Boardgamecafe.net in Essen Spiel 2013 – Day Two (25/10) Part 2
By jack208

EXCERPT
The 2nd part of Day Two showcased some interesting games which we are likely not going to see in M’sia such as L’AEROPOSTALE, WOOLF, ROMANCE OF NINE EMPIRES, TRAINS & STATIONS and a walk thru promising publishers from EU notably ARTIPIA & PORTAL.

Our last report shared the games we covered in the morning of the 2nd Day of our Essen Spiel 2013 trip, which included CORTO, an interesting publisher (of young adult games) DREI HASEN IN DER ABENDSONNE, CV from GRANNA, COMPLOTS (the origin of Coup) from FERTI, the booth that always (almost) sold out all their games JAPON BRAND, the latest edition of YOKAI NO MORI (a rethemed Shoji), a quick chat with the designer of CAFE MELANGE and strangely a new 18xx game 1862 EASTERN COUNTIES that I didn’t pick up! Hah.

Let’s now see what the afternoon session has to offer for us. 🙂

ASYNCRON

L’AEROPOSTALE

The next booth we stumbled into has a very pretty game complete with planes tokens.

Obviously I’m curious to find out more.

The game is L’Aeropostale from Asyncron Games (FR), not a publisher we are immediately familiar with. And that’s part of the joy of coming to Essen; getting acquainted with not-so-mainstream but up-n-coming publishers like these.

The title translated to English would be “AIRMAIL” so this looks like a pick-up and deliver game, but on closer inspection it’s not. I would probably classify this as an economic game set in the airline industry. Not a theme you get often.

This game is rated 70 min but looking at the amount of components on the board, it feels more like a 120 min game.

It’s still rated below #3,000 in Boardgamegeek but I think that’s because this game didn’t get a wider distribution in the USA and only available to gamers in Europe.

CAPSTONE GAMES (HK)

WOOLF!

The next game is from someone we knew. WOOLF! published by Capstone Games (HK) by a designer who’s nick is Bono Light. We met him last year during the dinner organized by Swan Panasia.

WOOLF! a card game based on the Little Red Riding Hood (wolf) theme.

In the game, you are dealt cards which would indicate you being one of the five roles – Hunter, Hunting Dog, Shepherd Boy, Sheep, and Wolf (not in pic above). Each role has a specific mission for eg the Hunter’s mission is to catch/kill the wolf ie he needs to find out which player is the Wolf and take him out.

It’s a deduction game – along the lines of Shadow Hunters or Bang – but with an interesting twist to how one decides which is your role. You are dealt two cards (which could show the same role or different ones) and your “chosen role” is the card with the higher number. So if you are dealt Wolf-3 and Sheep-5 cards, your chosen role is “Sheep”. The other card is used to misled others who may open one of your role card to try and deduce who you are.

The two-role card mechanic did sound interesting but when we played a demo session, we didn’t quite get how it works coz it appeared broken – or it may simply be we didn’t understand the instructions properly. Anyway we’ve a copy of the game and we should really get some sessions going at OTK to testdrive it. 🙂

The dial (above) is used when one player think he has figured out his target, and called to make an accusation.

btw they already have expansions lined up for this game ie Red Riding Hood and Three Little Pigs.

waiyan with Rachel from Capstone and her copy of WOOOLF!

And at the time we passed by their booth, WOOOLF! was in the Top Ten of the Fairplay Rankings. 😛

IELLO

KING OF TOKYO: HALLOWEEN

Next up was the KING OF TOKYO booth as the Richard Garfield franchise continues humming along with their HALLOWEEN expansion which included an exclusive card that’ll tie in with their next iteration of this addictive game KING OF NEW YORK.

Wouldn’t this game sell more if they included miniatures instead of cardboard tokens for their monsters? Just saying… LOL.

TWILIGHT CREATIONS

ZOMBIES!!!

From the monsters of Halloween, we moved on to check out the latest expansion for ZOMBIES!!! of Twilight Creations. Arguably the first zombies game; it was first published in 2001 and it’s essentially a beer-n-pretzel dice game compared to the recent crop of zombies theme games like Zombicide. But it’s still fun!

This year’s expansion is ZOMBIES!!! Zombie Zoo. And yup, it’s about zoo animals turning into zombies.

Surrounded by zombie gorillas and other zoo animals… hoho. This game needs some painting love.

I’ve lost count but apparently this is expansion #12. That’s a pretty long lifecycle for this simple beer-n-pretzel game.

We also learned that Todd Breitenstein, the designer for this game had passed on last year. R.I.P.

LITTLE DEAD RIDING HOOD

I also came across one of the older releases – Little Dead Riding Hood. It’s not an expansion to the Zombies!!! series but carried similar “dead” theme.

We’d the game for some time in our webstore / library but haven’t really taken it out for a play session. Ironically, it’s in Essen that I first had a good look at the game. And they do have nicely designed cards.

