Games I played at Pionek (Gliwice, Poland)
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Earlier this fall I went to Essen and to BGG.CON, but many people have already written reports and geeklists about them. But this past weekend I went to a 2-day event that seems unmentioned on BGG until now, Pionek (which means "pawn"), in the Polish city of Gliwice. (Thanks to organizer Ignacy Trzewiczek (trzewik) for telling me about it, and for offering crash space in his company's office: Portal, the publisher of Neuroshima Hex!) This was the 5th Pionek event. I had a good time, and it was cool to see what a homegrown convention is like in Poland.
In contrast to Essen (tens of thousands of people in a modern convention center) and BGG.CON (500+ people in rather luxurious hotel), Pionek was small and cheap (maybe 100 people, with a nominal admission fee of 1 zloty, i.e. less than a dollar!) and took place in a "dom kultury", i.e. a building where different groups can rent space for cultural/social events.
We were in 2 rooms on the third floor (4th floor by US reckoning), with the only men's room on the ground floor. But it was a good space with enough tables, and a stage where announcements were made from occasionally, and a corner with many games brought by people to share, like a smaller version of the library at BGG.CON. The selection of games played reminded me a lot of BGG.CON, i.e. a lot of somewhat heavy eurogames as well as a lot of shorter games including some abstract strategy games. I didn't notice any hardcore wargames or CCGs or RPGs.
Here is an announcement which lists many of the games that were there:
http://www.gry-planszowe.pl/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4409
There was free coffee, tea, juice, snacks too.
A language note: As far as I know, I was the only American there, and one of only a few non-Polish people. I am still learning Polish and still have a lot of trouble understanding Polish speech, but enough people were able to speak slowly or use English that I didn't have any real problems on the language front. And I got a lot of practice with certain key phrases like "it's your turn", "I'm losing", etc...
Anyway, I had a good time and met lots of cool people, and I was impressed at what a good event it was on such a shoestring budget - clearly a labor of love.
PS: I've since decided that I'm not a fan of these "games I played", "games my game club likes", "games I want", "games I own", "games I'm thinking of buying", "games I own but only played once", etc type geeklists, and prefer geeklists that talk about some common property inherent to the games in the geeklist, e.g. "good solitaire wargames", "games with spinners", "multiplayer games that work great for 2 players", "games with sewer movement", "games about detectives", etc. That's because I like to look at game articles and see what geeklists they're on to find other games that have something inherent in common with them.
So this should be my first and last list of games with nothing inherently in common.
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Pionek started officially at 10am Saturday, although my carpool (thanks Maciek and Monika) arrived late due to urban navigational difficulties. Let's just say we took the scenic route into Gliwice and out of it and back into it. As soon as we arrived at Pionek around 10:30, I was invited to join a game of King Me! I got to use my lame Polish right away as one of the King Me players didn't speak English. I like this game and had only played online previously at http://youplay.it.
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Continuing the kingly theme, I introduced some people to Gipsy King, which I'd brought. It is a great game for teaching people quickly at cons.
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
A day without Bakelite is like a day without sunshine! Another great game for teaching random people at cons.
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
I got in several games of Pick & Pack during the weekend with various people, in various proportions of English and Polish. It's a cool little game. If we'd bought just one more game at BGG.CON, it would have probably been this. It was nice to get to play it again!
-
-
5.
Board Game: Blokus
[Average Rating:7.15 Overall Rank:200]
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Pionek had several small tournaments each day. My moment of glory was the Blokus tournament. 16 people played in 4 games, then the winners of those played a second game together. It seems my many games worth of experience in Blokus paid off. As a result of winning both rounds, I received a new Polish edition of Blokus as a prize. This was very cool, since I only owned Travel Blokus (which ironically I also won as a prize this year! Now I just need to win Blokus Trigon somehow...)
