It’s late but there’s always time for a quick post with some photos and game comments.  Probably more photos than comments today.  Reminder: you can follow my photostream on Flickr to see photos throughout the day, plus extras that don’t show up on the weblog.

After a quick workout and some breakfast in the morning, we headed over to the south tower, level 5, to check out the facilities.  Derk and Aldie were actively engaged finalizing details, trying to find chairs, and handling general logistics concerns.  I think they were most worried about getting chairs.

We setup our Havoc demonstration area in about an hour or less. KC and Rita did most of the work… in fact they probably did 90% of the work for the whole day.  I’ll make it up tomorrow.  By about noon we were giving our first Havoc demos.

 Yehuda arrived about this time as well and spent some time sorting out some game materials.

I bet Eagle Games, Z-Man Games, and Days of Wonder were all thrilled to be located close to the Sunriver Games booth – I’m sure the Havoc draw will bring a lot of traffic to their lesser known games.  I told Eric and Mark (below) that they are welcome to try and sell me any of their games but that, unfortunately, I already own all of them so there’s really no use.  Eric decided I needed to buy a 2006 calendar.

Derk and Aldie did an amazing thing – they setup three prize tables with an instant raffle upon badge pickup.  I drew the lowest valued ticked (red) but picked up Plunder, a game I’ve been wanting to try for some time.  AMAZING how much they can fit in that small box.

A bit after noon a couple (Numskull and BilboAtBagEnd) of gamers stopped by the Z-Man Games booth and asked to play their only copy of Siena. I overheard the request, asked if I could join in, and we headed over to the open gaming area.  Gilby and EdBryan joined us so we were set with five players (gilby, edbryan, numskull, and bilbo in order left to right below).

The games was incredibly difficult to read, learn, and teach on the spot.  I wish I had read this before trying to digest the English rules.  The game is good, maybe excellent, but unfortunately I ran out of time and had to bail out before ending.  Players take on the role of peasants that move up to be merchants and finally bankers.  There are some creative mechanics in the game, but I’m not sure how they all fit together.  I didn’t get to observe enough of the final banking phase to see how that played out.  Oh, and there are prostitutes in the game.  Seriously.  And they entice your banker to join them in the inn.  And you can distract them with girlfriends.  This lead to some interesting color commentary during our play.

The game is well produced with some very nice artwork.  I’ll probably pick up a copy of the game once it ships.

I then taught Antike to two groups, but did not play myself.  I’ll get a chance to play it on Saturday and will let you know what I think.  General impression was that it is a solid conflict / empire game with very little player downtime.

After dinner at an Irish pub with Rita, Jeff DeBoer, and Baldboy_1, we returned to have Jeff teach KC, Rita, and me Lost Valley.  This is an exploration game I picked up at Essen for a mere 10 euro based on a recommendation from Ben Corliss.  I’m glad I did, because this is a great game.

Players take on the role of explorers trying to find glory through gold panning and mining.  There’s an exploration / flip the tile element to the game, but the fun is in the resource management and dealing with other players’ actions.  KC played a superb game and wiped us clean, finishing with something like 28 points to my 15, with Rita and Jeff tied at 12.  Wasn’t even close, but it was still fun.

Tomorrow we’ll sell some more Havoc and I hope to get in a playing of Indonesia.  I also hope to pick up a copy of Railroad Tycoon – Eagle Games thinks they’ll have stock by the morning.  I just need to make sure we sell enough Havoc to make room for it in my bag!

I had no idea this was (finally) about to be released.  And to think I considered picking up Knife of Dreams this week… tisk tisk, I should know better.

Hopefully George R. R. Martin knows how to finish a story.  I have faith.

KC, Rita, and I safely arrived in Dallas tonight for BGG.CON.  This will probably be our last convention to exhibit until Essen next year, and our goal is to play games as much as we sell Havoc.  I’m scheduled to play at least Antike and Indonesia this weekend.  Also hoping to get in at least one game with Mark Johnson and I need to spend some time with my friend Yehuda from Israel. 

(I may add photos more frequently than I blog.  You can follow the photostream on Flickr to see cool pics as I upload them.)

We had a brief lay-over in Denver on our way to Dallas so I brought out Gloom.  I bought this because of the cool see-through card mechanism and the mostly positive review over at Have Games Will Travel.  We also like to sample print quality, and I noticed that the game was made in India – I suspect PlayingCardsIndia manufactured the cards but I could be wrong.

We only got a single turn into the game,  but I think we understand how to play.  Simple game with a great theme: inflict as much misery on your family before delivering untimely deaths to them all.

