Before I get into day 2 proper, there were a couple of things I forgot to mention about day 1.
When I went to Essen I had no plan to write about it when I got back. As such I am going of memory and the few photos I took. If I had known I was going to write a blog post I would have taken way more photos and kept better notes. Saturday and Sunday I took hardly any photos, this was because I was enjoying the experience of it I never thought to interrupt that experience to take photos. The other reason was the chocolate kebab.... I come back to that later.
So most of the photos you will see are what I was able to find on the web.
There were 2 other games we tried. The very first game we actually played, and I can't believe I forgot it was table top curling. It was a load fun and put smiles on our faces.
It basically does what it says on the tin. I think it is a great party/ group game. A game to play between games sort of thing. Also this is the type of game that all the family can play and would enjoy playing. The little stones slid really well. It is quite long and I don't have a table big enough for it, which is why I didn't buy it. Looking online it is pretty cheap and I think I will probably pick this up at some point. It would be a fun filler game for the Friday night gaming club I play at.
The other game we tried was 9 worlds. It is a area control game with a Norse mythology theme. Interesting fact the game is designed by the guy who runs UK games Expo.
Expo even had a stand there. They were there mostly to connect with traders and exhibitors for Expo next year.
I don't really remember much about 9 worlds, this was due to the fact it wasn't really my cup of tea. It was a little dry and abstract for me. The beads are your people, you try to get more people, and move them around the board to have the most at a location to be able to use the location power. you got points at the end of a round depending on how many of the worlds you controlled.
It was okay, it's not a bad or terrible game, just not for me.
So the last thing about day 1 I want to mention is the evening. The fair closes at 7 and we heading back to the hotel to get some dinner. We didn't think the hotel food had been great the previous night so we went and found a local restaurant.
When I go to other gaming conventions what generally happens is that in the evenings open gaming takes over. Tables are made available and you play games with your friends long into the night. This is where Essen differs quite drastically. There is no open gaming at the convention centre, the only games you play there, are the demos. It is foremost a trade fair. The hotel we stayed at had actually prepared a gaming room for the evening, and I would assume many other hotels were doing the same, but here's the other thing; we didn't want to game long into the night. At UK games expo, for example, it is not unusual to be still playing games at 1 or 2 in the morning. With Essen we played a few games until 11 - midnight at the latest. You don't want to miss or waste a second at the convention centre, there is so much to see and try. we were more interested in getting up in the morning getting a parking spot and being ready to game for the day.
I think there might have been some confusion the at Gloomhaven stand, we got there, out names where in the booking sheet on the previous day but with Saturday's time pencilled in. The guy there remembered Garry and we took one of the tables. we had to wait a bit because I think no one had told the demo guy that he was doing a demo at 10.
It got worked out in the end and it turned out that the guy doing the demo was one of the creators of the game. Getting a demo by one of the creators is pretty cool.
I am not sure if we played a bit of the first mission/adventure or something that was created for demoing. Either way you won't see the campaign side of the game, the progression, the map, the world exploring. In the case of Gloomhaven it was less of an issue, it has had a lot of positive reviews and we had an idea of it's scope. The demo mostly went over the mechanics of the game. These where pretty fluid and straightforward.
Gloomhaven is a co-op game, the players play as a adventuring party against the game.
Combat was quick but with the battle still requiring some tactical discussion. In the game you have a set of cards, and each character has different cards to represent their different fighting styles. Each card is split in two a top and bottom which has an ability, attack or move. you pick two cards and pick and action from the top of one card and the bottom of the other. All the cards have numbers that decide initiative order, lowest going first. The nice thing was that a number of cards encouraged team work. some cards gave buffs to others, you had healing potions etc. As you play more cards your hand/ deck gets depleted, when you run out of cards you have to spend your actions drawing back up/shuffling your deck. There is also a set of cards that add a random element by adding or subtracting from your attack total. A bit of planning is necessary or you leave yourself open to attack.
The other thing that was nice was that the monsters are treated with having a bit of common sense. They don't all just blindly move towards a character to hit it. For example a thug with a crossbow will move to within it's maximum range to fire, and it will stay there. if you move closer, it will move back. There are different cards for different NPCs and NPCs can vary in skill and power.
