Scott Tepper: A Glimpse of GAMA 2007

This week’s column comes to you from sin city itself, Las Vegas.

Ahhhh, Las Vegas. Home of showgirls and indecent proposals.  What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas. 

Usually…………But I’m a sharer.

I was in the city of lights demoing for Rio Grande Games at the annual GAMA (Game Manufacturer’s Association) trade show.  This convention is not open to the general public, but rather is a chance for retailers and distributors to get together and see what’s new from the manufacturers they represent, and also attend seminars on how to improve their business.

It’s fitting that GAMA takes place in the city of games of chance.  Although there’s not much I’d rather do than play games, I’ve never really felt at home in Vegas.  Maybe it’s because I don’t find it entertaining to risk losing my hard-earned money, or that nothing seems sacred to the juggernaut that is gambling.  For instance, within one minute of walking off the plane, I came upon a Star Wars slot machine.  Star Wars?!?  Does George Lucas really need the extra money that he has to license his movies to one-armed bandits?

Riding down the escalator at the Las Vegas airport, you have no choice whatsoever but to look at the huge poster advertising the Las Vegas production of The Producers with a picture of a reclining…wait for it…David Hasselhoff.

Riding in the cab to my hotel I marveled at the lights twinkling from most every surface visible, yet I couldn’t help but wonder how much money was spent keeping the lights on the Luxor hotel burning so forcefully that they could be seen 250 miles away in the sky. 

After checking into the hotel, I had no choice but to walk through the casino to reach the elevators.  As I did so, it was as if I had walked into a wall of cigarette smoke, which became kind of a barrier for me during the trip, limiting my visits to the front of the hotel.

One of the few times that I needed to go through the casino to get to the office center, I passed by a game of craps that was in progress.  As previously stated, I’m not much of a gambler, but I do find it fascinating to watch people in all sorts of public activities, and casinos are one of the most interesting places to see people from all walks of life interacting with each other.  An older gentleman, who appeared to be intoxicated, at the craps table, caught my eye.  As it was early in the morning, I assume that he had been up through the night.  He didn’t seem to be actually participating at the game, but did have a space at the table and would shakily reach for his drink every other minute or so.  I couldn’t help but wonder if he was really having “fun”.

I would have liked to spend more time people watching, but my time at the convention was limited.  Since I was at the show demoing for Rio Grande Games and wasn’t able to see all of the show, I can’t give you an in depth recounting of everything there, but I did see a few things that you might find interesting.

Contrary to its name, GAMA isn’t just about games, but also includes related or tie-in products that might appeal to stores that carry games, such as comics, miniatures, books, t-shirts, etc.  The main focus, though, is on games: board games, card games, and even role-playing games.  Manufacturers were showing some of their staple games as well as their new and soon to be released games.

The Rio Grande booth was showing old standards such as Carcassonne and Alhambra, as well as newer games like Taluva, Underground, and Thurn & Taxis: Power & Glory.  Tuesday, Cyril Demaegd from Ystari dropped off a first run copy of Caylus Magna Carta, which is now to be considered a pre-production copy because the artwork on the cover of the box is too dark and the cardboard chits were printed wrong (mis-matched fronts and back of the coins and castle counters) by the factory.

Cyril, who you may recognize as the designer of YS, not only gave me some interesting tidbits about some upcoming games, but he kindly gave me permission to share them with you.  The first bit of information was about his new game, Amyitis.

The game, which will be published in a big box, is based on the construction of the famed Hanging Gardens of Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar II for his wife, Amyitis, to remind her of her homeland.  In the game, whose title comes from the queen’s name (and for the record, it hasn’t been 100% decided which accepted spelling, Amyitis, or Amytis, will be used for the game), the players construct the hanging gardens by hiring workers who can do different tasks, like producing resources or developing irrigation amongst others.  There are two main boards to the game, where the players will either move their caravans to trade for different resources or build the gardens.  There are three types of resources to manage in this gamers’ game: money for hiring people, resources for building garden components, and camels for movement. 

