Rick Thornquist: Even More Essen Games First Impressions / Canal Mania

It’s time for some more first impressions of some upcoming Essen games.  This time I’ll be giving you my first impressions solely from the rules of the some of the games.  Some publishers have actually posted the rules for their games on their websites, but I have been sent some rules that are not publicly available.  Here we go!

Fiji
Fiji is a new game designed by Friedemann Friese and published by 2F-Spiele (it will be published in English by Rio Grande Games).  The idea of the game is that the Fijian islands are in a contest for possession of shrunken heads and the player with the most shrunken heads at the end of the game wins.  Only Friedemann Friese would come up with a theme like this!

This is a light to middle weight bidding game that is played in four rounds.  At the beginning of each round, players start with a set of differently colored glass beads that they hide behind a screen. 

Then, four condition cards are dealt face-up on the table.  These condition cards show a particular combination of beads that you need the most or the least of.  Beside each condition card is dealt a face-up effect card.  These effects can give you additional beads, or have some other effects. 

There are then three closed-fist bidding phases where you bid with your beads.  The idea is that when you bid, you try to match your bid to one or more of the condition cards.  Whoever’s bid best matches a condition card gets the card’s effect (and usually more beads). 

After the bidding, players reveal all their beads.  They compare them to a set of goal cards that were dealt face-up on the table at the beginning of the round.  These goal cards show a color of bead plus indicate whether you want the most or the least of that color.  Whoever best matches the goal cards (by having the most or the least of a color of bead) gets the most shrunken heads, the second best player gets one less, and so on.  Four rounds are played and whoever has the most shrunken heads at the end wins.

The game is a blind-bidding and bluffing game.  It looks fairly easy to explain and quick to play.  Sorry to say, there are no actual shrunken heads in the game - the heads are tokens, though the illustrations are quite funny.  I’ll be sure to get in a game while at Essen.

Fürchterliche Feinde / Formidable Foes
Next up is another Friedemann Friese game published by 2F-Spiele - Fürchterliche Feinde (this one will be published in English by Rio Grande Games as Formidable Foes).  When I read the rules for this one I was a bit surprised - it does seem more of an American-style game than a German game.  This is a classic dungeon crawl game where you are roaming through a dungeon battling monsters and collecting treasure.

I won’t go into too much detail here, as this is a bit more involved a game.  Basically, on your turn you can move and battle, move twice, or take power chips (for your battles with the monsters).  Each player has a wisdom level which you can increase by battling (there is another way as well).  Each monster requires a certain amount of wisdom to attack so you can’t attack the big ones until you get more wisdom.

The battles are dice-rolling affairs.  The outcome of the dice rolling indicates the amount of power chips you have to spend to defeat the monster.  If you win a battle, you get gold pieces plus a magic spell card, which gives you a special power.  You also will gain some wisdom. 

When the final monsters are defeated the game ends and whoever has the most gold wins.

It really does sound like a classic dungeon crawl.  It’s a more involved than Fiji, I’d call it middle weight, but still seems fairly straightforward.  I’ll be sure to get in a game of this one as well.

Other Games
I do have a few other rulesets that I hope to have time to go over this week before I head out to Essen.  If I do have the time I’ll post an additional column with my thoughts on them.

Games Played
Another very light week due to the mountains of Essen work and a slight cold that everybody in Vancouver seems to have picked up.  My only games were Canal Mania, which I played for the first time, and a multiplayer game of Crazy Chicken (using the Drive rules, you can play this game multiplayer - and it works well!).

Canal Mania
I’m a little late to the party when it comes to evaluating this new Ragnar Brothers release.  This is one game that I had to buy if I wanted it (yes, poor poor pitiful me) and as my friendly local game store didn’t carry it, I was going to have to order it from an American game store (with the attendant shipping costs).  I thought I’d wait to hear the buzz before I sprung for it.  The buzz was good, so I sprang for it.

Much has been said by others about the mechanics so I’ll just sum up.  The game is ostensibly about canal building, but this is a rail game through and through.  As a matter of fact, it very much derived from other rail games, especially the Martin Wallace Lancashire Railways / Volldampf / Age of Steam games with a little Ticket to Ride thrown in.  Basically, you get your tickets, uh, contracts, and lay your track, uh, canals, and move the cubes. 

Each player also gets a card that gives him a special power.  This card can be traded for an unused card or a card that another player has - shades of Maharaja (decidedly NOT a rail game).

The game played perfectly fine and I think it’s a good one.  However, the lack of originality bugged me (and the other players).  It’s just so much like the aforementioned other games.  If you haven’t played the Wallace games, it’s worth checking out.  If you like Age of Steam and want something similar, it’s worth checking out.  If you have played Age of Steam and want something different, I suggest you look elsewhere.

That’s it for this week.  As said, I may post another column with some more first impressions if I have some time before I head out for Essen.  I’m leaving this Sunday and I’ll be in Germany for the Essen week plus an extra week, so I probably will be missing my next two columns.  I’ll return in three weeks.  In the meantime, enjoy the Essen coverage!

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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Comments:

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Wow!  I’m sorry to hear about Fiji and Formidable Foes.  Fiji is a blind bidding and bluffing game ... two mechanisms that just don’t go down well with me.  Formidable Foes is a dungeon crawl, yet another genre of which I’m not fond and try to avoid. Looks like I’ll have to play them at Essen, as I’ve now scratched them from my “automatic” purchase list. Posted by Greg Schloesser on Oct 10, 2006 at 06:26 AM | #

Greg, if you really don’t like blind bidding and bluffing, I’d stay far, far away from Fiji.  Basically, that’s all the game is.  It’s a game I intend to avoid from now on, but a lot of other people loved it, so there’s obviously something there for folks who do appreciate those systems. Rick, with regards to Canal Mania, I actually thought there was quite a bit of originality to the design, but it’s all refinements of existing mechanics.  So yes, there’s roles with special powers, but you can always acquire the role you want, with the only cost being losing the chance to do something else in that phase.  And yes, you’re building track, but the endpoints are specified and there’s a maximum number of segments you can use.  As a train game veteran, I really appreciated the improvements that were made to existing systems, particularly since most of these were implemented very simply and elegantly.  To me, it occupies a nice little niche between Age of Steam and Ticket to Ride in complexity.  Definitely worth owning and definitely worth playing, even (or maybe especially) if you’re familiar with those other games. Posted by Larry Levy on Oct 10, 2006 at 12:57 PM | #

Larry sums up my thoughts as well.  I think there is more originality here in how the game in the overall construction of the game and the mechanics.  Canal Mania looks like it has all been done before the the end product ultimately feels pretty fresh - at least it did for me.  I see all of the same similarities that Rick mentions, but that is as far as it went.  I actually think the game is very near the same complexity level as Age of Steam rather than occupying the space between it and Ticket to Ride.  The difference between the two being the amount of direct player interaction. Posted by Craig Massey on Oct 10, 2006 at 03:11 PM | #

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