This page contains information about all non-tournament events and activities that will be happening at EuroQuest
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| Euro Quest - Presents This page contains information about all non-tournament events and activities that will be happening at EuroQuest |
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This "EuroQuest Presents" page focuses on all the non-tournament events and activities at this year's EuroQuest. Under this umbrella, we will be bringing you a wide variety of events outside of the scope of our regular tournament play.
Some of these events will be familiar to long time EuroQuest attendees, while others are brand new this year!
We will be updating this page with new details and new events right up to the convention, so bookmark this page and check back often.
For now, we're happy to tell you about just a few things we have in store for you.
To see an updated list that includes all the times for demos and all EuroQuest special events in one place, right up to the day before the convention starts, click here.
In order to preserve space in the conference room, all scheduled game demos and other non-tournament events (including demos of new Wild Card games) will take place at one of two designated tables in the front corner of the meeting room in the area previously occupied by Z-Man opposite the front desk. Two tables (one round and one rectangular) will be designated for this purpose, and there will be signs on these tables listing the demos at that table for each day. Important: Demo tables should be CLEARED at the end of the scheduled demo time, to allow time for the next demo to be set up.
Blood
Bowl: Team Manager - The Card Game is a bone-breaking, breathtaking
standalone card game of violence and outright cheating for two to four
players. Chaos, Dwarf, Wood Elf, Human, Orc, and Skaven teams compete
against each other over the course of a brutal season. Customize your
team by drafting Star Players, hiring staff, upgrading facilities, and
cheating like mad. Lead your gang of misfits and miscreants to glory
over your rivals all to become Spike! Magazine's Manager of the Year!
Demo Time: Friday at 6:30 PM
Demonstrated by: Victor Hutcherson
Castle Dice
is a light worker-placement, dice drafting game in which the players
have been ordered by the king to build castles along the borders of the
kingdom. The player who can create the greatest castle will become the new
heir to the throne. Players will explore the land by rolling the dice,
and then take turns gathering resources from them. These resources are
then used to hire workers and improve castles. At the end of seven
turns, the player who has built the greatest castle (earned the most
victory points) wins the game!
Demo Time: Saturday at 6 PM
Demonstrated by: Mike Mullins
Freedom: The Underground Railroad
is a card-driven, cooperative game
for two to four players in which the group is working for the
abolitionist movement to help bring an end to slavery in the United
States. The players use a combination of cards, which feature figures
and events spanning from Early Independence until the Civil War, along
with action tokens and the benefits of their role to impact the game.
Players need to strike the right balance between freeing slaves from
plantations in the south and raising funds which are desperately needed
to allow the group to continue their abolitionist activities as well as
strengthen the cause.
Through careful planning and working together, the group might see an end to slavery in their time.
Demo Times: Thursday at 7 PM and Friday at 8 PM
Demonstrated by: Rik Van Horn
Thunder Alley,
designed by Jeff and Carla Horger, depicts the
fast-paced action of stock car racing. We expect to have a demo copy
of this recent P500 release by GMT Games on hand, courtesy of the game
designers. The game plays with 2 - 7 players, and each player controls
a team of cars, not just one car.
Demo time: Sunday at 2 PM (John Weber)
Note, we have already scheduled demos for eight new titles added to the Wild Card event for this year, for details see the Wild Card page.
Tzolkin: The Mayan Calendar
presents a new game mechanism: dynamic
worker placement. Players representing different Mayan tribes place
their workers on giant connected gears, and as the gears rotate they
take the workers to different action spots. During a turn, players can
either (a) place one or more workers on the lowest visible spot of the
gears or (b) pick up one or more workers. When placing workers, they
must pay corn, which is used as a currency in the game. When they pick
up a worker, they perform certain actions depending on the position of
the worker. Actions located "later" on the gears are more valuable, so
it's wise to let the time work for you -- but players cannot skip their
turn; if they have all their workers on the gears, they have to pick
some up.
The game ends after one full revolution of the central Tzolkin gear. There are many paths to victory. Pleasing the gods by placing crystal skulls in deep caves or building many temples are just two of those many paths... Demo Time: Friday at 10 PM (Jeff Thornsen)
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In
CO2,
each player is the CEO of an energy company responding to
government requests for new, green power plants. The goal is to stop
the increase of pollution, while meeting the rising demand for
sustainable energy -- and of course profiting from doing so. You will
need enough expertise, money, and resources to build these clean power
plants. Energy summits will promote global awareness, allowing
companies to share a little of their expertise and learn still more
from others. The game includes Carbon Emissions Permits (CEPs) which
are granted by the United Nations, and they must be spent whenever the
region needs to install the energy infrastructure for a project, or to
construct a fossil fuel power plant.
