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.