Convention Report: Essen 2006: Postscript 3

By Rick Thornquist
November 3, 2006

Here is my last postscript report for Essen 2006.  In this report I talk about a number of new games I played from Friday to Sunday of my second week in Germany while at the Helmarshausen gaming event. 

Monstermaler
During the event I got a chance to play my first game of Monstermaler, a new game designed by the triumvirate of Friedemann Friese, Marcel-André Casasola Merkle, and Andrea Meyer. 

Monstermaler is a party game and is made up of a pad of printed paper.  In a game, each player takes a page from the pad which shows a generic cartoon of a person (see the picture below).  On the back of the page is a list of famous people - you can pick one of those (or choose your own) and write the name down on the back. 

The sheet is then folded in half vertically so you are then looking at the left side of the generic cartoon.  When someone yells go, everyone simultaneously draws the left side of their chosen person using the cartoon as a guide.  When everyone is done (and you have to be fast), the folded papers are passed to the left.

The player that now has the paper looks at the name that is now on the inside of the fold but is not allowed to look at what the player before him drew!  When someone yells go, he then draws the chosen person on the OTHER side of the folded page.  When everyone is done, scoring occurs.

To score, a player simply slaps the unfolded picture on the table which was half drawn by him and half drawn by the person before him (this makes for some hilariously goofy pictures).  Whoever guesses it gets points, though the points are really not that relevant - this is a silly party game.

The idea is wonderfully simple, plays quickly, and is a ridiculous amount of fun.  You don’t have to be a good artist to do well and I found that people can be incredibly creative in getting across who they are drawing.  You can play as many rounds as you want and with pretty much any number of players.  I kept requesting we play it again and again - it was that fun.  Everyone I played with loved it as well.  A highly recommended party game.

Note that you do get quite a few pages in the pad but you could eventually run out.  The pads are cheap though, less than 3 Euro, so it’s worth getting a couple to have a good supply.

Ur
Ur is a new game designed by Paolo Mori and published by Italian publisher What’s Your Game?. 

In Ur, the board is made up of a set of tiles laid out in a 6x6 grid representing Mesopotamia.  Players also start with a tile in their hand.  Next, players seed the board with three of their tokens representing their civilizations. 

The tiles do double-duty - they make up the board plus the tile in a player’s hand shows the actions he can take.  Each tile shows two different actions - a player can do both actions, just one action, or no actions.  If you give up actions you get to put more cubes on the board.

The colors of the actions represent expanding your civilization through agriculture, commerce, culture, politics and war.  In game terms, each of these involves of getting more cubes onto the board, moving them around, or eliminating other player’s cubes.  Most of the actions are not simple - they depend on what tiles you currently occupy on the board, what’s adjacent to them, etc.

Once you get five tokens on a tile you have to option of converting those to a ziggurat (a pyramid).  Ziggurats are not movable and cannot be destroyed.

When you’ve finished using the actions of the tile in your hand, you exchange it with an empty tile on the board.  The tile that you choose will indicate which actions you will be able to do on your next turn. 

When the game ends, players grab all the tiles on the board they occupy.  They make sets of these tiles according to the colors and get points for these sets.  Whoever has the most points wins.

This one has a fairly steep learning curve because of the involved actions you can take.  It’s also a bit difficult to play because of this - it’s a very cerebral game where you have lots of options and have to consider.  Also, you not only have to consider your current turn, but also your next turn (which is determined by the tile you pick up at the end of your current turn) not to mention considering what the other players are doing.  I thought the game interesting, though there may just be too many options to make the game move quick enough.  For sure it’s a brain burner, but I’ll have to try it once or twice more to render a final opinion.

Kabale und Hiebe
Kabale und Hiebe is a new small box game from Hans im Glück.  The game was designed by Lutz Stepponat (of Die Rückkehr der Helden / Return of the Heroes fame) and is to be available in English from Rio Grande Games under the title Ruse & Bruise.

In the game, each player gets a deck of influence cards, each with a number and most with some special power.  At the beginning of each round, a set of scoring cards are laid out face-up.  Each player gets a hand of three cards from his deck and the game begins. 

On his turn, a player plays a card and draws a card.  You play a card face down below one of the scoring cards.  If there is already a face-down card below that scoring card (of any player), that card is turned face-up.  If the turned-up cards has a special power, its power takes effect. 

A round ends when a certain number of cards have been played on each scoring card and then the scoring cards are distributed.  Basically, whoever has the highest sum of cards below a scoring card gets that card.  After a certain number of rounds, the player with the highest sum of scoring cards wins (including some bonuses).

As I reported in my first impression from the rules, this game has more than a passing resemblance to the Reiner Knizia game Dead Man’s Treasure, published by Playroom Entertainment (which was a new version of Der Schatz des Kapt’n Flint from Piatnik). 

The game is quite light and chaotic and with the special power cards I felt like I was playing a Bruno Faidutti game.  You are quite constrained by the three card hand and I never felt like I had much control over the outcome of the game.  The game also felt far too long for a chaotic light game.  I’d classify it as okay, but not much more than that.

