Postcards From Berlin #25: Nuremberg 2008, Day One

By Jeff Allers
February 20, 2008

German Word of the Month: Messe (convention)

Editor’s note: Jeff’s Nuremberg coverage will be in three parts, with the other two to follow soon.

I’m not one to obsess about statistics and I’ve never been interested in market analysis, but the information provided in the press package for the Nuremberg Toy Fair caught my attention. Production of games in Germany rose to 35 million Euros last year, it said. Furthermore, the country imported 1.1 billion Euros worth of games and exported another 1.2 billion Euros worth. Games and puzzles are the largest product group in the expansive toy industry in Germany, rising to 17.8 per cent of the market last year. This compares to only 10.4 per cent of France’s toy industry – or a mere 7.8 per cent of England’s. This means that, at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, games play a more prominent role than in any other convention of its type around the world.

View from our youth hostel (shown below left)

And so it was that, accompanied by my father – who is also still very much a kid at heart – and armed with my press badge, a backpack full of prototypes and a list of appointments, I sped off down the German rail to this Bavarian jewel of a city for my very first gaming convention.

Of course, the Nuremberg Toy Fair is really more of an industry convention, with little opportunity to actually play any games and no possibility of buying them, but my father and I were determined to have a good time meeting with other designers and publishers and getting a few sneak peaks at the games that are not yet available in stores.

It is difficult not to enjoy visiting Nuremberg, one of the most beautiful cities in Germany with much of its medieval charm still intact. It is, in fact, a shame that it is often known only for the bombastic Nazi rallies held before the war and the war crimes trials that came after. Hitler’s enormous assembly grounds and eerie ruins are certainly worth a visit, but the cobblestone pedestrian streets and canals lined with half-timbered houses should not be overlooked. And the castle on the hill at one end of the Old Town offers a wondrous view of rooftops, market squares and church spires. The stables have even been converted into an enormous youth hostel, which was our accommodation for the weekend. After climbing the steep streets and checking in, we rested for an early rise to Thursday’s first appointment.

After a quick breakfast at the youth hostel, we marched down the hill and boarded the underground for the fifteen minute ride to the convention center. The train soon filled with well-dressed business people, many clearly from Asian countries. We were certainly on the right “track.” After arriving, we registered at the press desk and headed for the two-story board games building.

Hanno Girke, my first scheduled meeting, was chatting with someone at the Heidelberger booth when he suddenly turned toward me, revealing his bright orange Lookout Games T-shirt. We sat at a table at the games café across from the booth, something provided by the Game Designers Association (SAZ).

“I need a break from Agricola,” he said as he sat down. He was certainly not complaining about the game’s recent success, making his tiny publishing company something of a “superman” in the business, but he said that it’s been overwhelming and Lookout is, after all, really his second job. His Clark Kent-like alter-ego does translation work for Hasbro (Wizards of the Coast). Up until now, he’s produced a couple of well-received board games and lots of Bohnanza expansions. “We’re [publisher] Amigo’s guinea pigs,” he said with a grin. When his small print run sells well, Amigo releases a larger reprint as with Ladybohn. Aside from that, Hanno said he enjoys tinkering with Uwe Rosenberg’s designs to come up with unlikely variations, such as the Bohnaparte expansion.

Hanno did say that the next reprint of Agricola will have wooden animals instead of the cubes used in the first version. The new bits will also be available for sale to those who want to replace the originals from their first edition of the game. “Now, don’t you have a prototype you want to show me?” he said, ready to move on.

Aquaretto

Afterwards I spotted the Abacus booth, and Ulrich Bauer gave me an explanation of the new Zooloretto spin-off. The main differences are that the “pens” (now “pools") are determined by the players, in typical tile-laying fashion. That is, when a player adds an animal tile to his aquarium, it must connect orthogonally to a previously placed animal of the same type, and it can never connect to an animal of a different type. This makes managing the pools much more of a challenge.

Another change is that the “holding area” for the animals that a player does not immediately wish to place is now a stack, and only the top animal may be placed on a later turn. This, too, makes managing the placement much more difficult. There are also special animals that can be trained, and meeples who can be placed as trainers to make the trainable animals more valuable, placed at the cashier desk to score points for a player’s money, or placed at the holding area to reduce a player’s minus points.

