Spiel 2009 Preview

Which games will debut at the Spiel game convention in October?
(A BGN Member benefit)

• Publishers A-D
• Publishers E-M
• Publishers N-R
• Publishers S-Z

Board 2 Pieces

Posted Nov 5

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W. Eric Martin: First Thoughts on Tobago, Mosaix, Loyang, Beer & Pretzels, and Gonzaga

I’ve played a few games that debuted at Spiel in late October 2009 at least twice, so I thought I’d offer early impressions, with more detailed reviews to follow once I’ve played them a sufficient number of times. Here goes:

• Tobago – Bruce Allen has created a fun deduction-style game that contains no deduction. On an island with different types of terrain and landmarks, players play cards that reduce the possible locations of a treasure until only one spot remains. (Cards have pictograms noting things like “adjacent to a palm tree,” “not within two spaces of a mountain,” and “in the largest lake.") Once a player reaches that spot with his land-cruiser, that player and everyone else who has contributed to isolating the treasure gets a share of the loot, with those who contribute more getting more shares and those who contribute later in the discovery process getting first dibs. This scoring method encourages players to cooperate in a treasure hunt, even if they’re nowhere near the treasure; cursed treasures create an incentive not to go it alone as you risk taking nothing home despite all your work.

In September 2009, designer Bruno Faidutti described Tobago as “the first serious contender” for the 2010 Spiel des Jahres, and I can see where he’s coming from as the game has enough luck to allow players to come back from early deficits and enough skill that players who care to do so can play better than casual folks.

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North Star Games Donating 2,000 Games to Libraries

North Star Games, publisher of Wits & Wagers and Say Anything!, is donating one thousand copies of each game to libraries that signed up to participate in National Gaming Day (NGD) on Saturday, November 14, 2009. The American Library Association organizes NGD annually to promote the presence and use of board game in public libraries. In 2008, NGD drew more than 14,000 participants, and the ALA expects to have twice as many players on hand this year.

Kris Hall: John Poniske and King Philip’s War

John Poniske first came to my attention because of Lincoln’s War, an as-yet-to-published game on the American Civil War.  But Multi-man Publishing has put another of Mr. Poniske’s games on its preorder list, and John recently agreed to talk to me about King Philip’s War.

Kris: I have an interest in King Philip’s War because I grew up in Rhode Island, and I am one of the many descendents of Roger Williams, the founder of Providence and of the colony of Rhode Island--and who was still an important figure at the time of the war. What made you take an interest in such an obscure war?

John: I knew nothing about the conflict until I read a Military History Article about the subject in 2004. I was fascinated that something so monumental was so unknown. I looked for games on the topic and found none.  That same week I began work on KING PHILIP’S WAR.  As an aside, I feel sorry for the Rhode Islanders. Of all the colonies involved, it seemed they got the shortest end of the stick. Philip’s beef was originally with Plymouth. His relations with the Rhode Islanders was relatively good, but his geographic proximity in Rhode Island meant that it was inevitable that the war would spill over into these more neutral settlements

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Game Review: Railways of the World

By David Pazmiño
November 5, 2009

Designers: Glenn Drover and Martin Wallace
Publisher: FRED Distribution

Players: 2-6
Ages: 12+
Playing Time: 120 minutes
Rules Language: English
Price: $75
Links:

Version played: Comped review copy
Times played: Eight, three times with 2 players, three times with 3, once with 4, and once with 5

If games had pedigrees like race horses, then the new Railways of the World base game and series from FRED Distribution would certainly fit the bill as the best bred train game. With such parents as Age of Steam and Railroad Tycoon, this new train game series has the bloodlines to back it up. But does it deliver?

