Dale Yu: My report from Essen: Part One

I’m back home from another Spiel fair – the 2009 version has come and gone with its own share of hits, misses and surprises.  I think that this is the sixth or seventh year that I have been fortunate to make the trip, and as always, I am quite sad to be leaving Germany again.  This fair, for me, was a bit like last year as my evenings were often busy with events and presentations, and as a result, I didn’t have a lot of time to play games during this trip.  In fact, I think that during my 9 day stay in Germany I might have played seven games to completion during the entire trip! (For the record, Assyria, Mosaix, Cardcassone, Koplopers and Dwarslingers, Peloponnes, Insula and Tobago). Nevertheless, the fair was a great chance to see the new games even if there wasn’t quite enough time to play each one of them!

Why wasn’t there enough time to play games?  Well – for me – the biggest reason is that there is just too much to do!  With so many new games to be seen, oftentimes I’d prefer to have someone explain the gist of the rules to me and then go through the first few turns to get an idea of how the game plays.  So, please keep in mind when I talk about the games from Essen that right now a lot of what I have to say is based on an incomplete look at the game (for the most part).  However, I’m fairly certain that this phenomenon is true of many folks who go to Essen.  For me, it’s just so hard to settle down for an hour (or possibly much more) when there are so many other games to also try to check out!  So, I’d definitely like to say thanks to my usual travel partners, Valerie and Brian (as well as Christian Leonhard) for agreeing to keep up with the crazy pace needed to see so many games!

[Oh, and given the new disclosure regulations – let me issue a blanket disclaimer.  For any and all of the games mentioned in this column (and in any future columns), just assume that I have been provided with a copy of the game for review purposes.  While you’re at it, you can also go ahead and assume that I may own or invest in all of these game companies or have worked for them on a professional or volunteer basis, that I have designed/developed/illustrated them, that I am good friends with someone in the company and may have shared a Banana-weizen with them, that I may have let someone from the company pick up the tab at a doner kebab stand or Korean restaurant, or that I might be in a fantasy football league with someone involved with the game.  I think that should pretty much cover me with just about any circumstance that could come up… And honestly, at any point where a true disclaimer is needed, I will continue to provide it at the necessary times.  Oh, and one more disclaimer – I’m typing this up on the plane ride home from Germany, so I’m fairly sleep deprived and only have my addled brain power to rely upon for details of the games I’m going to talk about here… so I would certainly not guarantee that the details of any particular game are 100% correct!]

This year, the fair again coincided with a school holiday, and as a result, the event halls seemed more crowded than last year.  In fact, after talking with fellow fair-goers, the consensus was that the Thursday crowd was perhaps the largest one in recent memory.  The corridors of the fair were packed with people making it quite difficult to quickly travel within the Messe.  However, the crowds weren’t all bad – a few of my close friends who were working the show all mentioned that the sales were also at alltime highs for the Thursday.  I certainly can see from their standpoint that crowds three or four deep in front of the stands is probably a good thing!  While the increased crowds can be a mild negative due to congestion, overall I think that the Spiel fair is better off for the crowds - there is something about seeing so many people enjoying boardgames that gives the event a certain electric atmosphere.

And now on the part of the report that most of you are waiting for – talking about the games!  As I was preparing this report on the flight home, I started by making a bunch of lists of things I wanted to make sure that I would cover in the report.  As it turns out, it figured that this mnemonic might actually be a really good way to organize my thoughts at this point – so you’re going to get a bunch of lists for my report.  Hopefully you’ve been able to get a good feel for some of the other hype from the show through the daily reports done here on Boardgamenews.com as well as Frank Kulkmann’s excellent site.  If you haven’t already had a chance to catch those reports, I’d certainly recommend taking a look at them (after you finish reading my report, of course!)

Hit of the Show—??
My overall initial impression of 2009 is that the crop of games will have a lot of solid titles, but I’m not yet sure if there one that is head and shoulders above the rest.  Unlike in many of the years past, there did not seem to be a game that was being universally hailed as “The Game Of The Show” (TGOTS).  Usually when I’m walking through the halls, anytime that I see familiar faces, I’ll try to have a short conference with them to see what games they are excited about (or what games didn’t work for them).  This year, opinions were extremely varied on the games, and I never got the feeling that there was a game that stood above the rest (based on all of our collective glances/demos/half-plays).  Furthermore, there didn’t seem to be any games that had massive pre-order buzz or long queues at the stand.  I also didn’t hear of any games that were surprising sellouts.  Finally, the two rating scales available at the fair (Boardgamegeek’s GeekBuzz and Fairplay) had very volatile ranking with many games moving up and down the charts – and also, there didn’t seem to be a lot of correlation between the two rating systems.  Moreover, for the early days of the show, the rating charts were wildly fluctuant (partly due to sample size and partly due to what I suspect was a bunch of games that ended up with similar ratings)—a game might be in the top 3 at Playfair in the morning, but then find itself in the second ten by lunchtime only to recover back to the top 3 by the end of the day.  This year was also a bit exceptional in that there wasn’t a game that was universally panned either.  Over the past few years, it has certainly seemed like most years produce at least one game that the crowds can’t seem to like.  So for now, I’m going to take a pass on trying to judge what the hit of the show was.  Perhaps in a month or two – once I’ve had a good chance to play a good portion of the games that I’m bringing home – I’ll be able to make a more informed statement on TGOTS.

