damage the base of their enemies. A base has a number of hit points (you start with 20---hello Magic!), and the game ends once someone's counter drops to 0.
The clever idea is that you can do damage by placing units of your army on the board; these units have various abilities in terms of protection, their ability to do damage, and if so, how much, and at what range. By cleverly positioning your tiles you can at some point trigger quite a domino effect which will see the opposition just crumple in front of your onslaught. It's actually pretty standard wargame stuff, really, but in a much more attractive and quicker package.
Despite the rather cumbersome explanation---our explainer didn't speak English very well, for which he duly apologised---this game showed a lot of potential and had you thinking along lines of 'if I place this there and THAT over THERE, then I can...'. Of course it had brutal bits too: a nuke indiscriminately kills off the center of the board, a grenade kills just a single tile, and so forth. I found myself thinking of the computer game 'Worms' on more than one occasion; it has the same black humour.
We didn't pick up a copy, though. We found the design of the game to be rather busy and somewhat unclear (the board was shiny, for example); and we also concluded we would be the main two players of the game. We'd always have an unfair advantage over our opponents by simply knowing what the tiles and their combos would do, but the game itself was fun enough to forgive it that. My sweetheart remarked that the game should be released in a 'woman friendly' design, and that she wouldn't mind owning a copy then.
Gentlemen from Portal Publishing, if you would be so kind...?
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Hans im Glück surprised us this year by giving out almost no information on their upcoming games whatsoever until right before the show. I quickly glanced through the rules once they were available, and decided that this game bore far too much resemblance towards any stock standard majority game to be interesting. However, we had about an hour left to go at the end of the first day, and lo and behold, there were a few tables open for playing at the HiG/Schmidt-booth. This is rare enough for us to decide 'What the heck'; and so we gave Ming Dynastie and Oregon a go.
We played this game with 2 other players, and after a quick introduction were summoned to begin. First we would place little guys on a track of coloured areas from which we could place them in the province of equal colour. Then we'd be taking 'travel cards' placed right next to the little guys which would allow an ersatz king from El Grande to travel around---we'd only be adding the little guys to the region where this imposter would be currently standing. Then there'd be a majority standoff which would see the winner move his little guys into a village located within the province. Based on the amount of men in a village you'd get province chits; by collecting a of 6 different colours you could score an ungodly amount of points. Then there'd be a blind bid to see who would retreat his men back into the province. This was the most interesting point of the game, as the 'winner' would get points, but any little guys remaining in the village would also die and be removed from the board. I was too tired to ask why this was so, and frankly, I don't think I'd have cared much if I knew.
We found this game boring. It worked in the sense that it moved along smoothly, but neither us nor our two German partners for this game were much taken in by it. I think the game would instantly improve if the card drafting mechanic---which could see you stranded with worthless cards beyond your control---was altered or somehow completely removed. (I'm thinking of Tower of Babel's extra set of cards here which some people prefer to remove.) Then you'd get an interesting game with quite a lot of nasty choices, last but not least the bluffing element for villages. But it seems very difficult to separate the cards from the game, and therefore this game becomes a rather contrived score-for-the-moment, mini-El Grande majority game.
Then again, please consider that I'm a spoilt gamer, used to heavier fare, and currently flirting with genuine wargames too. I don't exactly fit into the profile of a family games player, although it can at times be relaxing to play something simple. If I try to 'scale down' my expectations then perhaps Ming Dynastie isn't too bad. It has a few nice and straightforward elements with clear effects, and there's a good bit of randomness to appease those who dislike to think and plan ahead a lot. You must think ahead a bit somewhat (mostly about where your ersatz king will go), and will quickly discover that if you place your little guys into one 'waiting area' you won't have much choice when drafting cards, too. There's a balance to be mastered here, but it's not a particularly 'deep' one.
Needless to say, we didn't buy a copy, and we didn't play to completion.
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12.
Board Game: Oregon
[Average Rating:6.81 Overall Rank:526]
Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Oregon on the other hand was something we did appreciate. We started playing this game with 20 minutes to spare, and were asked by not more than 4 officials to keep an eye out on the time---so we didn't play to completion.
