Postcards From Berlin #15: The Gathering of Freunde

By Jeff Allers with Bernd Eisenstein
May 4, 2007

German Word of the Month:  Spielspaß (fun of playing)

While the best-known open gaming marathons in the US may be invite-only, there are many options for board game hobbyists in Germany.  I know of at least three that take place throughout the year (not including the Essen Spielmesse, which also includes space for open gaming).

One of my good friends, designer Bernd Eisenstein, has written the Spielwoche (gaming week) in Oberhof permanently into his yearly calendar.

Bernd and I first met at our regular game group after he moved to Berlin from Speyer (near Heidelberg) a few years ago to be closer to his girlfriend, another avid gamer he met through BrettSpielWelt.  Like me, he became a gamer long after Settlers of Catan took the country by storm and started working on his own designs shortly thereafter.  He won the Hippodice game design competition with Maya, which was then published by Abacus.  Bernd also reviews games for the German site Hall9000.de as well as on his own personal blog Irongames.de, which also has interesting information and photos showing the development of his prototypes, including Maya.

After all of the Gathering of Friends reports online, I found it interesting to compare with his own descriptions of a similar event on this side of the ocean.

The gaming week in Oberhof has been going on now for eleven years and is organized by a hobby gamer and father of two, Kay Kuchelmeister. The original event was started by a local magazine and took place in Austria with 66 participants, but as the numbers rose and many of the gamers had children, he took the initiative to move it to a more central location in Germany. Since 1997 they’ve met in the modern Panorama Hotel on the edge of Oberhof in Thuringen, not far from Erfurt and the Warburg castle where Martin Luther hid from the papacy as he translated the Bible into German.  The huge hotel had no problem hosting the 275 gamers who attended this year; tables were set up in three large rooms, one smaller room, and even the hotel foyer.

The beautiful natural surroundings also provide plenty of non-game related activities, although outside games are also popular.  The lawn game Kubb, for example, otherwise known as Viking Chess, is more well-known here than Croquet.  The many options make Oberhof a popular event with families, and 66 of the participants this year were under the age of 14.

Like most of these events, though, games are still the centerpiece, being played at all hours of the day and night.  Some of the participants bring their own games, but many of the new releases are loaned or donated by publishers and later given away as prizes or remain as part of the hotel’s growing games library.

Most designers remain curiously absent from this event, but one I know particularly well dared to bring a few of his prototypes with him this year and reported about the experience, as well as giving his impressions on all the recent releases.  What follows is a rough translation of Bernd’s entries for this year’s “Gathering of Freunde” (see his blog for photos):

Finally, after much anticipation it was time: the gaming week in Oberhof was knocking at the door. But first a little patience was needed as the god of traffic jams did not mean for us to have an uneventful journey. It seems as though all of Bavaria was in Berlin for Easter and wanted to drive home at precisely the same time.  Oh well, we still made it by late afternoon.

After greeting old friends we cut loose with Notre Dame. What can I say: The game is awesome! Not a real heavyweight, but it requires one to constantly make difficult decisions to keep the upper hand in a system where you never have enough. (Everything in the game is somehow important.) The placement mechanic is unbelievably simple, actually, but absolutely brilliant—why has nobody come up with this before?

Guatemala Café was the next game. In the beginning there was an overwhelming euphoria surrounding the game on the Spielbox online forums. Unfortunately, the high expectations could not be fulfilled. Certainly, moving the buyer and acquiring the pieces is fun to do.  Thanks to the fantastic game components, watching the plantation board fill up slowly is a feast for the eyes. But as soon as the game becomes more and more concerned with scoring points, the fun is over and it boils down to who is able to take their turn at the right moment.  This ending destroys the fun nearly completely and only bewildered faces remain.

… another game of Notre Dame …

After that it was time for something a little lighter: Fangfrisch from Queen Games.  Two years ago I actually had the chance to play the prototype with the designer in Rieneck (a gaming meeting from BrettSpielWelt). The game has hardly changed, although instead of shouting there is now a bell to ring in order to secure an offer.  The material—above all, the graphics—are beautiful and witty. The play is also rather fast-paced and possesses the right depth of play for its length: Buy fish at the auctions, collect them, and sell them again for the best rate possible.  It’s tempting, though, to spend good money on too few fish. The other players are more than happy to steal the best fish away.  The game does have a flaw: If no one has 10 euros any longer, a player could turn over as many fish cards as they wished and no one would be able to acquire them. Unfortunately, the rules remain silent on this problem.

