Convention Report: Essen 2006: October 22, 2006 (Day 4)

By Rick Thornquist
October 22, 2006

Here is my report from the fourth and last day of Essen 2006 - Sunday, October 22nd.

It was another crazy morning of getting up early, madly typing up the report for yesterday, and getting ready to go.  This time, though, I was checking out of the hotel so I had the extra job of packing up.

Packing up your games when leaving Essen is a bit of an art.  You have to maximize your luggage space because most people buy way more games than they can possibly fit in their luggage.  Packing becomes a ritual of trying to fit card games inside the boxes of smaller board games, fitting the smaller board games inside larger games, shuffling bits around to various boxes, etc.  Then you have to fit all the boxes in your luggage - it’s like a giant three dimensional Tetris puzzle. 

Making thing more difficult this year are the new weight restrictions on baggage, which are, on average, 20 pounds less per bag than they were last year.  This means having to go through a silly procedure of taking anything really heavy out of your checked baggage, which the airlines weigh, and putting it in your carry-on, which they don’t weigh (at least, not in the zillions of times I’ve ever flown).  I’m expecting to have a lot of game boards in my carry-on.

Fortunately for me, I’m staying an extra week here in Germany so I just needed to fit everything in my bags and not do any weight redistribution.  I had bought two huge suitcases before this trip and I was able to fit everything in - but just barely.

I then headed to the Messe.  Patrick Korner, Moritz Eggert and I had planned to meet up at the Queen booth before the show opened to play Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel.  We found each other, snagged a table, and played the game

Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel
Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel is Alhambra - The Dice Game.  As compared to The Gardens of Alhambra, which has absolutely nothing to do with the original Alhambra game, one can actually trace the linage of Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel back to the original game.

In Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel, instead of buying and placing building tiles, you roll a set of dice where each face shows one of six different colored buildings.  You can roll up to three times and after each roll you can set aside some of the dice, usually of one color.  After three rolls you choose which color of building you want to score and place a maker on the lower track of the board (see the picture below) based on the number of dice of that color you rolled.  You can stop rolling after your first or second roll if you want.  If you do, your marker gets placed slightly higher on the track.

In our three player game, each player gets to place five markers in turn.  Once all the markers have been placed it’s the end of the round and the markers score.  Whoever has the highest marker in each color (i.e. rolled the most dice of that color), gets to move another marker on the corresponding color on the upper track on the board.  Second place gets to do that as well.

After that, all the markers on the lower tracks are cleared and another round begins.  After the first, third and fifth rounds, the upper track markers score victory points.  Similar to Alhambra, only first place on the upper track scores victory points in the first round, first and second place score in the third round, and first, second and third score victory points in the fifth and final round.  After the fifth round, whoever has the most points wins.

What did I think of the game?  Not very much.  After the rules explanation I could tell I wasn’t going to like it and during the first round all of us were already starting to moan about the huge luck factor.  During the second round we sensed the barest glimmer of strategy but it all went downhill again as any of that strategy is completely overwhelmed by the huge amount of luck.  For the rest of the game we were in agony as the game continued to be a giant luckfest.  Sure enough, the player that won the game had rolled the best and the player that came in last rolled the worst.  Wow, what fun. 

The luck isn’t the only bad thing - let’s talk about downtime.  You don’t do anything on the other player’s turns so you are just sitting on your hands while the other players go.  Our game was with three players and the downtime wasn’t so bad, in true Queen fashion they have stretched the game to play with six - I can’t imagine the downtime with five or six players, it must be huge.  I could probably reshingle my roof in the time it took back to get to my turn.

Oh, and the dice cup that comes with the game stinks.  In more ways than one.  First of all, it’s not big enough for the dice if you slam it face down on the table.  Second of all, it smells bad - the smell is sort of like bad leather mixed with some kind of industrial solvent.

I have created a chart that shows my opinion of the game, on a scale of one to ten, over the five rounds of the game:

Lest people think I’m biased against games with dice… I’m not.  I think Can’t Stop is one of the most brilliant games ever and this year’s Yspahan uses dice and I think that game is quite good.  Those who like dice games and don’t mind a fair amount of downtime may like this one (right now Larry Levy is reading this thinking this may be the greatest game ever), but I didn’t like it at all.

