Essen Spiel 2017 Pre-Essen thoughts & Day 1

This was my first time to Essen Spiel and it was fantastic. Below is an account of my time at the convention and my thoughts  on it as well as things I learnt about it. I will also do some brief descriptions of the demos I took part in, and the games I bought.

Just a warning that this my go off on tangents or jump around on subjects I talk about. I'll try to keep it focused but no promises.

I went with my friends Garry and Andy, going by car and sharing a hotel room which was a short drive from the convention centre. Traveling through 5 countries in one day was a pretty epic start to the gaming adventure. During the journey we discussed what we wanted to see and try there, turned out my list was way longer then theirs.

I had done some internet searching and come up with a list of games I was interested in owning or trying. I didn't know much about them other then what I had read on the internet. Below is the list with the information I had going into Essen. Some of the information may be wrong or inaccurate, but that is the list I was working from at the time.

List:
Expansions:
Venus next ( Terraforming Mars); Hellas & Elysium ( Terraforming Mars). I recently got a copy of terraforming Mars, and love playing it, getting the expansions was a no brainer.

City of splendor ( Splendor) Splendor is a good game, that has fallen behind Century: Spice road for me, but I still wanted the expansion as it added new things that changed the way the game is played.

New Games: 
Charterstone - This is legacy worker placement game. It is made by the people who did Euphoria and Scythe. With one of my gaming groups we are currently in the middle of legacy game called Seafall. We think we will play Charterstone afterwards ( but probably not straight after, lots of other games to play too). I was thinking of buying it at Essen, but talking to the others we still have a long way to go with Seafall so buying it right now made no sense.

Noria - A euro style resource points scoring game. The theme is airships, which I think is cool, and it has something called a resource wheel, which got my interest. Some sort of player wheel that turned and did stuff depending on the resources you had on it.

Rajas of Ganges - knew next to nothing about this game, only that it had an Indian theme, which I don't see a lot of so was interested to see what the game did with it.

Santa Maria - All I knew was that it was a dice drafting game. Honestly if a game involves drafting, I am all over it.

Pulsar 2849 - From the guys that make T'zolkien, another favourite game of mine. This was a space area control game with dice drafting. That magic word drafting.

Keyper -  was a recommendation from a friend, a worker placement game with an engine building element. Worker placement and engine building are a favourite with me.

Alien Artifacts  - This is by Portal, they make a couple of games I really like, Imperial settlers and  51st state. Alien Artifacts promised to be a 4X game in an hour. That is pretty bold claim.

This War of Mine  - I had heard a lot of good things about the game so was interested to see it.

Azul - A mosaic tile game, where you try to draft tile pieces to complete your mosaic

Coaster Park - A game where you construct a roller coaster and then send a marble down it to see if it works.

Not alone + expansion   - I had been introduced to Not Alone at a gaming weekend with friends. It is a really cool little multi-player game. One person is an alien and the others are the humans trying to escape, it is a deduction game at heart. I wanted to show it to Garry and Andy and see what the expansion added.

Pie Town - A game about making the best pies

Decrypto - A game where you are 70s/80s code breakers, trying to break the other teams code while at the same time trying to keep your code a secret from them.

PhotoSynthesis - This was one of the buzz games I heard about, didn't know much about it apart from it was supposed to be good and it was an area control game about growing plants.

Alexandria - This has a great theme/ premise. The library of Alexandria is burning down and you are trying to save what is in the library, as the library burns down the board gets smaller.

Pioneer days - another game that promised dice drafting.


We arrived late Thursday evening (our plan had been to do the Friday, Saturday and Sunday) We got some dinner in the hotel and immediately noticed other gamers. The hotel had even set aside one of their meeting rooms for late night gaming and we had a game of infernal contraption. We didn't stay up to long as we wanted to leave early to get a parking spot.

DAY 1 (Friday)

We arrived in good time. The car parking was well organised and we followed a large stream of people heading in a direction that we could only assume to be the convention centre. 

