Dale Yu: Essen 2008 - Request Policy and Preview of Constantinopolis

Well, things are getting exciting around here.  It’s almost time to start packing for Essen!  I’m As has become de rigeur, I am in the process of packing my bags with all the stuff to bring over to Europe.  Many of my friends over there take advantage of my empty bags on the way over to have stuff brought over from the States to Europe.  Thus far, the list includes:  domestic games (Heroscape and various Fantasy Flight games primarily), a fairly rare copy of “Lieber bayrisch sterben”, toys (American-only Playmobil playsets), camping clothes/gear from REI, 1950-60s DVDs of Hollywood musicals, a pallet of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and an iPod.  With one piece of luggage nested inside the other, at least I won’t be bringing over completely empty suitcases!

Sadly, the other rite of October is also taking place—I am in the process of systematically declining requests to bring things back from Essen (sixteen requests and counting).  I hate being put in this position as I’d love to be able to help all of my friends (or acquaintances), but I’ve found that my current policy is really the only “fair” policy for me.  In short, I won’t accept any requests to bring things back from Essen unless that person has done the same for me in the past or will be in a position to do a similar favor for me in the future.  Draconian?  Possibly.  But it’s my policy - I’m the one taking vacation time and spending my money to get to Europe.  I frankly don’t want to take the time and effort to do anything that isn’t for me as I’m only at the fair for three days (Thurs - Sat), and there often isn’t enough time for me to do all the things that I want to do.  So who makes the list?  Maybe 6 or 7 people.  However, the list is really only one or two people this year as the rest of the list is going to Essen themselves!

Even if I weren’t so self-centered about my vacation time (though I would expect that most of you would feel the same way on your vacation), there are still a number of reasons which make it necessary for me to have such a policy.  I’ll admit that the policy seems overly severe to someone that has never been to Essen, but I think that those who have been to Essen before would agree on at least some of the points below…

First, Given the current airline rules, it is even harder to accomodate other people’s requests than it has ever been.  The weight limits on bags are reduced - the 70lb bag is a thing of the past.  Sadly, I can’t even bring two bags home for free anymore… (This would be about the only time that I’m sad that I’m not an elite frequent flyer—I’m quite jealous of my friends who will be able to bring back three bags WITHOUT a weight limitation placed on any of those bags!) I don’t want to be put in a position where I’m having to hold back on my own purchases (games or otherwise) because I"m close to the weight allowance from other people’s games.  Moreover, I don’t want to have to cram stuff into my bags to make everything fit.  I’ve already had a few years where all the boxes were smashed because I tried to fit too many things into my bags.  I don’t like having my games squished… and I don’t want to bring back damaged stuff for other people either.

Second, there simply isn’t enough time for me to be able to accomodate everyone’s requests.  Though each request seems innocuous, they really add up.  Many of the requests require me to be at a particular place at a particular time.  These are the hardest on me because these time constraints really screw up my schedule.  Not only do I have to be somewhere at a particular time (when I might want to be somewhere else), I also have to be free for an hour or so before to make sure that I can be free to be where you might need me to be.  Thus, a single request can tie my schedule up for hours.  Additionally, there isn’t enough time as it is!  Last year, having only a very few favors to do, I didn’t have enough time to see everything that I wanted to see!  And, if I’m taking the vacation time and spending all the money to get there, I’m not keen on the idea of not even getting to do all the things that I want to do.

Third, not even “free” things are really free.  Even small expansions that have no cost still take time and effort to pick up.  Additionally, most “free” things/expansions are limited to one-per-person.  And, again, since I’m the one making the effort to get to Essen, I’m going to get all the freebies I can for myself first.  Even if I don’t have the game which has a free expansion, I’m still going to keep the freebie.  Going back to the not-enough-time argument, I’m not going to be willing to wait in line a second time for a freebie if they won’t give me two of them right off the bat.  Why am I keeping everything?  I might sell them later to defray the costs of the trip, but more likely, I think that these little things make great presents or prize table contributions, and I like to keep my gift-giving cupboard full of these things.

Fourth, given the global gaming market, most of the things that people want me to get for them at Essen can be had back home in someway without me bringing it back for you.  Hopefully, they will be things that can be purchased from online retailers or perhaps ordered directly from the publisher.  Yes, it’s true that the costs for these items (including shipping) can be quite high - as much as 100% more than the price at Essen - but you can still get those items.  Worst case scenario, you can try to get them from the secondary market—which these days is essentially Ebay.  Yes, the prices on eBay can be exorbitant - but again, you can still get them there.  If it’s too expensive for you, weigh the costs of paying extra for something from Funagain/eBay/whoever against a plane ticket, transportation, hotel costs, food costs and Spiel entry fee.

