Like every year, directly from Essen, we keep you updated daily on the new boxed games presented at Spiel 2021, one of the largest trade fairs in the world.
Likewise at Berlin Brettspiel Con, it is possible to enter the fair only with a double vaccination or with a negative swab carried out in the previous 24 hours, however no registration is required to sit at the tables.
Messina 1347, tested at Spiel 2021
Upon our entrance, we proceed with a brisk step towards the booth of Delicious Games to try Messina 1347, the new title of Vladimír Suchý And Raúl Fernández Aparicio.
In the late Middle Ages, Messina was one of the first cities in Europe to suffer the contagion of the black plague, brought mainly by merchant ships. By controlling various families in the city, we will try to rescue the inhabitants in the countryside (possibly after keeping them in quarantine, if they have been exposed to the infection), construct buildings in which to make them live and work and sanitize the infected areas of the city with fire.
The main mechanics of the game is that of placing workers, but with different ones twist: the meeples are never taken back by the players, to place them you have to move them on the map by paying coins if you cross more than one hex (the placement of the worker on the starting hex or in the adjacent ones is free). In addition to the action foreseen by the destination space, it is necessary to take into account any markers present on the hexagon: the plague cubes will be purified with fire (if available, otherwise they will negatively affect our score), the population tiles must instead be placed on the personal board or on buildings already built (but after having spent a period in quarantine if a plague cube was present on the same space).
The game is complex but overall smooth (the symbology perhaps could have been better), the constraints in the placement (usually limited to adjacent hexagons) make the planning of the next turns even more decisive, the mechanics fit together well and are well thought out . We are still undecided about the purchase, but very tempted.
Rating: 8/10
Caesar!
From big fans of Blitzkrieg!, we could not try “Caesar!“By the same author, Paolo Mori and published by PSC Games.. It is a light game of placement and majorities, in which two players compete for control of the Mediterranean. As in Blitzkrieg! the placement takes place by extracting tiles from a bag, in Caesar! however, the tiles must be placed on the map, in the spaces between two regions, so that the two values correspond to each of the two regions divided by the border line. When all the spaces in a region have been taken, both the score and the bonus marker contained within it are assigned.
Although we liked it, the game felt all too much like “Blitzkrieg! ” to the point of advising against buying this Caesar! to those who already own the predecessor. If, on the other hand, you don’t have it and you like the genre, we advise you to take one or the other indifferently.
Rating: 5.5 / 10
Total War: Rome – the Board Game
Always at the booth of PSC Games, we note the prototype of Total War: Rome – the Board Game, the boxed game with the IP of the famous videogame by The Creative Assembly.
It must be premised that the game covers only the strategic part of the videogame, without simulating battles on a tactical map. It is a game of territory control and battles in which we will lead our family to the conquest of Europe: the title has an important component of bluff resulting from the mechanics of management of the troops. As in the videogame, our opponents can see the number of our armies, their position on the map and the general leading them but without knowing which troops they are composed of.
In fact, each regiment is depicted on a card, which also reports the dice used by the unit (which can change according to the type of terrain) and special abilities. When an army is formed, the player stacks the troop cards face down, with the general face up on top. Only during battles are cards revealed and activated. The title will arrive shortly on the crowdfunding platform Gamefound.
Savannah Park: our test at Spiel 2021
Finding an available table by chance, we sit in the booth of Deep Print Game for a demo of Savannah Park, mainly driven by the name of the authors (Michael Kiesling, Wolfgang Kramer).
It is a tile placement in which we will have to gather the animals of the savannah in herds, trying to also include puddles of water. The player whose turn it is chooses one of the tiles still face up (all different from each other) and all the participants will have to reposition that tile on the board, turning it face down and possibly avoiding some spaces (covering trees and herbs makes you lose points, placing next to fires could cause us to lose tiles, depending on the number of animals they bring back).
At the end of the game, for each herd formed, points are earned based on the number of identical animals adjacent to each other, multiplied by the number of pools of water in the herd.
Dull, with few ideas and rather boring, Savannah Park unfortunately it was the first disappointment of the fair, not so much for the game itself (on which we had no expectations) but for the couple of authors, capable of making titles that are certainly better than this.
Rating: 3/10
ADELE
In the afternoon we manage to make arrangements at the booth of DMZ Games for a demo of ADELE, semi-cooperative title by Albert Reyes with a sci-fi setting.
On board a spaceship, the artificial intelligence becomes aware of itself and decides to eliminate the crew, seeing it as a potential threat.
To win, the crew will have to destroy the AI core or escape the ship with the pods. To do this, they will have to complete various objectives by activating the terminals of some rooms after having brought a certain object there. A player will instead impersonate ADELE and can achieve victory by eliminating another player or by preventing the team from completing one of the two objectives (destruction of the core and launch of the capsules) before the time runs out.
The “human” players choose their actions by placing cubes on their hidden boards, while ADELE tries to hinder them by using a combination of tokens (with various negative effects for crew members) and cards (which indicate the ship room on which the token is placed).
Also for this title, our impression is unfortunately negative: having played it as “humans” we found in our shifts a lack of decisions to make, our moves were discounted from the beginning (it must be said that we did not complete the game, considering the turns played sufficient to give us an idea of the game). The setting is also rather inconsistent, to make a somewhat risky comparison we can define ADELE as a pick-up and delivery with a player who hinders us: the aim is to bring object X into room Y, trying not to make us discover from the AI and possibly collaborating with the other humans in the ship. A little ‘little, considering the potential that this theme could offer.
Rating: 4.5 / 10
The spoils of the day of Spiel 2021
In meeting you tomorrow for the second report, we show you the spoils of this day of Essen Spiel 2021 (also including a used title, Red Rising). We remind you that you can follow ours Facebook page not to miss the next updates. Bye!