The Opinionated Gamers

First Impressions from Essen

We’ve decided that we’re going to hold off on writing our group reviews until around Thanksgiving – in order to give as many of our writers a chance to play the games at the fall conventions (Great Lakes Games, Sasquatch, BGG.con, EuroQuest, Basement Con, Lobster Trap, etc) and allow for as many comments as possible on the new games.

In the meantime, I thought I would write up some quick mini-capsule reviews of some of the new games that I’ve played. Most of the games have only been played once, so clearly my opinions are still forming on the games – but I know that many people are trying to figure out which games they want to buy/try first, and to that end, any opinions will be helpful.  These thoughts will eventually be edited/incorporated into the full review that will come in the next few months, but I will try to talk about the new games a little bit at a time until we’re ready for full reviews.  I will try to give a short description of the game(s) in each piece and some quick thoughts about them. The rules are not meant to be comprehensive – merely enough to give a flavor for how the game works.

Ka-Boom!

• Designer: Roberto and Florence Fraga
• Publisher: Huch! & Friends
• Main mechanics: Dexterity building, dice catapulting, table smashing

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We’ve decided that we’re going to hold off on writing our group reviews until around Thanksgiving – in order to give as many of our writers a chance to play the games at the fall conventions (Great Lakes Games, Sasquatch, BGG.con, EuroQuest, Basement Con, Lobster Trap, etc) and allow for as many comments as possible on the new games.

In the meantime, I thought I would write up some quick mini-capsule reviews of some of the new games that I’ve played. Most of the games have only been played once, so clearly my opinions are still forming on the games – but I know that many people are trying to figure out which games they want to buy/try first, and to that end, any opinions will be helpful.  These thoughts will eventually be edited/incorporated into the full review that will come in the next few months, but I will try to talk about the new games a little bit at a time until we’re ready for full reviews.  I will try to give a short description of the game(s) in each piece and some quick thoughts about them. The rules are not meant to be comprehensive – merely enough to give a flavor for how the game works.

Galapagos

• Designer: Bjorn Heismann
• Publisher: Amigo
• Mechanics: real time dice rolling, set collection

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Every October the Essen game fair dumps hundreds of new games on us and every year there are good, mediocre, and poor games scattered throughout the new releases.  Some folks subscribe to the notion that there are particularly good or bad years, but given the sheer quantity of releases, I strongly believe that every year offers games all across the spectrum from great to abysmal.  And every year, for some inexplicable reason, I like to subject myself to trying as many of these new games as possible, as soon after the fair as I can, to try to find the gems hiding among the countless new titles.  Normally I can’t do that in earnest until BGG.CON in late November, but this year a friend visited Essen for the first time and brought back a boatload of games for us to try over the past couple weekends.  So I’m here with an early pre-BGG.CON report on the Essen games I’ve had the opportunity (and sometimes misfortune) to try so far.  Since I like to rank things, I might as well rank them from top to bottom based on initial first impressions along with a brief explanation on each.

1) Patchistory – The most impressive game I’ve tried so far hands down.  I tend to be interested in civilization games, so I was eager to try this one.  It felt fresh and innovative with its core mechanism of “patching” technologies, buildings, wonders, and leaders that you acquire into a growing quilt that you build over the course of the game.  Be warned it did take almost 5 hours for our first play with four players, but I think that would come down considerably with fewer players and more experience.  I could see it easily fitting in 2-3 hours, like Through the Ages.  Also note that the game starts very slowly as you build up from very little and feels like treading water doing very little for the first third or so.  But the epic sense of growth combined with the clever puzzle aspect of the game make this a classic civilization game with a twist.

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