Patrick Brennan: Australian Games Expo 2007

I’ve spent two wonderful days in Albury at the Australian Games Expo over the long weekend. By nearly all measures it was bigger and better than last year’s inaugural event. Exhibitor numbers were up 70%, attendance was up 60%, tournament numbers were up. I don’t know any sales figures of course, but the retailers all seemed pretty happy—or at least talked the talk!

Most of the key local B&M players were there—Mind Games, Tin Soldier, Games Paradise, Ventura, Funatical—as well as online retailers such as Caterpillar. There were a number of self-publishers, including a few kamikazes adding to the colour of the event … all you can do is wish them well.

Especially welcome was the international presence of Rio Grande Games (doing demos, not sales) and Z-Man Games. Zev from Z-Man finally gave us Aussies some prices that seemed comfortable and right. I’m still looking forward to the day that Aus publishers co-produce with leading international publishers so that we don’t have to pay the shippage that drives prices to ridiculous levels.

The local games scene hosted social gaming events each night, and on behalf of all the incomers, our thanks for the planning, co-ordination and hospitality. It balanced the weekend nicely: play games all day at the Expo, play games all night at the function centre. Sounds good, was good!!

There were a number of tournaments—Settlers Of Catan, Carcassonne, Blokus—with first prize for the first two being a trip to Essen. Not exactly small potatoes. The decision to host the Australian Diplomacy championships next to the Expo, but after hours, was a beauty and promoted inclusion across gaming communities. Hopefully more gaming championships will choose this weekend and location to come together.  (I was walking around seeing all these faces that I vaguely remembered until it clicked that these were the Dippers I’d last seen seven years ago when I did the Diplomacy tournament scene for a year.)

I’m not a tournament type guy though, more a social gamer, and so of course I got around a bit, playing a bunch of games, some new, some old. There were a few prototypes getting run-bys at night as well, but I’ve penned some thoughts below on some published efforts newish on the scene, in alphabetical order. Of course I didn’t play anywhere near all the games on display at the Expo, but here’s the ones that interested me enough to try them out after a first glance. In alphabetical order:

Archaeology
Australian: Inspired by Lost Cities, it’s a card-based set collecting game. First, you may exchange cards of equal value with any already in the common marketplace to build sets. Then draw a card. That’ll be a ‘set’ card or a thief (steal a card from another player) or a key (which may be able to be used later to get a free batch of cards). There’s no protection from a future thief played against you, which creates ongoing decisions on whether to sell now or wait to improve the set. Other than that, the best card to draw is five times better than the worse, and there’s no hand management (the key to most card game success), so expect luck to rule the roost. I had a decent enough time playing, but it’s hard to see where the ongoing learning curve and challenge might be. A nice first effort, but it’s a 5 for mine.

Kingdom Quest
Australian: Each of the 2-4 players gets six cubes, and each cube has the same six characters on its sides. You introduce them on your side of an 81-square grid, and then roll the cubes from square to square, intending to land next to an opponent’s cube with the exact face-up character that will then capture your opponent’s face-up character. The rolling cube mechanism is interesting to begin with, but the deeper you get into it, the more troublesome it is to check every opponent’s cube and assess what its potential danger to you is if it’s rolled this way or that, so you’re getting into some serious AP and down-time if you want to play it well. Combine this with the natural problems of multi-player abstract war / elimination games (king-making, gang-ups) and the potential for stalemates as no one wants to roll out of their defensive positions, and I find it’s not a game I want to play, even though I admire the concept and it may well have been the deepest game I found at the Expo. Therefore, it’s a 5 for mine.

Side story: If you can, check out the Princess picture used on the cubes. Melissa Rogerson, the week before, writes up the game on the Geek and labels her the “slu..y princess”. Cut to today and the guy at the booth is teaching us the game (us including Melissa’s hubby, Fraser) when we comment on the delightful charms of the Princess and the sagacity of the developers in using such an inspirational image. Booth guy asks with a bit of a know-all look if we know the Geek. “Ah, yep, I’m user ID number 8 there” and booth guy starts going sheepish as the rest roll eyes and laugh. He ploughs on, saying just between us guys, some girl posted about the princess being “slu..y”. Fraser chimes in with “Ah, yep, that was my wife”, and of course Melissa just happens to be walking past at that exact moment. As we’re falling about laughing, poor old Booth Guy is looking around to see if there are any more holes he can possibly dig for himself. A funny moment.

Owner’s Choice
International: This is a nice, light 30-minute stock market game. Each turn a player gets to decide on which of the next three squares to land on. These depict the four companies plus some specials (div payouts, etc). If you land on a company square, the owner of the most shares in that company rolls a die which may increase or decrease the stock price or pay dividends. Alternatively, you can roll an event die which should score you some money. Basically, buy anything to start with and hope the dice roll in your favour and your stock increases in value. And if it has, maybe sell it and hope the stock decreases in value. We had fun with it, but after one play it seems a bit of a luck-fest. It’s family fare and works well as a simple stock game, but not a lot to explore for the gamer I suspect. I start it as a 6, but could see it rise to a 7 with the right group.

Railroad
Australian: This is an abstract tile placement game onto a square grid. Scoring is different but the game play is similar to Ta Yu: take turns playing oblong Ta Yu-like pieces that have all sorts of different paths on them. Aim to cordon off corners of the board, inside which you capture opponent’s pieces and can place your own pieces at end-game, with the aim of maximising the number of path connections you’ve placed onto the board. It’s clever and probably pretty deep, but the smallish game board should keep games to a neat 10-20 min length (depending on your AP). I liked it and gave it a 7 after 1 play.

Stack Market
International: We had fun with this as well, but I guess I may as well admit that no game that rewards stacking 15 dice on top of each other is ever really going to hit my “let’s play now” list. But for those who love rolling and stacking dice, this baby will push all your buttons. I gave it a 5, but any dexterity game can be great fun with the right crowd so don’t let my rating put you off.