Money, CEPs, Green Power Plants that you've built, UN Goals you've completed, Company Goals you've met, and Expertise you've gained all give you Victory Points (VPs), which represent your Company's reputation -- and having the best reputation is the goal of the game. But, as the game designer reminds us, If the pollution isn't stopped, it's game over for all of us. Demo time: Friday at 12 Noon (John Weber)
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Terra Mystica
is a game with very little luck that rewards strategic
planning. Each player governs one of the 14 groups. With subtlety and
craft, the player must attempt to rule as great an area as possible and
to develop that group's skills. There are also four religious cults in
which you can progress. To do all that, each group has special skills
and abilities.
Taking turns, the players execute their actions on the resources they have at their disposal. Different buildings allow players to develop different resources. Dwellings allow for more workers. Trading houses allow players to make money. Strongholds unlock a group's special ability, and temples allow you to develop religion and your terraforming and seafaring skills. Buildings can be upgraded: Dwellings can be developed into trading houses; trading houses can be developed into strongholds or temples; one temple can be upgraded to become a sanctuary. Each group must also develop its terraforming skill and its skill with boats to use the rivers. Demo time: Friday at 11 AM (Mark Moore)
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In
Myrmes,
players control ant colonies and use their ants to explore
the land (leaving pheromones in their wake); harvest "crops" like
stone, earth and aphids; fight with other ants; complete requests from
the Queen; birth new ants; and otherwise dominate their tiny patch of
dirt, all in a quest to score points and prove that they belong at the
top of the heap, er, anthill. After three seasons of scrabbling and
foraging, each ant colony faces a harsh winter that will test its
colonial strength.
After three seasons, players must pay food to get their colony through winter, losing points if they can't. Whoever has the most points after three years wins. All hail our new ant overlords! Demo time: Friday at 9 PM (Kurt Runco)
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In
Archipelago,
players are Renaissance European powers competing in
the exploration of a Carribean archipelago. They will explore
territories, harvest resources, use those resources in markets both
internal (for their use and that of the natives) and foreign (to sell
it in Europe), build markets, harbors, cities and temples, and
negotiate among themselves (and maybe betray each other) -- all this to
complete their secret objectives. Players also need to be careful of
the natives; if they make them too unhappy or if too many of them are
unoccupied, they could revolt and declare independence. Then everyone
will lose!
Demo time: Friday at 10 AM (Kurt Runco)
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Copycat
(aka by its German name, Fremde Federn) is about borrowing
elements from well-known Eurogames and constructing a new game out of
them.
You are a politician who tries to gather enough money and influence to become the next president. Of course, you depend on the work of others to get the needed influence. You start with a set of 10 cards (7 of them are "fatherly friends", which give you 1 money each and 3 cards to get 1 influence each (VPs)). Each round you draw 5 cards from your deck and use one card for the turn order to place your workers. The workers go to the different offices places in the government building to buy new cards for you, get influence or different other actions. Each round there is one more space, where you can place your workers. On the game board is a row of cards, which you can choose to buy and each round the empty places in this row are filled from a deck of cards divided into 4 different "Ages". The last cards of the deck are Dr. degrees you can buy with your money, which give you 1 VP for each money spend. The game ends when all Dr.'s are bought or one player has more (or equal than) 95 VPs. Demo time: Friday at 8 PM (Mike Brazinski)
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In
Saint Malo
players roll five dice to gain various resources;
combinations of dice create enhancements like characters or buildings,
which can provide additional victory points, money, or special actions,
such as altering the outcome of a die roll. Players draw symbols for
their holdings on an erasable board showing a grid of their city to
create an individual town. Players could build storehouses on
particular squares, for example, then place a merchant nearby to gain
money each turn. Another important character is the soldier; players
must acquire these to defend themselves from pirate attacks that can
decimate their town.
