Dale Yu: My Essen Report Part Two (of Two)

Sadly, I haven’t had much chance to play games since I gave my initial report on the Spiel fair, so I am not quite yet ready to write up any more information on the new games… But there are still plenty of things to comment on about the Fair itself as well as the travel that Valerie and I were able to do beforehand.  I’ve got a lot still to say, and since this is the last week that I’ll have to dedicate to the Essen trip – I’m just going to throw it all here in one column (since Great Lakes Games starts tomorrow and then BGG.con comes up in two weeks!).  Apologies in advance if it’s a bit disjointed, but I’m trying to fit three columns worth of stuff all together here this week!

Some other general thoughts about the Fair

Let me get back to the fair for a bit and give a few more general impressions.  First, though the folks running the fair told us that there were even more exhibitors this year than ever before, it didn’t feel any bigger.  In fact, it seemed a bit smaller as there weren’t any overflow booths stuck out in Hall 4 this year (and Hall 9.1 wasn’t used as it has been in some previous years).  Maybe there were just many more exhibitors, each in smaller spaces.  Honestly, it would be hard to tell.  There were definitely a lot more exhibitors there this year that I hadn’t heard of before, especially from the Far East.  In the closing letter from Friedhelm Merz Verlag, the 2009 Spiel fair had 763 vendors from 31 different countries.  Over 152,000 visitors came through the turnstiles this year, and there were more than 600 games that premiered at the fair.  So as you can see, there was a LOT to see (and a lot of people to try to dodge in order to see those things!)

As I sort of mentioned last week, this year seemed to be a bit anomalous in that there wasn’t a single game that seemed to have universal buzz about it.  In my experience, I’ve found that almost every year, there turns out to be a game that all of my contacts talk about.  Some recent examples in years past include Dominion, Agricola, Duck Dealer and King of Siam.  A few years ago (the year I didn’t make it to Essen) – the buzz was so strong about Khronos that I managed to catch a hold of it back home in Ohio and had to pull some major favor strings to get one brought back to me!  And going back even further, I can still remember the huge swell of support for the original release of Oltre Mare – in the 5 inch box – which slowly but steadily got people to the booth to look at it.  Of course, the buzz doesn’t always predict a good game, but usually there is some sort of excitement about a few games each year.  This year seemed a bit different, as I didn’t get the sense that there was the same level of support about any game in particular.  Of course, I could just be out of the loop now and not hearing all the good rumors about the games at the fair, but in the many conversations I’ve had since Essen, I think that most of the folks that I know agree with this sentiment. 

I also noted that there seemed to be a much lower rate of pre-orders (both on offer as well as orders being placed) this year.  Last year seemed to be the apex of this trend for me, and I do recall having at least one half of my baggage weight accounted for by Thursday at lunch time as I had pre-ordered or reserved so many games last year.  This year, it was a complete about face for me as I didn’t preorder a single game.  Is that because I wasn’t as interested in the games this year?  I don’t think so… It’s just that none of the games that I really wanted required pre-orders.  Though, looking back on it, I do think that I was a bit burned last year with so many pre-orders, and a good number of those games didn’t really live up to their expectations. So.. even if there were plenty of things to pre-order, I’m not sure how excited I would have been about those prospects.  Given the fact that there wasn’t really any major release that I missed out on by not placing a pre-order, I think that I’ll continue on the non-pre-ordering route as much as possible in the future.

Another difference that I noticed this year is that there were many more non-gaming booths scattered around the fair.  Hall 5 see med to have a few more wooden toy booths than I remember before.  Also, there was a cookie-cutter stand that managed to get prime real-estate space in Hall 12 right between Cwali and Bambus Spiele.  I can’t remember what was in that space last year, but I’m almost certain that it wasn’t cookie cutters!  On a funny note – I was looking for a gift to bring home for my wife, and as we were rushing by, I thought that I had seen a meeple cookie cutter.  When we went back later in the fair to re-examine it, the “meeple cookie cutter” turned out to be a simple Gingerbread man.  It’s funny how you can make yourself see something else when your mind is so concentrated on games!  (I would have totally gone for it if there were a cookie-cutter in the shape of a meeple or a poppel)

Another interesting development was the change in the Heidelberger booth in Hall 10.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the Heidelberger booth generally always has a long line snaking into it.  They set up a metal fence around the borders of their booth space and then stack the walls of this cage with discounted games of all sorts.  Usually everything in the booth is something on clearance, and there are plenty of deals to be found.  It’s quite congested, and the path that they leave for buyers is usually wide enough for about 1.5 people – so you end up getting in line and then trudging through single file trying to look at all the bargains as best you can.  This year, there didn’t seem to be as many discounted games; in fact, there were many new games being offered in the booth – which is something that I don’t remember from years past.  The prices they had on the current games were competitive with the other vendors around the fair, but there were certainly many fewer clearout bargains this year.  I wasn’t the only one to notice this as the lines for the Heidelberger booth were much shorter than I can ever remember.  Some of the changes may stem from the fact that Heidelberger is trying to be a bit more prominent in the games distribution arena – they had a fairly large floor space set up in Hall 9 to demonstrate the new games which they were distributing.  It was hard to walk into the hall and not see the three-foot tall head shot of Uwe Rosenberg staring at you!

