The Opinionated Gamers

As the countdown to the 2011 Spiel fair at Essen continues, the enthusiasts in our hobby community have created numerous lists of games they are tracking, spent many hours trying to glean nuggets of information about hundreds yet-to-be-released games from sources like BGG News Spiel 2011 Preview, published game rules, and game previews from the OG blog, all in an effort to pare down the list to a manageable size both for luggage space and time limit at the Spiel to actually try out games.

Because I am a card-carrying member of the Cult of the New, I have bought huge number of games from Essen each year. Starting last year, I am also hosting a gaming gathering about 10 days after the end of the Spiel fair, so my purchase list has expanded from games that look interesting to me to also include some games that may not be my cup of tea but I know others may want to try. Like many overseas visitor to the Spiel fair, I used to limit my Essen purchases to the games that are difficult to get outside of Essen, which eliminated the titles that would have English version/US distribution releases, were from/by US publishers, and the ones that I could get from German e-tailers such as milan-spiele.de. With the new objective of getting as many interesting new releases as is reasonable (i.e., luggage space and budget would allow) for the convention attendees to play less than 2 weeks after Essen, I end up having to purchase a lot more games at Essen. To guarantee that we have the games to play by the time the gaming gathering starts, we even have to buy Essen releases from US publishers at the Spiel, as most publishers have the games shipped directly to Germany.  When we are talking about ~100 games, it is definitely beyond the realm of possibility for the try-first-before-deciding method of Essen game buying, and not surprisingly, almost half of the items on this year’s list have been pre-ordered, and significant number of others will be purchased without getting even a demo. Continue reading →

Well, the time has almost come to leave for Europe… In fact, as you read this, I’m probably in the air already headed off for a week of fun and adventure on the Continent.  As usual, there is a flurry of last minute information on games that is causing last minute havoc on my carefully planned list of games to look at next week!

First, some sad news – a number of games have already been announced as “not being ready for SPIEL”

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[To continue the Ignacy Trzewiczek day – as Liga has just published his interview with Ignacy earlier this morning – let me talk a bit about the new game, The New Era, which will debut at SPIEL 2011!]

My local game group was given the opportunity to play an advance copy of New Era, the standalone expansion to 51st State.  I’ll be honest with you, when I first got the offer, I wasn’t sure what to think of it – I was honestly fairly neutral about 51st State.  I loved the ideas / mechanics behind the original game, but it fell a little flat in my group as we felt it was mostly group solitaire.  Other than two or three cards – which weren’t even guaranteed to come into play – there was no way to interact with the cards of the other players’ areas.  Yes, there was some indirect interaction though the card drafting at the start of each round – but that was about it…

After discussing the game a bit via email with the designer, Ignacy Trzewiczek, I was assured that this new version would alleviate a lot of my concerns with the original design.  The whole premise behind New Era was an increase in interaction between the players – and this interaction could be both cooperative as well as antagonistic.  Seeing as I loved the idea and theme behind the original, I told Ignacy that I’d give the game a try, and having played it a few times now, I’m glad that I did!

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