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[Thisisnotasmile]

This is one for the TTA lot. Today, being the first day of Essen, sees the release of Nations. I've not seen anyone talking about it here yet but I've been getting pretty excited for it. I'm not at Essen but a friend is going and will be buying me a copy of the game. Has anyone else got this on their radar?

I thought the designer diaries posted on BGG were really interesting, a bit like the Dominion secret histories and pre-release previews all in one (well... 40). Definitely worth a read if you want to see what the game is about.

[Tables]

I read the designer histories, it looks really exciting. Reading the rulebook now.

[Ratsia]

I've not seen anyone talking about it here yet but I've been getting pretty excited for it. I'm not at Essen but a friend is going and will be buying me a copy of the game.

Hope your friend was quick; apparently the English versions were sold out very early.

I haven't played Nations myself, but I know quite a few people who have played prototypes at various stages as it is a local game. Most seem to rate if fairly high and the overall comments have been positive, but I haven't heard the kind of praise the Finnish community had for Eclipse at the same stage (then again, the designer was also a lot more closely tight with the community). It's definitely on my radar, but sounds awfully difficult to balance.


The biggest hit at Essen would seem to be Amerigo by Feld. I should have chance to try out most of the new releases around Halloween; the biggest Con in Finland is always right after Essen and there are enough crazy people who go there to buy effectively all of the new games.

[Tables]

Okay, I want to give this game a go now, having read all the stuff. It sounds like it could be a really great game. Then again, maybe it just won't play that well, or just be a miss for me, or whatever. Like I already spotted a few possible issues (notably with war: You can defeat yourself with a war, or if you're scared of them, you can grab a war to make yourself immune to other players wars, since there's only one war per age - at least if I've read all this right).

[Watno]

Sadly I didn't get to play much at Essen this year, since I was working there on Thursday and Friday, and decided not to go on Sunday.
It was really crowded on Saturday, and since I know people who bought most of the interesting games, i didn't make too much effort waiting for free tables: From what I have seen, there are several games that look quite interesting, but nothing really stands out yet.
Amerigo is the one where I see most potential for it being absolutely amazing. Some others, like Nations, Glass Road as well as Caverna will probably be quite good, but I think they might feel similar to other games.
I'm also curious to how Tash-Kalar will feel. It doesn't sound to interesting, but I think all of Vlaada's games are at least very good, so this one can't be bad.
I got to look at the Galaxy Trucker app, which looks quite promising, and I think I'll probably buy that one when it comes out. There's also an upcoming TTA up, in case some of our addicts didn't already know.
Something I'm quite sad to have missed is Might & Magic Heroes (as well as Patchhistory of course), which was sold out, and I don't think anyone I know got one.
A game I tried and that was really fun, but doesn't get as much talk as I think it deserves is Mascarade. The only drawback is it apparently doesn't work well with less than 6 players. But if you play with a big group regularly
and don't mind some Chaos, I highly recommend looking at it.
I ended up only taking home some light fun games I can play with housemates and fellow students (when I play heavier games, I usually play those with people who own them anyway, which is quite useful , namely Escape, a mini edition of Gift Trap, as well as the new German edition of Time's Up.
I alreay had a lot of fun with the first two and hope the get Time's Up played as well soon.
Really looking forward to trying the other new stiff as well.

[Tables]

I heard there was something new with TtA going on... do you know roughly what it is? New edition, official expansion etc.?

[Watno]

Only heard about the app (and it being cloned by Nations )
The good news however is: BGO isn't going down.

[Thisisnotasmile]

This is the first I've heard of the TTA app. Is it going to be available on Android devices?

[Thisisnotasmile]

I've not seen anyone talking about it here yet but I've been getting pretty excited for it. I'm not at Essen but a friend is going and will be buying me a copy of the game.

Hope your friend was quick; apparently the English versions were sold out very early.

This post worried me slightly as I'd not heard anything else about stock levels at Essen, but this report from the designer has rased my hopes. It did sell out quick but extra stock was brought in which lasted pretty much until the end of the con. Now I just need to hear from my friend... I have a feeling he got stuck on the continent yesterday with  pretty much every transport connection to the south of Britain cancelled.

[Watno]

This is the first I've heard of the TTA app. Is it going to be available on Android devices?

I think I only explicitely asked about Galaxy trucker,  but can't imagine TTA being different: they're planning to release on iOs, android, as well as windows, though the iOs version might come ahead of the others.
From what I saw of the apps,  the already look more polished than Goko does today.

[Thisisnotasmile]

Just been told my Nations has survived the storm and has arrived in York! My girlfriend's working late for the next couple of nights so I'm going to solo it to death. 5 o'clock can't come soon enough.

