Ocasta

I'm just back from spending a long weekend at the Essen games fair. Last year I produced short, capsule reviews of the games I played as the show progressed. This was too much like hard work so this year it's just a simple overview of my thoughts and impressions. There has long been a debate about whether the quality of Essen releases goes in cycles. My impression of the current crop of releases was that while production values continue to increase the uninspiring titles dominated the show. I played between 20 and 25 different game titles over the four days and of these I'd rate five as pleasant and worthy of consideration and two as interesting. Did I play every new release? Of course not. Traders of Carthage A trading game where players the cards are both the goods and the currency. As the goods are bought the ships carrying them sail from Alexandria to Carthage. When one arrives its goods are sold and the ships nearly there are attacked by pirates and may lose their goods. This played well but the components were prototype level

This weekend saw my annual pilgrimage to the Spiel Essen, the highlight of the year for boardgames. Last year I wrote up capsule reviews of all the games I played as the fair progressed. That wabs much too much like hard work so this year I shall just pick out a few highlights. Overall production levels continue to increase with more and more small companies producing exquisite looking games. I'd like to see the same attention paid to play-testing levels. Of the twenty to twenty-five games I played I'd rate only a handful as worthy of a write-up. The rest were either very ordinary or worse. Did I play everything? No. Did I miss a future classic? Only time will tell.

Traders of Carthage - Kawasaki Factory Japon Brand

A small game where players buy and sell goods on ships sailing from Alexandria to Carthage. The cards are both the goods, the currency and the means for moving the ships. As goods are bought the ships move along the trading route. When one or more arrives a Carthage all players sell the goods they own that arrive while those on board the other ships may be at risk to pirates. There's a nice balance to the decision making in this game between taking a card as money or buying goods which also moves the ships and may trigger the pirates. However, the production levels on this game were more like those of a prototype.

HysteriCoach - Scribabs

A mad game where players are divided between two soccer teams. Each team appoints one coach with the remaining players taking ownership of the team members. Each turn the coach draws a formation card. The coach's job is to shout the soccer players names and gesticulate at the players to try and get them to position the team members in to formation shown on the card. Then they can soot for goal. The catch is that the coach must not use verbal directions other than pass and shoot. The name of the game sums up the play pretty well. We had a very enjoyable and hectic 20 minutes playing this.

Greentown - Bambus Spiel

A tile placing and route building game where the players compete in running coach tours. At all times in the game each player has one tourist route card telling you the length of the journey and the places the tourists want to go. Your job is to build new roads, upgrade existing ones (in a manner similar to 18xx style railway track building) and place these destinations so that you earn the most money when you operate the coach tour. Once complete you get a new (and longer tour). This would be relatively simple affair if it wasn't for the fact that Green Town is so named because of its trees that the tourists come to see. As you develop the town the trees get pushed out to the more remote parts of the region making it harder and harder to include them on the tour.

Die Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg - Adlung Spiele

Each player is a member of one of two secret societies who, together must collect a set of objects. The catch is no one knows who else is in their secret society and the objects are distributed around each players hands. When one player knows who is with him and that between them they have met their objective then they may declare the game over. If they are right then all members of that society win. Cards are exchanged through duelling and trading. This is a nice variant on deduction games with only a small memory element and lots of opportunities for player involvement and interaction.

Space Dealer - Eggert-Spiele

One of the big hits of the show. At its core Space Dealer is a relatively straightforward manufacturing and trading game. But it has a unique twist. Well unique for a boardgame. It adds a realtime element to the standard mix. Building stuff takes time. Travel takes time. Real time, as indicated by the sand timer you place on the object when you start it. It is an element that computer games have had for years, but applying it to a boardgame is a neat idea. I know Tamsk used sandtimers and time, but as an abstract game it doesn't reach the same players as a game like Space Dealer. Not only do in game activities take time, the game finishes after exactly 30 minutes. I have some reservations about this game - sand-timers work well but a knocked table can cause havoc; because everything is simultaneous the game is much more open to mistakes and cheating; you can't pause a sand-timer to ask a rules question - but the basic concept is inspired.

2006 has seen me rediscover role-playing. Away from the mass market D20 products an independent press has grown producing interesting and varied games generically known as Indie RPGs. Project Odyssee round the back of Hall 6 (a hall full of a variety of fantasy games and LARP'ers) were doing a great job demo-ing a wide selection of games from this community. I enjoyed a couple of demos and finally bagged a copy of Ron Edwards' Sorceror.

Unlike many of my fellow gamers I go to play new games, meet old friends and total strangers rather than come back with a suitcase full of games. I dragged my weary brain away from the fair on the Sunday with three games, 1 rulebook and a graphic novel. If you've never been you have to go - there really is nothing else like it.

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