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This report is based on my experiences during a visit to the Marcham Games Convention near Reading in Berkshire, a gathering of 40-60 people for 12 hours of games playing. I'd like to particularly thank the organisers: Mark, Mark, Nick et al. It was friendly, well-organised and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
I wanted to concentrate on new games, mostly those I recently bought in Essen. You might also like to look at my board games pages.
You can click on any pictures for a larger version (each about 30Kb in size).
If you have any comments, or have found any errors or omissions, please drop me an email.
This is a step-up in production quality from previous Friedemann Friese games, which could sometimes look pretty basic. In it, you're moving on foot or by ferry between merchants and traders, buying and selling various goods and manipulating the stock market to help yourself - or hinder others!
The mechanisms hung together well, but I suspect we'll create a house rule to ensure merchants producing, and traders buying, the same type of goods, are not next to each other.
The unique aspect of this game is that up to 15 people can play with three copies of the game simultaneously, moving between tables at will. Having played the game on one table, I think it will work well and be even more enjoyable.
Rules in English are available as a PDF file from BoardgameGeek.
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This Italian card game has rules in English as well as dual-language on the cards - or perhaps I should say duel language as this is a showdown in the Wild West!
The Sheriff is battling it out with some outlaws with the aid of his loyal deputy, but a renegade is hoping to eliminate everyone else and become Sheriff himself. Only the Sheriff reveals himself at the beginning, but it soon becomes obvious who the bad guys are!
The game is quick, taking between 20-40 minutes a game, so if you're shot, you won't have to wait too long for your revenge.
It has some interesting mechanisms, is easy to learn and fun. If you like Don Pepe, you'll enjoy this too!
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Abenteuer Menschheit or The Ascent of Man is the latest in the Settlers saga - or perhaps I should say, the earliest!
The board looks fantastic and much of the game will be familiar to anyone who's ever played Settlers.
The raw materials in this game are furs, flint, meat and bones. Instead of playing roads, you pay meat to enable your nomads to explore.
All the players start in Africa and expand into the other continents, but beware - Africa becomes increasingly desertified through the game, so if you don't move, you won't prosper.
It'll take a few games to work out the best strategies, but from my game, I discovered some of the worst! I'm looking forwards to trying this again soon.
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This game is the first from JKLM Games and was designed by Markus Welbourne. It was hand-made in a limited edition, but I was a little disappointed in the quality of the bits. Many of the hexagons are already coming unstuck, and they are a very tight fit in the board. The cards are also difficult to shuffle and some were bent. I don't think the game will withstand many playings and will need some repairs before a second game.
Having said that, I think there's a good game in there, with some novel mechanisms.
You discard two cards and choose three from the five on offer. Then you dig. A basic dig costs two cards, so if you just dig, you'll run out. The alternative is to give up some gems or rocks you've already dug to do other things, and these end up on the rubble piles.
Rocks allow you to pick up gems from the rubble pile and this is very powerful. Overall, a good game - a must-buy if a second edition is better-made.
Whilst playing it, I couldn't stop singing to myself, "We'll dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig the whole day through..."
I've enjoyed all the Cwali games I've bought, but being cylindrical, they are difficult to stack on my shelves!
This is a price worth playing though, as this bidding game is as great as it looks. It feels short and tight, as there isn't much money around to bid for attractions for your Zoo, but if you don't spend, you don't earn.
There are five rounds and in each, five zoo-tiles are auctioned. The newest and biggest attractions receive the most visitors - but most are lured from other zoos! If paths make a complete loop, you get extra permanent visitors. Each round is worth more victory points, so don't get complacent if you want to win.
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This game was nearly a disaster, as we missed a couple of important rules. After twenty minutes or so, tempers were fraying, and we nearly abandoned it. Luckily, we pored over them again (both pages) and realised what we had missed.
The game is poking gentle fun at the D&D brigade.
You turn over a dungeon card and if you disturb a monster, you have to fight it. The main rules we missed were that if you don't get a monster, you can optionally fight one from your hand or pick another card from the deck. It might be an item that you can play, or it might be a curse you can cast on another player.
It is particularly fun to watch a player think he's about to defeat a puny monster, only for it to get a lot bigger and meaner!
After the inauspicious beginning, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, especially when being mean to everyone else - as I was about to win the game by slaying a vicious Tongue Demon, it was hit by a friendship potion, suddenly turned friendly and wandered off, leaving Tom to pulverise a level one Lame Goblin for a well-deserved win. Curses!
On re-reading the rules, I found another couple of rules we'd missed that would have further improved the game (e.g. if someone helps you, they automatically acquire all your advantages and disadvantages in combat, as well as their own). I look forward to playing it again and will probably buy the expansion pack and a similar game, Chez Geek.
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By now it was getting late, so we only played this one halfway through.
You auction rights to various fantasy items. such as armour, swords, potions and magic items.
Then you fix your selling price, but if any other players undercut you, you end up with unsold stock and no money!
Deals are made and sometimes broken.
There were special cards, which seemed very powerful - perhaps too powerful. It could have been a shuffling problem, but there seemed to be an awful lot of them - I'd be inclined to remove some cards, and maybe some type of card completely.
I'd like to thank everyone you played with me, not least for putting up with my laboured explanations of the rules of games I'd never played! I hope they enjoyed them as much as I did - the games that is, not the rules!
I look forward to playing these games again, but I still have two dozen other games from Essen 2002 which I haven't played yet...
Roll on the next Marcham Con!
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: © Mike Bliss 2008