Essen 2016 – Games Played

A quick look at the games I played at Essen 2016

The Arrival at Essen 2016

A round works with a pretty nice mechanism where you have a couple of decks of cards with different backs. The back of the card gives you a good idea of which resources are on the front of the card.

You draft 4 of these and place them in a row in your play area.

Actions

You then go around taking 2 actions. You can ‘Build a Fortification’ by adding a counter to an existing fort. Place a Shield to increase the defence of a region… That’s one of the large coloured areas of the board, not an individual space.

‘Spread Fomori’ (the baddies) by placing new Fomori tokens on the board adjacent to another one on there. Finally, ‘Repel Fomori’ by attacking them…

You score points for repelling Fomori, by playing bonus tokens and a few other ways.

The Arrival Summary

We played one round because we’re polite and people were waiting but it did seem like a cool game.

It reminded me quite a bit of Mythotopia which is by the same designer but is less of a deck builder and more of a resource management game with the threat of this ‘5th Player’ controlled by everyone.

Good idea, good mechanisms, good game.

Light of Dragons at Essen 2016

In this game, players have 3 dice of set sides. Either end of a board set to sides 5,2 and 3. Each side of a die represents a different creature in this world.

On your turn, you move your die or use a power. If you move a die onto an opponent of a lower value you take it. Then score points equal to the value of that die. You can also level up a die by spinning it up a level.

The 1 is the weakest but if you have 3 connected orthogonally they form an unbreakable wall.

The 2 moves 2 spaces and can move through creatures. If it moves through an opponent’s creature that creature loses a level. Also, if this creature is defeated the creature that defeated it loses 2 levels.

3’s can split into 3 1’s. by adding dice from your reserve. It can also take a 6 with a 6 being a Dragon and a 3 being a Dragon Slayer.

4’s can let you remove dice from your supply to increase the level of dice. This depends on the number of 4’s you control.

5 always moves diagonally and if it defeats a creature, it can attack or move again.

6’s can split into 2 3’s. But each round you score 1 victory point for each Dragon you have in excess of your opponent.

First to 10 points wins.

Light of Dragons Summary

A fun easy game to play. Like a Chess and Quantum combined with a fantasy theme.

Not too bad.

Hero Realms at Essen 2016

Hero Realms Review

A Kickstarter I picked up at Essen 2016.

This is based on Star Realms. But instead of spaceships and things, it’s Orcs and Thieves and Daggers and Magic etc… I prefer that.

We played a 2 player fight where you both start with 50 life. The goal is to get your opponent down to zero.

The game players out in a standard deck-building way with 5 cards laid out. You use gold from your cards in hand to buy them.

In Star Realms you have Bases that stay out in play. In Hero Realms, you have Champions that can act as a barrier between your opponent and your life total.

Hero Realms Summary

It’s a good game, so good, and quick, that I forgot to take pictures… oops!

The interesting part will be when I get to play the campaign mode. Here you have a persistent deck over several games vs game control enemies and stories.

But for now, I’m happy just laying the smackdown on whoever will play. 🙂

Terraforming Mars at Essen 2016

Each player plays a corporation which gives a starting amount of cash. Also a special ability and in some cases an action you need to take on your first turn.

Then you get a hand of 10 cards. You use your newly received cash to buy them for 3 each. Then the start player takes 1 or 2 actions. Play continues clockwise with everyone taking one or 2 actions.

Actions

You can play a card by paying the cost of the card, resolving it and placing it in front of you. The cards have ‘tags’ and some cards have a requirement of 1 or more of these tags on cards already in your play area.

The next action is to play a standard project which let you do stuff without using a card. You pay to increase your Power income, increase the temperature, and place a water/forest/city tile, on Mars.

Milestones

You can claim a milestone by being the first person to achieve one of the 5 goals, you pay 8 money to claim one and only 3 can be claimed per game so be quick!

Finally, you can fund a reward. There are 5 categories and only 3 can be claimed. The first player pays 8, the second 14 and the third 20. These show you which 3 of the 5 categories will score at the end of the game.

At the end of the game, you score points for Awards and Milestones, tile placement, bonuses on cards you played as well as points picked up for doing things through the game, most points win.

Terraforming Mars Summary

This is a good game. I played it with 2 players at Essen then 5 players 7 days later and got to do different things so that’s always good.

I’m looking forward to a few more games so I can actually concentrate on that ‘Scoring Points’ thing that seems so important 🙂

Jórvík at Essen 2016

Form a Viking queue for cards, they’re so patient!