R-ECO
In my wrap-up report on Essen I lamented that of all the games I played, I hadn’t found a really great card game.  Well, now I have.

R-ECO is another Japanese game and like The Traders of Carthage it was designed by Susumu Kawasaki and was published by Kawasaki Factory (and was shown at Essen by Japon Brand).  The rules are in English , German and Japanese.  The theme in this one is about recycling, but like most light card games the theme is pretty much irrelevant.

In the center of the table are place four disposal facility cards, of four different colors, representing the four different types of garbage in the game.  On each card is place a pile of reward cards, most worth positive points and one worth negative points. 

The other cards in the game are the garbage cards in each of the four colors (and each garbage card can have one or two symbols).  One side of each disposal facility card is called the Factory side - this is where player play cards.  The other side of the is the Dump side - this is where players will pick up cards.  The Dump side of each color begins with one garbage card from the deck.

Card play is simple.  On a player’s turn, they play as many garbage cards of one color as they want on the Factory side of the corresponding color.  They then pick up all the cards on the Dump side of the same color and add them to their hand.  Easy. 

You have to be careful, though, as your hand limit is five cards.  Go over that and any cards over five have to be discarded and each one counts against you at the end of the game!

If the number of garbage symbols on the color on the Factory side is four or more, you get the top reward card in that color’s pile.  The Factory cards are then discarded.  If the symbols are less than four, the cards just stay.  No matter what, the Dump side gets some more cards.

Play continues until one pile of reward cards is exhausted.  Players count up their reward cards but you only count reward cards if you have two or more of one color.  If you only have one of a color it counts as zero.

This is a very, very clever game that is quite well designed.  To me, it feels like Coloretto kicked up a notch.  It’s easy to teach, plays very quickly, and there’s lots of moaning and groaning as players try to figure out which cards to play and take.  The amount of control may be more of an illusion than reality, but the game is so darn much fun that it doesn’t really matter (to me, at least).  I found the game a ridiculous amount of fun as did practically everybody I played with.  In my opinion, it’s a very good filler game bordering on great, and one of the best fillers I’ve ever played.

With Traders of Carthage and R-ECO under his belt, designer Susumu Kawasaki is looking like someone we should be keeping our eyes on (and I am very much looking forward to playing another game of his - Gra Gra Company).

Santy Anno
The last new game I’m going to talk about is Santy Anno, designed by Alain Orban and published by Repos Production.  Repos scored big last year with the very original Ca$h’n Gun$ and Santy Anno is another quite original game.

In Santy Anno, players play pirates.  The table is set up with eight chairs (yes, you do need eight) and on the table in front of each chair is placed a tile depicting a pirate ship.  Each ship has a name on a faceplate, a number, and a picture of the ship with a coloured hull, sails and crows nest.

Then a row of cards is laid out in the middle of the table.  Each card shows something that indicates another ship in relation to the one you are at.  For example, one might show a ship’s hull which relates to another ship with the same hull colour as the one you’re at.  Another may show a letter which relates to another ship that starts with the same letter as the ship you’re at.

All players starts a round standing behind the chair next to one of the ships.  After the last card in the row has been revealed play starts.  All players play simultaneously.

The idea is that everybody goes through the cards one by one in their heads - mentally moving from one ship to the related ship as depicted on the card.  The first card moves you to one ship, the second moves you from that one to another, etc.  When you have gotten to the last card and think you know which ship you end up on, you run around the table and sit in the chair in front of your destination ship.  You then slap a marker in the middle of the table and the pile of markers which indicates the order people sat down.

Once everybody has at down, each player is resolved.  You, or another person, goes through all the steps on the cards to make sure you ended up on the right ship.  If you do, you get a coin - the players who sat down first get higher coin values than the slower ones.  If you ended up at the wrong ship you get nothing!  A number of rounds are played and whoever has the highest sum of coins wins.

The game is very unusual - half a very cerebral thinking game and half a silly party game.  I don’t think it’s for everyone but I do have to say that I played the game with a lot of people and practically everyone enjoyed it.  The period when everybody’s moves are being resolved is somewhat long, but I didn’t seen anyone really minding it.  Certainly it is unique and I think quite a good game.

And that was my experience with new games at the Helmarshausen gaming event.  I had a very fun time - thanks to Henning Kröpke for inviting me and to the organizers for getting it together.  Thanks as well to everyone there who made my experience so enjoyable.

I’ll have one more Essen item that I’ll be posting tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	Monstermaler
	Ur
	Kabale und Hiebe

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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It should be noted that there is an important rule omission in the English rules issued with UR (and also in the German as far as I can see). The rules should state that when using the War action a player must surrender an additional cube if the two tiles in question are different UNLESS THE ATTACK IS COMING FROM A WAR TILE.  (The section in capitals was omitted in the translation) A correction is on the Geek and also on DIGers Posted by Derek Carver on Nov 4, 2006 at 05:15 AM | #

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