|
David Ausloos
Belgium
Antwerp
-
ESSEN 2007: Newbie Report
Go ahead and shoot me. I live about 2 hours away from this brettspiel-nirvana and it took me 4 years to finally get myself to visit the
biggest boardgame fair in the world. What can I say, I'm a slow learner.
People have to really spell out "go to Essen" coupled with the words "regret" and "not" to make me take the plunge. Again shoot me.
I don't mind, I have a bullet-proof vest anyway.
I hooked up with fellow geek William Hunt to take the trip on friday.
The 2 hour drive passed quickly since we not only had a love for boardgaming in common but also shared some other passions: arthouse movies and jazz. And I thought the cinephile boardgamer was an extinct species. How foolish for me to think so. Hey, a man can learn right?
We arrived at Essen at 10:00 and lost a bleedin' 45 minuted actually finding the Messe. No, we do have a sense for direction before you begin to wonder. But quite frankly, for a fair that is amongst the biggest in the world what games are concerned, it sure was a surprise to drive around and only see minor signs here and there, spread redicoulsy all over the place with great distances in between. About 5000 sign passed us by for "Mamma Mia" the musical, only about 8 for Spiel. ABBA seems to be hot in the land of the beergardens, boardgames...not sure.
Anyway, just before 11:00 we entered the entrance and decided to start at Hall 12 and go downwards to 4. It was less crowded than I expected
and it was actually do-able to walk around without the need of my stick with a scorpion attached. Believe me, this device has worked wonders in conventions all over the world but Essen on friday was pleasantly crowded...dare I say cosy. Nowhere the nightmare I read in some reports.
First we dedided to go to the Hans im Glück stand and see what new titles they had on display. Some people were in the middle of a game of Oregon, an interesting looking exploration/area influence game that had a pleasant looking board (yes, I am a sucker for nice graphics)and an intruiging premise coupled with compact gameplay. Yet in the end I didn't snatch it up and have regretted it ever since. At 22 euro it was a nicely priced family game with more depth than the average crowd-pleaser.
Off to one of the bargain shops that was about the size of a small cafeteria in a Siberian refugee camp but it had interesting titles at
"are you kidding...this must be a misprint obviously" prices.
I snatched up a german edition of Fire and Axe for 19 euro, almost a third of the price I saw it in many local shops. At this point I already found the trip worth it. What a nice start!
We had to return to Belgium to avoid traffic jams at 16:00 so we sadly had no time to actually try out many games. I was charmed by the low-profile boot of Angelo Porazzi Games (please, don't ask me why, my street-cred is pretty much at stake here as it is) because a game caught my eye that looked like it borrowed alot from an old cheezy movie called "Rollerball". Yes you sneakish B-movie chaps, you know what I'm talking about: men in silly outfits and skates, rolling around in a deadly arena to snatch a metal ball. A macho rollerdisco if there ever was one. The game was called Scaraball and Angelo himself ancouraged us to sit down and have a go. It's a dexterity game in which you push carboard discs with the players printed on them (a team consists of 3 of these) over the surface of the board (depicting an arena), trying to get the ball (placed in the center at the start) to reach one of your opponents goals. Sounds fun? Hmmmmm...actually, I'm not quite sure what to think about this one. It did have a charm, but I wonder if it would be fun when played more than the 5 minutes we tried it. I would rate it a 5 for now, with a chance to upgrade to a 6 when the rules would be varied enough to balance off the simple dexterity mechanic.
At this point William was already looking at me with questioning eyes, but since Angelo had gone to such efforts to covince us this "was" a game I politely asked him to explain BOL, a title that looked like it was made by a 6-year old blind kid with a short attention-span. Which turned out to be not far from the truth ironicaly enough. The point of the game was that there was no point to it. "Yeah right?" I hear you say. No really, this was a game without purpose. You roll the die after declaring the number you were going to roll, move your pawn according to the result and decide the rules for the next turn. As a joke I proposed to "move backwards" the next turn. Every player had to vote if this was ok (take note Knizia!) and we started to move all backwards, away from what was supposed to be the finnish. In the following 3 turns we moved into what looked like an inner chamber on the board were a ball popped up that we needed to avoid(if this doesn't make sense...join the club) and finally, after a pointless turn of abstract nonsense we decided to leave the boot before we turned in our sanity. This was absolutely the worst game I ever played, which somehow is quite an accoplishment since I played candyland in the past. Which makes the following image of people playing BOL and actually seeming to enjoy it rather...exotic.
Makes me wonder how much rum-flavoured cappucino these folks needed from the Nescafé booth to get to this enthousiastic state. My guess: alot.
Aaah, Fantasy Flight. While I had set my mind on Starcraft It was Dust that caught my eye with it's Italian comic-style cover that radiated a pleasant epic feel full of drama (ok, I admit, it was the
chicks on the cover that did it here...how can a man resist the combo babes 'n bullet'). The fact I have this sweet nostalgia towards conquest-games (I was introduced into the hobby by some intense sessions of the dreaded Risk) I was sure to like it better than the
other game I had spotted next to it: Tannhauser, which after reading the rules left me a bit underwhelmed.