This is a re-theming of Die Speicherstadt.

The game has 2 versions and as I’ve played both I’ll go through each. I’ll do an overview of the simple game, cover the main extras with the advanced game then go over the cards.

Firstly the basic version involves half of the playing board. The players each have 4 Vikings and take turns adding a Viking under one of these cards. If a Viking is already at that card the Vikings join that line, almost queuing for the card.

Once everyone has played all their Vikings you go through each row left to right to assign the cards to players.

Assigning Cards

The player at the front of the line gets first to pick and can either buy the card for 1 coin per Viking in the line or withdraw. Then the next player has the same option except now the line is one shorter so the card is one cheaper.

If a player wants the card they pay the cost if not one wants it the card is discarded.

For the advanced game, the board is unfolded and all of it is used. There is another row of spaces for you to place cards which is an alternative option for the players. When placing a Viking, you can ‘reserve’ one of these cards instead of moving it to a separate row.

Apart from extra cards in the deck, this is all the advanced game adds.

Cards

The cards come in 4 blocks each representing seasons and you start in Winter and play until Autumn.

They include Boats that have randomly drawn resource cubes on them, Traders and Artisans that use these resources, other cards that give a general effect and Soldiers that increase your attack value.

Every so often you’ll be attacked and an attack card will show the number of points players will gain or lose during this attack. The player/s with the lowest attack lose points and the player/s with the highest gain points.

Jorvik Summary

The best bit about the game is the auction-type thing. You can place Vikings to increase the price for other players including multiple times in a row, the first to bump up the price and the second to buy it yourself cheaper.

It’s the cards and their effects that let the game down for me. You don’t really do much apart from collecting Artisan cards that require resources and hope you can afford to buy a Boat card that has the resources you need on it.

After two players I’ve seen enough… Would love to see this auction/bidding track mechanism in a different game.

The Football Game at Essen 2016

The Football Game Review

Not ‘A’ Football Game, ‘THE’ Football Game

In this game, you start with a random squad of players represented by cards and each player has a value of 1-5. So with everyone starting the squad being different how can it be fair?

Well, the point of the game is to exceed the fan’s expectations. So the total of your starting squad puts you a ‘Class’ (Title Contender, Relegation Candidate etc) and it’s where you finish in the League relevant to your Class is how many points you will score at the end of the game.

Also, during the game, you have a chance to ‘Scout’ to look for better players and can sell the ones you have and buy new ones.

The Football Game Summary

It’s very good and very thematic. I messed up where I was near the top of the league so I pushed, sold too many players to buy a good one, got a couple of injuries and didn’t have enough players out on my board 🙂 Then I sunk down the league quickly.

I think the whole game comes together really well and will appeal to Football fans a lot, and the general simplicity will appeal to non-football fans.

Backed this on Kickstarter as soon as I got back to the hotel and I look forward to getting it next year.

The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game at Essen 2016

A card game of a cool dice game.

Instead of a player board, you have cards in your play area. Looks more untidy and takes up more space but does the job.

Instead of rolling dice and doing things, the action cards you’re drafting are placed alongside 6 cards showing the 6 sides of a die. You have a deck of 6 action cards and you keep two of them in your hand to discard for the die value on the top… instead of rolling a regular die.

When you discard a card you can take one of several options depending on the number of the card you discarded in most cases.

Cards

Like coloured cards stacked on top of each other and each card has an ability that you trigger so you can chain some moves if you planned well.

These, along with Goods and Animals are kept in your Storage area.

The Castles of Burgundy Card Game Summary

It compares to Castles of Burgundy the board game with the advantages of being MUCH smaller and about half the price.

Same feel but I don’t compare it to the better Bora Bora, because of the actual dice so it’s all good.

A keeper for sure.

Inis at Essen 2016

Part of the Cyclades/Kemet line of games.

So here you draft action cards then take turns using them to take actions.

The cards have various actions such as adding units to the board and moving them around… Also other things. The board is pretty though and connects in a weird way. The minis and buildings are nice too.

When you control a region you gain control of its card which gives an ability. You play until at the end of the round a player has a majority of the 3 winning conditions listed at the top of the page.

Inis Summary

It’s a dudes on a map game, not my kind of game.

Project: ELITE at Essen 2016

A co-op real-time dice game.

You have a mission to complete and each player takes control of a character with an ability and you get some equipment. The guns and equipment all work differently which is pretty cool.