The new game is for ages 10 and up, as opposed to Zooloretto, which was for ages 8 and up. Ulrich also said that there are rules included for combining both games which makes for an even more challenging game. And as far as theme goes, there are plenty of zoos in Europe that also have accompanying aquariums – Berlin has one of them!

Shanghaien

Michael Schacht also teamed up with Roman Pelek to produce a nice card-and-dice, two-player game. The simple rules have already been aptly explained in the Nuremberg preview on Boardgame News.

Fauna

Later, I had a meeting with Christian Hildebrand of HUCH & friends, a publisher focusing mostly on children’s games or games with an educational component. Surprisingly enough, its biggest newest game was designed by none other than Friedemann Friese. Fauna is a game in which the players must guess different facts about animals.

The gameboard is a map of the world with the continents divided into regions. Then there are several tracks with spaces for the animals’ other attributes: average size, average age, etc. These spaces are usually ranges, since these attributes do differ within an animal species, and it makes it easier to guess correctly. Each player also receives a number of wooden cubes to use for placing their bets.

At the beginning of a round, an animal card is drawn from the deck. Then each player takes turns placing one of his cubes on a region (where he thinks the animal lives) or one of the tracks (what he thinks the animal weighs), etc. Only one cube may be placed on each space on the board. This means that the options for scoring right answers are reduced with each turn. When all players have passed, the card is flipped to reveal the facts about the animal, which are then compared to the guesses of the players. Those who guessed correctly win a number of points; those who were almost correct (with their cubes on spaces adjacent to the correct ones) also win points. Those who guessed incorrectly lose these cubes for a certain amount of time, so that there is some risk involved in taking too many guesses.

All in all, it looks good and has some nice mechanisms for an educational game. I even noticed a hint of green in the borders of the cards, something I’m sure Friedemann has in the fine print on his contract. Will Fauna be released in the U.S.? “Ask me after the fair,” said Christian.

Metropolys

Christian also showed me Metropolys since HUCH & friends are distributing the game in Germany. Sébastien Pauchon’s second solo published game design had already piqued my interest after Eric Martin’s preview, and Christian’s description – together with the Fritz Lang-style graphic presentation – only made me more anxious to finally play it. Alas, T.I.N. (This Is Nuremburg) – I’ll have to wait until it’s sent to stores in a few weeks. Christian did mention that the game includes two versions: a family game and a more strategic variant, the only difference being the difficulty of the goal cards. The box says that the game is for ages 8 and up.

Ausgerechnet Buxtahude!

Andrea Meyer once coaxed me into a game of this, and though I could appreciate the design, I was almost completely unable to make a single play. The reason? The game has to do with the location of German cities and towns, many of which I’ve never heard. The mechanism is familiar from the popular Anno Domini series: You add one of your cards to those on the table; the next player can then do the same or doubt that your placement was correct. Since this is geography, though, the game has two dimensions: north-south and east-west. You simply place one of your town cards in relation to the town cards already on the table until someone doubts your placement. Then the cards are flipped, revealing their exact coordinates which are printed on the other side, and the player who is incorrect (in placing or in doubting) gets a penalty. I’m actually very good at geography, so I write with great relief that there may actually be a U.S.A. version on the horizon. Are you ready for a rematch, Andrea?

Wie Verhext!

I found the small alea booth and finally had the opportunity to meet Stefan Brück. Before showing him a couple of prototypes, he explained the new alea release by Andreas Pelikan. The game includes wooden tear-shaped ingredient chips in three colors (Stefan really liked the English word “Ingredients” compared to the German “Zutaten"), gold and flask (i.e. small potion) counters, and cards. The “gold cabinet” cards, “ingredient cabinet” cards, and three types of kettle cards are placed face-up in five piles in increasing values of victory points. A pile of eight spell cards is also placed face-up.

Each player receives an identical deck of 12 role cards. Each role has two benefits on it – one action for that role, and one lesser privilege – and is one of five types:

• The three green roles provide ingredients: three for the action and one for the privilege.
• The three yellow roles can trade ingredients for gold, gold for small potions, or gold for ingredients.
• The three light-blue roles mix up the potions. (Players “buy” a kettle card with the ingredients matching those pictured on the card.)
• The gray role allows a player to perform the action on the current spell card.
• The two red roles allow that player to take up a collection of gold or ingredients from the other players in an attempt to win one of the “cabinet” cards.