The characters you play gain experience that you use to buy more cards like equipment and upgrades.
While doing the demo we did notice that there was not many boxes left, they were going really fast. Garry had to leave the demo to go and buy a box, because it didn't look like there would be any boxes left by the time we would have finished playing the demo.
Which brings me nicely to another point about Essen. You get access to stuff way before anyone else. The Gloomhaven they had at Essen was the retail version of the game, not the kick starter version. The retail has has some aesthetic changes made to character cards/sheets. This version of the game isn't out til January 2018.
My only minor doubt about Gloomhaven is how repetitive it will be. There may be maps to explore, and characters to level up, and maybe even a connecting narrative story which pushes the campaign forward. But, is it just dungeon bash, after dungeon bash? Sure there are variations on the that like, searching, stealing, rescuing, guarding etc. But I don't know if that ends up boiling down to start in a tile/room A get to tile/room B, kill everything on the way. I mean that can be a lot of fun. I would just want a bit more to it.
In the demo there were 5 players and the game finished in an hour. To me, that is pretty amazing. To have a game of this complexity, with 5 players and be done in an hour is great. Turns happen so quickly. The game gives you a number of choices. Do you play the logistic side or the operational side. Do you try to push technology or planets, or go after artifacts. The game has these little nuances that you can try and leverage to help you win. You can try and run through the resource deck faster to end the round/ game. You can try to set collect types of cards to maximise you faction victory point condition.
I really like this sort of game and I bought a copy. I got a discount of €5 for playing the demo, although I miss out on the free promo factions as they had all gone by then.
Should you buy Alien Artifacts? Well that is a slightly less straightforward answer. Let me explain.
Alien Artifacts comes from Portal Games, who also make 51st state/ 51st state: New Era; Imperial settlers; 51st state: Master set, and now Alien Artifacts. All these games while having different themes share a number of design ideas and mechanics.
If you have played 51st state: Master set and/or Imperial settlers you will have a good idea of how Alien Artifacts plays/works. You could in fact draw a line of game design evolution through all them starting with 51st state: new era all the way to Alien Artifacts.
If you own either Imperial settlers or 51st state: Master set, then it becomes less clear if you want or need Alien Artifacts. They all scratch the same itch. They all do it a bit differently, whether the differences are great enough depends on whether you like these type of games or love these type of games. They are all tableau building victory point generating games.
For me I would describe the differences between each game as follows:
Imperial Settlers is the most combo-tastic, it has a deck building element to it that the others don't. It also has the most expansions out giving you a tonne of options. It has the longest set up time.
51st state: Master set is the most focused on engine building, it is much more of a race to get the victory points. You want and need to find an engine (or even better, multiple engines) to get you VPs.
Alien Artifacts is the most stream lined of the 3, it is the easiest game in which to attack other players and the quickest to play. It is less about engine building then the other two. With Alien artifacts you are ( I think) trying to complete a number of steps to get VPs. Get artifacts with ships, get VPs with operational tech, get VPs with operation planets. Once you get those VPs you set about a new series of steps to get the next batch of VPs.
I love these type of games and am happy to own and play all 3. If you don't own any and like the sound of them then I think Alien Artifacts is the game to go for. From there it is up to you whether you want to get the other as well.
Terraforming Mars (another game I own) also plays in a similar way, so is another option if interested in these type of games.
Side Note: If you have the older 51st state games, like New Era, then you really should get the Master set, it is just a flat out better version of the game)
I also picked up all the promos for 51st state and Imperial settlers at the same time as the Alien Artifacts game and got a decent deal on them.
After that we went to find some food and do a demo of a game Garry wanted to try.
Queues for food are what you would expect them to be for a convention of this size, but they move relatively rapidly.
For my lunch I decided to have this.
A chocolate Kebab.
And this is where things get a bit hazy. You see, by the end of the chocolate kebab, I was bouncing. I was on a massive sugar rush. There are no more photos, I'm not sure what follows happened in that order, or that I can give you much detail about the games played. I was too busy trying to enter the Speedforce.