Finally, I don’t want to have to choose between my friends.  It’s easy enough to tell people I’ve never met before that I can’t help them out, but most of the people that ask me are my friends.  I don’t want to be put in a situation where I have to decide which friends will get my help and which ones won’t.  Thus, the only fair way that I can do it is to simply decline all requests.  And when I say I can’t do it, I’m not saying that I won’t do it.  In fact, I usually get extras of a few things while I’m in Essen and I send them on to the people that asked… But I don’t want anyone to rely on me to get something because I simply can’t (and don’t want to be able to) guarantee that I can fill those orders.  If there is something there that you really need, you better find someone else or some other way to get it.

Okay, enough about the somewhat depressing recap of my rules for requests… On to the game preview!

Constantinopolis
Designer: Giancarlo Fioretti
Publisher: Homo Ludens (and ?Fantasy Flight)
Ages: I’d say 12+
Time: around 2 hours

This is copied from the BGN Preview article for the game which ran initially in June 2007: “Constantinopolis takes places in the sixth century CE, when the city of Constantinople was the greatest trade center of the Byzantium Empire. Opportunities for commerce are expanding rapidly, and handling the export of local goods by sea to nearby cities is an ideal way for local entrepreneurs to increase their own riches. The players are entrepreneurs in the city of Constantinople, trying to use government functions to increase their own business activity and the production of assets in order to trade them away, sell them in Constantinople at markets, and ship them to other cities through fleets.”

After reading this little blurb, I was already quite excited about the game.  There was a slightly expanded entry in the BGN 2007 Essen preview, but sadly, the game was not ready for production by the fair, and I did not get a chance to see the prototype there last year.  The game again appears on the 2008 Essen Preview, though the text appears to be identical to that from the previous year’s edition.  I am still very interested in the game, perhaps even moreso as I’ve had a chance to play it once.  Fantasy Flight appears to be considering doing a domestic version of the game, and they have had their prototype copy for it available for play at conventions such as GenCon.  I was lucky enough to be able to play a game with the FF director of playtesting, Rob Kouba.

The game is a nice engine building / resource manipulation game.  It takes place over the course of 10 rounds, and the winner is the player with the most victory points at the end of the game.  Each round follows the same general template (which I’ll try to reconstruct from memory later on).  The board essentially is just a holding area for a number of different buildings.  Similar to Cuba (and dozens of other games), some of these buildings produce goods, some let you maniuplate goods, some let you convert goods into money and/or victory points, etc.  Each player also has their own player mat which holds their buildings, goods and money.  It also gives players a place to keep their ships.

The basic flow of the turn is as follows… First, a turn order is set up.  Each of the positions in turn order has a special ability that goes with it.  Starting with the current start player, each player gets to decide if he wants to stay in his current spot (and keep his current special power) or if he wants to switch.  If he wants to switch, he moves into another spot and an auction occurs for the spot.  The winner remains there and the loser can either take the vacated spot for free or move to a different spot to start another auction.  In many ways, this is similar to the mechanic seen in League of Six.  Once everyone has had a chance to move around and get settled in a spot, the round begins in earnest.

Then each player produces goods - and this is determined by which production buildings a player has bought up to that point.  The appropriate goods are collected and placed on the player mats.  Following that, the first buying phase occurs.  Going in turn order, players have the opportunity to do things.  Players may buy buildings from the board (using gold).  They may activate buildings they already own - which have varying effects.  They may trade with the market - where goods can be bought or sold for gold.  There are five different market tiles in the game, and these are randomly shuffled at the start of the game.  You go thru the stack twice over the course of the ten round game.  You can do these things in any order, and you may use the effect of a newly purchased building as soon as you buy it.  There are a few limits though - you can only use a building once in a turn, and you can only do any particular action at the market to the limits proscribed on the card.  (i.e. you can sell Red cubes once, you can buy Red cubes once, but you can’t sell Red cubes twice).  Additionally, you can only buy one of each type of building in a turn.

There isn’t enough space here for me to go over the buildings (nor can I remember all of the buildings!)—but here’s a general overview of them.  Red buildings are production buildings, and they make one or two cubes at the start of each round.  Yellow buildings are convertors—for instance, one building converts 2 green cubes into 5 gold.  Another building converts 2 black cubes into 10 gold and 1 VP.  Green buildings give special abilities such as improved rates for selling cubes at the market or discounts on future building purchases.  Purple buildings are straight victory point scoring buildings (and they are the most expensive!) Finally, grey buildings represent city walls.  Generally, these can only be purchased by the player who takes the “build city walls” action in the turn order auction.  The city wall buildings give some mild special abilities, but they also contribute to endgame scoring.

Once everyone has had a chance to do everything they want to do in the first buying phase, then shipping contracts are handed out.  In general, the number of shipping contracts that you get is related to the number of production buildings that you have bought: the more production buildings you have, the more cards you get.  These cards allow you to convert one or two goods into money and victory points.  In general, a player will get more for completing a contract than he will for converting them through a building on his player mat.

