Essen 99


The calendar is dotted with games conventions, large and small. Without doubt, the largest event of the year is the Essen Spielfest, held in Germany each October. I was there again in 1999, helping out at the SFC Press stand. Theo Clarke, Small Furry Supremo, relies on a small but easily led bunch of friends and hangers on to man, or rather crew, the stand, greeting the locals with practiced cries of Wir sprechen Deutsch nicht so gut In return, he allows us to do so.

Here is Brian "Artistic" Lea, glowering for England on the SFC Press stand. We were carrying a wide range of Rio Grande games - English language versions of German games such as Big City or Pfeffersacke. Some of these can be seen lurking behind Brian.
One of the hits of the show, in terms of boxes in carrier bags was the long awaited Sternenfahrer von Catan by Klaus Teuber. This is a truly awesome piece of production, with plastic retro-gothic rocket ships that double up as status displays and random number rollers.
The new Rio Grande games were Stephenson's Rocket by Reiner Knizia and Andromeda by Alan Moon. I demonstrated both these games on the stand, and in my biased opinion they are both excellent games. Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande can certainly pick them.

Rocket could be loosely described as Acquire with trains. During the course of the game, several railway companies extend can extend track from their starting towns, gaining value as they connect to cities and railway towns. Each time a player extends a railway he/she earns a share in that company. Players can attempt to connect the track to previously placed station tokens, but other shareholders can attempt to veto track placement, starting a bidding war to determine the placement, when the winner loses the shares he bid. Both stations and shares are important in determining who receives payouts from a company, so there are some tricky decisions to make.

Opinion was mixed at Essen on this one, and there is no doubt that people were having trouble getting the rules right at the first attempt, although the rulebook is clear and error free. It takes at least one and half games before you have a clear idea of what you are doing. I will certainly be playing this again.

Andromeda has a much easier learning curve with a couple of clever game mechanisms. This is a Science Fiction themed game. The players are attempting to establish bases (wooden cubes) on "economic centres" round planets in the Andromeda Galaxy. A plastic shell with a cut-out just large enough for a single cube is placed over all the bases currently on planet, and the player making the attempt swirls it around with his thumb stopping the exit, before removing his thumb and jiggling the shell until a base emerges. If it is one of his own, he emplaces it on a vacant economic centre, otherwise he sends it back to earth. Judging when to make such an attempt is the key decision in the game. Almost all the actions in the game requires the play of sets of cards. There is a formal card trading mechanism that involves one player laying cards one at a time, while the others must respond with cards that do ~not~ match. There is potential for stitch ups right there as valuable cards can be forced out.
This is Stacy of R&R games, with their card game Overthrone. We sold out of Overthrone on the first day, due to a tragic miscalculation by the shipping agents in the USA, who had literally missed the boat.
Also present on the stand was John Harrington of Fiendish Games, seen here demonstrating the German language version of Office Politics
From left to right, Alan Moon, obliterating Frank DiLorenzo of R&R Games, Paul Evans, Richard Borg, and Evil Genius Theo Clarke

Paul and Theo are the orginal Small Furry Creatures. Richard Borg is the designer of Battle Cry the new ACW game from Hasbro. Alan Moon needs no introduction.
. Around the rest of the convention ...

The DTM Motorsport stand was wallpapered with mapsheets from their game
Live action Robo Rally was in progress. In other rounds notorious English robo-rally hustler Stephen Taverner won himself a copy of the German version of the game, while in the next round your correspondent guided "Blue Robot" Theo Clarke to a 3:1 kill/die record over the the Yellow Robot. Curiously, he remained unimpressed, citing the fact that he never reached any waypoints. Anybody would think it was a race.
Evan Jones of QED games tirelessly demonstrated his new game Dog Eat Dog (They wouldn't let him off the stand. As the blurb says, destroy the environment for fun and profit. Evan claims his next game will be a cynical look at US politics. Is there another way to look at it?
Finally, hard drinking G3 editor Carol Johnson, fresh as a daisy at 11AM on the last day of Essen99 after staying out till 5 in the morning. How does she do it? "I was only drinking white wine" she explained.