Ocasta

Forget the photo's. I had hoped that my phone's camera would be good enough, but the VGA camera in a SE K700i just doesn't show any detail. Time to get a new phone. 2 mega-pixel and Symbian looks likely. If only they could make it smaller. I do love the small size of the K700i after three years of Series 60 handsets.

My first game played at Essen this year was Havoc from Sunriver Games. This is a very nicely produced card game, loosely themed on the Hundred Years war.

The game consists of six suits (colours) numbered 1 to 10 plus a number (6?) Dogs of War and eight battle cards. The suit cards are nicely designed, contain a medieval drawing and some flavour text. The battle cards are named after the major battles of the Hundred Years war and contain the victory points allocated to each player for placing in the battle (1st, 2nd and 3rd).

Game play is remeniscent of Reiner Knizia's Attack (or Ivanhoe). Draw cards or start a fight. The difference being that in a fight you takes turns a playing cards to build up Poker hands (modified for six suits) rather than just fighting in a colour. It's not easy to remember the sequencing of hand values but a handy summary chart is provided. The winner of the fight gets the most victory points, 2nd and 3rd less (if any). The key to the game is to minimise the number of cards played for the points you win. There isn't enough time to rebuild great hands so over bidding is costly.

Most people come away from Essen with 10-20 games. These days I buy one or two. So it was no suprise that I didn't buy a copy. A nice filler, but nothing particularly new or special. My fellow Essenite enjoyed it enough to buy a copy.