In Oregon, players pretend they're the settlers coming in from the Eastern United States, settling down in Oregon. By playing two cards simultaneously, players create a pair of coordinates where they should (roughly) place one of their settlers, or construct a building. Settlers and buildings interact in various ways to score points, and whomever has the highest amount at the end wins the game.
We couldn't play this game much more than one quarter through, but we found it much more to our liking than the somewhat disappointing Ming Dynastie. Despite the limited choice where you can place your settlers and buildings, you have to think a bit more because you can help other players too. This effect becomes much more pronounced as the board begins to fill up. So while it is inevitable that players begin to profit from each other, the question to what extent still remains. It could be very well possible that the limitations of your cards force you too often to make moves you don't want to make---or the other way around.
We're hoping that this game will end up at reduced prices during Spiel 2008 or 2009 so we can see for ourselves. The current price of EUR 25 was a bit steep.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Still with us? I'm impressed. We're currently at day 2, but relax, it will be a bit shorter than day 1.
This game was on my sweetheart's list to try. We were at the Messe about 10 minutes later than the opening time of 10 o'clock, which has the advantage of getting into the convention without any delay. It's very interesting to see which games are not yet played at that time---of course only the die-hards are at the halls at 10 sharp. This game at the Winning Moves booth was completely bereft of players.
If you know Halma, then you know Wind und Wetter. It's a clever and much-expanded copy of the original get-your-guys-to-the-opposite-side game. Now there are obstacles in the shape of a combination of terrain and weather conditions which at times block movement. Add into the mix the possibility to hinder your opponents by making bad weather appear out of nowhere, and a nifty system whereby the wind blows bad (or good!) weather away, and you get a very original title which seemed like a good idea just waiting to happen.
With two players, the game incurs a good deal of good-natured take-that play: it is slightly annoying to see your men blocked by the opponent, but you can just as easily pull off the same trick on him, so the balance is maintained. It was hard to remember the various effects of weather and terrain, and if they hadn't been printed on the game board things would be quite hard indeed. However, we felt the board was a tad too big, and that the game took a tad too long. With two players things got quite congested already---we hate to think what happens if you play with the full set of four. Especially if they don't mind a good deal of take-that. The game might take much longer than its breaking point.
We played nearly to completion, the last few moves not mattering much to the final outcome anymore, but we didn't buy this game. Thematically it is a great idea; practically there's a few sharp edges we're not entirely satisfied about. Perhaps if the game is sold at a lower price that we will be tempted to get a copy.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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The stand of Histogames was quite a cozy place: the game was played on low tables so you were looking down on the game. Initially I was intruiged about this game because of its small number of actions---you just get 8 of 'em and have to make do with them throughout the game. My sweetheart remarked that the cover art looked a bit like that of Indonesia and therefore expressed interest. So off we went.
We joined two people whose native tongue was English and got an explanation from one of the staff members. This game is a majority game with of course a very stringent limitation on what you can do during the game. Basically: play a card or pass. When you play a card, do what it says and grab a cube from the board. If everyone passes in succession, then the 'current region' is scored. If one colour has the majority it gets the appropriate marker; if there's a tie, the British take over. You can influence the province-to-be-scored-track just once (because you only get one card with this action) by swapping two province tiles, and then get to 'lock' one of them in place. At the end of the game, the person with the most cubes in the colour which took over the most provinces wins---if there's a tie, it's them Brits again who march in and impose a different victory condition: namely who gathered the most sets.
This game is amazing. Despite its very basic majority structure it packs an incredible amount of gaming goodness in a tiny and affordable package, and provides a Liberté-experience in a fifth or sixth of the playing time of Martin Wallace's offspring. You have to be exceedingly careful in what you play and when, when to pass, and when to steer for the alternative victory condition. The steady reduction of cubes on the board means that it becomes harder and harder to move influence around; sometimes you just score a province just so can finally have a colour back in stock again! But that means that other people can suddenly play a card they'd been holding back again too...
