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Convention Report: Origins 2006: June 30, 2006 (Day 2)
By Rick Thornquist
June 30, 2006
This morning was a little more rushed than usual - I woke up a little later than expected and then madly wrote up yesterday’s report so I could be at the Exhibit Hall by 9:00 - an hour before it opened. Origins has arranged it so the press gets into the Exhibit Hall a hour early on both on the first and second days and I wanted to take advantage of this. The early start gives us press people a chance to get some quiet time with the exhibitors before the mobs descend. I posted Part 2 of yeterday’s report and then ran down to the convention center.
Just as I was entering the Exhibit Hall, I ran into Mark Kaufmann of Days of Wonder. I took the opportunity to quiz him on what was going on with his company.
The Days of Wonder booth was featuring all of their games including their two newest releases - Cleopatra and the Memoir ‘44 Pacific Expansion. They also had their deluxe Shadows Over Camelot set on hand - an amazing miniatures version of the game (see a picture of it in our Day 1 - Part 1 report).
I wasn’t able to get any scoop from Mark on anything new, but I did get some updated release dates. The new version of Gang of Four is still on for July. The small Ticket to Ride expansion is still on for October (Essen). The ‘Bigfoot Game’ is also due in October (Essen).
The Memoir ‘44 Official Carrying Case has been moved to Late 2006 / Early 2007. The ‘Memoir ‘44 Updated Summary Card Deck’, which will come with the case and be available separately, will also be Late 2006 / Early 2007.
The expansions for Pirate’s Cove and Shadows Over Camelot are scheduled for 2007.
My next victim was Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande Games. The Rio Grande booth was featuring a selection of their newer games along with five newly released games - Funny Friends, Rum & Pirates, Aqua Romana, Toppo, and Thurn and Taxis. Jay has a huge number of games coming out in the next six months or so and I was able to get some scoop on some already announced games as well as some news ones. Here we go!
The El Grande Decennial edition is going to include the base games plus most, if not all, of existing expansions. Jay couldn’t remember if every single expansion is in there - I guess we’ll have to see. The Grandissimo expansion will be there, though, and some of the cards in that expansion are now tiles. The map has been changed a bit - it now includes Portugal’s name as well as an empty space for a scoreboard that can be filled by a mobile-type scoreboard if you are using that country. The box will be the same size as the base game and the cover art will be similar but will use a different background.
Gloria Mundi will be delayed until August due to component problems.
The cards in To Court the King will feature the same graphics as the German version of the game, but the section at the bottom that shows the dice combinations will be made larger.
The new version of Taj Mahal will be multilingual with English, German, French, and Dutch rules. It will be done by Abacusspiele in Germany, Ystari in France and White Goblin in Dutch. The new version of Medici will feature new art for the components inside the box which will match the cover art. Ship mats will be included. Shogun, the new Wallenstein game, will have minor rules changes from its predecessor as well as some minor changes to the cube tower.
John Silver has been removed from the Rio Grande production schedule - Jay has decided not to do the game.
The Friedemann Friese game Fiji will be available at Essen along with a dungeon game of Friedemann’s that he was showing at the Gathering of Friends.
The graphics for Race for the Galaxy are in progress right now. Jay says that this one won’t make it for Essen this year - it’s going to have to be pushed to next year. Also pushed to next year are Mystery Rummy: Bonnie and Clyde, Veritas, Credit Mobilier and Silver Mountain. The new version of Stephensons Rocket is a maybe for later this year. The ‘Puerto Rico Expansion’ is still in the hands of designer Andreas Seyfarth - there’s no further word on when it will be available.
New to us is a Peter Sarrett / Michael Adams game If Wishes Were Fishes. This is mainly a card game with a board and fish pieces. The idea is that you go fishing to catch fish in order to sell them. If you catch fish you can throw them back - throwing back fish gives you wishes, which are special powers. This one will be multilingual with English, German and French rules and Jay is hoping for an Essen release.
Jay is also working on a new Power Grid map (I was able to see the prototype). Jay is hoping for an Essen release for this one as well.
Also for Essen is Yspahan - the next game from Ystari. Jay describes the weight of this game being between Mykerinos and Caylus.
For those who can’t get enough Carcassonne, Jay is planning a Christmas edition of the game. What will be in that edition is not set in stone yet, but Jay says that it will be packaged in a metal box.
Talking about metal boxes, Jay is planning a new version of Tichu which is to come in a metal box. It will include just the one deck that everybody uses (some versions of the game come with two decks). This one is also to come at Christmas.
Rio Grande is going to do a new version of the Michael Schacht game Mogul, originally published by Schacht’s Spiele aus Timbuktu. This will be an expanded version of the game and should be available in Early 2007.
And lastly, some expansions. Jay is planning an expansion for Saint Petersburg which will expand the game to five players and add some other things. Jay is also planning to do the Jambo expansion that Rudiger Dorn recently announced - that will happen later in 2007.
Whew!
