Dale Yu: Essen Preview Review Part Two and the First Puzzle

OK… Another disjointed two themed column.  Just one more reason why I’m not a technical writer by trade… Without further ado, let’s get to this week’s festivities!

BOARDGAMENEWS PUZZLE HUNT – PUZZLE #1 OUT OF ???

Here is the first weekly puzzle for you to try.  As you work on these puzzles, keep the following things in mind

1) The overall answer for the puzzle is usually a word or a phrase. 
2) The rules to the individual puzzles are often not going to be spelled out for you, part of the puzzle is figuring out what you need to do!
3) Most of the puzzles can be done using only your mind, a pencil and some rubbing together of your little gray cells.  However, many of these puzzles were meant to be done in the Gathering of Friends gameroom.  You will likely need to refer to an online source (such as the Gaming Cabinet, Brett and Board, the Westbank Gamers site, or maybe even BoardGameGeek.com) for assistance. 
4) If you get lost, don’t get frustrated…. Feel free to ask for hints at any time via email.  Mail me at BGNAdvisor@gmail.com for hints.
5) For the time being – I’ll keep track of scoring as follows… 50 points for a puzzle answer correctly sent to me by 11:59pm Tuesday night.  25 points for a puzzle answer sent to me before the next puzzle is posted.  10 points for a puzzle answer sent to me anytime after that.  If you need hints, some number of points will be deducted in return for the gracious help that I’ll offer.
6) There will be a prize for the person who does the best at this puzzle hunt.
7) If you were a member of the top three teams at the Gathering Puzzle Hunt – you are ineligible to win the prize.  Sorry, those are the (arbitrary) breaks
8) Feel free to work in teams, and you can turn your answers in as team as well.  However, I accept no responsibility for splitting up the prize(s).  That will be left up to you.  At the current moment, there is only one prize, and it would really suck if multiple people took different parts of it….
9) If there’s a tie at the end, there may be a puzzle-off…. Or I might just arbitrarily pick a winner.  Or maybe I’ll let you all Roshambeau for it.
10) These rules may change at any time at my whim, and they’re really only here in order to possibly minimize the whining when someone wins and someone loses.
11) I might add bonus points to the person who can first correctly read my mind and figure out what I’m giving as the first prize.  (A formal announcement of the prizes will be made at a later date once I find the appropriate prize, and see what can be gleaned from the BGN prize closet as well)
12) As I mentioned earlier, you’ll eventually need to get a map from AAA of Ohio and West Virginia.  I won’t tell you which puzzle you’ll need it for, but trust me, it will be essential for you to have this.  You’ll need the map to solve a puzzle that will be posted quite soon!  If you do not live the United States, I’m trying to see if it is possible to get these maps via mail order or some other way.  Contact me if you are doing this from far away, and we’ll see what we can do
13) This is the last rule – have fun!  Don’t get frustrated if you get stuck, ask for help – either from me or from someone else working on the puzzles!

The First Puzzle – PUZZLED TO RIDE

OK, so I just listed all these rules above, and this first puzzle breaks the rule…
The answer to this is simple.  I just need a list of the fourteen cities (in the right order).  THERE IS NO HIDDEN MESSAGE, so please don’t waste your time looking for it!

Puzzled To Ride

It appears that Kensington, while an avid game player and note taker, is not as adept at game recaps as his ludophiles would like.  All we have from his last game of Ticket To Ride are some scribbled notes (listed below).  Can you figure out what the route his little blue trains ran from start to finish?

1. I used all 45 of my trains.

2. I connected 14 cities and got 83 points from those 13 connections. 

3. There were no branches in my track.

4. I needed only two more trains to make a completely circular route.

5. The number of gray tracks out numbered the colored tracks.

6. I never drew any blue, black cards or wild cards.

7. None of my trains went to or through Atlanta, Houston, Portland, or Omaha

8. The number of 2 length tracks plus 3 length tracks equaled the number of 4 length tracks plus 6 length tracks.

9. I started in Canada and promptly went directly due south.

10. I only visited one city that starts with a vowel.

Good luck!  Remember, please direct all answers and hint requests to BGNAdvisor@gmail.com .  And though you won’t normally get any hints, if you’re stuck at work and you don’t have the TtR board burned in your memory, look here for a refresher… http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/38674

ESSEN PREVIEW REVIEW PART TWO

Now, here’s the second half of the games that I’ve found intriguing in the Essen Preview

Rattle Jungle
This looks to be a quick cute dexterity game that involves magnetized eggs.  I’d like to see how this works, but since Fantasy Flight will be making this one domestically, this will likely go on the Christmas list for the parents and inlaws to look at

Robotics
Based on the artwork and description, this looks like it might be a similar game to Factory Fun which I love.  I’ve not had the best luck with Pegasus games in the past, so this will definitely be a try-before-I-buy game

Chicago Poker
I do enjoy a good game of poker, and I do enjoy board games.  However, I’ve found that the two often do not mix well.  The poker-like mechanism in Card Football and Card Hockey seemed to be OK.  However, most other games that incorporate poker into the play just don’t seem to work for me.  I’ll definitely have to get a peek at this one because I know that my curiosity will force me to try to find that perfect mix of board game and poker play.