We immediately bought a copy of this game, and officially designate it as the best game we bought at Spiel 2007. If you like majority games of the Mykerinos- or Louis XIV-type, buy this one. NOW.
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15.
Board Game: Moai
[Average Rating:6.42 Overall Rank:2403]
Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Our next stop after 19th-century Siam was 17th-century Easter Island for a game of Moai. This game is about the construction of the moai, or stone statues which litter the shores of this island. They were made during a time of great ecological peril when the island's natural resources simply weren't capable of sustaining the large population, leading to all sorts of nasty things, including raids, war and even cannibalism. Our explainer explained that in order to be politically correct the cannibalism is not mentioned in the rules, but it is still present in one of the mechanisms (the 'raid'). The game isn't truly Moai unless you explain this to your fellow gamers so they can appreciate the dire situation they're about to enter all the better.
Of course this makes Moai quite macabre. Don't play with those who can be offended by the idea of actually having to commit cannibalism, even if it is abstracted! The idea is to perform the best, i.e. by building the biggest moai, in a time when you can't even feed your own population. This do-best-under-worsening-conditions mechanic has been used before: last year I played Gloria Mundi which features a similar idea. Unlike Gloria Mundi, you can target players directly, and that makes it acceptable fare for me.
The game is actually quite simple, but very nasty. Cards are laid open, and you bid on those. In the beginning they are quite friendly stuff---you just get cards back at the end of the round, and can bring people home too: this allows you to have them do something else in a later round. But this soon changes. The topsoil erodes, leaving you with less room to farm. Wood gets burned, depriving you of material to transport the moai to the coast, or destroying fishing boats you desperately need to feed your people. Open war kills. Moai are desacrated and torn down, meaning you lose very valuable victory points. After you've bid on these cards---rather, the right to select one first---players take alternate turns to place their workers in one of the three areas on the board. These workers come in values 1 to 3, and some are placed face down so you never know how well you are doing with respect to others. If you do not have to reveal them, you are safe from cannibalistic raids. Therefore sometimes you will just create a conflict to see if there's any... well, food... to be had there, even if you're just competing for a wooden disc.
Then it is established how well you did with wood gathering, moai production and finally food production. If you have more people on the island than you can sustain, the excess dies. Or survives by cannibalising others. Amidst all this grisly preying on each other, there is room for a little joy: you can have children too. But you must pay in cards to get them. The same cards you use to bid on those nasty effect cards, to be precise. Choices, choices...
At some time Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutch explorer, is turned over, and the game ends. Whoever has the most moai-points wins.
This game has take-that in spades. It exudes preying on each other, turns into a form of art to say the least. There's no other way to win. Someone else has an advantage? Eat the sod. Kick him off his valuable soil. Burn his boats. Whatever it takes, whatever it takes. Therefore this game will most likely not appeal to everyone. Game-wise it is not very special, although the progression of deterioration has been captured in the game's mechanics very well. The theme is where Moai truly shines. Nevertheless it is 'friendlier' than expected because the hurt seems to get spread out evenly over everyone---unless you specifically aim for a fellow player, you will all go down together. It also helps that the little guys you're playing with are very abstract wooden discs with little numbers on them. There is a sense of dread as bad news keeps on piling on bad news, and there is some perverse delight in seeing how well you can manage under those circumstances, which historically were very brutal to say the least.
We bought a copy of this game, and look forward to experiencing the dread with two of our relatives who, despite being a happily married couple in real life, become mortal enemies in games. They'll love Moai.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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After Moai we felt... hungry... and ate a few sandwiches. We were nearing the end of our to-play list, and paused in front of the not-exactly-new but still interesting Phoenicia. We added this to our list as an afterthought, for what reasons I can no longer remember.
Phoenicia is a bidding game coupled to a Civilization-esque technology tree. Bid on interesting technologies, workers of various skill or other items, then decide how to distribute those workers amongst your technology charts. The more workers you have on those charts, the more victory points you amass, as well as money points. These money points are important, because these translate into money at the end of the round according to a fixed scale printed on the scoring track. The further along, the more money you get.