We are very unimpressed with the quality of the box and the cards.  Much of the text is unreadable, the cards show creases and streaks right out of the box, and it seems like the game is unlikely to last for more than 10 plays or so.  Apparently some folks on the geek agree with this assessment.  Now I’m not saying we could do better – this has to be a difficult design and production challenge.  I just wish the end result looked better.  Maybe we’ll get a chance to play through it tomorrow.

The hotel here is very nice, other than the fact that we got stuck with smoking rooms.  They ionized the air pretty well and I can’t detect a trace of smoke in the room.  So I guess we are a step ahead of Essen.  Here’s the view from my room.

Tomorrow morning we’ll setup our meager Havoc display at around 11am in anticipation of the vendor area opening at 1pm.  I’ll be teaching a group how to play Antike around 4pm and hope to get in a good amount of gaming tomorrow night.  We also have a batch of prototypes from KC and others to try out each evening at 7pm.

I forgot to post a link to this cool article in the Sherwood Gazette (our local small-town rag) about Havoc.

It was my turn to host a Rip City game night.  My travel schedule has forced me to bow out of several of the last events and have someone else host in my place, so it was nice to finally have things work out.  We had a decent crowd of seven tonight.

Ken showed up a bit early so he, Matthew, and I tried out a round of Drive, the card game from SimplyFun for 2–4 players.  I never seem to get to play a full game of this because I’m always on my way to somewhere or something else.  It is a fun, easy to learn, light card game that seems to work just as well with 2 or 3 players.  Haven’t tried it with four yet.

Matthew fed me too many nice cards so I managed to win the hand easily.  Ken says he’d rather sit to the left of Matthew next game.

The rest of the crowd starting arriving promptly at 7pm.  Caylus was the universal choice for tonight, so Mike brought along his copy so we could run two games concurrently.  We opted to squeeze both games onto our dining room table to allow Mike and I to teach it together to everyone.  Well, I taught it verbally while Mike mimicked my sample plays and pantomimed some of the verbal commentary.  Quite amusing.

I mentioned before that I enjoyed Caylus but had some concerns about a runaway leader problem.  I felt much better about this playing, partly because I won (!), but mostly because I’m beginning to think the game justly rewards solid play.  I was much more prepared in this game and I think my adaptive strategy paid off.  Jim struggled with the rules, while George played a solid game and would likely give me a much better fight in a second playing.

I tried to play contrarian, avoiding the castle when I suspected others would go there and getting some early buildings out.  Going to the castle when you can build at least two sections seems to be a great way to economize on turns (I managed to build three at once in the second scoring phase).  I only made one minor planning error in the game – you’ve got to pay attention to your resources and plot out your move.  This becomes especially important as the number of options grows.

We started the instruction around 7:20pm and the game at 7:50 or 7:55pm.  We finished about 10:15pm.  I think with experienced players, a 3–4 player game should always finish in less than 2 hours.  Both games finished within 2 minutes of each other.  Ben apparently pulled out the victory in the other game.

For my first Essen Spiel report I thought I’d focus on the Sunriver Games booth.  This was such a learning experience for us rank amateurs, but I think we pulled it off with very few snafus.

Julie, the boys, and I arrived in Essen just after noon on Tuesday, October 11.  We checked into our room at the Hotel Arosa and started to notice some other gamer folks hanging around the hotel, including Lorna, Doug, and Mimi.  After grabbing a bite to eat, we walked over to the Messe so that I could check out the booth and see if our rented furniture had arrived.

It was a bit strange finding my way into the hall – I figured one of the main doors would be open to those with exhibitor passes.  I finally approached the security guard at the drive-in gate near the south entrance, showed him my pass, and he let me through.  I was surprised at how little had been setup yet – most notable was the Settlers of Catan Bus, but very few of the smaller exhibitor booths showed signs of any action yet.

I quickly found the way to our booth (4–52) but was slightly disappointed to see no furniture there.  I was stumped about how to resolve this, so I wandered around for a while looking for someone official.  Nobody looked official.  The most common site was folks drinking beer while constructing booths.

Eventually I referred to my layout map and discovered the service center over by Hall 5.  Inside the center I found a very helpful woman who noted my request for furniture, confirmed my reservation, and spent some time on the phone with someone.  About five minutes later she told me the furniture would be there within an hour.  I wasn’t going to setup Tuesday anyway, so it was good to know it would be in place for setup on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday morning we used our rental car to drop off all of the Havoc product.  You can drive a car into the parking setup area if you have an exhibitor pass and a 50 euro deposit, which you get back as long as you leave within an hour.  We hauled our goods the short trip through hall 5, through the 4A hallway, then to our booth in hall 4.  Still no furniture.  I walked back to the service center and they were surprised the furniture wasn’t there, got on the phone, and indicated that perhaps it was left at the wrong booth and that they would fix it promptly.  By the time I returned to the booth, a mover was carting our tables to our booth – they were sitting just behind our booth at another (4–62 I think).