Pseudo Hit of the Show – Mosaix (Schmidt)
Well, I might have mis-spoken above.  There was one game that was surprisingly sold out at the Fair – Mosaix by Schmidt.  It seems like every year, Valerie, Brian and I find one small filler game – often from Schmidt – that we fall in love with.  Games from years past include Wurfel Bingo and Finito.  Anyways, the game was available at many of the stands early in the week (for about 6€), but at the time I chose not to buy copies of the game figuring that I could throw them into a deal later when I was back trying to buy multiple games.  Of course, when I was ready to buy the game late Friday afternoon, it was nowhere to be found.  So, when we were done with the fair that day, we headed into downtown Essen to look for it.  No luck at the local Toys’R’Us, though we did eventually find copies at one of the larger bookstores near the big mall.  I’m fairly certain that not that many other folks were looking at Mosaix, but the three of us sure tried to talk it up during the week.

16 Games I’m Anxiously Awaiting to Play:

So here is the current list (as of the flight home on Sunday afternoon) of games that I’m most looking forward to trying.  I’ll try to give a short explanation, if possible, why I’m waiting to play the game in question.  Luckily for me, I’ve got two conventions coming up in the next four weeks – Great Lakes Games in balmy Fort Wayne, IN as well as BGG.con in Dallas – so I should have a fairly decent chance of getting many of these games played in the near future.

1. A La Carte (Moskito) – This was a release that I was actually surprised by – I actually wasn’t expecting anything from Karl-Heinz at this show… But the new version of this game showed up on Friday afternoon.  I’ll be honest and say that I actually didn’t get much of an explanation of the game before getting it – but I didn’t need it as I’d played the previous version.  What I don’t know is if there are any changes made to this version as compared to the original.  The bits are much nicer—one of the bits in the game is a little mini-skillet and you need to somehow shake cubes out of a salt shaker like thingy.  The bits alone were probably enough to make me buy this, but it’s a nice light dexterity/luck game that the family should be able to enjoy!
2. At The Gates of Loyang (H@ll Games) – When I talked to Uwe Rosenberg about this one, he told me that this game actually was started before he worked on Agricola – a game which shares some of the mechanics found in Loyang.  So, in this game, you’ll find vegetables as resources as well as Harvests.  What else is similar?  Hmm… lemme get back to you in a few weeks.  I do know that the main part of the game engine is planting your vegetables and later harvesting them so that you can sell them to your opponents to make money.  One thing that turned up at the fair with Loyang was a second set of rules.  In this additional set (which was not included in the box), you’ll find the rules presented in a narrative fashion – as if Uwe’s teaching method had been transcribed.  Furthermore, this extra set of rules includes a few development tidbits where Uwe shares some info about how certain rules evolved during the creation of the game.  As of the Saturday of the show, I had not yet confirmed anyone as the US distributor/license holder – though I think that Ralph printed at least 1000 English copies, so there should be some available if you’re interested in this one.





Agricola Part 3 (or should that be Agricola version 0.5?)




3. Atlantis (Amigo/Mayfair) – I was initially going to wait on this one as there is already an English version done by Mayfair.  However, Valerie and I were able to find a table at the Amigo stand on Saturday and were able to get a nice demo of the game.  Atlantis seems to have taken some of the ideas of Cartagena (also by Colovini) and made the game into something that is a little less dry and analytical.  As in Cartagena, you’re trying to move your meeples along the track using cards.  However, unlike Cartagena, if you land on an occupied space, you do not simply go to the next free space.  Instead, you get to play another card and take another move entirely.  Furthermore, as the tiles on the track are collected and holes are generated in the path, these holes become obstacles that cause players to spend more resources in order to pass by.  There is also a penalty at the end of the game scored against each meeple that hasn’t yet finished the path.  As a result, there is more incentive to possibly push your players ahead as quickly as possible or at least having to weigh that option versus optimizing the tiles that you pick up on your way through the tile path.  Time will tell on this one—because I’ll admit that I really don’t like Cartagena.  Picking up a game which is so similar in nature could be a recipe for disaster.  O course, if could also be a way to take a pretty good mechanic from a game I don’t like and convert it into something that I do like!  I did learn from Alex Yeager at the Mayfair booth that this one should have a street date in the US likely before Thanksgiving—so you should be able to find this at your FLGS soon.
4. Cardcassone (Hans im Gluck) – This is one of the games that I’ve actually already played, and I’m definitely jonesing for more.  While it is named in the Carcassone line of games, the artwork and the wooden meeples are about all that are shared between the games.  Cardcassone is a great set collection game with a nice time pressure element thrown in.  The table is filled with four rows of cards (one row for each color).  In each round of the game, each player is dealt 5 cards and has one meeple to place.  When you play a card, you put it in the row that matches the color of the card.  At any point in the round, when it’s your turn, you can choose to not play a card but instead play your meeple.  When you play your meeple, you place it at the right hand end of any of the four rows of cards.  At the end of the round, you’ll score all of the cards that are found to the left of that meeple.  So, as the round continues on, you have to constantly evaluate whether you need to place your meeple now to ensure that you get the cards that you want or if you can risk waiting for another round to see if anyone else adds better cards to that row.  As far as the cards go, there are three different types which each offer different types of scoring:  people cards (with potential for high scoring immediately but only score once on the turn you collect them), animal cards (which you keep through the game and can score increasing amounts for each successive time you collect similar cards), and treasure chests (which offer end-game bonuses).  While it doesn’t have that much in common with Carcassone – it’s a great little game and I think having the name Carcassone somewhere on the box will definitely get more people to take a look at it. Oh, and it’s a Karl-Heinz Schmiel game – which may also explain my interest in it!
5. Colonia (Queen) – This is new big box release from Queen Games.  It comes in the same size box as Wallenstein and Shogun.  After I had a chance to meet with Rajive Gupta (the head of Queen), I learned that this one is going to be not quite as complex as Wallenstein, but certainly more towards that end of the complexity scale than some of their other recent games such as Alhambra.  I’ll admit to only having read the rules (the Queen booth was simply too jam packed for me to ever find space at the demo tables to get a good demo in), but it looks to be a nice worker placement game.  The game is set over a time period of 6 weeks (rounds in the game) - on the first 6 days of the week, you place your pawns on the board trying to collect different kinds of resources or to increase your influence over the city government.  On the final day, you the use the stuff you’ve already collected (and the influence you’ve created) to get relics - the victory points in the game.  Sounds like a lot of the recent Eurogames, right?  Well, the big difference (at least as far as I can tell) is that there is no engine-building aspect of this game across the 6 rounds.  It actually appears that this game will reward strategic tactical play each week as you start anew at the beginning of each round in the game.  The last game I can think that also was like this was League of Six - though you did still keep some of the cards between rounds there.  The artwork and presentation are beautiful as I’ve come to expect from Queen.  It should also be noted that Queen did make a special edition game with a different cover and a whole bunch of wooden bits inside (as opposed to the cardboard chits in the standard game).  It appears that there will be some of the special edition made available to the American market, so if you’re interested in getting the super-snazzy form of the game, you should at least have a chance to do so.  Furthermore, it looks like Queen Games will have a presence at BGG.con in a few weeks, so there will likely be a chance to learn more about the games at that show (and most likely a chance to pick up copies of them as well).





