Essen Experience: Sunday

Here I'm reporting the last Essen day. Four days seems a lot of time to see and play but it is enough just only to have an idea of what was happening in Essen: there are booths and part of the fair that I never seen in my 4 days of continuous walking and playing: many games in my list I hadn't time to try ... anyway

Sunday morning we have an appointment at 2F demo booth with Ele to try the two new 2F games: Fiji and Formidable Foes.

We started with Fiji and I liked it: it was a nice auction game with a sort of "I think that you think that I think" mechanism, but is quite nice: I bought it!

After we go for Formidable Foes: Eve was really great (and funny) explaining us the rules but we didn't like the game too much. There was good ideas and some clever mechanic (and, as usual, a really nice graphics and materials) but the game is a bit boring and repetitive. It was on my to buy list but I decided to preserve my money for something better: I must admit that this year I was quite disappointed by Mr. FF releases ... I hope for the next year since I think he is one of the most talented designers.

Sunday morning was just gone and we end walking around in the "Little Italy" area: Mind the Move, Zugames, Post Scriptum, Angelo Porazzi Games, Scribabs, What's your Game ?, Manor House and Sil Toys was all located close each other in the same corridor at hall 9. We got catched by Cocktail Game publisher who show us a small jewel: Zigomar, a funny game (for kids, I suppose).

The game is quite easy: the clown face is made of 6 tiles (2 hairs and eyebrows tiles, two eyes tiles and two mouth tiles). Every tile has two different faces (eye open or close, eyebrow up or down, ...).

You got a card displaying the clown face and quick you have to arrange the tiles to show exactly the same face. you can play with different rules (using only one hands, building the opposite face) and also in pairs (on assembling the clown's face and the other looking the card and giving hints). We was so pleased that we bought two copy of Zigomar and one copy of Rapidcroco.

After we was so luck to meet Mik Svellov at the fair and so we finally have time to travel and play together: Monty and Viki also liked Mik a lot and so the poor Danish Man had to babysit 3 Italians around the fair.

We all also had still to buy some games so we shared our time playing and buying.

The idea was to play some games we still have in our list but also stopping where we can find seat (Sunday was not an easy playing day!).

We start playing Genesis at Face2face booth. The game is not bad: every turn you have to play one or two tiles in the map according to the result of throwing a pair of dices (every dice could show one of the 4 colours or a jolly). You try to be the one with the most connected tiles of the same color in each group. At the end of the game every group (with 3 or more tiles) of connected (orthogonally) tiles of the same colour score 4 points for the first (the player with the highest number of connected tiles in the group) and 2 points for the 2nd. If a group is mad only by tiles of one players he score 6 points. the largest group in each colour score double and the largest of all the groups score triple.

If you don't like the results of the dices you can just place a single tile of the colour you like.


The game plays well and it is nice but, for me, too much abstract: i won the game, anyway.

After that we play, always at face2face booth, and old game: I'm the Boss. Monty, after discussing for a lot of time about the absurdity of some rules, won the game because me and Viki was so idiot (that was the world Mik used!) to let him score really a lot of money: anyway, was a nice game and Monty bought it.


After that we gone walking around and we was so luckily to find a free seat for Notre Dame. I think it was one of the best game played in Essen and I think I'll buy it as soon as it will be released.

The game is played in round. Every round is made of three turn. In every round all the player have 9 cards, displaying the actions they could make. In every turn you get 3 random cards: keep one and pass the other two to the player on your left. Than, again, keep one of the two you get and pass one to the player on your left. Now you have three cards but you play only two. Every card display an action: usually putting one token in one of the city areas you control. Every token you put in the map usually give you something according to the place and to the number of token already there. You can get money, victory points, tokens or just fight the rats.

With the money you can buy a special power (at the end of each turn) or victory points at the cathedral (playing the right card).

The powers usually permits you to get something more.

After the three full rounds (nine turns) the game is over and the winner is the player with the highest amount of victory points. It works really well and you have to think ahead and look what the other players are doing trying to argue which cards you can get and which card you can give. For me a great game.

I won the game scoring 73 points: one of the highest score, according to the designer.

After that we say hallo to Mik and we ran for the last buying.

Just the time to optimize the space occupied by the game boxes in the car and we start for our long night driving. We drive until Switzerland than we stop 1 hour sleeping and we drive again.

Was a really, really, really great experience!

good play
Liga