After the heartbreak of Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel, Patrick and I did do a little shopping to pick up a few small last-minute items.  Buying games at Essen is an interesting experience and there are lots of factors that you have to take into consideration before buying.  If you’ve played a game and like it, great, you can buy it no problem.  If you haven’t played it you have to rely on the buzz from other people, plus things like the Fairplay poll where people rate the games that they have played during the fair.  The Fairplay poll’s reliability can be questionable sometimes but usually the best games rise to the top of the list and the worst games sink to the bottom.

Then there is the question of timing.  With small publisher’s games you often taken a flier on it early in the show because you’re hedging against the possibility of it selling out.  On the other hand, the bigger publishers usually have tons of stock and they are better bought on Sunday, when the dealers have discounted their prices to get rid of what they can before the fair closes.

I had most of the games I wanted already but I decided to also pick up Marcel-André Casasola Merkle’s cutout card game Julchen und die Monster plus a couple of Adlung games (you can always stuff a couple more Adlung games in your suitcase, no matter how full it is).

It was then lunchtime and Patrick Korner and I took advantage of the fancy restaurant in the Messe to relax.  Patrick generously volunteered to pay for lunch, though in truth that was only after I told him that I had run out of Euros.

I was planning to play a few more games but like yesterday the crowds conspired against me.  I did want to get in the new Hans im Glück game Taluva plus the Goldsieber game Die Säulen von Venedig, but the booths were just too crowded.  It was a bit less crowded than Saturday, but still crowded enough that getting a table was too much trouble.

I was told that some were going to be gaming at the nearby Savoy hotel in the afternoon so I headed there.  Unfortunately, none of the expected people were there, though Alan Moon was there waiting for an appointment to show up.  We took the opportunity to chat - Alan has lots of great war stories about the gaming business.  He should write a book.

I then headed back to the Messe.  It was getting towards the closing time of 6:00pm, so I made one last round of the convention.  I visited quite a few booths and said many goodbyes.  This is the hardest part of the show, knowing that it will be a whole year before seeing many of these great folks again.

After the show closed, Henning Kropke, who is hosting my extra week in Germany this year, and I gathered up our stuff and headed for the train station for our trip to Ascheberg, where Henning lives.  We arrived around 8:00pm and I quickly fell into bed for a very long and much needed sleep.

I’ll be posting a wrap-up of the convention either later today or tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	Pictures from around the fair - Hall 5 - The Game Master
	Splotter
	Pfifficus Spiele
	Fanpro
	Fanpro - Drachenjäger von Xorlosch
	Krimsus Krimskrams-Kiste
	Warfrog
	Argentum Verlag
	JKLM Games
	Some personalities from around the fair - Designer and Cartoonist Ted Alspach
	Designer Christophe Boelinger
	Geoff Brown and Designer Martin Wallace
	Games Played - Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel with Patrick Korner, observer Richard Sivél and Moritz Eggert (his face showing what he thinks about the game)
	Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel
	Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel Close-Up of the dice
	Some other pictures - A poster of the cover of Amyitis, the next game from Ystari Games
	An unusual set of signs pointed out to me by Patrick Korner - this was in a booth for a small publisher with their game Media Mogul (which I’d not heard of).  I have no idea what it means.
	Just as the fair was closing - the final standings of the Fairplay Poll

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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Comments:

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No, Rick, the Alhambra Dice Game didn’t sound too tempting.  The decisions didn’t seem very interesting from the rules.  I’ll give it a try if someone asks, but I’m not going to seek it out.  And I really don’t like games with downtime; that’s why I avoid playing Um Krone und Kragen with five, or your favorite, Pickomino, with five or more. Sleep well, sweet prince.  Thanks for another terrific set of reports.  It sounds like it was a memorable show.  I look forward to some interesting session reports from your stay at Henning’s. Posted by Larry Levy on Oct 23, 2006 at 08:22 AM | #

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