Back to Modena and back to normality. Yesterday evening I finally got a real Italian dinner and this morning a normal breakfast and I must admit I feel really better.
Bringing Caterina at school we talked about our top 5 that will be the main part of this article. This year we don’t have a real outstanding winner and our lists are quite different.
We also talked about games played and missed: Essen is now so huge that you can have many different great Essen’s experience with almost nothing in common. Hundreds releases and if you are lucky (and enough motivated) you can play something close to 30 different games. Of course detailed pre-Essen readings, GeekBuzz and FairPlay, can help you to have an idea of what’s going on but it will ever much more what you are missing.
Before going on you can read our report of the Fair … here the links
Father in the Messe: Day 0 – Approaching the Messe
Father in the Messe: Day 1 – The War Begin
Father in the Messe: Day 2 – Deep in the Woodicon’s Valley
Father in the Messe: Day 3 – A Fierce Resistance
Father in the Messe: Day 4 – The Long Journey
I have reedited the articles trying to correct the hundreds misspelling and mistakes! I discovered my English is far below the needed and that I have an insane dependence from spellcheckers. I hope you will like the report and our top 5!
I’ll put into brackets games we put in our list but we didn’t play in the Messe (so you can’t find nothing about in our reports I’m sure you have read in detail before!).
Caterina Essen 2014 top 5 is:
1. (Splendor)
It is a game she really love. We played endless of time (as 2-players game)
2. Imperialism: road to domination
3. Dark Tales
Probably the game, as soon as we will have an Italian copy, we will play as post-lunch game as an alternative to Innovation and Splendor
4. Sun Tzu
A really nice two player experience
5. Fields of Arle
6. Versailles
Liga Essen 2014 top 5
1. (Hyperborea)
A game I have played so many times in the play-testing and I found excellent in his final version. A game that can perfectly mix what is good in german-games and what’s good in american
2. (Imperial Settlers)
A great Ignacy’s design, probably competing with Robinson Crusoe and the greatly underestimated Pret-a-Porter (I’m sure Pret-a-Porter will got an huge success if released with a different theme)
3. Dark Tales
I’m really impressed by this little two-players games. A nice game-play and superb illustration and, I think, a great longevity (we played 3 times and we wish to play it again and again)
4. Versailles
I think it is a real good design with an innovative mechanic. It works fine, at least after 2 times.
5. Imperialism: road to domination
It seems to be a nice game, as long as you know that you can’t ignore fleets or, at least, be sure that there is more than one players rushing for colonies.
6. Fields of Arle
Rosemberg raisen. I think you will need no less than 2-3 games just to have an idea of what you can really do.
7. (Five Tribes)
there is much more in this game you can explore in just few session
8. (GodZ)
An excellent gamer’s game hidden in a small box
9. McJohny’s
I’m not a fan of party-games but this one really works and all the 5 real-time mini-games are fun to play
So, this year there is not for us a real top of the top but Dark Tales and Imperialism: road to domination got good response by both of us.
Of course we have many games still to play and we skipped many titles we are sure to be able to get in Lucca at the end of the month.
Thanks you for following our report.
Good play
Caterina and Liga