One odd thing I found while waiting was that queuing isn't a thing here. People just gathered in a homogeneous group that got bigger and bigger. Also a few people at the back pushed their way closer to the doors. 

Tip: Buy your convention tickets before hand online. You do not want to be queuing in the morning for them.

Programmes were handed out that listed games and stands with a simple map. It is a long list and in hindsight I should have had a look at the list and map on the Web site.  

The doors opened at 10 and a mass of people surged through. We decide to move through Hall 3 and head to one of the other halls and try to avoid the early congestion in the hall we came in.  

As we didn't know where  specific games  were we were going to try and do a circuit of the convention to get a feel for the place. 

As we walked through the first hall I spotted  the expansions for terraforming Mars a bought them. I was also got a couple of promos thrown in too.

We got through Hall 3 and found another Hall a little quieter.  Saw a game with a large demo table open and went and sat down to try our first game of Essen Speil. And what a game it was. 

Dragon keeper

Dragon keeper is beautiful in it's simplicity and cunning in it's game play. 

I am a bit vague on the theme.  You are either a group of adventurers who have decided to get there own dungeon  ( because scaming would be heroes is where the real money is) or you work in a dungeon and have to look after a dragon. 

The theme connection to the game play is really light and hand wavey.  

The game is played over 3 levels, each level is a board with a set of random tiles. The tiles are split into 5 colours with each has tile having a points value from 1 to 5. A dragon model sits on the centre tile. 

At the start of the game each player takes a tile at random and keeps it a secret. This tile is a one of the colours that will score that player negative points. The red tiles don't have a negative tile, so everyone knows thar red is a "safe" colour. Everyone starts with 3 gold (more of which later)

On your turn you move the dragon twice. You move orthogonally to land on a tile. The first move is in direction 1 ( lets call it North-South). The tile you land on you take to keep for points. The second time you move the dragon it is in direction 2 ( lets call it east-west) the tile you land on you give to the player on your right. Play then moves to the player on the left. This carries on until there isn't a tile the dragon can move to.

During the game you are trying to build up a number of piles of coloured tiles, all the while trying to hide your negative colour. You are also trying to give the player to the left what you think is their negative colour and/or trying to over stack their highest score pile so they lose it at the end, while at the same time trying to not give the player to your right a high scoring tile to land on.

There are a couple of other rules. Some tiles have special powers that trigger when you take them, for example swap a tile with any player, or cancel a negative point tile.

At the end of the round you lose a number of gold depending on how many tiles are left on the board. The player who causes there to be no more legal move loses an additional gold. Now you can gain coins by giving a tile worth 3 points or more to the player on your left. You really need coins so now you also have to be a bit generous in the points you give away, because if you can't pay the gold at the end of the round you are out of the game.

And that's it, a game of two moves. It is simple to play, quick and challenging, we loved it.

We played the game on a extra large version which was added fun. It was a clever design because the trays underneath slide out and could be put on top of the previous level.

See link below for more details. The box it comes in is just genius. it forms 3 trays that stack on top of each other to form the 3 levels of the game. see picture below.

Dragon Keeper I am going to call an Essen Spiel hit.

Both Garry and Andy bought a copy. I got a little concerned at this point. The first game we tried, two of us had bought ( and I had already spent money on the terraforming mars expansions). It was going to be a long week-end of gaming and it felt like money would be pouring out of our wallets.


We moved on to find the next game to try. Walking around we saw a lot of amazing displays. The photo below is an example of the high levels of talent and craft this industry has. A whole freaking dungeon level!

Dotted around a number of the halls were these wooden table top sports games. Basically you held on to either one or two magnets underneath the playing board and moved your piece(s) around from underneath. There where variations of hockey, football tennis etc. All good fun. the company that made them, Klask has a very fun/party attitude. You could get one of the games for free if you got a (non-permanent) tattoo on your forehead for 2 days.

People enjoying the Klask games.

We walked around found the Gloomhaven stand and booked a demo for 4pm. As we continued our wander we came across a sight that made myself and Garry break into a very brisk walk. Games Workshop's Necromunda demo stand. 

