We made it safe and sound to the Arosa in two taxis. It is almost fortunate that three of our bags didn't make it (they are held up in Frankfurt and will arrive later today) as we wouldn't have fit in two cabs. The hotel is just as we remember from last year with a nice surprise waiting for us in the lobby: three large boxes from Ludo Pakt containing our first shipment of 24/7: the Game! I got some choice photos of Carey unpacking and opening the first box - we are very pleased with the quality and everyone was able to breathe a huge sigh of relief (what do you do if the games don't show up?). After unpacking it is off to the Messe to check out our digs, make sure the furniture arrived, and start setting up the booth.

Customs and security didn't slow us down too much and we are sitting on a B737 for our flight to Dusseldorf. Carey, Linda, KC, Marty (KC's dad), and Lorna Wong are all with me on this flight. We'll split two cabs for our trip to the Hotel Arosa. Hopefully our luggage will make it given the tight connection. This is my 3rd time in Frankfurt this year for a connection, though the first time I'll be staying in Germany since last year's Essen trip. The rest of today will involve staying awake (maybe a run in the park?), getting settled in the hotel, and prepping for setup tomorrow at the show. More on that soon - we should have a much nicer setup this year.

Racing to catch our flight to Dusseldorf. Hopefully they'll hold the flight or we may arrive in Essen much later than palnned!

The time is quickly approaching where I'll board a Lufthansa flight here in Portland to join a bunch of my partners and friends for the trek to Essen.  Sunriver Games will again have a booth at the fair (hall 4, booth 69) and we'll be selling 24/7: the Game, Abagio, Havoc: the Hundred Years War, and the Havoc Expansion.

Preparing for the show has been nowhere near as involved and tiring as last year.  Ludo Fact handled all of the final production for 24/7 and the first set of copies will be delivered directly to our booth.  Quite a bit easier than hand assembling, shrinkwrapping, and carting the games to Essen in our luggage.

Not to say that we don't need to bring any games with us.  We are going to take about 35 copies of Abagio and KC came up with the brilliant idea of packing 4 Havocs inside each Abagio box (yes, there's an excess of air in the box).  This will allow us to bring about 100 copies of Havoc (supply is dwindling, and what we have leftover after the show will be sold through Funagain).  There are currently no plans for a reprint though we will reconsider in 2007.

We have a few special promotions going on at the show:

• We are giving away some very nice "Gamers Do It 24/7" buttons to folks that try a demo of 24/7: the Game at our booth.
• We will be giving away the very cool Start Spieler spinning fingers to folks that spend 20€ or more at our booth.
• We are running some 24/7 contests and raffle giveaways of a very nice handmade wooden board for the game.  We will also raffle off some spiffy Sunriver Games t-shirts.

We also managed to pack our buttons and the Havoc Expansion into the dead space in the Abagio boxes.

Carey purchased three travel trunks to cart all of the goods.  With my Star Alliance Gold status, I should be able to check all three of the trunks without any extra cost with Lufthansa.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) this should give us lots of space to pack up purchased games on the home trip.

If you are heading to the show, you might enjoy listening to my segment in the Dice Tower, episode 23 where I talk about 10 things you need to know about going to Essen.  See you at the show!

I recently picked up the Avalon Hill game Nexus Ops from Toys R Us (great deal - $19.99 with free shipping) and we all sat down to give it a try today.  The game is meant to be a fast-moving build-your-units-and-attack style game and it certainly achieves this goal.  Originally it was just going to be the three boys playing, but Jacob and Matthew managed to talk Julie into joining us.

Each player starts with some money (Rubium), with early player advantage offset by a lower starting bankroll.  On your turn you produce units, move them, flip over any discovered exploration tiles (which can be mines, new units, or both), resolve combat, receive income from mines, and finally draw a secret mission card.

The goal is to achieve 12 victory points (we set our limit at 10 to speed up the game), and you get victory points primarily by attacking and winning.  There are other ways to get points - Secret Mission cards - but most of those involve winning battles in certain locations, winning with certain kinds of units, or destroying certain kinds of enemy units.  Given that all players are racing to the VP condition, there's no way a player can turtle and build up and win the game.  This keeps the game moving quickly and encourages confrontation.

Matthew raced out to an early lead with 5 VPs while the rest of us were at 1 or 2.  The rest of us caught up quickly and we were facing a close contest with everyone in the 5-7 point range.  On what turned out to be the last turn of the game, Jacob asked me if I was going to be able to win on my turn (I think I had 6 points at the time) and when I said "no" he said "oh, I think I will then."  And he did, winning a few one-sided battles that triggered some 2 point secret mission VP cards.  Final score was Jacob: 10, Chris: 9, Julie: 7, and Matthew: 5.

Ratings on the game by the group were high - all 8s and 7s.  Given the short play length (easily played in an hour or slightly more depending on the ending conditions) I think this one will come out more than usual.

Time for a quick update on my unplayed games burndown project.  In my last update, I mentioned that I need to kick the playing and possibly the getting-rid-of into high gear.  I think I did pretty well in August and September.

