Schlagwort-Archive: Star Warships

New games from Latin America, July 2017

(Slightly updated translation of an older article of mine, originally planned for BGG news where it remains in the queue/leicht aktualisierte Übersetzung eines älteren Artikels, die ursprünglich auf BGG News erscheinen sollte, dort aber noch immer in der Warteschleife steht)

Argentina

The third „Geek Out!“ Festival was celebrated in Buenos Aires in early May, and from what I read, it seems to have been great. Anyone who has ever organized a con like this will probably know that 2400 people the third time around are a huge success, especially when they are the first in their country trying something like this at all. I assume that many people who were there are looking forward to the 2018 event already.
For the second time, the King Alfonso Award was handed out. The winner is Conejos en el Huerto (Rabbits in the Orchard) by Luis Marcantoni, published by Ruibal Hermanos. Congratulations! While at it, the game also won „Best overall presentation“ (gotta love the letter „J“ in the title. Congratulations to artist Celeste Barone as well). I am curious whether we will hear from the rabbits outside of Argentina in the future. I just got a copy of the game on Friday and hope to be able to write more about it in the future. Co-finalist Mutant Crops has an upcoming English edition already.

In the small print run category, the winner was Star Warships by Gabriel Isaac Jalil. Again: Congratulations.

Magos y Tabernas
Image taken from this thread at BGG (with kind permission)

A candidate for next year’s award is scheduled for release in July. It’s Magos & Tabernas (Mages & Tavern) by Adrián Novell. Three thirsty mages enter a pub which only has one beer left. Unsurprisingly, fireballs start flying. Players are working their way towards said beer by removing obstacles on the way. Why can’t there be a good brewing spell instead?

Brazil

TsukijiBrazil seems to have the largest gaming and publishing scene in Latin America by far – that’s not too surprising, I guess. I have a feeling that I am still just scratching at the surface. But I am planning to explore more of it, and am always happy to discover new things.

Still rather new on the boardgame scene is publisher Redbox from Rio de Janeiro. After a couple of fairly successful RPG publications, they started localizing foreign publications and are publishing four Brazilian games this year:

LabyrinxIn the short economic card game Tsukiji by Leandro Pires you are a fish trader and try to manipulate the Tokyo fish market prices in a way that lets you earn more money than the other traders.
Labyrinx by Daniel Braga and Thiago Matos just finished its crowdfunding campaign. As the name suggests, you move through a labyrinth. The labyrinth is created from cards during the game and you have to make sure to remember your way home, as there is a fog of war mechanism that obscures most of the labyrinth. While you are trying to remember which way was the way out, you collect treasure, dodge traps and mess with the other players.

MicropolisMicropolis by Rodrigo Rego is a tile laying game with rhombic tiles. All players try to expand a city by adding houses, parks, factories and so on. When placing certain special buildings into the city, you can add influence markers on them. The goal is to be the first player to put all your influence in.

Copacabana
Box prototype

Copacabana is by Rodrigo Rego as well. At the beginning of the 20th century, players transform the sleepy beach into the mixture of glamour and chaos it is known as today. Achieve this by placing tiles and getting into the most valuable streets to build the most valuable buildings.

Gekido

 

In March I had mentioned Space Cantina by Fel Barros and Warny Marcano. Fel Barros now works for CMON which just released a new edition of Gekido: Bot Battles, a game that he had designed (together with Romulo Marques) and that was first published in 2014. With the new edition, this should become a lot more available outside Brazil. Gekido is a dice roller, in which robots smash each other in an arena.

PabloPablo by Marcos Mayora is one of those rather unusual games, it seems. There are 140 cards with words and categories (in various difficulty levels). Some you hold in your hand, some are on the table. One player starts to sing any song and tries to insert as many words or categories from their cards, for which they get points according to the difficulty. When someone else has a card which might fit the current song, they can start to sing along and push in their own words. You can also throw tomatoes (in the form of cardboard counters) if someone sings wrongly. If you want to have an impression how such a game works, you can see it (in Portuguese) here. Pablo is published by Mandala Jogos, and there are promo packs for different musical styles. It was named after a Brazilian music show of the Eighties and sounds like one of those games which gets you kicked out of your appartment if you play it too often.