Booth setup took very little time as we didn’t have much to do.  The biggest challenge was cutting down our fabric table covers to fit the tables.  In hindsight we wish we had brought a larger hanging tarp or cloth to drape from the booth wall.  To this we could have attached banners, price information, etc. without risk of damaging the walls.  As it was, we taped them to the booth walls but had a hard time getting the residue off at the end.

KC and I took a break from setup to attend the press event.  There were definitely some lessons learned here.  You need to let the Spiel folks that (1) you have a new product you are releasing at Essen, and (2) register to show that product at the press event. This would have allowed us to setup a small table on Tuesday or Wednesday morning with our goods and have a formal presence at the event.  As it was, we lurked, passed out cards pointing to our booth, and left some press flyers for folks to take (they were all taken within about 15 minutes).  So we did OK, but lesson learned for next year.

We stayed around the hall till early evening as we had a decent amount of traffic without the show even being open – we probably sold 10–20 copies of the game on Wed afternoon.  It was also a chance to checkout the used game vendors in hall 4 and see if there were any good deals.

Thursday morning presented a few logistics issues as we tried to coordinate pass purchases and get as many of our demo team in as early as possible.  I was able to buy three more exhibitor passes and hand those out, but there was no easy way to buy 4–day passes for general admission ahead of time.  Things worked out fine despite the huge crowds on Thursday morning.  By 10:30am our demos were in full swing.

We sold about 80 of our 310 games on the first day, which was a big surprise.  We extrapolated this out with some projected growth and though we might sell out as early as Saturday evening.  Thursday would turn out to be our best day, which I think is indication of some of the pre-show buzz we worked up and the niche attraction of Havoc: the Hundred Years War.  We would do reasonably well with walk-up sales, but due to the remote nature of our booth most folks that came by were looking for us.

We had a number of “celebrities” come by the booth.  Mik Svellov…

Andrea Meyer…

and Derk Solko came by and interviewed Jacob and Julie.

KC, Julie, Jacob, and I would have been overwhelmed giving demos were it not for the help of our demo assistants.  Doug, Mimi, Lorna (all pictured below), Mike, Richard, and Ben: thanks for your time and dedication to making this event work.  Ben and Mike both knocked our socks off by giving demos in German.  I think Mike even surprised himself.

Cleanup on Sunday evening was more about getting a TON of boxes ready to ship back with Funagain than actually cleaning up our booth, though we did need to expend some serious energy cleaning the booth walls of residue.  We wrapped up by around 7:15 and worked our way back to the hotel for a final evening of gaming.

Well, that about wraps it up.  The event was a great success on so many levels, new friendships were forged, and we met our objectives with Havoc.  We are already planning for our trip next year, and if things go well we might even have a booth again with another game to sell.

The transition from Koblenz into Koln is pretty dramatic – it became clear that we were leaving the hills and forest of southern / central Germany and heading into more flatlands with occasional rolling hills.  Our one destination in Koln was the famous Dom Cathedral, an impressive structure that dominates the landscape of the city.

The Dom is a major tourist attraction, and the crowds were the largest we had yet seen in Germany.  The inside is dramatic, with impressive stained glass and unbelievably tall ceilings.

We opted to climb the bell tower to get a sense for how tall the cathedral really was, as well as to get some needed exercise.  Along the way we passed the immense bells and large groups of tourists returning down the spiral stairs.  The stairs are actually in three discrete sections with two of them offering extremely narrow passage.

The view from the top made the climb worthwhile.  This is a good time to reflect on just how amazing the weather was for the trip: most days were clear, 60s to low 70s, and we barely noticed any precipitation for the entire 12 days of our trip.  This is as unusual in Germany in October as it is in Portland.

Our touring complete, we climbed in the car and completed the final drive into Essen to check into the Hotel Arosa.  It was a tad bittersweet, but everyone was ready to be done driving around and welcomed the chance to stay in the same room for several days.  Plus we had the Spiel fair to look forward to.  I’ll wrap up my Germany posts over the next few days with some detailed Essen reporting.

While we knew that day 5 would end in Koblenz, we weren’t sure until the day before what route we would take to get there.  We thought seriously about heading to the Mosel valley to visit Burg Eltz and some of the other sights along the way.  But missing the chance to drive up the most scenic portion of the Rhine valley was too much to risk, so we set off for the valley to see some castles.