The top line (red plus the blue) shows the overall size of my game collection that has been unplayed at some point in the year.  It dropped down significantly in August as I sold and donated a number of games.  It bumped up a bit as I picked up a few games: Antiquity, Roads and Boats, and Canal Mania, but net I made good progress.  I'm down to about 30 or so to play, so I should be in good shape by the end of the year.  The key, though, is this: not buying games at Essen that I don't play at Essen!

Nearly a month ago I spent the better part of a Saturday over at Doug's to play the Splotter game Antiquity.  Doug already did a great job of describing the session in detail, so I'll limit my commentary here to my impressions.

We started the game using the forgiving beginner rules - no polution, no famine.  As a group we decided to kick it in around the 5th or 6th turn.  In hindsight, it would have been better to start with those rules or not use them at all.  We just weren't ready to handle it, and as we scrambled to prepare a few of us came precariously close to a death spiral.  Much of my first town filled up with graves, though I built a second town in time to provide some space for new buildings.

Down-time can be a problem with the game if the players aren't taking about the same time for each move.  Even though much of the game can be played with parallel activity, I still found myself waiting quite a bit.  No dig on the other players at all - it is a very thoughtful game!  Still, I'm not sure a 3rd and 4th player adds much to the game, as you spend the first half in solitaire mode and the second half bumping into 1 or maybe 2 other players.  I think the right way for me to play this game is with 2 players - it will play faster and will be just as enjoyable.

As it was, we didn't manage to finish the game as I had to get home for some guests that were having dinner with us.  I felt liked I played the game enough to understand all the mechanics and look forward to trying it again, perhaps with Jacob or Ken.  This is a pretty brutal game as far as planning and forecasting go - I compare it to predicting cashflow in a business.  Matthew wouldn't be ready for it yet, but I think Jacob would enjoy it if he's in the right state of mind.

I'm running a weekly morning gaming class for kids at Archer Glen Elementary.  On this page you can find a list of games we'll be playing this year as well as links to Funagain Games where you can purchase most of the games.  Another local option for finding these games is the wonderful Rainy Day Games store in Aloha.  The SimplyFun games listed at the bottom can be purchased through my friend and SimplyFun consultant Mike Deans.  This is a page I expect to update from time to time, so I'll keep a permanent link on the home page.

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From SimplyFun games:

    

I broke down and purchased the newest Ragnar Brothers game Canal Mania after reading the Counter review and seeing some positive buzz online.  Seeing that folks were comparing it to games like Volldampf and Ticket to Ride really piqued my interest so I took a chance.

The components are very high quality and I suspect better than any game Ragnar has done to date.  The board is thick with a linen finish and I found it fairly usable.  The main complaint is that it is hard to read the city names when you have barges and goods cubes on them.  Set in the late 18th / early 19th century, the game is about the frenzy of canal building that happened in England before trains took over.  But at its heart this really is "just another train game".

Each player randomly assumes the role of one of five different engineers that grant special abilities - these roles will change (view them as consultants working for your business and expect them to be hired away by the competition).  The basic idea of the game is to build canals between cities according to contracts granted by parliament (e.g., build a canal from Leeds to Liverpool).  Points are scored for using special kinds of canal tiles (locks, aqueducts, and tunnels) but not for the basic "stretch" tiles that are plain jane canals.  The catch is that you can never place two of the same kind of tile in a row along a canal.

You build canals by playing cards from your hand that can be drafted during your turn.  Similar to Ticket to Ride, the general idea is that you can draft cards or build canals but not both on a given turn.  So... the basic way to score points is to pick up contracts (you must always be working on at least one contract, but you can hold no more than two)and build canals to finish the contracts.  Contracts don't score points directly, but there's a nice bonus at the end (depends on the number of players) for completing the most.

The other way you can score points is by transporting goods.  At the end of your turn you can transport a good between two towns.  The last link followed by the good must be one of your own, but it can pass through others' towns along the way.  The restriction is that a good can only go through each color once, including the start and end town (I believe there are six different colors).

Instead of doing an action in a phase, you can always choose to draw a card from the top of the face-down build deck.  So if there are no goods to transport, you can always take a free card.

I played with KC, Rita, and Carey, and KC stomped us.  He mostly raced ahead through shipping goods, taking advantage of the replenishment rules that keep bringing goods back to towns that are connected to canals.  I didn't really think that through and left some goods around in my towns, wanting to wait until the routes got juicier and would score more points.  I didn't take into consideration that it would be fairly easy to get goods back (goods replenishment is triggered by picking up build cards with a goods symbol on them) into those towns, so I probably wasted 3-4 turns about about 6-12 points being cautious.

I'm pleased with the game overall and think the team did a good job with development - it is fairly streamlined and easy to play once you get past a few of the special rules.  I would put it in between Age of Steam and Ticket to Ride in complexity, and probably closer to the Ticket to Ride side of the spectrum.

I'll be at the Essen Spiel show again this year and while I don't expect to be online with the laptop much (if at all - it is expensive!) I'd like to be able to easily mail in posts from my BlackBerry. So consider this a first test. I've got a bunch of stuff to talk about regarding Essen, Sunriver Games, and gaming in general so expect to see a lot of posting over the next 2 weeks.