The next game we played was made by a friend of Garry's. It was called Knossos. It is played on a maze board where you move your player piece and also the Minotaur. It is a sort of co-op game. The players are trying to get stuff in the maze and not get killed by the Minotaur, but then you are also trying to get the Minotaur to kill the other players. It isn't the sort of game I would play generally. The game felt too long to me time wise, but that was probably the sugar, everything was moving too slow.
As I was getting the demo Garry and Andy found me and told that they had actually booked a table for the Alexandria game for later. While we were there we went through the demo anyway.
When we got to playing the game later at the table it turned out we were given the game and left to our selves to play it. Turned out that booking the table got you a chance to pay the full game. No one was there to demo it. You basically had to get a demo from one of the demo team and then book a table to play the game. It was okay in the end because we had had the demo and also the rule book wasn't difficult to follow. I did think it was an odd way to do things though.
In the end the game didn't meet my expectations. It isn't a game I would be interested in playing again. you move from room to room trying to pick up certain items to get VPs. You use time as a resource, so moving costs time, actions cost time etc. you keep having your turn until your time tracker is no longer the highest and then the person with the highest time (i.e. the most time left) goes. At the end of a round the library gets smaller as it burns away.
It had some nice ideas using time as a resource and to track who is the active play was neat. It just wasn't that much fun. there was no sense of urgency to the game. I wanted the game to be more "manic". For a game were you are in a building that is burning down around you there was no sense of danger, or need for speed. I was interested in the game based on it's theme, but for me the theme didn't come through how I would have liked it to.
There were a couple of quick games I got to try during the day. I can't remember their names and I might have forgotten some other games we tried.
One game was what I would call noughts and crosses with card counting. Yes it was as dull as it sounds.
The people who did Alexandria also did a card game about a robot destruction derby. I thought it was pretty meh.I can't even remember how it played.
So Saturday finished and we went and to a burger restaurant near the hotel called Base Burger. I thought it was really good. the burgers were massive. ( I realise I keep using the word massive a lot in these write ups, honestly it is completely appropriate to do so.)
Back at the hotel we broke out 51st state master set and then I showed Century: Spice Road to Andy and Garry ( I think it is a really great game)
When I went to Essen I had no plan to write about it when I got back. As such I am going of memory and the few photos I took. If I had known I was going to write a blog post I would have taken way more photos and kept better notes. Saturday and Sunday I took hardly any photos, this was because I was enjoying the experience of it I never thought to interrupt that experience to take photos. The other reason was the chocolate kebab.... I come back to that later.
So most of the photos you will see are what I was able to find on the web.
There were 2 other games we tried. The very first game we actually played, and I can't believe I forgot it was table top curling. It was a load fun and put smiles on our faces.
The other game we tried was 9 worlds. It is a area control game with a Norse mythology theme. Interesting fact the game is designed by the guy who runs UK games Expo.
Expo even had a stand there. They were there mostly to connect with traders and exhibitors for Expo next year.
It was okay, it's not a bad or terrible game, just not for me.
So the last thing about day 1 I want to mention is the evening. The fair closes at 7 and we heading back to the hotel to get some dinner. We didn't think the hotel food had been great the previous night so we went and found a local restaurant.
When I go to other gaming conventions what generally happens is that in the evenings open gaming takes over. Tables are made available and you play games with your friends long into the night. This is where Essen differs quite drastically. There is no open gaming at the convention centre, the only games you play there, are the demos. It is foremost a trade fair. The hotel we stayed at had actually prepared a gaming room for the evening, and I would assume many other hotels were doing the same, but here's the other thing; we didn't want to game long into the night. At UK games expo, for example, it is not unusual to be still playing games at 1 or 2 in the morning. With Essen we played a few games until 11 - midnight at the latest. You don't want to miss or waste a second at the convention centre, there is so much to see and try. we were more interested in getting up in the morning getting a parking spot and being ready to game for the day.
DAY 2
With a Gloomhaven demo booked for 10 we got to the convention centre an hour early to be close to the doors when they opened. I am pretty bad at remembering where stands are and in what hall and when the doors opened I followed Garry to the demo table. It would have taken me forever to find it by myself. The halls fill up really quickly as there are multiple entrances.I think there might have been some confusion the at Gloomhaven stand, we got there, out names where in the booking sheet on the previous day but with Saturday's time pencilled in. The guy there remembered Garry and we took one of the tables. we had to wait a bit because I think no one had told the demo guy that he was doing a demo at 10.