Opening the box at home I was pleasantly suprised to find 2 sets of rules: 1 standard version that creates a 2-hour game and a more
aggresive combat-drived 4-6 hour version with a bit more epic scope.
Interesting idea that I would like to see more games adapt.
It was a nice boot with lots of tables filled with folks playing Arkham horror and Runebound. Strangely enough the table that seemed to have a game of Starcraft going was deserted. I think they were searching for a larger table to fit all the 3000 components that barely fitted the current playsurface. And what a livingly sight those components were. It surely brought up the small boy in me with fierce conviction.
Brings us to the Z-man stand that strangely didn't had Duel in the Dark, number one on my whislist. When asked to the sales-person we got a glazy look and a vague yet polite reply we had a better chance snapping it up at the competition. Talking about marketing...these guys no how to sell their stuff...
it took us another hour until we finally found a copy at a smaller
shop. A new trend I noticed is that some of the titles I saw this year, including Duel in the Dark and Container (Valley Games) were printed on a type of paper that made the colours and contrast seem rather "washed out" as if you just bought a cheap dodgy asian bootleg.
Especialy in the case of Container (that is already using a subdued colour-sheme) this resulted in a rather greyish looking game.
Anyone else noticed this? it could also be a result of the toxic hotdog I had payed 3 euros for at a stand run buy 2 asian chicks (who desperatly needed to check their pricing and selection of buns: it tasted like cardboard, at least in sync with the games surrounding the stand).
It was time to meet Anders Fager at the UGG booth. anders had helped me alot in the editing of the rules of my own boardgame project and turned out to be just the kind of chap I expected him to be: dandy-ish, for a scandinavian talking in suprisingly posh enlgish and with the kind of charming black humour you expect form a guy that has made a game about Hell. the UGG booth was also one of the more original, covered in camouflage material which was very appropirate for a wargame-specialist. It was strange that other vendors didn't use more creativity to sell their thematic stuff.
Portal was next on the list with Neuroshima Hex that I pre-orderded to get the special Essen-edition with the extra army.
It turned out to be game that was even more interesting than I expected
since the components were rather flashy for an abstract and
the rules everything but too light.
Also a tip for other firms: take a look at the box this game comes in:
sturdy stuff that seems to be able to withstand a nuclear explosion.
For a smaller publisher both their booth and the quality of their products was very impressive. I predict if they can come up with more of these quality titles they will be big in no time.
After a last walk through the halls I snapped up a copy of
Seefarers of Caten for 10 euro (quite a nice bargain) and make it to the parking with enough games to fill the trunk.
William had also bought his share of bargains and Essen-releases so
we ended up filling it to the brink. If we had bought a few games more the car (a small rental) would had surely refused to bring us back home
and suffocated from the weight of so much cardboard and plastic.
In short: a wonderful day. I saw Stormtroopers with dirty helmets, Goths that looked like they were digged up from a grave from the nearby cemetery, japanese cosplay-girls in dodgy bunny suits and most of all a pleasently diverse audience of enthousiastic people sitting around tables trying out hundreds of interesting games.
If there ever is a place every boardgamer should go to, this is it.
And now I have to take care of the scars that the handles of 3 heavy-loaded plastic bags have caused on my fingers during a 10-minute walk from the convention to the parking-lot. These germans sure don't mind long walks.
-
Jerome
Netherlands
Eindhoven
-
Re: ESSEN 2007: or how I stopped worrying and love the game
Duel in the Dark has its own booth, where you can get all expansions as well (some so new they're not on the DitD-website yet!). Friedemann himself runs the booth, so it's a nice opportunity to meet the designer as well.
-
-
Re: ESSEN 2007: or how I stopped worrying and love the game
Nice report!
ausloosd wrote: A new trend I noticed is that some of the titles I saw this year, including Duel in the Dark and Container (Valley Games) were printed on a type of paper that made the colours and contrast seem rather "washed out" as if you just bought a cheap dodgy asian bootleg.
You aren't far off. Many games lately are printed at cheap printers in China with all sorts of problems (warping boards, washed out colors, missing text, misaligned graphics).
-
David Ausloos
Belgium
Antwerp
-
Re: ESSEN 2007: or how I stopped worrying and love the game
chinese printers...that explains alot 
-
"Kurosawa"
Belgium
Antwerp
-
I happen to know that 999 Games also prints a lot of their games in China nowadays and since I own a lot of their products I can assure they all seem of excellent quality, without any problems or cheap components. I guess it depends which company prints it. The washed out look of Container could be caused by Chinese printers but maybe we shouldn't look so far and the designer (rest in peace Mr. Delonge) intended the colors to be like that because he likes it. To be hones I didn'think that the graphics of Container looked bad at all although they were a bit bleak. I guess we shall never know the real reason.
-
-
>"Makes me wonder how much rum-flavoured cappucino these folks needed from the Nescafé booth to get to this enthousiastic state. My guess: alot."
Damn, swabby! First of all rum was already stored in me stomach, and second we had fun playing that game: and me say that's not exotic, it's just feel free to game, swabby!
Yo ho ho!
-
|
|
|
Posted Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:47 pm
