I’m not going to go through all of them. There are just too many, 503 would be a lot to talk about, even ignoring expansions it’d still be a lot. Instead, I want to pull out and highlight some games or expansion that I want to pick up.

Essen Spiel Games

Paper Dungeons

This is one that I actually own, it’s a roll and write, hack and slash dungeon crawling game. I need to play it still. But it’s my type of game with the roll and write aspect to it. I’m going to be curious to see how complex this game is because I like my roll and writes to be somewhat complex but not too complex. Alley Cat Games, the production company, also made Cat Cafe which was a nice balance of stuff, but not one that I consistently go back to.

Picture Perfect

Picture Perfect looks very intriguing. From Arcane Wonders, you set-up the perfect group picture. This is not one that I’ve bought, and not one that I’m sure I will buy. You are trying to figure out how everyone wants to be framed in your picture. And each character wants to be in a certain spot in a certain way, will you get the picture set-up correctly? The concept sounds really good, but I wonder how much I’d actually play the game, once I’ve played it a few times.

Welcome to the Moon

This is another game in the Welcome To system of games. I have Welcome To… and Welcome To New Las Vegas. From Blue Crocker Games, this one sounds interesting because it is a campaign game as well. I’m not sure what that means, but a short campaign of 8 different sheets sounds cool. I’m guessing that we’re still building up a city, but beyond that I’m not sure. You might even be launching off to the moon, which would be cool. And I really like the aesthetic of these games.

CoraQuest

This was a demo only for a kid focused dungeon crawl game. I talked about this one before when it was on Kickstarter. The game was developed by Dan and Cora Hughes as what started as a school project for Cora. The game looks like it’s pretty fun but simple dungeon crawler, which is a cool concept. I didn’t back it on Kickstarter because I’m a few years away from wanting a game like that. I am really glad that Bright Eye Games picked it up though because the concept is fun. It makes dungeon crawlers more accessible to more people.

Lost Ruins of Arnak: Expedition Leaders

I still need to play Lost Ruins of Arnak, but this expansion definitely is on my radar. From Czech Games Edition, the game is a combination of deck building and worker placement. And I really like the theme of the game where you are exploring some lost ruins, I like that Indiana Jones style feel to the game. This adds in some unique leaders which means that you start with a unique starting point, which I always like it when games do that.

Hanamikoji: Geisha’s Road

I’m a very big fan of the original, Hanamikoji from EmperorS4, and I really want to know about this one. It still has area control or majority in it which I like. I also like that it’s still only two players because that is one that works really well in the original game. It means that it should hopefully play fast still. Instead of trying to win the favor of Geisha, you want your favored Geisha to progress the fastest at tea houses on Geisha’s Road.

Hibachi

Another game that I almost backed on Kickstarter, this is a game from Grail Games. In it you flip out disks to get ingredients and that determines what ones you can use. Of course it also determines how much they might cost and there is strategy to what you are doing. I ended up not backing this one because I want to try the game before I would buy it. It’s a fun sounding concept but it’s one that I question if I’d play long term.

Similo: Spookies

I’ve talked about Similo before, it’s one that wasn’t on my radar for a long time. It’s from Horrible Guild and I like their games. But Similo is just a simple party style game, except that it’s not. It’s a clever little game of getting the players to eliminate the right characters or creatures. The Spookies version can be used with everything else, but it has a nice “spooky” theme to it. Or at least uses spooky monsters. It’s a great little game and this makes it great for Halloween season as well.

Ramen! Ramen!

Japanime Games are hit or miss for me. They unfortunately use a lot of anime IP’s (intellectual properties) that I like but often the games are okay or disappointing. This one isn’t like that, but it looks like a simple little game. The artwork looks very cute and the theme is fun. It is about building out the best bowl of ramen by getting the most points possible. There does seem to be some take that in the game with people being able to steal ingredients. But I’m hoping it’s light, fast, and fun.

Detective: Signature Series – Petty Officers

So, you might read the name of this game in the Detective line and assume that it’s going to be about military police, and it might be. But it’s more than that, it’s animal assistants, you know the types that you pet. I got know clue how it’ll work, but I have everything for the Detective system of games, including Dune: House Secrets, and I have loved everything I’ve played thus far. So I will get this at some point because animal offers is just cute.

Plus Many More

So, obviously, that’s not that many games. Those are the ones that I know some about or that jumped out at me. And there are a lot that I’d love to try but maybe less interested in buying. What games showing up at Essen Spiel looked interesting to you?