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Neuroshima Hex is surely the premier Polish boardgame, and of course I entered the Neuroshima Hex tournament, which had 16 players playing in 2-player games (8 pairs, then 4 pairs, then 2, then 1). But I got knocked out in the second round, in an enjoyable close game with a fellow called Goor. I usually just play it at home with a2na, so it was fun to play with some other folks. Plus after the first round, the tourney director Multi gave us a free extra tile ("Mad Bomber") for the game.
-
-
7.
Board Game: Trax
[Average Rating:6.60 Overall Rank:1559]
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Trax is a great little game to take to events and teach people, I have found. It's fast and interesting for new players, and more often than not, people want to play it several times in a row. Bakelite tiles in a carrying pouch are a gaming fetish of mine! I played Trax with quite a few people during the weekend (although sadly never got a chance to play with Bazik, whom I'd play with in Warsaw earlier this year.)
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
If we'd bought just one more game at Essen, it probably would have been KogWorks, but we waited to long and it was sold out. It's a clever elegant game that uses turning gears to physically verify if a player's board position is valid. It was nice to get a chance to play it again, with Adam "Folko" Kałuża (designer of Glik), who did buy a copy at Essen. Probably the last one that should have been ours! Thus he got to practice it more, and beat me at Pionek!
-
-
9.
Board Game: TZAAR
[Average Rating:7.73 Overall Rank:137]
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Then Folko and I played my favorite Gipf project game and current hot game, Tzaar, which he'd also brought. I redeemed myself after KogWorks and won Tzaar. But I knew that we would next play one of his favorite games, another Gipf project game which I like but suck at...
-
-
10.
Board Game: ZÈRTZ
[Average Rating:7.37 Overall Rank:183]
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Try as I might, I cannot get my brain to grok Zertz tactics, and Folko demolished me in this!
-
-
11.
Board Game: 9tka
[Average Rating:7.25 Unranked]
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Then Folko showed me one of his current projects, Dziewiątka ("Nine") which was an abstract pure strategy game that involves moving pieces a little like Glik, but with a goal of getting a majority of pieces in areas. We played, he won of course. It has elegant rules and a short playing time, and I'll be interested to try it some more.
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
After the gaming finished (around 6pm Saturday - a big difference from a US con!), several dozen of us went to an Italian restaurant to eat, drink, and play games. One game that got played in my subgroup was Once Upon a Time, the storytelling game which (perhaps ironically) I have used for teaching English. We had an English edition but played in Polish, which was tough for me. Luckily a gamer Michał beside me helped explain what people were saying, at least as much as he could understand the storyline (after all, Once Upon a Time does not always produce a very coherent story...) I spoke enough to get rid of a few cards, but let's just say that 3 games of Once Upon a Time in Polish was rough for me.
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
9 of us travelled together to couchsurf at the office of Wydawnictwo Portal, publisher of Neuroshima Hex. Portal is located in a post-apocalyptic-looking old industrial park, guarded by surly bureaucratic guards who would not let us enter for a long time until Ignacy came to sign a document and stamp it, and we all had to sign it too. So we used that waiting time to play Travel Blokus.
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
In the end we did make it to the office, which is a spacious and luxurious penthouse suite, with furniture of fine Corinthian leather on thick Persian rugs, and a gourmet espresso machine.
No wait, that's some other place.
Wydawnictwo Portal is a 2-room suite in a dilapidated building, with piles of Neuroshima boxes everywhere, and a saw where wooden Glik tiles were being cut, and game prototypes and plans and designs scattered about, and lots of cardboard dust and sawdust all over the floor, and cool game art on the walls. The bathroom is down the hall, and I received several worried warnings about it. I have seen worse, but it was definitely a scary-looking toilet.
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
It was a long day, so we played a round of this very silly card game to unwind. Since the game was in Czech, we used the Czech words for the 4 vegetables and cockroach, taught to us by Petr, who is from Czech Republic and one of the few other non-Polish people at Pionek.