Colonia taken from a strangely skewed angle




6. Dominion: Seaside (Rio Grande) – OK, as I mentioned above, this is one of those times that I should remind you that I’m one of the two developers for Dominion (along with Valerie Putman).  I’m still looking forward to playing Seaside as I’ve not yet actually had a chance to play a game with the real cards.  I was actually hoping to get in at least one face-to-face game with Donald Vaccarino, the designer of the game, but as it turns out, our schedules never synced up to allow this to happen.  In any event, Seaside introduces one new major rule to the world of Dominion – the concept of Duration cards.  Duration cards (which are colored orange) act as regular action cards on the turn they are played.  However, they do not move to your discard pile during that Cleanup phase but instead remain on the table in front of you, and the Duration cards have an effect on your next turn as well.  The Duration cards are then placed into your discard pile at the end of that second turn.  Seaside also adds a new a few accessories that are needed for specific cards.  I’m sure that I’ll be playing a lot of this over the next month, and I’ve already accepted a few challenges for BGG.con coming up next month. 





Some of the promotional items that were created for Dominion and Dominion: Seaside




7. Gonzaga (DaVinci) – I heard a lot of good things about this one from people who tried it and I was able to watch a few turns at the booth while I was having it explained to me.  There are a lot of plastic pieces in the box and they’re itching to get played!  The game appears to have an area control element where you use your plastic templates to help you try to take control of land regions on the board as well as the water regions.  However, while you’re spending your efforts on this, you still have to keep an eye out on your secret mission for a game end scoring. I’m excited about this one because it looks like it will be that sort of game where you’re always going to want to do more things than you have the ability to do. 





The bright plastic pieces used in Gonzaga




8. Hansa Teutonica (Argentum) – I have generally liked Andreas Steding’s designs, and Hansa Teutonica looks to be no different.  This new release has you playing your cubes (via a number of different actions) to the board in order to control trade routes. When you are able to fully control a trade route, you can then choose to place a cube in a city to control trade there, or instead, you can take the opportunity to increase your ability on one of 4 different tracks which make you later moves much stronger.  There are 5 (or maybe 6) different ways to score victory points, so it looks like it’ll have a Caylus-like feel to it – though there aren’t any of the buildings with variable actions.
9. Jaipur (GameWorks) – OK, so I’ve said that I don’t like to get 2-player games.  Jaipur is the 2009 exception to that rule.  This is a very clever 2-player card game where you vie to be the best trader.  There are a number of different suits (colors) as well as some camel cards in the deck.  There is a tableau of 5 cards on the table, and on your turn you can either: A) Choose one (non-camel) card from the table and add it to your hand, B) Trade 2 or more (non-camel) cards from the table and add them to your hand, C) Take all the camels on the table and keep them in front of you - camels are useful as you can use them to trade if you choose that action, or D) turn in 2 or more cards of a color in order to score points.  There are tiles of varying value for each color with the higher valued tiles going to the player who scores earlier.  The only endgame bonus scoring is a 5 point bonus tile to the player who has the most camels left at the end of the round.  A round takes maybe 5 to 10 minutes and the game is best 2 out of 3. 





Though it’s hard to tell from this picture – it’s an action shot of my brother completely kicking my butt at Jaipur