Colombia

FocusXColombian publisher Azahar Juegos had released the well-noticed game Xanadú in 2012, which was re-published by Quined games three years later. Now there are two new games by Azahar:
FocusX by Guillermo Solano is a card game in which you try to find matching characteristics between three cards (there are animal categories, numbers and colors). You can play it by speed or more quietly, and according to the publisher, it is suitable for players five years and up.
Hot-Pota-Toh!Hot-Pota-toH! is from Xanadú designer Javier Velasquez. A stack of cards makes the rounds, and you either have to draw a card from this stack or play a card. While doing this, you try to get certain cards and avoid drawing the exploding potato. While this description might sound similar to Exploding Kittens, Hot-Pota-toH has no player elimination, but a round ends when someone explodes and everyone else then counts their points. Therefore there is a motivation to take a risk and draw cards, or sacrifice expensive carsds to avoid losing everything.

 

Neue Spiele aus Lateinamerika, Mai 2017

Nachdem meine ersten Überblicksartikel ganz gut angekommen sind, mache ich mich wie versprochen an die Fortsetzung. Ich habe wieder einige Kontakte knüpfen können und von spannenden neuen Projekten erfahren.

Argentinien

Am 6. Mai fand in Buenos Aires das dritte „Geek Out!“-Fest statt, und nach dem, was ich im Internet so lesen konnte, war es groß und klasse. Wer jemals selbst so etwas organisiert hat, weiß, dass 2400 Leute beim dritten Treffen ein toller Erfolg sind, und umso mehr, wenn man damit totales Neuland betritt. Ich habe gelesen, dass sogar Busse gechartert worden sind, um Leute da hinzukarren. Wahrscheinlich liegt in Argentinien gerade der eine oder die andere im Bett und träumt schon von 2018.
Zum zweiten Mal wurden die König-Alfonso-Preise verliehen. Hauptgewinner ist Conejos en el Huerto von Luis Marcantoni, erschienen bei Ruibal Hermanos. Herzlichen Glückwunsch! Das Spiel gewann bei der Gelegenheit dann auch gleich noch den Preis für die beste Gesamtpräsentation (seht Euch mal das „J“ auf dem Cover an – wie gut ist das denn? Glückwunsch auch an die Illustratorin Celeste Barone). Ich bin gespannt, ob man von den Kaninchen auch außerhalb von Argentinien noch was hören wird. Mit-Finalist Cultivos Mutantes ist auf Englisch ja schon in Vorbereitung.
In der Kategorie der Spiele in kleiner Auflage gewann Star Warships von Gabriel Isaac Jalil. Auch dazu herzlichen Glückwunsch.

Magos y Tabernas
Die Illustrationen sind noch vorläufig. Sie stammen aus diesem Thread bei Boardgamegeek.

Ein Bewerber um den Preis im nächsten Jahr soll demnächst erscheinen. Dabei handelt es sich um Magos & Tabernas (Magier & Tavernen) von Adrián Novell. Drei durstige Magier treffen sich in einer Kneipe, aber es ist nur noch ein einziges Bier übrig. Dass da der eine oder andere Feuerball fliegt, versteht sich von selbst. Man arbeitet sich sozusagen bis zum Bier vor, wobei man Aktionskarten einsetzt und Karten abräumt, die zwischen Magier und Bier liegen. Warum die nicht einfach neues Bier herzaubern, erfahren wir im Juli.

Brasilien

Brasilien hat offenbar klar den größten Spielemarkt in Lateinamerika. Ich habe das Gefühl, dass ich hier bisher nur an der Oberfläche kratze. Aber ich bleibe dran und freue mich ja auch darüber, weiterhin Neues entdecken zu können.

