Essen 2017 Highlight Preview Part 7

Okay, it’s 2018 and still there is a long list of Essen 2017 games to be done. Have you acquired some of them? Feel free to share the new collection or discuss them here. Now lets move along to the seventh part of this long preview.

PULSAR 2849
2849 marks the beginning of an interstellar energy boom. Human finally invented new technologies that can harness or utilize the energy of pulsar for many different things. In this new dawn, players as corporations do not want to miss that chance and compete with each other to take part on this historic event by building megastructures in space. Okay, this sold me out, though I tend to avoid space sci-fi theme due to my wife’s disliking of the specific theme. My main interest honestly lies within the designer behind the game, Vladimir Suchy which designed Shipyard in the past, a game of building ships, which my wife really fond of.  So what game is Pulsar 2849? It has a round-shaped board showing a space in the galaxy with a star cluster and many planetary systems. In 8 rounds players will take turns to draft dice and allocate them to different parts of the game. There are so many actions to choose over the turns, players can move their survey ships around, develop pulsars, build energy transmission, patent technologies, and work on special projects. These are major things you do in the game, the truth is there are many other small things under this major actions you need to do. One of the interesting things in the game is the engineering and initiative tracks which run side by side depending how players want to use it. See, while drafting dice, players can choose any die but they need to pay the cost based on the median track of the available dice of that round. They need to pay the cost with their engineering or initiative. The thing is the higher the die value, the better it is. So I guess the game mitigates this issue by making the players to pay the cost, which getting a high value die is more expensive than the lesser ones. When paying the cost they can choose to move out one of their tracks (engineering or initiative) based on what die they take and its current median. Initiative will determine the turn order of next round, while engineering is like an income for energy cubes based on the position of the markers. When the game ends players score points based on their goal tiles, purple patents, claimed pulsars, leftover engineering cubes, and stations. There are so many things spread around the game and with those come so many choices to choose for. It feels like a point salad game, while you gain points based on what you do. I like how the game looks and can’t wait to try it out.

PHOTOSYNTHESIS
This game is very interesting, you can see it only by the looks of the game set up on the table. There are card board trees, many card board trees. So the game is about the title itself, photosynthesis which is a process used by plants to convert light energy into chemical energy so that they can grow. In this game, players will be one of 4 different varieties of trees and compete to grow and spread their seeds in the sunlight. In the game players will get a player board with slots for many different size trees of their variety. There are 3 sizes of trees, small, medium and large. And players will start with 2 small trees on the board and can work to grow them and add more trees into the board. In order to grow, players need sunlight to light their trees. But the sun moves around and cast shadows. Shadowed trees cannot grow because the sunlight cannot reach it. That shadow comes from another tree blocking the sunlight, since there are different sizes, larger tree will cover the sunlight from smaller ones, making them cannot grow. In the game, players can buy trees from their player board to their supply by using light points, plant seeds around their existing trees on the game board, grow trees by using light points and collect scoring tokens by ending the life cycle of large trees. The game ends when the sun rotates 3 times and the last sun revolution counter has been drawn. I found the game has a very really simple set of rules but offers very deep tactical choice within the game. Players need to plan and take actions carefully by looking at the board situations and how opponents will act to determine what is the best thing they need to do on their turn. The components are good, it’s very nice to look at, definitely eye candy over the table. And the most important thing is it has a very nice educational value for kids (or adults alike) about how trees grow.

UNTOLD – ADVENTURES AWAIT
This interesting storytelling cooperative game is played using a set of Rory’s Story Cubes. For those who don’t know Rory’s Story Cubes, it’s a set of 6-sided dice with different symbols on each side (the symbol is unique one of a kind in a set). In the original game of Rory’s Story Cubes, players will roll dice and set a story from the rolled dice. It’s a loose game of storytelling. Now in this game, they took the cubes usability to a whole another level. With some rules and standard guide they create a structure needed for the dice to be used in a way that players will try to make more compelling and structured good story. Before the game starts, players will set a base story in the episode guide as a starting point and setting for their story to expand. The game also comes with character creation, a quite loose one at that. To create a character, players can use the story cubes (dice) as assistance to shape the character or do it freely and then fill out the questions on their character sheets. A character can also has special abilities along with companion or items than can helm them on the story. As most of good stories, it’s broken down to several scenes (orderly fashion), starting from A Dangerous Dilemma, The Plot Thickens, An Heroic Undertaking, The Truth Revealed and The Final Showdown. Based on these scenes players will reveal scene cards to guide them with their story. The symbols on scene cards will determine how players will use the die of their choice. Since this is a cooperative game, by the nature of this game, there will be an alpha player issue. It requires some sort of creative storytelling and imagination level from the players to create a good and interesting story that will engage them as the game goes by. So if you do not like these kind of stuff, sharing you imagination, give story ideas and like to playful with your stories, this might be not a good fit for you. It relies heavily on that part to determine the fun level of the game. There are some features for players to control (to some extent) on how the story goes, they’re given some tokens to alter the story in one way or another. Players can interrupt other player’s story with idea token (each player has two tokens), go back to the past and try to add more depth or details to the backstory using flashback token, change a die result by using a modify token and a play/pause card to pause the game to set a discussion about the story. This is not a game about winning or losing, it’s about how you build the story together and feel accomplished.