I also very much liked the new trend of combined booths.  There were a number of booths set up that were shared amongst a number of different publishers.  There was a Games in Italy stand in Hall 5, the “Korean Embassy” in Hall 4 and the “French Connection” in Hall 12.  I bet there there were others throughout the fair, but those are the ones that come to mind now.  I like the way that the individual exhibitors banded together in each of these cases.  Talking to a few folks, such as Cyril from Ystari and Alfredo from Ghenos (in the Italian area), there were some distinct advantages of the combined booths – most notably an increase in demo area available because there was a certain efficiency of space when all the exhibitors could store their games in one place.  Also, it was a nice way to have many people in one area who spoke the same language – which helped with demos because if there was ever a translation issue, it was more easily resolved with so many native speakers concentrated together.  This trend is something that I hope continues in years to come.

Another new booth which I felt was a success was the Geekdo.com (Boardgamegeek.com) booth.  They were able to secure a fairly prominent space in Hall 5 in a very high traffic area – right across from the always packed Galeria Kaufhof booth.  This booth was always abuzz with some sort of activity, and it served as a nice meeting place.  [At this point, let me throw out another one of those official disclaimers – I serve as an admin for BGG, though this is a completely voluntary position] The ability to use the computers to set up a real-time ranking system was nice, and it provided a nice alternative to the Fairplay list.  This isn’t to say that it wasn’t without some kinks – but since this was the first year that the BGG folks were at the fair, I suspect that they’ll have most of these things ironed out if they make it back in 2010.  Additionally, I was “recruited” a few times to conduct interviews or sit in on game demonstrations for the streaming webcast, and I’ve really only heard positive things about the webcam.  Sadly, given the time shift, a lot of the stuff was on between 4am and 8am Eastern time here in the US, but it was still a nice way to get a glimpse of what goes on at the fair.  On behalf of BGG, I’d like to thank all of the publishers, game designers and other journalists who took a bit of time out of their Spiel schedule to sit down with the folks at the booth and do stuff for the webcast.

Finally, I’ll admit that it was it bit painful to see all the new game-supply booths at the fair.  In the past, I can only remember two consistently located meeple/wooden block/wooden cylinder booths in the fair – one in Hall 12 on the back wall behind Kosmos and one in Hall 5 across from the Lookout booth.  However, this year, there were at least two other large booths – one prominently located in Hall 10 – that were filled with wooden bits of all shapes, sizes and colors.  Sadly, given the overburdened bags that I already had, it was simply not possible to bring home any of the bits which would have been quite nice for my own prototypes and playtesting.  Maybe next year?  (Doubtful!)

Thoughts about the competing Ranking systems of games

This year brought the gaming public two different ranking systems at Essen.  Fairplay, the traditional ranking list found in Hall 10, was in its usual place, and this year it crowned Vasco de Gama at the top of its Scout list.  Fairgoers could stop by the booth and fill out a paper ballot to help rank the games they enjoyed the most during the fair.  Geekdo.com was also present, and in their first year, they brought the GeekBuzz system to Essen.  This system used a local computer network to allow folks to rank games and then have the results automatically posted on the toteboard.  Dungeon Lords took the crown here as the most favored game of the show.

I have always tried to make a point of going by the Fairplay booth once or twice a day to try to get a feel for the pulse of the show.  Sometimes there are some games that inexplicably miss the BGN preview, and the only way that I hear about them is by finding them on the Fairplay list and then checking out the games myself.  This year, the trips got a bit longer as I now tried to go past both the Fairplay booth and the Geekdo.com booth each day.

While I’ve always found the polls to be a useful tool, this year they definitely seemed more labile than in the past.  Games would bounce all over the place in the rankings, so it was hard to ever get a good feel for what was going to do well.  In fact, the game that eventually won the Scoutlist at Fairplay, Vasco de Gama, never even made into the Top 10 during the time I was at the show!  I later found out that this was due to a low number of votes for it – the game only met the criteria for ranking near the end of Sunday – by which time I was already flying over Greenland on the way home!

Now that I’ve had a chance to sit back and reflect on the show, I thought it might be useful to compare the two ranking systems.

Which system is better? 

Honestly, I don’t think this is a question you can answer.  Both of the systems give voters a chance to express their opinions about which game at the fair was the best.  The results were different, but that’s probably because the folks that voted at each one were different.  I was just glad to have multiple ranking systems available to me as it gave me additional chances to learn about games that may have slipped under the radar in my preparations for the fair.