Demo time: Saturday at 4:30 PM (Michelle Hymowitz)
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Plan, build, and develop a small town into a major metropolis. Use
hex-shaped building tiles to add residential, commercial, civic, and
industrial areas, as well as special points of interest that provide
benefits and take advantage of the resources of nearby towns. Your goal
is to have your borough thrive and end up with a greater population
than any of your opponents.
Suburbia is a tile-laying game in which each player tries to build up an economic engine and infrastructure that will be initially self-sufficient, and eventually become both profitable and encourage population growth. As your town grows, you'll modify both your income and your reputation. As your income increases, you'll have more cash on hand to purchase better and more valuable buildings. As your reputation increases, you'll gain more and more population (and the winner at the end of the game is the player with the largest population). During each game, players compete for several unique goals that offer an additional population boost -- and the buildings available in each game vary, so you'll never play the same game twice! Demo time: Friday at 3 PM (Eric Hymowitz)
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Briefcase
is a deck-building and resource management boardgame where
players build their own business empires by acquiring and activating
various companies. Each company, once activated, provides the player
with some benefits (which are called decisions cards) and a special
ability for the rest of the game.
Players start with identical decks of decision cards. Each time one player activates a company, he/she adds to his deck more decision cards. Decision cards give the players various possible actions (like buy/activate/hire/obstacles). The most important is the "buy" action, with which players can either buy a building or a resource from the market. Demo time: Thursday at 10:30 AM (John Weber)
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P.I.
is a pure deduction game, with players competing in three
consecutive mini-games in order to see who's got the best chops in
terms of solving their cases. Each mini-game, you receive in secret one
suspect card (out of 12), one crime card (out of 10), and one location
card (out of 14); this set of information represents the case that the
player to your left must solve. The game board shows fourteen locations
arranged so that each location touches a few others; each location has
space for a suspect and crime tile. Shuffle the suspect tiles (12, plus
two "no suspect") and the crime tiles (10, plus four "no crime"), then
place one face up in each location. Each suspect, crime and location is
included in a deck of evidence cards, and nine evidence cards are
revealed.
On a turn, a player either places an investigator, chooses an evidence card, or attempts to solve her case. When you place an investigator in a location, the player to your right looks at his case cards, then places a disc on this space for each case card he holds that matches the suspect, crime or location in this space. Additionally, he places a cube on this space for each suspect, crime or location that's adjacent to this space. When you choose an evidence card, the player to your right places a disc on the matching tile if the card matches one of the case cards he holds, places a cube on the matching tile if this tile is adjacent to a tile matching one of the case cards he holds, or places nothing if you've made a wild-eyed guess and the tile isn't adjacent to anything. To attempt to solve the case, you place a black token on your guesses. If wrong, you're penalized two points and continue play next turn. If right, you receive 7, 5, 3 or 1 points depending on how many others have solved their cases in earlier rounds. The mini-game ends once everyone has solved their case or only one case remains unsolved. All used investigators are removed from play, then the board and cards are reset for the next mini-case. Each player has only five investigators total, so use them wisely! Whoever has the most points after three mini-cases wins. Demo time: Saturday at 7:30 PM (Jeff Thornsen)
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Article 27: The UN Security Council Game We anticipate having a copy of this new Stronghold Games release at this year's EuroQuest.
Demo Time: Friday at 3 PM
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Viva Java: The Coffee Game
is about finding that perfect blend of
beans to create the next best-seller in the coffee houses and kitchensof the world. In the game, players send researchers to hot spots
around the globe to gather the perfect bean. This may bring them into
contact with other players who are also on the hunt, creating a crucial
choice: Go it alone and continue to research, or join forces with that
opponents, hoping to combine beans from both players and share the
score with a superblend. Going it alone with research can often prove
useful as players spend time in the lab developing additional
abilities. However, in VivaJava the bold taste of victory will go only
to those players who are able to balance solitary research with
cooperation with other players.
The rich depth of varying strategies and social play will satisfy most players' thirst for unique gameplay, but VivaJava has even more brewing. This flexible game can accommodate up to 8 players, and through smooth simultaneous actions, play is quick and constant with little downtime. Scheduled demo (featuring game designer T. C. Petty III): Friday at 4 PM
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Keyflower
is a game for two to six players played over four rounds.
Each round represents a season: spring, summer, autumn and finally
winter. Each player starts the game with a "home" tile and an initial
team of eight workers, each of which is colored red, yellow or blue.