VIRAL
Viral is a game about virus (obviously) in a human body. Players take the role of different viruses trying to get viral points by infecting, spreading through different organs on the body. It’s a pretty unique theme, while Cytosis has a positive approach this one has negative approach. The main boars depicts a human internal organ such as brain, lungs, heart, kidneys, intestines and others divided into different zones. The game uses action selection mechanic with cards. In each round players will assign 2 pairs of cards (with each pair consists of 1 zone card and 1 action card) and then resolve the actions in turn order and discard the used cards (those cards couldn’t be used for next single round).  Players will have to spread their markers to different zones and organs to gain majority and zone controls. To control a zone, each player must have at least one marker in every organ in that zone. Some organs will have a crisis tile (depending on the number of viruses (markers) that organ has and number of players. Crisis tiles mark the organs where the body’s immune system will work. Some viruses on that organ will be removed (there also be scoring). There are also cures which based on the research track on each player. Player’s that already move into the top space on the research track will remove all of their viruses (except the ones with shield icon) from the board and reset the track back. The game uses tie breaker mechanism where players will determine which one of them win the tie breakers. So there will be a lot of tie situations on the game. The game uses vibrant color for the organs and it looks very contrast over the white background. It looks colorful and clear. But apparently I consider this overly too simple for this kind of game. I wanted more interlocking mechanics than just placing viruses and control the areas.

PIONEER DAYS
This is a very simple dice drafting / allocation game from Tasty Minstrel Games. It is designed by Matthew Dunstan and Chris Marling. The game sets in a wild west frontier where players will set a journey with their wagons through the perilous Oregon trail. Life is hard in the frontier and it takes careful planning, cunning decision and perfectly timed actions to avoid disasters and complete objectives. The game lasts for 4 weeks (5 days in each week, 5 turns). In the game, players try to get points by acquiring Town folks, pairs of cattle, favor tokens, gold nuggets while avoiding take damages to their wagon. In this game players draft dice from the pool to do certain actions (Income, Action or Recruit). There are also Disasters in the game, turns out living in the frontier is not that peaceful, there are Raid, Famine, Disease and Storms. Disasters on the game are triggered based on the color of the leftover die that players didn’t pick up each round. Black die is the most dangerous of all which advance all the disaster tracks up one space while other colors only advance that particular color. I think the game is pretty simple, you pick a die and choose what to do in a turn. The drafting is a bit interesting with the disaster tracks. When choosing a die, you need to consider what will be the last die left. This will determine which disaster track would advance. The Town folks also interesting, aside from providing benefits to the players during the game, some of them also provide points generators.

So, until next time.

Essen 2017 Highlight Preview Part 6

We’re moving on to the sixth part. Now let’s see what I have in store for you guys in this highlight episode. New games to ponder, research, try and maybe eventually buy!

DOGS
Not sure this is also included as an Essen 2017 games but it’s new and listed as 2017, so I throw it in along. Hope it’s fine for you guys. Dogs is a very simple pick-up delivery game with worker placement game. It’s not great, it’s ok or decent. But in its defense if you like dogs or animals this would be a good choice. In this game you will own your very own kennel with a sole purpose to help stray dogs in the city (well honestly, your goal is the highest point, luckily it’s align with that noble charity work of helping dogs). In the game you will move around the city with your truck and collecting stray dogs (there are different kind of dog breeds) which then will be placed on your stalls (cage?) or infirmary if they’re unwell. After this players will take turns to assign their assistants in various places in the city, town hall to build more stalls, store to get food and medicines, vet to treat your dogs in infirmary, market to trade stuffs or fair to sell, buy or trade dogs. You must carefully plan your actions because you need to manage your kennel, give your dogs food and pay your assistant or get gas for next round. The game has a very tight money income and I think it really depends on the random draw of bonus cards (which could easily ruin your plans) and feels unnatural towards common game play in many other games. I think this brings a good and bad aspects to the game. First, the bad side is that you really depending on the bonus cards (more than the location action) and from round to round, players will mostly snipe money bonuses instead of other things, though sadly the first player will change in clockwise which is not a good incentive in this kind of rule, again if there’s a way to manipulate the turn order, it would be a good idea. The good thing is that it gives very tight and challenging aspect in the game. Money is very important in the game, it can make or break you. I find the game has a very unique feel and theme cause I love dogs, so it’s a big value for me. Aside from that, it’s an okay game of set collection and worker placement.

OTYS
Welcome to the future water world. In Otys, players are part of the living colony above sea level called Otys where players need to retrieve the past humanity debris from the underwater remnants of a civilization drowned in order to build the future civilization. In the game players will have divers ready to get things needed to complete contracts. These divers are assigned to different depths to retrieve items, complete contracts and some. Basically it’s a programming game where you need to carefully plan the actions based on what you have and what the goals are. On player’s turn, they will choose a level and slide a key token on that level to the right and activate sponsor tiles corresponding to that level. Next they will activate the diver on that level. Then the key token is flip face down and place it on the bottom of the player board (in the left most free space of the hacker track) and the diver will be slide over to the top (resurface) and divers on top of it will move down. This will change the order of the divers based on the activated level. There are many ways to manipulate this process, by using battery tokens to re-arrange divers, or by using ‘x’ key token to manipulate the use of sponsor tiles. The divers have many effect and can also be upgraded to its advance side to give players with more improved skill than the basic side. There are lots of moving parts in the seemingly simple game play, which obviously makes the game kinda bit harder or need essential planning between actions. And it’s also a racing game to get 18 points to win the game. What funny is that recently I was attracted to several racing games which not the aspect I particularly like. But I do think this one is not purely a racing game (the end game trigger might be racing), in the end the winner is based on most points. I think the game has gorgeous artworks but unfortunately it’s not shown with a strong presence in the game. But the good thing is that the player boards have recessed slot that really works with the components. You will slide the divers often and having a well-made player board will improve the game play experience a lot.

