Convention Report: Essen 2006: Postscript 2

By Rick Thornquist
November 2, 2006

From Thursday to Sunday of my second week in Germany I had the great pleasure of attending a gaming event in the small town of Helmarshausen, in central Germany. 

This year the event took place the weekend after Essen and Henning Kröpke had invited me to stay the extra week so I could go.  After staying at Henning’s place from Monday to Wednesday, on Thursday morning we took off for the drive to central Germany.  I was quite surprised to see beautiful countryside the whole way, with green fields and rolling hills - I really had expected to see mostly cities.  I did ask about this and was told that had we driven in another direction, I would have seen the expected cities but in this part of the country the scenery was mostly rural.

Another surprise for me was the number of power-generating windmills in fields along the highway.  They dotted the landscape throughout the whole trip.  Now I have first hand experience seeing the wind power depicted in Power Grid.

When we got to Helmarshausen it was just as I had pictured it - a wonderfully picturesque group of houses surrounded by beautiful countryside.  The leaves on the trees were changing color and the weather was perfect - coolish with a bit of a breeze. 

(To see what the town looks like, check out this picture on German Wikipedia)

This event takes place twice a year, in the spring and in the fall, in a fairly large hostel on a hill just at the edge of the town.  In many ways this was a fairly typical gaming get-together - a group of people (I think about 60) , a pile of games, and open gaming all day and all night.  There were a few differences, though…

The main difference was the make-up of the group.  Most gaming events tend to be skewed towards males, but this event was pretty much 50 / 50.  That was a nice surprise for me - hey, the more females the better!

The organizers had implemented two great ideas that I hadn’t seen before.  First of all, they put up massive sheets of paper on one wall and every time someone played a game, they’d write the name of the game on the paper and then rate it (’--’ for bad games, ‘-’, ‘0’, ‘+’ and ‘++’ for great games).  By the second day of the event the wall was covered with games and ratings.  This was a great way of guiding people towards which games to try and which ones to avoid.

(For the record, the highest rated games were Die Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg, the new Adlung game that I bought but have yet to try, Space Dealer, Die Säulen der Erde and the party games Werewolf, Time’s Up and GiftTRAP.  Kosmos was notable for having some of the lowest rated games - Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod, Schrecklicht and Summertime all got hammered.)

The second great idea took place at the end of the event.  Everyone was gathered together and there were the usual speeches, but in addition everyone took their turn giving a short speech about their weekend and any gaming highlights.  Of course, for me this was all in German and quite ununderstandable, but there was lots of laughing and clapping as people remembered funny moments and talked about the joy of getting together and playing games.

Before I got to the event I did worry about the language barrier.  I really only speak ‘Game German’ (start spieler, spenden karten, etc) and though I’ve not had problems communicating at Essen before (most people speak English), I thought I may have a problem at a smaller event.  My worries turned out to be all for naught as most everyone spoke perfectly good English and were always kind enough to speak English while I was playing with them.

I played lots of and lots of games over the four days of the event.  Some were older, some were new Essen games that I had already played at the fair, and some were Essen games that I hadn’t played before.  For the rest of report plus one more postscript report I’m going to talk about the Essen games that I hadn’t played before.

Here are some games I played on Thursday:

Summertime
My first game of the event was Summertime, designed by Inka Brand and Markus Brand - a game in the two player game series from Kosmos, .  I’ve not thought much about some of the most recent offerings in this once heralded series of games - I thought Gone Fishing was a silly game with barely any strategy and we all know about the much reviled Crocodile Pool Party.  This game, while not as bad as those, is still not up to snuff (in my opinion).

The game consists of a set of square cards, each with a picture of some summer activity - swimming, sailing, etc - and have either a number or a multiplier on the card.  Three cards are turned up and players can buy these cards using a set of tokens.  Then, if they wish, they can play some cards on the table. 

The cards on the table are played in a grid.  Most cards have one or two smaller pictures on the card which refer to other cards.  The idea is that you can’t play the card on the table unless it’s beside the cards referred to in the smaller pictures.  When you place cards on the table you score for those cards - if you place cards with multipliers as well you can rake in more points.  At the end of the game whoever has the most points wins.

The game is fairly easy to teach, but tough to play.  The game can be fairly cerebral as you are constantly thinking which cards you need to place and where in order to get the most points.  It can also be very tough, if not impossible, to play a certain card because you simply can’t get it beside the other cards it needs to be beside.  The first play was frustrating for me as I had some of these cards that I simply could not place.  It struck me that many others disliked the game as well because of this.

However, I’d like to give the game one more chance.  I think that after a game or two if you got to know the cards better the game could be moderately enjoyable.  We’ll see.