First off, Railways of the World relies on the same track-laying, goods-delivery, and economic-optimization system in the now classic Age of Steam. Since Age of Steam had a particularly high learning curve, it was hard for casual gamers to jump in and enjoy their first game. Railroad Tycoon from Eagle Games refined the system to make it a bit more accessible: The game was streamlined, with money not quite as tight and a bit more luck added through Tycoon and operation cards, making it appeal to the more casual gamer and families. Part of Age of Steam‘s original appeal was the vast replayability from the myriad official and fan-based maps. Eagle Games wanted to do the same thing for the Railroad Tycoon system, but then Eagle was sold to FRED Distribution. While one expansion for Railroad Tycoon did materialize – Rails of Europe – that seemed to be the end of the line.

Now, though, FRED Distribution has decided to breathe new life into Railroad Tycoon by transforming the game into Railways of the World, changing a few rules, further streamlining the system, and offering something that the original fans wanted: more maps.

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Board 2 Pieces: November 5, 2009

ILSA Magazine #7 - Essen Special

I’m proud to announce the #7 of ILSA Magazine: Essen Special.

ILSA: Informazione Ludica a Scatola Aperta (that means something like information about games with open box). The web site is totally renewed.

In this number first impressions/reviews of

Vasco da Gama, Dungeon Lords, Carson City, Atlantis, Last train to Wensleydale, Insula, Erosion, Bunny Bunny Moose Moose, Shipyard, Gonzaga, Strada Romana, Day & Night, Luna Llena, Endeavor, Sumeria, Caligula, A la Carte, Pony Express, Tobago, Factory Manager, Hansa Teutonica, Horse Fever, Opera, Thunderstone, At the gates of Loyang, Tricky Trek, Basket Boss, Granny Apples, Pocket Rockets, Modern Society, Aaargh!Tect

by Mauro “MdM” Di Marco, Fabio “fab!o” Cambiaghi, Andrea “Liga” Ligabue, Franco “Ciaci” Sarcinelli, Andrea “Tanis” Chiarvesio, Paola “Paoletta” Mogliotti, Francesco “Prometeo” Pessina

and also Comics from Jacopo Ziliotto!

Download ILSA #7

I’m sorry ILSA is only in Italian at the moment ... but it could be a nice reason to start to learn it!

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Jennifer Schlickbernd: Ask Ms. Meeples – Playing with Mr. No

Folks, I need your help as I’m completely and totally out of questions! Please send me questions!! As you can see from previous columns, in no way do I divulge who you are or even where you are unless you include that information in your own signature as part of your question. And if you know me, still send in questions – just use an anonymous email from Gmail or Hotmail if you are more comfortable with that. I’ll continue to do tips even without questions, but the questions are way more interesting!

On to this week’s question!

We have one member of our game group who simply refuses to play many games that the rest of the group likes. The others in the group are willing to compromise and play games they don’t absolutely love if the rest of the group wants to play them, but this one fellow flat-out refuses to play many games. This is very frustrating for the rest of us, but we’ve been gaming together for a very long time and don’t want him to leave the group – we would just like him to agree to play a wider variety of games.

How can we approach this without making him mad or defensive? It’s to the point where when he doesn’t show up, everyone goes, “Oh good! Now we can play x, y, and z!”

The obvious answer is to stop inviting him because the rest of the group doesn’t seem to want him to be there anyway. But if you really want to try to save the situation, find out what kinds of games he doesn’t like, then see whether you can discover why he doesn’t like them. If he can express it, then see whether there’s a way to mitigate his issue. For example, I don’t like most party games because they depend on knowledge of pop culture, but I’m willing to play a party game like Pow Wow that doesn’t.

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Dale Yu: My Essen Report Part Two (of Two)

Sadly, I haven’t had much chance to play games since I gave my initial report on the Spiel fair, so I am not quite yet ready to write up any more information on the new games… But there are still plenty of things to comment on about the Fair itself as well as the travel that Valerie and I were able to do beforehand.  I’ve got a lot still to say, and since this is the last week that I’ll have to dedicate to the Essen trip – I’m just going to throw it all here in one column (since Great Lakes Games starts tomorrow and then BGG.con comes up in two weeks!).  Apologies in advance if it’s a bit disjointed, but I’m trying to fit three columns worth of stuff all together here this week!