One problem: the day was Monday, and most castles appear to be closed on Monday.  This meant that our day consisted of driving from one castle to the next and getting some nice photos from the outside. 

This made the boys a bit anxious (and disappointed) so we made sure to treat them with some solid playground time.

While navigating, Julie read ahead to see what other options we had to try and see something on Monday.  Castle Marksburg seemed a likely bet given the prominence of the castle as a tourist destination.  One problem: the castle is on the other side of the river, so this meant getting all the way to Koblenz, crossing the river, then doubling back to the south for a bit.  There was still the risk of the castle being closed, so we found our hotel and checked in around 4pm and kindly asked the friendly front desk clerk to see if the castle was open and till what time.  We brought our luggage to the room then checked back with him – the castle was open!  But it was going to close at 5pm!  Quick kids, jump in the car so we can storm the castle…

Turns out the castle was open until 6pm, but the final tour started at 5pm.  We made it in plenty of time and joined a German language tour.  This was Julie’s favorite castle as it has the distinction of being one of the few (the only?)castles in the area to have not been sacked at some point, so it lacked the baroque or neo-classical treatments so common in the other castles that were rebuilt in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The castle is situated on a hill overlooking the Rhine and offers spectacular views.

Monday night we did a walking tour of Koblenz and enjoyed the peaceful riverfront.  Situated at the junction of the Rhine and the Mosel rivers is the Deutsches Eck with an imposing statue of Kaiser Wilhelm.  We all enjoyed climbing to the top of the statue base and watching the sunset over the Mosel.

We finished the evening with a nice Italian dinner in an open air plaza.  Jacob also got in a brief blogging session with the BlackBerry.

The next day would conclude the touring portion of our trip as we finish at Essen.  But not before a brief stop in Koln…

The old part of Heidelberg is striking – an old ruined castle looms over a beautiful German village.  We were fortunate enough to have a hotel room in the Parkhotel Atlantic, which is located above the castle with amazing views of the city.

This room was substantially better than our room in Tubingen but was identically priced (about 140 euro for the night, including breakfast).  It was nice to have some space to move around, though with a shared bed one of the boys opted to sleep on the floor each night.  The boys caught up on homework and did a bit of blogging the first night we arrived.  We stayed close to the hotel for dinner, dining at the Wolfsbrunnen restaurant.  This was our finest dining of the trip but was still very affordable. 

The next day (Sunday) was spent hiking around Heidelberg.  The castle is more impressive from far away than it is from the inside – it was all a bit touristy.  The one exception was the apothecary museum, which is first rate and very educational with detailed descriptions in English.

The city itself was a pleasure to stroll through, with many historical buildings and the famous bridge spanning the river Neckar.  The highlight was the Holy Ghost Church, and a climb to the top of the tower is highly recommended.

Next up is a drive up the Rhine valley to the lovely town of Koblenz.

Day 3 begin with our departure from Tubingen and a drive back north toward Heidelberg.  We planned for two stops along the way – Ludwigsburg Palace and the monastery at Maulbronn.

After some small challenges parking (we started by trying to drive straight through the palace gate, but the guard would have none of that and sent us over to park below the department store) we entered the palace grounds by about 10:30am.  Note that this is a palace, not a castle.  Think estate, mansion, playground with the mistress.  The grounds were huge, and we only sampled a small part of it.  The best comparison I can think of is Versailles, but not quite as baroque.

(Note: that’s not our rental car in the picture above)

We took the English tour which was well worthwhile, and really the only way to see the interesting parts inside the palace.  The guide was German-speaking but French, and her English was more than adequate for the tour.  The back story is the most interesting part of the tour.

We of course had to check out the game section of the department store; while not quite as impressive as the game store I saw in Frankfurt earlier this year, it still went way beyond what you see anywhere in America but the niche hobby game stores. 

Next up was the drive to Maulbronn on the way to Heidelberg.

Julie and I greatly enjoyed the visit to the cloister; the boys were less impressed.  I think Julie and I preferred the more subdued architectural lines and stark nature of the monastery, while the boys prefer the gaudiness of the palace.

The name Maulbronn actually means “mule fountain”, and the town is famous for the legend of its founding:

Where the Eselsbrunnen ("mule fountain") stands today is where the mule was reputed to have stopped and quenched its thirst at a stream. The monks saw this as a sign from God and it was there that they decided to build the monastery.

To this very day, the legend lives on in the name of the town (Maulbronn literally meaning "mule fountain"), the coat of arms of the town and the etching of the mule drinking from the water in the arched vault of the fountain house.

We finished the day with the drive to Heidelberg, which will be the subject of my next post.