Dart Wars
Dart Wars from Squale Games, designed by Pascal Reymond, is actually a cross between a Risk-like conquest game and, believe it or not, darts.  Yes, I said darts.  When I first wrote about this game in my Essen Preview I thought the concept was ridiculous but intriguing.  It is indeed ridiculous and intriguing, but it is also a very well designed and very fun game.

The board of Dart Wars is a rolled up rubber-like material that unrolls to reveal a world map.  The maps is divided into areas, Risk-like.  The map has a cord that is used to hang it on a wall.

The game comes with two sets of three darts.  These darts don’t have pins on the end, they have magnets - and quite strong ones to boot.  When you throw a dart at the board it sticks quite nicely and is easy to remove.

Players start by throwing a dart at a region.  This is their home region and they get three magnetic troop markers on it (little magnetic buttons).  Players then take turns throwing three darts each.  If you hit a country that is adjacent to a country you occupy, you can move into it.  If the country wasn’t conquered beforehand, you get an extra troop marker there.

If you move into a country that has enemy troops, combat occurs.  Combat is simplicity itself.  There is a small target of concentric circles at the bottom of the board and the attacker and the defender each throw a dart at it.  Whoever gets closest to the middle wins.  The loser loses a troop marker and the winner gets one.

The idea is to eventually conquer your opponents home regions.  When all but one of the player’s home regions are conquered, the remaining player wins.

The game is very easy to teach, lots of fun to play, and ridiculously original (at least to me).  I never would have thought that combining a wargame and darts would work, but it actually does and quite well.  I played a number of games over the course of the event and enjoyed every one.  This is the one game that I missed picking up at Essen that I now wished I had grabbed a copy. 

The Traders of Carthage
Another game I played on Thursday was The Traders of Carthage.  This game was designed by Susumu Kawasaki and was published by Kawasaki Factory (and was shown at Essen by Japon Brand).  The game is not quite a professional production - the boards and the cards are thinner cardstock and the rules look to be done on a color laser printer - but I thought the production was good enough.  The rules are in English and German.

In The Traders of Carthage you are buying up merchandise and selling it at overseas markets to make money.  It’s mainly a card game and the cards are goods of four colors and are numbered 1 to 5 (there’s lots of each).  The cards do double duty - in your hand they are used for money but when you buy them they go in front of you as merchandise in the ships.

Players start with three cards in their hand and then five are laid out on the table in what’s called the Market - these are the cards you can take as money or buy as merchandise.  There is also a small board with a track of six spaces, going from Alexandria to Carthage.  Four boat pieces (one in each of the card colors) are placed in Alexandria to start.

On your turn you can do one of three options.  First, you could take a card and put it in your hand, where it is worth face value as money.  Secondly, you could use your hand cards to buy all the cards in the Market - the sum of the cards that you pay has to be equal or more than the sum of the cards in the market.  You put the bought market cards in front of you - this is the merchandise you are shipping.  Each card that you buy moves the ship of the corresponding color one space along the track towards Carthage. Thirdly, you can put a token on a card to reserve it such that only you can take or buy it.

Play continues until a ship or ships reach Carthage.  When this happens any merchandise cards bought in those colors score points.  You’d better watch out, though, as any ships in the two spaces before Carthage are raided by pirates and any merchandise cards of these colors are lost (there is a way of saving them, if you are willing to sacrifice more cards).

After scoring, the ship or ships in Carthage are returned to Alexandria, and the pirated ships are moved back to Cyrenaica (two spaces after Alexandria).  Play then continues.  At the end of the game the player with the most points wins.

I found the game to be quite a nice little card game.  You have to know when to take cards for money and when to splurge and buy cards for merchandise - always keeping a eye on the location of the ships to see which ones are likely to score or be raided.  The game is middle weight but with some good strategy.  My first impression is quite positive and I’m very much looking forward to playing the game again.

I played many other games on Thursday, but the above were the only ones that I hadn’t played before.  Tomorrow I’ll post my final postscript report where I’ll talk about new games I played on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  See you then!

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	Summertime
	Dart Wars
	Dart Wars Close-Up
	The Traders of Carthage
	The Traders of Carthage Board Close-Up

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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Comments:

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Germany is a gorgeous country ... if you quickly get your keeter out of the industrialized Ruhr region (which, regrettably, is where Essen is located).  I’ve had the great pleasure of traveling there over a dozen times and consider it one of the most beautiful contries I’ve visited. Posted by Greg Schloesser on Nov 3, 2006 at 01:49 PM | #

Rick, Would love to see pictures of the Germany you got to experience.  We are headed to Zermatt, Switzerland for Christmas and I have been gearing up on the picture taking front… can’t wait to go. Posted by Ryan Bretsch on Nov 4, 2006 at 09:03 AM | #

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