Friday Morning at Essen

Posted on October 14, 2016 by Dale Yu

Just getting ready for breakfast. Spent a good portion of last night opening boxes, repackaging boards/cards, nesting boxes, and trying to get it to all fit in my cases.  I think that I have maybe 30 to 35 more pounds worth of weight before I’m done, though I haven’t done any drastic weight reduction measures yet.

I have a few meetings today to continue checking out the new games, and now that I know how much space/weight is left, I will be taking my time figuring out which of the new games makes the cut in the remaining weight limit.

This would also be a good time to give you my annual direction to  Frank Kulkmann’s blog – no one does Essen coverage quite like him during the fair itself.

http://boardgame.de/specials/messe/essen16/essen16.htm

I’ll try to write more this morning, but now it’s time for breakfast!

Posted in Convention Report, Essen 2016 | 1 Comment

Father in thE Messe 2016: day 1

Posted on October 13, 2016 by Andrea "Liga" Ligabue

The first time you enter in the Messe is something you can’t forget. Something you know will change your life for ever like the first day of school, the first kiss or the first time you eat Tortellini (for people from Modena something usually will happen around the first year of life).

Francesco first time was, as usual, a big “wow”, just entering the hall, than games games and games and than another “wow” for the first twisted potato.

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Caterina is now attending a language high school and she is able to understand english rules and catch a bit of German and french too. Francesco doesn’t speak english but knows almost all the usefull words like “tank”, “hit”, “score”, “move”, “resources”, “card” and so on … so we are really ready to dive into the most hard core euros despite the fact that most of the demonstrators are considering us a typical casual family …

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Essen Day One: What’s Hot, Plus General Thoughts on Day One (Chris Wray)

Posted on October 13, 2016 by Chris Wray

spiel16

As with my past coverage, I’ll be posting each night about (1) what’s hot, (2) what I played, and (3) general thoughts on the convention.  I didn’t get the chance to play any games today, but I did get 90+% of my shopping done, so I’ll spend the next three days playing games.  Unfortunately, that means I don’t have any snap reviews tonight.

Below I talk about what’s generating buzz, plus I walk through my experience buying Japon brand games.  If you didn’t see my post early this afternoon, I gave initial thoughts on the convention there, plus did a reveal of the DSP Goodie Box.   Continue reading →

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Thurs at the fair 

Posted on October 13, 2016 by Dale Yu

Way too busy to write now. I will mostly have to let the pictures do the talking 

Lunch time. Spiral potatoes. 

We had killed brian’s step goal by lunch. I think we’re around 18,000 steps now 

Went back to the hotel twice. Here’s the loot stack for the day at 1500

More demos and meetings, so no writing now.  Perhaps tonight. But I might be busy punching and packing. For as slow as weds was yesterday, today has been packed with activity 

Posted in Convention Report, Essen 2016 | 1 Comment

Essen Day One: The Convention So Far, Plus the Morning Haul (Chris Wray)

Posted on October 13, 2016 by Chris Wray

morninghaul

A picture is worth a thousand words, so this will be a short post, mostly to update on what is hot so far at the convention.  I also crack open the 2016 DSP Goodie Box below.

By 10:30, the convention crowd was in full force.  While it is hard to tell what’s standing out — people haven’t had that much time to play the games — I do know what seems to be selling well.  Feuerland Spiele sold out of their English allotment of A Feast for Odin this morning, although Z-Man might still have some (I didn’t check).  Japon Brand’s games were as hot as ever (more on that tonight).  And Stronghold appears to be one of the most crowded booths, with several of its titles being high on people’s buy list.

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Essen Day Zero: Set Up Photos, More Games I’m Anticipating, and Three Snap Reviews (Chris Wray)

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Chris Wray

The halls were mostly empty yesterday, but by Wednesday afternoon, most of the booths were in place and the publishers were just moving around the games.  I snapped a few pictures in the Messe, which I’ve posted below.  They show both (a) how far things have come in just a few hours, and (b) just how many games there are to move around.

In this post I also discuss some additions to my “most anticipated” list and do snap reviews of three games: Camel Up Cards, Las Vegas: The Card Game, and Memory: The Board Game.  (I played all three of those with Dale, so he beat me to the punch on blogging about them!)

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