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Ganz Schon Clever is probably one of the more influential games in terms of putting the roll and write craze over the top. There had been games before like Qwixx that were out there, but Ganz Schon Clever hit the market and took off because it made a game that was interesting and challenging and put in so many combos into the game. So many combos. In this game, you are playing a number of rounds, 4 to 6 depending on player count, more rounds for less players. On your turn you roll six dice, you can then use one of the dice in one of the five sections. Each section corresponds to one of the dice colors and then there is a wild die, the white one, that can be used in any section. The trick for what die you’ll use comes down to the fact that any dice that are of a lower value than the one you select go onto a platter (this will be important later). Then you roll the remaining dice again, repeat the process, and do it all one more time. At that point in time, all the other players can pick and use one of the dice on the platter. Then the turn passes, next person goes, and so on and so forth. Doesn’t seem that challenging, but there are so many interesting things in it, as each section scores differently and can then let you activate other areas, possibly chaining even more things together.

Let’s do a quick run down of how each section works. In yellow you cross off a number, and for rows and the diagonal that you complete you get some bonus, like crossing off a spot in another section or adding a number. The columns when filled in give you points. In Blue, you always take the total of the blue and white dice and fill in the corresponding number, the more spots you fill in, the more points you get, and filling out rows or columns gives you bonuses. In green, you fill in from left to right and the number has to be greater than or equally to the number i the circle to cross it off, the more you fill in, the more points you get, and if you make it to certain points you get a bonus. Orange is the easiest, it’s just the number on the dice, and then there are bonuses that you get for filling in certain spots, but you have to work left to right. There are also a few spots that double or triple in yellow. Finally, there is purple, in purple you go left to right and the number must always be greater than the previous number, so you could go something like 1, 4, 6. When you put in a six, you can start over again, and there are a ton of bonuses in purple. Finally, there is the fox bonus. The fox bonus shows up in each section and for the fox, you score the number of foxes you’ve made it to times your lowest score, so you can’t just skip one section, because then your foxes would be X time 0 which would give you no points.

Really, that’s probably enough to get going on the game and be able to play it. The game is simple, but there is strategy. Plus, you do get some other bonuses that I haven’t mentioned yet. You can unlock rerolls, you can get +1 that you can use to use an extra dice after people are done rolling, and you can just fill in a spot of your choice in round four. So sometimes you can use the +1 die to chain into something else and fill in a few spots, or maybe the filling in a spot will do that for you.

Like I said before, this game is pretty simple to learn. But to master it, you need to figure out the strategy for it. Sometimes you’ll want to reroll just because to use the die you need to, or want to, will lose you too many dice. Saving the +1’s towards the end can also be a good strategy because you can use them to combo more sooner, but sometimes I’ll spend a +1 to get a +1 when it’s a harder +1 to get than others, if that makes sense. So there is way more going on than just rolling dice and putting down a number, and scores can vary wildly.

Now, if you don’t like luck, there is luck involved. You might roll all ones, reroll and roll all ones again. It’s improbable, but not impossible. Or someone else might be consistently rolling higher numbers so they can score the orange and purple sections better. But with that said, since the game is fast, and since you are using dice that someone else has rolled, it is possible that you’ll get to use better dice, or if you don’t, the game will be over quickly and you can try again. The luck factor though might be a turn off for some, but I do think with all the combos that it is hard to get completely locked out of the game and doing well at all in it.

I’m also looking at this as a big fan of a lot of roll and write games. There are a number that I’ve talked about before, such as Welcome To… Second Chance, Criss Cross, and Cartographers, all of them great games, and a number that I like better than Ganz Schon Clever, but one thing that Ganz Schon Clever does differently from all of those is the combos. With those there might be other variability in the game, but you never will get that really satisfying chain of doing one thing and then doing another and another because of that first thing that you picked. Sonora, the flick and write, has that comboing if not more going on it, but that’s one of the only others I’ve played that does that.

Overall, this is clearly a game that I like a lot. I think that the play is pretty clever (the English translation of Ganz Schon Clever is That’s Pretty Clever). I like that the game plays pretty fast, I think slightly longer than the box says, but with that game speed, you never feel like you have much down time since you are doing things on other people’s turns as well. It scales well, and the rules are easy enough to teach that I think I could with most people, with just a few reminders during the game.

Overall Grade: A
Gamer Grade: A-
Casual Grade: A

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