Naturelich Games

At Essen we played a couple of games. Although we would have loved to play more there is only a limited number of new stuff I can digest. The four Essen days are extremely dense and we wanted to try some games after the fair.

Games Played at Essen

• BattleLore: We were able to get a table to play and pre-order Battlelore. Days of Wonder was demoing a simple Battlelore version which felt like Memoir 44 but is already better. In Germany, the fantasy theme will be much much more popular and politically correct than the WWII Memoir '44. Battlelore is starting off much slower than Memoir. It took a couple of turns before the first unit was hit and later taken off the board. This is due to some nice twists to the rules which lets the forces get closer to each other before big damage can be done. The mana was an extremely important element that allows to finish off injured enemy units. Results for the Zauberer und Macht scenario: Shelak 5, Naturelich 6
• Blue Moon City: This earlier Nuremberg 2006 release was nominated for this year's Spiel des Jahres. Although Blue Moon City did not win, we liked the game although I personally feel no need to own it. While Pegasus was giving away two promo cards for the original Blue Moon game, the Knizia Almanach contains new tiles for Blue Moon City. This game went pretty well for Raven. At first I did not seem to understand the mechanism but later got better into the game. Results: Shelak 2, Raven 5, Naturelich 3
• Cleopatra and the Society of Architects: This Days of Wonder game had been released a couple of months ago, pre-Essen. Since we did not get a chance to play it, we immediately grabbed a free DoW table. The game explanation took pretty long, but was well done. The game has a lot of interesting mechanisms, however, the end felt a little bit long and repetitive. Shelak was playing very clever in this game as he was able to keep control of the traitor-markers. Yours truly was not as lucky and got to know what an unhappy Cleopatra can do. Rumor goes, Naturelich has survived the attack of the alligators, but it will take another CATSOA game to know for sure. Results: Shelak 33, Raven 24, Naturlich (killed in action)
• Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod: This game is for school kids. It is based on a famous funny book that makes fun of the current state of th German language. This game is obviously not recommended if you are not a native speaker. Works best for children. Results: Shelak 18, Raven 20, Naturelich 22
• Gemblo: This Korean game regularly gets high praise on a popular podcast. Therefore, I had to talk Raven and Shelak into playing. The rules were easily explained and the nice game explainer also joined our game. Gemblo is not bad but felt a little bit too abstract for my taste. Shelak did particularly well and won by quite a margin: Results: Shelak 7 (negative points), Raven 19, Naturelich 19.
• Inka: Inka is an older release from Queen Games. We had played Der Dieb von Bagdad before and decided to try another small box game. The publisher has a big sale of his small box games and Inka sounded interesting for a quick buy. Unfortunately, the game did not turn out to be among the high standard of this year's releases. In the end, I was able to win the game.
• Kabale und Hiebe: This Hans im Glück release looked pretty interesting. This card game comes in a smaller-than-HiG-usual box. The game was explained extremely well, although almost every card had to be adressed separately. The game has a nice mechanism and might make a good filler. Based on the one game I was not yet able to make-up my mind whether I should like the game. It certainly deserves a second and a third play. The game itself felt rather close although the final results proved us wrong. Raven won by quite a margin as she was able to get all 6 different card types - which scores 30 extra points: Results: Shelak 14, Raven 59, Naturelich 19
• Kampf um Rom: Kosmos, Klaus Teuber. A must-try game. Kampf um Rom is pretty close to a wargame. Although players do not fight each other directly the game is very confrontational. The map depicts Europe in the usual Catan-like tiles. I enjoyed the game a lot although we got pretty bored at the end. Kampf um Rom felt repetitive at the end and it was not really compelling. Despite this impression our game was very close and was won by a short margin, where two players had the same amount of victory points (the turn is played until the end) but a different purse. Results: Shelak 10 (3 money), Raven 10 (4 money), Naturelich 7 (but also only one turn away from victory...)
• Taluva: My personal favorite of the show. Taluva plays very fast and can be very tense. The components are beautiful and the rules are simple. The first game was pretty close and we had to learn a lot of strategies that we applied in a couple of games in the evening. Results: Shelak 3rd place, Raven 2nd place, Naturelich 1st place.

Games Acquired

I was able to buy quite a number of games. Some of them were blind buys, where I just could not resist. I doubt that they will all work out well for me, but the majority is pretty interesting. When do I get to play more...?

• Alhambra - Das Würfelspiel
• Die Macher
• Die Siedler von Catan - Die große Karawance
• Hameln
• Imperial
• Meastro Leonardo - Codex Leonardi II
• Power Grid - Benelux / Central Europe (Funkenschlag - Erweiterung Zentraleuropa/Benelux)
• Shogun
• Space Dealer
• Taj Mahal
• Taluva
• Tempus
• Thurn und Taxis - Der Kurier der Fürstin
• Ticket to Ride: USA 1910

Games Played at Home (after Essen)

We played a couple of games in the evening hours. Since we were all pretty exhausted after the show we did not get to play as much as I would have liked to. However, the games we played were big fun. Particularly Space Dealer was interesting and I will have to play this again some time soon...

• Start Player


• Space Dealer


• Taluva