Spiel ’06 – page 2

Report on the 2006 games fair by Pevans (Version 1)

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Face 2 Face Games

Genesis is a new Reiner Knizia-designed game published by Face 2 Face Games. It is set in the distant past when the Earth’s land was concentrated in a single continent, Pangæa (I always thought it was called Gondwanaland, but apparently that’s the name of the southern supercontinent formed when Pangæa broke in two). The players are different species struggling to establish their place in the changing ecology as Pangæa breaks up. This they do by playing tiles that represent their creature in different environments. However, the different environments must be contiguous. At the end, players score for having the largest herd in a particular environment. It sounds like another simple but clever design from Reiner Knizia, with some overtones of Euphrat & Tigris. I look forward to trying it. A provisional 8/10 on my highly subjective scale.

Photo of box and board of Section X showing counters and tiles in play

The Game Master

Dutch publisher The Game Master publishes an interesting selection of games, which is enhanced by this year’s game, Section X. Players are prisoners on an island jail who try to escape by building tunnels to the mainland. Or just using someone else’s tunnel – after all, why go to all that hard work when you can let someone else do it? Designed by Chislaine van den Bulk, Section X appears to be interesting mixture of labyrinth-building and out-psyching your opponents. A provisional 8/10 on my highly subjective scale.

Ghenos Games

Another innovative game is Bolide from Italian publisher Ghenos Games and designer Alfredo Genovese. It’s a car racing game that uses no dice – for movement anyway. As well as a car, each player has a pawn of the same colour. After moving their car, the pawn makes the same move (e.g. 3 squares forward and 2 to the left) from the car’s final position. The car’s next move must be to a position (cars and pawns go on the corners, not in the squares) within two squares of the pawn (limiting acceleration and deceleration to two squares a turn). The pawn then makes the same move as the car just did, starting from the car’s final position. The effect is to conserve momentum, making cornering tricky: cars have to slow down or they’ll just shoot off the track (and possibly out of the game). In play, it gets even trickier as other cars will get in the way.

Players each have a set number of ‘Sharp braking’ moves that allow them to break the usual movement rules for one turn. These are very useful for getting round the sharper corners. It’s a bit worrying when they run out, but a pitstop will restore them. There are rules for slipstreaming, colliding with other cars and for taking risks by exceeding what the car can normally do (this is where the die comes in, it’s used to find the result of the manoeuvre on the various tables). Advanced rules provide for the effects of weather, different tyres and different fuel loads. The game comes with two, fictional, tracks – one on either side of the board – and there’s an expansion set of another two tracks. Despite having played it once, I haven’t got the hang of it yet. 9/10 on my vroom, vroom scale.

GiftTrap

GiftTrap is an interesting ‘party’ game. From the selection of gifts available (cards showing presents that range from the prosaic – a tie, say – to the exotic – a safari by hot air balloon) players decide which of the other players they would give them to. Then everybody indicates which gifts they’d love to get and which they’d hate. Reveal the choices and start the fighting! A game that should be played in a spirit of fun, obviously. And fun is what it sounds like. Points are scored for getting the giving and getting right and the winner is the person to get across the board in both categories. Production is excellent with the board folding down to fit into the cube-shaped box. Each player’s pieces – one is a model of a wrapped box, the other an opened one – comes in a little ‘goody bag’. All in all, it’s a nice package. But not really my kind of thing: 5/10 on my very subjective scale.

Box art for Mr Jack

Hurrican

Mr. Jack is a good-looking two-player deduction game from new Swiss publisher, Hurrican. Designed by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc, it was published last year in a limited edition as Un Ombre sur Whitechapel (A Shadow over Whitechapel). The game has one player as Jack the Ripper, the other as the police. As you’d expect, the police have to catch “Mr Jack”, while he tries to escape. Game play centres around the eight suspects on the board, one of whom will have been secretly and randomly identified as Jack at the start of the game. Both players can move the suspects, leaving them revealed in the light of the streetlamps or hidden in the dark. The police player gets to find out which group Jack is in. Thus s/he gradually eliminates suspects until only one is left. Then Jack can be arrested. However, if Jack can get off the board, he wins regardless. There are lots of things players can do – lighting streetlamps, for example – making this a subtle and challenging game. The rather dark theme is enlivened by some great, light-hearted artwork – even if the bearded Sherlock Holmes has attracted some flak from Holmes fans! It gets 8/10 on my highly deductive scale.

JKLM Games

I have to put in a quick plug for On The Underground, designed by my gaming buddy, Sebastian Bleasdale, and published by JKLM Games (and Rio Grande). It’s a clever game of building Underground lines across London. Apart from connecting stations, players are aiming to provide the lines that ‘the passenger’ wants to use. It’s a tightly fought tactical game that balances the various ways of scoring points. Excellent stuff and 9/10 on my Oyster card.

Photo of baox and board from Grosse Turnier showing cards in play

Lookout Games

Das Grosse Turnier (The Big Tournament) is a new edition of Australian Design Group’s World Cup Tournament Football Game from Lookout Games. Players play cards to influence the results of the matches through the group and knock-out stages of the tournament. The aim is to get their team to win, of course, and ownership of the teams is secret. It’s fun, but it is rather long-winded for what it is. 7/10 on my highly subjective scale.

Matagot

You don’t find many games that include time travel, but Khronos is one of them. Designed by Arnaud Urbon and Ludovic Vialla and published in France by Matagot. The board shows the same territory in three time periods. Players use their time travellers to build towns in the first two. Towns ‘ripple’ through time, appearing in subsequent periods if they are big enough – which can have interesting effects. Players score points for the other types of buildings in each conurbation if they have the biggest building of the ruling type in each time period: military in the first, religious in the second and civil in the third. It’s clever stuff and gets a provisional 9/10 on my once and future scale.

Mind the Move

Mind the Move’s Hermagor was one of the hits of the show (although the game is multi-lingual, there is an English language version from Rio Grande). Designed by Emanuele Ornella, it’s a clever trading game. Play starts in a grid representing the marketplace where players pay to place their pawns to get the supplies they need – or bonuses. Then players go on the road, selling goods to establish trading posts in the towns along the roads round the board. It also costs money to move, so routes need to be planned to make sure you’re making a profit – and the goods you need should be planned as well. Trading posts bring in extra income and there are bonuses for getting all the towns in an area. This is definitely my kind of game, though it took me a couple of turns to work out what I should be doing. A provisional 10/10 on my highly mercantile scale.

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