Dale Yu: My 2008 Great Lakes Games Experience or How I Got To Play All The New Essen Games
Each year, the highlight of my gaming travels is most definitely the pilgrimage to Essen. However, I usually don’t consider my trip to be over until I get to go to Great Lakes Games – a convention which traditionally occurs 1 to 3 weeks after Essen. Admittedly, the “tropical” climate of Fort Wayne, Indiana might leave a little to be desired – but it’s a good weekend of friends, fun, and time to play all the new Essen games!
This year was perhaps my most successful year in terms of playing the new games. I brought 20 Essen releases that I hadn’t yet played, and I was able to get 19 of those games played over the weekend! I honestly can’t remember the last time that I had managed to so many Essen games that I bought played before Thanksgiving!
Here is the list of games that I played and my general feelings about them
(*) – this game is new from Essen and was my first play
(+) – this game is new from Essen and I had played it before
Really Liked
Cities +
Dominion x 2 +
Diamonds Club *
Duck Dealer *
Imagination +
Le Havre *
Auburn, IN Kiwanis Holiday Loaf (OK – this isn’t really a game)
Liked
Amerigo *
Comuni *
Crash by Crash *
Fluch der Mumie x 2 *
Ghost Stories *
Mehr oder Weniger *
Name of the Rose *
Powerboats *
Steel Driver *
Via Romana +
Neutral
Bloom *
Byzanz *
Boss Kito *
GemBlo Pyramid x 2 +
Planet Steam *
Cavum *
Not My Cup of Tea
Lungarno *
Space Alert x 2 *
Jury is still out
Sylla *
[The only new game to me which was brought and not played was: After The Flood – and this is mainly because we couldn’t get the players together and committed for a three hour game during the weekend. Snow Tails and Krakow 1325AD were also brought, but I had already played those at Essen…]
So, as you can see – I managed to play 29 total games over the weekend and got in 25 Essen releases. Overall, this has to be the most successful weekend of Essen gaming that I’ve ever had! Admittedly, I haven’t had much chance to process the games yet as most of them only got one play – but here are my initial thoughts on some of those games. Please keep in mind that these are all initial impressions, and my feelings about them may change after I get a chance to play them again.
Cities (Emma) – a nice little combination of Carcassone and Take It Easy. Slightly more than a filler in weight, but comes in around 30 minutes (as long as you can keep Tony on task of placing his meeples). There are a number of different levels of complexity in the scoring rules. I’ve now played this a few times and I find that Level 2 is the right combination of elegance and challenge for me. One thing I might like to see (or do myself if I get around to it) is to print out a manifest of the tileset so that all players can easily see what tiles might be left for them to play.
Dominion – OK so I’m a bit attached to this one. It was a lot of fun being able to teach it to new players. I have a set that is sleeved (my future playtest set) as well as unsleeved. I must say that I prefer playing with the cards themselves as opposed to the sleeved ones. (And as always, please be aware that I am one of the developers of the game.) The game was in near constant play during the weekend, and the six copies on the prize table all went very quickly.
Diamonds Club – Choice 1a for my favorite game that was completely new to me. Others have compared it to Goa, but other than the designer being the same, it’s not much like Goa at all. Don’t get me wrong, there are some elements which are recycled – such as a variable set of tiles which the players choose their actions from… Diamonds Club is a meaty game with multiple paths to victory that fits in 45-60 minutes – what more could I want? My only complaint with the game might be the Sylvester Stallone lookalike guy on the cover – he kinda gives me the creeps.
Duck Dealer – Another good/great game from Splotter. This is another engine building game where you try to set yourself up with commodities to trade in for more advanced goods. It’s really really thinky – more so than a usual game as there are a limited number of action turns in the game. A frustrating aspect of the game is that you might be saving up your action chips in order to take a humongous turn, but if you wait too long, your plans could be dashed if someone takes a turn a bit earlier and beats you to the punch. While I really enjoyed the game, I might have an extra one for sale as there are two other copies in my game group… Contact me at BGNAdvisor at gmail dot com if you are interested.