TsukijiNoch recht frisch in der Brettspielszene ist der Verlag Redbox aus Rio de Janeiro. Er gibt seit einigen Jahren mit Erfolg Rollenspielmaterial heraus, hat dann ein paar ausländische Spiele lokalisiert und wagt sich in diesem Jahr zum ersten Mal mit brasilianischen Spielen an die Öffentlichkeit. Und zwar gleich vierfach:
Im kurzen Wirtschaftskartenspiel Tsukiji von Leandro Pires ist man ein/e Fischhändler/in und muss versuchen, auf dem Fischmarkt in Tokio die Preise so zu manipulieren, dass man am Ende mehr verdient hat als die anderen.
LabyrinxLabyrinx von Daniel Braga und Thiago Matos hat hat gerade erfolgreich eine Crowdfunding-Kampagne hinter sich gebracht. Wie der Name vermuten lässt, bewegt man sich durch ein Labyrinth. Dieses entsteht im Laufe des Spiels aus Karten, und es ist wichtig, sich den Weg zu merken, denn es gibt ein „Fog of War“-Konzept, das heißt, dass Karten auf ihre Rückseite gedreht werden können. Während man also versucht, sich zu merken, wie man aus dem Labyrinth wieder rauskommen kann, sammelt man Schätze ein, weicht Fallen aus oder versucht, seine Mitspieler/innen zu ärgern.
MicropolisNoch ein Plättchenlegespiel ist Micropolis von Rodrigo Rego. Hier erweitern die Spieler/innen gemeinsam eine Stadt um Häuser, Parks, Fabriken und so weiter. Das Ziel ist es, zuerst alle eigenen Einflussmarker auf dem Stadtplan zu platzieren, was man beim Bau besonderer Gebäude tun kann.

Copacabana
Prototyp-Schachtel

Ebenfalls von Rodrigo Rego stammt Copacabana. In diesem Spiel geht es darum, zu Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts den verschlafenen Strand in die Mischung aus Chaos und Glamour zu verwandeln, die er heute ist. Auch hier legt man Plättchen und versucht, sich in den wertvollsten Straßen einzunisten und die wertvollsten Gebäude zu bauen.

Im März hatte ich in Gekidomeinem Lateinamerika-Überblick Space Cantina von Fel Barros und Warny Marçano erwähnt. Fel Barros arbeitet mittlerweile bei Cool Mini or Not, und dort erscheint in diesen Tagen auch eine Neuauflage von Gekido: Bot Battles, ein Spiel, das er gemeinsam mit Romulo Marques schon 2014 auf Portugiesisch herausgebracht hatte und das nun für ein größeres Publikum erreichbar werden dürfte. Gekido ist ein Würfelspiel, bei dem sich Roboter in einer Arena die Köpfe einschlagen.

 

Pablo von Marcos Mayora macht einen sehr ungewöhnlichen Eindruck. Auf 140 Karten stehen Wörter und Kategorien (in verschiedenen Schwierigkeitsstufen). Man hat einige davon in der Hand, andere liegen auf dem Tisch. Wer dran ist, fängt an, irgendein Lied zu singen und dabei möglichst viele Wörter von den Karten einzubauen, wofür es je nach Schwierigkeit verschieden viele Punkte gibt. Hat jemand anders eine Karte auf der Hand, die auch gut zu dem Lied passen würde, kann diese/r Spieler/in anfangen, mitzusingen und die eigenen Worte oder Kategorien einzubringen. Anschließend bekommt man Punkte für die Karten, die man eingesetzt hat. Auch Tomaten (in Form von Pappcountern) kann man werfen, wenn jemand falsch singt.Wer einen Eindruck davon haben möchte, wie dPabloas Spiel abläuft, kann hier gucken. Pablo erscheint bei Mandala Jogos, und es gibt Promopäckchen für verschiedene Musikstile. Es ist nach einer brasilianischen Musikshow aus den Achtzigern benannt und klingt nach einem dieser wunderbaren Spiele, bei deren übermäßigem Gebrauch man aus seiner Mietwohnung fliegt.

