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Convention Report: Essen 2006: Postscript 1
By Rick Thornquist
October 26, 2006
This year I decided to spend an extra week in Germany after Essen. From Monday to Wednesday I got a chance to play some of the new releases with I didn’t get in during the show with my German host Henning Kropke. Here are some notes on the games.
The Monday after the show was mostly a day for relaxation. Henning’s living room looked like Christmas morning with games piled up all over and Henning and I spent most of the day going through punching out pieces and bagging everything. At one point we decided to take time out for a game - I chose Taluva.
Taluva is the new big box game from Hans im Glück designed by Marcel-Andre Casasola Merkle.
Taluva is a fairly easy to learn game that is mostly abstract. There are nice chunky tiles that are three hexagons big and players take turns placing tiles on the table. The tiles can go beside other tiles or on top of them - Java-like. After placing a tile you can place your pieces on the board. Your pieces are huts, temples and towers and each has to be placed in a specific way. Once you have played all of two types of pieces, you win the game. Alternatively, if the tiles run out, the player who has placed the most temples wins (ties broken by the most towers placed then huts).
There is one other thing - if in your turn you can’t place a piece, you automatically lose the game!
There are a few more wrinkles, but that’s the basic idea. This is mainly a thinky abstract game that is fairly easy to teach but can tricky to play. There is quite a bit of interaction as you can destroy other player’s huts by placing tiles on top of them (you may also want to do this to your own huts, for strategic reasons).
We played two two-player games and it wasn’t until the second game that I really began to understand the subtleties of the game. I’ll have to play it a few more tiles to see if it really has staying power - for now, I think it’s a fairly interesting abstract.
One more note about the game. I’ve heard from others that multiplayer games can have a kingmaking problem. Having played only two player games I can’t testify to that, but it sounds plausible.
On Tuesday I worked in two games - the first was the new game from Czech Board Games - Through the Ages.
Through the Ages is a civilization card game. The rulebook is twenty pages long and looks quite daunting, but they have subdivided the rules into a Simple Game which is a short game that teaches the basic game rules, the Advanced Game which adds more rules and is longer, and the Full Game which adds a couple of rules and is the longest. The rules are actually fairly wordy, but this was obviously in an effort to make them understandable and complete at the expense of brevity. Strangely omitted is a component manifest, but it ended up being not too much of a problem figuring out what was what.
I played a two player Simple Game. Each player starts with a small player board, which tracks your workers (yellow tokens) and your food / resources (blue tokens). There is no map - your civilization is made up of a number of cards that are played in your player area. At the beginning of the game you get a number of these cards to start and most of the cards start with workers on them enabling them to produce food, resources, or other things.
On your turn you get a certain number of actions. With each action you can do different things. One type of action is to take cards from the Card Row, which is a row of cards on a board. The ones at the lower end of the board take less actions to grab than the ones at the higher end (Showmanager style). There are quite a variety of cards - production technologies, building technologies, military technologies, governments, leaders, wonders, and action cards (in the Advanced Game there are many more).
You can use actions to play these cards in front of you as well, but you can’t usually use them until you allocate workers to them, which takes more actions. There are many other types of actions you can take to create more workers, build, upgrade or tear down things, play leaders and action cards, etc.
At the end of your turn you score science points and culture points. Science points you get from certain buildings, your Philosophy card at the beginning of the game, and Culture points you get from various cards. Science points you can use to create more advanced technologies - culture points are the victory points of the game.
There are four ages in the full game - in the Simple Game you play through the very short age of Antiquity and then finish at the end of the second age - the Middle Ages. Our game lasted a bit over an hour for the short game.
So how did it go? All in all, very well. The learning curve was a bit steep at the beginning but once we got over it I found the gameplay surprisingly smooth. There isn’t much interaction in the Simple Game, you are just trying to build up your own civilization as best you can. The Advanced Game really adds the meat of the game as well as the much more interactive elements (and goes to the end of the third age). The Full Game goes through all four ages.
I was quite pleased with my first game, which I found quite interesting, but the proof will be in the Advanced Game. I hope to get in a play of that soon.