Imagination – A light filler from Schmidt which has a bit of puzzle and a bit of speed. A card with colored spots is flipped over and players rush to mark the line on the card which they think will score the most points. Scoring is done by putting a mirror on the card and looking at the reflection as well as the exposed area of the card. It’s only meant for 4 players, but we tried to make it a 5 player game by adding an extra cube. It worked pretty well except that it’s really hard for 5 players to all have their hands around a 8cm square card to put their cubes on!
Le Havre – Choice 1b for my favorite new game of the weekend. This is kind of like the second coming of Agricola! Another long-range planning game where you have to choose from many different options each turn. Though I think that I still prefer Agricola to Le Havre, this scratches the same spot for me gaming-wise. I’m sure that I will be trying this a few times over Thanksgiving – possibly right after an Agricola game! And curse you, Michael Webb, for not letting me buy the boat named after me during the game. I never liked that stupid Montreal AoS board BTW.
Amerigo – This is a nice little card game by Din Li – the author of Hanging Gardens. The first game maybe went a bit too quickly as none of us realized how quickly the deck would be dealt out if we took long outbound expeditions. Essentially, each player is a trader who goes out to sea to explore and then comes back into the city and tries to sell his goods at the market for the highest prices. The scoring at the market is clever with the rarest good being the most valuable followed by the most common good being next most valuable. The whole idea of selling goods at the market is clever as is the timing needed to take best advantage of the market. Of all the filler/small card games at Essen, this is the one I most likely see hitting the table again.
Crash by Crash – This is one of the new releases from the folks at CBG. It is a two-player game (or two team game) where players try to score the most points in a wicked bumper car arena. Despite the cartoonish graphics, there is quite a nice tactical game within the box. There are two main ways to score – bumping your opponents cars out of the arena or triggering a score based on the locations of the bumper cars in the arena. My first game was a partnership game, and while it was enjoyable, I think that it will be much better as a 2-player only game as it will be much easier to control the overall strategy of your cars.
Fluch der Mumie – this is a really neat game for adults and older kids. One player is the mummy while the other players are explorers of the tomb. The explorers all sit on one side of the board while the mummy sits on the other. The game uses magnetic pieces so that the players can always see where the mummy is while the mummy cannot. The victory conditions of the game for the explorers are to collect 5 different treasures from the tomb. The mummy wins if he can capture (occupy the same space) as an explorer enough times in the game before one of them collects the treasures they need to win. I’ve only played it twice (once as a mummy and once as an explorer) – and I’m certainly looking forward to trying this one with my kids. I think that they’ll be more than capable of being the explorers, and possibly, they’ll be able to play as the mummy as well.
Auburn, IN Kiwanis Holiday Loaf – this is becoming one of the traditions of Great Lakes Games for me – the local Kiwanis holds their holiday fundraiser around the time of our convention each year, and they sell Holiday Loaves for $3. A holiday loaf is a yummy yummy pumpkin/spice bread loaf, and empiric testing has shown that one loaf is usually enough for one person to have a really nice breakfast and share the rest with his friends. As usual, I supported the local organization – this year purchasing 5 loaves to enjoy at GLG as well as to take home for family and friends. Yum-o!
Powerboats – A very nice racing game. There seems to be more control than you actually have though – our game was littered with broken powerboats as they rammed into each other, islands, buoys and anything else that could possibly get in their way. The race itself is a simple race around three buoys and back to a start/finish line. On each turn, you can decide to change your speed by possibly adding or removing one die from your current total. Once you decide on the number of dice, you then roll as many of the d3 (yes, that’s right – three sided dice) as you want. Any dice you choose not to re-roll keep whatever number they had last turn. Before you move, you may only make one 60-degree alteration in direction if you want, and then you have to move in a straight line the full number of your dice roll. It’s certainly a different Cwali game that the last few years, but still a very enjoyable race game.
