Convention Report: Essen 2007: October 19, 2007, Part 1 (Day 2)

By W. Eric Martin
October 20, 2007

Another day of Spiel, another four hours of sleep to keep you going through it…

One correction to start with: In Part 2 of the Thursday Day 1 report, I listed Rio Grande’s new titles and forgot to mention the long-awaited arrival of Race for the Galaxy, despite me actually buying a copy at the show! I was practically sleeping while I wrote that report and thought that I was writing Wednesday’s report for some reason, so I didn’t mention RftG as the game didn’t arrive until late that evening. The days are a blur.

The first stop of the day was with John Yianni, who was showing off his new title, Army of Frogs. This game matches the look and feel of Hive to some degree, as the players build an island of pieces turn-by-turn while trying to connect all of their frogs. The frogs are bakelite and add a lot to the visual appeal of the game.

More details on the game play: Players take one of the four colors and ten pieces of that color are mixed in a bag. You draw two pieces randomly to start. On a turn, you must move a piece of yours already on the board by jumping it over other pieces to move from one end of the line to the other; multiple jumps are possible as long as you follow two construction rules for the frog army. You then add one piece from your supply, which may or may not be your color, to the board and draw another frog from the bag. The first player to connect seven frogs of his color in one group wins; if more than seven of your frogs are on the board, you must connect them all.

Simple rules, pieces that are fun to touch, and a good storyline—those are the elements Yianni says he wants to bring together to make abstract games more appealing to a wider audience. You don’t want just black and white pieces, he says; you want to use something familiar to people like bees, frogs or rabbits. Rabbits, your raised eyebrow might ask? Yianni mentioned that he has other games in the works, so perhaps we’ll see some stylin’ bakelite bunnies down the road.

One item Yianni didn’t have on hand was the Mosquito expansion for Hive. The pieces were stuck in customs with no hope of them appearing in time for Spiel. After encountering one disappointed Hive fan after another, Yianni said that the Mosquitoes would likely be available for purchase in some manner, in addition to being available at future conventions, as their absence from Spiel ‘07 meant that lots of people wouldn’t have a chance to get them until next year—and 12 months is a long time to wait. Once more details are available, I’ll cover them on BGN.

While Spiel is hopping with casual gamers and families who have come to find holiday presents and something to play on the next vacation, dedicated gamers are also out in force—and with 150,000 visitors over the course of Spiel, you’ll often encounter items that you never would have seen otherwise. Take, for example, this custom-designed playing board for alea’s Louis XIV:

Steve Hughes loves Rüdiger Dorn’s game design, but the graphic design of the game—which requires you to pick up and flip game tiles multiple times—left him eager to find some way to facilitate the process. Since he couldn’t find something, he created the solution himself: a multi-layer acrylic gameboard that has thumbholes around the tiles and decks of cards so that you can push your finger in the hole to pop up the item for easier movement. Space for all of the pieces and tokens has been incorporated into the design, and a separate gameboard holds the three mission decks.

Hughes has created multiple gameboards, some with a matte finish, some with glossy (which reflects this author’s image in the photo above), and some in wood, which he says is a lot more work. He’s also created a board for Blue Moon City, which uses the same type of tile-constructed gameboard as Louis XIV. The boards take a ton of work, and friends traveling with him who had received copies as gifts marvelled at their beauty and functionality.

Alan Paull, from Surprised Stare Games, was showing off the company’s latest release, Tony Boydell’s Scandaroon, as well as arranging playtest games for his 2008 release Confucius. Here’s a description of the game from Paull:

The gameboard was huge, and Paull’s explanation of the game added layer on top of layer, making it sound like an intriguing, somewhat complex design. His intended release date is the UK Games Expo in June 2008.

Friedemann Friese has two new creations at Spiel ‘07: a new deck of power plant cards for Power Grid, and a small standalone game called Filou: Die Katze im Sack. The subtitle is something similar to the English expression “pig in a poke,” which refers to someone buying something without really knowing what they’re getting. Filou recreates this situation simply and ingeniously.

Each player starts with the same deck of ten cards: five friendly cats worth positive points, two mangy street cats worth negative points, two dogs, and one fuzzy bunny. Each round, you add one of your cards to a central lot. The first card in the lot is revealed, then players hold an auction to see who will buy the lot. When you pass, you take 2-6 coins off the table and add them to your holdings; at the same time, you reveal the next card in the lot, giving players more information about what’s in the bag.

Once all but one person has passed, the auction winner pays his loot, reveals all the cards, and sees what he gets. Dogs come in two sizes: If a small dog is in the lot, it chases away the cat with the lowest number, which could be a good thing if a feral cat is strutting around; if a large dog is present, it chases away the cat with the highest number; if two or more dogs are present, they go play with each other and leave the cats alone. Bunnies are just fuzzy.

The auction winner starts the next round, and your starting position affects which card you’ll play since it will be revealed before bidding starts. If your card won’t be revealed until later, perhaps even last, you can hide something juicy and use that information to give you an edge in the auction. One card from each player is removed at random at the start of the game, so you can’t know exactly what’s left in opponent’s hands.

The game is clever and fun, Maura’s artwork is appealingly goofy, and I romped to victory, so I can safely say that Filou is a masterwork.

While the multiple Messe halls hold hundreds of publisher booths, even more publishers can be found roaming around without a booth, looking at prototypes, finding publishing partners, and otherwise preparing for the future. Canadian publisher Filosofia was present, for example, and Sophie Gravel and Martin Bouchard were nice enough to spend a few minutes talking about the company’s publishing plans.

Over the past 18 months, Filosofia has released that same number of games, primarily French versions of the Kosmos Catan games, although Lost Cities, The Pillars of the Earth, Kahuna, and other titles have also appeared. With that body of work completed, the company is moving forward with its own publications, starting with a new version of Karsten Hartwig’s Chinatown, which now has a release date of Spring 2008 due to illustration delays. Filosofia is publishing a French version of the game, and English and German editions will appear through publishing partners.

Chinatown’s game design remains essentially the same, although it will be tweaked (with Hartwig’s involvement) in response to player comments in the eight years since the game’s initial appearance. The lottery-type aspect of the bonus cards, in which players can randomly score a bunch of points in the final rounds, are one of the affected elements.

The artwork and graphic design of the game is being handled by Mathieu Leyssenne, who did such fantastic work on Animalia and Jamaica. His cover design for Chinatown, which I saw in an in-progress version, is as lush and richly colored as everything else he’s done. The artwork on the shop tiles is similarly striking.

In addition to Chinatown, Filosofia is releasing new versions of Reiner Knizia’s Exxtra and Hart an der Grenze (retitled as No Problemo and appearing without the costly tin suitcases), both in a box size similar to that of Hans im Glück’s Ruse and Bruise. What’s more, Filosofia will also publish new versions of Dorn’s Traders of Genoa and Kramer and Ulrich’s Die Händler, both of which will receive designer-involved tweaking to incorporate years of player comments. These titles will also appear in separate French, English and German editions some time after Chinatown.

That’s a fabulous line-up of titles, and Bouchard and Gravel are understandably pleased and excited to show off their hard work. For those who have longed for a wider release of Chinatown, you won’t have to wait much longer…

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	John Yianni, an Army of Frogs, and an equally impressive army of boxes
	Greg Schloesser gets a lesson in Confucius from designer Alan Paull
	Most of a lot in Filou: a decent kitty, a bunny, and ??
	Martin Leathwood and son get a lesson in cat auctioning from Heli Barthen
	A new version of Tayu from Dutch publisher Goliath

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