It got worked out in the end and it turned out that the guy doing the demo was one of the creators of the game. Getting a demo by one of the creators is pretty cool.
Gloomhaven
Making any sort of judgement on Gloomhaven from the demo is hard. Purely because of what type of game Gloomhaven is. It is a campaign game that is played over many adventures/missions. It is a huge box with a ton of stuff and many, many hours of game.I am not sure if we played a bit of the first mission/adventure or something that was created for demoing. Either way you won't see the campaign side of the game, the progression, the map, the world exploring. In the case of Gloomhaven it was less of an issue, it has had a lot of positive reviews and we had an idea of it's scope. The demo mostly went over the mechanics of the game. These where pretty fluid and straightforward.
Gloomhaven is a co-op game, the players play as a adventuring party against the game.
Combat was quick but with the battle still requiring some tactical discussion. In the game you have a set of cards, and each character has different cards to represent their different fighting styles. Each card is split in two a top and bottom which has an ability, attack or move. you pick two cards and pick and action from the top of one card and the bottom of the other. All the cards have numbers that decide initiative order, lowest going first. The nice thing was that a number of cards encouraged team work. some cards gave buffs to others, you had healing potions etc. As you play more cards your hand/ deck gets depleted, when you run out of cards you have to spend your actions drawing back up/shuffling your deck. There is also a set of cards that add a random element by adding or subtracting from your attack total. A bit of planning is necessary or you leave yourself open to attack.
The other thing that was nice was that the monsters are treated with having a bit of common sense. They don't all just blindly move towards a character to hit it. For example a thug with a crossbow will move to within it's maximum range to fire, and it will stay there. if you move closer, it will move back. There are different cards for different NPCs and NPCs can vary in skill and power.
The characters you play gain experience that you use to buy more cards like equipment and upgrades.
While doing the demo we did notice that there was not many boxes left, they were going really fast. Garry had to leave the demo to go and buy a box, because it didn't look like there would be any boxes left by the time we would have finished playing the demo.
Which brings me nicely to another point about Essen. You get access to stuff way before anyone else. The Gloomhaven they had at Essen was the retail version of the game, not the kick starter version. The retail has has some aesthetic changes made to character cards/sheets. This version of the game isn't out til January 2018.
My only minor doubt about Gloomhaven is how repetitive it will be. There may be maps to explore, and characters to level up, and maybe even a connecting narrative story which pushes the campaign forward. But, is it just dungeon bash, after dungeon bash? Sure there are variations on the that like, searching, stealing, rescuing, guarding etc. But I don't know if that ends up boiling down to start in a tile/room A get to tile/room B, kill everything on the way. I mean that can be a lot of fun. I would just want a bit more to it.
Planet conquering deck building game
After Gloomhaven we found a small stand doing a deck building game. There are a lot of smaller stands/ games available at Essen. Small companies, even individuals showing of a single game they have created and published. In some cases to show off a prototype of a game that is coming to kick starter.
Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the game. Your deck is made up of aircraft and tanks. in the middle of the table is a planet deck. Every turn 2 planets are out face up in the middle of the table. Each planet has 3 action square, which are either victory points or card upgrades. Each player secretly decides what planet they are trying to conquer. You can choose to go after 1 or both planets.
You aircraft power is used to decide who attacks first and you tank power is used to defeat the planet to get one of the squares on the card. Once you choose a square the other players can't choose it afterwards.
Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the game. Your deck is made up of aircraft and tanks. in the middle of the table is a planet deck. Every turn 2 planets are out face up in the middle of the table. Each planet has 3 action square, which are either victory points or card upgrades. Each player secretly decides what planet they are trying to conquer. You can choose to go after 1 or both planets.
You aircraft power is used to decide who attacks first and you tank power is used to defeat the planet to get one of the squares on the card. Once you choose a square the other players can't choose it afterwards.
I liked the game, it's not your usual group solitaire deck builder. All the player play at the same time. It is in essence a bidding game. It was a fairly light and quick game. The nice thing about the smaller game makers is that sometimes they ask for your opinion about the game.
