The Opinionated Gamers

Ahhhh, fall – what a great season. The air is cool and crisp, the leaves are turning beautiful colors, and a whole crop of new games is arriving from Essen..  It’s also the season of one of my favorite game conventions, Lobster Trap.  Lobster Trap is a small, invite-only con held just north of Boston. It started out as a large group of friends getting together to play games in one friend’s art studio for a weekend and has morphed into a 4 day, 90 person con in a hotel ballroom.

I was able to attend for three of the four days this year. Over the course of those days I played a total of 15 games (14 were unique plays) with 22 different people.  Of those 15 games, 10 were new to me and 3 were games I had only played once. Here are some of my highlights.

MARACAIBO

Bob, Mark and I pulled out Maracaibo. Mark and I had given it a play the weekend before, which helped us learn it and made it easier for us to teach to Bob, since the rules are mostly clear but a little scattered. The game has a lot going on, so that’s somewhat understandable. I am really enjoying this one. We’re playing the story arc; we repeated the first chapter to catch Bob up; since much of the set-up was randomized, it didn’t feel repetitive at all, since so many elements were a little different. The rules provide a good description of how to save out the story cards, leaving the game playable in one-off mode for others. I’ll be writing a full review of this soon, so stay tuned for that.

DIE CREW

I am a big fan of trick-taking games, and with some positive buzz on this one from some of my fellow Opinionated Gamers I was really excited to give it a try. It did not disappoint.  All players are working cooperatively to complete the mission, which is a card or cards that have to be taken by a particular player or players, potentially in a particular order. There is very limited communication, so you are relying on the card shark skills of your fellow players as well as a little bit of luck. My copy is already on its way from Amazon.de, since I don’t think I can wait for the English edition to play it again.

HADARA

I played a pre-release copy of this way back in April and I thought it was a fun, innovative game. For some reason I promptly forgot all about it, so I was glad to give it another try and see if it held up. It definitely did, and I will be picking up a copy. We didn’t play with the new expansion, so I cannot comment on that.

AZUL: SUMMER PAVILION

I am not a big fan of Azul in general; both of the previous versions are fine, but not something that I would seek out to play.  In my opinion, this is the best of the three and I enjoyed the puzzle aspect.

ERA: MEDIEVAL AGE

I was curious to try this twist on Roll Through the Ages. It keeps some of the same elements and format, but adds 3d buildings, which lends a bit of a puzzle aspect to your planning. I enjoyed it enough to play it twice.

PROMENADE

One of the best games that I played was Promenade. Players are art dealers, buying paintings from galleries to display in museums. It is a creative deck builder, and I really enjoyed. It has a limited printing, but it is my understanding that it has been picked up by a bigger publisher.

THE FRIENDS

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As always, the highlight of Lobster Trap were the people. I am so glad that I managed to get a game in with the people that I did, although there is always that feeling of disappointment about all the people I didn’t get to play with (but there’s always next year!). I say it all the time, but I am always thankful for the boardgaming hobby for giving me so many amazing friends. Whether I am sitting down to play with my closest friends or am playing with people I know more casually, I always have a good time. Boardgamers as a whole are a fabulous group of people, but the people that attend Lobster Trap are particularly special.

Spending time with friends was even more on my mind this year with the passing of my friend Adam Smiles.  Adam was one of the organizers of Lobster Trap, and most years my first game of the con would be with him. You were missed, my friend, and you were remembered at every table.

OTHER GAMES

Many other games were played. I also played Coloma, Deep Blue, Black Angel, Tajuto, Kerala, Babylonia, Teotihuacan Expansion, The Taverns of Tiefenthal and Humboldt’s Great Voyage.

Maracaibo saw a lot of play, as did Deep Blue, Hadara, Yukon Airways, Babylonia and Krass Kariert. Some older games saw some time at the table, too – I spotted tables with Terraforming Mars, Eclipse, Ticket to Ride, Everdell and Power Grid, to name a few.

I am already looking forward to next year.

Well, normally I try to write something up each day while at Essen, but for a number of reasons, this just didn’t happen.

1. Old age – I tell you what, this year, I was just bushed every night when coming home.  By the time I hit the hotel room at night, I just wanted to take off my shoes and fall asleep in the clothes I was wearing.  And, that may or may not have happened more than once on this trip. 
2. Technology issues – On top of being so tired, my laptop kept having issues staying on WiFi, and this proved to be just enough of a barrier to just go to bed.  I have lost far too many articles midway through writing on the Android WordPress App due to a mistaken gesture or keyboard touch, so I am truly reluctant to use it.  Also, I couldn’t use my regular phone, because when I slammed the German SIM card into it, it turned out NOT to be unlocked as promised.  I did have my backup phone, but there’s a reason that I retired that phone from daily use two years ago.  To make things worse, I lost a bunch of my pictures.  I thought they were being backed up to the cloud, but they weren’t, and about 80% of my pictures went poof somehow due to a local phone memory failure – which is one of the many reasons why my backup phone is the backup phone.
3. Meetings – during the day, I usually have a bit of free time when I can rest and catch up.  This year, my meetings lined up in a way that I seriously barely had time to make it between appointments, even with a 30-minute gap usually left between them.  It certainly seemed like this year was more crowded than last year – there usually aren’t Hall 3 traffic jams on Thursday, and by about 2pm Thursday afternoon, you seriously needed 5 minutes to get through the 100m from Hasbro to Iello.
4. Evening events – lots of planned dinners and meetups kept me out each night into the wee hours.  Well, I mean like 9pm.  That’s a wee hour somewhere, right?  Anyways, after a 6am wakeup call each day and walking about 10 miles each day, I’m ready for bed the instant we get back to the hotel
5. Playing games?!  And, unlike years past, the few nights where we don’t have a dinner, I managed to get in a few games!  I often go to Essen and play no games at all – this year, I think I got in nearly a dozen games over the course of the week.  The main reason for this is that I’m now in a pattern of shipping a box of games home to myself; and now that I do this, I don’t have to worry quite so much about.  Any free time in the evenings can now be spent trying to sneak in a game or two!

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New Frontiers has players taking turns to select an action card, which then dictates the action that is performed by all players. Through the course of the game, players settle planets, build developments, and exchange goods for points or profit. Develop the best economy (be it building, exchanging, settling, or a combination of them) to be crowned the winner of the game.

New Frontiers
Designer: Thomas Lehmann
Publisher: Rio Grande Games
Players: 2-5
Ages: 14+
Time: 45-75 min
(review copy provided by publisher)

For many years, the top rated boardgame in the world was Puerto Rico, where players develop an economy through role selection (one person chooses, all players participate) and attempt to score points through building buildings and shipping goods. Five years later, much of the spirit of the game was copied with the now very popular card game, Race for the Galaxy. It has the same role selection, building things, and shipping goods. However, as a card game, there are far, far more buildings and other effects involved allowing for players to discover and exploit “combinations” of cards that produce synergistic effects. A second take on the game was in the excellent Roll for the Galaxy, which is a similar game but emphasizes the use of dice for selecting roles and developing ones’ economy. New Frontiers comes full circle to its roots, becoming a boardgame once again but retaining the space theme as well as its tendency towards allowing interesting combinations of special powers.

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