Convention Report: Essen 2006: October 19, 2006 (Day 1)

By Rick Thornquist
October 19, 2006

Here’s my report from the first official day of the Essen game fair - Thursday, October 18th.  In today’s report I’ll talk about the fair as well as the games that I played.  I’ll also be sharing some very good news tidbits that I acquired in my travels.

After getting up my first call of duty was to write up and post part three of yesterday’s report.  I then headed downstairs for breakfast and ran into none other than Reiner Knizia.  I only had a few seconds to chat with him - hopefully we’ll cross paths again in the next few days and I’ll have a chance to talk with him a bit more.

I then packed up and headed to the fair.  Today was the day I decided to do some video coverage of the fair so not only I was toting my ever-present laptop and camera, but I had my video camera as well.  When I got to the Messe it was about an hour and a half before the show was to open, but there was already a fair number of people milling around the outside waiting to get in.  I took a little video of the outside of the Messe and then headed in.

Once in I thought I’d take a few shots of some booths that were now complete but empty and waiting for the oncoming storm.  I then claimed my seat for my first game of the day.

Notre Dame
Every since my first Essen three years ago, I’ve had a tradition - the first game I play on the first official day of the fair is the new Alea game.  This happened the first time I came to Essen and in the years since I’ve always made sure I was at the Alea booth first thing to get first crack at their newest game.

The game this time is Notre Dame, designed by Stefan Feld.  When I first received information about the game a few months ago, I noted that it was fairly low on the Alea complexity scale.  This indicated to me that Notre Dame was going to be more of a family game but it turns out that is not the case - this is a gamer game through and through.  The game we played was a prototype was near-final board and card art and prototype bits.  The game is to be introduced at Nuremberg and should be available sometime after that.

The board of Notre Dame is made up of a number of city district boards which meet at the middle where the Notre Dame cathedral is placed.  Each player plays on his own city district, but you do have a piece that can wander to other player’s districts.  A player’s district is made up of eight spaces, each with a building (see a picture of the board below). Each player has his own set of nine cards, each of which is an action that you can take on your turn.

To begin, each player shuffles their own cards and draws three.  You then keep one and pass the other two to your left.  You get two cards from the player on your right and again you keep one and pass the other.  At this end of this you’ll have three cards, one of which is yours and two others from other players.  At this point the cards are all yours - who they came from makes no difference.

Now each player in turn plays one card and does the card’s action.  This goes around twice.  After that you will discard your last card - it will not be used.

Most actions consist of placing cubes (people) into the spaces (buildings) in your district.  Each building gives you something - victory points, money, the ability to get more people, protection against rats (more on that in a minute) and more.  One action allows you to move a pawn of yours around the board to pick up victory point chips.

Once all the actions are done, there is a phase where players can pay to do a special action.  Then, it’s time for the rats!  Yes, every turn your district is going to be infested by a number of rats.  You can avoid them by placing your people in certain buildings or by using a special action, but if the rats get to be too much you get a plague which loses you people and victory points.

Play continues for a set number of rounds.  At the end the victory points are totted up and whoever has the most wins.

That’s a quick summation of the game - there’s a lot more to it than that.  I liked the game a lot - I thought it was very good.  For me, Notre Dame harkened back to the glory days of Alea when gamer games were their bread and butter and this is very much a gamer game.  As mentioned, this one is being introduced at Nuremberg next year and it is at the top of my ‘to buy’ list.

Walhalla
After Notre Dame it was time for something lighter, so Greg Schloesser, Ward Batty and I headed to the Amigo booth to try their new game Walhalla.

Walhalla is a medium weight board game about Vikings pillaging new territory.  The first thing that struck me about the game is the board - it’s basically a scoreboard with three long peninsulas extending from it, with space between each peninsula.  Each peninsula is divided into different types of spaces (see the picture below).

Each player starts with a set of Vikings.  On a player’s turn he takes a ship, which is a piece three spaces long, puts his Vikings on it (he may have to allow another player’s Viking to join him), and places it beside a peninsula.  The Vikings then disembark on the spaces on the peninsula beside them.  If someone else is already occupying the desired space the defending player decides whether to keep the space or retreat.

The spaces on the boards do different things.  Some give points right away, some give points later, some give special cards, etc.

Once all of the boats have been placed, each peninsula is checked.  Whoever has the most and second most Vikings on each peninsula gets points.  After that, the boats are cleared, players get new Vikings and a new round starts.  After three rounds the game is over and after a bonus scoring whoever has the most points wins.

There are a number of things I quite liked about the game.  The board and mechanisms for getting guys on the board is quite unique (at least to me) and there is some nice strategy as far as where to place your boats, which spaces to land on, when to defend a space and when to retreat, etc.  It’s not a simple family game but it’s not a deep gamer game either - it’s sort of on the cusp.  I actually thought it was quite good - I may just have to pick this one up.