10. Koplopers and Dwarsliggers (Giuoco) – K&D is a new train game from Holland designed by Chislaine van der Bulk.  She apparently works for one of the railway companies in Holland and she has designed a nice pick-up-and-deliver game modeled on the Dutch railway system.  The mechanics on the game are very streamlined – you have 5 Action points to use each turn to move your trains (you start with one train but could have as many as three trains by the end of the game).  During the game, you pick up passengers from stations and deliver them to their destination.  If you can get the passengers to their target city, you score a number of points equal to the number of passengers you delivered (varies between 100 and 500).  There are also a few ways that allow you to join trains or exchange passengers between adjacent trains.  Furthermore, there is a nice system of rotating roadblocks which allow you to hinder the progress of your opponents.  We managed to get in nearly a full game of this at the stand, and it was easy to pick up the basics.  Discussing the game with the designer while we played made it quite clear that I had missed some crucial strategy points, so I’m very much looking forward to the next try to apply some of my new found knowledge.
11. Mosaix (Schmidt) – as mentioned above, this was a really hard game to find!  It’s comes in a little tin and you get 4 wipeoff boards, 4 dice and 4 markers.  Each of the dice have 2 sides each of crosses, triangles or circles.  One player gets to roll the dice and then arrange the 4 dice in any arrangement that has them each touching at least one other die.  Then, all players must use that orientation (which may be rotated) and write the appropriate icons onto their board.  At the end of the game, only areas of at least 5 contiguous icons of the same type will be scored… and the score for each icon type is the number of distinct groups of that icon of at least 5 multiplied by the total number of icons in those groups.  Therefore, if I have a group of 7 circles and a different group of 6 circles on the board at the end of the game, I will score 26 points for circles: 2 x (7+6).  You add up your scores for all three icon types and whomever has the most points wins!  The game is blissfully quick to play and it has the super erasable markers previously found in Wurfel Bingo.
12. Opera (Game Master) – I had a nice chance to sit down with the designer of Opera on the Wednesday of the show.  He was gracious enough to show me both Opera and Hotel Amsterdam – two new games from his company.  While I haven’t had the chance yet to play Opera, I am very impressed with the game as described.  The artwork is also fantastic and adds to the overall feel of the game.  The theme seems to fit the game and the mechanics very well.  When I asked the designer about his design method, he told me that Opera was always designed by coming up with the theme first and then molding the game to fit around that theme. Each player is trying to be the best opera house manager by building opera houses in multiple cities and making sure that the best operas are playing in their opera houses.  The game is played over 9 rounds (with interval scoring after rounds 3, 6 and 9).  In each round, a number of different actions (out of a possible six actions) will be performed.  The order of the actions is determined by a clever scaling mechanism not unlike that seen in Tinner’s Trail.  In any event, some of the possible actions will let you build pieces of your opera houses or invite composers to perform in your opera houses. A different action will cause one particular city to score points during that round.  Yet another action lets you modify the relative popularity of the different composers.  Again, I haven’t had a chance to play the game yet, but I promise that a more detailed description/review will come as soon as I am able to get it on the table.
13. Peloponnes (Iron Games) – OK, I can’t believe it, but I took a flyer on a game because of a positive review from Larry Levy.  It’s probably best to re-read his review to get all of the details on the game.  From my standpoint, it’s a nice engine building type game that you can play in about an hour.  That alone made this a must-try for me.  We did manage a full game one night in our hotel room, and my mind is still filled with plenty of ideas to try in my next game of it.
14. Strada Romana (Games in Italy) - I had been talking with Walter Obert before the show as I was quite interested in his new game, Strada Romana.  This release, which is much more serious than his other Essen game (Arggh!tect), is a more abstract game where the players take turns moving wagons in (and out) of ancient Rome.  The players don’t own any particular wagon, but rather they are trying to move them to the right places in order to collect tiles and/or cubes which help you win the game.  Sadly, I missed catching Walter at the booth, so I instead had to get a demo of the game from some of his Italian colleagues at the stand.  Lucky (for me), Walter was good enough to track me down at the BGG booth so we could at least talk about it for a bit.  In any event, I never got a chance to try this one at the fair, and I’m anxiously awaiting my first chance to do so.
15. Tante Tarantel (Doris and Frank) – Tante Tarantel was a surprise find for me this year.  I had heard that Doris and Frank were going to be doing another version of their classic hedgehog racing game, Igel Argern.  What I didn’t know was that the game was going to be packaged along with a reprint of Tante Tarantel, which is a long out of print (and much sought after) children’s game.  Tante Tarantel is a race game of sorts, where the players are trying to get their flies across a spider web without being captured by the spider.  I say it’s a race game of sorts because the winner isn’t the player who first exits the web, but rather the one who scores the most points during the game (there are a varying number of points given to each fly that exits the web).  Anyways, it’s a game that I’ve always wanted to have at home to play with my kids, but I hadn’t been willing to pay the prices that the secondary market demanded for them.  Now I (and you) don’t have to!
16. Tobago (Zoch) – I hadn’t heard much about this game before I left for Germany, but once I heard Tobago, it quickly went on my must try list.  In the game, players play cards which help narrow down the locations of four treasures.  Every time that you play a card, you must be able to narrow down the possible choices of one treasure.  Once a treasure has been found – i.e. There is only one possible spot for it on the board, it can be discovered when one of the players drives their jeep-meeple (jeeple?) to that spot on the board.  Once the treasure is found, there is a slightly convoluted method of divvying up the loot – each player gets to see one treasure card for each card he played that helped narrow down its location.  The player whose jeeple actually found the treasure also gets a card.  All of the examined cards are now shuffled in – along with one unknown card – and then the cards are offered to the player who played the most recently for that treasure.  The catch here is that there are three curse cards found in the treasure deck, and if a treasure card is revealed, any players who are still collecting treasure cards at that site lose their most valuable treasure card collected thus far and also do not receive any further cards from that particular site.  The game ends when all the treasure cards have been distributed.  Tree is certainly a little bit of fiddly-ness with the game, but overall it is a well designed game that deserves more exploration.  I would also like to take a second here and thank the designer, Bruce Allen, for taking a bit of time out his busy Saturday to sit down with us at the BGG booth and give a nice game demo for the online web stream.





Tobago set up at the press conference.




17. Ubongo 3D (Kosmos) – I almost didn’t bring this home because the box was so frickin’ big – but the lure of yet another Ubongo game was too strong to resist.  In this version, you use 3D pieces made of resin to build a 2-level high shape that matches the footprint on the card.  The easy version of the game asks you to combine only three pieces while the advanced version requires you to use four pieces.  In our test game, I think that we failed over 70% of the time when we were trying the easy boards!  In fact, we all were a bit indignant that Kosmos has included a cheat sheet in the box which shows you how to solve every board in the game… but after seeing how difficult the game was for us – we ended up needed to consult it at least once to prove to ourselves that a solution could be found for a particular board!  I’m pretty sure that I’m not going to be very good at the game, but I know that I’ll always enjoy playing it as I love these puzzle type games.