Who voted where?

Well, this is obviously speculation as I have nothing to do with the Fairplay booth – but my guess is that the Geekdo.com booth attracted many more English speaking folks (as the majority of Geekdo.com users are English speaking).  Fairplay is better known amongst the Germans as they have been at the fair for a number of years now, and my guess is that there aren’t many people who voted at both booths.  However, it’s fairly clear given the differing results that a different population of gamers voted for each award.

What were the results?

Fairplay

(taken from http://fairplay-online.blogspot.com/)

1. Vasco di Gama, What’s your Game, Score 1,38, 34 Votes
2. Machtspiele, eggertspiele, Score 1,81, 58 Votes
3. Macao, alea, Score 1,88, 106 Votes
4. Magister Navis, Lookout Games, Score 1,92, 48 Votes
5. Dungeon Lords, Czech Games Edition, Score 1,94, 48 Votes
6. Vor den Toren von Loyang, Hall Games, Score 1,94, 51 Votes
7. Egizia, Hans im Glück, Score 2,00, 91 Votes
8. Funkenschlag-Fabrikmanager, 2F-Spiele, Score 2,04, 72 Votes
9. Hansa Teutonica, Argentum, Score 2,05, 43 Votes
10. Carson City, HUCH! & friends, Score 2,06, 97 Votes

Geekbuzz

(taken from http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geekbuzz/overview )

1. Dungeon Lords, 4.1 Stars, 109 Votes
2. Power Grid – Factory Manager (Funkenschlag-Fabrikmanager), 4.0 Stars, 120 Votes
3. Agricola: Farmers of the Moor, 4.0 Stars, 61 Votes
4. Endeavor (Magister Navis), 4.0 Stars, 71 Votes
5. Arena – Roma II, 4.0 Stars, 22 Votes
6. Vasco de Gama, 3.9 Stars, 46 Votes
7. Carson City, 3.9 Stars, 107 Votes
8. Ghost Stories: White Moon, 3.9 Stars, 37 Votes
9. Stronghold, 3.9 Stars, 55 Votes
10. A Brief History of the World, 3.9 Stars, 32 Votes

So, as you can see, there is a lot of variation between the two polls.  Only 5 games were on the Top 10 of both lists.  The winner of each list did no better than fifth on the other.  If you’re the sort of person who wants to try to compare the scores, both were scored on a 5 point scale, but the Fairplay scale uses a score of 1 as the best score while the BGG scale uses a 5 as the highest score.

What do the results tell me?

Honestly, I don’t know.  I will admit that the wide variation of results seemed a bit surprising – and it kind of supports my belief that there wasn’t a consensus “Game of the Show” this year as there has been in years past.  Furthermore, looking at the spread of the raw scores – especially on the Geekbuzz rankings – it’s no surprise that the games were jumping all over the place.  A single “5” or “1” vote would be enough the move the averages to drop a game multiple ranks in the order. 

Having actually looked at the raw number of votes though does make me a bit suspicious of the validity of the rankings though.  For a fair that claims to have an average of 38,000 visitors a day, the fact that only 34 people felt strongly enough about Vasco de Gama to vote for it makes me question whether it’s really the people’s choice for the Game of the Show.  Likewise, though the BGG vote totals are a bit higher on average, 109 votes is still a drop in the bucket when compared to even the number of different people that would simply walk by the Geekdo.com booth in a single hour.

The vote totals (at least on the Fairplay) side appear to be consistent though.  The winner last year, Dominion, managed to get 147 votes —which happened to be the most of any game at Spiel ’08.  You can see the full results at:  http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p3vSRS-GKaqxXx96Ah83KAQ And Tribune won the Spiel ’07 Fairplay Scout List with only 51 votes.  The largest vote getter that year was Cuba with 103 votes total.  http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p3vSRS-GKaqx93ZwOzR15SA

What isn’t clear from either of the Geekdo or Fairplay information currently available to me is: How many people voted in total for each poll… Even though I did serve as a TA in a statistics course in college, I’m not sure that I have enough expertise in the area to do a statistical analysis to see whether or not the results of these polls are significant.  Maybe I can talk Valerie into looking into this with more depth as statistical analysis is something that she does on a professional basis for her work…

Did the rankings affect what I looked at or what I brought home?

Well, this year, not really – though I’ll admit to not bringing back many of the games on the list… On the Fairplay list, only three of the games made it into the suitcase this year (Dungeon Lords, Loyang and Hansa Teutonica)!  And considering the GeekBuzz list, amazingly, only two of the Top 10 Games is currently in my possession (Roma II and Dungeon Lords)!