[Ratsia]

Just been told my Nations has survived the storm and has arrived in York! My girlfriend's working late for the next couple of nights so I'm going to solo it to death. 5 o'clock can't come soon enough.

Might not matter that much for solo games, but apparently you should take seriously the recommendations for the setup. The game comes with a huge pile of cards out of which only a subset are being used for each game. The rules go with the usual "beginners should start with this kind of a setup", which most serious gamers ignore completely because usually the simplified setups are for people new to the whole boardgaming industry and often make the game considerably worse. For example, think of the standard setup for Imperial, or the basic games for TtA, Opera or Steam -- there's simply no reason anyone familiar with modern boardgames in general should ever try the "basic" versions, but instead one should immediately take into use all of the mechanics and components.

According to the comments I've read/heard this should not be done with Nations. Instead, you really need to stick to the suggested setup as you might otherwise completely throw off the balance by omitting critical elements.


(Note that I still haven't played the game. Let's see if I have a chance in the weekend, though after reading through the Essen reports of various friends I have several other games I will prioritize above this one.)

[Ratsia]

(Note that I still haven't played the game. Let's see if I have a chance in the weekend, though after reading through the Essen reports of various friends I have several other games I will prioritize above this one.)

Okay, it is good. Possibly really good.

I did not play it myself during the Con in the weekend, but that was purely because there are so many copies of Nations available in the local clubs I play and people were so enthusiastic about it that I will have plenty of opportunities to play it to my heart's content during the following weeks. A lot of people who are big fans of Through the Ages (including also guys who play it competitively) and other games of similar scope (say, Terra Mystica, Eclipse etc) liked it a lot and many of them played several rounds during the weekend. I listened through one rules explanation and the game certainly sounds almost like a clone of TtA in terms of concepts, but seems to play differently enough. It also seemed to work quite well with 4 players too, in contrast to TtA that is purely a 2-3 player game when playing live.

The reason I didn't want to "waste" my time with Nations was that during the Con there were several new Essen releases that will be harder to find in the future, including some esoteric Japanese cards games etc. The best of the new releases I tried were perhaps Concordia, Prosperity, Yunnan, and Russian Railroads. Rampage was another hit, but it's maybe more a fun toy than a game. The low-point of the weekend for me was Packet Row; I can't imagine people actually release that kind of stuff anymore.


Edit: Some more comments about Nations. One strong point is that the rules are much cleaner and easier to explain compared to TtA. The biggest issue some people commented about was rather high degree of luck in terms of the event decks. The event decks are large but only two cards of each type will always be used in a single game. Furthermore, some of the events are very cruel, whereas some others don't do much. If one tries to play the game with low stability or military they will expose them pretty much to the luck of draw; if some cruel event related to that category comes up then they are screwed, but they might just as well luck out and go through the whole game without ever needing the track for clearing events. More generally, the card distribution seems to cause huge variance, making the game very tactical instead of strategic. It seems one cannot decide in advance things like "I will concentrate on the books/stability/military/whatever in this game", but instead one needs to really adapt to the choice of cards. However, you do not see the cards of the future ages so you can only hope that the tactical choices you made during age X will still be valid during X+1.

As a practical example of the variance, someone tried focusing fully on the books in two different games. In one game they managed to reach less than 20, in another game 75. In the latter game people not even trying to maximize the category reached more than 40. Apparently that focusing paid off a lot more in one of these games, and it was purely determined by luck of draw.

[Qvist]

I just watched rahdo's runthrough and final thoughts. And he praised it highly and even said it's his game of the year so far.
It seems really nice. I like that it reduces down time by taking only action per turn and I think War/Military is done better. But I think reducing the complexity of corruption is something I'd miss.

[Twistedarcher]

Woah, I didn't know they released a Heroes of Might and Magic board game -- I used to love those computer games. Will definitely be looking to grab that one if I get a chance!

[Ozle]

Woah, I didn't know they released a Heroes of Might and Magic board game -- I used to love those computer games. Will definitely be looking to grab that one if I get a chance!

Dont think its officially out in English.
Do you speak Polish?

[Twistedarcher]

Woah, I didn't know they released a Heroes of Might and Magic board game -- I used to love those computer games. Will definitely be looking to grab that one if I get a chance!

Dont think its officially out in English.
Do you speak Polish?

Nope, waiting for it to come out in English, whenever that is.

[Ozle]

Essen apparently...

[Watno]

It was abailable in Essen, but they were sold out on Saturday already.  Not sure wether it will be widely distributed.

[Watno]

I finally played Nations yesterday and liked it quite a lot.
While it has some similarities to TTA, it feels very different. It's a lo more tactical and less strategical.
I think its the best game of Essen 2013, though overall this year is lacking highlights.