Rick Thornquist: Second Impressions / Thurn und Taxis - Der Kurier der Fürstin

After two months of working on the Essen Preview every day, the convention itself, and another week in Germany, I was exhausted.  Since coming back home I’ve spent much of my time resting and and trying to recover (though the time change and a cold that I acquired didn’t help).

Though I was not in the best of shape, this didn’t stop my friends from beating down my door to play some of the new Essen games I brought home.  I did get a chance to play a few of them and thought I’d jot down some second impressions.

I’ve played Space Dealer six or seven times now and I still love it - it’s unique, filled with tension and great fun.  Though the basic game is fun, the real game is the advanced game (you really only need to play the basic game once before moving onto the advanced game, it’s not that much harder).  I played the game with three different groups last week and pretty much everyone loved it. 

There is one part of the advanced game I am not wild about however - the attack cubes.  These allow you to attack other players directly and I’m not wild about the ‘take that!’ aspect.  Fortunately, the game plays fine without the attack cubes.

Some hay has been made about the sand timers in the game running for different amounts of time.  This is indeed a problem as even a few seconds difference between the timers can be a big deal in game terms.  There are a few ways of dealing with this - I may just have to find a source where I can find more accurate timers.

Moving onto R-ECO… I’ve played R-ECO six or seven times and I really like this one too.  It has become my favorite new filler - fairly easy to teach, quick playing, and lots of fun.  There are only two real issues with the game - first, I don’t know how easy it’s going to be for people in North America to get it.  Secondly, getting the cards and the instructions back in the very tight box is almost impossible.  Tossing the German and Japanese instructions makes everything fit, but just barely.

Moving once more, this time onto Taluva… I’m still not sold on this game.  When played multiplayer it does have that Attika feeling - when someone is about to win, another player has to sacrifice his move to stop the leader and that hurts him and benefits the other players.  The game does have some good strategy but this bit, plus the abstractness and the luck of the tile draw, puts me off a bit.  Like Attika, I think I’ll be playing this one more two player instead of multiplayer.

Games Played
Last week I played R-ECO x 4, Space Dealer x 3, Taluva x 2, Tichu, Midgard, Mr. Jack, Medici vs Strozzi, and Thurn und Taxis with the Der Kurier der Fürstin expansion.

A few words about the Thurn und Taxis - Der Kurier der Fürstin expansion.  This expansion came with the Spielbox magazine that was available at Essen and consists of a small counter sheet.  Spielbox has made available the rules for the expansion in English - check out Thurn und Taxis – The Messenger of the Princess (in PDF format).  You actually don’t need the counter sheet to play the expansion - you just need the rules and can use markers or cubes from another game.

The expansion is quite simple to implement and adds another strategic level to Thurn und Taxis by giving players the option of taking more than one special action on their turn.  Those who want to spice up the game should take a look at it - it does change around the strategies a bit. 

That’s it for this week! 

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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Comments:

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Hi Rick, Could you comment on the interaction in Space Dealer - we observed a few games in Essen and everyone seemed focused on just their tasks -I appreciate they were all learning the game and also playing the basic edition - is there much interaction ? Posted by Mark Robinson on Nov 7, 2006 at 04:31 AM | #

Mark, 1. There is obviously a race aspect in the delivering of cubes. 2. I personnaly am a big fan of the little black cubes which you can use to poison others sandtimers / modules. And this another big interaction. Anyway for your first games, you have so much to do that you do not have much to look at what other do. After a few game, you are much more efficient and interaction is much more evident. This game is a absolut hit for me. All in all, the Essen production seem to have been close to fabulous this year. Posted by Olivier Reix on Nov 7, 2006 at 08:44 AM | #

Thanks Olivier. Posted by Mark Robinson on Nov 7, 2006 at 09:17 AM | #

When I clicked the link for the translation of the Thurn & Taxis expansion, I got a 404 error.  I was able to find the HTML of the PDF with a Google search, but it seems like the PDF is unavailable right now. Posted by john TODD jensen on Nov 8, 2006 at 02:15 PM | #

Rick, To even out the timer problem in Space Dealer can you pass the timers around between rounds?  Not perfect, but at least one person won’t be stuck with the slow timer the whole game. Posted by Jonathan Benjamin on Nov 8, 2006 at 03:05 PM | #

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