I am associating myself with the comments of several other Essen attendees these days.  This crop just is not wearing well.

First is length.  Whatever pendulum on this subject exists in design, someone gave it a hard shove in the direction of longer.  Whether its Loyang, Dungeon Lords, Colonia or Shipyard, we seem to be playing longer games with familiar mechanics.  Not that this makes a game a failure, of course.  But if you have to commit more than 2 hours to a game, it needs to really shine.  It seems like too many designs this year took the two hour time frame as a casual committment.  Ordinarily a new Splotter release would stand out from the pack in terms of time committment, not this year. 

Second is complexity.  Naturally, this is related to the first concern, but it also has its distinct issues.  Frank Branham has declared the Euro game dead.  The complexity of this crop has me nodding my head a bit.  In part, I think European designers are trying to capture some of the narrative feel and story arch that is more prevalent in Ameritrash designs.  There efforts tend to involve more layers of interlocking mechanisms.  Colonia illustrates the problem perfectly in my book.  Essentially, we have taken the perfectly charming Alhambra, and added 3 more currency exchanges to it.  Ugh.  Sadly, this kind of complexity does not really satisfy in the same way complexity wedded to meaningful theme does.  It seems like complexity for complexity’s sake. 

Third is too much of a good thing.  If one rondel is good, 8 will be great?  If two currencies in a game is fun, 5 will be fantastic?  I am all for exploring where the edge of a mechanic may go, but it seemed like every designer was on this same wavelength at the same time. 

So, we end up with a lot of reports that “all the Essen games are good, but none great.” I’ll go one better.  All the Essen games are functional, but none is memorable.  Length and complexity are triggering an instinct in gamers that there must be layers worth exploring.  My guess is 9 months from now, we won’t be exploring much from this crop.

That’s not to say there is nothing worth playing.  Our crew really liked Endeavor and Peloppones.  I personally enjoyed Homesteaders and (much to my surprise) Hansa Teutonica.  But these games buck the length and complexity trend to offer other innovations.  To me, that elegance and novelty of mechanics is really what Eurogaming is all about.

If I want complexity and length, I have shelves full of really good wargames that will scratch that itch better.

Jason

In fairness to Thunderstone, Dominion has the same dysfunction problem. About 10-15% of games of Dominion I play are boring and/or dumb to due lousy card mixes, usually due to mis-priced or unbalanced cards (Pirate Ship is a huge offender in Seaside; until then, I thought Thief was pretty bad in terms of changing and severely narrowing gameplay). Once the Pirate Ship hits the table, 75+% of the other cards become irrelevant.

I liked Thunderstone. It is pretty close to Dominion, but I think it’s targeted at a whole different audience. The one I thing I do wonder about is whether there should be some mechanism to make sure a few weak monsters are the ones up front first. As it is a couple tough monsters in the front rank can gum up the game for a while. It doesn’t *break* the game per se, but it does make it somewhat less interesting.

Oh, and the other thing I found disappointing was that they didn’t improve the communication design more. Dominion was such a complete train wreck in this respect, clearly demonstrating how *not* to do it, and Thunderstone has improved things somewhat (no single lines of 6-point type in giant text boxes), but not enough.

I’ll have more to say about the games I played at the con in a day or two (suffice it to say that my impressions are somewhat rosier than Jason’s), but for now, let me make a couple of comments on Aaron’s fine summary.

Your group is really subjecting Tobago to heavy analysis?  I’m just not that sure how that can be done and I think I take the game more seriously than most (for example, I like to be the one who puts the final clue down for a treasure).  What kinds of calculations is your group performing?  And do you really think anything you’re doing can really overcome the inherant luck in the game (I myself have gotten insanely lucky with the treasure cards in my two games)?  When a game’s foundation rests on a fairly high luck base, I question subjecting it to too much analysis.  I like Tobago, but strictly as a middleweight.

Now for a blast from the past, based on one of your comments.  You call Princes of Florence an auction game for those who hate auctions, which is a good description.  But as someone who LOVES auctions, I’ve never understood the reason for the processional auction rules given in the game (first player must bid 200, the next bids 300 or passes, and so on).  It can’t be simplification; this is a very involved game and I can’t believe they would bother cutting corners here.  So can this procedure be manipulated by clever players?  When my group first played the game, the procedure struck me as so silly that (at my behest), we played it as a straight around-the-table auction, with players free to bid whatever they liked.  In more recent plays, my opponents have insisted on using the original rules, but I honestly don’t see the purpose of them.  The design is still one of my all-time favorites, but I was wondering if some of the game’s many fans could help me understand why they think the auction rules are the way they are.

