Essen Spiel 2016: Games Played

If there’s one thing you’re short of at Essen Spiel it’s not games. I went this year purely with the aim of playing as much as possible so how did I get on? Well…!

Let’s start with my top 10 games list. Of these, my plan was to buy as many as possible so that I could review them soon. So any games I have bought at the show I haven’t played, while anything I played, I haven’t bought. Not the necessarily an advisable way to operate, but it gives me the most scope for new content possible! Let me know what you want to hear about and I’ll try to prioritise it!

 

My Top 10 Games

Well my wallet has very successfully emptied itself into the money tins of the world’s biggest board game retailers this weekend and I can’t say I feel too bad about it. But then, as of this moment, I’m still waiting for the stork-like wings of DPD to whisk my new collection of cardboard babies into my waiting arms from where I shall desperately need to try and fit them on to my over-filled shelves. This will be a challenge.

This Essen I also had the very real pleasure of receiving my first “in-person” review copy. Having a major exhibitor eagerly duck back behind their table to produce a glowing shrink-wrapped wonder just for me while the crowds queued outside was a wonderful feeling. Thank you Jana and Czech Games! Jeez, maybe I really am making it in this industry!

Anyhow, onwards to the games!

 

Fields of Green – Collected my Kickstarter

Nautilion – Bought – read the review here!

Essen Fog of War

The Fog of War – Played and was absolutely blown away (war puns not withstanding). Didn’t have enough in the budget to buy but will be looking to pick this up at some point! Probably my game of the con so far (of those I played).

Kanagawa – Bought – reviewed!

Great Western Trail – Bought

Inis – Neither bought nor played, although not for lack of trying. The demo tables were rammed with people constantly. Hopefully I’ll get to play this at some point!

Fabled Fruit – Bought – read the review!

Colony – Bought

Railroad Revolution – Should (hopefully) be getting a review copy through the post soon

Adrenaline – Review copy received and can’t wait to get to the table – read the review here!

 

Other Purchases

Obviously I couldn’t limit myself to just my top 10 with all those games around and cash on hand. Though I’ve certainly kept things under control better than some people, if the queue for the postage service was anything to go by (which worked well enough, though they need to dramatically expand their operation to handle the ridiculous queue times). Expect reviews of these games soon-ish!

Honshu – One that had already grabbed my attention with it’s beautiful box cover (I really am a sucker for a good box cover!) this mixes trick taking, tile laying, city building and resource management into a tiny €12 box. Yes please!

No Siesta! – aka La Granja the dice game, this was something of an impulse purchase at the Stronghold booth but, hey, what’s Essen without an impulse purchase or two?

Food Chain Magnate – A pick up for a friend, I’m frankly terrified of this game but will give it a try. Hopefully I’ll be able to get that friend to put together a full review too.

Cottage Garden – the natural next step from Patchwork’s quilt making is gardening, hopefully in an allotment with a small shed. This was one of the big new hotnesses and having loved Patchwork, I had to pick this one up.

Captive – A choose your own adventure style graphic novel, with full gamey elements (the inside front cover tells you the rules!) this intrigues me as something unique I can play solo.

Power Grid: The Card Game – I love Power Grid, I like… cards and the German edition was fairly cheap so, hey! I gave it a go. Fingers crossed it’s good (and I can find English rules).

Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game – Having heard such good things about this game and loving the original I couldn’t resist this.

 

Played

Now for the bigger list! I wanted to play as much as possible and, if anything, I’m a little disappointed I didn’t play more. But demo queues will do that to you. Expect First Impressions for some of these. Probably not all of them. So let me know which games you are most interested in reading about!!

Argo – A Bruno Cathala Kickstarter game about trying to escape an alien infested ship with your crew, while hopefully feeding your opponent’s to the aliens.

Pandemic Iberia – The latest Pandemic iteration takes us back in time to 19th century Spain/Portugal with some pretty cool twists on the gameplay. Won’t say much more here but I did like this one.

Goths Save The Queen – An amusing team game where you are trying to guess what your teammate will play in order to do anything. It was a lot of fun, mostly because you inevitably screw up. And that’s just funny.

When I Dream – A cool concept with even cooler art, when I dream has you trying to get a blindfolded player to guess a word printed on a card by giving them one-word clues. But half the players secretly want them to get it wrong.

Via Nebula – Not a super new release, but a game I hadn’t had chance to play yet. It’s a sort of route building and resource management game, and I rather enjoyed it.

Raise Your Goblets

Raise Your Goblets – a party game previously known as Toast has you attempting to poison each other while avoiding the poison yourself. Was good fun, and reminded me a lot of Mascarade. But with cups.