My second game of Tuesday was a three player game of Die Säulen von Venedig, the new game from Goldsieber (Henning’s better half Angelika joined us). Goldsieber’s output has been erratic for the past few years, as has the sizes of their boxes. Kreta’s box was different from most (if not all) of their previous games and Die Säulen von Venedig has yet another box size - a big square Kosmos-like box.
Die Säulen von Venedig could be described as a medium-weight game that is probably a good family game but also may have enough meat there for gamers. In the game you are building pillars in a canal in Venice. The board is a grid that is water with the grand canal running through the middle.
Each player gets a hand of character cards and each character does a different thing (there are duplicates of a few of the major characters). One major character allows you to add pillars to the water and you can add a few of your player tokens to the top of some of the pillars. Another major character allows you to build buildings on the pillars. You get victory points for building buildings plus if you build on a pillar that has another player’s token on it, that player gets points as well. There are many other character cards that allow you to do many other special actions.
A round consists of each player choosing a character card from their hand, revealing simultaneously, and then taking their turn one at a time. The played cards are then passed to the left and another round begins. The game ends when all of the pillars are gone - whoever has the most victory points wins.
I actually thought the game was quite good. I’m not really a fan of the Adel Vefphlichtet style playing of the characters simultaneously while trying to outguess the other players, but I thought there was enough strategy otherwise to make a good game. The components are worth mentioning - they are quite nice. There is German on the character cards but I had the characters down pat by the middle of the game (without having a translation by my side). I hadn’t picked up this game at Essen, but I do like it enough that I may try to convince Henning to let me buy his copy.
Wednesday found me upping my game playing to four games. The first was Der Dieb von Bagdad, a new one from Queen Games.
While at Essen I heard some quite negative things about this one while I heard some positive things about the other Queen game Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel. My experience was exactly the opposite - I greatly disliked Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel but have found Der Dieb von Bagdad to be a pretty good light abstract game.
In Der Dieb von Bagdad the board shows six palaces. In each palace there is a pile of treasures. Each player gets a hand of cards which correspond to the palace colors (there are wild cards as well, but you have to pick them up). Spread among the palaces are some neutral guards. During a setup phase, each player in turn places his own guards among the palaces as well.
In a player turn, you can play as many cards as you want to do a number of actions. The main action is placing your own thieves on in the palaces. The trouble is you have to have one of your own guards in a palace to put a thief there. Also, the more neutral guards or guards of other players, the more cards you have to play to get your thief in there! You can use your cards to do other actions as well, move your own guard to another palace (dragging along one of your own thieves if you want), moving neutral guards, etc. At the end of your turn you draw three cards (if you don’t do anything you get an additional wild card).
The idea is the get a certain number of your thieves in a palace. Once you get that number you get one of the treasures. Once a player gets a certain number of treasures they win.
The game is fairly easy to explain, but does required some strategy to play. You have to use your cards carefully and you can do some pretty neat combination moves if you plan carefully. The only luck factor is that you may just not draw the cards that you need, but you can almost always make alternate plans.
I played a two player game and I found it to be quite interesting. It is abstract, but there is enough strategy to make for a good game. I would like to play it multiplayer to see how it works that way (it may be too chaotic and that may be why others like it). In the meantime, for two, I liked it.
My next game was a two player game of Haste Bock?, the new version of Shear Panic from Zoch.
The game is already familiar to many so I’ll just point out a few quick things about this version. Zoch has added a board which I think is a nice touch. They decided to dispense with the rules for keeping the flock together, which I think simplifies things somewhat. There are now action chips instead of a board on which you play tokens. I can’t enumerate all the other changes between the two games (I don’t have a copy of the original game handy) but besides what I’ve mentioned the game seems to be almost the same as the previous version.
There is a two player variant in the Zoch version, which is what we played. It adds a very simple way of adapting the game to two players and works very well. I always though the game was a nice little game - albeit a bit thinky at times - and Zoch has created a nice new version of the game.
My third game of the day was Tomahawk, a game designed by Bruno Faidutti and Bruno Cathala and published by Matagot. This is a two player game with a North American Indian theme.
In Tomahawk, each player gets a set of numbered cards plus some special cards. They each shuffle their own deck, put it face down, and draw eight cards. Between the players are four piles of territories - the top one of each pile is turned face-up making four territories to fight over. Each territory has a limit of 1, 2 or 3 cards and each is worth a certain number of victory points. Each territory can also be one of three different types of terrain - plains, forest and mountains.