We played this game only until the end of the first epoch, when we had gotten a good feel for this game. If you like auction games, you should have a look. My sweetheart found it boring, and I could already tell I was going to lose at that point had we continued until the end. As with many games of this type it is extremely important to do well in the first rounds of play because doing well here will have the largest cumulative effect on the rest of the game. The 'winner' at that point was 4 or 5 money points ahead of me, and would therefore dominate every auction to come, effectively cementing his lead.
From a discussion on this site I understand that the game is actually more complex than I make it out, and that it is harder for a leader to run away under those circumstances but given that I'm not very good at this sort of game (I rarely win in comparable games anyway), and actually am willing to sascrifice my own position to stop a leader, makes Phoenicia a nono for me. My sweetheart was disappointed too, so this game, despite only having being played one quarter through, was not bought.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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That more or less concluded everything we wanted to play. We would have liked to have tried Antler Island, but with only one stand at the booth of the Lamonts, there was no way to break in without waiting for a long time. 1001 Karawane looked very drab, as did Chang Cheng. We decided to postpone Lascaux and El Capitan to the upcoming Spellenspektakel to be held in Zwolle late November so we'd actually have a reason to go there.
Amyitis would have been on that list too, were it not for the fact that we always buy the French edition of Ystari games to avoid translation problems. We bought this game unplayed, although I had gotten a good impression from reading the rules that it would be a fun title I'd enjoy. My sweetheart was not overly impressed with that, given the somewhat disappointing performance of Cuba and Hamburgum, but she's really a dear, so we got this at the Ystari booth. En parlant français. Which made a nice change from the German / English we'd been using for the past two days now.
Looking forward to playing this game. Added later: look below in the comments for a brief overview of this game.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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So what to do with about 3 hours to spare? Well, walk around a bit more. Look at games some more. We walked along Fantasy Flight Games' Dust, which indeed looked like Risk done right. Perhaps someone I know will have picked up a copy; I'm actually interested in playing this lot of chrome in subdued colours. Unfortunately there was but one game going on, and it had just started at that. But located right behind Dust was the SdJ winner Zooloretto. And my sweetheart being a sucker for playing SdJ-winners---she got me to sit down at Thurn & Taxis too---I was again made to sit down and play.
Zooloretto is Coloretto on a board, with a few extras added to give it a richer feel. These mostly have to do with money, which you can earn by 'finishing' a stack of 'cards': populating an entire cage with a certain number of animals, hence the name ZOOloretto. The animals are the various colours in Coloretto. The basic mechanism has been retained: draw a tile, and place it in a row (in this game, a 'cart'), or grab a row ('cart') and then put the tiles in their cages (the 'stacks' of the cardgame) and forego your turn. But there's a few tiwsts. For example, there's 'male' and 'female' animals, and if you put them together in a cage, you get a bonus offspring to add to the cage. With the money, you can execute a money action instead of drawing a tile or taking a cart: these actions include moving animals about, buying them off of someone else, or increasing the zoo with another cage.
The game is, I admit very grudgingly, actually somewhat fun, and a good extension to the basic Coloretto. It is more convoluted owing to the addition of the money action, but at the same time the nastiness of feeding someone cards he doesn't need has been mitigated by lowering the penalty and having someone being able to pay his way out of a predicament. There have been worse SdJ-winners.
But I put my foot down when asked whether we should pick up a copy after playing all the way through. Coloretto will do for us. We're minimalists .
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19.
Board Game: Zoom
[Average Rating:5.62 Unranked]
Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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While walking towards the exit, we passed along a stand where wooden games were sold. I wanted to try this little brain burner. Zoom isn't a new game; it's just republished with a new look. The idea is quite simple: form a square of 4 marbles of your own colour in the playing area by sliding them from in from the edge of the board. You cannot jump over others, nor push others aside.