Interesting summaries Aaron, thanks for the write-up.  I completely agree about Bunny Bunny, definitely seemed like a game with too much figuring for a game where players were sticking out their tongues and such.  My other issue was that most of the group ended up each round with the exact same configuration on their heads, which I suppose is inevitable but makes the game less interesting.

Also enjoyed the comments by Jason, Chris, and Larry.  Good point Jason about the trend for many games this year to stuff more into their games on the theory that more is better, definitely seemed to be the case with Colonia, and perhaps with Shipyard, although it worked more for me in Shipyard, but perhaps just because I enjoy rondels, and perhaps because the game just feels overwhelming at first and thus makes you think it’s worthwhile.  I certainly agree that complexity can trick us into thinking a game needs to be played a lot and is deep and thoughtful when at its heart it’s really not, but arriving at that conclusion for any given game after a single play is difficult, and giving each game sufficient plays is even more difficult, so it’s a conundrum.

I very much agree with Chris about the need for ordering the monsters in Thunderstone with a sorted shuffle like in Lowenherz or Tikal, for instance.  An A, B, and C deck of monsters that are shuffled and placed on top of each other would improve the game immensely in my mind as it would make the beginning more interesting with the decision of whether to fight or purchase, and the end more interesting as you’re actually using your improved deck to beat harder monsters.

Lastly, as Larry says, having played Tobago a few times now and with different groups, I can’t possibly imagine how it could be a game with “a ton of potential calculation.” I definitely wouldn’t want to play it like that, and I love other games that involve a ton of calculation, but this one is so random and light that it would be miserable for players attempting to calculate the incalculable.  I’m glad I didn’t end up in a game of Tobago with such players accidentally as it would have likely ruined this fine family game for me, then again that would have saved me the $35 that I’ll soon be spending on it…

Larry, here’s a conjecture about the Princes of Florence auction: maybe it’s so that if you know someone who wants what you want has 300 florins, you can’t open the bidding at 300 florins to screw him?  On the other hand, the rules say that money is hidden, so this is less likely to work anyway.  (I’ve always played with money public, not realizing that the rules said hidden until fairly recently.)

I don’t know, Doug, bidding 300 florins when that’s all you have sounds like good strategy to me.  Besides, you could always convert a Prestige Point if you really needed the cash.  But I guess that’s my problem with the rules as written:  they’re forcing me to act like an automaton when bidding instead of playing the game situation, like any other auction game.  No one else seems to have an issue with this, though; hence, my question.

re: PoF, I’ve always felt that the auction restrictions was just an add-in to keep the complexity down.  Possibly also to prevent easy overbidding, since the different objects have pretty wildly ranging values.  I doubt I’d object to playing with typical auction rules.

re: Thunderstone… well, there’s much I could say about it, (and maybe I will if I wind up with another chance or three to play it) but the short version is that I’m much more critical of games that are clearly trying to ‘fix’ another game.  The staging of monsters falls into the ‘easy fix’ category that I feel AEG developers -should- have caught.  We (as players) can easily modify the game, but…

As regards to the staying power of the Essen ‘09 crop?  No clue.  I’m fairly confident Dungeon Lords and Power Struggle will make the cut for some groups. 

Overall we need to remember that the board game market is in a huge boom [glut] right now.  Euro style games, as well as Wargames and Ameritrash all have 10x as many releases in the US as they did 5 years ago. It seems like Essen is almost a 40/60 split between US/EU companies.  More if you count co-productions.

The result?  More unmemorable games, and more games played to find the truly great ones.

I’m sad I missed Peloponnes, but will try to fix that one of these days.

Has anyone played MegaCorps (Zman/Costikyan)?  I haven’t heard much so I didn’t go out of my way to try it.

RE: Thunderstone and ‘fixing’ the monster staging.

Did everyone forget that you can attack a monster and ‘fail’ in your fight to send it back to the bottom of the dungeon deck?  This happens quite a bit in our games where it looks like one monster is going to be too tough and you would rather get rid of him than risk someone gaining all the VP’s and killing it before you do.

I grant that it is a bit of a spiteful ‘if I can’t have it no one can’ but I’ve rarely seen the dungeon stay stagnant for more than two trips round the table before someone decides that ditching the archdemon is a good idea