Does this mean that I’m not going to check out the games that everyone else liked?  Not really.  There are a lot of games that I specifically didn’t bring back home because I already have confirmed that someone was going to do a domestic version.  In those cases, it doesn’t make much sense to use up precious luggage space and weight for something that I can easily obtain back home.  By not bringing it home from Essen, it does mean that I won’t have the game for quite some time (as I generally don’t buy games for a pretty good stretch after Essen), but those are the choices you’ve got to make sometimes!

So, taking into consideration the games that I know will be done in English (or have already been done) – Macao, Endeavor, Egizia, Fabrikmanager, Carson City, Agricola: Farmers of the Moor, Carson City – my totals come up somewhat… There are still some holes in the Top 10 lists that I currently am not planning to look at – but I’m going to be hard pressed to find all the time that I need to play the games that I picked up this year already!  As another data point, look at the 2008 Playfair list again:

1. DOMINION von Donald X. Vaccarino (Hans im Glück) 2+
2. MACHU PICCHU von Walther „Mac“ Gerdts (PD) 2
3. COMUNI von Acchittocca (Tenki/Huch & friends) 2−
4. DIAMANTS CLUB von Rüdiger Dorn (Ravensburger) 2−
5. SNOW TAILS von Fraser und Gordon Lamont (Fragor) 2−
6. PANDEMIE von Matt Leacock (Pegasus) 2−
7. IM SCHUTZE DER BURG von Inka und Markus Brand (Eggert) 2−
8. ICE FLOW von Dean Conrad und John Streets (LG) 2−
9. AGE OF EMPIRES III von Glenn Drover (Pro Ludo) 2−
10. URUK von Hanno und Wilfried Kuhn (DDD) 2−

Of these games, I took home or already owned 8 (all but Im Schutze der Burg/Castle for All Seasons and Ice Flow).  So, time will tell whether the Playfair list (and the Geekbuzz list) will remain a viable source of information to consider when trying to find the new games! 

The Annual Pre-Essen Travelogue

Well, before I leave the Essen trip for another year, let me just post a few pictures about the wonderful travel we had in Germany prior to the fair.  Though the highlight of each October trip is certainly the games at the Spiel fair, Valerie and I have made it a point to travel for a few days prior to the event to learn a little bit more about the country (and it’s a really good way to get all that jet-lag out of your system so that you’re ready to go all day for the fair when Wednesday rolls around!)

This year, due to the fact we were able to use frequent flyer miles to fly over there, we were able to easily set up a trip with different entry and exit points from Germany.  We flew into Munich and spent a few days exploring the city and the surrounding Bavarian countryside (and a short jaunt into Austria).  We did get a twin railpass which turned out to be a great way for us to travel around fairly inexpensively.  The German rail system is a breeze to use, and they are well set up to help travelers who do not speak a lot of German.  Almost every one we talked to from DB was able to speak English, and in the larger HBFs, there was often a customer service counter that was strictly for English speakers.  While we won’t always need to use the rail system so much (especially if we do our traveling in areas closer to Essen), this year it turned out to be a necessity.  And, it was a fairly good deal seeing as our 5-day pass cost only about 30 EUR more than the price of two second class tickets from Munich to Essen (which we would have needed to take no matter what!)

On our first day in Germany, we just stayed around town in Munich.  We had a nice walk down to the Hans im Glück office and got a chance to see where our German Dominion colleagues worked.  It was actually a nice cozy office tucked into a quiet street.  Even though the gaming industry is much larger in Germany, a passerby would likely not even notice that the offices of a prominent gaming company was housed there on the Birnauer Strasse.  Anyways, it was a nice visit.  We got a chance to play the new Cardcassone with Moritz Brunnhofer which was a blast.  Then Moritz surprised us by showing us the tins of Dominion-mints as well as the German versions of the huge cards that were going to be used as booth decorations!  Finally, I spent a few minutes being a fanboy and checking out the shelf of awards.  All of the trophies from the SdJ, DSP and other awards were all crowded together on a single shelf.  I wish I had brought my camera there because it was a pretty impressive sight to see!  Well, actually, I had brought my camera with me, but when I tried to take the picture of the award shelf – that’s when I realized that my camera had conked out!

The next day, we used our rail pass to take a daytrip into Salzburg.  Though our rail pass was only for Germany, apparently the Munich-Salzburg line is included in the pass.  I have always enjoyed Salzburg, and despite the rainy/snowy weather, we still had a good time seeing the usual sights.  After doing the “standard” stuff in the city such as the Mozartplatz and the cathedral, we then took a cable car ride up the mountain which is nearby to the city.  It had been snowing there for a few days, and the mountaintop was simply covered in snow!  We couldn’t see much more than 20 feet in front of us due to the snow and the fog – but it was still an experience not to be forgotten!  I should also make mention now that we really enjoyed the Salzburg Citypass program.  For 22 (or maybe it was 24) euros, you could buy a card for a day which allowed you to use all of the local public transport for free, and it gave you free admission to about 30 tourist attractions.  For folks visiting the town for a single day, it was a really nice way to organize our sightseeing.  By the end of the day, we had ridden the bus/tram all over the city, and taken advantage of about 8 or 9 things on the list. 