From Cyril’s passionate description, the game has been extensively play-tested and at this point, the only thing left to do is decide on what type of artistic rendering should be used for the hanging gardens.  They have already produced two; an overhead view, and a 3D side view, both of which have pros and cons.  Barring any major problems, Amyitis will be released at Essen 2007.

Cyril also told me that a computer version of Caylus Magna Carta is in the finishing stages and will be released in May.  Unfortunately, at this point, it will be released only in French, with only a possibility of it being produced in English. 

Lastly, Cyril told me a little more about the upcoming Caylus Deluxe Limited Edition.  As has already been reported, the artwork for this version of the game will be done by Mike Doyle.  Not only will the currency in the game be made of metal instead of the original cardboard, but it will be minted using molds created from actual antique coins from that era.  Ystari will be limiting the print run to only 1500 copies.  There will definitely not be a reprint.  Once they are gone, that’s it.  Preorders will be accepted.

One of the booths next to Rio Grande Games was Screen Life, the people who produce the game, Scene It.  My only experience with this game was a few years ago when I went to the home of a friend who had heard about my interest in boardgames.  He hosted a game party where we played Scene It.  As I recall, the game was played in teams, where the players had to answer different types of questions about movies. 

One of the main mechanisms of the game revolves around a DVD that shows a movie clip and then asks you a question about it.  Our team was shown a clip from the movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where the mysterious overhead lights of the UFO were causing all sorts of havok, like making a truck shake or letters fly out of a mailbox or turn lights on in a house.  After viewing the longish scene from the movie, our team had to answer the question, “How many envelopes flew out of the mailbox?” At that point, my brain shut down because I figured that if the questions were going to be that impossible, it didn’t matter if I paid attention to the clips or not.  I never played Scene It again.

So here I was, face to face with a booth filled with easily 20 different versions of Scene It.  The newest were Harry Potter 2nd Edition, and Disney 2nd Edition.  After speaking with one of the representatives about the new travel versions, which are for use in a car DVD player, as they have no gameboard board, I have to admit that I thought it sounded like a pretty good idea for parents to occupy their kids on a long car trip.

A new game publisher, Red Juggernaut, was demoing its soon to be released game, Battue: Storm of the Horse Lords, which will be the first in what promises to be a series of games set in the fictional world of Terris.  The large square board is filled with face-down, randomly arranged, Tetris-shaped tiles.  On a player’s turn, he can allocate a number of his warriors to attack one of the outer tiles (buildings).  The success of an attack revolves around the number of warriors used, the defense strength of the tile, and a die roll.  If a player is successful, he receives victory points, and possibly a random card that gives one of a variety of special benefits, and possibly triggers an event.  As players conquer tiles, they open up the option of attacking neighboring tiles, until three particular buildings have been conquered.  The player with the most victory points wins.

Battue will be released in May and will have a retail cost of $49.99.  The next release from Red Juggernaut, sometime in the summer, will be an expansion for Battue called, Battue: The Walls of Tarsos, and will include new tiles and Event cards, as well as some additional new components.  Subsequent releases will be Mansuba: Challenge of the Pharaohs, a game for 2-6 players, and two different versions of a 2-player game called Stronghold which can be played separately, or combined to support more players.

Although the version of Battue I saw at the trade show was a special demo copy (with beautiful acrylic tiles), it was clear from the detailed artwork and nice plastic warrior pieces that the publishers know what they’re doing.  This makes sense as the C.E.O of Red Juggernaut is Jim Long who worked on Mage Knight and Shadowrun, and the Executive VP is John Leitheuser, who worked for WizKids.

As I was dashing past the Playroom Entertainment booth, the game Mother Sheep, which is to be released in 2-3 weeks, caught my eye.  It was the cute little plastic sheep, reminiscent of those in Sheer Panic, that prompted me to stop and inquire about the game. 