Rise of Nations
A big sweeping empire-building big box game?  That sentence alone makes it sound like the next Through the Ages!  To be honest, I don’t remember any other great Pro Ludo games in the past – but I do like a good empire-building game!  More details will hopefully be coming on this one soon

KeyHarvest
The next game in the Key Series from Richard Breese.  I like Richard’s designs as they are quite simple, though there is usually enough nastiness in the game to make it quite fun to play.  I’ve yet to be disappointed with the Key-games, and frankly, the collector in me would likely not let me leave Essen without having this one to sit on the shelves next to all of the other Key-games (and Aladdin’s Dragons)

El Capitan
This is a remake of the old Kramer game Tycoon with artwork done by Mike Doyle.  This is one that I’ll have to see first.  I do like Tycoon, but I still own it and it still makes it to the table occasionally.  I’m not sure if there will be enough difference to merit buying another copy of the game.  Additionally, I find some of the new art to actually be distracting.

Monastery
This new game from Ragnar Brothers sounds great… It involves tiles, and can be played individually or in partners… All it needs is a good tea-towel!  Unfortunately, it’s unclear whether the games will be ready for Essen or not – so I’m not getting my hopes up yet

Easy School
This is a game that has you playing the role of a college student trying to pass as many exams as possible… What?! Of course, this sounds just as awful as Ad Acta where you play the role of a desk jockey pushing paper around – and I love that game!  Based on theme alone, this one will have to be looked at.  Of course, I still think the easiest way to pass a college class is to wear revealing clothes in an attempt to seduce the teacher.  Well, at least it was when I was the TA….

Mexican Hold’Em Poker
From my friends at Repos, this looks to be a mechanism to set up a Dealer’s Choice poker night.  I’m not sure if there is much else to the game yet, so I’ll peek at this as I get in my yearly game of CashNGuns at their booth this year

Burger Joint
I’ll admit that I love Joe Huber’s games.  They always involve clever mechanisms and generally offer multiple paths to victory.  I have a number of his unpublished (or still in design process) games – Joe often leaves these on the prize table at some of the invitationals that we mutually attend – and I still haven’t found a game of his that I don’t enjoy.  This one is coming out by Rio Grande, so it will be saved for the parental “please don’t buy me Trivial Pursuit or Harry Potter Scene It list”!  Now if someone would print Sharecropper – everything would be right in the world

Civitas Hamburgum
I’m only considering this because of the “rondel” mechanism – but I’m not sure how many times one can go back to the well before the games start feeling derivative… At least Antike and Imperial had totally different feels to them…

Auf Achse (Revised)
A new version of this Kramer classic is set to be released.  I still get my copy of the original Auf Achse out to the table at least once a year.  I’ll be interested to see what the rules changes are, and if these changes can be made retroactive to the original version of the game! 

Kingsburg
This is supposed to be a resource management game (like Settlers) that doesn’t involve trading with other players or dice rolls to generate resources (unlike Settlers).  I’m quite interested in this because Settlers is still among my Top 10 games, but I have definitely had many frustrating games due to no 6s or 8s being rolled!  Of course, it’s being published by a relatively unknown Italian company and it is a maiden design, so I’ll hopefully get some morning-after feedback from the Mulheim boys before I have to make a decision on this one… (because I know that Alan How will not be able to resist buying this one out to try!)

Brass
This looks to be an engine building game by Martin Wallace… I’ve thought the past few Warfrog releases have been hit or miss for me, mostly due to the longer playtimes, but I’m very interested in seeing more about this one.

Winsome Games 2007 Threepack
I have a standing preorder for one of the 75 sets (hopefully it will be my traditional #69/75).  Each year there is a very limited release of these games, and I’ll admit that I buy them sight unseen because I’ve very much enjoyed these Winsome releases each year.  The components are frankly DTP at best, but the ideas in the games are quite good and many of them get played year after year.  I’m quite excited that there will be a revised version of Trainsport available as this has been one of my favorites from the older Winsome releases.

Pandemic
Let’s face it, I’m a doctor and this game is about finding cures to diseases.  This is a must-see for me based on theme alone.  Zev has done a great job of choosing games in the past few years, so I have high expectations of this one.

OK, back to work everyone.  There’s nothing more to see here… If you need to kill more time, go work on the puzzle!

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

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