Boss Kito – a typical Michael Schacht game. Very light with minimal control. Kinda like Coloretto but with gorillas. Cute game with excellent art. If you like Schacht games, you’ll probably like this one. If you don’t like Schacht games, well, it’s a Schacht game.
Byzanz – an interesting auction game. It’s exactly what you’d expect from an Amigo card game. It’s fairly good, but nothing here that sets it apart from the other 40 Amigo card games that I own in the same size box. I really don’t know why I keep buying games like this because they’re always decent, but generally not great. It’ll get played a few more times this winter and then it’ll end up in the drawer graveyard with all the other similarly sized Amigo games.
Gemblo Pyramid – I like the basic game much more than the advanced poker game. The basic game is more “mathy” relying upon simple addition to determine legal placements. The advanced game uses “four card” poker hands which is somehow less interesting. Also, I’ll likely not want to play this again with four players – there simply aren’t enough dice in the game to allow for a game long enough to be good.
Space Alert – a very interesting real-time sort-of-cooperative game where all the players involved try to save their spaceship from being destroyed. The planning part feels like RoboRally as everyone has to program in their actions. The re-play part of the game – where you work out the actions, enemies, etc – is neat the first time but seems a little long for what you get. I thought that it was a decent enough game, good enough to want to play it again, but I can not see this getting any playing time in my group as it just isn’t going to go over well with everyone…
Sylla – the jury is definitely out on this one… I was fairly frustrated in my one game of this because our game had an issue with the start player never moving as the player who got initial starting player kept taking the Senator cards and making it nearly impossible to be taken out of that place in turn order. Of course, I was the poor sap who ended up fourth in each round, and there were many times when it seemed like I didn’t have any real choices to make by the time an action came to me. That being said, I did the best I could and ended up finishing second by a few points – while I thought that I would have ended up much further behind due to the turn order thing. As such, I’ll have to play it again and see whether it’s a problem or not. Many of my trusted friends have had very positive experiences with the game, so I’m hoping that it was just a first game thing…
Crazy Dale’s Bazaar
Well it’s that time again… Time to make room for the new Essen games and send out some well-loved used games.
As usual, I’m always open to deals, esp. for multiple games.
If you’re interested, contact me at BGNAdvisor at gmail.com
$25 Abenteuer Tierwelt Ravensburger
$40 Age of Empires III Tropical
$5 Alphablitz WotC
$20 AoS: Moon (old) AoS Team
$15 Aqua Romana Queen
$15 Arche Opti Mix (Ark) Doris and Frank
$8 Arriba! Gold Sieber
$15 Atilla Hans im Gluck
$10 Atta Ants Realm of Fantasy
$10 Badaboom Gigantoskop
$10 Bali Kosmos
$40 Barbarossa ASS
$20 Battledome Parker Bros
$5 Bayard Bayard
$5 "Birds, Bugs and Beans" R&R
$5 Blockhead Parker Bros
$10 Bobbin’ Bumblebee MEGA
$5 Bongo Heidelberger
$10 Bumparena Cranium
$10 Carrousel Asmodee
$20 Chamelequin R&D
$20 Chang Cheng Tenki
$5 Channel Surfing MB
$35 Container Valley
$40 Corsar/Thor/Delphi set of 3 games! Heidelberger
$10 Coup d’Etat MB
$10 Crossword Pyramids CardChess
$25 Das Ende des Triumvirats Lookout
$8 Das Hornberger Schliessen Zoch
$5 Deception Lowe
$10 Der Zerstrute Pharao Ravensburger
$25 Destination London RTL
$5 Diceland: OGRE Cheapass
$5 Diceland: Space Garthians Cheapass
$15 die Brucken der Shangri-La Kosmos
$7 Die Weinhandler Amigo
$10 die Wilden Kerle Fussball Amigo
$8 Dobbeldwergen Selecta
$6 Don Queen
$10 Doubles Wild ?