Necromunda & Shadespire or The importance of a good demo

Necromunda is a game I enjoyed playing and was looking forward to it being re-re-leashed,  the chance to try the new version was pretty exciting.  

I came into the demo excited, I left disappointed. It wasn't a great demo. I got to try the Base game which is played on a board with some bulkheads and doors for cover/scenery.  

The rules have been updated which I think is a good idea in general. You have alternative activations  ( I go you go) the usual roll to hit with range and cover modifiers then save roll and injury dice. There are also Ammo dice you roll when firing a multi shot weapon.  ( I may be remembering some of this wrong) When you take a wound you lay the model on either it's front or back depending on how badly damaged you are, which was dependent on what was rolled on the injury dice ( which has a number of symbols).

Gangs have special play cards ( my term, can't remember what they were actually called)that do bonus stuff like extra movement when charging, or extra dice in attack etc.

The game wasn't really explained very well. We moved, decided who to shoot or charge told to roll dice and told whether we succeeded or failed. The rules were glossed over slightly and the demoer seemed unwilling to give much detail out.

Before I go into why I was disappointed I want to emphasis that this is my thoughts of just one demo play, and not a great demo at that. I want to try a full game before making any final judgement, I'm just no longer in a hurry to try the new version.

So what didn't I like? Well first it didn't feel like Necromunda. All that made great Necromunda for me was missing. No 3D terrain, no talk about experience and skill improvements. The board felt sparse not the the cramped urban jungle I imagine for Necromunda.

 I found the injury dice a bit odd as well, maybe because it was a bit different to what I am used to and it was explained/used  wrong once during the game, which didn't help. Once a ganger was removed from the game there was no injury table to find out what happens to them. I guess that in a one off game that is fair enough, but as a demo I want to see these things. During the demo I played the Goliaths. They are a close combat gang, one of the models only had a close combat weapon, but all the Goliaths had base movement 4. Can they really call it a close combat gang with only movement 4? I am not so sure.  I want to see all the gangs and how they play really.
Alternative actions gave the game a good to and fro feel. seeing what had moved, whether to move into a room or not etc. My only minor quibble was it didn't feel like I was playing with a gang, just individuals. This probably will change as more games are played and it may well have just been the way the models were set out for the demo. I do like the idea from Frostgrave and dropzone of group activations where you can move a group models at the same time. I am thinking the maybe juves rather then activating on their own they activate with an experienced ganger, so when you activate that ganger the Juves activate with him. But like I said after 1 demo, I shouldn't really be making rule changes. Come to think of it, I'm not sure there were even any Juves in the gangs we played!

Ultimately it wasn't really a demo of Necromunda, because Necromunda really starts to sing in campaign mode ( or so I hope). Now the "proper version of Necromunda will be able to be played with an expansion, which should be coming out at the same time as the base game. But that begs the question of why? In my eyes the base game is only half a game (if that). So if I have to buy the base game and the expansion, is that a price point I am willing to play? Probably? It just feels like a misstep by GW and I feel I need a proper game of it to decide if I like this version or not.

After Necromunda we tried Shadespire. I really like the concept of Shadespire a 45 minute tournament game with a deck of cards that you custom build to favour a combo or play style and each warband bringing a particular strategy to the table. But again the demo wasn't great, we weren't explained the game so much as walked through a couple of turns, we didn't see all the cards, the two factions in the base set didn't feel very different. the game boiled down to run towards the enemy and whack them. After the demo I felt  that the most important strategy in this game was to be able to roll more crits then your opponent, because crits beat everything. Taken 3 hits, I roll a crit on 1 dice and take no damage. Roll a crit for damage, well that can't be saved so you take a wound. I really hope that they just got the rules wrong, because otherwise, Shadespire isn't going to be a good game.

Afterwards we stared at a really big model of a Titan because it was a thing of awesomeness. I made a mental note to come back a buy some Bloodbowl starplayers, as buying them here would save me postage money. We talked to guy from Forge world to get some news/rumours from him, asked when the rest of the Goblin secret weapons were going to show up. He gave a non committal "soon". It was the same with the rest of GW staff, no one seemed willing to confirm or announce any news relating to their games. Disappointing really, I expected them to have something exciting to share.

