Dale Yu: Puzzling Fun as I Prepare for Essen

Well, I’m trying to put two different ideas in one column.  They really don’t have anything to do with each other, but I imagine that you’ll deal with it just fine.


BoardgameNews Puzzle Hunt

First, I am going to start a new puzzle portion to my column.  As many of you know, I helped with the most recent puzzle hunt for the Gathering of Friends.  I’d like to share those puzzles with you through my column over the next few months.  The true puzzle hunt experience will not be quite the same as I’m not going to create a new metapuzzle for this project.  However, I still think that the individual puzzles are interesting enough on their own as many of them are game-related due to fact they were created for the Gathering of Friends.

What do you need to do to participate?  Well, you’ll need a few things.  First, you’ll likely need a printer.  The puzzles will be posted here in a number of formats—most likely Microsoft Word (.doc), PDFs or JPGs.  Though you could possibly do them on your computer screen, most of them will require you to actually put pen(cil) to paper.  Second, you’ll need a map.  Specifically, you’ll need an Ohio/West Virginia map produced by AAA (The American Automobile Association).  If you’re an AAA member, the map is free at their office; if you are not a member, I think it will run you $4.95.  I’ll give you guys a week or two to get the map, then we’ll get started in earnest.

I think that I will offer at least one prize for the most successful puzzle hunt participant, and I’m in negotiations with Eric (though this will be his first inkling of it) to perhaps find one or two more prizes as well.  What I’d like to do is provide a new puzzle in this weekly column, then accept answers during the following week via email.  There will likely be some sort of premium given to more timely answers, but on the scale of days rather than hours or minutes. You might score, for instance, two points for a correct answer by Tuesday, and one point for a correct answer later in the week.  Additionally, I will be available by email to give hints to help with the puzzles as well…

So, this week, I’ll work on the structure of the contest (as well as the prizes), and you guys each have a week to try to get your map.  This will be open to anyone interested, so please spread the word on BGG, Spielfrieks, etc.

Getting Ready for Essen

Well, it’s about that time of year again… I have already managed to get my airline tickets arranged for this year’s Spiel, and I’m in the process of trying to confirm that I actually have a hotel room for the week!  In addition to these mundane tasks, I also have to ready myself to take a gander at the BGN Essen Preview.  At this time, it really just means scanning the huge amounts of text to see if things catch my eye… However, before I leave, I’ll likely print out most of it to serve as my in-flight reading material and backup flotation device.

Here are some of the things that caught my eye in the “Publishers A-M section”.  By no means is this a complete list of what I’m interested in NOR is it a complete description of the games either.  If you want the full information on the games, please check out the Essen Preview yourself!

Age of Steam: War in Iraq / New York Subway
I have enjoyed the other AoS releases by Alban Viard, especially the Mars expansion which is among my favorite three.  The themes seem interesting, and I actually look forward to comparing the New York Subway board to the new Montreal Metro board recently released by Michael Webb.  I will admit that I reserved these boards before I had even read the description of the boards due to the previous success of AoS: Mars and the fact that I have a serious mental illness that causes me to try to have every AoS variant board ever devised and printed on cardstock.

Bezier Games AoS 6-board bonanza
Well, I’ve ordered these as well, and I look forward to taking advantage of the BGN columnist courtesy discount as these have been designed and produced by fellow BGN personality, Ted Alspach.  However, due to the new restrictions on baggage size and weight, these will be shipped to me domestically.  I may not get them quite as early as everyone else, but I will save two pounds (at least) of stuff in my luggage! 

Affentennis
I missed out on this one as I was not present at Essen last year, but it looks like Jurgen is producing a third edition of this game for 2007.  I’m still not sure if it will make the grade for both space and weight purposes, but clearly, any game that involves monkeys playing tennis has to be seen!  I almost bought a copy of the second edition of this game, but the shipping costs were far too exorbitant for a game that I had never played.  I’m hoping to get a few games of this in at the booth to decide whether I’m going to buy it or not.

Galaxy Trucker
This is from Czech Games Edition, which is not the company that put out Through the Ages.  The game, however, has been designed by Vlaada Chvatil, who is the designer of Through the Ages.  Pretty much due to the success of Through the Ages, I’m going to look at this one as soon as I can find it.  The description of this makes it sound like a real-time game which is a possible negative.  As cool as the idea sounds, I find that the real-time games seem to fizzle over the long haul (see Space Dealer).  Before any money changes hands on this one, I’ll have to give it a test run (or two).  Anyways, there’s no chance to pre-order this one as the website is in Czech only.