Now that people know what goods they need for shipping this round, there is another round where players can do stuff.  They can do everything that could have done in the first buying phase with the exception that buildings can no longer be purchased.  This is an important distinction because it forces players to have to make educated guesses / take risks in buying buildings when they aren’t quite sure yet about which cubes they’ll need at the end of the round.  Additionally, all buildings can only be activated once per game round, so you have to decide when the best time is to use those abilities.  As a result, our game developed a pattern where most players pretty much only bought buildings during the first buying phase.  They would activate only the buildings that they needed to activate in order to generate enough cash to buy the building they needed.  Then, in the second phase, when more detailed planning can be done, all of the other building activation and market trading would occur.

Once each player has taken their second buying phase, the game moves on to the shipping phase.  At the start of the game, each player gets one small boat which can ship up to two cubes worth of goods.  Earlier in the round, players had received their shipping contracts, and they have had a turn to try to manipulate those goods to match their contracts.  Contracts and their corresponding cubes are then placed in the harbor.  They will actually not score until the beginning of the next turn (after turn order has been decided) - so any money provided to you from the contracts will not help you in the turn order auctions as you will not yet have it.

So - there is a lot of mental gymnastics to be done at the end of each round.  You have to take all the cubes you have and then figure out what is the best way to maximize your points and money given your situation.  In general, if you score victory points, you get 1 VP per transaction.  There are some cards that only require you to ship one cube, and these are the best deals for VPs as you get 1 VP for 1 cube.  Otherwise, the cards and the converter buildings are mostly a wash as you usually turn in 2 cubes at each for 1 VP.  You do tend to receive more money via the shipping contract than the building, so that often causes you to ship cubes rather than convert them with your buildings.  However, the number of things you can ship each turn is limited (although you can always buy more ships provided the supply has not yet run out).  Also, if you ship, you do not get the money until after the next turn order auction.  So - if you think you’ll need the money sooner, you may need to take the less efficient deal of converting the cubes thru your buildings so that you have the cash on hand.  Finally, each market allows you to turn in one set (three-of-a-kind) for anywhere between 2 and 4 VPs.

This can take a fair amount of time, and in order to shorten the game length somewhat, we simultaneously figured out the rest of our turns after we received our contract cards.  We are able to do this as there is no longer competition for the buildings (as you can’t buy them in the second buying phase).  Even with that shortcut, the “figuring out” phase took between 5 and 7 minutes usually as people were activating buildings, buying and selling cubes, and then figuring out which set of transactions netted them the most VPs and money.

So, overall, it’s a fairly enjoyable game.  I think once players are comfortable with the many different buildings and their actions, the game will move along fairly quickly. After my one play, it doesn’t seem like there is a single “killer” strategy.  There are multiple ways to generate victory points, and given the multiple special actions (in the turn order and on some buildings), there are plenty of ways to generate an advantage at one or more of these methods.  When you look at it, in fact, most games will follow the same general course as the only thing that would change from game to game are the values on the market cards (as they are shuffled at the start of each set of 5 rounds).  Though, I’d certainly need to play it a few more times to get a really good feel for it, I think the game has enough promise to merit that further investigation.  I look forward to my next chance to play it, and I’ll be looking to see if it is available for play/purchase at Essen in a few weeks.

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

Editor’s note: Constantinopolis has been delayed until Nuremberg 2009. Sorry, Dale!

© 2008 Dale Yu

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Comments:

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I’ve stopped asking people to bring things back from Essen for the reasons you mentioned. Except for the person whom I brought back Roads & Boats for in 2000 - if he ever goes to Essen I will definitely be making requests of him. :) Posted by Dan Blum on Oct 8, 2008 at 04:24 PM | #

I limit Essen requests to my ‘main’ gaming group - i.e. the one that meets at my house. :) And even then the limit is 1-2 titles per person (2 if they’re small, 1 if they’re larger). Next year I might have to reconsider, as I’m nowhere near where I need to be to re-up my Elite status with Air Canada - making this the last year for a bit with the blessed 3 bags no restrictions scenario. :) pk Posted by Patrick Korner on Oct 8, 2008 at 07:46 PM | #

Patrick, trust me - when you’re trying to fit everything (including the clothes that you brought with you) into 2 bags with 50 lbs each, it ain’t pretty.  To top it off, I think that I have to pay $50 just to have my second bag put on the plane this year! Just read my first post-Essen article from last year to see the luggage gymnastics I had to go thru to get everything home. If you need it, I’ll have the hand scale in my hotel room as well as the transmogrifier to shrink down the oversized Matagot game so it fits in a luggage. dale Posted by Dale Yu on Oct 8, 2008 at 07:49 PM | #