At Essen you will come across many, many games you will like. Unless you have won the lottery you aren't going to be able to buy them all. Ultimately it comes down to how often you think the game will be played.
At Essen you will come across many, many games you will like. Unless you have won the lottery you aren't going to be able to buy them all. Ultimately it comes down to how often you think the game will be played.
As I said I liked the game, but it wasn't screaming buy me now either.
After that game Garry needed to take the massive Gloomhaven box to the car. Carrying it around all day wasn't an option.
After that game Garry needed to take the massive Gloomhaven box to the car. Carrying it around all day wasn't an option.
We decide to meet up at the Portal games stand, as I wanted to get a demo of Alien Artifacts.
Alien Artifacts
Saturday is by far the busiest day of the fair. Demo tables are constantly full. If you want a game of something specific you have to loiter with intent. Make sure the demo person knows your hanging around waiting to try the game.
We arrived having just missed the start of a set of demo games. which ended up meaning we had to hang around the area for an hour. There was a demo table we could have go in a bit sooner the the person doing the demo seemed to spend a lot of time looking stuff up in the rule book, which made me want to steer clear of him.
We arrived having just missed the start of a set of demo games. which ended up meaning we had to hang around the area for an hour. There was a demo table we could have go in a bit sooner the the person doing the demo seemed to spend a lot of time looking stuff up in the rule book, which made me want to steer clear of him.
Alien Artifacts calls itself a 4x game played in an hour. (4x = Explore, Expand, Exploit & exterminate). This is a bit of an exaggeration I feel. It is, however, a really good game.
Below is a video explaining how the game works. It does a good job of explaining all the parts of the game and what you can do. It will also be quicker then me writing an explanation of how the game plays.
Below is a video explaining how the game works. It does a good job of explaining all the parts of the game and what you can do. It will also be quicker then me writing an explanation of how the game plays.
In the demo there were 5 players and the game finished in an hour. To me, that is pretty amazing. To have a game of this complexity, with 5 players and be done in an hour is great. Turns happen so quickly. The game gives you a number of choices. Do you play the logistic side or the operational side. Do you try to push technology or planets, or go after artifacts. The game has these little nuances that you can try and leverage to help you win. You can try and run through the resource deck faster to end the round/ game. You can try to set collect types of cards to maximise you faction victory point condition.
I really like this sort of game and I bought a copy. I got a discount of €5 for playing the demo, although I miss out on the free promo factions as they had all gone by then.
Should you buy Alien Artifacts? Well that is a slightly less straightforward answer. Let me explain.
Alien Artifacts comes from Portal Games, who also make 51st state/ 51st state: New Era; Imperial settlers; 51st state: Master set, and now Alien Artifacts. All these games while having different themes share a number of design ideas and mechanics.
If you have played 51st state: Master set and/or Imperial settlers you will have a good idea of how Alien Artifacts plays/works. You could in fact draw a line of game design evolution through all them starting with 51st state: new era all the way to Alien Artifacts.
If you own either Imperial settlers or 51st state: Master set, then it becomes less clear if you want or need Alien Artifacts. They all scratch the same itch. They all do it a bit differently, whether the differences are great enough depends on whether you like these type of games or love these type of games. They are all tableau building victory point generating games.
For me I would describe the differences between each game as follows:
Imperial Settlers is the most combo-tastic, it has a deck building element to it that the others don't. It also has the most expansions out giving you a tonne of options. It has the longest set up time.
51st state: Master set is the most focused on engine building, it is much more of a race to get the victory points. You want and need to find an engine (or even better, multiple engines) to get you VPs.
Alien Artifacts is the most stream lined of the 3, it is the easiest game in which to attack other players and the quickest to play. It is less about engine building then the other two. With Alien artifacts you are ( I think) trying to complete a number of steps to get VPs. Get artifacts with ships, get VPs with operational tech, get VPs with operation planets. Once you get those VPs you set about a new series of steps to get the next batch of VPs.
I love these type of games and am happy to own and play all 3. If you don't own any and like the sound of them then I think Alien Artifacts is the game to go for. From there it is up to you whether you want to get the other as well.