So you have short, timed periods of rolling dice and taking action, like Escape: The Curse of the Temple except you have 2 minutes then stop, you’re not rolling all game.

The dice have symbols and need to be moved onto your equipment before activating and then must be re-rolled before those dice as used again.

If you roll one of those Red Skull things you need to move one of the bad guys… They move down a track following the arrows on the board.

You choose who to move so you can move them into position for you to shoot, but you might accidentally block what one of your team was going to do… you don’t have time to discuss a plan…

So eventually you either win or lose a scenario…

Project: Elite Summary

Lots of variation in equipment, scenarios, enemies and probably a tonne of stuff I don’t know about. Loads of expansions too!

A VERY fun game, no need to play one of the ‘Escape’ titles again.

Virus at Essen 2016

A fast real-time game.

So is another real-time game where you only have 40 seconds to take actions and there are TWELVE of them!

Mostly you’ll be exploring and moving by placing tiles so you can get around and find the cure to the Virus.

Eventually, you’ll have to get into combat and to do this you throw cubes onto a board. You take an action cube and a number of bullets and throw them onto your board which has a number of squares on it.

Each cube you throw that touches a square counts as a hit and you distribute the damage… Some enemies dodge or have more than 1 health and you need to do all this, as one action, in 40 seconds…

The baddies follow you around like Zombicide…

Eventually, you’ll find clues to where you need to go to do what you need to do to win the mission.

Virus Summary

It’s OK… I’m not sure we played it 100% correctly so I look forward to playing it again. I did take away that it was hard but the quick time limit was great. It really felt like you had to sacrifice movement for combat… Taking a shot at the baddies can take 10 seconds and that’s forever in this game!

The Daedalus Sentence at Essen 2016

Escape the spinning prison of Doom!

So let’s get this out the way… The game is pricey and it’s BIG, like ‘Doesn’t fit on an Ikea shelf’ big, Extra Large Pizza Box big…  BUT! It’s only big in 2 dimensions so if you want it you’ll find a place for it down the side of the shelf (where mine is) or behind the sofa or something. Also, the price really isn’t that bad for the stuff you get, good insert too, check it out.

Gameplay

So gameplay… You all get a character that has a special ability with its own player board and matching mini. Player ability is locked to colour to match the character so I guess I’m not playing Purple EVERY game in this one 🙂 In the second game I played, I used Audrey the Sprinter who goes 2 spaces when moving…

So all players start along in the centre of the randomly created Prison… The tiles are placed, by colour, face down around each ring on the board. This way you never know where the doors are, the board changes game to game and you can spin each ring around individually.

The Prison

The Prison has a central area divided in the player colours and each player starts in their own little cell.

Each player has a number of action points depending on the number of players in the game. Actions are free-form so players take actions in any order they like… Maybe you explore, then I move onto the newly explored tile, activate it to draw cards, you move onto the tile and take a card from me, attack a bad guy… etc

Team Work is required.

So you explore, move, pass cards and interact with rooms. Some rooms are special and have abilities which are laid out on the front of your player board… Unfortunately, the rooms aren’t labelled so you have to look at the images, on the BACK of the player board. They’re straightforward enough it’s just a pain flipping the board over and back… (If you’re clever only one person has to do it, it doesn’t have to be you ;))

Some rooms let you draw two cards for an action (Usually it costs 2 actions for 1 card) or lets you hide for an action so you can’t be caught.

Of course, some rooms spawn Guards… This means picking them up from the box and placing them in that space.

Doors

You’re looking for Doors to get out of your current ring…

That’s the door to exit and win the game but each ring has its own door. When you find one you put a number of cards out depending on the number of the door token…

Players then need to get to the door and discard a matching set of cards between them in one go by spending an action each and discarding the cards. Guard cards match all Guard cards but the numbers need to match by either Colour OR Number…

It’s easy to do, your hand of cards is face-up so you can work together pretty easily on it, it’s just trying to dodge Guards at the same time which is the pain!

Once the door is unlocked you can move through it, but so can one of the types of Guard too… the Loctae Scientists… Minotaurs ignore them and just continue to patrol in circles 🙂

When the players have taken all the actions they want to take, the ship itself takes its turn…

These cards are laid out and activate depending on the current threat level which rises as the players move through the Theseus. The further out they are, the more cards activate to move the Guards and rings of the ship.

