Dale Yu: Essen 2013 Picture Post Part 4

OK, this will be the last set of pictures for the year as my camera sucks. I’ve tried a few different SD-card recovery utilities, and while I’ve been able to find some pictures that I had taken three or four years ago… Nothing else from last week shows up. Oh well.  I’m hoping that Jonathan, Joe or Ben was able to get more pictures taken as well.

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The one demo copy of Les Batisseurs (Bombyx) at the show.  I didn’t get a chance to talk to anyone who was able to try it.

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The German version of Palaces of Carrara.  A little birdie may have told me that there are plans to import some of the German language version back to the US shortly.  As the game itself is language independent, this should be a nice way to meet the current demand.

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I went back up for a quick tour of the press room when it was empty.  You can get a much better sense of how large the space is… especially when you consider there is a small alcove off the the left that you can’t see which holds 15 or so displays… and that the room in the back is even larger than the room you can see here.

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An attempt to take a picture of Hall 3 from the press room.  It’s actually quite difficult to see all the way back to the end of the hall – and not just because there is a reflection of my flash in the window.  The extent of this hall was hard to imagine at first.

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Different angle, no flash at least.

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This is the Hanabi deluxe set with hard tiles and a wooden box.  It looks quite nice, but my group at home wouldn’t play the game enough to make it worth getting a set.  Furthermore, I have talked with R&R Games, and they are seriously planning to do their own deluxe version.  Though plans are still in process, they are going to try to do it with larger tiles that also have an image pressed on the back of the tiles – so that you can use the orientation of the tile to give/keep information – just like you can do with the cards in the game.

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This is an unstamped prototype of the tile that R&R wants to use. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a Hanabi Deluxe tile at the time to take a comparative picture.

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Yay for Suburbia Inc.  I am pretty darn proud of this one.

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In case the 300 EUR cost of the all wood Whacky Wit was too much for you, you could buy an analog version of the game that came in a poster tube.  You get a couple copies of the board, dice, and a black marker.  Sadly, the replay of this is limited as it’s hard to undo the black marker on the posters.  IIRC, the cost of this was about 20 EUR.

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At the Kosmos booth, they had some Settlers goodies.  Sadly, almost all were sold out by Friday afternoon when I noticed they had stuff like this for sale.  I mean, who doesn’t want a Settlers’ Christmas Ornament or a stuffed Robber plush toy?

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More cool Settlers stuff. I almost bought one of the score keepers, but managed not to pull the trigger on it.

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The Concordia booth was pretty much at full capacity all weekend.  Being near the top of the Fairplay chart for the whole time assuredly contributed to this.

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Man, keeping up to date with all of the Queen extras is almost a full time job! I think there were 25 different Queenies that you could pick up. Wow.  And based on the line that I saw at the stand, plenty of people were ready to trade in their Euros for the Queenies.  A brilliant job by the Queen Games marketing department IMHO.

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The Mayfair stand.  Plenty of Orange Lookout shirts in the crowd here – evidence of the recent marriage (well buyout) of Lookout by Mayfair.  Lots of Caverna and Bremerhaven demos going on this weekend.

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Lorenzo from Cranio Creations with his two new babies for the show.  This is right before his BGG interview.

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Remember those spiral potatoes?  Here is the stand.

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Best show food. EVAR.

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Separated at birth?  Long lost brothers?

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And in closing, what a motley group of fools sitting around the table at the R&R booth late Saturday afternoon.  It’s been a great trip, and it’s time to start playing some games!

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor

About Dale Yu

Dale Yu is the Editor of the Opinionated Gamers. He can occasionally be found working as a volunteer administrator for BoardGameGeek, and he previously wrote for BoardGame News.
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5 Responses to Dale Yu: Essen 2013 Picture Post Part 4

  1. > The German version of Palaces of Carrara. A little birdie may have told me that there are plans to import some of the German language version back to the US shortly.

    Or you could just order it today on amazon.de for $46 total, including shipping, and get it in two weeks. It boggles my mind that more people aren’t doing this.

  2. Dale Yu says:

    Curt – agreed. Though the shipping costs from amazon.de are weird at times. I tried to price the shipping for my brother’s two games – the shipping costs for those two games was 31 EUR.. which was 60% of the cost of the games themselves! Yet, other games, like Palaces of Carrara and Nauticus were quite reasonable. I wish there was a way to predict that…

    • Dan Blum says:

      They have the weight wrong on Brian’s games – they are listed as 5 kg (11 pounds) each which must be far too high. I e-mailed them about it, who knows if they’ll listen.

      • There’s also the question of fulfilled by Amazon vs fulfilled by some 3rd party. Only the stuff fulfilled directly by Amazon seems to have the great shipping. Also note that prices as listed include VAT, but when you go to checkout with a US shipping address, that gets removed. And of course using real-time translation of the pages makes it (mostly) a snap (still a few buttons with text burnt into the images).

  3. AED says:

    Suburbia, Inc really improves the original game…congrats!

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