SPIEL 2011 - Anyone Coming?

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After last year, I'm planning to attend this year's SPIEL in October and I'm thinking - perhaps it would be a good place to meet a few fellow forumites there? After all, it's only the biggest gaming convention - and while it focuses on board games (btw, those are fun), it has a few halls set aside for traditional RPGs, other table games, card games and comics. As far as I know, last year the attendance was around 150 000 for the four days, so you can imagine there will be a lot of things to see and people to see it with !

This year it's going to be from the 20th to the 23th of October, and you can get some more details from the site here. Does this sound tempting to anyone ?

 

Dude, I'd give my left nut to go to that -- or any such trade fair, but I have learned that airlines and other transportation companies do not accept left nuts, or indeed anything other than money. As such, while I am tempted, I shan't be attending this awesome event.

 

Nah, it sounds like it's for geeks.

 

Well, it's mostly for boardgames - I'd say about 4 halls out of 7 - and these are fairly popular in Germany. You get a lot of gamers, LARPers, comic fans and the like, but also a lot of families who kinda treat it like a shopping trip .

I will tell you that, though, it's a great place to go if you are a geek. Last year I almost had a nerdgasm when I saw someone in a Munchkin costume .


Edit: Ack! Ok, it should work now

 

You need to right click on the image and select Copy Image Location.

Otherwise we can't view the link you put up. You know it will be the right URL as it will end with .jpg

 

Thanks, try again. It should be ok now.

 

I would like to come, but not sure if i can make it this year, but i try.

 

Tempting. But no. I have to many costs. And I know I will go over budget.

 

Well, that was that - after 3 days at the Essen fair, a lot of walking around, and less playing games than I had been hoping for, I’m back home. Despite the moaning from the spirits of my bank account, I think it was mostly worth it except for some unpleasantness at the start. It’s a pity I had to leave before the last day, but between the other guy I was with having to be back on Sunday and it being election day here, I decided that three days should be enough. I got a chance to play a few games, so in case you intend to be looking for a game, here’s what I think about some of the names there.

Kingdom builder – This year’s designated champion for heavyweight Queen games didn’t look like much at first, but turned out to be pretty decent. It looks fairly simple compared to some of the better lookers that they’ve produced like Shogun or Samarkand a map with areas and simple tokens. However, the map you build involves 4 pieces at random – out of 8 possible. The victory conditions are three cards, drawn at random, out of 10. Chances are, you can play several times and it feels completely different. A bit on the expensive side (35 Euro at the fair – what do you expect, it’s Queen games) but quite good if you want a 2-4 person strategy game.

Infarkt – a short party game we played, by some obscure Czech company. You play several guys and see who dies last. You start off healthy and well-off, but in the course of work, parties, bars and the like you will soon have plenty of options to die from cholesterol, infarct, diabetes, depression, or cancer (there’s also obesity – it won’t kill you, but will certainly help a lot with the cholesterol). Of course, chances are you won’t kill yourself – that’s what friends are for. Kill them slowly, and with kindness – before they do the same to you.
- P.S.: bonus points if the depression hike you get from their deaths causes you to kill youself too.

Evo – 2nd edition – you play dinosaurs, and apparently some people who design and mutate them. It’s in German only, though.. The board is a bit like Smallworld, with different regions (and different size depending on how many players there are); each turn there will be several types of regions where you need mutations to adapt to or your dinosaurs become fossils.. Every turn, you can bid on mutations (the currency is your VPs) that let you survive more conditions, fight off other dinosaurs better, or multiply faster. You need to get more VPs before the meteors hit. Beats me what the people are for, but meh, you get dinosaurs mutating and fighting each other before the inevitable doom, so what more do you want? Well, apart from the game being in English or whatever non-German native language you have.

Sake & Samurai – the goal: be the most drunken samurai alive when the sake is over. It’s a card game where you have a character (a famous samurai or some not-so-famous samurai-ko hey, we can’t have it be a sausage fest), you lay down “item” cards or play action cards and the purpose is to end a crate of sake. The more you have drunk by the end, the better… but each sake token has to go on a card you have in play, and it either stops or weakens it. If you get killed (there are plenty of weapons or attack actions, which also make you work with a fun “range” system) you become a hungry ghost and **** up other people’s sake. It looks good, has a sense of humor, and can work with up to 8 people. It does seem to offer a bit too little for 25 Euro, but could be great in the right company, and allows for up to 8 people to play – a good deal more than most games

F3 – a poker-like card game advertised by crazy guy with a Chinese accent who got us to try it we made up our mind which of the two neighboring stalls we wanted to see. It was quite good for its price - 5 Euro, that’s a beer and a half at the show. You get something like a card deck (5 suits, 13 cards per suit) and trade cards around before you start laying cards on the table which you can use alongside with your own to get high suits – a little bit like Texas hold’em, but you have a lot more cards. You can also extend how long you have before you put the cards down to multiply the scores you have, although it’s easier to end the turn sooner than extend it.

Ustash – A game about Croatian pirates, because as we know everything's better with pirates (and ninjas, but I doubt they had any in Croatia). Don’t know if they look all that piratic, but I’m more than glad to have a good-looking card game where you don’t have the stereotypical fantasy/sci-fi/mixed look. Plus, as the creators themselves mentioned, the cards are designed to withstand stains (as the German version helpfully mentions “beer stains”), so that's one less worry.

Anyway, we had a game, and while the game was quite fun (and could be fairly complex if you use an optional “advanced” set of rules), I’m not quite sold on it. The price is somewhat high – 15 Euro – and for that you are essentially getting the equivalent of a deck of cards and a game rules brochure. While there are some nice personal touches (i.e. a wax seal) I find it somewhat underwhelming compared to a lot of other choices. I had to give it a pass and instead went for…

Inquisitio – one of the products of a small Finnish firm, I found the premise interesting, the look good, and the value for the money quite good. It’s a card game where you are suspects rounded up by the Spanish inquisition and “investigated” for witchcraft. Your goal is to not get burned at the stake – and if possible accrue the minimum amount of guilt points and retain the maximum amount of health and sanity. You can confess, bribe, or try to withstand all the caring attentions of the Inquisition. Remember, innocence proves nothing. For 10 Euro, it was imo a bargain. And no, I didn’t misspell the title.

Finally, one other note about a game that had me psyched up with its look, Metro 2033 – a game based on the books about a postapocalyptic society surviving in the Moscow subway network – should be fun enough. We’ll have to see in 2012, when it gets released, for now it looks good.

At the end, I went with Infarkt, Inquisitio, and a copy of the 2nd Edition Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay corebook, for a total of 54 Euro spent. Not that much, but after being late for the check-in for my outgoing flight and having to pay 60 extra for my luggage (I’d like to say “**** Wizz Air”, but I think that’s standard airline practice), I wasn’t in the mood for spending too much. Besides, last year I bought Fresco, Navegador and Vinhos – all big, expensive games – and I think we’ve played them less than 10 times in total. I did go over budget (although thinking back, my budget was unrealistically low and pretty much presumed I would buy nearly nothing), but still spent notably less than last year. I really wished I could afford more, though .