FALLOUT
Now this one is very interesting. The game is a board game adaptation of the video game with the same title. I think most gamers or fans have high hopes this one could do justice to the video game. It was released by FFG so the components and artworks should be top notch. I like the presentation of the game and it also boasts that every game will never be the same. Though I still don’t know how different each game will be. The game offers 4 different scenarios to play with and the characters have good quality miniatures with different abilities as well. As you know, the game has a unique setting of a post-apocalyptic world with a vintage steam punk art direction style and of course there are lots of iconic elements inside the game such as the pip boy and the VATS system, bottle caps, perks and other things. During the game players will get encounters, which is resolved with the help of other players reading the card for the active players. It’s more like Above and Below kind of game where players are presented with choices to make. They will also move around, exploring the wasteland (shown in hex map tiles put together), complete quests, trade, fight enemies and others. I like how the hex map is designed, it has beautiful (amazing) wasteland artworks but in the same time has clean and nice graphic design elements on it. One of the biggest thing in the game is that players can gain perks that give them beneficial effect throughout the game by activating / using sets of letters (forming a word “SPECIAL”) that players can collect. They also bring out the VATS on the combat dice where the damage allocation based on the targeted parts of the body. Players can die on the game, but worry not, there’s no player elimination. When they died, they will reset back (not sure where) their life (but not radiation level). Yes, there are two parameters in player’s health, life and radiation. When this two trackers meet, players die and the life track gets reseted back, but not radiation. So throughout the game the radiation level will pushing player’s life shorter. I cannot wait more goodness this game has to offer Since this is an FFG release, it should be available very soon on your friendly local game stores.

WORD DOMINATION
Here is another game of crafting letters into word. There are few good word games, scrabble is one of them (legendary game) and others such as Paperback, Word Porters, Codenames, Hardback, Wordsy or Letter Tycoon. But not all are involving crafting letters into words, Codenames isn’t. Scrabble is good, no doubt about that as you jumped into the mind-boggling word puzzle. Your vocabulary knowledge is basically essential to excel at the game. For me, I love word games, Scrabble is a classic and I have had a good time with it in the past, but unfortunately the grid board really gives you a restraint to some extent (though it’s not particularly a bad thing for those who like it). I find the grid placement really restraining to craft letters into words, in addition with random draw of letters. Letter Tycoon is a more simplified word crafting game compared to Scrabble, but I found that the word has no real distinct value like in Scrabble. Now Word Domination is not the best, but it surely gives a gamey feeling. In this game, players will be a super villain that using letters to dominate the game to gain infamy points. Players will craft a word using a letter in their hand and letters available in the grid. The letters do not have to be adjacent and in order (which is an improvement than Scrabble for me). Crafting letters do not give players immediate points, but rather placing tokens on them. This is required if they want to claim letters. Players can claim a letter tile if there are 2 of their tokens on it, claimed letters are placed in front of players that can be passively used in future turns (exclusively can be used by the owner). But if players place their tokens in letter tiles with another player tokens, they remove the tokens back to the owners. This is area control game, where in 2 turns if you can secure the letters, you will get control over it. Players get points based on the final situation on the board, 1 point for each stolen tile and 1 additional point for each stolen tile in a group (3 or more tiles). I found the game to be quite interesting, in addition you can also play with different character abilities (and weaknesses). The downside is that the same thing with Letter Tycoon, the game doesn’t reward you with difficult word or letter values. It’s just the longer the word is, the better.

NOMADS
This game was previously known as Jeju Island (from the same designer, Gary Kim) but this one was released developed by Libellud based on that game. It follows the same principle as Jeju Island, the Mancala mechanic. Players will try to tell stories or sing a song around campfire. In turns, players will either move and listen to stories, or write a song or legend. Moving is done by distributing discs in one direction and taking a tile (it could be a story tile, a moon tile or a wild tile). All players with disc on top of the stack will take a tile if any. Or players can claim a song or legend card by paying the cost. Song tile can be claimed once (players cannot change to another card in future turns) while legend cards can be replaced with better ones for each type. The game is simple, intermediate scoring happens during full moon (moon tiles form a full moon) where players will score points based on the total of legend card and song card they have minus the existing story tiles the possess. Its basically Jeju Island but with better game play, variation and better looking artworks. The game is simple, there’s a puzzle element to some extent. Also the characters have special abilities that could break rules to give more interesting options. It is a light medium set collection game, good for casual or new entry gamers. Of course for some intermediate or heavy gamers, this might be lack of challenge for their taste.

There you go, another 5 titles from Essen 2017. 5 more on the works. Stay tuned and subscribe for more.

 

Essen 2017 Highlight Preview Part 5

Next, our journey post-Essen continued with this 5th part of this highlight preview. I’ve tried Dogs in the past day, not sure it’s a valid Essen game, but it’s a Kickstarter game and just recently fulfilled by the publisher. It’s a simple game, yet we played it totally incorrect, shamefully in my defense that’s not entirely my fault. Okay let’s not ponder on it, move on to these games instead.

DEADLINE
Deadline is a cooperative game with a setting where players are 80’s detectives who try to solve crime cases. The game comes with 12 cases to work with, with different range of difficulty, from easy, normal and hard. It also has several characters with different abilities. The game works similar like The Grizzled in term placing cards to complete objective or play cards to table that usually not good for the group. The game play works very simple, players try to complete the available clue cards by placing required symbols. Each completed clue card gives a certain amount of information about the case and what are the next clue cards available. The round ends when all players have passed or when they managed to complete all the symbols on the chosen clue. The game ends when players managed to clear all the clues or when they failed the third time to complete clue cards. This will lead to the question phase where they need to answer questions related to the case. Their answers will then cross-checked with the solution book to determine how well the players worked the case. I find the game to be a mini puzzle game that rewards players with information that relate to the case, it’s not directly related and thematically tied with the case. Thus some people do find it quite abstract.  Though the stories / cases are written well and provide interesting narrative in overall game experience. The game however has a very low replay value since when you’ve played and know the answers, there’s nothing can draw you back to replay the case aside from the mini puzzle experience or trying to improve your performance.

