Every year is really amazing to be back in Spiele. Entering the main hall me and the kids were stunned by the colors and the sounds. Thousands of games just waiting to be played with a crew of devoted demonstrators trying to get your attention and your happiness: it is something really close to heaven if you can forget, just for a minute, the German food (yes, we are Italians and concerning food we are a bit spoiled).

That’s is an enough good reason to wake up early in the morning!

We rush to eggertspiele but all the tables were already occupied (and since we are entering just half an hour before the openings it is quite impressive) so we go to Lookout/Mayfair booth to play the expansion of Isle of Skye. The game loose a bit in elegance but, for gamers like us, offers a lot of thinking an management: something we are used to love. For me thumb up. Francesco rate it 8.5 and Caterina 8.

After that we were able to find a free table at Z-man to play Gaia Project. I like Terra Mystica and I really like how the designers were able to twist and fit it in a sci-fi theme. Of course, like Terra Mystica, is a game you need to play many times to explore all the deepness but the first impression was great. Francesco rate it 9.5 and Caterina 9. We would like to buy it but the english version was arlready sold-out. Luckily we know that Cranio Creations is going to produce an Italian edition!

Just the time to eat something and than we go to Cwali to play the news edition of Habitat: a good game, tricky enough to convince all of us. You move your pawn around a grid of face-up tale representing animals and flower. Every turn you take a tile and place it in your “zoo”, trying to surround t with the right tiles to make the animal happy. If you are able to place the right tiles around you will score the animal’s value in the end of the game. Random scoring conditions (3 different each game) and special tiles will offer the right amount of freshness to make every game different. Francesco rate it 8 and Caterina 9. We got a copy.

Wandering in the halls we found a place to try Rhodes, a not bad resource management game. Two gamers joined us for a 5-player game and since non of us ever played it we didn’t used the Colossus expansion. The game was not bad but nothing really new. Francesco rated it 7 and Caterina 6.

We than stopped to play Skull Port, a really fresh dice game: a new restyled and themed version of yatzee with special cards and many interesting ideas. You fight to be the crew of the six ships (double pair, three of kind, full-house, straight, four of kind and five of kind) during a 11 rounds games. If you like dice game this is really enjoyable. We all three liked the game and Francesco and Caterina rated it 8!

We than moved to Iello booth to play Bunny Kingdoms. I really like Richard Garfield design and this area control draft driven game really works great. In a 10×10 you try to build up fief placing rabbits. There are 4 rounds; in each round you get 12 cards. In your turn you keep 2 cards and pass the other. The cards can be terrains cards (place a rabbit in B6 or J9 and so on), building cards (place a city or a special resources) or treasure cards (scored in the end of the game). After the draft you build and than there is a scoring phase. Each fief will score the number of different resources in it multiplied by the number of towers in the cities. It works really well. We all rate it high, Francesco and Caterina 9. We played it also in hotel with 2-3 and 4 players. Great!

The first day was amazing and we are ready for the friday!