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Board 2 Pieces: November 3, 2009

Fraser McHarg: Spiel 09 - Sunday Pt 1 of 2

Why part 1 of 2 you ask?  Because we are currently in Munich (just back from the games night at Hans im Gluck’s offices) and my notes are probably back in Wuppertal so I cannot provide the normal details.  Also because the full story of Sunday does actually continue on to Monday.

However back to Sunday.

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Matt Thrower: Witch of Salem Review

Given my usual abhorrence of co-operative games I’m not entirely sure why it was that Witch of Salem from Mayfair games originally crept on to my radar. Perhaps it was the theme, and the recurring description of “Arkham Horror lite”. Perhaps it was the art. Perhaps it was some personal comment or other that I’d read somewhere about the original German edition “Der Hexer Von Salem” (perhaps the only instance I’ve come across where the German name of a game is actually better than the English translation). Whatever the reason, Mayfair kindly agreed to provide me with a review copy so I could check out whether or not this would be a rare co-op title that would get a positive reaction from me and my gaming group.

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Game Review: Flat Acting

By Jonathan Degann
November 1, 2009

Designers: Mark & Matthew Anticole
Publisher: Eye-Level Entertainment

Players: 2-5
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 30 minutes
Rules Language: English
Links:

Version played: Comped review copy
Times played: Four, three times with 3 players and once with 5

Shimmer is a floor wax!
No, new Shimmer is a dessert topping!
It’s a floor wax!
No, it’s a dessert topping!
Hey, hey, hey, calm down. It’s both a floor wax AND a dessert topping!

The new game Flat Acting, by Mark and Matthew Anticole, promises to do for board games what Shimmer does for aerosole products. On one level it is a family game of strategy that fits in the genre of Eurogames. On another level, it is a story-telling game that relies heavily on its theme to encourage players to creatively explain some pretty weird hijinks on a movie set.

In the world of Flat Acting, four different genres of movies are somehow competing for dominance in the same movie. Each player controls one genre – romance, western, detective, or spooky – and attempts to play his appropriate actors on the board in a fairly straightforward battle for majority control of areas. In addition, there is a fifth, neutral set of playing pieces, the crew, who are just taking up space. (I’ll bet that’s how some actors feel in real life.) The “set” suffers from a similar multiple personality disorder, having various locations (garden, western town, house/office, cemetery) which any of these actors might appear on. This basic game could work well enough as a typical thinly themed Euro, but the designers take it a step further. Anytime a player introduces an actor onto the set, he must explain what’s going on in the story. Why? Because. It’s just a rule, and if you forget, you get penalized.

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Game Review: Rummino!

By Nathan Beeler
October 31, 2009

Designer: Alauna Sallis
Publisher: Marina Games
Players: 2-6
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 30 minutes
Rules Language: English
Links:

Version played: Comped review copy
Times played: Four times, twice with 3 players and twice with 2

By now everyone should know the great blunders in life as taught to us by Vizzini in The Princess Bride: “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,” and “never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.” To that list I might have added “never forget to zip your fly before a job interview,” “never taunt someone who was held back one or more grades,” and “never agree to review a family game from a small publisher that has an exclamation mark in the title.”

The truth of these statements seemed self evident to me, and until I played Rummino! recently I would have sworn by all of them – but the real truth is that Rummino!, a family game from a small publisher boasting said exclamation mark, doesn’t exactly suck.

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W. Eric Martin: Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?

So, Spiel – I suppose that I should write a paragraph or twenty about the show, having spent four days in Germany checking out dozens of new games, but I’ve had to catch up on other work since returning and have had time to write about games only in the past few hours. As a result, I thought I’d focus on only one game in this column and leave the rest of the material for later reports.

One of the consistent elements of Spiel – one aspect that makes the show what it is – is the search for the unexpected wonder, for the game that pulls your mind in a new direction. Every time you encounter someone new in the halls, you ask, “What’s the best thing you’ve played?” When people asked me this on Thursday and Friday, I had little to say since I had played few games, instead spending time talking to designers and publishers. Tobago had struck me the right way – a feeling confirmed by two subsequent plays – and Tikal II had everything that you’d want in a Kramer/Kiesling design other than being published and available (the game is due out in 2010 from GameWorks), but neither of these games seemed like a good answer.