That is one big Titan.

After Games Workshop we went looking for the next game. At Essen you will always be hunting for that next game, because there will always be a next game to find.

We found a demo of Star Trek Ascendancy and were able to book in a slot. Star trek Ascendancy is a game I have wanted to try for a while, I have been tempted to it buy a few times, but have been put off for two reasons. Firstly it is very expensive, about £70, secondly the base game is for 3 players. To get the forth player you have to buy one of the expansion packs. But it is Star Trek, the quick demo I got of it at GenCon last year I had liked what I had seen. But it was only a short demo and not a play through of a turn. Now I got the chance to play a few turns of the game.

STA is a resource gathering game. The more resource you get, the more ships you build, the more technology you can make and more planets you can bring within your sphere of control/influence. Once you have enough of the "culture" resource you gain ascendancy points, 5 of those and you win the game.

The game has been out for a while, so you can find a few reviews and game explanations out there. For me the game is good, just not great, and it needs to be great at that price. I enjoyed playing it and would play it again, I just wouldn't buy it.

It had a couple downsides game play wise for us. The game is mostly group solitaire. Now I don't have a problem with that in general, but the downtime waiting for your turn can take a while, and the impression we got was that a game takes along time to finish. Eventually your system will join up with another players, and you should try and do this a soon as possible. This is because you get to make trade agreements/ peace treaties that get you even more resources. There is player interaction as you get closer to the 5 ascendancy goal I would imagine, as you try and convert systems to your empire, but from what I saw in the demo there isn't mass space battles as such. Most of the time you use your ships to either explore and absorb other cultures into your own via diplomacy or you occupy and force them in line.

On one hand I really like how the game plays to the ideals of star trek, on the other, I do enjoy a good shin kicking in my games, which this game seems to lack.

We didn't play a whole game, that would have taken to long, but I left with a better idea of what the game was and how much I liked it.

We made our way back to the Gloomhaven stand for our demo, only to find out they had no one to demo the game at that time and they should not have had that time on the sign up sheet. The guy there apologised and gave us a 10am slot for the next day. Normally you can on sign up for slots on the same day. Garry had hoped to get the demo done today, he was interested in getting the game, but naturally wanted a demo first before part with any cash ( and Gloomhaven isn't cheap). We could see that the game was shifting pretty quickly and knew there was only so much stock available, but felt there would still be boxes tomorrow morning. With the Gloomhaven demo postponed we went looking for another demo.

The thing with Essen is that you can go in with a list of news games you want to try or buy and find out how good they are; but really, secretly, you want to discover a game that no one is talking about, a game you didn't know about but is fantastic, something you weren't expecting. We were lucky and got that in Dragon Keeper, with the Gloomhaven demo moved to Saturday our luck held and we found another great little game.

Samhain

In Samhain you are a Celtic clan trying to survive in Roman times. You are trying to have your clan have the most devotion with the Celtic deities.

Samhain is a a worker placement action activation game. Instead of a board you have 15 cards, these card are placed randomly to set the play area, so each time you play, the game is slightly different. each card has a day and night power. the odd turns are during the day, the even turns are during the night. On your turn you can do 1 of 3 things. Get a new clan member; move to an adjacent card (optional) and then activate an ability (mandatory) on a card; or pass.

The aim of the game is to have the most victory points at the end of the game, which has a predetermined number of turns depending on number of players.

Let me take a step back for a second to explain what this games is. You see dear friends, what we have here, is a mid to light eurogame that that can be played in an hour that comes in a small box that can be held in one hand, with a lot of replay-ability. In short it is magnificent.

Now let me go over something again, because you may have missed it in the explanation above. Each card has 2 actions, there are 15 cards. This game has 30 different actions. And that's before I mention items. The game gives you 5 items which also have built in actions that can be used once per day/night/round. This game gives you a number of options on how to collect victory points, and how you get those victory point will change from game to game as the cards are set out differently each time. 