In Mother Sheep, each player is given a card with names of five of the several sheep.  At the beginning of the game, the sheep are placed somewhat randomly on the table surrounding the larger Mother sheep.  The players are given three long, cardboard sticks that have a variety of colored bands on them.  Some of the colored bands are long, others are short.  To give you a general idea, imagine you filled up a Blokus board with all the different colored tiles, then took a picture of the board and cut the picture up into long strips.  That’s more or less what these long sticks look like.

On a player’s turn, he takes a colored stick from the general supply and places it so it emanates from the patch of grass that Mother Sheep is standing on.  He may also play one or more of the sticks from his personal supply as well.  Subsequent sticks can either be placed similarly on Mother Sheep’s grass OR on a previously placed stick, but only so that a color on the new stick covers the same color on the former stick.  This will eventually form a spider web effect extending from Mother sheep.  The goal is to have sticks completely enclose the sheep named on your card one by one till they’re all enclosed.  The first player to enclose all of his sheep wins.  This game appears to have a feel like Transamerica, where the players hope that the other players will do some of their work for them.

I stopped by the Asmodee booth one morning before the show opened up.  They were displaying Fire & Axe, as well as Du Balai, and they also had a copy of the Werewolf expansion, Nouvelle Lune (New Moon).  I had already received this add on to Werewolf a couple of months ago. It includes special action cards and stickers to convert villagers from the original deck into new roles, such as the Elder, the Savior, the Village Idiot, and the Flute Player.  Unfortunately, at the time when I stopped by, there was no one at the Asmodee booth that I could ask to find out if or when an English version of Nouvelle Lune would be released.

A quick visit to the Face 2 Face booth enabled me to ask if they had a copy of Wizard’s Brew, since they had a large poster of their games which included this English language version of Das Amulett that I’ve been expecting for quite some time now.  I was told that Wizard’s Brew would be released in time for Essen.

One final random observation:

Wizkids seemed to have given away some super-sized HeroClix figures to some show attendees because I saw several people clutching very large HeroClix boxes.  I don’t know what character was in the box, but I did overhear one of the attendees who was carrying one, as we were riding an elevator, say to someone else, “I don’t play the game, but I’m thinking of displaying this at my store just so some of my customers will drool over it.”

As a result of my not having much time at the show, there was, unfortunately, a whole separate exhibit hall that I didn’t get to see. 

Now, to finish up I want to give you the non-game related lowpoints and highpoint of my trip.  The first runner-up to the lowest point was when I used the washroom at the Las Vegas airport right before getting on the plane for my return trip home.  The sinks were those automatic sensor type where you wave your hand and the water just starts flowing.  Unfortunately, I chose the wrong one, as my hand motion triggered not an easy flow of water, but rather a high-velocity water cannon, which reflected the soapy water out of the washbasin and all over my shirt and pants, soaking me from head to knees. A man who was just walking by happened to witness the water attack and let out a gasp as I was sputtering to spit out the water that hit my face. 

What were the odds that I would get the one bad faucet? 

This is why I don’t gamble.

But that was only the runner up.  The worst part of the trip was triggered by my buying a muffin and container of milk at the hotel’s coffee shop kiosk.  I took my impromptu breakfast up to my room to eat while I watched TV.  The muffin was delicious, but when I took a chug of milk, it tasted…bitter.  I was wondering if the taste had anything to do with my ordering skim milk, when I realized that the milk also had…a texture. 

I ran to the bathroom and spit out what I hadn’t already swallowed of the milk.  It was…chunky.  I poured the rest of the milk down the drain to witness that the entire carton had the consistency of runny oatmeal.  It took me about five minutes of rinsing my mouth out before I was confident that my gag reflex wasn’t going to trigger.

MMMmmmMMM!  Milk, it’s not just for breakfast anymore.  It’s also an emetic!

The non-game related highpoint of the trip for me was waking up on the flight home and looking out the window to see the Grand Canyon from above for the first time in my life.  It was breathtakingly majestic, seeing the valleys and rock, and the water twisting and winding.  There should be a game in there somewhere…

Comments:

< Back Home