Thankfully I found the answer Saturday afternoon while helping to demo games at the BoardGameGeek booth, that magical game being Aargh!Tect, a Walter Obert design that I had somehow not heard of despite writing a Spiel preview that ran to several hundred pages. As often happens at Spiel, we played with somewhat dicey rules as Scott Alden, aka Aldie, had played once or seen people playing or watched mimes interpreting the rules or received a telegraph that summarized the rules. We knew some percentage of the game play anyway and winged it for the rest, using our gamer-fu to fill in the holes. Thus I might be wrong on the specifics of game play, but I don’t care because I had so much fun playing the game. (English rules will supposedly be available on the Heidelberger Spieleverlag website by mid-November 2009.)

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Innovention Toys Wins Lawsuit Against MGA Entertainment

Innovention Toys, publisher of Khet, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against MGA Entertainment and Wal-Mart Stores in October 2007 over the Laser Battle board game, as noted on BGN at the time. Khet, which debuted in 2005, and Laser Battle, which appeared a year later, are both two-player games in which players have mirrored pieces that they move across the gameboard and lasers that they use to attack and remove pieces. To describe the game (or rather games) more precisely, let’s turn to section 39 of Innovention’s patent for a “light-reflecting board game”:

39. A method of playing a game by opposed players; said game comprising two sets of distinguishable playing pieces, each set having movable pieces with no mirrored surfaces, of which one is a key piece, and pieces with at least one mirrored surface, a game board consisting of a first end, a second end, and a plurality of rows and columns, intersecting to form a plurality of spaces, the method comprising the steps of:

• placing each player’s set of playing pieces on the game in a pre-determined starting configuration; and

• alternating turns, each turn comprising moving, either a translation or a rotation, a piece followed by activation of a laser, said alternating moves continuing until one player illuminates the opposing player’s key piece;

• wherein moving a piece consists of a movement one space in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal direction to an unoccupied adjacent space.

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Sneak Peak at Phalanx’ Version of God’s Playground

Martin Wallace debuted God’s Playground at Spiel 09 in late October, and as with all games from Wallace and Warfrog/Treefrog Games they have a particular graphic style that’s easy to identify. As noted on BGN, Phalanx Games Polska is issuing its own version of the game titled Boze Igrzysko in Nov./Dec. 2009, and in addition to Wallace-approved changes that allow four players to play instead of only three, Phalanx is putting its own graphic interpretation on the game. Here’s a peek at the (nearly final) gameboard:

Gone Cardboard: Kill Doctor Lucky, Coming Again from Titanic Games

Titanic Games is rereleasing James Ernest’s Kill Doctor Lucky in December 2009/January 2010 with minor changes from the previous edition. Due to concerns over the possibility of finding lead in wood, the painted wood tokens from the previous edition are being replaced with cardboard stand-up figures. This change, combined with a move to a new printer, will drop the retail price from $35 to $30. In addition, this new release will include the ...and His Little Dog, Too! expansion – essentially a dog token and rules.

For those not familiar with Kill Doctor Lucky, 3-7 players are trying to off an old man in his mansion – man, that sounds vicious when you think about it – but to avoid being arrested, they can’t do the deed unless they’re alone in the room with him and out of eyesight of the other players. Even in these situations, your attacks against the codger can fail due to card play by others.

This game has been added to Gone Cardboard.

Game Review: Castle Panic

By Andrew Knaack
October 30, 2009

Designer: Justin De Witt
Publisher: Fireside Games
Players: 1-6
Ages: 10+
Playing Time: 60 minutes
Rules Language: English
Price: $35
Links:

Version played: Comped review copy
Times played: Six, once solitaire, once with 2 players, twice with 4 players, twice with 6 players.

