Essen 2013 – Games Played
I played about 25 games at Essen 2013, 23 games I consider to be good or better. (Yes, 2 were not good at all) These are my favourite 10 games I played at Essen Spiel 2013 is descending order.
10 Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends
A 2-4 player solo or team game where you make patterns on a board to summon cards from your hand to play abilities and score points. It’s a good game but I’m not sure when I would want to play it so I didn’t pick it up.
9 Blood Bound
A Vampire themed bluffing and deduction game. This is pretty quick to play so will see play every so often. It was only available in German at Essen so I picked this up when I got back home.
8 Bluff Im Zoo
A fun and cute bluffing game similar to a card game version of Liars Dice. Glad to have a copy of this in my gaming group.
7 Quantum
An area control dice game where your Dice are Space Ships with abilities and statistics based on their pips. Might pick this up one day if I can get it cheaply as it’s current price is a bit expensive.
6 One Night Ultimate Werewolf
A great way to play Werewolf using thick cardboard tokens as roles and just one round of bluffing, lying, deduction and finger pointing. Can’t wait for Bezier Games to print their version with the Ted Alspach influence in 2014.
5 Ebbes
A trick taking game where the ability cards change round to round giving you an extra level to think about. Again, glad to have a copy of this in my group.
4 Coal Baron
A fun Euro of mining and delivering coal. Lot’s of mechanics with set collection, worker placement and tile placement to mention a few. Lot’s in there but it all works together well. I did want to pick this up but I thought the theme would not appeal to my gaming group but the game itself is excellent.
3 Glass Road
A typical Uwe Rosenberg game with a very nice mechanic for resource management. One I will definitely play over and over. I would buy this but again, the theme isn’t a very good fit.
2 Trains and Stations
Dice Rolling and Route Building. The dice are used well in this small game as they are used to build trains, make money and build buildings. Played it and bought it straight away.
1 Om Nom Nom
A very fun game of food chains. Play cards to eat as much as you can without being eaten yourself. A very fun game of bluffing and laughs, especially when everyone psychs each other out! Played it, bought it, love it.
Essen 2013 Games Played Review
Here are a few ‘mini Reviews’ of the games I played at Essen 2013
Space Sheep at Essen 2013
This is a race against time to match Sheep with Shepard while protecting them against the Wolf.
Essentially is a co-op puzzle game against time.
You have a hand of cards and use those to move sheep and Shepard around the table. The aim is to pair each colour sheep with its respective colour Shepard on its home bar colour.
You do this by playing matching colour cards from your hand.
Playing a card on a matching Shepard moves him along the bases one space, switching him with the Shepard on that space.
You can also play a matching colour card on a base to move either sheep or Shepard. These movements are controlled by random tokens that are placed on the bases.
These say simple things like ‘move two passed the yellow Shepard’ or more complex things like ‘Move x passed the green Shepard where x is the number of times the same colour Shepard and sheep are together’.
The big bad is the wolf. If the timer ticks down he takes 4 cards from your deck. If you run out of cards he wins.
You can attack the wolf by playing a card matching the colour of the base he is on.
This Knocks him down and lets you turn the timer over before it runs out. The wolf then moved D8 bases clockwise and stands up again.
It’s a fun game, very hectic and complex but a lot of fun.
Trains and Stations at Essen 2013
This is a great game if dice rolling and placement with a bit of building and resource gathering.
It’s a light enough to be fun while having many choices to make along the way.
I bought it there and then so a full review will be coming soon-ish. (Update: I went off it quickly and sold it)
It was one of my Top games of 2013.
Space Cadets: Dice Duel at Essen 2013
A game if hectic rice rolling and team space combat.
Team vs Team. One player is the engineer supplying his team with power. This power is in the form if D6’s…
1s and 2s went to weapons and sensors. This is to load torpedoes (roll dice to form a torpedo puzzle) and power the targeting system and jammers. (Roll dice to get symbols)
4s and 5s went to Helm and shields. This involves rolling dice for movement symbols and shield symbols.
Helm moves the ship around the board.
When targeting and weapons are loaded and the ship is facing the right direction you can shout ‘Fire !’
At this point, the game stops and damage is worked out. each ship has 4 lives.
It’s fun and hectic with very little downtime. (hence the terrible picture) it really needs 6 players minimum which is the only downside.
Tash Kalar: Arena of Legends at Essen 2013
A game of placing tokens to create patterns to cast spells.
You have two actions a turn which are place a Common token or play a card.
To play a card you must match the pattern of tokens on the board.
Cards do several things such as summoning Common, Heroic or even Legendary tokens into the board. They also remove opponents tokens.
If you fall too far behind you can use a flair card to help catch up.
The goal of the game is to complete tasks to gain points such as connect from one corner of the board to the other of completely surround an opponents piece.