PANIC MANSION
Now this is a game with a very unique approach from the dexterity genre. In Panic Mansion, players will try to escape from the mansion (or to be in one specific spot rather than out). In order to do this, they have to try to create the situation required in the objective. Each player will get a mansion board that consists of several rooms with partitions and all the meeples needed in each objective.
The fun part is that players need to direct their marker (and/or other markers needed) to complete the objective. To do this they will shake, slide or tilt their mansion board in order the markers to move from room to room until the objective is met. It’s surely a fun, new and bizarre experience in board game design and this can be a hit or miss game for sure. At first the objective level would be very simple and easy to do, but as the game progresses, the difficulty will increase and they will have to juggle more meeples in the same time. It’s a fun family game where you can laugh and move the parts of your body around, it’s like you shake a tray in search of gold (you know what I mean?). I for one, would love to try this game, though not sure if this will find a good place in my collection or not. Quality-wise, it has good and attractive components.

LONDON (2nd Edition)
Though this is the second edition of a classic game with the same title, it’s published under different publisher and got a complete overhaul in the visual aspect of the game. Osprey games did a very fantastic job on this one, it’s surely a work of art. I fall in love immediately with the box cover, which gives a deluxe / collector edition feel into the game. I for one, had been waiting this (kind of) game for quite a while. Never played it, but always eager to try and own Martin Wallace’s games. I know that not all of His games are proven great but some of them are legendary games such as Brass, A Study in Emerald (first edition) and Discworld: Ankh-Morpork. So head good reviews about it and luckily haven’t own the first edition, I jumped the wagon to own this one. I must admit that it is without disappointment. I guess no such thing is perfect. It has issues on the card quality, from the linen finish and the color consistency. I found the game to be brilliant, it plays fast, has very simple rules and very quick setup. You can setup and explain the game within 10 minutes. I personally like the game, the first time I tried the game, there was this feeling of a classic Euro game. Like it’s been quite a while playing games of this genre. I found it to be satisfying, it has a very simple ruleset but offers a rich possibilities on how you play the game. I must admit, there’s a small variability in the game due to the nature of the card variations within the game. It would be great if there are more card sets come with the game but there’s a randomizer to what sets used in the game. I think it would changed the game a lot. The game is more like a card game rather than a board game. In player’s turn they will draw a card and then take an action (either play a card, buy a borough, run your city or draw 3 more cards). Also there’s a twist on how players collecting poverty cubes involuntarily, which in the same time they need to remove it for it would gives penalty in the final scoring. Also the way of card drawing is affecting the length of the game into some extent. For me this is easily a keeper mostly because of the art and Wallace’s game, the good gameplay is a plus though.

INBETWEEN
This game is a 2-players asymmetrical game with a horror sci-fi setting which can be relate with Stranger Things TV series. It’s a small box game that can be played in 30 minutes. In the game, players will take the role of human and the creature from different dimension. The goal is to achieve one of the winning conditions, whether to raise awareness to level 6 or influence a number of characters within the game or when there is only 5 characters left in the game. It’s a very unique tug of war, where players will try to pull the characters to a side of their own. Each player will have their own deck of cards with different effects and uses. In each turn, they can choose to take one out of the 2 available actions, play a card or recharge energy. Character cards also have abilities that can be triggered and have two sides showing the two different dimensions to determine which they’re currently in. The characters can be in 2 different dimensions, shown by 2 sides of the card (human or creature dimension). When players try to influence the character, they use cards from their hands (the symbols shown on the cards) to shift the safety marker on that specific character. This process feels like a tug of war where players pulling the character back and forth to their sides. It’s a tedious process for sure and it needs high amount of patience. Though somewhat the game can move back and forth without significant progress there are some aspects that players can consider and these will affect player decisions throughout the game. They need to cleverly analyze the characters’ abilities and how they are spread out in the game. Cleverly set priority which character need to be secured first will surely gives high advantage in future turns. Observe your opponents also important to react wisely before or after their moves. The game may have slow pace, I feel this as a creeping death and slowly grow paranoia and tension, thematically fit with the theme. It’s not a game for everyone though, since the gameplay requires certain understanding, slow paced and has different feel and tone compared with other games. For me, this game fits the bill for Stranger Things card game (if not a board game) and does justice to it.

BATTLEFOLD
This game reimplements a game called Fold It! and adds fantasy theme to give more attractive appeal. The game uses the combination of dexterity and speed element as it core mechanic. In this game players play as characters with different class and try to win the game by achieving one of two conditions, be the last living character or be the first to resurrect their ghost character. Each player will get a piece of cloth with a 4×4 grid icons, a player board and a marker. Each round players will try to fold their cloth to follow the pattern shown on the card. This is a speed game, the first player to match the pattern may take a turn order marker in the action phase. Basically the symbols on the pattern will determine the actions for the players in the current round. The actions are move, attack, potion, shield, item and trap.
When a player health is drop to zero, he died and becomes a ghost (flip the player board). However, he’s not out of the game, he can still move around (though cannot use any other action beside move and attack). Attack also have different effects. Attack action does not give damage to the attacked players, but instead give spirit points to players for resurrect purpose. Once resurrected, the player wins the game (unless another player has won before that). The game is simple but has additional depth to the folding action in the previous game Fold It! It also has interesting plays with the characters have different abilities. It is full of pattern recognition, puzzle and speed hand coordination (maybe).

Another 5 titles are done. Now onto the next fives.

 

Essen Spiel 17 Highlight Preview Part 4

Wow, it’s already part 4 and to be honest we (or is it just me?) just moving still. There are still many, many… (I emphasize on many) new games out there need to be previewed and I am ashamed with my speed. But no good whining about good stuff, let’s savor it the best way we can and buy it eventually.