Gameplay is simple. Each player plays one card face down on his side of each of the four territories. Most of them are then revealed (forests are not revealed until the territory is at its limit, more on that in a minute) and the corresponding cards compared. Higher cards beat lower cards and can win scalp tokens - each worth a victory point.
When the number of cards on each side of a territory equals its limit, the territory is evaluated. The cards on both players sides are added up and whoever has the most gets the territory and its victory points. Another territory is turned over in its place.
When the round is over the players get more cards and play continues until all the territories are gone and the players are out of cards. Whoever has the most victory points - territories plus scalps - wins the game.
My main problem with Tomahawk is that it’s just so much like so many other games where players play numbered cards and whoever has the highest sum gets the victory point card. I had the same complaint about the Amigo game Relikt - it’s just too unoriginal for me. The game works fine and has nice art but I already have a number of games like this. If you don’t, you might give the game a try because aside from the unoriginality, it’s a decent game.
My fourth and last game of the day was BattleLore. At the convention I played a demo game that had a bit of the magic and the lore part of the game - in this game I started with the first scenario which doesn’t have those things (I thought I’d start from the first scenario and work my way through them). Nothing really to report other than that I kicked Henning’s ass! Well, I actually barely beat him by one point, but hey, we were playing a German version of the game and I didn’t understand what half the cards did.
That’s it for now. Tomorrow I’m off for Helmarshausen, a gaming event that goes until Sunday. Internet access at the event is sketchy, so I’ll probably post one more postscript report sometime after I get back home next Monday.
See you then!
| Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version | |
 | Taluva |
 | Through the Ages - Score Board and Card Row |
 | Through the Ages - A Player area |
 | Die Säulen von Venedig |
 | Die Säulen von Venedig Close-Up |
 | Der Dieb von Bagdad |
 | Der Dieb von Bagdad Close-Up |
 | Haste Bock? |
 | Haste Bock? Sheep |
 | Haste Bock? Action Tokens |
 | Tomahawk |
 | BattleLore - Agincourt Scenario |
© 2006 Rick Thornquist
Posted by Rick Thornquist on Oct 26, 2006 at 02:43 AM in Special Features, Convention Reports, Convention Report: Essen 2006 / 3028
Comments:
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Rick was right in his comments on TALUVA (amongst others) to emphasise the difference between playing just two players and playing more. In TALUVA I found that (like with so many other games for more than two players) most of the time players were concentrating on their own game and ignoring what was going on around them. Then as the game approached the end everybody started to look around only to find that one player was close to victory. It was then up to one of the players to sacrifice their own move in order to prevent this. So it can be a case of either player D stopping player A from winning - and therefore probably giving the game to players B and C who have meanwhile been getting on with their own game. Or player D becoming Kingmaker. This doesn’t happen when just two play, of course. But, as I say, it isn’t a problem confined to just TALUVA. - Derek Posted by Derek Carver on Oct 26, 2006 at 04:24 AM | #
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Hi Rick do you know the difference between Haste Bock from Zuch and the Mayfair edition of Shear Panic ?
good play!
Posted by Andrea Liga Ligabue on Oct 26, 2006 at 07:22 AM | #
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I had the pleasure of playing The Thief of Bagdad several times in prototype form, when it was a map of Anatolia, the palaces were ports, the guards were ships and the thieves were cargo blocks used to construct buildings. I don’t think much as changed other than the theme.
I enjoyed all of my playings. It is much more a game of making the most of the op unities that present themselves when it is your turn (tactical card play) rather than long-term strategy (I played with 3, 4 and 5 player. I like the more original theme Queen gave to it and will be picking up a copy. Posted by Jeff Allers on Oct 26, 2006 at 07:36 AM | #
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I have the Mayfair edition, and just from the photos I can see that Haste Bock has a grid for the sheep to be on, and there isn’t a player board to use, rather you get tiles in Haste Bock that represent the moves you’re allowed. The mayfair edition does have some rules for 2 players though. Not sure if they’re the same as Haste Bock… Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Nov 4, 2006 at 05:12 PM | #
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