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ESSEN THE GAME

Spiel 13

The famous „El Dorado“ is situated – according to a Columbian legend from the 16th century – in the north of South America. In four countries – in The Argentine, Columbia, Peru and Venezuela – there are cities carrying this name. But till today nobody has managed to find the real fabled land of gold.

For us players “El Dorado” can also be found in the north, albeit in the north of Germany, in Essen. Contrary to the conquistadors of Renaissance times who hoped to return rich and laden with gold we leave a lot of gold – in the guise of Euros – to return with virtual precious metal – that is, with the latest new games. In October of each year about 160.000 prospective buyers and interested players from all corners of the world make a pilgrimage ro the Ruhr metropolis to acquire those jewels they think the most valuable among more than 1000 new games, presented by about 900 exhibitors. For all those who want to experience the unique atmosphere of SPIEL in a game or for all those that have yet not made the trip to Essen and who want to feel the flair of this event at least on a game board, designers Etienne Espreman, Frederic Delporte und Fabrice Beghin have created this game. I do not know much about those designers. Etienne Espreman was involved in the creation of “Bruxelles 1892”. I had not heard anything about Delporte or Beghin and have also no prior knowledge of the publishing company Geek Attitude Games.

2013 „SPIEL“ was relocated from halls 4-12 into the the area of 48.000 m² offered by halls 1-3 and this is also the point at which the game begins. The cover shows the usual crowds in front of the entries to the fair. The fun for insiders, too, starts on the cover, a lot of well-known personalities from the gamers community are depicted. How well did designers manage to catch the flair of SPIEL?

Let’s start with the relatively big game board. The contours of the halls I mentioned are depicted true to scale, the number of booths has been reduced to a manageable number of 60 booths. Those booths are depicted in five different colors to support the rules of the game. Those booths are marked with the logos of the best known publishers. In front of the two marked entries and the parking lot a number of persons is milling about, which is meant to indicate the number of visitors. Gallery and outdoor areas are also presented corresponding to reality. The remaining images support the flow of the game, including storage, pallet truck, a display for the wish list cards, placement cases for draw piles and various scoring tracks, which will be mentioned in more details later.

At the start of seven rounds in the game each player is given 300 Euros in cash as capital for buying his games (that would be nice in reality, too – my account would be pleased in October about such an influx). You start with your marker on the parking lot and place an action token on your personal track on the board, and you also place a marker on the track for victory points. You can acquire games in four different types. Those categories are indicated by Meeple, Die, Cards and Sand timer and marked on a track on the board with popularity markers. Those markings vary in the course of the game and yield varying amounts of additional points. Two crowd markers are meant to simulate the very real masses of visitors. Each player receives seven wish list cards out of a total of 60 of such cards; in a drafting mechanism now each player chooses a card and hands on the remaining ones; this is repeated until each player has selected four cards for his hand. The remaining cards are deposited on the game board on the area indicated for this purpose. Contrary to the personal lists they now represent the general pubic wish list. There are also Ranking cards, nine for shopping in the morning and nine for shopping in the afternoon. Those two stacks are shuffled separately and three of them are used for the game.

Out of 60 game tokens corresponding to the 60 booths, five stacks of six tokens each are assembled and put into storage face-down. Six more tiles are placed open-faced onto the so-called pallet truck cases. Next to those cases are numbers which one the one hand influence the popularity track for the respective game categories and, on the other hand, make a game into a bestseller (Bonus +3) or a slow seller or flop (-3), or even mark a game with “sold out”, which makes acquisition of this game impossible if you did not preorder it.

Furthermore, two game tokens games are marked which ended up next to the question mark. Their color affiliations determine the placement of the crowd markers. In those areas movement is made more difficult, each move costs two instead of one action point. The remaining 24 game tokens are placed open-faced on the corresponding booths, which is easily done by color and booth numbers.

Finally, there are markers for “Last Round”, which provide different endings to the game. One of those markers is randomly chosen and provides bonuses for a certain category of games or offers a bargain reduction for all buys that are done at the end. Now, after quite a copious preparation phase, we can begin to play the game.

