I’ll write more about LoBsterCon when I’ve got more time (spoiler alert – it was awesome), but as I was writing/thinking about the games I’d played over the weekend elsewhere last night I got my thoughts down here too.

These are all games I had some interest in before I went to Essen Spiel 2018, but that didn’t come home with me. Will they be making it into my collection – or was I right to leave them off my final list? I played each once over the weekend, so take that for what it’s worth: these are first impressions, hence ‘mini’ reviews.

Fool

(4-8 players, 45-60 mins)
Don’t be fooled (ho ho) by the 15 minutes on the box: it will only be that short if you have a player who is terrible, or incredibly unlucky. If you’re used to trick-taking, it’ll likely go a lot longer.  Fool (formerly ‘Foppen’) is more trick making than taking though, as you don’t collect tricks won: your objective is to get rid of all your cards, which you do by by staying in as many rounds as possible – if you have the worst card in a trick, you’re the ‘fool’ and miss the next hand. A typically clever Friedemann Friese design which I’d pick up if I was likely to play this type of game more often.

Decrypto

(4-8 players, 45 mins)
This is being described as a ‘Codenames killer’ by many and I can see why. While I love Codenames Duet, the multiplayer Codenames can be a little fragile: it puts the clue giver under a lot of pressure while having the potential for long downtime. Decrypto partly fixes this, giving shorter time in the hot seat for each player and keeping both teams engaged simultaneously. It’s a clever design which I’d happily play again, but I don’t feel the need to own two games in this genre (I don’t play them enough) and am happy to keep Codenames for now.

Coimbra

(2-4 players, 90-120 minutes)
I only wanted to bring back one dry euro from Essen this time, and I chose Crown of Emara over this – and I think I made the right decision, just (review incoming). Coimbra is a really solid euro design, with pretty standard card play, light engine building and point gathering being supported by an enjoyable and competitive dice auction mechanism. It reminded me a little of Lorenzo in weight and decision making, but I think I enjoyed Lorenzo a little more – but that’s a game very near the top of my wish list, so that’s no criticism. If you like auctiony sub-two-hour euro games, check it out.

Underwater Cities

(1-4 players, 2-4 hours)
This has gone from ‘how did I miss it?’ to ‘top of my want-to-play list’ to ‘dead to me’ in a weekend. Vladimír Suchý designs tend to be clever but too dry for me, but this had been compared to Terraforming Mars so I really wanted to try it. Sadly, it fell well short of my expectations. I suppose the varied cards led to TM comparisons, but they’re lazy comparisons at best: the game play is miles from it. The card play starts out engaging, but the player board (which should feel like a puzzle) adds nothing and things soon started to drag as no arc emerged. We went nearly four hours: it justified about two.

Passing Through Petra

(2-4 players, 60 minutes)
An ugly game, which wouldn’t bother me if I’d enjoyed it – but I really didn’t. For me it got the luck/strategy mix all wrong. If I play a 60 minute euro I want fun/luck/tactics or thinky/strategy: with Petra, I was thinking hard but relying on luck (cards and tiles). Get good cards or combos, you can do well – if not, you won’t. Sure, you’d get better with practice – but it will still be too luck driven. It is also very fiddly, while the ‘clever’ movement grid isn’t – you have to do a bit of everything, so moving in a grid is largely arbitrary (and done much better in Ulm).

So, my wallet is safe! For now… Apart from Petra I did enjoy my plays of the other four games (although maybe only the first two hours of Underwater Cities) and would recommend those to players who think they sound interesting – especially the top three. But I’ll definitely be passing on Petra (I’ll get me coat…).

Oh, and before anyone accuses me of liking/not liking them because I won/lost, let me assure you that is not the case and I can prove it: I didn’t win any of them 😀 And they were all played in good spirit with good people (cheers all).