My attempt at capturing the beauty of the dome of the Salzburg cathedral

The old fortress of Salzburg taken from the city below.

A picture from ground level of the mountain we were about to take a cable car to the top of!

Due to the weather, there wasn’t much of a view!

Well, the picnic tables were still set up… And yes – it’s as cold as it looks!

This building here housed the restaurant/bar at the top of the mountain that catered to tourists.  Amazingly, despite the weather, it was still open for business!

Finally, what trip to Salzburg would be complete without a visit to the Hellbrunn castle and its trick fountains.  Of course, when it’s raining as much as it was that day, the water doesn’t really seem to be a bother!

Here’s the walkway out of one of the buildings which was guaranteed to get the visitors wet!

The next day was quite an adventure as we had a chance to drive around the Bavarian countryside and see some places that were not quite convenient to the German rail system.  We took in a few palaces such as Neuschwanstein and Linderhof.  We were also able to get to the abbey in Ettal and see the wonderful baroque church there.  I would like to take another opportunity to thank Tom Werneck for allowing us the use of his car and giving us the chance to have a fantastic day in Bavaria.  The day of sightseeing was wonderful, and the nice traditional Bavarian dinner at a restaurant that was seriously in the middle of nowhere was excellent as well.

The exterior of the abbey in Ettal

I told you it was Baroque, right?

The colors were much more vibrant in person.

A sign that even the Pope can sell out – A “Pope beer” which is brewed in Ettal

A lucky shot of me and Neuschwanstein.  It was so foggy that day
that oftentimes you couldn’t even see the castles!

The final day of our sightseeing was spent putzing around town and then making a spur-of-the-moment trip out to Oberammergau.  My folks had been out there in 2000 for the most recent version of the Passion Play, and I kind of wanted to see the town to put an image to their verbal descriptions of it.  Valerie was interested in seeing the woodworking shops that the town is also known for.  All in all, it was a good start to the trip to see such wonderful things.

Finally, as some of you may have read a few weeks ago, I set out on the trip to Germany with a list of things I’d like to see or do while there.  After looking back at the list – it looks like I was able to accomplish 19 of the items and only missed out on 12.  Let’s go over the list again and see how I did!
12 Things I still managed not to accomplish

1. Drink a beer in an authentic Munich beer garden – yes, I know that I’ve already missed Oktoberfest – and yes, I know that Cincinnati has the only authentic Hofbrauhaus in the US – but I still want to get a big stein of beer and consume it around people in lederhosen and dirndls.

   Well, we never made it to the Hofbrauhaus.  No excuse here – just too many other places to eat and drink.  Every restaurant that we tried in Munich and Bavaria was wonderful, so I’m not at all sad to have missed out on this one

2. Figure out how to get a pre-paid “Handy” to use when I’m over there - it’s hard to get used to being unconnected while there

   As it turned out, this wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be.  I honestly didn’t really need a cell phone while we were traveling before the fair, and I still had my handy-dandy Verizon phone card to call the wife and kids back home (still with 33 minutes left on it for next year!) At the fair itself, I did enough circulating that I ended up running into whomever was looking for me – or was able to pick up a message at either the BGG or RGG booth where I was often found.

3. Find a dirndl for my wife – you know, in case she wants to be St. Pauli Girl for Halloween

Wow – they were more expensive than I thought!  Even at the post-Oktoberfest sales in Munich, the price of an average dirndl was still around 100 EUR.  And that doesn’t include the blouse or shoes!  In any event, it turned out to be far to expensive to consider for something that she’s not really going to wear all that often.  Also, there would have been some issues trying to figure out what size to get as the German size system isn’t exactly the same as what we have at home.  We also did make a stop in a traditional Trachten store while we were in Oberammergau, and the stuff there was beautiful… and expensive – I think the one outfit that I really liked would have run about 400 EUR.
4. Try to see an 1860 Munich match – yes I know that it’s 2nd Bundesliga – but they just signed an American striker, Kenny Cooper, who I’d like to see in action

On that Saturday night, it was cold, mildly snowing and frankly, we were quite tired after a long day to Salzburg.  Sometimes it’s just not possible to fit everything into a trip that you want to!  But hopefully Kenny is getting good quality time in as it looks like he’s going to be playing a larger role on the World Cup side with the recent injuries to Davies.
5. See more local sports – on the last trip to Germany, we were able to see a women’s field hockey match between the German and Dutch national teams.  Quite a nice experience! 