$5 Duel Master: Challenge of the Magi book Armada
$5 Earthquake WotC
$5 Einfach Tierisch! Amigo
$5 Electro Junior Jumbo
$10 Ellery Queen’s Game Mayfair
$8 Eureka Ravensburger
$15 Evergreen Rio Grande
$25 Fabulantis Selecta
$10 Fence LJS
$5 Fiasko Ravensburger
$10 Finale Kosmos
$10 Finance Parker Bros
$8 Freche Frosche Queen
$40 Fubi Fubi
$10 Full Time Lambourne
$15 "Garten des Sonnenkonigs, der" Noris
$15 Glucks-Kafer-Baum KiKa
$30 Graenaland Altar
$5 Greed Waddingtons
$20 Guatemala Cafe Rio Grande
$666 Head to Head Golf Omni
$15 Heart of Africa Phalanx
$20 Hermagor Mind the Move
$5 Herr die Ringe: die Gefahrten Ravensburger
$5 Hot Wheels Acceleracers CCG Mattel
$5 Inkognito the Card Game Fantasy Flight
$5 Jitters MB
$5 Jitters MB
$20 Journey Through Europe Ravensburger
$30 Khronos Matagot
$20 "Kohle, Kie$, Knete" Schmidt
$25 Konig Salomon’s Schatzkammer Clementoni
$20 Kontor Gold Sieber
$5 Landlord Amigo
$30 Landslide Parker Bros
$10 Lie Cheat and Steal Reiss
$5 Lie Detector Pressman
$6 Liftoff Queen
$5 Limits Amigo
$15 Little Italy Playroom
$3 Loopino Adlung
$5 Magica Selecta
$20 Magical Athlete Grimpeur
$6 Mamma Mia! Amigo
$15 Marblehead IDEAL
$5 Megaman NT Warrior Mattel
$10 Meurtre a L’abbaye Multisim
$35 Mogul/Station Manager/Crazy Race Timbuktu
$45 Navia Dratp Expansion BanDai
$45 Navia Dratp Starter Set 1 BanDai
$45 Navia Dratp Starter Set 2 BanDai
$25 New York Architecture Game Prestel
$10 New York Times Crossword Game CrosswordCompanion
$25 Nino conillo Selecta
$5 Nobody but us Chickens Diet Evil
$5 Nur Mut Ravensburger
$10 Oasis Uberplay
$5 Once Golden
$10 Once Upon a Castle Playchest
$5 Othello (Tournament version) Gabriel
$8 Paparazzo Abacus
$10 Phoenix EuroGames
$50 Pirates on the High Seas! Ravensburger
$10 Pony Express Abacus
$5 Power Lunch Mayfair
$8 Primo Calculino Selecta
$20 Prophecy Altar
$30 Race the Wind Ghenos
$20 Railroad Dice Wassertal
$10 Rapscallion Bezier/FRED
$10 Raub Ritter Queen
$8 Remmi Demmi Gold Sieber
$25 Rettet den Marchenschatz! Selecta
$10 Rolomatic Bridge Set II MB
$15 Sausebahn Haba
$10 Savannah Café EuroGames
$10 Schatzjagd Haba
$20 Schleck und weg!! Zoch
$15 Seismic Atlas
$8 Snail’s Pace Race Ravensburger
$5 Split Parker Bros
$10 Stage II MB
$5 Stamp Amigo
$100 Stock Car Championship Racing McGartlin
$25 Stock Market Game Whitman
$8 Stonewall Stonewall
$10 Strata 5 MB
$5 Take Your Pick Simply Fun
$15 The World of Wall Street Hasbro/NBC
$180 Train Raider with Expansion Mediaworks
$5 Trust Me Parker Bros
$50 Tumblin’ Dice Tumblin’ Dice
$5 Twitch WotC
$5 Typo Cwali
$10 Ultimate Golf Ultimate Golf
$15 Unspeakable words Playroom
$15 Uptown Funagain
$3 Viele Dinge Adlung
$5 VisualEyes Buffalo
$15 "Vorsicht, kleiner Pirat!" KiKa
$5 What’s It To Ya? New World
$5 Wie Hund und Katz! Gold Sieber
$10 Winnie the Pooh Ruschpartie Ravensburger
$5 Won Over Parker Bros
$30 World Cup Tournament Football Game Australian Design Group
$8 Zwergen Ziehen Asmodee
Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor
© 2008 Dale Yu
Posted by Dale Yu on Nov 12, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists, Dale Yu / 2284
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Valerie described Duck Dealer as an “economic snowball”. Above you describe it as “engine building”. I don’t see this for several reasons: - The opportunity cost for upgrading your ship once out of the early game is prohibitive - Asides from that brief ship construction phase (one or two actions) there’s no Build-Engine then Run-Engine-For-VPs structure to the game. Not unless you want to describe the somewhat opportunistic process of energy accumulation and actions as building an engine and then running it, which I think is really stretching the pattern. - The rate of score accumulation through the game is only slightly better than linear. While the size of the scoring lumps do grow, they grow modestly and also become increasingly less frequent as the energy costs for them rise and more rounds are spent gaining the requisite energy. Instead I see a nearly pure logistics game very much in the spirit of Roads & Boats or Neuland, in which the players differentiate in the first couple rounds in their ship construction (the primary effect of which is to establish different operating rhythms for the various players) and then spend the rest of the game managing those logistical rhythms against emergent opportunity costs. Did I miss something? Posted by J C Lawrence on Nov 12, 2008 at 03:07 AM | #