Theseus Activation

The top row moves the ship and is called the ‘Theseus Activation‘. A standard card will move that colour ring, that many spaces, in that direction. So that ‘Red 1’ card on the top row will move the Red ring 1 space, anti-clockwise.

A White card matches everything so moves every ring…

A Minotaur or Loctae card on this Row spawns a Guard which I’ll get to in a bit.

The bottom row moves Guards and is called ‘Guard Patrol‘. In the same way, the Standard cards (and white cards) move Guards on that ring (or all rings) that many spaces in that direction and a Guard cards spawn a guard.

Spawning is… complex… It needs a random card draw to determine where the Guard will spawn so here we go…

Spawning Flow

So, if it’s a Minotaur card you flip over the top card of the deck and if it’s a Standard card you place a Minotaur in the furthest out ring in line with the cell of the colour of the card drawn…

If it’s a White card, add a Minotaur to each ring using the same method… But if a Minotaur is drawn, spawn a Loctae, if all Loctae are on the board, keep drawing until a Minotaur can be spawned.

If a Minotaur card is drawn spawn an additional Minotaur following the same rules but if you run out of Minotaurs in the supply stop spawning.

Locate all spawn in the Spawning Chamber in the middle of the board, they’re easier 🙂

It’s easy once you get the hang of it, it just requires a couple of Theseus Activations and Guard Patrols to get the hang of it

If 3 Minotaurs are in the same place, convert them into one Loctae if one is available from the box if not leave them there. But, If one becomes available later, swap a Minotaur group for one.

If a Guard ends its turn on you or moves through you you’re caught! You get sent back to your cell and you flip over your token on the Theseus board as well as your player board… You lose your power as well as add a penalty power to play, oh, and you also discard all of your cards.

People need to get back to you to let you out…

If a player gets caught for the second time, the game ends as well as the game ending if everyone is back in a cell at the same time.

You win if everyone can get to the outer door and unlock it…

The Daedalus Sentence Summary

So I played this twice while I was at Essen… Both times with slightly wrong rules but nothing game-breaking…

The first game was 2 players and we got to the outer ring before someone got caught then I got caught going back to the middle to rescue them.

In the second game we played 4 players and, honestly, we had a dream run… Every time we went through a door, we immediately found the next one 🙂

So the big hook here is the giant circular board with rings that move… It’s not a gimmick, it makes for good gameplay. The game obviously gets compared to Room 25 with moving minis around a moving board with face-down rooms…

These rooms are easier to rotate, just put your finger in a hole and push, or pull, but GENTLY! If you’re too rough or push too horizontally the ring lifts up and it breaks… Doesn’t happen often, but can happen if you’re not careful.

Also, it’s initially fully co-op without a hidden traitor which I prefer. There is a 1 vs many options I haven’t explored yet as well as many variants to change the game up. (Including one that uses very nice looking dice :))

But, the game is fun and VERY tense given how hard it is to actually kill the Guards. The board is fun and works, the minis are great and the insert is phenomenal.

I look forward to introducing more people to it and playing the rules 100% correct and exploring some of the Variants.

Note: The copy I played was a review copy generously provided by Eagle-Gryphon Games, big thanks to them for this game.

Clank! at Essen 2016

Deckbuilding, dungeon diving…

The deck-building part is straightforward except you have to play all of your cards. There are several ‘currencies’…

The first one is the normal money that you use to buy cards.

The second is ‘Attack’ that you use to defeat some enemies in the row of cards you buy from, you can’t buy these, just fight them to get their bonus. You can also use the attack to fend off taking damage when manoeuvring the Dungeon.

You walk around with a ‘Boot’ icon which is the other resource. Usually, it’s one ‘Boot’ per space but some paths require you to spend more boots to get down them. Also, there are little caves that you MUST stop in probably to prevent people from moving 9-10 spaces in one go 🙂

Clank

The last one isn’t a resource as such but it’s important as the game is named after it and that’s ‘Clank!’. For each Clank you play, and you have to play all the cards you have, you put a token of your colour in a box…

When the cards are refilled into the row at the end of a player’s turn you check them to see if they have a Dragon symbol on them…

Then you put all of the cubes in that area in a bag and draw a number of them depending on where the Dragon is on his track.

If you draw one of your colours you take damage, too much damage and you die.

So you delve into the Dungeon, collecting treasure, scoring points on cards you buy and trying to get out safely.

When a player gets out that ticks down the end game timer… The Dragon attacks pick up and get worse so the longer you stay in the more at risk you are of death but the more points you can score on your way out.

