A brief visit to the 4 day autumn gathering down at Eastbourne saw me quickly fall in with Jeany and Mikko for a game of
Thunderstone;a game with strong similarities to
Dominion but more complex and with a strong fantasy theme. They and some of the other attendees at this event initially met through their involvement in the on-line game
World of Warcraft and now meet up at various gaming events such as Eastbourne, Essen and the UK Games Expo.
Having interrupted the flow of the game with numerous questions and lines of discussion that interested me about why they were there, their experience of games etc. Mikko (who had flown in from Finland the previous day just for this gaming event) eventually won and I, needless to say came
last!
Joined by Martin and Richard (of
R and D Games), (as an aside Richard told me how they had just produced their latest game
Key Market with a print run of 1,000, released at Essen this year and they have already sold all their copies to either the general public or games stores) we moved on to play
7 Wonders and later
Navegador. Both games I had played at Essen and enjoyed although in neither case did my previous experience help me prevail and win! 7 Wonders is a great game for up to 7 players with an ancient theme, very little down time and around an hour for a game. With a wide variety of card types it benefits from familiarity with all the cards available and so may not be suited to the occasional gamer.
I continue to enjoy Navegador, although both Martin and Mikko questioned whether the balance of the game was as good as some other roundel based games (the roundel is the mechanism for deciding what action each player takes during their turn). Certainly there is a danger (as occurred) that if only one player has large enough fleets to discover new territories in the later part of the game then the closing part of the game can seem to drag as everybody waits for that one person’s fleet to trigger the end of the game.
Finally Richard and I played a quick game of
Mosaix, a game with some similarities to Soduko, Noughts and Crosses and Take It Easy - a nice filler or closer that would, I think, work well with children.
So I headed home to supper whilst others there carried on till Sunday! A dedicated group closeted away (unfortunately) in the basement away from the eyes of passing strangers.
More photos of games and players present on Friday 19th November can be found
here
Should you be interested in joining the merry throng then the dates for next years events are detailed below:
Venue: East Beach Hotel, Eastbourne
http://www.eastbeachhotel.co.uk/
Spring Dates: March 17th,18th,19th,20th 2011. Noon Thursday to Afternoon Sunday.
Autumn Dates: November 17th,18th, 19th,20th 2011. Noon Thursday to Afternoon Sunday.
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