After interviewing Jay, it was time to finish writing up Part 3 or yesterday’s report and get it posted. I then wandered to the Board Room to see what was going on but was waylaid by my aching stomach which hadn’t had anything to digest all morning. I headed to the North Market to get some food and to relax for a few minutes. If you do come to Origins, make sure you check out the North Market - lots of great and varied food and much healthier than the stuff in the convention center. After finishing up it was time to head back to the Board Room to play some games.
My first game of the day was Recess - a new Morgan Dontanville game from Atlas Games. This game has a very cute theme - it’s recess time at school and the boys and girls are out in the schoolyard to play. Each player controls two boys and two girls and there are two nuns in the playground which are controlled by all players. Each player starts out with some money and the idea is to have the most money by the end of the game.
How do you get money? By getting your kids to beat up other kids! Basically, you move your kids around the schoolyard and when your kid moves into a space with another player’s kid, you start a fight and get some of their money. Be on the lookout for the nuns, though, because if one catches your kid he’ll be sent to detention and will be out of the game for a turn. You can’t start a fight within sight of the nuns and you can have a kid tell on other kids so a nun will head over and break up a fight.
The game ends when 30 turns are up or when a player gets one of his boys and one of his girls to meet up in a space for a kiss (out of sight of a nun, of course). Really, I’m not making this up!
While the whole aspect of having kids beat up other kids may seem offensive (as many have found in another Atlas Game - Lunch Money), this one is done in a fairly silly way and is more goofy than anything else.
The game can be a bit analysis prone and there is a timer so players won’t dawdle on their turns. The strategy part of the game is offset by the chaos - the moves of the other players can completely undo what you’ve done. I found the dichotomy of analysis and chaos to be a bit much for me - I just thought the game was okay. The theme is very strong, though, and that may attract people along with those who don’t mind the chaos in a game like this.
Eagle Games designer Glenn Drover is here and I spotted him when I entered the Board Room this morning. He had a prototype of Age of Empires III under his arm and was keen to get me into a game. I was more than happy to play - I had played a prototype at the New York Toy Fair and thought it was very good.
After a quick game of Bison, a group of us sat down to play. This prototype had the art for the board and the cards done, though we used cubes instead of the miniatures that will be included in the final version of the game.
A side note: Valerie Putman chided me for cheating on my Day 1 report and grabbing my description of Bison from my GAMA coverage. Well, I’m going to cheat again! Here’s a description of Age of Empires III from my New York Toy Fair coverage (note that since the Toy Fair Glenn dropped one game end bonus mechanic and has tuned the game somewhat):
| First off, Age of Empires III is a German style game through and through. This is not a conquest game - you are not going to be moving units and rolling battle dice. The game is more on the gamer game side of things - it’s not really complicated, but it is a bit more involved than, say, Ticket to Ride.
The basic premise of the game is you are sending your colonists out to colonize the new world, in this case represented by a map of North and South America divided into areas. Each area is worth a certain number of points at the end of the game and the player with the most colonists in an area scores that area. There are a number of other ways to score victory points as well. At the end, whoever has the most points wins. When Glenn first started describing the mechanics of each round, the resemblance to one game immediately came to my mind - Caylus. At the beginning of each round, each player gets five colonists to work with. On the board, beside the map, is a series of tracks each with a number of spaces. Each track corresponds to something you can have your colonist do - discovery (check out an undiscovered part of the board), colonize (move to a discovered part of the board), get goods (like fur, tobacco, etc), build buildings (which give you special powers), create special units like soldier and merchants, etc. Each player in turn plays one of his colonists onto a space until everyone is out of colonists. After this is done, each track is executed one by one and each colonist takes whatever action he chose. For example, if we are executing the colonize track, the player in space one will take his colonist and move it to the new world into a discovered area. Then the next player on the track does the same thing. Now up to here the game really does sound a lot like Caylus. At this point, though, the games diverge. The actions in Age of Empires III are quite different from Caylus (except for a turn order track) and area majority part of the game looms large over the game. One might be tempted to describe the game as an area majority game with a Caylus action selection mechanic, but I think that would be oversimplifying things - the game is much more than that. |
At the Toy Fair I said I thought the game was very good and this play just reinforced that - this is indeed a very good game, perhaps even bordering on great. There are lots of interesting strategies, lots of interesting interweaving mechanics, and lots of paths to victory. During this game I was completely engrossed and enjoyed the game tremendously.
Glenn told me that the game is now scheduled to come out in September. For me, Age of Empires III is a must buy.
After Age of Empires III, I had about a half hour before I was going to meet some people for dinner. I had time for a new game from Playroom Entertainment that I had just picked up - Knight of Charlemagne.
Knight of Charlemagne is a card game designed by Reiner Knizia and was actually originally published as Tabula Rasa. The game is not unlike Lost Cities or Schotten Totten. Some score tiles are set up in the middle of the table and players take turns placing cards on either side of the tiles. The cards can be played beside a score tile that either matches the number (for one set of tiles) or the color (for another set of tiles). When all the cards are played, each tile is resolved and whoever has the most cards beside a tile - ignoring the numbers on the cards - gets the tile. Each player adds up the numbers on his tiles and whoever has the most wins.