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I think Sylla is a very good game, but quite fragile. The “Senator” should have been outbid in the building phase and have little influence in the event phase, as I have interpreted the game flow. So with less buildings and less influence on what event cards to take effect, I cannot see the “senator” to be that strong. Posted by Patrik Strömer on Nov 12, 2008 at 04:10 AM | #
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JC - no I don’t think you missed anything, I think that you simply have a better word choice to describe the game’s central feature. I guess when I was thinking “engine building” it was more along the lines of: on my first turn, I’ll use all of my discs to move around and collect enough stuff to discover a planet with ducks, bring enough goods to make a stealth duck factory and possibly even feed a stealth duck consumer. Then, once I’ve set up that network, now I’ll save up discs on my next turn to make some other widget so that on my third turn I can combine those two widgets to make a third generation good. To me, that kind of activity feels like “engine building” though it is clearly not so in a traditional fashion - though I’ll admit that “logistics” is a much more apt term for it. Patrik - again, my remarks on Sylla are only on one game, and I’m sure that I didn’t play optimally. And, as the scores show (with me coming in second), the player who dominated the senators clearly didn’t run away with the game. My comment is more that my initial game was extremely frustrating with being stuck in last place in turn order the whole game. I’m interested though in how you think the game is fragile… Any explanation? Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Nov 12, 2008 at 08:13 AM | #
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I mean that if you have a strategy, you have to able to adapt to current situations. It is not always that easy to follow your path throughout the game. I also think that one or more of the other three players cold have saved money in the monument building phase to outbid the senator. And if there is starvation, you need to buy fields in order to collect any substantial VP:s before the end scoring. And if you (like I have done) are trying to create a certain crisis and fail, you will not be able to get the bonus points during the game, and also not get the multiplier at to boost at the end scoring… Posted by Patrik Strömer on Nov 12, 2008 at 08:42 AM | #
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Patrik - I agree with all of your points about Sylla. What felt frustrating for us (and again, some of this was surely due to the fact that it was our first game) was that by the time we realized that one player had an advantage in senators—it was around the 3rd round… and that player had a 5-2-1-1 lead in Senators. One other player did spend 4 or 5 coins to take the consulship away for a turn, but it turned out to only be a one-time thing as the cost was too high. I tried the gladiator/vestal virgin strategy, and though I was able to steer the events somewhat, the tiebreak advantage held by the consul muted the effects somewhat. Again, does this break the game? No. Clearly the players in my game allowed a situation like this to happen by not watching the status of the Senator cards or spending too much gold on the end of round bonuses so that we didn’t have enough gold to use when bidding for consul. But it doesn’t stop it from being very very frustrating. Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Nov 12, 2008 at 10:25 AM | #
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For what it is worth, I really enjoy Sylla. In one game, the situation Dale described occurred. The 1st player kept control of the First Consul throughout the entire game, and I was in 4th position. He collected a lot of Senators, but I still won the game. Go figure. Posted by Greg Schloesser on Nov 12, 2008 at 12:30 PM | #
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The most interesting game to me, reading the rules, is CONFUCIUS (arrives at any momnet). And my Geekbudies agree with that (JC Lawrence, Morgan Dontenville, John Squires, etc).