… Notre Dame again …

Because our table had now played awhile together, the others wanted to finally see one of my prototypes: Legato Andalusi came out on the table. Unfortunately, the auction mechanic didn’t work properly a few times, so it was difficult for the players to get an overview of the game, and they did not have enough influence on the results.  I don’t know if it’s worth it to work on this one further. The fun factor remains under the “nice level”.

A complete day, rich with gaming, came to an end!

The next morning began with a game of Jenseits von Theben. This is a game that has really divided gamers into factions.  On one hand, the theme is wonderfully implemented and the mechanic of the time track is really brilliant.  On the other hand, bad luck can really sour the game.  When, after drawing ten treasure tiles on your first dig, only two low-scoring ones turn up, the corners of your mouth begin to drop.  I would play it again, but the game doesn’t really thrill me.

After yet another game of Notre Dame, I decided to play another good new release: Wikinger from Hans im Glück.  The game possesses an intricate balance between landscape and personnel management.  In addition to that, it has a tension-loaded mechanic that brilliantly controls the prices for the tiles (island landscapes and ships) and meeples (Vikings).  A classic game—our first playing was so enjoyable that we just had to follow it up immediately by a second “revenge” game!

Hermagor was next, another great game, that unfortunately makes it to the table much too seldom.

Since I already knew Alchemist, I wanted to make the others aware of it and also see if, after further plays, it would be just as good as I found it on my first playing.  It remains a very solid game, although not an overachiever.  It was an advantage for me to already know how the game develops and how one scores points.  I still remember my first game when I sat helplessly over the game board.

We had missed Factory Fun in Essen 2006, but finally, after all the good opinions and reviews, we were able to finally try it ourselves.  When you see the pieces for the first time, it does cause a bit of smoke to come out of your head and everything looks a bit chaotic.  It takes a while to develop an eye for which parts to grab and build into your machine.  Not a bad game, but I need to play it more in order not to construct a piece of junk.

Thus, we slowly came to the end of another day so that we could get some rest for…

The big Tichu tournament was on the program for Thursday.  After our three-person team had proven itself last year (each player sat out two games in the six games we played) placing 4th, we wanted to repeat our success.  This year the field of 24 teams was stronger than the 18 teams from last year, but then three teams dropped out due to the beautiful weather.  In the last tense match, the 2nd through 5th places were still very much undecided, and our own success also depended on how our competition faired.  In the end, we celebrated winning a 3rd place certificate and small game prize.

In between games there was time to chat with other game designers, including Thorsten Gimmler, editor for Schmidt Spiele, who brought a couple of prototypes with him.

That evening, we went back to the “regular” gaming tables.  The new big game from Days of Wonder, Colosseum, was next on the program. After this publisher’s last game was more enticing optically than in its game play, Colosseum finally offers more of a juicy tidbit for gamers.  Resemblances to Princes of Florence really do exist, but are not necessarily annoying. Nevertheless, there is a rich atmosphere to the game and it has its own flair.  Only the large amount of time it takes to set up the game components and pack up afterwards decreases some of the pleasure.  This game should definitely make it to the table often.

Since I had perused the rules from Portobello Market during a break in the Tichu tournament, we were able to get a game started immediately.  With four players, each one had only five or six turns in the entire game.  In such a short game, players just don’t really have enough influence to set any goals.  It probably improves somewhat with three players, but it seems as though the publisher shortened and simplified the game in order to make it into something a family could play in a half-hour.  The prototype (East Indian Rails), which won the Hippodice game design competition, apparently offered more depth.

The next day, we tried out Origo from Wolfgang Kramer. The game board shows a very quadratic map of Europe, squeezed into a coordinate system.  Influence markers are placed using cards that match the columns, rows and regions.  Players receive points by founding countries and through their influence during scoring.  Because the map gets more and more tight as the game progresses, attacking plays a stronger role towards the end of the game.  You also jump over other scoring markers on the victory point track, if another player’s marker is already there.  The first impressions were divided—our first play was only partially satisfying.