At the beginning of each hand, each player selects five of these secretly to use for the hand. The hand is then played in a similar fashion to a trick-taking game. The player leading the round plays one of his role cards and declares that he is that role for the round (for example, “I am the wizard!"). Then the next player must “follow suit” by playing the same character card. If she doesn’t have the card, she passes; if she does have it, however, she must then decide between two options:

1. She can declare that she is that role for the round (she says, “I am the wizard!"). The player who previously claimed to be that role loses it and his card is placed face-down with the seven cards he did not choose for the hand.

2. If she doesn’t want to risk losing her role card to a later player, she can choose the privilege on the card by declaring, “So be it!” The privilege is, naturally, not as powerful as the action, but there is no risk involved as any number of players who have that role card can use this option.

When every player has played a card or passed, the round is over and the player who has the role carries out the action, then begins the next round. The hand ends when no more players have hand cards left (5-12 rounds).

In each of the five piles of victory-point cards are two cards with ravens pictured on them. At the end of a hand, if at least four ravens are in the possession of the players, the game ends. Players count up the points on their cards and add one point for each flask counter.

Stefan said that the game has good tension due to the opportunity for bluffing and the choice of action/privilege each round. It appeared to me to be a kind of San Juanish trick-taking game, which certainly can’t be a bad thing.

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My father and I had a few minutes and decided to take a break from the games and peruse some of the other buildings. We ended up in the model railroad hall and were amazed by some of the incredibly realistic-looking miniatures and effects on display. Cars and trucks moved on trackless city streets, signaling their turns; fire engines drove to burning buildings and put out the blazes; and steam billowed out of tiny locomotive stacks. My father and I had started building a layout together when I was a kid, and he has recently gotten back into the hobby, especially now that he has grandchildren, and Germany seems to be on the cutting edge of model railroad technology. I can also highly recommend a visit to one of the most elaborate layouts in the world, located in a renovated factory in Hamburg.

I left my father among the HO-scale landscapes and headed back towards the games buildings. Next up was HABA, famous for yellow boxes full of delightful wooden game components that make me feel as though I’m “ages 5 and up” again. After talking with a friendly Markus Nikisch about prototypes, his bubbly wife Katja demonstrated some of the publisher’s games for me. As usual, Haba has many new releases in all sizes and shapes, every one beautifully produced. The following were three of my favorites:

Kofferdetektive (Briefcase Detective)

Two to four players must each decide which objects have been stolen from the briefcase, which is actually the game box. The top lid is hinged and reveals 13 black cut-outs of different items and a cloth bag for the thief. Each player receives a set of 13 cards, one representing each item. There’s also a scoring board, scoring markers, and a timer.

The “briefcase” also has a bottom compartment, separated from the main compartment by a dark blue plastic see-through screen and accessible through a drawer in the back of the box.

Each round, eight of the items are chosen randomly and each player takes the matching cards into his hand. The items are then placed in the drawer and seen through the blue screen. Because of the size of the items, however, they overlap. The blue screen hides this overlap so that it is more difficult to see the individual items.

Next, the player who is the thief for this round opens the drawer again, takes out two of the items without showing the other players, and places them in the cloth bag. The suitcase is opened again for all to see, and the detectives must play the two cards from their hand face-down that they think match the items that were stolen. I found the game to be a very nice addition to Guido Hoffman’s award-winning resume.

Wilde Wikinger (Wild Vikings)

Prolific designer Wolfgang Dirscherl had no fewer than three new titles at the HABA booth. In this one, a harbor town board is placed above three Viking ships of different colors. Players receive hand cards that each depict one of the Viking ships or all three. They then take turns rolling a die that either: 1) allows all players to draw a card, 2) places a glass bead onto one of the ships, or 3) brings the top ship into the harbor. When the third option is rolled, each player bids a number of his hand cards that match that ship and the player who bid the most receives the glass beads. Then that ship is moved to the bottom of the order and play continues.

Besser Esser (Better Eater)

Although Katja doubted that this game would deserve the attention of a mostly-adult readership, it caught my attention nevertheless and I begged for an explanation. Stefanie Warich and the ever-present Wolfgang Dirscherl designed this education game about the food pyramid. Each player has a score card consisting of said pyramid along with a shopping cart board. Players roll a die to move the figure around a supermarket board and add food items to their shopping cart. There is a push-your-luck element, however, as landing on a space that matches a food item which is no longer available means that player forfeits everything in his shopping cart and ends his turn. If the player stops before this happens, he stamps the food groups he collected on his score sheet, places the food items back in the supermarket, and the next player takes a turn. The player who first stamps all the spaces in her food pyramid wins.

