Essen 2024 Note 3

The highlight of my third day at the Essen game fair 2024 was undoubtedly being able to meet Dr Reiner Knizia, whom I greatly admire. On Day 2, I saw a notice saying there was going to be a signing session at 4pm on Day 3. So I bought a copy of Rebirth and queued up for the signing. I was about half an hour early, and the queue had already started. It went very long. It disrupted traffic in Hall 3 and the exhibition staff had to reorient the queue to minimise disruption at least twice. 

On Day 3 I covered roughly half of Hall 3, and then started on Hall 2. Both these halls were focused on gamers' games, so mostly my type of games. But then maybe not. I find that heavy Eurogames don't actually get my excited so much anymore. Instead I tend to be tickled by simple, short and clever games. 

Rubico (above) is a secret identity team game. One team is on Caesar's side, the other on the senate's side. Every player has several cards placed before them facedown. Some cards help Caesar rush back to Rome, others help the senate flip over senate cards. 

All players persuade the active player to take one of their cards. After the active player has collected one card each from everyone, they are shuffled, and then revealed. This means the active player doesn't know who has contributed which cards. As the players gradually work on who is on which team, it will be easier to make decisions on who to trust and how to pick cards.

Many play areas at the fair used very nice gaming tables. There were several vendors selling such tables. They can be used as a proper dining table, by having planks put over the playing area. 

Another one

And another one

One with proper cutlery

Babylon was sold out. I don't know how it plays, but it looks intriguing. 

Whoosh is a speed game. There are three monsters at the centre of the table. They require various combinations of weapon symbols to defeat. Players take turns flipping over cards which have various weapon symbols. There will be more and more weapons revealed. When you think there are enough to defeat any particular monster, you slam your hand on that monster. If you are correct, you claim that monster for points. However if you are wrong, you take it as a penalty. 

Now that's a weapon

I'm not familiar with the Moomin character, but I have seen it before. This one is a cute family game. 

Everyone chooses one character. Your character gives you some special ability. On your turn, your roll dice, and try to fulfil the criteria of a portrait on the board (which is a colouring sheet). 

There are lots of different criteria, some easier, some harder. E.g. you need to roll 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Or you need to roll three of one number and two of another (i.e. full house). When you are able to fulfil a criteria, you will the background of that portrait with your colour, and collect a resource given by that portrait. Sometimes you get rerolls, which you can use on a future turn. There are lots of different criteria, some easier, some harder. E.g. you need to roll 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Or you need to roll three of one number and two of another (i.e. full house). When you are able to fulfil a criteria, you will the background of that portrait with your colour, and collect a resource given by that portrait. Sometimes you get rerolls, which you can use on a future turn. 

Pax Viking Junior is not about vikings. It is about their cats. 

You send your longships out to discover new lands, which will have various resources. You can also deploy your cats to "befriend" the locals (that person describing this to me definitely had tongue in cheek). There is majority competition among the players in terms of who has sent more cats to befriend the locals. If you have more cats, you control the resource provided by the territory. When you discover a new territory, you draw two tiles and you may decide which resource it produces. You also get some resources for discovering a territory. The game is a race to have a certain combination of resources. This is a common and open objective. 

The Rome: Total War Boardgame. I have played the computer game before. I played a lot of its predecessor Shogun: Total War. This boardgame is a medium complexity multiplayer war game. 

You win by achieving a certain number of victory points, and victory points come from several sources. That includes having money, winning battles and controlling opponents' home territories. You have to fight. You can't win just by being rich. That would defeat the purpose of the whole Total War thing. 

The tiny guy is your agent. I think that's a spy. 

You can have alliances, but ultimately victory is individual. Alliances can be useful because you can make more money together. It's win-win. 

You can have up to four armies in play. An army can have up to 6 units, i.e. 6 cards. You have a tech tree to develop. Reaching the end of a track on your tech tree gives victory points. 

Military units have different properties and special abilities. Depending on how good they are, they roll different dice. Black dice are the weakest, with many misses. Orange dice are the best, with no misses at all. 

Forests of Pangaia is simply stunning. You grow trees in the forest and try to have them positioned to fulfil certain conditions. You then complete missions to score points. The missions are all public information so this is a race. Your trees become shorter whenever you complete missions. You can grow them taller before you complete missions, so that they won't be reduced to seeds. 

You have a spirit which moves about the forest dropping seeds. I think this was inspired by the forest spirit in the movie Princess Mononoke. 

So beautiful!

Robot Quest Arena

The robots are pretty. 

New game from Friedemann Friese. Outpost, which seems to be Power Grid in space. I see many elements which are like Power Grid, but I did not get an overview of the game so I'm not sure. 

The fuel in this game seem to be humans. 

What a cool box cover! The game of the game is Ice. 

I didn't get a proper game overview. I only watched others play for a short while. The board has multiple layers of ice. As you use the pawns to break and extract the ice tiles to your player board, there will be deeper ice tiles made available. I find that quite interesting. 