Relikt
My next game was another Amigo game - this time it was the card game Relikt. 

In Relikt you are ostensibly playing treasure hunters searching for treasure, but the theme is practically non-existent (the rules even admit this).  During the game, a number of treasure cards are laid out, each worth different amount of points - most positive, some negative.  Players each have a color and there is a deck of numbered adventure cards that have cards of all the player colors.  Each player gets a hand of these cards to start.  Each player also gets a few special action cards.

Card play is simple.  You can play a special action card, which allows you do to special things, and then you play an adventure card beside one of the treasures (you may be playing adventure cards in your color or other player colors).  Once a certain number of adventure cards have been played beside a treasure it’s evaluated - whoever has highest sum of cards beside the treasure wins it (big surprise).  A new treasure is then put on the table.  When the treasures run out, players add up their treasures (there’s one twist - two of the same negative treasure count as a positive) and whoever has the most wins.

I do have to say that during the rules explanation, I was rolling my eyes.  The design is just so commonplace, I feel I’ve seen the same mechanics a million times before.  That’s not to say it’s a bad game, far from it - the game works fine as a light card game.  I just felt it was ridiculously unoriginal.  I’ll be giving it a pass - in my opinion there are so many other light card games that are better and more original (and many of these are from Amigo).

After Relikt, it was time to continue my video work.  I went from hall to hall videoing the various booths and goings on at the fair.  It’s sometimes tough to get good shots in a situation like this - there are lots of people around and getting a good shot without people getting in the way or getting bumped into can be a challenge.  I didn’t shoot everything at the fair - that would take days - but I think I did get enough to give people a good taste of what the fair is like.

After shooting the video I headed back to the hotel to edit and post it.  I’ve done this at a few conventions now and I’ve gotten pretty quick at editing and narrating the videos.  Fortunately, the software that I used - Microsoft Movie Maker - cooperated fairly well this time and only crashed once.  The narration went well too - I was happy with my first take and didn’t have to re-record it.

I did have problems uploading the video.  I did get it up to YouTube but couldn’t FTP a downloadable version to Boardgame News.  After countless fruitless tries I just posted the YouTube version - I hope to be able to get the downloadable version working later today or tomorrow.

After finishing up with the video, it was time to head back to the Messe.  I spent the next while taking pictures of the booths along with some of the personalities at the fair.  Today I took pictures of booths in the two biggest halls - 12 and 10 / 11.  I’ll post pictures of the other halls over the remaining days of the fair.

After finishing up with my pictures, it was time for another game.  I ran into Valerie Putman, John Palagyi and Brian Yu who I practically hadn’t seen since Tuesday.  The fair was going to close in an hour so we decided to head to the Amigo booth to see if we could scare up one last game.

Project Skyline
We found a free table with a copy of Project Skyline so we decided to give it a try.  Here’s my one word review: yeeesh.  Here’s my longer review:

Project Skyline is a simple boardgame where players are creating buildings and skyscrapers on a gridded board.  On your turn you roll two dice.  One die moves your pawn on a track outside the grid and the other moves a common piece - the architect - on the grid.  If your pawn ends up adjacent to another player’s building, you have to pay rent to the building’s owner (the bigger the building, the more money you have to pay).  Then you move the architect on the board and if it lands on a free space or on one of your buildings, you can build.  If your building is two levels or higher, you can move your building around the board and destroy another player’s building (they explain it that you are dismantling the other player’s bulding and moving yours to his location - but that’s obviously stretching the theme).

There is a bit more than that to it, but believe me, you’d rather not waste your time reading about it.  This is an almost complete luckfest and ridiculously chaotic to boot - there is a slight amount of strategy as to where you place your buildings, but most of the rest of it is complete silliness.  We endured the game for about half an hour before I declared I couldn’t take it any more and threw in the towel - much to the relief of the other players.  This game feels like the silly American games we used to endure before German games came along and saved us.  Needless to say, this one is not on my buy list and the only way I’d play it again is if someone threatened me with a red hot poker (nah, even if someone threatened me with a red hot poker I still wouldn’t play it).

After the silliness of Project Skyline the fair was closing so I headed back to the hotel for a little dinner and relaxation.  I struggled some more trying to upload the video, but it was all in vain - it just wouldn’t work.  I decided to give up on it and headed to the Savoy Hotel to see if there was any gaming action happening.

I arrived at the Savoy to find one section of the restaurant jammed with many of the usual gaming suspects.  I got some visiting in but it wasn’t long before a game of Factory Fun was suggested and I couldn’t resist taking part.

Factory Fun
I’m just going to give a quick description of this because I only got in a few turns.  It’s basically a simultaneous puzzle game where each player has a board where they place machines.  Each machine has colored inputs and output and you are trying to make a factory where the machines inputs and outputs match up correctly.  To do this, you can use various pipe and other contraptions. 

