The Opinionated Gamers

As I mentioned earlier, there were a lot of games at this year’s show – according to the organizers, over 800 new games on offer this year.  From my perspective, there were a lot of very good games – so many that I could not even see them all, much less attempt to bring them all home.  It will be harder than previous years to try to do this recap on the flight home because my usual mnemonic of mentally walking through the halls simply won’t work.  First off, all of the booths were pretty much concentrated in only two halls, and even by Saturday afternoon, I still was a bit lost when navigating around the new floorplan.  I’m not even sure that I could mentally get around at this point.  Hopefully by the end of Essen 2014, I’ll be more comfortable!  That is, of course, that they don’t re-organize the booth locations!

So, I think I will go to my list on my computer (which is not filled in and is NOT the one that I lost), and go through the publishers alphabetically…

2F was crowded as always… There are always people waiting to playtest Herr Friese’s games, and this year, the added draw of getting candy after the playtest seems to keep things hopping.  For me, though, the highlight of the stand was the Folders.  I have already spent an hour or so playing around with them on the plane.  I have copies of Funf Gurken and Wucherer in my bag, but I haven’t had a chance to play them yet.  I have played a proto of Futterneid, but have not played the published version – FF told me though that there weren’t too many changes from the version that I played.  FInally, the new set of PG boards is in a box being mailed to me, so I will get to that in the next few weeks

Abacus had the new deluxe Hanabi set.  It comes in a nice wooden box, and the tiles feel good in your hand.  I did have some concern because it looked like the tiles in the demo room were getting scuff marks on their back – which would provide some information to game players – but these marks easily wiped off with a cloth, so I am not concerned by this.  My brother got a set, and it looks good.  The only downside was that tiles do not fit back in the box in the included bag – you have to arrange them nicely again to get the lid to close.

Adlung – this is another booth that I simply didn’t have time for.

AEG – The big games for me here were Canalis and Cheaty Mages. There was some issue with shipping or customs for Cheaty Mages and it was not available at the start of the show, but it showed up by late Friday night, so all is well.  I really liked the original Japanese version of Cheaty Mages, and the new edition actually has a few rule changes that were suggested by the designer – so I’m looking forward to seeing how those changes affect game play.  I also am excited that they are continuing their Big in Japan line with plans for Sail to India for 2014.

Amigo – Amigo continues on with its focus on family games.  My brother and I tried Speed Cups which is a rapid fire dexterity-ish game where you have to stack 5 plastic cups as fast as possible to match a card flipped up on the table.  It also has a Halli Galli style bell which is loud!  Galapagos and Flash 10 are the games that interested me most (for my family) – though I still will need to work out a translation for Galapagos… I am hoping that one of my friends over at Amigo will come through for me (hint, hint)\

Continue reading →

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Different angle, no flash at least.

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.

Continue reading →

Okay folks, here it is: my final (and slightly delayed) write up about my experience as a first-time attendee of the SPIEL fair in Essen.   I made it back home safely, as did most of the games (Keyflower: The Farmers is a little worse for the wear, but that’s a sacrifice I can easily live with).  Although I am no means the expert packer Dale is, I did manage to bring home 19 new games, 2 expansions, and a handful of promotional items and stocking stuffers for friends, such as 2-F Spiele’s innovative Folder puzzles. (For those who just want the eye candy, a final picture of my Essen game purchases is at the end of the post.)

Kookaburra, as bored at the airport as everyone else.

If you followed my adventures along the way, you know that I had a blast in Germany, and, despite some bumps along the way, I am very grateful to have been able to experience the fair.  I want to thank my loyal readers for the words of encouragement along the way.  I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Dale and Brian Yu, who allowed me to tag along with them most evenings and who facilitated my access to people and places that most attendees never get the opportunity to see.

For example, me with (an obviously thrilled) Ignacy Trzewiczek on Press Day.

In the few days since returning home, the most frequent question I have been asked is, “Would I do it again?”  And I must admit, I’m not entirely sure.  If I were a twenty-something single lad with a bottomless piggy bank, this would be easy.  But Essen is a pretty lavish (and somewhat selfish) vacation once you are old and married.