Terraforming Mars (another game I own) also plays in a similar way, so is another option if interested in these type of games.
Side Note: If you have the older 51st state games, like New Era, then you really should get the Master set, it is just a flat out better version of the game)
I also picked up all the promos for 51st state and Imperial settlers at the same time as the Alien Artifacts game and got a decent deal on them.
After that we went to find some food and do a demo of a game Garry wanted to try.
Kebabs & Sugar
One thing that surprised me about Germany is that they really like their donor meat. I had thought that the kebab shop was culturally, a particularly British thing. But no, if anything the Germans love donor meat more.Queues for food are what you would expect them to be for a convention of this size, but they move relatively rapidly.
For my lunch I decided to have this.
A chocolate Kebab.
And this is where things get a bit hazy. You see, by the end of the chocolate kebab, I was bouncing. I was on a massive sugar rush. There are no more photos, I'm not sure what follows happened in that order, or that I can give you much detail about the games played. I was too busy trying to enter the Speedforce.
The next game we played was made by a friend of Garry's. It was called Knossos. It is played on a maze board where you move your player piece and also the Minotaur. It is a sort of co-op game. The players are trying to get stuff in the maze and not get killed by the Minotaur, but then you are also trying to get the Minotaur to kill the other players. It isn't the sort of game I would play generally. The game felt too long to me time wise, but that was probably the sugar, everything was moving too slow.
Hockey with magnets
Next we had a quick go on one of the Klask games. Table hockey. It was fun. I won.
We split up for while as Garry wanted to do do some shopping and Andy wanted to try and get a look at Legion.
We had been talking about Legion. A star wars miniature war game has obvious appeal. But it also has some set backs too we thought. Firstly how many different Armies can there be? The rebellion and the Empire. So 2. And that would be the battle too, I don't see many people wanting to do Rebellion vs Rebellion.
Secondly the miniatures aren't pre-painted. which, for some reason I thought they would be. If the universe's paint schemes are as fixed as they are in Star Wars why not have them come already painted and ready to play. I don't really want to be painting Storm Troopers.
As you can imagine the FFG stands were super busy and I never got close enough to see how Legion played.
I saw a number of tables playing City of Splendors, but I didn't really want to stand around waiting for a space to become available, so I wandered around until I found a a game that waiting for to be demoed. That game was Decrypto
In the game I played the 3 words/ phrases were Legend; Wire; Piano . The 3 words related to numbers on the code board. You are trying to tell the code to your team but not to the other side.
On my turn the clues I gave were Will Smith film; TV show, . The guys on my side were able to guess the sequence correctly. We swap sheets with the other team and look at their code words.
In the first round you don't guess, because you don't have enough information.
The next round your team mate sets the clues with a new code but the same words. There are 4 words but the codes are 3 numbers long so in the second round a new word may get used.
The clues we were given were Beowulf, fence, Black & white. ( so legend, wire, piano).
At the end of the round the sheets are swapped again and now you start looking for patterns of words. and try and break the other sides code.
I enjoyed playing it, I was worried playing a language game with with people whose first language isn't English, but as I have said before it wasn't a problem, and the guys on my side were able to follow my clues.
Decrypto is a party game, in that it is most fun in a large group. As such I don't think I would be able to get it to the table very often. I would say that it is one of those games that you could play with your non-gamer friends. I would happily play it again.
After that I got myself a demo of Alexandria
Halls 1 & 2
At some point during the day we hit halls 1 & 2. Hall 1 was massive. FFG where demoing there Star Wars legion game. There were a number of very impressive looking areas set up by a number of publishers. The FFG/Asmodee shop queue was fairly horrendous.We split up for while as Garry wanted to do do some shopping and Andy wanted to try and get a look at Legion.
We had been talking about Legion. A star wars miniature war game has obvious appeal. But it also has some set backs too we thought. Firstly how many different Armies can there be? The rebellion and the Empire. So 2. And that would be the battle too, I don't see many people wanting to do Rebellion vs Rebellion.
Secondly the miniatures aren't pre-painted. which, for some reason I thought they would be. If the universe's paint schemes are as fixed as they are in Star Wars why not have them come already painted and ready to play. I don't really want to be painting Storm Troopers.