RAJAS OF THE GANGES
This game is one of the games that I got my hands into. A friend got me this directly from his Essen trip. Bless you and your games man! Okay, this game is designed by Markus and Inka Brand, the couple behind Village, La Boca, Orleans Invasion and the famous EXIT series. The box cover in this game is breathtaking, I love it very much though the font type of its title is not so much, but hey as long as its inline with the theme. The cover shows a landscape of the famous Ganges river with looming figure of the God, Kali with colorful dice in her hands. In this game, players will take the roles of Rajas / Ranis in the 16th century of India and try to expand their province in order to gain fame and riches. Player that cleverly does so that their fame and riches intertwined, wins the game. The game uses some classic mechanics with added twist. The core is a worker / dice placement game with tile laying element. Players will have a province board and a Kali statue board with one die for each color (4 colors) with 3 workers at the start of the game. Players take turns to place their workers with the possibility of spending dice or coins in several places like Marketplace, Quarry, Palace and Harbor to do different things. Players can get province tiles from the Quarry by spending money and dice to add them to their province board. Players can also get money from Marketplace based on markets that they have on their province board. Palace gives special benefits that requires the cost of die of a specific value and also the place where players can get dice or convert dice to another color. Harbor is place where players can move up their Ships on the Ganges river. I found the game to be very simple, easy to learn and setup. It has the same feel like The Voyages of Marco Polo in the aspect of dice utilization. I’ve played several times and I like it so far. It’s one of few games that has a racing feel that I actually like (Lewis and Clark is still the best though).

THE CLIMBERS
Okay we head on to an abstract game. In this game you will try to climb a pile of wooden blocks as high as you can and get rid of your opponents. So the game comes with lots of different size wooden blocks with different colors on one side. These colors represent player colors. Before the game starts, players need to arrange the wooden blocks to a single pile (in any way they want) of course with certain requisites. Players take turns to move their climber from the bottom to the top of the blocks. To do this they can move up a level (shown by their climber’s “neck” level), if above this limit, they cannot climb it. Each player also given a pair of ladders, one small and one large. These ladders can be used once each to help them climb onto blocks that are higher than them. And also a blocking stone that can help them hinder their opponents for a single turn. But as it’s not enough, players also can only climb / move onto a block with the surface of their colors or neutral (beige wooden color). If I recall correctly, this game uses player elimination, since it’s possible that players can out of their movement. In this case they are out of the game. The game is actually not a new game, the listing page on BGG suggests it’s from 2008. I found the rules are very straightforward and easy. And the components are wooden blocks (so I expect it would be heavy) and can make a spectacle on top of the table. So if you like tactical movement with tolerance of abstract theme and a small direct conflict to block others, this might be good for you to check out.

FLATLINE: A FUSE AFTERSHOCK GAME
This is a sequel game of FUSE, designed by the same designer, Kane Klenko. As you know, in FUSE, players work together to defuse a bomb, this time the bomb exploded and players need to save the casualties. They work in the medic bay of the (broken and crashed maybe) space ship just barely getting the equipment running to save the critically injured or dying due to severe explosion. Unlike FUSE, this game has more components (it has bigger box and definitely heavier) and meatier. In this game, players get their own dice (by colors) and there will be an exact number of rounds (8 rounds) in which they need to save all the patients before the last round or they lose. In the game one player will be assigned as the Chief Medical Officer, who will keep things up based on the round breakdown. The first one is to remove a round marker and draw cards. These cards are (yes) bad for the players. There are two types of card, orange (stat) and blue (emergency) cards. When they’re drawn, they’re placed separately based on colors. Then the CMO roll the emergency dice to determine which emergency cards are active. Then they discuss the plan this round. Okay before move on to the next phase I want to explain about the board. There are 4 sick bays (medical pods if you like) to hold the patient tiles (a different number of players determines how many tiles that players need to save). And in the center, there’s a dial with 4 connectors, with each of them connected to a sick bay. After the discussion, the CMO will start the timer (one minute) and players roll their dice and assign them all into various spots. Once the one minute time is over, players must stop distributing dice. Okay, not only to cure the patients, but also different places such as the cards and recharging stations (there are two of them on the board). These recharging stations can bring back one round (delay the game) but there are only 2 of them. The different color cards have 2 different effects. Orange cards must be solve in that round, if not they’re placed on fail space and a number of failed cards can make the players lose the game. Blue cards in the other hand, is not as devastating as that but when triggered they can hurt players quite bad. And the bad news is that there can be 2 rows of 6  blue cards present in the game (and that’s a crowd). Treating the patients is as simple as assigning dice based on the symbol, but this must be done in inline fashion (they must clear it line by line). The other restriction is that who to place the dice, must be one player only, 2 or more or each player. This will surely keep the players busy with their dice allocation. When this hit the bottom, players can also use cards from Triage (cleared orange cards have their good effects) or submit a die to have all players the option to re-roll their dice, but the die locked in it for the rest of the game (also its limited to submit a die here). And about the connector, once a patient has all lines covered up, they are removed and the effect column that connected with the connector will take effect (black means nothing, green means good effect and red is the opposite). These connectors are set up in a way that each patient’s tab will get connected differently with each other, this adds another element to consider about timing to clear the patients. I played this game for several times, with 2, 3 and 4 players and these plays were memorably fun and crazy, lots of hilarious and chaotic moments. I guess it’s not that easy as it looks, to assign dice among players. As people say, “more minds, more problems”, can’t argue to that. But I must say that the game is beatable, we beat it once with 4 players, though it’s just in training mode. But amidst all that, the sole thing that drawn me into getting this game is the dice, the custom dice. Yes, I am a sucker for it. I love the colorful custom dice, period.