So on that note, here are a few more things I have learned throughout my journey that weigh on whether I would come back (along with a random assortment of blurry pictures I didn’t find a place to use previously).

Continue reading →

One of the joys of the Essen trip is the hours spent packing and re-packing to make sure that I can bring home as many games as possible.  I say that only half-sarcastically, as it is an enjoyable puzzle to see how much you can get into your two pieces of luggage, a carry on and a personal item.  I think that I’ve got a decent system in place now, and with a little help from some friends, it all works out.  I was lucky to have someone help this year get a box to the post office, so not all of the games on the list below came home in my bags.  I’d say that probably 12-18 games went home in the box in the mail.  But I can’t tell you for sure because the manifest for that box was written on my master list – which is now lost…. I’m hoping that I simply packed the list in one of my game boxes as I was trying to make everything fit into the luggage, and I’ll be surprised one game night when it shows up.

This year, given that I shipped a box home, it made it a bit easier on the actual Luggage Tetris ( TM) game that I have to play. I still definitely tried to nest boxes where I could, but I didn’t feel the need to punch every game to try to shave off every gram of weight.  Instead, I took the heaviest part of each game – the cardboard – placed each game’s worth of stuff in an oversized ziploc bag.  The bags I found this year at Dollar Tree were actually TOO big, these turned out to be two gallon bags, but being too large isn’t that great of an issue… Some games (I’m looking at you – Caverna and New Haven) probably each had at least 5 pounds of cardboard each inside the box…  These BOUS were then carefully stacked up in my carry-on which is just big enough to accommodate two separate stacks of cardboard from the usual rectangular sized box.  I probably managed to get 12-15 games worth of cardboard into the carryon.  The space left over on the sides was filled in with heavy decks of cards from games as well as the bag of heavy wooden pawns from Origin.  In the end, my carryon was a light and airy 45 pounds… And that’s without using the zipper to expand the size.  I try to attract as little attention to the carryon as possible, so I want to leave it small if possible so they don’t stop me due to size at the gate.  Also, if the dang thing was any heavier, I’m not sure I could get it into the overhead compartment without giving myself a hernia.  There was a bit of spillover into my bookbag (personal item) which brought 6 or 7 games worth of the 30cm square variety that did not neatly stack in the carryon.  Oh, and let’s not forget about the jacket. There are a few decks of cards and wooden bit secreted away in the pockets, but certainly not jammed packed like years previous. 

When it’s all said and done, I’m guessing that my luggage is about 170 pounds when totalled together.  Both of the checked luggages came in on the official scale at DUS at 22.6kg, so this means I was within 100-150 grams of the limit on the way home.  Both of the bags were busting at the seams, and frankly I don’t think I had the volume to fit anything else in either bag.  In fact, due to the lack of volume, a few games moved so far down the list as to be left behind – Nations and Amerigo, for instance – though both of these should be available fairly soon domestically says their respective publishers…  I will break down what games came home in what bag further below… but first, here is my sort of complete list – I am probably missing a few games that I cannot remember right now, and there may be a game or two on the list that I thought I had picked up and managed to not do so…

1. Archon

Continue reading →

We’ve finally made it to Thursday – the start of the show!  My SD card started to go bad here, so I have about a half of all the pictures I took for the rest of the week…

One of the things that makes going to Essen so fun is that the publishers offer you the chance to meet some of your favorite designers and artists.

Marie Cardouat and yours truly – after she drew a wonderful personalized picture in the inside of my Steam Park box.

Lots of pickups early on Thursday morning.  In fact, this is the stuff I walked back to the hotel at about 10:15 in the morning.  Talk about feeling like a salmon – going the wrong way (away from the fair) pretty much right at the open!

More games to try to pack!  I can already hear the tinkling tunes of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the background…

Yet more of the cool interactions.  Here Brian Yu and Piero sit at their signing of Geister Geister.  I also managed to get Piero to make a superb drawing in the inside cover of my game.

Continue reading →