The Opinionated Gamers

The SPIEL fair is now halfway over – and it’s been jam packed with games so far!  This morning, we were back to the Messe by 9am, and got a good walk around a mostly empty convention center.  This early time is great to get a unhurried and non-crowded look at some of the stands.  Of course, this is the setup time for the stands, so you have to make sure that you stay out of the way!

Early this morning, ran into two game designers with new releases at the fair this year – Greg Daigle (Hawaii) and Jeffrey Allers (Pala). In between them is my brother, Brian Yu, who is a game designer, but he isn’t showing a new game this year at Essen.

Sadly, the Austrian Game Museum still did not have delivery of their Pantheon tiles, so I was politely asked to return Saturday morning to try again… Hopefully they will arrive tomorrow as it’s the last day that I’ll be at the fair!

Continue reading →

This year, for the first time, I decided to attend Essen Spiel together with Caterina, my 10 year old daughter. Of course I was sure it would be a totally different experience to be not only a gamer but also a father at the greatest game event in the world. I also decided to let Caterina decide our routes, the games to play, and what to do, trying to influence her as little as possible. Of course that probably means I’m going to miss games, not buy as much as usual (or just buy different games), but I’m sure I’ll have a real great and new experience. I made the travel by flight trying to make a narrow games selection: first I decided to delay the purchase of all the games I’m sure I could get easily from Italy. I hope at least Italian publishers will be able to give me their games later. Finally I was lucky because a friend of mine, his wife, and their daughter decided to join in this experience so Caterina was not alone in the Messe!

Wednesday: day 0

Wednesday was a travel day. We got to the hotel at 22:15 since we had some delay with the flight and problem with the trains (we prepared the travel well but we didn’t realize that Koln Airport and Koln HBF were not the same station!). Anyway Caterina was eager to play so at 22:35 we were down in the hotel common room playing games. We were really well received by Martin Wallace and Julia. Thanks to Mik Svellov’s help we were able to play The City by Tom Lehmann. A nice quick and easy game with the core mechanic of San Juan and Race for the Galaxy (cards used as money). You are building your city and every card you play can give you money (cards) or points. Of course you need cards to build better and better buildings but since the cards give you points at end of each round and the game ends as soon as a player score 50 points or more, playing scoring cards in the beginning is also important. Of course cheap cards are used to give you points or money. There are also cards with icons (shopping carts, cars, and fountains) that offer bonus points/money to special buildings. Some buildings have prerequisites and few buildings offer discounts. That’s the game but it is funny and works well: we played 3 times in a row before going bed.

Continue reading →

OK, back for just a little bit… it’s almost midnight, and there’s not much time until the fair opens again in the morning!  The fair was lightly packed today (since there is not the school holiday this week), but that’s not to say that many people weren’t all trying to buy games.

The morning for me and many others that I know was filled with picking up pre-orders and checking out the limited edition games.  High on my list for today were MIL (1049) and Space Bastards as each of these only had 300 copies at the fair.  Other things high on the Thursday morning list were Poseidon’s Kingdom, Vanuatu, Trajan, Terra Evolution and Paperclip Railways.

(Not many copies of Poseidon’s Kingdom left, and none for sale – all that remain are for preorders)

Continue reading →

There are 644 Essen 2011 photos here:

http://www.trictrac.net/index.php3?id=reportages&inf=detail_photos&eve=20111020_essen_2011&abo=trictrac&nb=1

Post more photos sites in the comments.

– Jonathan

Quick check in here…

Most of the companies that were waiting for games have them now.

There are bunches of empty pallets and cartons littering the floor of the Messe in the prime opening hours.  But, nobody seemed to complain.

Continue reading →