Not sure what happened to the first draft. The app on my phone must have eaten it. Anyways, I can’t find it anywhere.
Setup day was it’s usual hectic hurry up and wait. Everybody rushing around to get stuff done.
Managed to have my favorite blood pudding dish for dinner tonight. Yum. Continue reading
Today is “the day”, when left behind ordinary customs and traditions me and Caterina convert in real “gaming machine” ready to play everything will be served on our tables. Of course we have likings and prejudices, expectations and wishes but we are open-minded and we can range from kid games to heave gamers games, passing through party-games and dexterity.
One of my biggest wishes is to be able to play some good and deep Sci-fi board-games (Caterina loves fantasy but she hates sci-fi) … I really prefer to be unaware of which is the biggest wish of an almost 14 years old girl …
I’m also bringing with me information abut the next edition of PLAY: The Games Festival (here a nice video of last edition) for designers and publishers interested in visiting us, but I’m sure this “public relation” duties will not steal me too much time. It is Essen time: it is time to game!
Looking our last year “top 5” I think we are “good testers” (or, at least, lucky ones) because our top of top was Russian Railroads that won both DSP and IGA. Caterina said “A perfect game. I liked everything. If there will be an Essen award for best gamers game it will have to go to this one” and me “I’m always fascinated by worker placement games and also by games you have to build up your engine in time to get points before the end. This game seems to have both this feature.“.
We played a few games last night – here’s what I could write about them before breakfast. Expect longer coverage at some point in the future (you know, November-ish).
Spellcaster
Super fast tactical game, takes 10-15 minutes to play. Each player starts with 10 power (yellow gems) and 2 sapphire gems. You can win in two ways: 1) acquire 15 gems OR 2) reduce your opponent to 0 power. Game is totally card based. There are 4 different suits of cards – and 4 mats on table to match suits. On your turn, you draw a card, and then can take 2 actions: play a card from your hand (which you orient towards yourself), activate any card that is oriented towards you, draw an extra card. All of the cards are pretty straightforward, and each of the 4 suits has a particular theme – red is usually a drain attack on your opponent, blue usually gets you blue gems, etc.
