#essen 2016

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Chinese-themed card game created by Qian Qi Animation. The card game uses the theme of the Chinese Movie The Message. 3 Kinds of Cards Identity: x9 Characters: x18 Function: x81 Its rules are similar to Shadow Hunter combined with Coach Ride To Devil's Castle. Initially, each player randomly select one of the three identities - Underground, Army, Passby. In addition, each player has one character out of 18 difference one to get difference special character ability. All function cards divided into three information - Red, Blue or Black (false information). Besides, all function cards can be used for its special function. During each round, each player draws two function cards. Then, the player transmit one of his function cards to other player as an information. Others player try to collect his requested information while avoid any False information (black). Apart from acting as an information card, function cards can be used for their special function to interrupt information, burnt away false information etc. Any player has received three black information will be dead. Underground will wins if he collects three Red information cards while Army wins if he collects three Blue information. Passby needs to achieve their special mission based on his characters in order to win.

Games I played at Essen, No. 29 (and the final one!): The Message - Emissary Crisis

In this game you send hidden messages around the table, sometimes to selected players, sometimes they just go around until somebody accepts the message. If everyone rejects the message it is returned to sender. Each player has a hidden loyalty card and is trying to collect three messages of "their" colour while avoiding the black messages. Then there is the factionless player who has their own mission they are trying to fulfil. The cards, apart from being messages, also have actions on them that can help you spot which faction somebody is in, target a message more directly or prevent another player from taking a message.

I was a little disappointed by this game. It's similar in concept to Coach Ride to Devil's Castle, which I (as the only person at the table) actually prefer, despite its tendency to drag on a bit. This game, on the other hand, felt like it was over too quickly while I was caught in a position in which I couldn't really do anything to influence the outcome. That may have been bad luck of the draw or player numbers, though, and my opinion may well have been impacted by the absolutely atrocious translation, which makes the game borderline unplayable unless you have someone at hand who already knows the rules or can figure out how to back-translate the presumably rather literal translation to squeeze some sense out of it.(Also, the theming is very, um, one of my friends described it as “Clearly designed by edgelords” - we’re talking specifically about the Emissary Crisis version.)

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The rules of "Red" are simple: highest card wins! But "Red" is just one of seven games you'll be playing in Red7, and if you're not winning the current game at the end of your turn, you're out! The last person standing wins the round. The deck in Red7 is 49 cards: each of the colors of the rainbow numbered 1 to 7. A hand takes just a couple minutes!

Games I played at Essen, No. 28 (of 29, almost done, breathe easy): Red 7

This card game has a premise that sounds like a tautology at first: If you don't win, you lose. A card in the middle declares the current win condition (e.g. "highest card", "most cards in a row", "most cards of the same colour" etc.). Your options are to play a card to your "palette" that makes you win for this particular condition or else to change the condition in the middle or both. If you can't find a way to win, you're eliminated. Last player standing is the true winner.

We played the base version, which was already fun and interesting, but there are apparently more complicated versions, just in case you want to make the whole thing a little more strategic

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To trust is good, not to trust is better. Five weary warriors, on a journey for a mysterious dungeon rumored to be filled with precious gemstones. But there is hitch: ferocious monsters are guarding the gems! If the warriors join forces they can defeat them. But the coward who, blinded by his greed, will not fight seriously might get his companions punished by the monsters! The warrior who will remain loyal and will betray at the right time is the genuine hero of this game. In Dungeon Busters, the players take the role of heroes exploring dungeons and defeating monsters in search of treasures. In order to defeat a monster, every player simultaneously plays a power card face-down then reveals the values. If two or more players play the same value, they are all ignored. If players are defeated the player who played the lowest value should return some treasures as a penalty. If players succeed to defeat the monster, players can divide rewards but the player who played the lowest value will go first. Japanese summary: 協力なくして勝利なし！裏切りなくして報酬なし！ 手札に書かれた数字は武器の攻撃力であり勇気のバロメーター。 より弱い武器で挑めば宝石を得るチャンスと共に、死の危険も迫ります。涼しい顔して嘘をつき、仲間を裏切る事で、より沢山の宝石を手に入れることが出来ます。 真の敵は目の前のモンスター？それとも笑顔で話す隣のアイツ・・・？ 「ダンゴーダンジョン！」は、仲間と協力しながら敵を倒しつつも、その仲間を出し抜き裏切る事で真の勝利を手に入れる、信頼と疑惑がせめぎ合う【（非）協力型カードゲーム】です。

Games I played at Essen, No. 27: Dungeon Busters

Another "Prisoner's dilemma - The game", this time with a dungeon crawl theme. You are an adventuring party trying to cooperate to defeat monsters. However, you're also trying to work for your own gain. You have a hand of cards of which you play one face-down each turn. All players collectively must beat the HP of the monster to defeat it, but only the player with the lowest number gets the loot and if two players play the same number, they cancel out and are ineffective.

