And we’re back! Hello everyone to the first official day of SPIEL. I was a bit anxious what would await me with tickets being sold out and the German unification day coinciding with the first day of SPIEL, but it turned out to become a pretty great day.
When I reached the Messe at around 9:20 AM, the first thing I noticed were 4-5 people holding up signs of “ticket wanted”. That definitely was a new experience! I’ve been going to SPIEL for so many years, the thought of not being able to attend on a whim is something my brain still can’t catch up with.
Inside the waiting hall, things looked rather normal for that time before the convention starts.
Thanks to my press pass, I was able to enter the halls 30min in advance which I thought would allow me to pick up all my “must buys” before the doors would open but that was far from reality. There were already small lines in front of various booths with both exhibitor personal and press trying to get copies. The award for longest queue before the doors even opened definitely goes to DEVIR games (and runner up going to Scorpion Masque for the Sky Team expansion).
When the doors opened, the halls filled up but it wasn’t as crowded as I had expected. Sure, there were a lot of people, but you could still move somewhat normally. I heard a number of people complain about the instant queues though, for example the 45min queue in front of the Itten/Sachi and Sachi booth.
After I had picked up Daitoshi, Altay, and Kingom Legacy, my first order of the day was of course to head over to Hegemonic Games and see if I could get a demo slot for the still in development World Order. Looking at the board and components, the common DNA is immediately noticeable: dark board, action cards, same art style, etc. Playing it though reveals a very different game. Sure, one still plays 4 out of 6 action cards, but players are asymmetric by their setup, allies, and production limitations, not the core rules. All players can gain allies, invest in countries, produce goods, import/export them, etc. It’s just that for example the EU has way less capacities to ramp up oil production than the US and Russia. Players also buy new action cards from a shared market and can thus build their deck. High-level, World Order is about gaining influence around the world and area majority (represented by influence cubes) is a key mechanism. There are three major ways to achieve this: via economic means, diplomacy, and military.
Unfortunately, we were only able to play a single of three rounds of the short game, the long game playing out over six rounds. This was mostly due to us still absorbing the game. We were told the first three rounds usually can be played in like 90min. What was noticeable though was that the turns themselves felt snappier, more “I want to do X and that’s what I do now” rather than Hegemony where sometimes one had to go indirect ways or prepare things via introducing new bills.
So I can’t really say how well the interconnectedness of things will play out, but I’m definitely curious. Where Hegemony felt almost like a roleplaying game to me (in the sense of players quickly acting out their factions), World Order feels more like a game where players might see it purely for the area-majority, deck-building mechanics and during play will suddenly realise why certain things are happening. Like the EU in our game buying oil from Russia and thus giving them money to fund other ventures. It just made sense for that player to do it.
Also strong recommendation for the accompanying booklet/book on background material. I quickly took a peak and it looks absolutely gorgeous. Kickstarter should start soon, so definitely keep an eye out.
After that, I went over to Delicious Games to pick up Resafa which was a stark contrast to 2023. I still remember their booth having a ridiculous long line for Evacuation, but this time there seems to be much less excitement for Resafa. When I went there during lunch, there wasn’t any queue at all. Nonetheless, I’m still eager to try it out. Vladimir always does interesting games.
On my way, I quickly dropped by Floodgate Games and played a round of Landmarks, though it was a shortened game to just reach one treasure instead of having to reach multiple ones and an exit.
In Landmarks, one player is a clue giver and has to write a word on a hex tile which they then hand to the rest of the players. Those than have to guess where on the map this hex needs to be placed, based on its relation to other words already on the map. E.g. “cake” should probably be closer to “chocolate” than “engine”, but where exactly? It is fun to guess, but also seems to be an interesting challenge for the clue giver to plot a course through the island that is safe for everyone as there are traps and other things that can prevent the players from winning. I liked it, really nice production with a cloth map, too!
In general, I didn’t have any problems getting any game I really wanted. Even the Sky Team expansion was still available at 1PM, though Galaxy Postman not only was sold out but didn’t even have a table to demo. My guess is they just brought a few copies left over from the Kickstarter and didn’t bother setting up a table.
Tried out Joyride: Survival of the Fastest which felt to us like a cross between Heat and Robo Rally. The fun part about this game is that the collision rules take up as much space on the player aids as the rest of the game. On the board, a simple gateway parkour had been built and by rolling and locking in dice, we were tasked to navigate it. Cars inevitably push each other out of the way or even turn others by 180 degrees, I got two rockets as upgrades, etc. The idea was fun, but it seemed that there was no way to catch up if a player once was hit hard. My table of players left the game intrigued, but not more. Would play it again, but won’t seek it out.
Dropped by Defenders of the Dictionary which is also a Kickstarter that is still in development. It’s a collaborative Scrabble variant with waypoints to hit and big baddies to fight. Apparently the rules change with the different scenarios. Ultimately thought, it left me unimpressed. For me, I would always prefer playing plain Scrabble or something like Paperback.
I then picked up my copy of Flamme Rouge: Grand Tour (yes, it really, really exists). When I asked at the booth why it has taken so many years to finally come out, they unfortunately only gave me a non-answer. I’m really curious if we will ever find out …
Overall, I was a bit exhausted from the frantic buying in the morning that I mainly kept to smaller games and signing up for demos on the other days. Got a chance to try out Spectacular which was a lot of fun, but felt like yet another “I collect stuff and build on my board” game. I really liked the combination of drafting, dice manipulation, and hex placement, but decided to not pick up a copy because I didn’t know when I would ever play it (my group likes more mid-heavy games). But I would prefer this to for example Harmonies though as there is more interaction with the drafting here and there are some nice scoring combos to build.
And to close out the day, I tried to demo FOUNDERS, the new game by the makers of ICE. For some reason, what seemed to be the end game scoring or some rules dispute caused the previous group to go on and on and after 15 min and with closing time approaching, I gave up on my slot. Not a good start, Founders … but you do look pretty again. I’m a bit suspicious if the gameplay will be for me, but I really wanted to demo it. Well, maybe one of the next days.
One of the nice things about staying in Essen is that the hotels seem to embraced SPIEL by now. In my Hotel, the bar and a whole extra room have been cleared for people attending SPIEL. So there were 10-15 gaming tables going. I played a round of Minecart Town which was surprisingly nice but nothing I will pick up myself. Over only four turns, players buy buildings from a shared market and then need to find ways to connect buildings using tracks. This is necessary as in a later phase, the production of the round can be moved to other buildings and then turned into yet other resources or VP. It’s a cool, rather clean design and one person mentioned wanting to buy a copy tomorrow, but it wasn’t really doing anything for me. It’s not because it is a bad game, I just don’t think it would see my table often with all the heavy hitters I have in my collection already.
And that’s it for today. Overall quite a productive day 1. I’ll share more about which games I picked up over the next days when I had a chance to play them more. Looking forward to Day 2 and just focusing on gaming and hopefully the first few interviews. Let me know if there is a particular game you are interested in for me to cover.