You Americans and your problems ;-) I have each year the problem to fit all the games into the car. This year its station wagon year thus this chore should be gone finally :-) Klaus Posted by Klaus Knechtskern on Oct 9, 2008 at 01:02 AM | #

Yep. I think I would take my upcoming ski trip to Park City over a boardgame trip to Essen any day. Getting everyone over to play a game of “I’m the Boss” is always going to be fun.  Good times, good fun, a lot of laughing.  Boardgames are great for their intended purpose.  I love ‘em. But for me personally, I just don’t understand going abroad for and spending valuable vacation time on boardgames… year after year after year. Someone has to report on Essen, I suppose. Posted by Ryan B. on Oct 9, 2008 at 01:40 AM | #

Hi Dale I have played Constantinopolis several times since his first version and it is really a great gamers game. Really a lot of options and, as far as I can see, not a killer strategy. I was planning to post here a detailed review (I have played it several times and also in the almost final version) including also some nice graphics but since you have posted this long article and since the game publishing was delayed to Nuremberg I’ll post it later in the winter, when the Essen wave will going down. I also want to say that everything in the game is as much historical as possible and the designer has worked together with historian expert of the period Good play Liga Posted by Andrea Liga Ligabue on Oct 9, 2008 at 02:13 AM | #

Klaus - if I could drive to Essen, I’d definitely be bringing a lot of stuff home (for both myself and my friends!) Ryan - while I respect your opinion and your valuation of vacation time, I suppose our differences explain, in part, why I’m still a columnist on a boardgame site and you are not.  One other factor that you seem to have miss about my trip to Essen is that I get to travel to Europe and spend a week with many many friends who I only see once a year.  I’ve said it before, and I will repeat it here, that I’d still go to Essen even if I couldn’t buy any games there because of the good times I have there every year catching up with my friends. Liga - I look forward to seeing you again at Essen - perhaps we can get a game in together! Posted by Dale Yu on Oct 9, 2008 at 06:19 AM | #

Dale, Thanks for the explanation on your policy, but there really was no need to justify your policy.  It is completely and thoroughly understandable.  Have a great trip. I know I’ll be looking forward to your reports. Best, Craig Posted by Craig Massey on Oct 9, 2008 at 08:46 AM | #

Perfectly understandable. I spent 3 days at NAB in Vegas last year - and it was plenty time..but it was for work! If I were at Essen, I’d imagine there would be much I would want to play, buy, and fill up my luggage with...3 days would go like *snap* Speaking of bringing things back from Essen - there is someone on the geek offering to pick up postcard expansions for Agricola for those that want...and send them along for COST.  I believe he said it was roughly $2.20 US that needed to be paypaled. Find it if you’re interested. I am sure if you want “freebies” or “Essen only” you could find other willing folks that can send smaller things along...and have offered to do so. Posted by tom moughan on Oct 9, 2008 at 10:05 AM | #

I think your “policy” ultimately benefits all of your gaming friends back home, as they get the opportunity to try the new games you bring back without having to buy them.  Then, when they are available in the U.S. (sometimes in English versions, other times re-released from a bigger publisher), they can order them knowing that they already like them.  Nothing draconian there. All they need is just a little patience… Posted by Jeff Allers on Oct 9, 2008 at 10:29 AM | #

Dale, someone in Europe has asked you to bring a pallet of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?  Really? I don’t know whether to mourn the collapse of European Culture or smirk that we’ve finally brought them down to our level!  :-) Posted by Larry Levy on Oct 9, 2008 at 11:09 AM | #

Could be an American expat. Although, I am still mildly surprised - I thought it was fairly easy to get products like that in Western Europe these days, as there are stores that cater to expats. Posted by Dan Blum on Oct 9, 2008 at 11:11 AM | #

I have a friend who used to live on a houseboat in Hawaii.  He told me the Japanese tourists would bring home case after case of SPAM. Posted by Brett Myers on Oct 9, 2008 at 01:58 PM | #

Dale, Yea, you are probably right.  And seeing your friends at Essen does make some sense to me… as boardgames are about the people experience for me too.  (as opposed to solely the games themselves.) So I can’t argue against that point.  Plus you do have a job to do as a regular columnist. Anyway, I love getting everyone together for boardgames because it is an easy going social activity where everyone can have fun.  And I enjoy reading and writing about the hobby from a business perspective… which was why I wrote as a columnist.  I guess my point is that there’s just so much varied activities to do and different places to see… its gotta be tough to go to these conventions *every* year, doesn’t it? Posted by Ryan B. on Oct 9, 2008 at 09:59 PM | #

I missed this preview before.  Thanks for posting it.  It sounds like it falls into the same type of game as Puerto Rico, yet I never enjoyed PR as much as others for some reason.  I’m hoping this game does for me what PR could not. Posted by Jacob Lee on Dec 12, 2008 at 09:49 PM | #

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