With the sudden spurt of cooperative board games, it is no wonder they are under scrutiny. The popularity of the titles creating this surge – Shadows Over Camelot, Pandemic, Ghost Stories – could lead to an early grave for the genre without serious innovation, particularly since many argue that the games lack competitiveness or that one player can play for the whole field.  Castle Panic tries to bring a new competitive/cooperative feel to the genre, while being simple enough to introduce newcomers to the game.

Castle Panic is a simple cooperative-ish game where players work together on a team to protect their six starting castles from attacking monsters and bosses. The game uses a very simple, card-driven battle system where each attack card hits monsters on certain parts of the board. Players play with their hand face up and can trade designated amounts of cards each round. If any of the original six castles remain at the end, the players have won.

What sets Castle Panic apart from other cooperative games is the idea of the “Master Slayer” – the title for the individual who has collected the most points by delivering the final blows to the attacking monsters if the players’ team wins. The promise of this accolade encourages players to act in their own interests instead of letting one player run the show. If players play with the goal of becoming the Master Slayer, the game takes on more of a Cutthroat Caverns feel in which players must work together for anyone to win, but there is always paranoia as to whether people are out to help just themselves.

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Lucca Comics & Games: streaming

Just a quick note to inform gamers that the Gioconomicon.net, one of the best Italian news web site about games, will provide direct streaming of all the conferences that will take place in Lucca meeting room, including Bruno Faidutti presenting Ad Astra tomorrow at 14:45

Lucca Comics & Games: Best of Show

Ad Astra (NG International) by Bruno Faidutti and Serge Laget, wins the Best of Show: Boardgames Category at Lucca Comics & Games.

Dominion (Stupormundi) by Donald X. Vaccarino, wins the Best of Show: Cardgame Category.

AGE – The Amazing Goal Era (RCS Quoti) by L. Delpiano, M. Pirovano, N. Speroni and P. Sciascia wins the Best of Show: Collectable/Miniatures Category.

Non Perdere il Senno (Janus Design) di B. Baugh and F. Hicks wins the Best of Show: RolePlay Games Category.

The member of the jury are: Luca Giuliano (president), Fabrizio Poli, Duccio Vitale, Paolo Fasce and Paola “Paoletta” Mogliotti

Here the list of the nominated Games and the winners of the side awards:

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Kris Hall: CharCon 2009

The other gaming convention of last weekend was a big success.  For the first time CharCon (the con in Charleston, West Virginia) was held for three days (Friday was added), and for the first time there were over 500 attendees.  I met two gamers who drove from the Washington DC/Baltimore area to attend (a seven-hour drive), and I believe they are indicative that the con is attracting gamers from further away now.

The boardgame tournament was a winner for a second year in a row, thanks again to major sponsorship from Rio Grande Games.  And for the first time CharCon sponsored a game of Killer, that old assassinate-your-friends game that is popular at colleges around the nation.  Tom Hancock, who ran that game, promises that next year Killer will be bigger and even more elaborate.

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Welcome in dV Giochi

Starting from this morning daVinci Editrice S.r.l. renewed:

... the name (now is dV Giochi all over the word)
... the website (on www.davincigames.com, www.dvgames.com and www.dvgiochi.com, and also in the corresponding .it)
... the logo, that now brings directly to idea of fun, closest to the new publishing line
... the catalogue that, from today, includes this editorial lines:

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Board 2 Pieces: October 29, 2009

Lucca Comics & Games

Lucca Comics & Games 2009
“Evoluzione della Specie”: the market fair becomes a Festival

29 October – 1 November (showrooms: 17 October –1 November)

The most important Italian event for comics and clever gaming, held in Lucca since 43 years ago, is showing itself under the aegis of change: Lucca Comics and Games becomes a real “Comics and Games Festival”.
From October 29 up to November 1 the appointment is in Lucca with an event, promoted by the municipality of Lucca with the aid of the Province, that this year is dedicated to the Evolution of the Species, to honor the 150° anniversary of Charles Darwin’s theory and the bicentennial of the scientist’s birth.