As you can imagine the FFG stands were super busy and I never got close enough to see how Legion played.
I saw a number of tables playing City of Splendors, but I didn't really want to stand around waiting for a space to become available, so I wandered around until I found a a game that waiting for to be demoed. That game was Decrypto
Decrypto
This is a game that is a lot like Code names. It was fun to play. I was playing with some Germans who thankfully were kind enough to do the demo in English. Video below helps explain how the game works. You are basically trying to communicate a number of words to your team mates with out using them, but at the same time trying to not let the other side figure it out either.
In the game I played the 3 words/ phrases were Legend; Wire; Piano . The 3 words related to numbers on the code board. You are trying to tell the code to your team but not to the other side.
On my turn the clues I gave were Will Smith film; TV show, . The guys on my side were able to guess the sequence correctly. We swap sheets with the other team and look at their code words.
In the first round you don't guess, because you don't have enough information.
The next round your team mate sets the clues with a new code but the same words. There are 4 words but the codes are 3 numbers long so in the second round a new word may get used.
The clues we were given were Beowulf, fence, Black & white. ( so legend, wire, piano).
At the end of the round the sheets are swapped again and now you start looking for patterns of words. and try and break the other sides code.
I enjoyed playing it, I was worried playing a language game with with people whose first language isn't English, but as I have said before it wasn't a problem, and the guys on my side were able to follow my clues.
Decrypto is a party game, in that it is most fun in a large group. As such I don't think I would be able to get it to the table very often. I would say that it is one of those games that you could play with your non-gamer friends. I would happily play it again.
After that I got myself a demo of Alexandria
Alexandria
This was one of the games I was interested in trying. I just really like the theme/idea behind the game. trying to save knowledge from burning down in the library.As I was getting the demo Garry and Andy found me and told that they had actually booked a table for the Alexandria game for later. While we were there we went through the demo anyway.
When we got to playing the game later at the table it turned out we were given the game and left to our selves to play it. Turned out that booking the table got you a chance to pay the full game. No one was there to demo it. You basically had to get a demo from one of the demo team and then book a table to play the game. It was okay in the end because we had had the demo and also the rule book wasn't difficult to follow. I did think it was an odd way to do things though.
In the end the game didn't meet my expectations. It isn't a game I would be interested in playing again. you move from room to room trying to pick up certain items to get VPs. You use time as a resource, so moving costs time, actions cost time etc. you keep having your turn until your time tracker is no longer the highest and then the person with the highest time (i.e. the most time left) goes. At the end of a round the library gets smaller as it burns away.
It had some nice ideas using time as a resource and to track who is the active play was neat. It just wasn't that much fun. there was no sense of urgency to the game. I wanted the game to be more "manic". For a game were you are in a building that is burning down around you there was no sense of danger, or need for speed. I was interested in the game based on it's theme, but for me the theme didn't come through how I would have liked it to.
There were a couple of quick games I got to try during the day. I can't remember their names and I might have forgotten some other games we tried.
One game was what I would call noughts and crosses with card counting. Yes it was as dull as it sounds.
The people who did Alexandria also did a card game about a robot destruction derby. I thought it was pretty meh.I can't even remember how it played.
So Saturday finished and we went and to a burger restaurant near the hotel called Base Burger. I thought it was really good. the burgers were massive. ( I realise I keep using the word massive a lot in these write ups, honestly it is completely appropriate to do so.)
Back at the hotel we broke out 51st state master set and then I showed Century: Spice Road to Andy and Garry ( I think it is a really great game)
What to make of Saturday Spiel?
Saturday you have to work much harder at getting demos. I am undecided on what the best strategy is. Whether to go to tables of games you know you want to play and wait stubbornly until a space opens; or wander the halls looking for any game that opens up as you walk past.
Doing your shopping list may also be a good option. The thing with Essen is that if you know you want something, get it as soon as you see it, because there is no guarantee it will be there later.
The highlight of Saturday was Alien Artifacts. It was an interesting day in that a lot of the demos I tried helped me decide that I didn't want that game. Which was really useful.
I think the most amazing thing about Saturday is the amount of people there. So many gamers. To be in place with so many like-minded people from such a variety of place is a extremely cool thing.
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