You get 20 points for getting out which is quite a bit so you can’t hang around for long.

Clank! Summary

It’s a good game, obviously compared to other Deck Builders with a board like Trains and Tyrants of the Underdark… It’s more interesting than Trains and less combative than Tyrants… I like the theme of delving into a dungeon and not making any noise (I play a Rogue in RPGs after all :)) and the card and mechanisms are pretty good.

I’ve played it again since Essen and I’m looking forward to playing it more.

Colony at Essen 2016

Roll dice to activate cards.

I was excited about this and yes, maybe we were taught the rules wrong? But right now I can say this is one of the worst games I’ve ever played.

I’m not giving it any more time.

Master of Orion at Essen 2016

Based on a PC game I’ve never heard of.

This is a quite simple game. Everyone has a player board representing a different race with its own ability.

Players take actions involving building buildings and activating those buildings. Buildings require resources but can also give you resources as income. You’re only allowed 4 Systems (stacks of cards) so if you have more than 4 cards, or you just want to, you can stack cards on top of each other. Covering a building doesn’t take away its resource income, but does cover its ability.

You can increase your popularity, draw cards, exchange resources and attack players. An attack is based on one resource and you gain points and lower your opponent’s popularity.

You can also trade cards in your hand for one of the contracts on the table.

These give you special abilities, some permanent, some you need to activate. You can only have one of these and if you want another you have to swap in and out.

Master of Orion Summary

This is a fun game with a fair amount of replayability and I look forward to playing it again. I’ll probably buy it 😉

Great Western Trail at Essen 2016

A review of Great Western Trail

There is a mix of mechanisms and you start your turn with a point-to-point moving around a board. This board shows connected routes of buildings, some belonging to players but most are neutral buildings that start on the board.

You move your meeple, following the route moving at least one space up to your maximum speed and take the action on the building you land on. (Assuming the building is your colour or a neutral one, you don’t get to use the abilities of other players’ buildings)

These abilities are vast and varied so I won’t go into detail but they include…

Trading with the Locals… You take one of these TeePee tokens and gain (or lose) the amount of money printed on the board next to the token.

BTW, those hands you see on the tokens, and on buildings, mean you have to pay the bank or a player a fee each time you move through that space.

Workers

Hire a Worker… You buy them from a track, paying the cost and placing them on your player board. There are 3 types, Guys that help you buy cattle, Guys that help you build buildings and Guys that help move your train.

Remove a risk… Take a Dessert, Avalanche or Water token from the board after paying the cost… These tokens block routes (well, slow you down on certain paths) on the board across the dangerous area on the map.

You can gain objective cards for end-game scoring… They show you the criteria required which includes all kinds of things including the above risk tokens which is why you would spend actions and money on getting them. These cards go into your deck of cattle cards and when drawn, can be played for an ability but then they MUST be scored at the end of the game, even f you fail it and lose points.

If an ability lets you move the train you can along the track but you can also pull into a station. if you do you can put a token on this station.

You can also build buildings, sell cattle cards from your hand, buy cattle from the ranch and much more…

Kansas

Things get pretty cool when you get to Kansas which all of the paths on the board lead to.

Here you have 5 steps…

Firstly you fill some Worker, Risk and/or TeePee tokens back up.

Then you sell cattle in your hand BUT all the cattle must be different so duplicate copies of the same cattle card are discarded. Each cattle card has a value and you gain that much money…

Then you add a token to a track of cities which I assume is showing which city you sold to…

The higher the value of cattle you sold, the further up the track you can sell… But it also depends on where your train is… You can sell to any city numbered up to the value of your cattle, but you must pay if the city is ahead of your train…

These counters you put on the board come from your player board.

These tokens uncover extra abilities, remove restrictions, increase your movement speed etc Also, adding workers to your board covers up spaces that give you a one-shot bonus.

When adding the workers to the board push a token off the bottom of the track the game ends.

You get points for a whole bunch of stuff.

Great Western Trail Summary at Essen 2016

This is a very good game. It has a great mix of mechanisms, plenty to do, and no real punishment for missing out on getting points from one area so you can just enjoy playing.

You can go for a bit of everything, focus on your cattle and train, maybe make building buildings your thing. I really like games that do this. I always think of Russian Railroads where I think ‘I’m going to focus on this track this game’.

A great game by a great designer.

So there you go, a quick overview of all the games I played at Essen 2016.

I had a good time at Essen 2016 and look forward to going again.

Jesta ThaRogue