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Shannon Appelcline: With Strange Aeons Even Dice May Die

Once more Halloween is upon us. It’s a time of year that always gets me thinking about ghosts, goblins, and other things that go bump in the night. However, as I wrote last year in The Problem with Horror Games, the horror genre hasn’t transferred very well to board games.

Despite that, there’s one horror subgenre where publishers--mostly American publishers--have been very active in for many years. That’s the subgenre of Cthulhu games (or Lovecraft Games or Mythos Games, as you prefer). This Halloween I’m going to spotlight them by taking a creepy tour through about twenty-five years’ worth of Cthulhoid ludographics.

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Dale Yu: My report from Essen: Part One

I’m back home from another Spiel fair – the 2009 version has come and gone with its own share of hits, misses and surprises.  I think that this is the sixth or seventh year that I have been fortunate to make the trip, and as always, I am quite sad to be leaving Germany again.  This fair, for me, was a bit like last year as my evenings were often busy with events and presentations, and as a result, I didn’t have a lot of time to play games during this trip.  In fact, I think that during my 9 day stay in Germany I might have played seven games to completion during the entire trip! (For the record, Assyria, Mosaix, Cardcassone, Koplopers and Dwarslingers, Peloponnes, Insula and Tobago). Nevertheless, the fair was a great chance to see the new games even if there wasn’t quite enough time to play each one of them!

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Board 2 Pieces: October 27, 2009

Tom Rosen: Essen 2009 - GeekBuzz Meets Fairplay

Essen is dead; long live Essen.  The International Spieltage in Essen, Germany closed its doors on Sunday, and there are 359 days until those doors reopen, which should leave us just enough time to sort through the roughly 600 new board games that were released at the fair.  Despite the fact that I didn’t attend Essen, have only played a handful of the games discussed herein, and the fact that my last attempt at an Essen recap in 2006 was more than a bit off base (e.g., underestimated Imperial, overestimated Gheos, but at least I was right about Anasazi and Justinian, let alone Knizia’s Genesis); I am nevertheless going to try to breakdown some of the potentially most noteworthy releases at Essen 2009.  How do I propose to do this?  Scientifically of course, and also based on more than a little hearsay thanks to the tireless reporting efforts of attendees such as Kulkmann and Melissa.  Scientifically speaking, I am going to use a combination of the longstanding Fairplay ranking along with the brand-new BoardGameGeek GeekBuzz ranking.  As for hearsay, you’re more than welcome to check out my primary source material, such as Kulkmann’s G@mebox (by Frank Schulte-Kulkmann) and Obsessing about Everything (by Melissa R.).  Moreover, I suggest you check out the videos that the GeekDo crew broadcast live throughout the fair, such as interviews and game demos, and which have been conveniently arranged in this GeekList.  I particularly enjoyed the interviews with Matt Leacock, Jay Tummelson, Uwe Rosenberg, Reiner Knizia, and the game demoes by Martin Wallace, Mac Gerdts, and the Czech Games Edition crew.  If you’re looking for purely audio rather than video, then check out Garrett’s Games & Geekiness episode 184 recorded live at Essen.  Last but not least, I have tagged over 100 forum threads and GeekLists with the “essen09” tag on BoardGameGeek, so peruse those for a wealth of fantastic firsthand reports on the Essen experience.

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Fraser McHarg: Spiel 09 - Saturday

That must be a good dinner that I am missing out on!

Melissa had told me two things about Saturday.  One it was busy compared to other days and two it was costume day.

Both these things are very true!

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Fraser McHarg: Spiel 09 - Friday (slightly delayed)

I’m on a roll here computer wise, so here comes another day’s report.

Melissa had many appointments booked, so I spent a lot of time with Daughter the Younger and some time with Daughter the Elder when she could drag herself away from the Lookout booth.

Thus I spent quite a bit of time with Daughter the Younger at Galleria where they have various different jumping castle type things and cruised some of the other halls.

I did get to play some slightly longer games though.

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