Nothing doing here.  Didn’t even see anything that we could have tried to catch.  Probably just the wrong time of year.  Though, as a possible mitigating fact, I did manage to watch an entire Team Handball match on D:SF one night in the hotel.  And though I think that I’m pretty openminded about different sports, I just couldn’t get into this sport. 
6. Get a nice Bundesliga shirt for myself – not sure yet which team, but I can rule out FC Koln (got one last year) and Bayern Munich (I won’t buy a Yankees jersey either)

I managed to forget to do this for me.  Too much time looking at games, I guess.  It was so cold when we were walking around Munich that I almost crumbled and bought a knock-off Bayern Munich scarf to use for warmth purposes… But, common sense kicked in just in time and I decided to just be cold for a little bit longer!
7. Get Bundesliga shirts for my kids.  I suppose I could get them a Bayern shirt – they generally root for anyone who is winning…

This is actually a half-victory for me.  I didn’t get the kids Bundesliga shirts.  I did manage to get them shirts for the local team of Essen, but they’re a third-division side.  So, shirts? yes.  Top division football?  Not so much.
8. Look for more Christmas decorations, esp. “Erzgebirge” style woodcarvings – does anyone know of any good shops with this in Munich or Essen?

We looked all over for this stuff, but no luck.  When we went to Oberammergau, I thought that the woodworking shops there might have something, but all of those craftsmen had very similar styles which was nothing like what I was looking for… Oh well, something to look for next year!
9. Rent a bicycle to tour Munich or Essen for a day

Too cold, rainy or snowy to consider getting out on a bike. 
10. Have to vote for my favorite games at the Playfair stand

I kind of forgot that as either a member of the press or someone there on an exhibitor badge, I’m apparently ineligible to vote for the Playfair award.  Sigh.
11. Have to vote for my favorite games with the new GeekBuzz system (Booth 5-22)

The computers were always quite crowded when I was at the BGG booth, and I got pressed into service on a number of occasions to run interviews or sit in on game demos during the streaming webcasts.  As a result, I never made it to the terminal to log my votes!
12. Play a game with Donald X. – That’s right, I’ve been working with him for almost two years yet we’ve never actually played a game together! 

Epic fail on my part.  I actually spent a fair amount of time with Donald between hanging out and the award receptions… We had a good chance to chat and catch up, as well as take care of some Dominion business, but never enough time to play a game.  Not even rock-paper-scissors. 

19 things I did manage to accomplish

1. See the “impressive” Hans im Gluck main office

As mentioned above, we had a delightful afternoon spent with Moritz in the HiG office.  Hopefully this won’t be my last trip there!
2. Go to Castle Neuschwanstein - yes, touristy - but something I’ve always wanted to see on my own

It was as nice as I had imagined, even with the awful weather.  And, as I commented to Valerie, I’d guess that 20% of the Japanese people in the entire country are probably located within 20km of Castle Neuschwanstein at any given time :p
3. Try local foods in each different city we’re in – one of the biggest food surprises of the last trip was eating Himmel und Ääd (literally Heaven and Earth) which is mashed potatoes with stewed apples and fried blood pudding. 

As always, we ate everything in sight!  We had a nice evening where Tom W. and his wife took us out to dinner at a nice traditional restaurant.  We ate roast goose and pork that was quite tasty.
4. Eat “second breakfast” every day that we’re in Bavaria - Weisswurst and pretzels sounds awesome

Well, weisswurst itself is actually quite bland.  In fact, I’d almost go as far to say that it has no flavor at all!  But, it is an excellent delivery device for the really really tasty honey mustard sauce that seems to always be served with it.  And the pretzels are as good as I remember.
5. Try russ and/or radler (wheat beer mixed with lemonade) – Heck, I love me a good shandy, so why wouldn’t I like this?

Radler was a nice refreshing drink which I enjoyed all through Bavaria, and it has the advantage that it only has half the alcohol content (being that it is half lemonade), so I didn’t get too sloppy after a nice relaxing meal!
6. Make it through Salzburg without succumbing to Mozart overload

Hah.  Didn’t even make it into either of the Mozart museums nor his purported birthplace.  But as I mentioned above, thanks to the Salzburg Citypass, we got a really good view of the city at an affordable price
7. See if I am able to by ordering in a restaurant only using German – I’ve been practicing all year! 