These takes are worth various points, 6 points wins it.
Tactical and frustrating but fun. We played a team game but I would like to give a 4 player free for all a go.
Thanks to Terry from Thirsty Meeples for showing me this game.
Dobble at Essen 2013
Very quick game for kids.
You each have a card with various symbols. There is a deck of cards with the same symbols face up.
If a symbol on the top card matches a symbol on your card you shout it out and win the card.
You then take it and immediately play the next card in the same way, most cards wins
Tetris Link at Essen 2013
A Tetris game for the table top.
You roll a dice and it tells you which piece you can play. You slot it in the top and it falls down like Connect 4.
The aim is to continually connect your pieces to gain points. When you have 3 touching you gain 3 points. Each time you add a new piece to that group you gain 1 point.
If you have 2 groups and you manage to connect them you gain points equal to the number of pieces.
Being Tetris you get punished for leaving gaps. For each square gap you leave, you lose 1 point.
Not a bad game. Played it with 2 people, 4 player might be more fun or too hectic… It’s still fun though.
Berserk: War of the Realms at Essen 2013
A Summoner Wars style game.
You have a deck and so much Gold and Silver to buy cards for the battlefield. Gold cards are a lot more powerful and we could only afford 1 each with the amount if Gold we had.
You then place these cards and fight. You move them around squares and attack.
When attacking, first the defender rolls a defence dice to see if they block or counter-attack.
Otherwise, the defender takes damage on 1 of 3 levels depending on the attack die result.
When a creature attacks it is tapped and is unable to defend.
There are a lot of abilities etc that keep the game tactical and interesting.
It’s nice to look at and pretty fun.
Pylos at Essen 2013
Abstract puzzle.
You take turns playing 1 ball onto the board.
When 4 balls make a square you can move a ball from the lowest level up on to the square to start the Pyramid.
If you make a square if 4 balls if your colour you get to take 2 balls back off the board.
Whoever places the ball on the top of the pyramid wins. If you run out of balls in your supply you lose.
Very simple, very fun.
Gitterratsel at Essen 2013
A word search game?
Words are on the outside if the wheel (in German). You then find them in the puzzle.
When you find it you pick up and squeeze the hooter. You then cover the letters in your colour.
If you find a word that overlaps an opponents word, they lose all the letters in that word.
Most covered letters at the end wins.
Bluff Im Zoo at Essen 2013
Similar to Shadows over Camelot the card game or Perudo.
You play a card face down and claim there are 1 of a certain animal played so far.
The next player plays a card and must declare a higher number but can change the animal.
This continues until one person calls the previous call wrong.
The cards played are checked. If there are equal to or more than the number of the called animals they are correct and the person that calls them a liar takes the card. Otherwise, the incorrect player takes them.
Fewest cards at the end wins.
Very fun, very cute.
Suburban Dispute at Essen 2013
Self-billed as a ‘stupid game of blind luck’…. Correct.
You choose either a Gangster family or an Upper-class family.
Your goal is to screw over your neighbours by playing nasty tricks on them.
You draw a mission card, roll dice and pass or fail. These missions are funny such as filling your neighbours’ mailbox with water and freezing it.
Level 1 you fail on a 1, level 2 on a 1 or a 5 and Level 3 on a 1,3 or 5.
Basic.
You get a bonus card for passing and you generally get money or move up the board.
It is very random and simple.
Buccaneer Bones at Essen 2013
Simple yet tactical dice rolling game.
You roll 6 dice and can keep some and retool once. Doubles move you one space up the track of that number. Triples move you all the way up the track.
If you’re at the end if a track and you roll a triple, you gain a treasure. 3 treasures wins the game.
As you move towards the end of the rows you start to get bonuses such as more dice, extra refills and +/- 1 to dice.
This was a quick fun game with strategic choices.
7 Days of Westerplatte at Essen 2013
A few Polish officers hold out against a German onslaught in World War 2.
This is a real-life event and at the time the Germans won, they also did in our game.
The enemy spawns after each player turn by turning over a card and following the actions. It involves soaking a card, maybe reducing moral and saying which columns move.
The enemy will advance and attack taking down your outer walls. When your outer walls collapse your inner walks protecting your huts go next.
When the walls around 2 huts collapse, you lose.
Survive 8 days (56 German cards) and you win.
Your moral decreases with enemy cards and eventually you get a penalty. Firstly you lose a resource from your supply, then get a movement penalty, then ammo is taken away… Bad!
But you can stop them.
You can move 2 and take 1 action in any order in your turn.
Or, you can fire by spending ammo and dealing one damage on the row you are on.
You can visit a shed that gives you a land mine you can place in an enemy zone to kill it when moves onto it. There are only 4 landmines available.
You can visit an ammo hut to get a special shot that deals 2 damage to an enemy.