 

Kolumbien

Der kolumFocusXbianische Verlag Azahar Juegos hatte schon 2012 mit Xanadú auf sich aufmerksam gemacht, das drei Jahre später von Quined Games neu aufgelegt wurde. Nun gibt es zwei neue Spiele von Azahar:
FocusX von Guillermo Solano ist ein Kartenspiel, bei dem es darum geht, Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen jeweils drei Tierkarten zu finden (es gibt Tierkategorien, Farben und Anzahl). Man kann es auf Geschwindigkeit oder auch ruhiger spielen, und es eignet sich laut Verlag auch schon für Fünfjährige.
Hot-Pota-Toh!Hot-Pota-toH! stammt vom Xanadú-Autoren Javier Velásquez. Ein Kartenstapel wandert herum, und man muss entweder eine Karte spielen oder eine Karte von diesem Stapel ziehen. Man versucht dabei, bestimmte Karten auf die Hand zu bekommen und zu vermeiden, die heiße (explodierende) Kartoffel zu bekommen. Die Beschreibung erinnert natürlich ein bisschen an Exploding Kittens, allerdings kann man bei Hot-Pota-ToH! nicht ausscheiden, sondern eine Runde endet, wenn die Kartoffel explodiert, und dann zählen die Überlebenden ihre Punkte. Es gibt also einen Anreiz, auch mal was zu riskieren, um Punkte zu bekommen, oder umgekehrt darum, Punkte zu opfern, um nicht alles zu verlieren.

 

Alle Bilder mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Rechte-Inhaber/innen.

How to turn a country into a gaming nation.

König Alfonso X
König Alfonso X., as depicted in the Libro de los juegos

(Deutsche Version hier.)

What does Alfons X. of Castile, Galicia and León (1221-1284) have to do with gaming?Well, he commissioned the „Book of Games“ (Libro de los juegos), which contained game rules, chess problems and other things and is considered one of the most important medieval books on the subject of games. Some 730 years later, Laura and Ezequiel Wittner decided to create a game award and called it Premio Alfonso X. In 2017, it will be awarded for the second time. The submission deadline was on January 10th, and the jury has started its work.
What’s special about this prize, you may ask? Aren’t there game awards in countless countries? Every once in a while we hear that one famous game or the other is now also game of the year in Finland, Portugal or San Marino. These awards usually aim at recommending the best games to gamers who aren’t spending all their free time on BGG anyway. It is rare that a game wins a national award which the community hasn’t heard about before.
But when I tell you the titles which compete for the Premio Alfonso X this year, I will assume that hardly any of you has even heard of a single one of these games. Here we go:

Premios Alfonso X
King Alfonso at the advanced age of approximately 800 years.

– Chernobyl
– Ciudadano Ilustre
– Código Enigma
– Conejos en el Huerto
– Cultivos Mutantes
– Dinosaurus
– La Macarena
– Venecitas
– ZUC!

There is a simple reason for this: The Premio Alfonso X will only be awarded to Argentinian designers (or those who have lived in Argentina for at least two years). The point is therefore not to introduce the best of the international gaming scene to an Argentinian audience, but to promote local design and publication efforts so Argentinian games can compete with those from the outside world. Before, domestic games often went entirely unnoticed, partly caused by the fact that production quality and artwork was decidedly mediocre. One geek wrote to me that if I saw the component quality of the Argentinian edition of Catan, I would cry. For those who want to have a look themselves, here is an unboxing video. You can admire the sturdy box at about 7:45 and later the precision of the tile cutting.
This needs to improve, so there is a special award for overall production value as well. And lastly, only games are admitted which state the names of the designers and artists. Somewhat reminiscent of the situation in Germany 30 years ago (but the SdJ jury didn’t mention the designers in the first years, either).
So if there is a prize aimed at promoting domestic games, it doesn’t seem like some nationalistic nonsense, but like an honest effort to make gaming more popular in Argentina. If I wasn’t from Germany, a country with a strong gaming scene, I might be grateful for something like that over here.

You might get an idea about the size of the Argentinian gaming scene when you hear that the nine titles competing for this year’s prize aren’t the finalists or anything, but they are the entire field of contestants (well apart from four submissions in a separate category; games with a circulation of under 50, so essentially prototypes). In other words, that’s more or less what was published in Argentina by local designers in 2016. I assume many of you have purchased more than nine games in 2017 already…
It is probably still a long way to go until the vision of one Argentinian publisher comes true and gaming becomes as popular as football. But you have to start somewhere.