Power Grid wall poster

Huang from Reiner Knizia is the newer version of Yellow and Yangtze, which in turn is a hex version of the highly respected classic Tigris and Euphrates. 

Litter Tray is a game about picking and collecting cat poop. Cat poop is your victory points. I told my wife about this and she said we don't need this game. We already have too much cat poop to handle at home. This is a game of push-your-luck. You flip over cards which tell you where your cat is trying to poop, among your six litter trays. You can flip over more cards so that you can get more poop. However, if any cat tries to poop in a litter tray which already has poop, you fail and you don't get any poop this turn. 

Look at all that sh... poop. Even the start player marker is poop. 

Galebari is a card game from Croatia and it is celebrating its 18th anniversary. Galebari roughly means playboys who like to have flings with female tourists. In this game you are competing playboys trying to attract the most women. 

Everyone has the same set of 7 cards. They have different strengths and special abilities. Every round you will be playing two cards. They don't go back to your hand until you play a card which allows you to do so. You use the two cards you play to woo women. Whoever has the highest strength attracts the lady of the round. 

Every round a location is first revealed, which specifies some special rule. The players then commit their first cards, even before they know who the lady will be. The lady is then drawn from the deck. The ladies have different interests, e.g. some are looking for true love, some like to dance, some are money minded. Some may not want true love. They just want a fling. The cards you play must fulfil the criteria of the lady for you to be eligible. If you have no common interests, she will ignore you. The first player to attract five ladies wins the game. 

This naughty game might be inspired by Dixit. It actually comes with a game component which may not get past Malaysian customs. I didn't get a game overview so I can only show this photo. 

Essen 2024 Note 2

Here's my Essen Day 2 (Fri 4 Oct 2024). This is the food corridor, a big long enclosed area in the middle of the exhibition centre between several halls where people can buy food and drinks. I have not bought any food or drink on the fair grounds. I had heavy breakfasts, and throughout the day I was just too engrossed in visiting booths, listening to game explanations, and playing games. No time to waste!

Many nice murals could been seen at the fair. This was just one of many. There was one section in Hall 4 where many game manufacturers, mostly from China, were located. I imagine it must be awkward being stationed so near your toughest competitors. I saw there were some European manufacturers in other areas and they weren't so concentrated. 

This was one game which had an unusual business model. The publisher lets player download and 3D print the models themselves. The business model is a Patreon subscription model. They will be releasing new content regularly. 

The miniatures look pretty good. 

This is a one-on-one battle game, with each player controlling three characters. 

Kezao is a speed game. You have 7 cards and your goal is to discard them all. Every turn one player rolls some dice, which determines the rules for discarding cards. E.g. the card you discard must have green, or must not have orange, or it must fulfil one of two conditions, or sometimes you may discard any card. Each turn the number of cards that can be discarded equals the number of players. You try to discard as many cards as possible before that limit is reached. That's how you get ahead. It's a pretty simple real-time game. 

Galileo Galilei is one of the hot games this year. You play astronomers. You spend time and resources to study celestial bodies to score points. Notice there is a telescope on every player board. You can tilt that at different angles, and where you point it determines the action you can perform. That quarter circle track of actions is made up of tiles which can be removed and slotted back in at the bottom. This is how the game mechanism disallows you from performing certain actions too many times. 

Dice are used as a way to track your resources. You don't actually roll them as randomisers. 

Age of Comics is about publishing comic books. You need to recruit writers and artists. There are different genres of comics you can compete in. You want to earn fans. Every round you will lose fans. You need new ideas to maintain interest in your comic book series. 

There is worker placement in the game. 

The art is evocative. 

Philharmonix is from fellow Malaysian Faris. 

I met Matt Leacock (Pandemic, Pandemic Legacy, Forbidden Island, Ticket to Ride Legacy). It was a fanboy moment for me. 

Rebirth by Reiner Knizia. It has some aspects of Through the Desert. It has secret objectives. There is plenty of interaction. Many fronts to compete in. 

One of the secret objective cards.

The player components are pretty.

Civolution is another hot game this year. It's a civ game. I listened to the game overview and didn't play. It is pretty complex. It has many moving parts. There are 16 resources, if I remember correctly, and 15 types of actions. Quite a lot to digest. This above in the main gameboard, which represents physical terrain on which players' tribes compete. 

The player board is huge! Almost as big as the main board. There is a lot you can do with it. You'll tuck cards and place tiles along the top. Players who like heavy eurogames will enjoy this. Just be prepared there is a lot to manage. One thing nice is the core action mechanism is very simple. You always need two dice to perform an action. Every action requires a different combination. When you run out of dice, you will need to reroll. 

The fair grounds stretches across six halls. On Day 1 I covered Halls 5 and 6, and less than half of Hall 4. On Day 2 I covered the rest of Hall 4, and about a third of Hall 3. Hall 3 is the heavy gamers hall, and it is also the biggest hall. I think I will really need all four days to cover all the halls.