This seemed to work out OK.  The only problem is that once I started using German, the servers sometimes wouldn’t revert to English when I got stuck!  We’ll see if my continued work with the Rosetta Stone course helps my speaking for next year.
8. Try not to lose more than 15 Euros in change over the course of the trip – list most Americans, I don’t pay much attention to coinage because our local coins aren’t that valuable.  Having coins slip out of your pocket in Germany is a much most costly proposition

By the end of the trip, I was actually accustomed again to paying for things in change, though there was still a time that I found out that I had 27 EUR in change in my wallet!  I think the giveaway was that my wallet was so heavy that is was nearly pulling down my jeans…
9. Eat as many different types of Lebkuchen that I can find…

Well, I at least had the one Lebkuchen that I always have.  Jay Tummelson has a thing for the boxed Lebkuchen that are sold at Schlecker (a local German drug store).  As usual, he had boxes of these at his stand on the set-up day, and I managed to sneak in one or two (or maybe more)
10. Go an entire week without mistakenly getting into the first class train car

This was easy to do now.  Though, I should re-iterate that the German Rail Pass from DB was a breeze to use, and it’s something that I’d definitely look into again if my travel plans require multiple train rides.
11. Remember to pack my luggage scale so I can get everything back home

The new digital luggage scale was a life saver.  It seemed to be accurate to within 100 grams, and I managed to get my bags packed with about 300 grams to spare total between them.
12. Spend at least an hour browsing the game/toy section at a local department store - the selection at a mainstream store is simply amazing.  Some of the department stores seem to stock as many boardgames as the local Toys’R’Us!

We spent a bit of time looking though the toy/game departments at Toys R’ Us, Galerie Kaufhof as well as Müller.  I’d never been in a Müller before, and it’s an interesting take on a discount store that’s been smushed together with a department store.  I think this is the first year that I didn’t manage to buy any games at all outside of the fair though!
13. Be mistaken for my brother at least once a day - but hopefully win the annual battle of who gets mistaken for the other more often

To be honest, we stopped keeping track of the score as we’re getting a bit tired of the game.  But it still happened about 2 or 3 times a day between us.  Sigh
14. Have my annual argument with John Bohrer about why the Steelers aren’t as good as they look – though this is the first year that I can remember where the Bengals have actually managed to beat the Steelers prior to the Essen trip!  Who Dey!

It was a very peaceful week between the division rivals.  John seemed to be very busy early in the week (as usual), and I never caught up with him after Thursday.
15. Watch the annual “worry-fest” at the Warfrog booth as they await the shipment of their games on late Wednesday afternoon!  Actually, I hope that this doesn’t happen because I imagine that it really is nerve wracking having to wait for your product to arrive in time for the fair.

Gladly, there were no issues about getting the games in on time this year (at least from what I heard).
16. Listen to Scott Tepper teach one game in English, German and French – this should only take about 30 minutes as he might use all three languages in a single rules explanation!

Got all 3 languages as soon as he said “Hi/Guten Tag/Bonjour” to me!
17. See if I can get Friedemann to eat breakfast one day without using any mustard

The breakfast at the hotel was nice… and there wasn’t a single bottle of Senf to be found anywhere!
18. Try to keep a running blog of things I do in Essen so that it’s easier to write up my report! 

Umm… See the article/recap from last week.  I essentially took my list making and turned it into the column…
19. Take my annual lump of salt from Hanno (at Lookout Games) and Uwe Rosenberg about the sad state of my fantasy football team in our Gamers league.  My team would be much better if it weren’t me in charge of picking the lineup each week

Yeah.  Lost again.  I’m now 2-5 in that league where the majority of the other managers are Germans.  So much for having an advantage because I watch the games every week.  Sigh. 

Ten final random musings (both game-related and non-game-related) from Essen

1. Flat rate taxi to DUS – Most years, my entire group makes the trip home from Essen at the same time, and generally everyone in my group has bags as chock full of stuff as mine.  We’ve generally decided on taking a taxi back to the airport because none of us want to have to figure out how to make it on and off the trains with 3 or 4 bags each.  Additionally, for the past two years, the Hauptbahnhof in Essen has been undergoing major renovations, and the thought of having to manually carry or drag my bags up the stairs to get to the S-bahn tracks is not something I’ve wanted to do.  Anyways, in the past, it was always a bit uncertain as to how much the ride to the airport would cost.  Surprisingly, this year there now appears to be a flat rate of 39 EUR to get from downtown Essen to the airport.  When this is split over 2 (or possibly 3) travelers, it’s really not too bad of a deal, especially when you add in the convenience of not having to lug your bags all over the place.  The discovery of this flat rate definitely makes the trip home a bit less stressful to consider (and makes it easier to keep “just enough” of the European currency to get home).

2. Skipping the games which I know are going to be done in German – I’ve always threatened in the past to try to stay away from the games that I knew were going to be done in English, but this year is the first time that I really kept to that promise.  I am fairly certain that there are a lot of games that folks were surprised that I wasn’t bringing home from Essen – but frankly, it just doesn’t seem to make sense to use the limited weight in my bags (and risk the damage to them in transit) for games that may already be available at home.  Another advantage is that my family will likely have a much larger bunch of games to consider giving me for Christmas…

3. Pizza menus – OK, this is a funny story told to me by Sean Brown (from FRED).  While they were out in town, they ran across a pizza restaurant which had an interesting menu.  Their pizzas came in three sizes: klein, groβ, and ”U.S.” For those of you that know Sean, I’ll let you guess what size pizza he ended up ordering…

4. Banana Beer – The annual trip to Germany always presents an opportunity to try many different beers as I travel through the country.  While we were shopping in the grocery department of the Kaufhof in downtown Essen, I noticed a new type of beer which I hadn’t ever seen before – a Banana-weizen.  That’s right, a hefeweizen with serious banana overtones.  It was the most banana-y tasting thing I’ve had that wasn’t actually a banana.  Was it good?  I’m honestly not sure.  It was definitely different. And it was definitely more banana-y as it got warmer, which I think improved the beer.

