Convention Report: Essen 2006: October 18, 2006 - Part 3 (Setup Day)

By Rick Thornquist
October 18, 2006

Here is part three of my report from the Essen game fair for Wednesday, October 18th.  In this report I’ll talk about the games I played today.

On the Underground
Now before I tell you about my evening of games, I’ll have to step back for a moment.  I did play one game during the day while I was at the fair - that was On the Underground by JKLM Games and Rio Grande Games.  Unfortunately, I only got to play half the game (I had to run to the press conference), but I think I pretty much got the gist of it.

On the Underground is a rail game - in many ways similar to many other rail games out there.  The board is a map of the London Underground railway system and from what I understand the map and logo were actually licensed.  On the map there are a number of locations and between these locations there are spaces where you can lay track - similar to the way the Ticket to Ride board looks.

In our five player game, each player gets two different colors of track.  On a player’s turn he can lay four pieces of track, in both colors or just one color.  Once you lay a track of one color you must extend it, but with a little work you can branch it as well.  One way to get points is to connect to certain locations on the board or to connect two locations with a length of your track.

At the end of a player’s turn he moves the passenger - a token that starts on one of the cities.  There are a set of four cards that are turned face up that show which cities you may move to (with certain restrictions).  Whosever track you move over gets points.

At the end, whoever has the most points wins.

The game is quite similar to a many other train games out there - there’s nothing that is extraordinarily new here.  The game is medium weight and is fairly straightforward to play, with maybe a small demerit for the slight fiddlyness involved in moving the passenger.  I’ll really have to get a complete game under my belt before I pass full judgment on it, but my preliminary take is that we have a very nice medium weight rail game here with some good strategy.  I’m looking forward to trying it again.

Stepping forward to later in the day… After finishing posting the first part of today’s report it was time for dinner.  I met up with Henning Kropke, whose name may not be familiar to some gamers, but for those of us in the business he is quite well known.  He does a lot of work in the German gaming scene including helping develop games for various publishers, translating rules, and much more (you’ll see Henning’s name in the credits on many games from Phalanx, 2F-Spiele and others).

After dinner we headed to the Savoy hotel.  There are three hotels close to the Messe that are known as hangouts for the English speakers and the Savoy is one of them.  Folks like Alan Moon, Richard Borg, Greg Schloesser and many others stay there.  The Jung is the second hangout (the home of the Warfrog folks, among others) and the Arosa is the third (the home of Mayfair, as well as some others).  There is always gaming in these hotels after the fair closes for the day.

Side Note: I actually stay at another hotel altogether - the Hotel An der Gruga - which isn’t much of a hangout, but it does have the benefit of being the closest hotel to the Messe as well as having excellent Internet access.  It’s also quite close to the other hotels as well.

Upon arrival at the Savoy we ran into a gaggle of gamers who were already in the midst of dinner and games.  Henning and I grabbed Jeff DeBoer and Alan Moon and started a game of Justinian.

Justinian
Justinian is a new game from Phalanx Games designed by Alessandro Saragosa and Leo Colovini.  Now before you start getting all judgmental because the game was designed by Colovini, I should tell you that this is quite unlike other Colovini games.  His games are usually pretty easy to pick out but I never would have pegged this one as being one of his.

Justinian is in Phalanx’s big box game series and I do have to say they really did an excellent job with the production.  The way the board is constructed and the way it holds the pieces (difficult to explain, you really have to see it in person) is very good and the illustrations are excellent - very reminiscent of the period of the game.  Big kudos to artist Harald Lieske and graphic designer Lin Lutke-Glanemann as well as the rest of the team at Phalanx for a great production job.

In the game there are a number of counselors to emperor Justinian and they start the game on the board in a row - the least influential on the left and continuing to the most influential on the right.  Each counselor has a unique number and each player starts the game with a set of numbered cards with each card corresponding to a counselor.

The game plays in three phases.  In each of these phases there are a number of rounds where player take turns placing numbered influence tokens face down on the counselors (sort of like the betting round in Royal Turf).  The tokens run from -3 to +3.  At the end of a round the tokens are turned over and the tokens on each counselor are summed.  The sum indicates how many places the counselor moves to the right (if it’s positive) or to the left (if negative).  Moving right is good, moving left is bad.

The idea is that you are trying to influence the counselors that you have cards for in your hand to move to the right.  That’s because the farther to the right they are, the more points they are worth.  At the same time, you are trying to push other player’s counselors to the left (though you cannot quite be sure who has what counselors because the cards are secret).

At the end of a round, each player shows two of their cards and scores those two counselors.  The farther the counselors are to the right the more points you get.  After the three phases, whoever has the most points wins.

I’d characterize the game as a middle weight game that is mainly blind bidding.  There are some interesting choices to make, but you do have to pay attention to what others are doing and try to outguess how they are trying to influence the counselors.  I’m not a huge fan of blind bidding, but I did find the game interesting and enjoyable.

Gheos
My last game of the night was Gheos, designed by Rene Wiersma and published by Z-Man games. 

If I was asked for a quick characterization of Gheos, I’d say it was Carcassonne kicked up a notch, with much more interaction.  It’s a tile laying game where players take turns laying triangular tiles that have water and land, Contiguous land segments form continents and when a continent is formed, a player can create a civilization by putting a round marker of a certain color on it.  Each civilization has followers - wooden cubes of the same color - and when a civilization is formed, the forming player usually gets some of its followers.

Note that civilizations don’t belong to a particular player.  Any players can acquire followers for any civilization on the board.  Usually you are trying to get followers for the civilizations on the board that will score the most points.

You can place tiles that merge or split civilizations - this causes wars or migrations.  You usually do this to increase the scoring power of a civilization where you have many followers.  You can also do this to screw another player by reducing or eliminating a civilization where he is heavily invested in followers.

There are a number of ways to score - certain tiles score when drawn, others score when placed, and players have markers that score as well.  These all score in different ways.  At the end, whoever has the most points wins.

This is not a simple game - it’s a bit more involved than Carcassonne, though perhaps not much.  There is a slight learning curve at the beginning as players figure out all the symbols on the board and scoring methods.  We had it down before long, though, and I thought it played very nicely from that point on (though sometimes there may be a bit of analysis paralysis, your choices can be many).

I thought the game was very interesting.  There’s lots of strategy as to where to place your tiles, when to score, and when to start wars of migrations.  Those who like Carcassonne but are looking for something a little more involved with much more interaction should take a look at Gheos.  I liked it very much and am looking forward to my next play.

With that, it was time to head back to my hotel for some shut-eye.  Tomorrow is the first official day of the fair and you can be sure I’ll be playing lots of new games.  See you then!

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	Games played - On the Underground with Brian Yu, Patrick Korner, John Palagyi and Valerie Putman
	On the Underground
	Justinian with Henning Kropke, Jeff DeBoer and Alan Moon (orange tablecloth not included)
	Justinian
	Gheos with Torrey Johnson, Jeff DeBoer and Alan Moon
	Gheos

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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From the description, Justinian sounds a lot like Schrille Stille without the “CD player” to hide what is being voted for. Posted by Paul Sauberer on Oct 19, 2006 at 06:54 AM | #

Poor Colovini!  It’s like for a sizable segment of the hobby, you have to say, “This isn’t like his usual stuff” in order for them to even look at it!  Of course, introducing goal guessing and blind bidding into a game isn’t usually the way to inspire me to try something out! Posted by Larry Levy on Oct 19, 2006 at 09:46 AM | #

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