Other Games That I Passed On (for now)

1. Filipino Fruit Market (Bambus) – OK, I’m really sad to have missed this one.  It’s a trick taking game, and I love those.  My family comes from the Philippines, so the theme is appealing to me.  I love fruit.  So, really, what’s not to like?  Well, as it happens, I spent much of the fair trying to find a time when I could sit down with Peer Sylvester and discuss the game with him.  But every time that I made it back to the booth, Peer was either gone or he was already in the middle of a demo with someone else.  So, each time I went by the booth, I decided not to pick up the game because I knew that I was going to head back to the booth to try to meet with Peer.  Sadly, I mistimed my final approach to the booth on Saturday, and the booth was already closed up when I got there.  The sad (or possibly ironic in the Alanis Morissette sense of the word) is that the exact same thing happened a few years ago with Peer and King of Siam.  In any event, I’ll have to keep my eyes out to see whether I’ll be able to get a copy of this back here at home or see about getting one shipped to me from Europe.  Sigh.
2. Age of Steam expansions (multiple) – OK, it’s time to come clean.  I didn’t get all of the AoS expansions this year.  Why?  Well, as it turns out, I still have about 4 boards from last year that I haven’t yet had a chance to play, and given my continued work with Dominion, my chances for more AoS time is really really slim.  So, I’m taking at least a one year break from acquiring them.  Luckily, a few of the Great Lakes Games guys still get the boards each year, so I know that I’ll at least have a chance to see them in a few weeks, even if I don’t get a chance to play them.  But, I’ll also be running into Michael Webb soon at Great Lakes Games - and I’m fairly certain he’ll have copies of his new Zombie board, so I’ll get to try that one soon (and maybe work out a trade or something for it)
3. Agricola Resourceeples (Lookout) – How could I miss out on these?  Honestly, because I forgot to make it back to the Lookout booth to pick them up.  But, I’m going to rationalize that by noting that my current plastic craft storage solution exactly holds my current Agricola super set (1.5 games worth of bits), so I have managed to save myself the problem of finding the next perfect box.  At least the resourceeples don’t affect game play, so while I won’t have the snazziest looking set, it’ll still play the same.  Maybe Hanno will save me a set for the next time that I see him (or send one to Dallas with Fraser when he comes over for BGG)
4. Alcazar (Kosmos) – Well, when I left the US for the fair, this was at or near the very top of my list.  I love Big Boss (and Acquire which was the initial inspiration for Big Boss) – so a re-do of Big Bos looked right up my alley.  However, after seeing how quickly my bags filled up, and seeing the huge size of the Ubongo 3D box that was eating up lots of volume, I decided to take a pass on it.  I only heard comments about it from one person, and his opinion was that it wasn’t different enough from Big Boss to make it worth trying to figure out how to bring it back.  Of course, I’m still keeping my eye out on this because I’m in no way ready to give up on it yet, but it simply couldn’t make it into the bag on this trip.
5. Beer and Pretzels (Bezier) – After a fantastic rules demo from Ted’s daughter who was helping man the booth – we played a quick round of the light filler.  It’s a nice little dexterity game where you flick coasters on the table trying to keep your own coasters uncovered by those of your opponents.  But given my space issues and the fact that Ted will also be at BGG.con, I decided to wait on it until then.  OR.... this is the start of my Bezier boycott until he provides me with the limited edition version of his original Bay Area board that he’s been taunting me about for years (well months… well, since the Thursday at this year’s Essen).  But perhaps a little greasing of the wheel will prevent me from sending off my little letter to the German authorities about certain violations of child labor laws...





Beer and Pretzels in Action




6. Campaign Manager (Z-Man) – I spent all week with Christian Leonhard, and even managed to get him to not eat as his usual restaurant for one meal during the week!  I really wanted to check out his new game, Campaign Manager, but unfortunately, it’s caught up somewhere in the production chain.  As it stands now, it looks like a January delivery date is likely on this one.
7. Carson City (QWG) – Another casualty of the airline limits on weight.  Even though this was near the top of the Fairplay lists early in the weekend, I chose to pass on this as it looks like FRED will be doing this domestically, and therefore, I won’t miss out on a chance to pick this one up later on.
8. Cheese (Theta) – Another game that was high on the list of games to check out before I left, but after one trial go of the game at the press conference on Wednesday, it became clear that it wasn’t quite what I was looking for.  Plenty of other people were having lots of fun with it, but there just wasn’t enough to it for me
9. Climb! (Ferti) – Sigh.  I’ll never get this game (nor Busen Memo).  I didn’t make a point of going to the Ferti booth early in the fair, and by Friday afternoon they had sold out of the game when I asked for it.  Of course, this would all be easier if the Fearless Leader would just agree to sell me his copy, but he has really dug his heels in on this one.
10. Day & Night (Mystics.nl) – There was a fair amount of buzz about this 2-player game, partly in response to this game winning the International Gamers Award this year.  However, like most dedicated 2-player games, it was a pass for me.  I have so few occasions to play games with only two players that I simply am unwilling to devote any more space in the game collection to a game that has very little chance of making it to the table.  That being said, it does look really really good.  The way that the actions on the cards interact with each other look to give the game a high replayability factor, though like any game dependent on cards, the luck of the draw could make any particular game imbalanced.
11. Die Tore der Welt (Kosmos) – I really wanted to get this one at Essen.  But I have hopefully learned from my mistakes in the past.  I own a German copy of Pillars of the Earth (Die Saulen der Erde) – and even though there isn’t that much German on the cards, it’s enough to stop it from getting to the table at times.  So, I’ll try to patiently await the Mayfair release.  Alex Y. from Mayfair couldn’t give me any timetable on the English release date unfortunately.
12. Donna Leon (Ravensburger) – A game based on a detective novel series set in Venice.  Game done by Colovini (which seems to be a mortal lock if a game is set in Venice).  But, I could never get close enough to the Ravensburger booth to get a demo of the game.  So, I’ve got a nice set of exclusive expansion cards from the de Cassan’s but no game to play it with.  I’ll have to wait until I can find out more information about it.  Given the sporadic distribution of Ravensburger games around here, I might not get a chance to see this unless I can get someone to bring it to the Gathering in April.  Unless, of course, BGG got a copy for their library for BGG.con!
13. Egizia (Hans im Gluck / RGG) – Jay has already said that he’s going to do this one in English.  In any event, the guys at Hans im Gluck told me that there is too much German on the cards and that it would be better to just wait for the RGG version.  As a result, I didn’t even look at the game or try to get a description of it. 
14. Endeavor (Z-Man) – This one will have to wait for BGG.con.  Given the fact that I was going to have time to check it out in a setting without a thousand different new games available, it seemed to make sense to just wait until later to see this one.  Anyways, it’ll be cheaper to buy back in the US rather than pay the Essen prices and then having to figure out how to bring it home.
15. Fish Fish Fish (Quined) – I had set up a meeting with Chislaine van der Bulk to see her new games, and I was interested in all three of them.  Unfortunately, there was some sort of die cutting issue with the counters in this game and they ended up removing them from the stands as they will have to be redone.  So I guess that I’m just tabling this one until Spiel 2010.
16. Funkenschlag: Fabrikmanager (2F) – Makes no sense to get it at Essen when it’ll be widely available back home in the RGG version.