MEEPLE CIRCUS
Okay lets head on to a dexterity game. In this game, your motor skill will be tested. In Meeple Circus, players need to pile up meeples and the likes in order to get points. There are different shape of meeples, from basic meeples, animals and different objects. Players will do a great performance with 2 rehearsals (3 acts). In each Circus acts, players will go through a preparation,  presentation, evaluation and end phase. In the preparation phase each player takes turn to take a component tiles and act tile (in the order they choose). After that players must show to their best what the public demands with their acrobats and other components, yes you stack ’em up! Of course there are some restrictions, you need to stack them inside your circus ring, place it on their side (not lay it down) except barrels and beams and all components on the ground must carry at least one other components. Players do this against time and other players. The time is from an application with circus music themed (very fun and lively), once the music stop, they must stop. In evaluation players will gain applauses by their presentations through public demands, acrobat meeples and speed bonus tokens. Public demand cards are somewhat like objectives that player can follow through to get points (these cards have different categories shown by different colors and each act will have different cards available). Next are acrobat meeples, which have 3 different types of acrobats, beginners (blues), intermediates (yellows) and experts (reds) and they score points differently, interestingly it’s thematic in some way. The beginners score points as long as they touch the ground, while the intermediates score points as long as not touching the ground. Now the experts have very unique and interesting scoring mechanism. Experts score by using a custom designed ruler (provided from the game). They score based on their heights. Higher they’re the bigger the points are. The second rehearsal (act 2) works similar with the first one with small difference, there are guest stars that can give points in specific ways. The great performance has some changes, speed tokens are not used, double points from guest stars and each challenge will give points when completed. I think its a simple dexterity game, you can find similar games in this genre such as Animal Upon Animal, Rhino Hero and others. But in this one, they managed to make it interesting both in terms of theme and game scoring, totally well done. This is definitely on my must have list.

AZUL
This one is one of the most stunning (if not beautiful) games released in Essen 2017. Azul is an abstract game with a very loose theme of aesthetic decor ceramic tiles originated in Alhambra palace, in southern Spain, called Azulejos. It was introduced by the Moors to King Manuel I when he visited. The king was mesmerized and awestruck that He began to order His architects to redecorating His palace in Portugal. In this game, players will be the King’s architects and try to decorate the walls of the palace. Each player will get a player board and the goal of the game is to be the player with most points after the game ends (which is triggered when a player successfully complete a horizontal line in their player board.). The gameplay sounds simple, in a player’s turn, the player takes tiles of the same color from either the factory display or center of the table and place them on one of their pattern lines. When all players already take tiles, next they place the tiles onto their 5×5 wall grid from the pattern lines and scores. The basic mode has a pre-definitive pattern shown on the grid, while on the back side of the board, there’s a blank grid (a variant, as expected for this kind of game). Scoring is unique, players will score the row and column of each tile placed. Players get one point for each tile currently exist in the same row and column line of the placed tile, and this is done separately between row and column. But the twist is that those points will be deducted with the tiles laying on the floor lines. More tiles, the negative points are bigger, so this put a huge consideration to the player’s choice when taking tiles. I found the game to be pretty unique, complex in the outside while the real thing is quite simple and pretty much 5 minutes rules explanation. This game required a great knowledge and plan further because the pieces placed going to affect subsequent turns greatly. I am not a big fan of an abstract game, but this one surely caught my attention due to its beautiful components, thanks God they didn’t go with card board tiles, that would be so lame. The tiles are gorgeous, beautiful, stunning and amazing (I am out of words), the game visual presentation is out of the chart, its an aesthetically work of art. I found it quite unnecessary for the score track in each player board, a single score track for all players would be more suitable since players can observe others and it surely mitigates the chance to knock or slide player markers off their place.

I included two photos of Azul, in my defense, the game is worth it. So this has to end and I need to prepare with the next list. It’s been slow but I hope you can understand, since I also has couple of new games coming (though sadly not all of them are Essen releases). Also shamefully, my game review posts have been pending due to a lot of things (this is one of them). So until next time, with part 5.

Disclaimer: all of the images shown are taken from boardgamegeek.com and the credits go the owners, I do not have the rights for all the images.

Essen 2017 Highlights Preview – Part 2

Following the previous one, here is part two of Essen 2017 Highlights Preview. Last time I showed you some good games that you would probably like, and now I hope you would like my next picks. Without further ado, let’s start with,

FLIPSHIPS
It’s designed by Kane Klenko (Covert, FUSE, Flatline and etc) and illustrated by Kwanchai Moriya. The game is practically Space Invaders: The Board Game. Yup, you and you partners will team up (okay it also has competitive mode) and defend the city against hordes of alien ships invasion just like the video game. What makes this game unique is that you need to flip your ships out to the outer space in order to shoot (more like a kamikaze move there) the enemies. Yes, you can flip the ship token (it’s made of cardboard in case you are wondering) from the edge of the table or they provide you with a wooden base to put your ship as a launch pad of some sort. The enemies are cards, form in rows and columns, they have different abilities. But the real deal is the mothership. The mothership is the boss, if you and your friends cannot defeat it before the deck runs out, you’re practically dead (it gives you 20 damage points). Worry not, you have plenty things to use in your disposal such as different level ships with different abilities and the game difficulties can be adjusted to players liking. In order to unlock the different levels, players need to trigger the condition, which usually from the City defense track. I think the game is very interesting, action dexterity game with nostalgic feeling where you flick ships to defeat enemy. I know like other dexterity games, it has 50/50 chance that it could be a hit or miss game. But even players with lousy flicking skill could improve with experiences and strong will. Hope you do not give up with one try if you perform badly flicking you ships. All in all, the game is super fun for friends, family and children alike.