Workers of matching colors are used by the players to bid for tiles to
add to their villages. Matching workers may alternatively be used to
generate resources, skills, additional workers and victory points (VPs)
not only from the player's own tiles, but also from the tiles in the
other players' villages and from the new tiles being auctioned.
Scheduled demo: Thursday at 11:30 AM (Eric Sokolowsky)
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Escape: The Curse of the Temple
is a cooperative game in which players
must escape (yes...) from a temple (yes...) which is cursed (yes...)
before the temple collapses and kills one or more explorers, thereby
causing everyone to lose.
Escape is played in real-time, with all players rolling dice and taking actions simultaneously. You must roll the right symbols to enter a room, and if you're at an open doorway, you can roll to reveal the next tile in the stack and add it to that doorway. Some rooms contain combinations of red and blue symbols, and if you (possibly working with other players in the same room) roll enough red or blue symbols, you "discover" magic gems, moving them from a separate gem depot onto that tile. Scheduled demo: Sunday at 12:30 PM (Jeff Thornsen)
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In
Western Town,
each player is a Marshal of an expanding town in the
Old West of the U.S. in the early 1860s. Each Marshal wants to develop
the most prosperous town, one which President Lincoln himself would be
proud to visit. The three principal criteria which allow you to win
the game are population growth, charm/attractiveness, and wealth, as
measured by gold. Turns are regulated by the visits of Lincoln, who
determines, bit-by-bit, the value of the towns relative to those three
criteria. These criteria can and do change every round, and you will
need to adapt to these changing criteria to win this game!
Scheduled demo: Saturday at 2:00 PM (Mark Moore)
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Guards! Guards! A Discworld Boardgame
sees players taking on the role
of newly recruited members of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. With the
Eight Great Spells missing from the Unseen University, the future of
the Disc hangs in the balance. Each player is tasked with collecting
and returning a number of the spells to the university before it is too
late. Each player selects one of four Guilds to infiltrate: Thieves,
Assassins, Alchemists or Fools. Their chosen Guild Card will give them
a specific selection of the Great Spells to collect and grants them a
unique Guild Ability which can be used to hinder their opponents. It is
also used to mark the players Charm, Guild and Magic abilities, which
can be developed throughout the game.
Scheduled demo: Saturday at 10:00 PM (Victor Hutcherson)
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In Asgard,
you want to support the gods by erecting temples and by
convincing brave warriors and mighty giants to side with them. You can
influence which god will fight which during the final battle --
Ragnarök-- the outcome of which will depend on how well you
strengthened their armies.
Beware, only a few of them will come out victorious. Will you side with the right ones? As a mortal, your place in the new world depends on it. Scheduled demo: Thursday at 9 PM (Kristina Lynch)
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Medieval Mastery
is a board game of tactical conquest based on the
feudal system that existed in Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Set in
France, during a time of turmoil, each player assumes the role of a
provincial lord as the country erupts into a war of succession. Send
your brave knights forth to conquer the surrounding lands in an all-out
struggle to claim the throne!
Medieval Mastery incorporates area control, hand management and modular board design as well as variable player powers and phase order. The rules include alternate gameplay variations. This, coupled with a modular game board and a random combination of crowns, orbs and sceptres, means that no two games will ever be the same! In addition, the number of components included allows for up to three games of varying sizes to be played simultaneously! Scheduled demo: Sunday at 11 AM (Victor Hutcherson)
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| In addition to these game demos, we will have an assortment of new Essen games on hand. Some may have impromptu demos, others will not. These games will be maintained in a separate "New Games Library" with a special sign-out procedure located near the New Games Demo Area: |
This year at EuroQuest, we are honored to have several designers coming in to demo and talk about their recently and soon to be published games. We anticipate seeing several games that are "in the pipe line" at a major publisher that are slated for a 2013 or 2014 release.
Bill will run scheduled demos of Entrepreneur on Thursday at 11:30 PM and Friday at 11:00 PM. He will also be available for pick up games throughout the weekend in the open gaming area. Just look him up to schedule a game.