One of the player boards from the new 2F game




17. Greed, Incorporated (Splotter) – This year, there didn’t seem to be the same buzz around the Splotter booth as there was last year with Duck Dealer.  (Interestingly, the secondary market for Duck Dealer will likely bottom out soon as there were a number of the discounters that had copies of Duck Dealer available for 15€).  Anyways, I did get a description of the game from the Splotter folks, and it looks to be a pretty tight and complex economic game with all sorts of moving parts and interacting mechanics.  However, it seemed a bit too dry for me, so I’ll have to wait until I try it before I put down 65€ for it.  This will be one of the games that I’m looking forward to trying at BGG.con though as I know they got a copy for the game library there.
18. Last Train to Wensleydale (Treefrog) – I kinda ran out of space by the time I made it to the Treefrog booth.  However, Valerie got a copy of it, so I should be able to try it in the near future. 
19. Macao (Alea/RGG) – All reports about this one were fairly positive.  But there was a fair bit of German on the player mats and the cards, so it seems easier to wait for the English version.  Based on the pasteups that Stefan had at his booth, it looks like the translation is already done – so it’s just a matter of waiting for the printers.
20. MachtSpiele (Eggert) – This was another game that was often near the top of the Playfair lists that just didn’t seem to jive with me.  I did get a reading of the rules on the plane ride over - while the rules were easy to understand, it’s been awhile since I had to get through 16 pages of rules for a Euro game!  Later in fair, I had a look at the game (but not a demo nor chance to play it) at the booth – but I wasn’t ready to buy it without trying it.  But, the two groups that I saw playing it gave positive reviews after their first games.  I usually like the sorts of games that have victory conditions similar to Machtspiele—in this game, there are 6 possible victory points to be gained, and the game ends when someone is able to score 4 of them.  So, for now, I’ll wait until I have a chance to hear more about the game.
21. Martinique (QWG) – When I originally read the game, I quickly picked up on the keywords “pirate” and “Deduction”—which put this high on my list of things to look at.  However, after a talk with Christian Hildebrand of HUCH & Friends at the press conference, I learned that this was also a 2-player only game, and sadly, that took it off of my list for the time being. 
22. Mister X: Flucht der Europa (Ravensburger)– Well, I have every other iteration of the Scotland Yard franchise, so I know that this one will make into the game collection at some point.  But, since it’s Ravensburger, I’ll have all sorts of ways to get a hold of it.  I suspect that this will be part of some post-Christmas order from Amazon.de (assuming that this is one of the games that the site will allow to be shipped out of Germany).  Because, let’s face it, if you get take advantage of the flat rate 14€ shipping from Europe that they offer, it’s a great way to get games here from Germany.  And as with Donna Leon, I couldn’t really get a good demo of it, so I don’t know what’s different about it and would set it apart from Scotland Yard or NY Chase.  If anyone knows, I’d be interested to hear that!
23. Small World Expansions (Days of Wonder) – It was selling like hotcakes.  But, since I don’t have the base game, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to get the expansions, neh?  I’ve just found that I in the past few years, I’ve strayed a bit away from the games with more direct conflict – but seeing all the interest around the expansion has made me want to try the base game of Small World at Great Lakes Games or BGG.con in the coming month.  I was able to have a short conversation with Mark Kaufmann from DoW and he told us that they had a blast looking through all of the varied contest submissions.  Makes me wonder if they’ll ever do something similar with Memoir ‘44.
24. Stronghold (Portal) – Another game that fails the 2-player game test.  This one was also quite high on the Playfair and Geekbuzz lists early in the fair, but I didn’t even look at it as it’s a dedicated 2-player game.
25. TWRS (Emma) – Heh.  Well, the game sounds interesting, but I couldn’t seem to scrounge up enough scratch to afford it.  Had a nice time at the SdJ dinner and was able to chat with Martyn F a bit over dinner.  Hopefully he’ll come up with an expansion for Cities next year (hint hint) that will be more in my price range!  From the demo that I overheard, it’s a moderate range abstract game which lasts maybe 15-20 minutes.  However, given that the price was too high for me to honestly consider the game, I actually ended up not spending that much time learning about it because my chance of ever obtaining one is essentially zero.