SANTA MARIA
The duo Eilif Svensson and Kristian Amundsen Østby are back with their latest game called Santa Maria. This game is still using the core concept from their previous games, Doodle City and Avenue. Imagine a city building game with placing tiles in grid spaces and dice placement to activate buildings in a column or row. The game plays over 3 rounds and in each turn, players will take one of the 3 available actions, expand, activate a building, activate a row/column or retire / withdraw from the round. Expand action gives you more space to work on your colony than you can use to activate. They usually produce resources or other things when activated. Players also has the choice to use an available die to activate a column or use their own blue die to activate one row. The twist is that after activating the row or column, the die used is placed on the last vacant building in that row / column. This building, cannot be activated again in subsequent turn. So players need to be careful and consider this factor in their actions. It has good variations in the game which is a plus. Plays very relatively quickly and falls into light-medium Euro category. There are a bit of set collection, resource management, tile laying, and dice placement in the game. The artworks are good and very friendly, it’s definitely worth checking out.

ALIEN ARTIFACTS
Is a new release game from Portal games. Designed by relatively new designers, Marcin Ropka and Viola Kijowska (Taste of Poland). The game take the theme of a space 4X card game. Players will have a character which gives them variable player powers and starting tableau. It is a tableau building game, with the similar feel of Imperial Settlers. Each player has a player board in the table, which separates 2 sides of their table, left and right. The left side is used to place cards that is not yet come into play (under construction or some sort) and the right side is for cards that are already built. The cards have three different types, Ships, Technology and Planets. And the unique about this game is that these cards can be used in two ways, Logistic and Operational. Logistic has an orientation of giving benefits during the game, where Operational mostly gives more ways to score points. From the logistic side, Ships increase the assembly limit, Technologies give you cool abilities while Planets gives you more extra resources. On the Operational side, ships allow players to attack Alien ships, Technologies give players more ways to score points and Planets produce resource cards. I find these flexibilities unique and can provide different strategy and ways to play. The game looks great, it has resource engine, tableau building, variable player powers and that 4X feels in it. I think they kinda look unattractive with the art direction, white dominant background with minimum icons and colors. The objects are not really standout as oppose with the white and clear background, it’s less evoking. But hey, they actually have really cool illustrations if you look closer.

PRINCESS JING
Is a 2-players game from Roberto Fraga (Captain Sonar, DR. Eureka, Doctor Panic, Spinderella and etc). Its a nice looking deduction game / hide and seek game where one players will be the Princess Jing and other player as guards. In the story (I hope I am correct) that Princess Jing needs to escape from the palace and in order to do that, she needs to evade all the guards chasing her with the help of the pillars and her assistants. The game uses interesting mirror reflection (yes, there will be a working mirror component in the game that is used to search the princess). Players will sit in two opposite sides, and Princess Jing can hide herself behind the pillars as she moves which cannot be seen from her opponent’s side. The guards need to make a smart deduction, cover some areas to corner the princess while also placing the mirror to locate the princess. While the princess is not by herself, she has help from her assistant that will act as a decoy for the guards. The game is very unique take on deduction element while incorporating interesting component into the game which formed a nice simple hide and seek game. It plays relatively quick and simple. Sadly, the publisher (Matagot) claimed that it’s not yet ready for Essen 2017 and they only have demoes for it. So while you still have to wait to get it, maybe putting it on your wishlist would be enough to make you wagging your tail, or not.

MINI PARK
This one comes from Taiwan BG Design (which represents SoSo games). They have nice looking titles for Essen 2017 releases and this one looks cute and attractive in such a very simple way. It’s colorful (greens and other colors). The game objective is about building park and score points from it. The game is simple, on their turn players choose whether to place a tile or a character. To place a tile, they take from the available two tiles in the display or take the top most face down tile from the draw pile. Place it adjacent with the existing tiles on the table. The roads on the tile must be connected and cannot be blocked. That player will get 1 points for each tile connected to the newly placed tile. Or they can place an available character from the display into one of the tile already in played. This is for scoring more points based on the park condition. The game comes in 2 different modes, basic and advance. As in advance mode, more complex elements are introduced into the game such as the placing character action will gives an end game scoring opportunity. And players are able to take this action a few times based on number of players while in the basic mode, only once. So the nature of the game is about building park together with other players while watching carefully when to take the action to score with a character. The characters scored differently based on different elements available on the park, while these will determine what players are after to score during the game. In short it is a racing game to score first while trying to score big. If you score too early in defense getting it before someone else, you might score small, while if you trying to hold back and score late in the game, other players might probably take that chance away. It’s an interesting game for sure, simple but creates a growing tension between players, which also gives precedence that this game has a strong take that feel since once your scoring chance is taken, your plan is blown and have to take the plan B instead. The game has a small box and everything is small, but it has some nice looking shaped wooden characters in it.

Well enough for now, hope these nutritions fit you well to get through today. I personally waiting for Princess Jing, want to try Alien Artifacts with that cool looking card uses. Mini Park is a nice addition for what it is, and definitely getting Flipships, while still on the fence for Santa Maria concerning how the game really fit into the theme and replay value. Until next time with more new releases games straight from Essen 2017.

Disclaimer: all of the images shown are taken from boardgamegeek.com and the credits go the owners, I do not have the rights for all the images.

Essen 2017 Highlights Preview – Part 1

I’m trying my best to cover as many games I can in the wake of Essen Spiel 2017 so you can get better preview on what games interest you more and what you should be getting.
I’m starting with part one, which covers some of the games. Be sure to check out more parts along the way after this one.