There is one more element that I found quite amusing. At the top of the food pyramid, there is one space reserved for sweets (as opposed to six spaces at the bottom for water). If a player who has already stamped this space is forced to take another sweet from the supermarket, he must immediately draw an exercise card and do the exercise shown. A jump rope is even included in the game box.

After the explanation, I remarked to Katja that a game that requires physical exercise and encourages a better diet might be more appropriate for adult gamers than she realized.

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The HABA stand was actually in another building, as the company also produces colorful wooden children’s furniture and other products. My father joined me again, and as we walked back to the main board game building, we were greeted with the smell of incense and soon found ourselves in the middle of a Christmas market. Apparently, nutcrackers and other German Christmas handicrafts are also included in the Toy Fair. My father and I thought aloud of how our wives would enjoy being there. “And we would enjoy it too,” my father joked, “since they are not allowed to buy anything.”

After perusing the aisles a bit longer, we enjoyed a meal of Nuremberg bratwursts that remind me of American breakfast sausage links, but passed on the local “smoked” beer. We then retreated to our hilltop castle for the evening.

After taking a nap, my father and I decided to go downstairs to the main lounge and play some of my prototypes. I got out the only two-player game in my backpack and we started up a round. Soon afterwards, a man walked by who seemed quite interested in the Dutch theme of my game and asked me to explain the rules. It turned out to be none other than Corné van Moorsel (second from left in the photo), who was at the convention to find some interesting bits for future Cwali releases. He left to go to his room, but soon returned with two of his Dutch friends: designer and publisher Gerard Mulder and Marco De Goede, an Amsterdam city councilman who claimed to be Gerard’s “executive vice president for the weekend.”

And of course, Corné brought a prototype with him as well: a multi-player version of his two-player boat racing game No Limit, available on his Mastermoves website. I had never played the online version, but thoroughly enjoyed the board game version, even when I literally crashed and burned on my first try. Marco pulled away from the pack early for an easy victory, even though he had to use a meeple since Corné did not have enough boat tokens. Man, could that guy swim!

To be continued….

© 2008 Jeff Allers

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>I’m actually very good at geography, so I write with great relief that there may actually be a U.S.A. version on the horizon. Are you ready for a rematch, Andrea? Could be difficult to locate Springfield correctly ;-) Posted by Klaus Knechtskern on Feb 21, 2008 at 03:28 AM | #

Yes, Klaus, we need to adopt the German system for identifying towns with the same name (how about “Springfield on the Mississippi”?) Posted by Jeff Allers on Feb 21, 2008 at 06:18 AM | #

Of course you can have the State mentioned. Springfield , PA still get a couple of hits, but adding the county might do the trcik ;-) Posted by Klaus Knechtskern on Feb 21, 2008 at 06:31 AM | #

Great report, Jeff! I’m hopeful that No Limit will indeed make the transition to print as the two-player version is fun, but more players would bring more interaction. We’d need rules for ramming as well… Eric Posted by W. Eric Martin on Feb 21, 2008 at 12:51 PM | #

Thanks for the report! Is the New Amsterdam game that you are playing with Hanno in the picture a prototype? It doesn’t look familiar to me. If it is, is it something that you can talk about? It looks like it must be close to final form. Posted by David Lund on Feb 25, 2008 at 11:45 AM | #

Ah, yes, the picture gave it away...it’s a prototype of mine that I was showing to several publishers, including Hanno.  So I could talk about it, but I’d rather wait until I have a contract in hand… (If you follow my Postcards column, though, it was the game I designed when I was sick a few months ago.  Lots of time looking at a ceiling can still be productive!) Posted by Jeff Allers on Feb 25, 2008 at 12:00 PM | #

I remember that Postcard. Good luck landing a publisher! Posted by David Lund on Feb 25, 2008 at 12:10 PM | #

> Could be difficult to locate Springfield correctly ;-) Klaus is correct.  The famous one where the Simpsons live is very hard to find on a map. http://snpp.com/guides/springfield.list.html ;) Posted by John Mitchell on Mar 14, 2008 at 08:29 AM | #

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