The game is very easy to learn and plays quickly. I played the game with two players and it indeed felt like playing a variant of Lost Cities or Schotten Totten. I’m not sure it’s as good as those two games, but I thought it was pretty good. The game does play with three or four players as well (four players with partners) and I’d like to have a few more games under my belt, including some with more players, before I render a final verdict.
After Knights of Charlemagne, it was dinner time. The fabulous Ted Cheatham had organized a dinner and a big group of us headed out to a restaurant across the street to eat and talk about games. Ted had his ever present tape recorder, which he had used during the day to interview some of the game publishers (I’ll be posting these interviews on Boardgame News as soon as Ted gets them edited and sent to me). Ted got us to pass the the tape recorder around the table and give our impressions of the convention. It was good to see everyone and I had a good time, though our food took its sweet time to arrive! Thanks to Ted for organizing the dinner.
After dinner, Valerie Putman and I set out for a game I had scheduled with Guido Teuber and Mayfair. We played a new Settlers game and while I’d love to tell you all about it, I’m afraid Guido has embargoed any description of the game until he’s cleared it with Kosmos. Sorry!
I can tell you is that it’s a new game based on Settlers. It’s designed by Klaus Teuber and will be published by Kosmos and Mayfair Games. I can also tell you that I thought it was a very interesting game and that I liked it a lot. When I get the go-ahead from Guido (perhaps mid next week) I’ll posted a detailed description of the game.
After finishing up the Settlers game, I headed back to the Board Room for a few minutes before heading to bed. It was midnight but the room was still hopping with quite a few people playing games.
I ran into Zev Shlasinger of Z-Man Games who was proudly showing off his newly won Origins Award for Parthenon - it had won in the Boardgame of the Year category. Congratulations to Zev and to designers Jason Hawkins and Andrew Parks. Zev told me the Traditional Card Game or Expansion of the Year was won by Gloom. Congratulations to designer Keith Baker and Atlas Games for that one.
After that is was time for bed. Stay tuned for more Origins coverage tomorrow!
| Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version | |
 | Games Played - Recess with Valerie Putman, Jeff Lee and David Patrick |
 | Recess |
 | The Recess box |
 | Age of Empires III with designer Glenn Drover, Richard Sullivan, Valerie Putman and Stan Sord |
 | The Age of Empires III prototype |
 | Knights of Charlemagne with Valerie Putman |
 | Knights of Charlemagne |
 | The Board Room at midnight - still going strong |
© 2006 Rick Thornquist
Posted by Rick Thornquist on Jul 1, 2006 at 07:34 AM in Special Features, Convention Reports, Convention Report: Origins 2006 / 3019
Comments:
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Great report, Rick. Lots of good information. The next time you see Mark, you can congratulate him for having Shadows over Camelot win a Meeples Choice Award. Of course, you may have to explain to him exactly what that is! It’s disappointing that Bonnie and Clyde and Race for the Galaxy won’t be produced until next year. Oh well, we’ve had to be patient with both titles, so I guess we can wait a little longer. Have you had a chance to see the new Funny Friends? If so, can you tell how severely it’s been bowdlerized from the original FFFF? Mogul is a fine game and deserves to be republished. I’m also a fan of Tabula Rasa (I think it’s considerably better than Lost Cities) and would recommend Knights of Charlemagne to fans of Schotten Totten/Battleline. Well, now you’ve got me interested in Age of Empires. But you know, it just won’t be as much fun if we can’t keep picking on the latest releases from Eagle games! I look forward to more good reports. Enjoy the gaming and all our mutual buddies! Posted by Larry Levy on Jul 1, 2006 at 10:11 AM | #
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Larry - I saw Funny Friends, but I didn’t play it (I have previously played the German version). Jay told me it really hasn’t changed that much from the German version - a little nudity has been covered up in the graphics and some of the cards have been changed to feature things more familiar to Americans - talking about baseball as opposed to soccer, for instance. Age of Empires III is indeed very good. - Rick Posted by Rick Thornquist on Jul 3, 2006 at 10:05 AM | #
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WOW that was close Rick!!! I believe we are playing on the new map for Power Grid in that picture behind Valerie. (Stop it all you “geeks” - there is nothing visible even if you blow it up to car sized!) It actually played really well with a few little twists. I anxiously await the final product. Posted by Scott Fisher on Jul 3, 2006 at 03:52 PM | #
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Scott - Wow, I should have thought of that when I was taking pictures! Next time I’ll keep in mind that there may be prototypes around. - Rick Posted by Rick Thornquist on Jul 3, 2006 at 04:35 PM | #
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Hmm, I will need to take a look at Recess. I have known lots of people (not hardcore gamers) who love playing Lunch Money based on the theme, but the game mechanics really didn’t do it for me (and I’m being generous here). It would be nice to have something where I could say “Like Lunch Money, but better!” Posted by Anye Mercy on Jul 5, 2006 at 03:22 PM | #
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