It's a nice idea and the art and components are cute/pretty, but I lost interest in it very fast.

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Pipe Work is a simultaneous-play, tile placement game with the tiles actually being pipes that connect colored tokens on your 5x5 playing area. In each of the eight rounds, players start by revealing a card that shows where the pairs of colored tokens are placed on their individual 5x5 game board. As soon as everyone's done this, all players race simultaneously to place pipes in their game board to create connections between matching tokens. Players grab numbered spanner cards in the order that they finish, and whoever grabs the "1" spanner gets first choice of a scoring card. Incorrect tile layouts net someone the "4" spanner. After eight rounds, whoever has the most medals wins!

Games I played at Essen, No. 26: Pipe work

The goal of this game is to try and connect tiles of the same colour on your "pipe board" with pipes while not leaving any spaces empty or creating loops and loose ends that don't connect to anything.

I was thoroughly unimpressed by this game. The pieces look cool, but I found them a bit fiddly for a time-based game. And it's a time-based game, so it was never going to be my cup of tea.

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As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs" —Johann Tetzel, 1465-1519 Mea Culpa is a paradise-and-pandemonium gamer's game that’s all about sins and sinners. Be it at the brothel or at the market, men such as the Pope or the Emperor can be seen hard at work at any time of the day. Even the most miserable miser, though, would be well advised to also strive to get hold of enough precious stones and wine to make sufficient donations towards the Lord's cathedrals. After all, it is through pious generosity that a poor soul can gain the all-important letters of indulgence and be pardoned for a life of greed and lust. When all is said done, what matters is to have sinned just enough to have achieved all goals and gotten away with it, while others took the fall. In more detail, to win, players have to end the game with their "poor souls" closer to heaven's gate than their opponents. Alas, throughout the game these poor souls pretty much exclusively move in the opposite direction, i.e., towards Hell. Only at the very end of the game might players climb back towards heaven, depending on the letters of indulgence that they managed to collect up to that point. The accumulation of these letters of indulgence is each player's primary goal. To this end, they take on the roles of different people: the Pope, the Emperor, the Merchant, or the Little Sinner. Each round, these roles in turn grant them access to different special actions. On their turn, players buy or sell goods on the market, visit the brothel to benefit from personal connections, or secretly donate money and goods to the church. Meanwhile, the construction of the game's three cathedrals proceeds. As soon as a cathedral is fully erected, the church will hand out the all-important letters of indulgence. However, only those who have donated the most in either of three categories will actually receive anything. Many perks that can be used during the game require the players to "sin". Sins are tracked by means of a tally stick and will move the player's poor soul closer to hell. The player who strikes the right balance and picks the right roles at the right time will be able to collect the most valuable letters of indulgence and might stand chance at winning the game. If a player has burdened themselves with too much sin, though, all will ultimately be for naught.

Games I played at Essen, Number 25: Mea Culpa

This is an absolutely hilarious Euro game about sinning to your heart's content, then buying indulgences to avoid going to hell. At the beginning of your turn, you bid with an ingenious little "tally stick + money" mechanic (the tally stick thing is based on a German pun that I'm now too lazy to explain, the mechanic is not THAT complicated but I'm too lazy to explain that, too) to get first pick of one of four roles (Pope, King, Merchant and Little Sinner) each with their own special start-of-turn actions and other privileges. During your turn, you go to the market to get goods or indulgences and sell goods or you go to the brothel for special actions. You can also donate goods to the church to get indulgences at a later point. Any time you sin, you throw "sin stones" into one of three little pools (these sins can later be punished by the pope). In addition, your tally stick goes up. At the end of each turn, the player with the highest number on their tally stick must move further into hell by the difference between theirs and the lowest tally stick. At the end of the game, you gain points for indulgences you have (four different colours gives you extra points) which you can use to save your soul from hell by moving heavenward.