Luckily I didn’t have to pay a fee to take a picture of it!




26. Vampire der Nacht (Drei Magier) – Another glow in the dark game from the folks that brought you Nacht der Magier.  For space reasons, I only had room for one kids game, and I chose Das Magische Labyrinth as it’s the Kinderspiel des Jahres.  If this looks good upon further review, I might try to have someone bring it over at the Gathering (or add it to the impending Amazon.de order) I have already heard it from a reliable source (well, Melissa) that Amazon.de has already accepted at least one order from her and has already shipped the game to Oz for a flat 14 Euro fee. 
27. Vasco de Gama (What’s Your Game?) - To be honest, I’m not sure if this is going to get done in English or not.  I remember trying to take a look at it on Thursday but quickly left as the booth was quite busy and I figured that I’d have a few more days to check it out. But, I somehow just never made it back to the What’s Your Game booth to try this one out.  In fact, as I’m mentally walking though the halls as I write this, I can’t even remember where their booth was!  In any event, this is a bit saddening as Vasco de Gama ended up at the top of the Fairplay chart by the end of the show. My only defense is that it didn’t show up at all on Thursday or Friday, and apparently didn’t even start making its way up the list until late Saturday afternoon. There is a very high likelihood that Vasco de Gama wasn’t even in the top 10 yet when I last checked the Fairplay list at about 3pm on Saturday afternoon.  Though I’ve mentioned it before, this year was quite strange in the extreme volatility of game rankings—both on Fairplay as well as Geekbuzz. 

Things Missed This Year

1. About 500 Games – lets face it, there simply isn’t enough time in the fair (or in all of October!) to see all the new games.  But what can you do?  Just make the best of it, and try to see as many as possible!
2. Hasbro – In a surprise development (to me, at least), Hasbro didn’t have a presence with a booth at this year’s fair.  It was a bit weird to walk through Hall 12 and not see the big Hasbro booth.
3. A Random Hit from Gold Sieber – In most of my previous trips to Essen, I’ve ended up coming home with at least one game from Gold Sieber.  Of course, it goes without saying that I generally don’t know anything about the games before I get to the fair because Gold Sieber traditionally doesn’t release a lot of information about their games prior to the fair – which is why the Fearless Leader generally doesn’t have a lot of info on the games in his spectacular Essen preview each year.  In any event, last year, the Gold Sieber hit was Via Romana.  However, this year, a similar game was not to be found.  Oh well, maybe next year...
4. Playing Games at night – just like last year, with a number of events/meetings lined up in the evenings, there simply wasn’t much time for playing games.  In fact, most of the time which was spent in the hotel at night was spent hanging out with good friends – especially the folks from FRED, Christian Leonhard (co-designer of Campaign Manager) and Funagain Nick.  Luckily, there’s plenty of time for playing games in the next month...
5. Playing Dominion: Seaside – as I mentioned above, it just didn’t work out to get in my first face-to-face game with Donald X.  Maybe next year?
6. Alan How’s annual booth sprint – as it turns out, my good friend Alan how was in Japan or some other exotic locale and wasn’t able to be at the fair.  His absence did deprive me of a good reliable source of information during the show as well as the entertainment of watching him race from booth to booth buying as many games as possible in two days.  However, it did look like he had folks there trying to acquire games for him – but unsurprisingly, it looks like Alan’s shopping list was so prodigious that it took three or four chaps to try to collect all the games!
7. Free Drinks and Internet Access in the Press Center – one of the greatest perks of having a press pass is access to the wonderful Press Center in the convention center.  It’s a nice place to relax or to conduct an interview, drinks (non-alcoholic, of course) are provided, and there are computer and LAN hookups available to use the Internet.  As I was leaving the fair on Saturday, I realized that I hadn’t once stepped foot inside the Press Center this year.  I honestly have no explanation for this other than the fact that I was simply too busy and I simply forgot.  Next year…
8. My Camera – for reasons still unknown, my good camera decided not to work upon my arrival to Germany.  Luckily, I was able to pick up an inexpensive digital camera at the local Saturn store in Munich (and it’s frankly amazing at the features and resolution that they are able to cram into a little handheld camera these days) – but I still missed my trusty Nikon 40D.  Furthermore, it was doubly painful to then have to pack up the camera (and lose both volume and weight in my bags) when I wasn’t even able to use the camera on my trip.
9. Sleep – Duh.  Too many games and friends and not enough hours in the day for all of them.  Oh, and my brother snores from time to time.

Things New This Year

1. BGG Booth – One of the new exhibitors this year was Geekdo.com (possibly better known to you as Boardgamegeek.com).  They had a nice space in Hall 5 set up with computers at the ready for convention goers to sit down and rank the new games.  They then had a real-time toteboard projected on the wall to provide real-time feedback.  BGG also had their webcam set up with streaming coverage of the fair.  If you happened to be awake at 5am Eastern on a few mornings, you may have had a chance to check out yours truly do a few interviews for the webcam.  In addition to interviews, the webstream also was used to broadcast game explanations (done by the game designer)!  The booth was also selling the Boardgamegeek game (designed by Richard Breese) as well as distributing nice light blue cloth bags with the new Geekdo.com logo imprinted on it.  The large space of the booth provided a nice meeting place for a weary convention goer as well as a central location for a number of Math Trades and other fun activities.  Oh yeah, and it had Derk in a kilt.
2. A New Hotel – I’m quite happy to report that our new hotel met or exceeded all expectations.  We were forced to look for new digs in Essen when our old standby, the Savoy, went out of business earlier this year.  Our new location still remains within walking distance to the fair, and has the distinct advantage of having HUGE rooms.  And I don’t mean huge by European standards… I mean huge by even American chain hotel standards.  I’d guess that our triple room was at least 600 square feet (30x20 feet) with a little separate kitchen area.  We’re definitely booking a room back there next year.





