So many games, so little time.
Publishers we’d never heard of. Booths for “Czech Games” and “Korean Games.”
When we first arrived on Friday afternoon, Daniel vanished to get something signed by the creator of Catan (I found out later it was the custom cards that the Sugarland folks had made for me - now they are doubly precious), while Meg, Donald and I search for Dixit to give it a try. Meg & Donald had heard of it before, but I was oblivious. Anyway, just as we sat down a pair of Finnish college students came over and joined us, then Daniel got there, so we had a full table.
Dixit: Cool game - we got a copy, as well an expansion for it. Everyone has a hand of cards with pictures (surrealistic drawings to a large extent) and one person (each person in rotation) picks one and gives a short phrase that sort of applies to/is invoked by the image. Everyone picks one card from their hand that they think would work for that phrase and puts it down (face down). They get shuffled and turned over, then everyone votes on which one the person who came up with the phrase used as inspiration. Points are awarded based on who got it right and who picked other ones. The person coming up with phrase gets points if someone, but not everyone gets it right.
After that, we split up for a while - Meg & Donald tried out Spiderella - a kid’s game, but fun. We played the dice version of Pandemic and weren’t impressed.
Friday night at the hotel, Daniel went to the rooms where people from the convention were trying out their new games. He found a couple of French guys and played “Celestia” (thought it was quite good) as well as “The Game” (which he wasn’t impressed by).
Saturday:
Daniel and I headed over earlier than the kids. We tried out the board game version of Pandemic (had heard good things from various friends) and greatly enjoyed it. It’s a cooperative game and the goal is to stop the spread of a variety of nasty diseases before there are too many outbreaks or they become too widespread to stop. We were playing with a couple of guys from the UK. We picked up the Legacy version (which is basically a continuing story - you play it then when you play it again, the next bit happens) - which can be played as the regular version or the Legacy one.
Meg & Donald arrived and found M.U.L.E. and gave it a whirl. They liked it quite a bit.
Then it was time for the Catan Big Game. It was very cool how they did it.
First of all, you got a tag - not a name tag, a language tag. This ensured you got directions in the correct language and could more easily make certain that you had someone playing against you that spoke the same language.
There were three different game boards - each for two players (set up as “sun” and “moon” so there were two “teams” overall). The land area was a smallish island and the seafarers rules were in effect - you could go build on adjacent boards.
Turns were timed (very short) and all the sun players went, then all the moon players. When it was your turn, you could trade with the person across from you, either person next to you and the people across from the folks next to you (5 total).
There were multiple long tables and at either end of the table, there were folks working who set up shadow boards of the end of the next table over (so that even folks at the end of the table could trade with 5 people) and were running back and forth as go-betweens.
We were allowed to keep our board and the pieces (Very cool road/settlement/city/ship pieces! Entire card sets!). We also managed to snag a couple extra boards, so we should be able to play with up to 10 people. :)
Because the turns were short (the robber didn’t move the first 15 turns and they were 45 seconds each - after that, they became 60 seconds with a few seconds between them), the whole game lasted around an hour. The first person to reach 25 points won - which happened on turn 48. It was actually almost a 3-way tie, but they had contingencies based on number of resource cards. First place winner walked away with the ENTIRE Catan line - every expansion. Second place still had a huge stack (about 8 boxes?). Don’t know what the third place person got.
Saturday evening, Daniel found the French guys again - this time Meg & I joined in.
We played “Treasure Hunters” - which was cute, but nothing to write home about. If someone had it, we’d willingly play it, but didn’t like enough to think about buying either for ourselves or anyone else.
Then we played “Mysterium.” So the French guys had played it several times before and said “oh, it’s just like Dixit.” Then they started pulling out board pieces and tokens and...Daniel and I looked at each other - because, well, it didn’t appear to be anything like Dixit at all. It was more similar than one would have guessed though, because it was a lot of interpreting pictures. It was very cool.
Sunday morning, Daniel and the kids finally got to sit down to “Concept” - a game they had noticed on Friday, but was always too crowded to play. Response was less than overwhelming. It was kind of like Dixit (use pictures to figure out what someone is trying to explain), but not as fun.
I then went on my disappointing Mysterium search. It was entirely sold out. It also was only a pre-release at Essen and won’t be available from retailers until the 22nd. Sigh.
Daniel, meanwhile played ExoPlanet. He LOVED it.
Things we didn’t get to: Dark Seas (a pirate game Daniel was interested in trying), Tides of Time (which we bought on recommendation without trying), Kingdom Builder (another one we bought unplayed) and a zillion other ones that looked neat.
They had some nice packages - the Kingdom Builder “big box” has three expansions in it and only cost an extra 15 Euro. Several of the companies and games did similar things - Catan and Carcassone leap to mind.
Bought several Christmas presents, had fun. All in all, a successful weekend!