Ticket To Ride: Switzerland
I’m really only interested in this one so that I can get a new board since that boor Larry Levy mangled my home-brew copy at the most recent Gulf Games.  As an aside, this remains the only Alan Moon game that I am lifetime undefeated at when playing with Alan Moon.

Hai-Alarm!!! / Kakerlakensalat
These are the two new games that are slated for release from Drei Magier Spiele.  There isn’t much other information available on them right now, but DMS’s previous releases have been beautiful to look at, and they are often aimed at younger gamers.  Thus, I’ll have to see if these are in fact kids games or not.  My kids love some of the other DMS games such as Geister and Geistertreppe, so I feel like I should really give these a look!

Moai
This is one of the new games from Face2Face games.  It’s about Easter island, and if you get there early enough, you can get a wooden Easter Island head to use as a start player marker.  That’s way cooler than a secret decoder ring in your box of cereal!  Of course, since this is an American company, I’ll likely just get this one once I get back home—but Larry and the rest of the F2F gang are always great to hang out with, so I’m sure that I’ll get a firsthand look at this one during the fair.

Everything from HABA
I expect that I will spend the better part of an afternoon at the HABA stand.  At the fair, they generally have multiple copies of all of their new releases available for play.  Though I’ll have to fight my way through the throngs of German parents and children to get the games, I suspect that I’ll come back with a long list of HABA games to pick up.  I will likely not purchase many of these while at Essen because they are generally available for purchase via mail order, so I won’t need to take up valuable weight with these games

King of Siam
This looks to be an interesting action card driven war game.  Previous releases by this company include Friedrich, and while I wasn’t overly interested in the playing card combat mechanism seen in Friedrich, I do know that plenty of people have liked it very much.  As a result, I’d like to at least give King of Siam a peek during the fair.  The difficult thing with this one is that there is likely not going to be enough time to give a complex game like this a full playing… So I’ll have to make up my mind based on a short demo of the rules and from the overnight report from the English group that plays all night in Mulheim

Mr. Jack expansion
Though I’m not always thrilled about expansions, I’ll probably give this one a try.  It’s a collection of new characters that were partially designed for a contest.  Valerie was gracious enough to give me the expansion that came in a recent issue of Spielbox, and it seems to work adequately.  I can only hope that the expansions that I will have to pay for have a bit more “oomph”.

Die Säulen der Erde: Die Erweiterung
Hmm, another expansion—I’m not keen on the idea of adding new abilities/locations as I think the game works pretty well as is… But being able to add a fifth or sixth player to the game could be a great addition.  Though the game has been in my hands for only about 10 months, I can already think of at least five or six occasions when I would have liked to have played this one, but had five people…

Ubongo Extrem
Ubongo with hexagons instead of squares.  Instant buy for me.  Now, if I can only find people that want to play it!  This still likely suffers from the problem that someone who may only be 2% faster at solving the individual puzzles will be 70-80% more likely to win the overall game—but it’s still fun!

Macht & Ohnmacht
This is a small edition release by MoD games—only 500 will be produced.  It sounds like an interesting strategy game, and given the small quantities produced, it’s one that I have already preordered without learning much about it.  The first MoD game I can remember getting is Kogge, which was fantastic.

Tribun
A new (gasp!) game from Karl-Heinz Schmiel?  I know that this one is likely to come out later in the year by Fantasy Flight, and I will most likely wait until the English language version is available to buy it… However, it’ll be nice to take a peek at the Moskito booth and have a new game to check out.  I wonder if this is the “sweet” game that Mike Siggins kept raving about last year and then never would give us any details about?!

Well, that’s about it for the first half of the Essen Preview at this time….
Come back next week for the first puzzle and the second half of my review of the Essen Preview!

