While all the beautiful people are in Essen, the rest of us are still getting on with it. Christo and Duncan came over last night and we had a lot of fun. Christo has written it up at his blog.

Evo
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this. It is light-hearted and reasonably quick, but requires plenty of thought and player interaction. Bruno Faidutti’s description is the best I have found. I really enjoyed how it felt like a race against time and the mutation auctions are very tense.
Rating 7/10, and that could easily rise.

Colossal Arena
For the second time in one blog post, Bruno Faidutti does the best job of describing a game. He also describes Reiner Knizia’s evolution of this simple game mechanic.
I bought Galaxy: The Dark Ages on eBay a couple of years ago, and we played it back in April 2004. I had heard it was inferior to Titan: The Arena, but I tried it anyway and we did not really enjoy it. Colossal Arena is more elegant and fun.
Having enjoyed this simpler version far more, I will try to play Grand National Derby with my Galaxy cards. We can always upgrade to Colossal Arena or Galaxy, with the same cards, if we get bored.
Rating 6/10.