You can visit a hut to repair broken walls. Only 8 bricks available.
You can increase the moral by 1.
You can pick up 4 of your basic ammo.
It’s good, it’s HARD. It has that Castle Panic feel but with a more real-world take us told.
Good game.
Coal Baron at Essen 2013
A worker placement pickup and deliver game using various transport methods.
You have a cool little mine shaft that slides up and down. You place workers on randomly selected mine tiles and buy them to add them to the mine.
Workers can be placed on a space to get some money.
You can also get a choice of random mine tiles and goal cards.
You select a number of mining actions to slide the lift up and down the mine shaft loading the coal into the lift and unloading it onto goal cards.
The main aim is to complete goals to score points, but also to have completed goal cards to score with at 3 intervals in the game.
When you have loaded enough of the correct colour resource into a card, you can use an action to deliver them. You deliver all of the resources of a particular transport type so getting groups of these will help, but you need to diversify for scoring.
I really enjoyed this game. The fact you have 18 workers and you have to pay more than the previous number if workers on an action to take it is a cool mechanic. Keyflower-esque.
It also helps that I won by a mile.
Glass Road at Essen 2013
An Uwe Rosenburg game.
You get point by building buildings onto your tableau using resources you have collected.
You collect resources by choosing 1 of 5 cards you select from a deck if 15. Then, reveal the card and take the two actions printed on it. If a player also has this card in their hand, you both take 1 action each.
I loved this part.
Resources are hard to explain. You have 2 dials on tracks with a token to represent each resource.
When you spend or gain a resource you move the token around the dial.
The dial always moves clockwise across empty spaces so at least 1 resource in each disk will be at 0.
The flip side to this is on each dial on the other side if the main track is another track that counts a rare resource in reverse. So as the wheel reduces the number of common resources as it moves, you gain Glass and Brick.
I really enjoyed this.
Om Nom Nom at Essen 2013
Eat and don’t be eaten.. simple!
There are 3 food chains…
Hedgehog –> Frog –> Fly
Cat –> Mouse –> Cheese
Wolf –>Rabbit –>Carrot
Dice are rolled to randomise a few of the items from the lower 2 levels of the food chain.
Each player has one card of each of the top two layers of the food chain.
Each player plays a card face down and reveals simultaneously and places it in its spot on the board.
You work out scoring form the top of each chain downwards. If you play a Wolf you eat all the Rabbits. For a Rabbit, if no one played a Wolf, you eat all the Carrots etc etc
If multiple players play the same card you share the eating evenly with the remainder left on the board.
You get one point for each card and black face (middle of the food chain) dice you eat and two points for each red face (bottom of the food chain) you eat. Most points after 3 rounds wins.
It’s a game of bluffing and second-guessing your opponents. We had an occasion where the dice rolled 5 flies… No one played a Frog but 4 of us played Hedgehogs hoping to eat all the greedy Frogs that went for the Flies…
There are LOADS of laughs and gasps. I bought this immediately after playing it.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf at Essen 2013
Review of One Night Ultimate Werewolf
Out in January from Bezier Games games, a Werewolf game that lasts just one night and doesn’t require a moderator.
We had 4 players, 2 Werewolf Cards, a Robber, a Seer, a Troublemaker and 2 Villagers.
We were each dealt a card and 3 were placed in the middle.
Then we closed our eyes and the werewolves opened their eyes to see each other. Of course, there could only be 1 Werewolf, maybe even 0.
Then the Robber switches his card with another card and looks at both. Also, it’s worth tapping a few cards quietly so they move slightly to not give away anything.
Then the Seer looks at a card.
The Troublemaker switches 2 cards without looking.
Then there is one round if negotiation. If a Werewolf is killed, the Villagers win, otherwise the Werewolf’s win.
I enjoyed this a lot. It’s very quick and lots of fun and high up on my preorder list.
Primate Fear at Essen 2013
You’re building a tower to climb higher than your competitors to escape FrankenMonkey.
You play junk cards and move the number if hight points up a chart.
You can reinforce your junk to help you against attacks.
Finally, You can attack your opponent’s towers to knock them down.
When you play cards with a horror symbol you add pieces to FrankenMonkey. As soon as FrankenMonkey is complete you add him to the bottom of the track and he moves up one level for each horror symbol played.
When he reaches the same level as a player they are eliminated, the last player wins.
I won but I had a large tower as the first card that protected me from attacks so I felt it was more luck if the draw than skill.
Blood Bound at Essen 2013
A bluffing game of Vampires.
You each take the role of a random Vampire from 1 of 2 clans ranked 1-9.
The cheat sheet each player has covered the entire card except the bottom right corner to show the cards clan.
Each player shows this information to the player on their left.