At the start each action points are available for each player to spend on five options. Those options are, first, movement, which is done horizontally, vertically or diagonally onto the adjacent case and uses up one action point for each step. Second, the acquisition of a game. For this option I would like to describe the game tokens representing a game. In the top left-hand corner the price is indicated. In the top right hand corner you find the coordinates allocation the game to the board. In the bottom left hand corner you find the bonus for the game and in the bottom right hand corner the affiliation to a category which scores points on the popularity track. Acquisition of a game does not use up an action point, but they reduce the number of future action points, as they are placed on the A track. You can buy a maximum of six games in one go.

The third option is to test a game. This uses one action point. You draw two cards from the face-down stack of wish lists and take one of them into your hand. If you manage to buy this game you score additional points at the end of the game.

The fourth option is to load up the car. For this each player has a track, divided into the four game categories and representing the booth of your car. For loading the car you must move your meeple to the parking lot (for movement points! Then you take your acquired games from the action track and gain more mobility. Loading in itself is free. Your fifth option would be to get cash. This is also possible outside the halls (as in reality) on the parking space.

Let my insert a personal criticism here that, despite severe and year-long negative experiences the Fair management was not able to install a second cash machine for SPIEL. Who has stood in the rain in the queue for such long time as I did will agree with me.

Well, getting cash does not cost you an action point, like loading the car, put you pay 2 victory points for every 50€. Additional action points can be acquired in the outdoor space between the halls by getting a snack for 20€. This can be very important to get movement points in time to reach the parking space.

After round 4 the game is scored. It is checked if ranking cards meet the requirements and you score four victory points for each ranking card that does. The morning cards are then replaced with the afternoon cards and you play three more rounds.

The core of the game is the dilemma of how to get the games that you selected at the start while taking into account the popularity track and the ranking cards. And you also need to stay within your budget and, most important, get to your car in time.

Let’s take a look at the end of the game. When the afternoon ranking cards have been scored you count the wish list cards of each player and scored, according to a table, with 5 to 30 victory points. When players manage to reach the parking lot in time for the end of the game, the first two players to do so receive a bonus for early departure in the guise of six or three victory points.

The designers have managed to incorporate essential and characteristic details of a visit to SPIEL into the game. It begins with the crowd markers which hamper your movement, continues with the cash machine outside the halls, the limited number of games that you can carry which triggers a transfer to the booth of your card, and finally, with the games you wish for. In the early days of the Fair you behaved like a preschool child waiting feverishly for Christmas and could not wait for the Fair and you stood entranced before the – at that time still manageable – offers of new games. Today, you arrive well-informed, due to the web, and acquire your wished-for games very focused and selectively. I do not want to make to mistake to say that in earlier days everything was better – it was different and I regret the difference a bit. The surprise moment that entranced my in the past is gone and I am missing it a bit.

All in all the purpose of an homage to SPIEL has been splendidly achieved. I can only recommend to all “Essenians” as well of those that stayed at home to get immersed into the fair with Essen The Game.

And yet, there is one point that must be criticized. I miss a solution in case you have miscalculated and have overlooked that you do not have enough movement points to get back to the parking lot. This problem tends to appear if you are further back in the halls and have already acquired one or two games. After all, it can happen in a “worst case” that there is one additional crowd marker in the entry area that you need five movement pints from the outdoor area and cannot reach the  booth that would save the day, which would result in an early ousting from the game due to inability to move. For this deficiency should should make up a house rule.

Rudolf Ammer

Players: 2-5

Age: 10+

Time: 75+

Designer: Etienne Espreman, Frédéric Delporte, Fabrice Beghin

Artist: Cyrille Breuil

Price: ca. 45 Euro

Publisher: Geek Attitude Games 2014

Web: www.geekattitudegames.com

Genre: Set collecting, action points management

Users: With friends

Version: multi

Rules: de en fr nl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Good simulation

Nice components

Pains were taken to create the tokens and board

Compares to:

Essen, Ludicréations, for the topic, otherwise set collecting games with action points management

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 6

Rudolf Ammer:

A well-made and felicitous homage and a similarly well-made simulation of SPIEl, which makes you want to experience the game and SPIEL.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0