Today is “the day”, when left behind ordinary customs and traditions me and Caterina convert in real “gaming machine” ready to play everything will be served on our tables. Of course we have likings and prejudices, expectations and wishes but we are open-minded and we can range from kid games to heave gamers games, passing through party-games and dexterity.

One of my biggest wishes is to be able to play some good and deep Sci-fi board-games (Caterina loves fantasy but she hates sci-fi) … I really prefer to be unaware of which is the biggest wish of an almost 14 years old girl …

I’m also bringing with me information abut the next edition of PLAY: The Games Festival (here a nice video of last edition) for designers and publishers interested in visiting us, but I’m sure this “public relation” duties will not steal me too much time. It is Essen time: it is time to game!

Looking our last year “top 5” I think we are “good testers” (or, at least, lucky ones) because our top of top was Russian Railroads that won both DSP and IGA. Caterina said “A perfect game. I liked everything. If there will be an Essen award for best gamers game it will have to go to this one” and me “I’m always fascinated by worker placement games and also by games you have to build up your engine in time to get points before the end. This game seems to have both this feature.“.

Day 0 was almost all reserved for the travel: Modena-Bologna by car, than Bologna-Koln by fly, Koln-Essen by train and finally Essen station – Hotel by metro. 6 hours. But today the train wasn’t there because there was a bomb of the second world war to disarm. We were lucky and Massimo and Luca from Asterion were on our flight and they give us a lift by car to Essen.
Time to drop luggage (still empty!) and say hello to gamers playing in the main hall of the hotel. It is clear that it could be a nice setting for a boardgames.

We still missed the Wednesday press event because Caterina this year has to take her exam (in the end of the first circle of secondary school) … maybe the next one.

A friend of mine asked me to take and bring home Perplexus Epic. Someone knows if there will be also this year an Essen booth dedicated ?

Perplessus Epic