I don't know if it was the language barrier during rules explanation, or simple brain exhaustion, but I took a long time to grok the rules of this simple game, in which you simply play the top card of your deck and say what it is, except when various conditions apply when you have to lie and say it's some other kind of vegetable. Trying to remember the Czech names amusingly increased the surrealism of the deceptively simple task.
-
-
16.
Board Game: Clans
[Average Rating:6.57 Overall Rank:683]
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Later some of us played Clans, after moving the table into better light to be able to distinguish black and blue and green. Then around 1am our clan of intrepid Portal dwellers called it a night and crashed in our sleeping bags.
Since moving to Europe, I've realized that people in the US expect (and pay a lot more for) much more upscale conditions at events. E.g. at BGG.CON, I was sleeping in a nice king-sized bed. At Pionek I was in a sleeping bag in an office with a bunch of people. Less comfy, but a lot cheaper! (If I'd wanted to, I could have had a hotel room for pretty cheap, actually, but I was up for seeing what Portal was like.) I've noticed that various events in the US often don't even offer an option for cheap mass lodging, whereas when I go to analogous events (boardgame cons, go congresses, Esperanto congresses) outside the US, they are often more economical and offer very cheap lodging as an option. (E.g. at the European Go Congress, about 100 people slept on the floor in a gym for an insanely low cost. The US Go Congress has never offered such a deal to my knowledge.)
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Next morning I ended up starting with a game of Abalone, which is not a great game, but a random filler we picked while killing time waiting for another game to end so that we could play a 4-player game.
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
None of us knew how to play, so I read the rules (we had an English version) and explained quickly to Michał, then he explained them to the others who joined us. It's a fun clever game. One player got seduced away by the Pitchcar tournament, so another took over her place.
-
-
19.
Board Game: Medici
[Average Rating:7.18 Overall Rank:225]
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
I was happy to play this again, since I used to play it a lot years ago before the huge flood of eurogames hit and it got lost in the crowd. We only had German rules, and none of us knows German well enough to read them, but I remembered the rules pretty well, I think.
We were interrupted due to 2 of the players being pulled away briefly by the following game event in this list...
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Ignacy and Folko arranged a quiz/trivia game about boardgaming. There was a 4-page test of questions to answer and turn in to qualify for the second round. I count it as a moral victory that I could understand most of the Polish text, even though I didn't answer enough correctly to advance to the next round. They were the sort of questions you'd expect, e.g. who designed the game Blah-blah, or what game won such-and-such award, as well as some questions about their new Polish boardgaming magazine Świat Gier Planszowych ("World of boardgames").
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Petr Murmak from Czech Games Edition was demoing his company's game Galaxy Trucker, and he was gracious enough to give me a personal demo, playing most of a 2-player game with me (before he had to truck back to his home town 6 hours away). It was a fun game, an odd mix of laying machinery tiles on your spaceship (like a faster version of Factory Fun) and an Ameritrash-style series of crazy random events that happen on the space trip.
It was also slightly surreal to talk English with a Czech among so many Polish people, for hard to explain reasons.
-
-
Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
-
Finally I finished the con with Genesis, which I'd been curious to play and was happy to notice at the con. I convinced some random guy to play with me. Unfortunately it took an annoying long time to sort the tiles, but then we enjoyed the actual play. It's clever and elegant.
Thus ended the, um, Genesis of my experience with Polish game cons. The first, but not the last for sure. I had a great time gaming, and also for me it was a good chance to practice my lame Polish while doing something I enjoy (boardgaming). Polish is a tough language, and I really have trouble understanding when people are speaking it, but the fun of gaming, and the genuinely friendly spirit of the people at Pionek, more than compensated for the language difficulty.
-
-
|
|
Posted Mon Dec 10, 2007 9:42 pm
Mesa
Arizona
Great list Russ!
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
Great list Russ!
No a2na potem powiedzała mi, że to powinno być "kultury", więc już poprawiłem.