by Ludologo

22 Ottobre 2012

Father in the Messe: the day after

Hi all,

me and Caterina are back home safe. Was a great Essen 2012. Of course we are been able to only scratch the surface of the iceberg of the Essen release and we have still a lot to play.

Tomorrow we will publish our Essen top 10.

I have also edited the past articles adding titles and making some small editing (but don’t worry, they are still wrote in Ligish and not in real current English!)

Father in the Messe Day 1
Father in the Messe Day 2
Father in the Messe Day 3

Despite the fact I write about games for Fantascienza.com, the Italian greatest portal and web-site about sci-fiction (here my preview article of Essen sci-fiction releases) I wasn’t able to play any sci-fi games during the Spiele because Caterina really likes Fantasy but she is not interested in sci-fi … too bad!

by Ludologo

22 Ottobre 2012

Father in the Messe: Day 3

Dear gamers, our story in Essen is come to the end.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I and Caterina will have to take our flight back home (if we will be able to store all the games in our suitcases!).

Maybe we will be here again next year. If you liked this report and would know a more detailed opinion about this games and/or other games write us at andrea.ligabue@ludologo.com or drop an email to Dale (my editor here in OpinionatetGamers.com) and ask about me!

Card City – Ludibay

It was the last day but I and Caterina really played a lot, starting from early in the morning when you went to Card City booth. The game is a strategic game about the building of a town where you have to build commercial areas (to earn money) and residential areas (to earn VPs) as much bigger as possible.

During your turn you have to draw cards from a deck twice the number of players in play. Then you have to arrange in stacks of two cards each and the player to the left will start to choose. The buildings (cards) have to be placed on your city that could occupy a hypothetical 5×5 grid. There are some easy to learn rules: you need Industries to make big cities; commercial areas will give you money and residential points. There are also Leisure cards (needed to evolve residential and parking cards.
The evolve phase is the core of the game: if you have more Leisure adjacent to a residential area than the actual number of cards in that area it evolves and you can add a residential to the area. Commercial do the same with residential. Finally you need to build orthogonally to an already evolved building.

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by Ludologo

20 Ottobre 2012

Father in the Messe: Day 2

Hallo gamers. Here we are with the report of our second day of gaming. Today I have had to attend both the International Gamers Awards Committee lunch and also the presentation, so we are not been able to play as much as we (especially Caterina) would like but I think we got a good performance anyway.

The real problem is that Essen is also the opportunity for me to meet peoples I’m using to see just once every year and sometime (too often, according to Caterina point of view) I stop gaming to talk a bit.

Twin Tin Bots – Flatlined Games

Today I also discovered there is a kickstarter project I was not aware of, Twin Tin Bots: it is a new Philippe Keyartes game resembling RoboRally and since I’m totally crazy for RoboRally it looks promising. I know the kickstarter campaign will end the 15 of November so I’ll rush for it as soon as I’ll be back in Italy. Eric from Flatlined Games told me that the game will see the light anyway but without reaching the needed money with Kickstarter it will take more than one year. If you light the idea of a Philippe Keyartes game with robot and programmed movement that can be easily played in just one hour this one is for you!

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by Ludologo

19 Ottobre 2012

Father in the Messe: Day 1

Today we wake up early to be able to be in the Spiele at opening time, 9:00 for press-tickets owners. First all we make a quick tour in the press room to take our press kit: the usual book and some press information including a list of personalities attending the fair.

Trivitia – Trivitar

We started with Trivitia by Trivitar. A game mixing dexterity and trivia. You have some wooden piece to place on a wooden basement (different basement’s shapes for different games). During your turn you just roll a die. On 1-4 you have to answer a question from a card. (Every card has 4 questions and the number you roll indicate the question). If you get the green face is like you got the right answer and if you got the red face is like giving the wrong answer. This make you place one of your pieces or have to place someone else piece, building a sort of tower/pile. When the pile collapse the player with less piece still in front of him is the winner. A nice variation of trivia but, still a trivia: I think could be nice for people liking trivia games but I’m not in this group.

Caterina says “Nice game a too much trivia”. Caterina rate 5.

Slavika – Rebel

The next game was Slavika from Rebel.pl, a really nice polish fantasy card game. Players have a company of 6 heroes fighting monsters and looking for treasures. You display 4 terrain cards (with different monsters and heroes values) and give each player a hand with his 6 heroes and some monsters cards. During your turn you have to play 3 cards: if possible 2 heroes and 1 monster otherwise 1 hero and 2 monsters. Heroes and monsters are played on different side of the terrain cards and when a card reaches the listed number of monsters (varying from 3 to 5) there is a fight. Monsters and heroes have fighting values and to beat the monsters the sun of the values of all the heroes at the terrain must beat the total of the monsters. The player with most valued heroes score much more points and get the treasure card than monsters are discarded and heroes came back in hands.
What make this game really nice is the different power of heroes and monsters: every player has 2 fighters (6 and 5), an archer (4), a ranger and a thief (3) and a wizard (1). Heroes have special power like wizard giving a plus two to all the fighters in that fight. Monsters range from 1 to 7 with few of theme with special abilities.
The game is nice and I think it really play much better with 3 or more players.

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