5. Reading the rules before Essen can be a life saver – As I noted all week, there are just too many games on offer now to try to get to everything.  Many of the games that debut at the fair had their rules available prior to Essen.  I took advantage of this and printed up a number of rulesets to read on the plane ride over.  Though it’s obviously never the same to learn a game from reading the rules as opposed to a demo, it’s stil better than nothing!  Reading the rules can often give you a general feel for a game, so you can focus on games that seem to suit you or so you can ask more detailed questions about the parts of the game that were a bit confusing on the read through.

6. Meeples from Lookout – Well, I managed to miss out on the Resourc-eeples offered this year – but I’m quite impressed with the level of support (and high level of creativity) that Lookout Games has put into supporting Agricola.  True, it would have taken 2 years to collect all the bits (as well as a few bucks), but the full game with the animeeples and resourceeples and all the expansion cards is a beautiful sight to behold.  (Disclaimer – I did do some volunteer development work on Agricola)

7. Cost of Living (Tights) – Things are just more expensive in Europe.  Hotels tend to be a bit pricier on average, and the cost of going out to eat also seems to be higher on average than back home. But, the thing this year that blew me away came from the hosiery department of the local Galeria Kaufhof – a department I only walked through as it was on the way to the escalator to the toy floor… Anyways, I couldn’t believe that there was an entire display of women’s tights (to be worn with boots, natch) that were 29 EUR or 34 EUR.  That’s right, 45-55 dollars for a pair of thick pantyhose.  Ouch – the price you have to pay to be fashionable, I guess….  (And I certainly enjoyed getting a chance to see it every day!)

8. I really wish that I lived in a city with public transport – Another trip to Germany has shown me how great the concept of an integrated public transport system is.  Living in the Midwest, there is really no public transport to speak of.  The local bus system is OK, but the closest stop to my house is over a mile away.  The train system (Amtrak) does run through Cincinnati, but there is only one line – which leaves for Chicago twice a week – so it’s not very viable.  After using the many different levels of transport this week including ICE train, RailJet, Regional Express train, S-Bahn, U-Bahn, buses, and trams – it’s been a great way to move about the country while keeping my carbon footprint much smaller than if I had driven myself all over the place. And… I didn’t have to spend any time looking for parking!
   
9. Strange signs on the autobahn – So, the Germans are known for their efficiency, and they’re certainly known for having a great roadway system.  But, man, can it be confusing for a non-German driver to get around without getting lost!  Now, this is probably an American-o-centric approach (and so I’ll admit that the problem may reside with me and not the German road signage system), but the signs are not set up well for those not familiar with the area.  First, the numbering of the autobahn exits is not easily seen.  Therefore, without a GPS device telling you when to exit, it can be very easy to miss your exit.  Furthermore, all of the autobahns have no directional notation on the signs.  For instance, the signs don’t tell you A99 North or A99 South – instead they simply point you to the next city/town/village along the way.  The problem with this is that if you don’t know all the cities and towns in Germany, it’s quite a challenge at times to figure out which way you need to go on the Autobahn – especially when you current speed of 140 kmh doesn’t really give you a lot of time to try to pull out the road atlas to figure it out!
   
10. the BGN Essen Preview rocks – and finally, I’d like to take a second to say thanks to Eric for putting together an awesome Essen preview.  I know that it takes him months to get it all together, and the size of the overall document is mind-boggling.  Though I didn’t print it out, if I did, the preview would have taken up over 400 pages!  While no document could ever be comprehensive in its approach to the Spiel fair, this is the closest thing that I’ve found – in any language.  Having a single resource to rely upon for information on the games really makes it easy to zone in on the games that I want to see – especially when there isn’t enough time to get to everything!  Thanks Eric!
    

Well, sorry there isn’t more actual information on the games themselves – but I simply haven’t had time to get to many of them yet!  I will be at game conventions for two out of the next three weekends though, so I’d expect that I’ll get at least one play in of almost every game I brought home from Essen in that time period!  So, even though the titles of the columns to come in the future won’t be labeled “Essen”, I’ll be talking about all the new games between now and the holidays!

Until your next appointement,
The Gaming Doctor

Comments:

< Back Home