Ocasta

Sunday was a bonus day for me. Last year, for the first time in sixteen years of Essening we decided to arrive Wednesday and skip Sunday. Generally by Sunday your brain is screwed-up through too many rules, late nights and alcohol and you've pretty much played everything you wanted to. So going home a day early really didn't matter. We had planned to do the same this year but our airline had other ideas and our flight was until 4pm. This meant an extra half day at the Messe.

After the struggle of Saturday we had a plan - a door opening dash to the back of hall 6 for an explanation and opportunity to play Parthenon from Z-Man comics. Our plan worked perfectly and we had the stand to ourselves. Strangely, Sunday morning seemed very quiet and we needn't have rushed. Part way through the game a German couple we had played Il Principe with way back on Thursday turned up. It was good to see a familiar face.

Parthenon is a game of developing civilizations in the ancient eastern Mediterranean (sound familiar?). This time the emphasis is on trading and investment - there are no people counters at all. Suprisingly for a trading game there was remarkable little player to player trading after Year 1. We were largely playing solitaire against the game system. There are other games that do this and while they aren't my kind of game I thought Parthenon did this rather well. There were plenty of choices of what to build, where to trade and what risks to take for all of us. Although I have the feeling that with repeated play optimum strategies will appear for each nation the random element will keep players alert.

The production uses muted tones and provides lots of card giving good heft value. As I say, not my sort of game, but if this is the type of game your group likes then its worth a look.

After this I tried to get a game of Skyline but failed as my the two German I was playing with became involved in a marital dispute (well it sounded like that anyway, but my German is very poor). So off to the airport

Was this a good Essen? For me this year was as good as recent years. I go to Essen to play new games and appreciate the company. This I did. There were lots of games to try, new companies to discover and old faces to meet. But from my jaded (and critical) point of view there were few games that caught the imagination. If my weekly playing sessions weren't dominated by play-testing I would have bought Indonesia and Kaivai but actually only purchased Railroad Dice 2. As usual I picked up a couple of lighter card games - TaTaTa and (unplayed) Adling Spiel's Zauberschwert & Drachenei with its expansion Helden & Zauberspruche.