X Nimmt – The new version of 6 Nimmt which adds some twists and, honestly, exists for the fans of previous iterations. Was fun in the same way as 6 Nimmt, but pays with an increased rules overhead without necessarily improving on the original.

Haru Ichiban – Featuring frogs, flowers and lily pads, this is a neat 2-player game where you need to get inside your opponent’s head and think spatially at the same time. While choosing flowers.

Armageddon – The big new Queen Games release is all about rebuilding after the apocalypse. Hits a lot of the tropes of the genre thematically, but mechanically mixes bidding, worker placement, tableau building and set collection into something neat and interesting.

Chariot Race – The new Matt Leacock game is perhaps best described as a cross between Formula D and King of Tokyo, but features some painful take-that and pretty shoddy components. But maybe I’m a little bitter after being speared through the back…

Perfect Crime – A one-vs-many (or fully coop) game that will show you just how rubbish you’ll be at robbing a bank. It’s the latest release from Grublin Games who published the lovely Waggle Dance.

Cry Havoc – Portal Game’s big release this year and a proper dust up amongst and endless wave of Trogs, at least during the two turns we got to play. Cool card driven gameplay and the neat combat board make for a interesting game, but with a steep learning curve.

Glimpse – A game highlighting the challenges of colour blindness. Think Codenames, but with the coloured grid already out and a guesser wearing red-tinted glasses to make the colours indistinguishable.

Dragon and Flagon

The Dragon & Flagon – Another Stronghold and Engelstein game, taking the programmed movement chaos of something like robo-rally and setting it in the perfect place: a fantastical bar brawl.

Eight Epics – A really intriguing co-operative small box game from AEG, where you are using the powers of various heroes to try and control the dice rolling challenges you face.

Dale of Merchants – A deck building and deconstruction game mixed into one is a game I’ve been curious about since it came up on Kickstarter. Some real neat and interesting combos available but I got brutalised by a nasty attack card.

Arkham Horror The Card Game – The upcoming Arkham Horror LCG from fantasy flight is a co-operative or solo affair, naturally seeing you face all kinds of mysterious horrors and sanity sapping stuff. – I’ve since got hold of and reviewed this beauty!

They Who Were 8 – A graphically beautiful card game with a really haunting feeling that I’m thoroughly intrigued by. It didn’t work too well at 2-player, but I have hopes for higher player counts.

London Dread – A Sherlock Holmes style mystery and story telling game which… well, doesn’t work as either. But it does have a fantastic programmed movement system.

Gloomhaven

Gloomhaven – The massive Kickstarted fantasy Legacy dungeon crawl system was as awesome as I had hoped it would be! And I’m not even a backer.

7 Wonders Duel – Not exactly a big new release as I’ve only just managed to play the base game! (Sorry, no idea how the expansion plays) The base game though was better than I was expecting! (I have this thing against hype) – I have since reviewed this and the expansion!

4 Gods – Possibly best described as simultaneous, real-time, Carcassonne this is hilarious, brilliant and clunky as all hell at the same time.

3 Wishes and What’s Up? – Two light, fast playing memory games that both look nice and play nice, and both have a surprising amount of depth to boot.

 

The ones that got away

Sadly there just isn’t time to see everything and there are so many games I wish I had played. But that’s the thing with Spiel! With over a 1000 exhibitors, there’s always something else waiting behind the corner and you just can’t play everything. The big regrets I have are: Oracle of Delphi (never could get to the demo table), the aforementioned Inis, Robinson Crusoe (2nd Editions just couldn’t be a priority this trip), Captain Lux (got a lot of buzz), Not Alone (likewise buzzy), Tramways (one day I’ll play an Alban Viard game, one day!), The Last Night (again, always busy), Key to the City of London (tiny booth, big queues), A Feast for Odin (only €60 Euros! Was so tempting but couldn’t quite justify it) and so many little or independent releases I missed out on.

 

Thefts and an appeal

I just wanted to finish with some sad news. On Saturday, the small publisher Ludicreations (Town Centre, [redacted], Crisis, …and then we held hands, amongst other titles) had their box of cash stolen from the booth by what are suspected to be a criminal gang operating at the show. The loss of all their earnings from what is the biggest single sales day for a board games company in the whole year is naturally a devastating blow, and they have responded in the best possible way. If you follow this link you can find a Kickstarter they have launched to re-coup those losses, but also to give you a postcard sized micro-game called, appropriately, Steal This Game! They have already massively over-funded so don’t feel obligated in any way, but if you want to show some solidarity with a great company, do consider backing.

 

So! Let me know which games you want to hear about! Which I should review first, and which first impressions have you most excited! Then I can get to work on them!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.