Each player is an entrepreneur who invests in markets to produce resources (blue collar workers, white collar workers, lumber, oil, technology and gold) and to control markets and regions (which are worth victory points (VPs) at the end of the game). Resources are used to complete contracts, which generate cash and VPs. Players control a market when they have the most number of investments there (and at least 2) and players control a region when they control the most markets in the region. Players also receive a VP for each $50 in cash at the end of the game. Players may obtain money by raising venture capital and may sell and buy resources at the resource market. Players alternate choosing from a limited number of available actions each turn, selecting those actions they believe will make them the most successful entrepreneur. The game has three sets of rules, each presenting its own challenges.
The game is playable by 1-4 players. Playing time is approximately 45-75 minutes for the Base Game (about 20 minutes per player), 1-2 hours for the Expanded Game (about 30 minutes per player) and 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 hours for the Full Game (about 40 minutes per player).
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Latest word is that this game is due to hit the GMT Games P500 list in 2013.
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In Chicken Caesar, players represent aristocratic ancient Roman chicken families trying to create a legacy for their family name. Each family has several eligible roosters eager to jump into the world of politics, getting rich and creating a legacy by any means necessary. Roosters gain renown for their families by occupying various political offices. Low-ranking officers don't yield much fame, but they hold both the purse strings and the power of the sword. A few roosters in the lower offices of Aedile and Praetor, together with the votes of a few well-paid (and temporary) allies, can clear a path to the luxury and recognition that come with the titles of Censor, Consul, and even Caesar. Being Caesar isn't easy, though: fail to bribe and bargain to ensure the welfare of the whole coop and today's Caesar is tomorrow's Coq au Vin. Dead roosters don't earn any more points, but they do offer opportunities for their surviving relatives to exaggerate their accomplishments. All that matters, in the end, is history's judgment, and history can be rewritten. Mechanically, players gain and maintain areas of influence through negotiation and voting. Scheduled demo: Saturday at 12 Noon.
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The Feuding Gods of Tictac is a light-hearted, family friendly area control card game that uses a central board. It is 2-4 players from ages 8+, and takes 15-30 minutes to play. Players are rival Gods vying for control of the land of Tictac by delighting the people with mystical displays of magic stones. Players have personal designs they are trying to achieve that are both public for all players to see and changeable by the player trying to achieve them. This keeps all players on their toes and invested in each other's decisions. Players in Feuding Gods have to play offense and defense at the same time in order to win. Scheduled demo on Saturday at 1 PM Stranded is a euro style task-based resource and time management board game for 2-4 players from ages 12+, and takes 45-75 minutes to play. After their plane crashes deep in the remote wilderness, players must survive on their own for 4 days until rescuers can reach them. They initially try to work together but find they can't trust each other, and are now competing over the scarce resources around the crash site. Stranded's primary strength is its powerfully integrated theme, leading players to feel like they are truly experiencing the game---lost in the wilderness, desperate to survive. Scheduled demo on Saturday at 3 PM.
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Luke Petterschmidt, game designer of Castle Dice, will be on hand Saturday. Luke will have a prototype of a new version of the game, and he is also willing to share his experiences with using Kickstarter campaigns to introduce new games.
TC Petty III will be on hand to demo his new game, a 2012 Essen release, entitled Viva Java, the Coffee Game, demo scheduled for Friday at 4 PM. For details, see here. | |||||||||
Some of these game designers plan to be on hand for a round-table discussion in the game demo area, scheduled for Saturday at 9 AM. Topics include: Tips on getting a new game design published and the new "Kickstarter" phenomenom.
Game designers expected to be on hand include Bill Crenshaw, Luke Petterschmidt, TC Petty III, Ben Rosset and John Sizemore. All are welcome to participate in this discussion, which is a EuroQuest "first."
The game exchange is scheduled for Saturday at 5:00 PM.
For those coming on Thursday, the opening day of the convention, there will be a special "Early Bird" prize drawing at 8:30 PM as a little extra incentive to attend for the full four days.
The main prize drawing will take place at 9:30 PM Saturday. Our Saturday evening drawing will have "top shelf" prizes, including copies of some of the "hot" new games straight from Essen! First pick will go to the winner of the EuroQuest trivia challenge (see details below) while other prize winners will be drawn from attendees who have completed a EuroQuest 2011 survey form (copies available at the front desk). This is your opportunity to help us improve the convention AND win a hot new game! (Remember, you must be present to win and will have a limited amount of time to step forward and claim your prize.) One prize per person.
If anyone has any other ideas for items to add to this page, feel free
to contact
Convention Director Norman Rule or
New Games Demo Coordinator John Weber
.
