Convention Report: Essen 2008: October 25, 2008 – Day 3

By W. Eric Martin
October 26, 2008

Saturday happenings from the Spiel game convention in Essen, Germany:

• Here are the Fairplay standings as of 18:15 Saturday:

• Dominion
• Machu Picchu
• Nefertiti
• Comuni
• Diamonds Club
• Pandemic
• Im Schutze der Burg
• Age of Empires III
• Chicago Express
• Wind River
• Cavum
• Space Alert
• Snow Tails

• Czech Board Games is working on a cooperative/competitive game for 2009 in which players create an island tile by tile, fighting monsters that jump in your path, collecting flowers that give you bonuses, and uncovering curses that afect all players. You can choose not to play the curses as they might hurt you more than other players, but they slowly choke your player action board, eventually forcing you to inflict them on the group.

• I actually played a few new releases on Saturday, including Lost Cities: The Boardgame (which is effectively Keltis), ...aber bitte mit Sahne (which works fine, although it might have a production error – something I’m checking today), and Royal Palace (which has the Hans im Glück genes running through every cell – if you like the style of HiG games, then you’ll like this one. I played Royal Palace and will post a more detailed write-up later.

• Ystari Games sold out of Sylla, but the game is available through other retailers. Repos sold out of Ghost Stories, and Lookout Games has nearly moved its mountain of Le Havre.

• Dominion is by far the most played game of the show, which shouldn’t be surprising given its short playing time. At one hotel on Saturday evening, three tables out of four were playing the game, and at a second hotel the ratio was four out of eight tables, later switching to two out of two as the clock neared 2:00.

• The FRED edition of Age of Steam has been placed in a holding pattern for now. More word on that when the ground below clears.

Time for a final look at what’s on the show floor!

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