We met the Spiele des Jahres itself! It was so thrilling! Anything else is nothing compared to that! We just played good game, met friends, bought something, attended the International Gamers Awards ceremony but everything fade in front of a picture of the Spiele des Jahres itself.

(Caterina suggest me to write that I’m the one on the left since she says there is not too much difference from me and the SDJ).

Anyway I’ll keep writing about Caterina and me day two in the Messe … have a nice read …

The day started with a real great surprise: Dojo Kun from Yemaia. It is a really well designed game, with a superb graphic and art, with a worker placement phase and a fighting phase. In the first three round you have to train your fighters and improve your Dojo: you can extend your dojo, hire new fighters, get new tolls for training, train fighters to get skilled in one ore more of the four fighting areas or send them to missions in the villages or teach them new special attacks. It is a real worker placement phase where you have to keep an eye on how enemies fighters are training since in the fourth round there will be a tournament where you will have to engage opponents. The fighting are resolved using the dice with a real well designed system where hits, blocks, holds and jumps combine interacting. Than three worker-placement rounds again and the final tournament. We really liked how it combine euro-style worker placement and america-style combat system … and it has dice! We played in four the whole game, including rules explanation, in less than two hours and, in the evening me and Caterina played in something close to 40 minutes. Probably one of the games we liked most until now.

Then was the time of the International Gamers Awards ceremony where I met several friends from all the world around, especially the Mik Svellov, the great dane, that introduced me to eurogames back in 1999! We awarded designers and publishers and designers of Marco Polo and Wir Sind Das Volk! And I was happy to present them with some balsamic vinegar from Cattani’s canteen in Modena. It was just 8 years old but I’m sure is far more better than balsamic you can find outside Modena!

After lunch we stopped to play Mr. Jack, one of our favored. For the first time Caterina beat me in this game despite the fact I tried the best to win! A game we thik everyone has to have in his library!

Walking around we stopped ad Artipia Games to play Dice City. It is the kind of game we can really like since there is a lot of planning, dice and it is easy to learn. It is a bit too much on the multi-player solitaire but we really enjoy our game and decided to buy. You roll 6 dice and place them on your board according to the number (column) and color (row). Than you can activate the effects under the die to get resources or for special abilities. Finally you can use resources to improve your board with new cards or get points killing bandits or trading. There is a deck of cards going from towers and markets up to improved sawmills or quarries. We played it with two gamers from french. It was on of the things I really like of this fair: people are used to sit-down and play together. Yesterday a couple from Hungary, today from French. We played Dice City again in the evening at the hotel: the same good feelings and we are bot interested to play it again to try different strategies and that means the game is good.

Then we moved to another Artipia‘s game, from the same designer: The Pursuit of Happiness. It is a great worker-placement game where you have to go through all your life from teens to the death, pursuing projects, getting jobs, having relationships and buying items. I won the game thanks to my work as an artist, a good relation with Martha and a great boardgames collection! The game is really fun with a lot of interesting mechanic. Despite the theme it is a tense and deep worker-placement game. In the past CV and FFFF tried to make this theme live in a game but, for me, this one is the best of the three. I got both the feeling of the theme and the challenge typical of a good euro. I got it and I’ll play again soon.

The day in the Messe ended with a 3-player game at CGE booth. It was fun to meet and talk with Vlaada Chvatil: as usual I tried to invite him at PLAY: The Games Featival (in Modena, 2-3 Aprile) … who knows if this year I succeded. Me, Caterina and Andreas (from Gemrnay) played The Prodigals Club. It was not too much different from Last Will: you have to try to spend all your money and ruin your reputation with a mechanic of worker-placement and cards really alike. It is a good game, well designed and produced, but, for us, not spectacular. This time I won. People are always happy to play with a fat father and his kind daughter but, leaving our table (since we are used to win) they are a bit more worried!

The time was over and we have to go to the hotel. After dinner, as already told. We played again Dojo Kun and Dice City, two games I’m sure will hit my table often in the future!

Of the 20 games inthe top of the Geekbuzz we played just one. What does it means ? Of course we are sure the best title will arrive in Italy with Italian edition soon (so there is no reason to take time playing here) but probably me and Catertina are walking on different paths … actually I’m still not able to find the way back to the press office without her …

See you tomorrow in the Messe for the last day … Caterina says she would like to spend some time in the cosplay/live-games hall and I started to cry!!!