Convention Report: Essen 2007: October 18, 2007, Part 1 (Day 1)

By W. Eric Martin
October 18, 2007

After a few hours of sleep, I headed to Spiel for the proper opening of the convention. I had made an appointment to check out alea’s new release, but since Im Jahr des Drachen will appear in English before too long, I decided to cancel and head towards the booths of smaller publishers, those who I wouldn’t see except at Spiel. Thus, the first stop of the day was in the Cwali booth where Corné von Moorsel was still unpacking to prepare for the crowds.

Gipsy King is von Moorsel’s new game for Spiel ‘07, although a mostly similar two-player version of the game called Land of Lakes is available online at his Mastermoves.eu. Gipsy King keeps the same features of Land of Lakes—take turns placing caravans on spaces around numbered lakes, first in ascending order, then in descending, with a goal of claiming fish in lakes and creating large groups—but expands the game play up to five players.

I played Gipsy King three times in the evening, twice with two players and once with four. The game with two is slightly different from the online version as players can place a double-wide caravan twice in the final round, to enlarge their groups and try harder to nab fish. The game with four plays much differently as the consequences of passing your turn—that is, skipping your caravan placement in order to stay at the front of the turn order chart to claim something better later—are harder to determine. With two players, I pass, you’re forced to fill the empty space around the current lake, then I go again; with four, you can’t be sure of what people are going to do, so if you really want to grab a space, you might have pass early and keep passing for several rounds or just forget it and try for something else.

I had doubts about the game with more than two players, but the gameboard is larger, which extends the length of the game (although you’ll hit 30 minutes only with slowpokes and four+ players). You do face situations where you feel forced to claim a space so that someone else doesn’t score big, but the cost of giving up your spot in the turn order is sometimes too great to ask. Good dilemmas in a tight timeframe.

Buying Gipsy King nets you a free copy of Territories, an excellent abstract strategy game that is also online at Mastermoves.eu. The initial run of Factory Fun is almost sold out, and von Moorsel has announced that the next edition will undoubtedly cost more. If you want one, get it soon.

Czech Games Edition is stuck in a new addition to Spiel this year, a smattering of booths in a covered galleria outside Hall 4. Despite this out-of-the-way location, the company had tons of visitors, and League of Six was already picking up great praise from reviewers, including whispers of a possible second International Gamers Award for a Czech-designed game, following on the heels of Through the Ages. It’s too early to think about such things given the number of other games that remain to be played, but if you haven’t done so already, you might consider reading my first impression of League of Six to see how the game works.

Scribabs was showing Walter Obert’s Star System, a compact card game that features a unique take on deduction mechanisms. Each player has a hand of five actors, and ten more actors are laid in a row face-down. The actors specialize in one of four genres, and are divided equally between men and women. On each of the ten turns, players alternate choosing one of the four possible actions; the actions let you move actors in the face-down row or gain some information from these cards or from your opponent.

All four action cards have secondary actions as well, and these actions are carried out on the two action cards not chosen. Since some of these actions grant a benefit to the player closest to it, you might chose a somewhat less attractive action in the main phase just to keep me from getting a special action in the second half of the turn.

The cards are very attractive and well-designed, and the game system seems to be a fresh take on the deduction genre—although it still waits to be played, as do dozens of other titles. Next week maybe. Okay, how about November?

Michael Benkendorf from Spiellabor had fresh copies of Fackel+Keule, and the extended description of the game reminded me of Lookout Games’ DargonXXXXX, in which players play cards secretly and simultaneously, with the card types being added together to see whether a prey animal was taken down. Players score points from the animal—getting a share of the meat, as it were—based on how much they contributed to its demise. If the animal isn’t killed, the player with the most clubs gets to whack an opponent and take something, so as with other simulaneously play games, you have to devine the actions of the crowd and place yourself in the right position.

Despite spending an unbelievable amount of time on the preview, I ran across several companies that hadn’t been covered in the BGN Essen Preview. One such group is Bouken Adventure Planning Service, which is a Japanese company with perhaps the oddest name in the Messe. Its new title for 2007, Make You Gunfighters, felt somewhat like Bang! in that players shoot each other in a western-themed game for 3-7 players with the goal of surviving to the end. Naturally, there are some differences.

You have a hand of gunners hiding in various locations, and on a turn you can either scoot someone to a new location (by discarding and redrawing), use special cards, or shoot at someone by choosing a card in your hand and showing them. The other player must discard all matching cards, and once you’re out of cards, you’re out of the game. At €12.50 the game seemed worth a try, especially since I’m unlikely to find it elsewhere.

If nothing else, I should have Bouken covered in 2008…

The size and look of Edition du Matagot’s Utopia matches that of 2006’s Khronos by the same designers, and customer reaction seemed nearly as brisk. Matagot has set a great example of how to promote a game through its English and French websites that provide all sorts of iamges and information about the game. The company has even added an animated trailer for the game to go with the complete rules downloads in English, French and German.

Heinrich Glumpler seemed to have a hand in every pot as he was showing Sim Serim from Clemens Gerhard, Tschuk from 3-Hirn-Verlag, and Perry Rhodan from Kosmos. He gave an overview of Perry Rhodan, and concerns about the German text on the cards should disappear as the text is short and easy to understand for anyone who speaks “game German.” What’s more, Glumpler will add some kind of translation labels to his website in the near future.

Glumpler’s take on Perry Rhodan has players zipping back and forth between planets to deliver goods and earn moolah. The goods deck works somewhat like Tschuk, as the goods have a different value and planet of destination on each side.

More tomorrow—so tired…

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	Malcolm Braff and Sébastien Pauchon, co-designers (with Bruno Cathala) of Animalia and Jamaica
	Designer and BGN cartoonist Ted Alspach
	Paolo Vallerga of Scribabs
	A first look at Hystericoach Hockey, due out in December 2007 in North America and Europe
	Michael Beckendorf and Fackel & Keule
	Bouken Adventure Planning Service, with Make You Gunfighters designer Kondou Koushi
	Heinrich Glumpler, inviting me to take a trip

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