It’s a light “racing” type of game – first to run back to Grandma’s house wins! – and looks like another good addition to the beer-n-pretzel genre from Twilight Creations. Need to remind myself to get a theme nite to break this out on the OTK tables.

AEG

It’s AEG’s booth next. This publisher’s entry into the boardgame market was thru a series of deck building games Thunderstone, Nightfall and another lesser-known card game called GUILDHALL. That was back in 2009.. Recently they secured the English rights to the popular Japanese deck building game TRAINS which was a sold out in Essen 2012. 

This year, they came to Essen with a number of new releases; notably ROMANCE OF THE NINE EMPIRES and CANALIS; plus expansions for Thunderstone and Nightfall. As they’ve already built a relationship with Japon Brand, it’s not surprising they also took the rights to reprint the English ver of SAIL TO INDIA.

ROMANCE OF THE NINE EMPIRES

Another deck building game from AEG. After all, if you are enjoying success with your existing deck building game, why not more of the same?

CANALIS

A departure from AEG’s card game preference, CANALIS is a boardgame with elements of card drafting and deck building.

COOL MINI OR NOT

ZOMBICIDE

Probably one of the hottest Kickstarter games in recent times and already running in Season 3, COOL MINI OR NOT’s Zombicide (whether you love or hate this genre) their Zombicide miniatures simply sell and sell.

So did you pledge for the latest Season 3 of Zombicide? And did you go ahead in spite of the “amazing” shipping cost to M’sia? 😛

WIZKIDS

TRAINS & STATIONS

More well-known for their Star Trek: Attack Wing series, WizKids do carry a few Euros in their inventory. Some of these you may have played such as QUARRIORS and MAGE KNIGHT but they’ve one 2013 Euro that I was asked to check out, being a train game aficionado, and that’s Eric Lang’s TRAINS & STATIONS.

TRAINS & STATIONS is a pick-up and deliver game (?) but it has DICE! So this looks like WizKids carrying over QUARRIORS dice-building concept into a train genre.

It does have pretty components and DICE! We didn’t get a chance to play this at Essen but given this year’s (2014) strong trend for dice-ifying of board games (VivaJava, Pandemic, Nations, Terra Mystica… haha okay I was pulling your legs on the last one but then you never know, we might yet see Terraforming dice-style), it might be worth another look at this game as it could fit into a DICE Nite theme at OTK. 🙂

Z-MAN GAMES

BLUEPRINTS

We saw a BLUEPRINTS booth away from the usual Z-man Games booth. We thought this was just another “dice” game.

However when we broke open a copy to play at OTK, we found it’s a pretty fun dice building game. After all, it’s rated as an under 30-min game.

Yes we are warming up to DICE games (get the drift?) 😛

HASBRO

MONOPOLY IMPERIUM

You probably can’t write about boardgames without paying homage to the one boardgame most of us grew up with – MONOPOLY. And to prove Monopoly is not yet dead, Hasbro released yet another variant of this venerable boardgame MONOPOLY IMPERIUM. We just learnt it’s English title is MONOPOLY EMPIRE.

From trading properties, you now move to trade companies and you get to buy or sell famous brands like Coca-cola, McDonald’s and Samsung. The gameplay remains essentially the same.

But instead of dice, you get the spunky new spinning tower (see below)!

Verdict: New jazzy look, still the old Monopoly. 😛

On the other hand, they have a new CLUE (or CLUEDO depending on where you first heard of this game). This one is called CLUE (SECOND CRIME SCENE EDITION). I think they’ve improved / updated the rules from basic CLUE but since I’ve not been following this game, I’ve no clue what those changes are. 😛

Before my immersion into Euro Games, I’d wanted to collect all the different variants of CLUE cards. If you share the same thought, this site might be an interesting visit for you
http://www.theartofmurder.com/table/link/suspectyears/index.html

And we’ve yet to talk about RISK.

HABA GmBH

HABA’s been one company we’ve always been interested to work with; given their range of games that are suitable for young children (Waiyan’s Boardgamekids market) and some of them being well-liked by adults as well such as JUNGLE TREASURE and ANIMAL UPON ANIMAL.

Every year without fail, HABA would have a large presence in Essen with their huge line-up of games. I think for 2013, they’ve over 20+ new titles.

FEUERDRACHEN

One of their 2013 new titles; nicely decorated area to match the theme – and also to attract the kids!

HERE AND THERE

And as we passed by the ROCOCO booth again, we saw they have already sold out (ausverkauft) the game!

We saw many tables doing Mac’s CONCORDIA. That could explain why this game still sat at the #1 spot in Fairplay Ranking as at today.

A quick passing of the DARK DARKER DARKEST game area. Will be picking up my Kickstarter copy from the QUEEN’s booth tomorrow or Sunday.

And it’s on to ARTIPIA GAMES next.

ARTIPIA GAMES

One of the rising stars in the Euro market, ARTIPIA from Greece only came into the market with DRUM ROLL back in 2011 and they have delivered some strong titles in AMONG THE STARS and this year they’ve ARCHON and SHADOWS OVER EMPIRE.

