As I shared with you last year as well, the press corps receives a series of newsletters from the organizers in the run-up to the fair. The second of these missives just arrived yesterday. Most important for me is that the envelope included the official application for press credentials for the fair. Once I filled that out and then figured how to (freely) upgrade my e-fax account to send international faxes, I sat down to read the included newsletter.
As always, there were a few tidbits which I wasn’t aware of about the fair. Moreover, it is always interesting to see which games get coverage in the newsletters.
TIDBITS ABOUT THE FAIR
- This year is the 30th anniversary edition of SPIEL
- There were only 12 publishers at the initial 1. Deutsche Spielertage
- Currently, there are 800 new games from 36 countries that will be shown at SPIEL ’12
- It will be crowded this year again as SPIEL coincides with the fall vacation period of the German state of NRW
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GAMES SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED IN THE NEWSLETTER
- “The renowned publisher Kosmos, for example, will be presenting its new game DIE LEGENDEN VON ANDOR featuring an opulent and fantastic adventure with a tight atmospheric design”
- “A total of 133 dice provide for exciting dice duels in the game WURFELMANIA!… The goal is the solve tricky tasks such as building a tower out of dice in your hand or rolling letters and forming words out of them as quickly as possible.”
- iPad gaming will be in full force – specifically mentioned are the Settlers of Catan app from Kosmos and the Apptivity products from Mattel. Additionally, Jumbo will show its iPawn series with games that are exclusively designed for the iPad. Both the Apptivity and iPawn games will use tangible pieces that are placed on the iPad screen to interact with the games.
- BOHNANZA is celebrating its 15th anniversary with the motto “15 years – 15 beans”. Apparently 15 renowned artists have each been asked to illustrate their favorite bean, and these will be auctioned off Friday and Saturday, 4pm, at the Amigo booth 11-22. Additionally, there is a large Bohnanza tournament scheduled Saturday at noon to qualify for the German national championship.
OTHER TOURNAMENTS AT THE SPIEL FAIR
- Bohnanza tournament
- 8th German Cuboro tournament (NB: I’m not sure how this can be competitive)
- 23rd Open Memory Championship of Germany
- 2nd German Dominion Championship
- 7th Carcassonne Championship as well as the 10th German Carcassonne Championship
- German Warhammer Invasion Championship
The rest of the newsletter covers information about the COMIC ACTION portion of the fair, so it needs not be covered on this boardgaming blog….
As usual, my personal level of anticipation is growing by the day! If I remember, I’ll try to add this countdown clock somewhere in all the Essen Preview posts so you can count down the minutes with me!
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