The game has 3 resources. Wood, Stone, Gold. 3 types of points. Multiple points ( no not a great name for them), devotion points ( more of which later) and Victory points. MPs can be gained by spending a resource or reducing your devotion, or spending a VP. MPs are needed to buy extra clan members or to pay for certain actions on cards. A new clan member costs 1+ your current number of clan members in MPs. You start with a set number of clan members depending on the number of players and have a unused pool of clan members to gain, which also has a fixed number depending on number of players. 

When you perform an action you exhaust your clan member, once all clan members are exhausted and everyone has passed, the round ends. All clan members have to be exhausted for the round to end.

When you activate an ability you pay the cost and get the reward. If you can't pay the cost you take a will o'wisp. Some actions also give you wisps. Now wisps come from common pool and there is a set amount of them. Once the last wisp is taken from the pool. the game is interrupted with a wisp event. The player with the most wisps has a clan member die, every other player must lose  a victory point or resource or devotion point for each wisp they have.

You can have more then one clan member on the same card. But when the active player activates the ability on the card, every other clan member must also activate that ability at the same time in player order.

What this means is that you can force an opponent to take an action before they are ready to pay for it, forcing them to take a wisp.  

Another thing that I really like about this game? For me, it has the right amount "shin kicking".

Devotion is the main way to grab VPs. There are 10 temples, a day and night temple to the 5 deities. A number of actions increase your devotion to specific temples. At the end of the round whoever has the the highest devotion at each temple gets VPs.

Now when you increase a devotion track for the first time you use one of the clan members from your unused pool and put it on the track. This means that for each temple you devote your clan to you have less clan members to draw upon. It can also mean that if your clan members are in the graveyard, you may not have anyone to place in a temple.

This is a game of fine balances. You need clan members to use actions on cards, the more actions you have the more resources and VPs/DPs you can get. But you also need to hold back some clan models so you can add DPs to the temples.

You want to get a wisp to pay for the more powerful actions, but you also want to give your opponents wisps and watch the common pool hoping to trigger a wisp event.

You want to spend actions getting VPs, but you also need to spend actions getting resources/ clan members/ items etc.

It may sound complicated, it may sound like the game is juggling a lot of balls, honestly, we played and finished out first ever game (3 players) in under an hour.

Why you should demo before you buy even if you already know the game.

I decided to buy Samhain. The game was for sale at €19. However because we had done the demo we were given a discount and offered the game at €15. Not only that, they also threw in a bag of meeples to replace the cubes that come with the game for the clan members AND added a small expansion as well !

What you got for €19

What I got for €15 for doing the demo.

The clan meeples 14 different ones, for free.

This was a bit of a theme at Essen. A lot of the time you got rewarded for doing a demo, either with a discount or access to promos. Even if you already know a game and know you are buying it I would suggest you still take part in a demo of it, because it may be to your benefit.

Things learnt after day 1

I can't remember exactly when it happened, I think after lunch. We were walking around a hall ( 3, I think) and I wanted to wander around a bit more when Garry pointed out that there were still the 2 main halls we hadn't even set foot in. And that's when it hit me. The awe of it. The first time you come ( and you really should go) you think you comprehend the size of it, the variety of games available, but no matter how prepared you are for it, you will be astounded by the scale of it. 

Cash is king. A lot of places weren't doing card transactions and were cash only. This was a bit annoying. 

Toilets. If you need to pee, know 20 minutes in advance. One queue went down a stairwell to the level below. 

Language is not a problem, everyone speaks good English and most tables have English versions of games to demo on hand. To be honest I felt a bit embarrassed. Everyone we met was lovely and spoke well, I however couldn't speak a world of German. The people who demo the games would even apologise at the start in case they made any language errors, which just made me feel even worse.

Some menus and signs can be a stumbling block, but with google translate at hand it is a very small stumbling block.

If you have any questions, or want to know more about any of the games I mentioned, or about the event in general, then  please post in the comments bit.


Day 2 write up to follow soon.