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

© 2007 Dale Yu

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Comments:

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Dale I had a chance to play a prototype of Tribune in the Fantasy Flight booth at GenCon Indy ‘07 with a couple of my friends and we very much enjoyed this game. Really looking forward to it’s release in Nov/Dec ‘07, just in time for Christmas! Posted by Paul Paterson on Sep 19, 2007 at 06:44 AM | #

Ubongo Extrem is at the top of my “to get” list as well.  The fact that the original Ubongo is one of my wife’s favorite games (a list which also includes Railroad Tycoon, Elfenland, Factory Fun, and Yspahan, among others) doesn’t hurt. As for the “everything HABA”...I can’t argue with that.  Grab a copy of Trotofant if you see it.  I can’t find anyplace in the states that carries it, and it’s ridiculously fun.  All in all this year, I think I’m going to hold back on placing a big “post-Essen” order this year.  It seems there are more and more American (or at least English language) publishers that eventually make the best of the best available in the states.  Last year I did my usual “order $400 worth of games in late October”, and got a handful of titles (Arkadia, Pillars of the Earth, etc.) that were fairly quickly released in English by RGG and others.  Sure, there are always a few gems that don’t get the co-publisher treatment, but for those of us who don’t get to go to Essen (grumble grumble), it’s becoming more likely just a matter of time until we see the games on the shelf of our FL(or O)GS. Posted by Jon Theys on Sep 19, 2007 at 09:12 AM | #

So in addition to hints to your puzzle hunt, will you also be handing out free chocolate pudding and cool whip?  What about fixed Boggle contests? Dale, I feel really bad about breaking your crap styrofoam Ticket to Ride: Switzerland board that was held together with mucilage and spit.  Maybe I could try out your new published version and mangle that as well!  Bwa-ha-ha-ha!!! Posted by Larry Levy on Sep 19, 2007 at 10:22 AM | #

I’m surprised that Giganten der Lüfte from Queen is on your list, Dale. I believe this is the infamous Seyfarth Blimp Game that we played at our first Essen! I really hope it is as I have wanted to play it again ever since playing the prototype 3 years ago… Posted by Brian Yu on Sep 19, 2007 at 04:37 PM | #

Care to pass on any details about that prototype, Brian?  We won’t tell anyone, I promise!  :-) Posted by Larry Levy on Sep 19, 2007 at 04:57 PM | #

Sure, Larry, I’ll share some details: it’s by Andreas Seyfarth, it’s about blimps and Dale and I played it in Essen 3 years ago! Posted by Brian Yu on Sep 19, 2007 at 05:14 PM | #

How recent does the AAA map need to be?  :^) Posted by Nathan Morse on Sep 20, 2007 at 07:07 AM | #

Umm… not sure.  I would think that it would work best if it were the current version.  I’ll have to check when I get home, but I think that the version that I’m using is the 2007 one which has a covered bridge on the front.  I’ll confirm that later today when I get a chance to look at one. dale Posted by Dale Yu on Sep 20, 2007 at 08:26 AM | #

Larry, I have confirmed that the Seyfarth game is in fact the one I previewed 2 years ago.  It’s really good! Posted by Dale Yu on Sep 20, 2007 at 12:41 PM | #

Dale, King of Siam is not at all a “card-driven war game.” It’s actually an action-card-driven majorities game, where the players place and move cubes around the different provinces in order to give a political faction a majority there at the proper time.  To “invest” in a faction, you must remove one of it’s cubes from a province, making it’s influence in that province weaker, but giving you a better chance of scoring with that faction. To add to the tension, each player has a set of identical 8 action cards and each one may only be used once in the entire game! Timing is everything, and this little game packs a lot of fun tension into a short duration of 30-60 minutes, with plenty of time left over for a rematch! O.K., so I’m a friend of the designer, but I actually did think of you, Valerie and Larry when I played the prototype for the first time.  Really. Posted by Jeff Allers on Sep 25, 2007 at 04:49 AM | #

Jeff, thanks for more info on King of Siam!  All I have is the little blurb in the Essen preview—I am definitely looking forward to trying this one out at the fair… BTW, will you be able to make it this year as well?  Maybe I’ll challenge you to a game there! Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Sep 25, 2007 at 10:58 AM | #

Unfortunately, I won’t be there--it’s the only week of school vacation in Berlin, which is the only time we can plan our work retreat for all my Berlin colleagues. I am hosting an After-Essen Party in Berlin the Wednesday afterwards (and expecting Eric and his wife), but most of ya’ll will have to go back after Essen, right? Posted by Jeff Allers on Sep 25, 2007 at 12:05 PM | #

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