ARCHON: GLORY & MACHINATION

Artipia markets their new titles mostly thru Kickstarters – but they are one of the few KS boardgame publishers who delivered their Kickstarted projects so you can feel assured going with them. I’d pledged for their new ARCHON and also took the opportunity to add a copy of DRUM ROLL.

Collecting my pledged copy of ARCHON, DRUM ROLL plus goodies & promo packs!

They even gave me a bag for that!

The ARTIPIA play area… next to Pearl Games.

A pic of their ARCHON game board, featuring a lighter colored background (instead of the original dark colored design).

Their other 2013 new title SHADOWS OVER EMPIRE.

But don’t the box cover art looked gorgeous? 😛

And this year (2014), stay tune for their latest title NEW DAWN, the sequel to their hit AMONG THE STARS.

All the offerings from ARTIPIA GAMES!

HAMMERDOG GAMES

WARLORD CHESS

I’ve always felt CHESS is an almost perfect – and well-balanced – game for 2-players. Yet there are countless attempt to turn it into 3- or 4-player variants. Another attempt, this time from HammerDog Games. 🙂

If you asked me, I dun see the need. 😛

PORTAL GAMES

Almost reached end of the day…. still one more important pick-up for me at the PORTAL booth. But not Robinson Crusoe or Legacy. 😛

I’d closed a deal with this gentleman – Michiel Justin Elliot Hendriks – to buy his Dutch edition of MANILA. At that time, I didn’t know he’s also the designer of one of Portal’s 2013 new titles LEGACY. 😛

LEGACY: THE TESTAMENT OF DUKE DE CRECY

Michiel was actually very busy when I dropped into the Portal booth; he was teaching a group of gamers his game LEGACY.

If you have this game – or enjoyed it – do check out the Designer’s Diary about how Michiel & Portal got into the agreement to publish this game. Very interesting read. Gives you good insights into the minds of a publisher (Portal / Ignacy) and designer (Michiel).

THESEUS: THE DARK ORBIT

THESEUS; another 2013 title from PORTAL. Untested by us, yet. 🙂

BATTLEFRONT MINIATURES

JOSS WHEDON’S FIREFLY

If you are a fan of the TV series, you wouldn’t want to miss this game – FIREFLY the boardgame from Battlefront Miniatures. This is the same company that gave us SPARTACUS the boardgame in 2012.

They have a few custom-made FIREFLY gameboard cum tables in their play area…. pretty cool!

R&R GAMES

One of last two stops was at R&R GAMES, to pick up our preorder stocks of COAL BARON.

COAL BARON

I’d picked up the Collector’s Edition of this game from eggertSpiele yesterday, but today’s stocks were for our preorder customers.

We also picked up some HANABI stocks since R&R now carries this title.

Frank took the opportunity to show us one of their new games – ATTRACTION.

waiyan trying her hands at ATTRACTION, one of 2013 titles from R&R Games. The game is about flicking “shooters” into the area to attract other magnets. Not as easy as you think. 😛

A pic taken with Frank, boss of R&R Games.

BEZIER GAMES

The last pickup of the day was for the new expansion to last year’s hit SUBURBIA. Good to know the expansion was packed flat.

SUBURBIA, INC

SUBURBIA was one of our fave games from the 2012 crop; and therefore we eagerly looked forward to the first expansion for this city-building game SUBURBIA, INC.

While the INC expansion provided a few nice upgrades, the most significant would have to be the introduction of the Border tiles.

If you have played with the Border tiles, tell us what you think? Whether the game is better with or without the Borders?

ONE NIGHT ULTIMATE WEREWOLF

BEZIER has another new title ie ONE NIGHT ULTIMATE WEREWOLF; a variant on the popular bluffing game but taking out the player elimination part and playing the game over one “night”. Interesting premise but I’m not convinced how it makes WEREWOLF better. 😛

Bezier also produced a couple of expansions to the base Werewolf games (their version ie Ultimate Werewolf). This is the same game as the One Night Werewolf we saw in the Japon Brand booth earlier in Day Two.

Boxes from Bezier meant for shipping over to Malaysia, yay!

This rounded up our tour of Spiel Day Two. We convened at the Moevenpick Hotel’s function room after dinner for the usual round of evening gaming sessions. Shall be writing more about those evening sessions in a separate write-up.

Till Day Three. 🙂

BGC Essen Spiel 2013

• Spiel 2013 – Day One 24/10 Morning
• Spiel 2013 – Day One 24/10 Afternoon
• Spiel 2013 – Day Two 25/10 Part 1
• Spiel 2013 – Day Two 25/10 Part 2
• Spiel 2013 – Day Three 26/10
• Spiel 2013 – Day Four 27/10

Related reads

• Boardgamecafe.net’s Essen Spiel 2013 Loot
• Eric Martin’s Spiel 2013 Preview
• BGC Boardgame Retreat 2013 – Essen in Green
• Boardgamecafe.net Essen Spiel 2012
• BGC in Essen Spiel 2013 – The Day Before (17/10)

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