Posted by Mario Aguila on Nov 13, 2008 at 12:16 AM | #
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Confucius is good, possibly very good, probably not great but definitely good. It is also delightfully delicate. Small errors can and will throw the game with ease. Learn not to make such errors. Given that the entire game is about creating tied situations which resolve in your favour this shouldn’t be surprising: the balances are delicate, scores are low (typically mid-teens to low 20s) and even single points matter a lot. I strongly recommend playing with exactly three during teaching games. It plays very well with that number. The gift-matrix is a little less volatile and interesting than with four or five but the potentials are all there and the perceived chaos among novice players is much lower. The simpler 3 player game gives players a chance to internalise the game before rushing into the maelstrom. Once you’ve all got a few games under your belts, then move up to four players. Oh, and learn how to use gifts effectively. A good gift manager will often dominate games. I’ve seen more than one 8pt region won from last place via a single well-placed gift. I’ve also seen more than one game won from dead last place by carefully orchestrating a tie for the win among the other players (in which case the admiral wins the game). It is a notably clever game. Also: Don’t believe the noise that coins are strictly better than licenses. They’re not. There are more places to spend coins and they are easier to spend, yes, but the potential ratio of VPs to licenses spent is higher. Posted by J C Lawrence on Nov 13, 2008 at 05:17 AM | #
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Thanks JC., your tips are always useful in these gamer’s games. The gifts system has been called my attention; this option to buy the help from other players is new for me. Posted by Mario Aguila on Nov 13, 2008 at 08:11 AM | #
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Mario, I did not list Confucius on my list of games primarily because I don’t own it! One of the gamers in my group got his copy about two weeks before Essen. Given the weight/volume restrictions, it seemed better to leave it behind at Essen knowing that I could play my friend’s copy at some point. Prior to Essen, I had read the rules, and I think it could be a very interesting game—however, as of now, I have yet to play the game. Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Nov 13, 2008 at 08:41 AM | #
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Hi Dale, Quick remarks about Sylla : I understand your frustration here but i don’t think this situation is a problem, since you should be able to beat a player with mainly senators. Being in first place is quite strong, indeed, but not enough to compensate the advantages provided by the other professions. So i’d define this strategy (lot of senators) as quite weak when you compare it with more mixed choices (which doesn’t means that you should diversify too much).
Regard,
Posted by Cyril Demaegd on Nov 14, 2008 at 08:06 PM | #
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Cyril, I’m hoping you’re right—like I have said—my reaction to Sylla is only after one play, which isn’t really enough to make up my mind. I am looking forward to playing it again and I will certainly try a different strategy. In our game, having the most senators clearly wasn’t an overwhelming advantage as that player only won by 3 or 4 points. Thanks for your comment/insight Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Nov 14, 2008 at 11:39 PM | #
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