Fair and convention season is upon us! I’ve been to SPIEL in Essen in October (together with Michal from The Boardgames Chronicle), and I’ve seen so many other board game writers go BottosCon, SDHistCon, or one of the many...
Fair and convention season is upon us! I’ve been to SPIEL in Essen in October (together with Michal from The Boardgames Chronicle), and I’ve seen so many other board game writers go BottosCon, SDHistCon, or one of the many other great events held in fall. For my second and last event this fall, I’ve been to the Süddeutsche Spielemesse (Southern German Games Fair).
One of the nice things about the fair is that it is held concurrently with a lot of other fairs (your ticket entitles you to visit all of them): You can check out the animal fair, the gems and jewellery fair, the food fair, and quite a few more. The hall with the board game fair also houses model trains, creativity and photography equipment, and lots of very dedicated Lego models.
The Süddeutsche Spielemesse itself is decidedly a post-SPIEL affair: As all the shiny new things have already been shown off, there are not a lot of booths for you to get quick glimpses of games. Instead, you can get all the hot new titles (and older ones at a discount) for sale (without the lines, and usually the uncertainty of SPIEL), and there are a lot of options where you can just sit down and play games for an extended period. It’s a bit of a crossover between a fair and a convention. The convention feel is particularly strong on Friday: Most of the booths close at the usual time at 6pm, but the big “gaming island” in the middle of the hall remains open until 10pm – just lots of tables and games which you can check out for free.
Here’s what I played:
It’s a Wonderful Kingdom (Frédéric Guérard, La Boîte de Jeu) was recommended to us by the friendly folk of Game-Point Bietigheim, a local non-commercial board games meetup which runs the gaming island. It’s a tactical engine-building game. First, players distribute the cards in a “I Cut, You Choose” way, then they opt if to start constructing the cards they got or to recycle them for resources (which you’ll need for construction), and then they produce more resources with their completed cards. There was a certain sense of scarcity in our games:
It’s hard to complete cards to begin with Cards often don’t produce for long (the game lasts only four rounds) While you’re trying to score points (none of us was ever able to out-score the negative points we each got from catastrophes), you also want to complete a mission (without which you cannot win in the module we played).It was an okay game, but neither of us would put it on a Christmas wishlist.
Mindbug (Skaff Elias/Richard Garfield/Marvin Hegen/Christian Kudahl, Nerdlab Games) takes inspiration from co-designer Richard Garfield’s Magic: The Gathering. Your goal is to reduce your opponent’s life to 0 by attacking with a host of devilish creatures, ranging from a Rhino Turtle to a Kangasaurus Rex. Countering your opponent’s creatures with the right antidotes is key – as is knowing when to employ your Mindbug cards which allow you to take control of a creature your opponent just played. The game plays so quickly that we managed five games In slightly over an hour. As I was defeated each time, you probably shouldn’t take strategy advice from me, but I had a great time playing it… and would have been up for a sixth game, if time had permitted it.
What are your favorite local board game fairs and conventions? Let me know in the comments!