The turn consists of turning up four new machines (in a four player game) and then grabbing the one you want before someone else grabs it (that’s the extent of the interaction of the game).  Each player then tries to place the chosen machine on his board as best he can, perhaps using pipes and other contraptions to help.  The machine is worth a number of points for placing it, but if you have to use pipes and other things to make it fit, you lose points for that.  You can also get points later if the machines are connected efficiently.

After all the machines have been gone through the game ends and whoever has the most points wins.

As said, this is very much a simultaneous puzzle game and not a simple one, so you’d better prepare your brain if you want to play it.  I found it very cool - I liked the challenge of getting the machine’s inputs and outputs working correctly and getting the factory working efficiently.  It’s a fairly unique game and I’ll be picking up a copy tomorrow.

After playing a few turns of Factory Fun it became apparent that fatigue was hitting me like a brick wall, so I decided to head back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.  I had wanted to get in a playing of the new game Mr. Jack from Hurrican tonight, but that will have to wait for another day.

For those of you who have got this far, I have a news tidbits before I go.  First of all, Jay Tummelson told me that he is going to be publishing a new Karl-Heinz Schmiel game that is going to be introduced at Nuremberg.  This is huge news - Karl-Heinz is a legendary designer and a new game from him is an event.  He does have a prototype of the game here at the fair and it’s been getting great buzz.  I’m hoping to get in a game while I’m here.

Another piece of news - I was told by someone from Asmodée that the new version of Ave Caesar will be done by them and not Café Games.  It should be out at the beginning of November.  He also told me that Formula De is being reprinted and will be out in December.  He said that is a straight reprint and will be the last straight reprint done of the game - the authors are making some changes and a new version will likely come out next year.

That’s it for today - see you tomorrow!

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	Pictures from around the fair - Hall 12 - Kosmos
	Kosmos
	Days of Wonder
	Halls 10 and 11 - Adlung Spiele
	Ravensburger
	Mayfair Games
	Hans im Glück
	Moskito Spiele
	Alea
	2F-Spiele - Fürchterliche Feinde
	2F-Spiele - Fiji
	Amigo
	Clementoni
	Goldsieber
	Haba
	Schmidt Spiele
	Winning Moves
	Queen Games
	Queen Games
	Rio Grande Games
	Abacusspiele
	da Vinci Games
	Hurrican
	Ferti
	The crowds moving from Halls 10 and 11 to Hall 9
	Some personalities from around the fair - Designer Stefan Feld
	Designers Alan R. Moon and James Miller
	Designer Richard Borg
	Designer Karl-Heinz Schmiel
	Designer Michael Schacht
	Designer Dirk Henn
	Edwin Wong - Boardgame News International Correspondent from Malaysia
	Karl-Heinz Schmiel and Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande Games cooking up a nice surprise (see the report)
	Notre Dame with Ward Batty, James Miller, Greg Schloesser, Stefan Bruck of Alea, and Patrick Korner
	Notre Dame
	Notre Dame Close-Up - One of the player districts
	Walhalla with Greg Schloesser, our teacher Alexander, and Ward Batty
	Walhalla
	Relikt with Greg Schloesser and Ward Batty
	Relikt
	Project Skyline with Valerie Putman, our teacher, John Palagyi, and Brian Yu
	Project Skyline
	The Fairplay tote board at the end of the day

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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Comments:

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Great report, Rick.  I’m very happy to hear about Notre Dame; this now goes on top of my 2007 shopping list.  Despite a few missteps, Alea games continue to be the ones I anticipate most each year.  I *have* found that there seems to be little correlation between their listed complexity rating and their gamerliness (I think I just invented a word!).  Stefan is usually very good about providing quality without introducing too much complexity.  Or maybe he just doesn’t like scaring folks away with a high rating Walhalla also sounds interesting, so that’s a new one to consider.  I’d already pegged Factory Fun as one to try out. The reason Relikt may seem so hackneyed is that it’s a ten-year old design.  It’s a remake of one of Rudiger Dorn’s first published games, Ex & Hopp, which came out in 1996.  Having two negative cards cancel out is a new twist, but other than that, it’s probably the same game.  This may have gotten published on the strength of Dorn’s name.  Ah well, I still have hopes for his Die Baumeister von Arkadia. Posted by Larry Levy on Oct 20, 2006 at 08:46 AM | #

Just who is that guy plastered on the corner of the alea booth?  Seems like a little bit of Ravensburger imagery, but a bit out of place. Posted by Jeph Stahl on Oct 20, 2006 at 04:51 PM | #

Jeph - Funny you should mention the guy on the corner of the Alea booth… While we were playing Notre Dame, we were constantly teasing Stefan Bruck (the head of Alea) about the picture:  I told him it was just a picture of him in his younger years, but he insisted it was a branding thing that he had nothing to with (probably from Alea’s parent company Ravensburger). - Rick Posted by Rick Thornquist on Oct 23, 2006 at 09:29 AM | #

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