The game is fast, but at one point becomes a bit stale as players wait until the opponent makes a slight mistake which allows one player to gain an advantage in position, and thus win the game. I had a tough time with my opponent, the charming booth lady, and I half-suspect she let me win because she played far too well to make the mistake she did in the end. It was enough for me to decide against buying this title, but there's at least a dozen more to be found around Spiel, so I'll be able to find a replacement for the GIPF-series easily enough.
My sweetheart occupied herself by playing a variant on good ole' Solitaire, and I think I spotted it somewhere in our bags. I'll have to ask her how the game she got is played.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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And so it became a little later, and we still had about an hour to kill. We ended up at the stand of Cwali, because the list of my sweetheart said 'Gipsy King' at some point. She was rather surprised when she discovered who 'Cwali' was---our previous experience with Aloha was not particularly good. Nevertheless, Gipsy King the list said, so Gipsy King it was.
We were explained the game: First create a playing area from various elements showing either lake or firest. In the lake there can be fish. Then take turns in placing gipsy wagons around the lake numbered one. When all places around the 1 had been filled, move on to the lake numbered 2. And so forth, all the way up to 15. Count the score, and repeat, but now starting from 15 all the way going down to 1. Count score again, whomever has the highest, wins.
So why would you want to place a wagon? For two reasons: to gain a majority around a big lake---a set of adjacent lake parts---so you get the points of the fish swimming in the total area. Or to form a chain of gipsy wagons. A chain of n wagons is worth 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + n points. But! You can also pass when filling up the area around a numbered lake, and that means you are the first to go for the next number. And that makes the game, despite its simplicitly, a whole lot of fun. When played with good players, passing is a very effective weapon to improve your position. The snaglet is that it's usually very obvious to establish when you should be passing, and if you're a quick and skilled with numbers, you can actually runs the sums in your head as you play. I'm not good enough to do that, so for me the game 'works', but be forewarned if you are blessed with such agility.
I liked this game. It feels like a very simplified Through the Desert, although you should not be comparing the two games. Gipsy King is not meant to be as complex: it is lean, fast, and simple, and was the first of Corné's designs I played which didn't feel 'somewhat off'. My sweetheart was a bit ho-hum after the first round, but 'got it' during the second, while we were going from lake 15 to 1. We therefore unexpectedly found ourselves with another game, and got another of Corné's games, Territories, for free. We haven't got the foggiest idea what that is about, but we'll discover soon enough.
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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And that concluded our second day at Spiel 2007. We were still debating the Cuba / Hamburgum situation as we walked towards the exit, by the way.
So what did we think of Spiel 2007? Well, it was a good Spiel, as usual. But there were a few little buts too. The experience with Cuba and Hamburgum taught us that we're becoming too spoilt and experienced to like everything we see anymore. We still added a fine stack of games to our collection, and played a helluvalot, but I had wanted to like Cuba and Hamburgum so much I never realised I might not like them. It was a sobering experience.
We were also a bit disappointed in what was on offer. During Spiel 2006 we got the feeling that more 'well known' games were dumped by the various salesmen; that was not the case this year. Prices were well within a narrow range, and there was little old stuff to be had for low prices. That's good for the market itself, but not so good for the bargain hunting player.
Spiel 2007 was a bit messy in its presentation. The second hand market, last year so neatly organised in hall 4 alone, was now spread out along halls 4, 8, and 9. This was a little annoying. In addtion, there were a lot more booths which really had little to do with Spiel's 'core business': unplugged games. There were quite a few computer-assisted game stands, more food stalls, and the like. The use of the Galeria meant that more space was asked for by the organisers, which is of course a Good Thing. Still, it left a vague impression on me that there was actually less unplugged to be found than in previous years. But I'm probably way wrong here: there was still far more than I could actually play in two days.
And that concludes my 'brief' overview of Spiel 2007. Thanks for reading. Now I'm off to gloat at my new additions some more .
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Posted Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:31 pm
Only in Germany.
I saw the ad in the new Spielbox issue and thought exactly the same as you: Why has no one made such a game yet? Wind and weather! Great theme!