Venedig by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede has already been available awhile on BrettSpielWelt. We were not yet familiar with it and tried it out for the first time. The mechanics are relatively easy and give you the impression in the beginning that you have a lot of influence over the game.  In reality, though, it seems fairly arbitrary which actions you take in order to score a few points here and there.  The rule that states that if you forget to take a swamp tile, you can’t draw one after the fact is silly. The same goes for the constant leap-frogging of opponents on the victory point track because spaces with players’ scoring markers are not counted.  This means that players who jump out in the lead will ALWAYS be overtaken.  This form of giving points away is an awful way to keep the scores balanced.  Furthermore, in our game, the gold tiles ran out and every player had to play one of his gold tiles before he took another action, in order to get the gold right back again.  This mechanic seemed quite undeveloped.  Overall grade: Failed!

In the meantime, we were still not too tired of Notre Dame to play again!

After knowing Coloretto and Coloretto Amazonas, we now had the chance to play the latest incarnation from Michael Schacht, Zooloretto.  As with Coloretto, players reveal cards (in this game, tiles) and place into different groups of three.  When a player finds one of the groups attractive, even if it contains less than three tiles, he takes it and drops out of the current round.  The animal tiles are placed in his pens, although a player can unfortunately only hold three different types of animals (four with an expansion).  The problem is that there are eight or nine different types of animals in the game.  A very quick game that is more fun that one might think at first.  With a humorous group of players, it really doesn’t matter who wins, and the game offers simply good entertainment.

We closed the day with Finden Sie Minden, another geography game in which players must estimate the positions of cities.  A map of Germany is divided into squares.  A player first determines how exact he thinks his guess for the city’s location will be.  The more exact, the more points he receives if he is correct, in addition to receiving the city card.  In our game I took an early lead and was fairly confident of winning.  Unfortunately for me, the leader also receives more difficult city cards and therefore has more of a challenge.  A very nice mechanic, but it kept me from keeping the lead, and my girlfriend passed me up for the win.  Players who do not like this type of game will also hate Finden Sie Minden.  To all others, I can heartily recommend the game.

The final day of the event was full of repeats, prototypes, and “older” games:

First, I introduced by prototype Tupai, which I felt was nearly finished.  After the last playtest, there was only a question about the playing time being too long.  This time, it was not a problem, as the game was finished in 90 minutes, and the local press even took a photograph of it.  We’ll see if an article comes out of it.

An older game then found its way to our table: Magellan, a very nice auction game, but one that does seem to polarize opinions.  It’s not enjoyed by everyone, especially those who do not like auctions, as they form the nucleus of the game.

We did not have much time remaining, so we brought back the “well-known” games (Colosseum, Wikinger). Unfortunately, some people were already packing up and leaving for home, and we were starting to feel like the last survivors of a deserted island. Nevertheless, we played games up to the end of the day, and I even had the opportunity to introduce my third prototype, Kronlanda. I knew that it was not functioning properly in every aspect yet, but through the playtesting, I discovered many ways to bring the design further.  There is definitely a game here that is worthwhile to develop.

I must also mention the winners of the Pfefferkuchels 2007, a traditional award at Oberhof that provides a good picture of the best new releases.  Not unexpectedly, Notre Dame and Vikinger won the award going away.

A great week came to an end and exposed us to a large part of the new spectrum of games, while also allowing us to enjoy time with old friends.  Oberhof 2008—we’ll be there!

© 2007 Jeff Allers

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Comments:

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Your comment on Magellan is quite striking actually. When my girlfriend and I had just started playing euro’s, one of our first auction games was Magellan, and it make us both dislike the whole auction genre for a while, until we discovered games like Power Grid and later Ra, that made us love them again. Posted by Surya Van Lierde on May 7, 2007 at 07:08 AM | #

I definitely concur with Bernd that his prototype “Tupai” is ready for some fortunate publisher.  I finally had the opportunity to play it Monday night.  An excellent game that combines many different mechanisms seamlessly and without making the rules overly complex.  It’s definitely a Euro, in that it involves resources for victory points mechanisms, but has a very nice interconnnectedness between all the parts (ship tiles, workers, resource cubes, action cards) each of which serves several different purposes in the game.  It’s been tweaked and tested for years, and it shows. It felt like it could have come out of an Alea or Hans im Glueck box, and it was one of the most enjoyable prototypes (of many good ones) Bernd has brought to the table. Posted by Jeff Allers on May 10, 2007 at 06:59 AM | #

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