If you plan to travel with a 12 years daughter there are things you have to know: the first one is that most of the Essen booth usually passing under your radar probably have one ore more interesting things for her, including the ones in the Forgotten Land of Hall 2. Last year Caterina started to play Pathfinder RPG so now dice and other RPG staff booth are for her of some interest.
Anyway, we can start the report of our second day of Messe.
The first game played was Coal Baron at Eggertspiele booth. A really good design. The 4 player game was nice and thense.I’m quire sure the playing experience will improve with a second game. Caterina also liked the game but the downtime was to her a bit high and so she can’t give the game a real thumb up. I indeed liked it a lot but, of course I’ll need more sessions to have a real idea.
Finished the game we met Viki, Elena and Ginevra and continued the visit togther
Krosmaster Arena is one of the games I played most in last Weeks and I was really happy to see Publisher Is going to keep it alive with maior and minor expansions and also working on new titles using krosmaster characters.
Next stop was at Ghenos Games booth were we was able to play the two releases: Leonardo and The Sheep race. We liked both games.
In the Sheep Race you bid on winnig sheep in a sheep race and than try to move sheep according to your bids. To move you roll 2 dice to determinate the affected sheep. Than you have to move it according to simple rules or rest getting two blue cubes. Every sheep will start the race with some cubes (white, blue and red) on it that are used to move. In the final part of the race sheep can finish cubes: in that situation the sheep fall on the gound and urn is over. A nice game with an important component of randomness but Really funny.
Leonardo was a quick family game were you have to go collecting materials to build Leonardo invention. The game plays around a simple but fun guessing mechanis.
Fun Farm was another game i checked in my list. It has great materials and very simple Rules.
You have 5 coloured animals, cards and dice. Every card display two die’s faces. The player just roll two dices and than all player concurr for being the First one to grab the animals in The middle If and only if you roll one of the two faces depicted on the card.
We than move in other areas. Caterina played three Quarto games against Ginevra and we played Fish Fish, a simple deduction/bluff game not impressed me at all.
Next stop at Hurrican booth were we discovered The Phantome de l’Opera, a streamlined rivisitation of mr jack we really liked. It is really nice how they will be able to keep the nice mechanics/feelings of Mr. Jack in a easier and quicker game. A great thumb up by Caterina and also by me.
There was than time for an Augustus session. It is a game we both know very well and I wrote a lot about so nothing to add it. It is a good family game as just winned Gioco dell’Anno award confirm.
We than stop at Asmodee booth looking for a last long game but all the tables were full so we stop playing an easy but funny game about palace building. Actually it was a nice surprise for me and also for Caterina. I let you guess the game looking the last picture!
Last game inside the hall was Trains and Stations . We were not able to finish the game before the closing time bit I (and also Viki) liked it alot. Caterina decided was the most boring game of the day!
After dinner we decided to go sleep early but in the room we played Innovation and Garden Dice.
Tomorrow our last day in Essen
See you in the Messe
Andrea and Caterina