CLAIM
Okay this one is a small game, it’s a 2-players game to be exact. Claim is designed by Scott Almes (Best Treehouse Ever, Coaster Park, The Great Dinosaur Rush, etc) and consists of two different halves like For Sale or Biblios. It’s a trick taking game where players decide to play a card to win another card in display. Players with the highest suit win the round and each suit has slight abilities that matters on timing. Like any other trick taking game, the other player must follow suit if they have or use a specific card that can break the suit. After collecting the cards, they will use those cards to gain favor of the suits / factions. In the end the scoring uses majority in each faction. It plays quick and simple, and the artworks are also look very good, done by The Mico (Raiders of the North Sea, GOT Hand of The King, etc).

MICHAEL STROGOFF
I am really excited about this one. It is based on novel adaptation from Jules Verne with the same title. In the game, players have to deliver the message of an imminent Tartar invasion over Moscow. It’s simply a racing game, player who managed to get into the destination and defeat the traitor Ivan Ogareff before He successfully invades Russia with Tartar’s army, wins the game. The game plays in rounds where each round players will take turns to do one of the possible action (advance, rest and resolve dangers) followed by the movement of the traitor. Players need to advance in order to get into the destination, but advance will force them to encounter many events in the route which usually have bad things on them. The route cards work in similar with trial cards in The Grizzled where the same danger icons cannot be present. If there are more than one icon present during this time, they have to bear the penalties where all route cards player has in their display, forcing the players to discard action cards or lose energies and flip route cards face down. Here comes the rest action where players can draw cards, recover energy or flip a face down card. The other action is resolve dangers where players need to deal with the dangers on their route cards shown in their tableau.

MONTANA
The game is about building settlements in Montana (obvious to the max) from Rudiger Dorn (Istanbul, Karuba, Jambo, etc). So as expected it’s a Euro game, medium weight to be precise. This is another racing game, where player who manage to build all of their settlements, wins the game. In this game, players will take turns to get workers, assign those workers to get resources. Where these resources will be used to build settlement. It has modular board setup with networking in the tile laying mechanic, resource management and worker placement and a small bit of auction in the worker placement segment. What unique about this game is that there are multiple types of workers and they do different things, and the main way players to get workers is through the spinner. Yes it’s like a luck-based rondel system where players spin the arrows in the wheel and see what workers they got. The component quality is good, each player gets their own player board to manage their workers and resources (not necessary but a plus) and the visual presentation is off the chart, it is beautiful and rich of colors. It plays relatively quick and the rules are clear and simple. But the main concern is that I think it has low replay value, where players are obviously do the same thing over and over again without any significant difference in each game. The modular board during setup doesn’t help cause it just gives variation but doesn’t change the game play even a bit.

LEGACY OF DRAGONHOLT
FFG latest game, they claimed it RPG without the need of a game master. Their new Oracle system provides the game that works without a game master, with its intuitive game play capturing immersive storytelling of a role playing game while adding the legacy mechanic inside the game. In short, they want to look cool with this new called system as it is practically a legacy game. It has character creations in it, some scenarios and mostly books full of paragraphs.
Corey Konieczka is the man behind the game, who also designed some notable games from FFG (Rune Age, Battlestar Galactica, Runewars, etc). I must say that I am interested on this one, surprisingly it still doesn’t have a listing on BGG. FFG announced it will be available in late 2017. I am not sure this will be on Essen 2017, but it’s new and was on Gen Con, so I just thought that this would be interesting to wait and look for.

EX LIBRIS
Adam P. McIver (Coin Age, Kingdom Land) new game, called Ex Libris. In this game players will become book collectors and in the event of Grand Librarian held by the city, you must show that you are the greatest one in the city. So in this game players will manage their book shelves with a series of books and score points from them. The game has worker placement mechanic where players sent the workers into places in the city in order get books that you want. In the end players will score based on the alphabetic order of their book shelves, variety and banned books.

The game surely gets more interesting with variable player power instead of the basic mode. What more unique is that these variable player powers grant players with specific shaped worker meeples. By golly they have a gelatinous cube as a meeple (yes, it’s true). The gelatinous cube assistant meeple is in fact literally a gelatinous cube. It also has a snowman, but who can top a gelatinous cube meeple? I find the game to be quite interesting, finding and sorting stuff. But there are some detriments in the game, like aside the game has a very good range distribution of books category, nice clear category icons, beautiful artworks and flavors in it, sadly it has a bad in-game texts that hard to read. A classic mistake to place a white small texts in front of a colorful illustrations. Players will constantly check these texts to know what exactly the actions and how it works since the game play requires the routine rotation of the action tiles. And about the variable player powers, they seemed not balanced and also there are quite a bit of luck on the draw of the cards.

COASTER PARK
Another game from Scott Almes (Best Treehouse Ever, Claim, The Great Dinosaur Rush, etc). In this game, players build roller coaster park, the best on wins the game. The main attraction of this game is the 3D card board pieces of roller coaster. Yes, you actually build roller coaster rides from tiles. It uses the similar mechanic in The Castles of Mad King Ludwig, where the active player choose a tile and offer the tiles to other players with certain amount of value. If there’s a player interested on that tile, they pay that amount of money to the active player. If no one interested, the active player get the tile. Some tiles have different effect in scoring and at the end of the game, before scoring, players will get maximum three attempts to see if their ride is totally works or not. Yes, you will check if your coaster works or not by testing it. Each player has a marble which used as a roller coaster cart and they will let the marble slide from the top. This is a very unique take from the game, and while there’s a loop part of the coaster, it can really work to make the marble circle 360 degrees. Very interesting game indeed and of course the presentation off the chart. No one will not see this on the table.

Disclaimer: all of the images shown are taken from boardgamegeek.com and the credits go the owners, I do not have the rights for all the images.