I thought it would be super-complicated when I first saw all the diagrams and started hearing the explanation, but it's not actually that complicated at all. And you've gotta love a game that features "Catching the Pope with his pants down at a brothel" as a major game mechanic. I really want to play a full-length game of this sometime.

Also, to make it even more hilarious, the game creators added a variant called "Meta culpa" where players have to put sin stones into the sin pools whenever they commit a gaming sin like retconning their turn or forgetting to put the character portraits back at the end of their turn. This variant is fully integrated with the other game mechanics

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Description from the publisher: Dreams is a game of perception and intuition with 72 large cards illustrated by eight different artists. In each round, four pictures are revealed. The players are gods who transfer one of these images onto the night sky as a new constellation of stars. Which one is transferred is determined in such a way that all players but one know the picture in question. The one who doesn't know which picture was chosen tries to remain undetected during the round. Star by star, the players now transfer the picture onto the night sky (i.e., the central mat) until all stars are placed. There is a good chance that different players will emphasize different aspects of the picture in question. After the placement phase, the "Gods" try to detect the "ignorant" player, while the ignorant player tries to name the picture that was chosen. The right balance between keeping the imposter in the dark and not giving the regular players cause for suspicion has to be struck...

Dreams is “Fake Artist Goes to New York - The Abstract Edition”. You’re a bunch of gods and a mortal. The gods “paint” a constellation based on some very Dixit/Mysterium-like cards by placing little gemstones on the board. The mortal tries to play along well enough to not be caught while at the same time figuring out which image the gods are trying to depict.

I love the art of this game and its concept. I think we might have been too few players to get the full effect of it, though. With too few available gemstones, the images start getting WAY too abstract to make any guesses (based on the actual game rather than the metagame of people’s eye movements) even vaguely more accurate than pure chance.

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The race is on to find out who’s the best chef in town, and only the cook with the fastest hands and the cleverest plan will win! Your goal in Fold-it! is to cook recipes the fastest, based on the order cards. When an order card is revealed, everyone starts cooking at the same time. In order to cook the order, each player takes their individual recipe cloth and folds it so that it shows only the items displayed on the order card. The round ends once all players have finished their order, and if you made the order incorrectly or were the last to finish, you have to give up a star token. If you lose all three of your stars, you're out of the game. Once only one player is left with a star token, they’ve won the game!

Games I played at Essen, No. 23: Fold-it

This is another “easy to understand, hard to master” game. You have a cloth printed on both sides with squares depicting food. You’re trying to fold the cloth along the lines so that only the squares shown on the cards are visible. The last player to finish loses a life. Three lives and you’re out.

I like the puzzle part of this game a lot. I think I’d get frustrated by the trying-to-be-faster-than-the-two-people-in-my-friend-circle-who-are-really-good-at-this-shit part pretty fast. Fortunately I was playing against my bro-in-law and husband as well and they were even worse than I was, so the timing element didn’t get frustrating as fast. But yes, that bias aside: I like the idea of this game (it’s pretty unique). I don’t think I’d play it very much in practice.

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Description from the publisher: Happy Salmon is a simple, ultra-fast, very silly card game. There are no turns. Players call out the action shown on their cards as fast as they can. When two players have a match, they celebrate by performing the action. Actions include the classic "High 5", the unifying "Pound It", the frantic "Switcheroo", and the delightful and bizarre "Happy Salmon". Each time a player celebrates a match, they quickly discard a card. The first person to get rid of all their cards wins. The "FIN-tastically" unique and cute fish pouch makes Happy Salmon perfect to take to camp, vacation or if you are just traveling upstream.

Games I played at Essen, No. 22: Happy Salmon

Happy Salmon is a super-fast, super-fun party game. Each player gets a hand of cards with actions on them: fist bumping, high fiving, switching places and “Happy Salmon” (a kinda wriggly slappy arm movement against the other players arm ... it’s hard to describe). You draw a card at a time and try to find another player who has the same card so you can do your action and discard the card. The first player to empty their hand is the winner.

It’s a super-frantic game but it’s so silly and fun that it didn’t set off the “AAAH! TIME PRESSURE!” thing for me at all (and, let’s be honest here, doesn’t exactly involve quick thinking. There’s not much thinking. Just a lot of shouting and arm-waving).

On a game review unrelated note: Explainer!Martin at the booth was super-sweet and came up with a wheelchair-friendly version of Switcheroo on the spot when he realised that actually switching places would be a bit impossible for me.