By now, all contestants have their own BGG entries. So let me give you a quick introduction:
Chernobyl is a cooperative game in which you try to rescue survivors from the destroyed reactor. To win the game, you’ll have to bring them to the helipad. There is a competitive mode as well. Chernobyl was designed by Gonzalo Emanuel Aguetti and published by Yamat.
Ciudadano Ilustre

 

Ciudadano Ilustre („Famous Citizen“) was crowdfunded, easily breaking its modest target of $737. It’s a trivia game with geography questions mostly about Argentina, but apparently also about some other places. The designers are Vera Mignaqui and Eugenia Pérez, with the latter doing the artwork, too.
Código Enigma („Enigma Code“) is set in WWII and of course it’s about deciphering German codes. For that, the players collect card sets and try to prevent others from doing the same. Apparently the Germans are also interfering at times. Designers are Joel Pellegrino Hotham and Silvina Fontenla, who also did the artwork. It was published by JuegosdeMesa.com.ar.

Conejos en el HuertoIn Conejos en el Huerto („Rabbits in the Orchard“), the players move their two rabbits through the variably set up garden and try to collect valuable vegetables. Their position determines which type of vegetable they can reach. A watchdog is doing its best to stop them. This game was designed by Luis Fernando Marcantoni, with artwork by Celeste Barone. It was published by Ruibal Hermanos S.A.

Cultivos MutantesCultivos Mutantes („Mutant Crops“) is a short worker placement game by Sebastian Koziner, illustrated by Rocio Ogñenovich. You use your actions to plant and harvest mutant crops and collect points. It was published as a cooperation between El Dragón Azul and OK Ediciones. An English edition has been announced by Atheris Games already. The kickstarter campaign is scheduled to start on the 21st of March.

Dinosaurus

 

Dinosaurus is a microgame with just 36 cards. Dinosaurs from different eras run around on a fantasy island and fight for food. Their favorite snacks are plants, mammals and each other. It was designed and illustrated by Amelia Pereyra and Matías Esandi and published by Rewe Juegos.

 

La Macarena is a witch or magician looking for a new apprentice. The players collect cards with four elements, and whoever has most of one kind can eventually exchange them against amulets with which they can gain La Macarena’s favor. The game was designed and published by five people under the group name Maldón, with illustrations by Chilean celebrity Alberto Montt. Two of the designers were at the Nuremberg toy fair, so this is the only candidate game that I have actually played myself.

VenecitasWith Venecitas, Joel Pellegrino Hotham has a second game in the race (and he did the illustrations together with Silvina Fontenla as well). Venecitas are some kind of Venetian mosaic tiles, and the goal is to collect colors. You roll a color die, may turn it by one edge, and then everyone gets the color facing them, while the active player also gets the color on top. Certain color combos can be exchanged against victory points. Venecitas was also published by JuegosdeMesa.com.ar.

ZUC!Zuc! is a party game designed and self-published by Agustin Carpaneto, in which you try not to draw a bomb card (because if you do, you lose). When it’s your turn, you can play cards to shield you from an explosion, force others to draw additional cards or avoid drawing any yourself. Illustrations are by Mariana Ponte.

Those of you who would like to know more about the small print run category can check out the respective bgg entries for Arte de Batalla, Cerrojo, Kallat and Star Warships.

 

Who will win?
Premios Alfonso XThere are several votes taken into consideration for determining the winners. A jury of eight people has the biggest weight in the decision. It includes a few well-known BGG users like lolcese, Mos Blues and Pastor_Mora as well as last year’s winner Bruss Brussco (whose game KINMO has become a family favorite in our house). 13 Argentinian gaming clubs also cast their votes (ensuring that the games get played by many people in the first place), and there will be some kind of public facebook vote as well.
The award ceremony will take place at the Geek Out Festival in Buenos Aires on the 6th of May, where more than 1500 people are expected.
If you read Spanish, you can learn a lot about the Argentinian gaming scene on the Geek Out website. I find this initiative very impressive and commendable.

Note: If you have anything to share about new games from Latin America, please contact me. I will try to write about these games once in a while.