Then players give a dagger to any other player to deal them one damage. Damage is shown by either a red, blue it question mark marker.
So as the damage is dealt you start to get information about who is working for which clan.
Which token you reveal will depend on your rank. Some are 2 red tokens, some. 2 blue, some 2 question marks. Others are 1 colour and 1 question mark.
Once you have revealed your 2 tokens your next damage forces you to take the rank token of your card. This grants you a one-off special ability depending on your rank.
The goal is to kill and only kill, the lowest rank member in the opposing clan.
I loved this game and wanted to buy it but sadly it was only available in German. I will buy it soon.
Sheep Race at Essen 2013
Cute sheep racing game.
Each player bids on one different sheep then blind bids on any other 2 sheep.
The race is played by rolling 2 dice and moving that sheep. There are 6 sheep so rolling 7 or 8 moved Sheep 5 and 6. Although they move more they are worth fewer points when betting. Rolling a 9 moves the ‘Lazy Sheep’, the one at the back.
Movement is done using cubes on sheep cards. Each sheep has different cubes and different moving spaces for these cubes. If a sheep is out if cubes you can rest to get cubes back.
Everyone moves all the sheep and in the last 5 squares before the finish line if a sheep runs out if cubes it is ‘Out of Breath’ and Falls over. The first 3 to finish end the race and players get points for their bids.
The wing sheep go into the final, you play 2 semi-finals and a final, most points wins.
It’s a nice game but takes a bit too long for how light it is.
Steam Park at Essen 2013
A theme park building game.
The goal is to build a theme park, make the most money and keep it clean!
I bought this so a full review will be coming.
Kragmortha at Essen 2013
A party game for 8 players, we played an oversize version.
You use cards to move your goblin around Rigor Mortis’ lab to steal potions. But you can also use cards to move Rigor Mortis towards the other Goblins so he punishes them!
This is where the party game element comes in. the punishments are things such as sitting with your leg outstretched with a card on your knee… Like I got first turn…
One guy had 5 punishments on him at the same time and it got crazy.
It was a fun party game, one that would be good with the right group of people.
Quantum at Essen 2013
Quantum is a game of spaceship warfare represented with dice.
The goal is to place your 5 tokens on the board on 5 different tiles out of the 9 that makes up the board.
To place a tile you need to have dice in the ‘orbital positions’ (orthogonally) to the centre of the tile that adds up to number ion the centre of that tile.
The value on the dice shows the distance the dice can move and is also the combat value. So a 6 can move 6 spaces but has a combat value of 6. Combat is a D6 vs D6 roll, plus each ship value, lower number wins.
You get 3 actions on your turn, one action is to reroll a ship in order to either make a tough ship into a faster one or a faster ship into a tougher one.
Each ship has a special ability that can be used once each turn for free. Such as the 4 can change into a 3 or 5, the 5 can move diagonally and the 6 can be rerolled for free once each turn.
This is a very good game, even though I don’t usually like combat style games. The dice look really pretty on that black background. One I’m considering for the future.
ebbes at Essen 2013
A trick-taking game where the bonus cards change round to round.
One player plays a card, each other player in turn order plays a card of that colour and the highest card takes the trick and starts a new hand.
If you can’t play a card of the correct colour you play another card and will lose the hand.
Each of the 7 rounds has a random number that will be the number for that round (I can’t remember what this is called) UPDATE: Designation Card
The first time that number is played, the colour of the card with that number turns that colour into a Trump card.
The second card makes all cards of that colour worth one point each at the end of the round.
The third is “ebbes” which means if you have the most or least of this colour you get 0 points, everyone else gets 3.
The fourth makes each card of that colour worth -1 point at the end of the round.
The last makes each card of that colour worthless.
You play 7 rounds, most points wins.
I enjoyed this a lot, it was frustrating and thinky but led to a lot of laughs.
Tanto Cuore at Essen 2013
A deck building game with a VERY dodgy theme…
This is a standard deck building game but the theme makes it… different.
You use ‘Love’ to get maids to work in your house. To score these maids you need to use actions to send them to your ‘Chamber’…
Yeah, exactly…
You can play Illness cards on your opponent’s maids in their bedroom and they can cure them by discarding a “3 Love” card…
I was having a hard time keeping a straight face while we were being taught how to play it. I didn’t buy it but I did pick it up on iOS.
Desire at Essen 2013
A set collection game with… erm… artwork…
You play a card that is 1 higher or lower than one of the 3 cards in the middle of the table and add them to your tableau.
Then you start to play cards higher (if is ascending order) or lower (if in descending order) on other players stacks to steal them.
You have 4 slots in front of you for these stacks.
The cards are suited in colours and you get points depending on how many you have of each set, most points wins.
This seems like they put interesting artwork on an average game but still, it was ok.
Jesta ThaRogue
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