Renowned game designer Christian Leonhard taking his first attempt at hotel interior redecoration in our hotel room – you can see about 40-50% of the square footage of our room in this picture.




3. Decorations at the Rio Grande Booth – Usually the Rio Grande booth is a fairly Spartan affair with the large area having a simple carpet and loads and loads of tables.  This year, Jay had a much more festive booth with the entire area decorated as if it were a tropical island (keeping the Seaside theme in the forefront of the convention goer’s mind!).  There were “palm trees” surrounding the edges of the booth space and the carpet was even two colors with a beige “beach” leading into a dark blue “sea” area.  The front of the stand also had a tiki-hut like construction where the games were being sold.  There were humongous banners on the walls in the back and the air was filled with oversized Action cards hanging from the ceiling (the cards were probably 3 or 4 foot in height). Overall, it was a very nice looking booth and hopefully this decoration will be continued in the future.
4. Dominion-Mints – On the day that Valerie and I arrived in Germany, we walked from our hotel down to the Hans im Gluck offices to catch up with our colleagues there.  As we were taking our tour of the office, Moritz Brunnhofer surprised us with little tins of mints with the Dominion logo printed on them!  These tins were given away at the Hans im Gluck booth during the fair, so I’m pretty sure that there a bunch of them floating around somewhere!
5. Donald X. Vaccarino – yes, it’s true.  I’m not Donald.  Somewhere there’s actual photo evidence of this.  Of course, not on my camera.  It was quite nice to be able to catch up with Donald in person as we generally only communicate via email. 





Donald X. at the press conference.  If you look closely, you’ll see that he looks absolutely nothing like me (or my brother)




6. The Big French Booth – So I had mentioned above that Hasbro no longer had a booth in Hall 12.  Well, in Hasbro’s place was the de facto French Gaming Embassy.  Many of the French speaking companies joined together to share the space – Asmodee, Ystari, Repos, Gameworks, etc – all could be found here.  I think that it worked out quite well for the exhibitors as they seemingly had more space each and a much higher traffic area to attract the gamers to their games.
7. Digital Luggage Scale – My old travel scale died on the way home from Berlin in July, so I needed to pick up a new scale before this trip.  After a few aborted attempts at weighing my bags on a fairly antique scale on a landing at the now-defunct Savoy hotel, I realized that having a baggage scale was essential in making sure that you can maximize your cargo capacity without incurring the ever-increasing litany of airline fees.  My old scale was a manual affair so you needed to have another person with you while you weighed your bag because it was physically impossible to read the scale while trying to lift a 50+ pound bag up with one hand.  The old scale was also a bit cumbersome because if you were struggling at all with the weight, the needle on the scale would bounce around making it nearly impossible to get a very accurate reading on the weight.  But, all of those problems are gone with the new digital scale.  Now, I can simply weigh the bag, hold it for a second or two until it beeps and then unhook it and read the weight which is frozen on the LCD screen until I erase it.  Based on my official weights at the airport, my scale seems to be accurate to about 100 grams.  The downside of this is that I apparently missed out on the opportunity to bring home one more game of about 400 grams! :)





My personal allocation of luggage.  What you see here is about 172 pounds worth of fun (and laundry).  For scale purposes, the red bag here is a traditional 29 inch luggage.




8. More New International Publishers – As I was walking through the fair, it was quickly clear that there were new faces from outside Germany.  In Hall 4, there was a Korean area which was shared by at least 5 different publishers.  Joen was there with Peeper, Hexus and a new game called Rabbit and Carrot.  Namuhana had a few maddeningly cute games for kids: Penguin C and King of Fisherman.  Playoff Games had Dino Business which looked to be getting a lot of interest from the fair-goers.  Beyond that, there were new names from Poland as well as the Czech Republic.  It was good to see the increased participation as it shows that there is still room for growth in the industry.





Penguin C – a new kids game from a Korean publisher, Namuhana




9. Filming of a documentary about boardgaming – Lorien was at Essen getting more footage for her work in progress which is a documentary on the boardgaming scene.  Luckily for me (and the eventual viewers of the documentary), just as at the Gathering of Friends, I think I managed to miss the video camera for the entire event.
10. A whole slew of new Star Wars games – it turns out that Jumbo holds the license rights for Star Wars games in Europe.  Did you know that they have Clone Wars Stratego?  I didn’t until the press conference!  Can’t wait to play this one with the kids!





Clone Wars Stratego – wonder if Hasbro will ever do this one?

Old Favorites at the Show

1. My Annual Near-Miss with Peer Sylvester – At some point in my life, I want to meet Peer Sylvester at Essen to discuss one of his games.  As in previous years, our schedules never worked out – as I never got my demo of King of Siam from him… I did run into Peer a few times as we were both wandering the halls, and we always discussed trying to set up a time to meet each other – but it just never worked out.  And to make things worse, due to a different scheduling conflict, I managed to even miss out on getting a copy of his new game, Filipino Fruit Market.  By the time I had wriggled free from the BGG booth on Saturday (my last day at the fair), the Bambus booth had closed up.  So, I’ll have to keep an eye out to see whether Funagain brought some copies home or maybe see if Peer can send me one.  :( Perhaps I’ll learn my lesson and set up an actual timed appointment next year as it’s obvious that the current system is failing in every possible way.
2. The yummy and affordable Bratwurst mit Brotchen at the Snackpoint – Yeah, I know I keep saying this, but really, it’s just so frickin good.  So good, it doesn’t even need mustard.  And, I’ll admit that the European crusty bread is so good that it makes me sad to think that I’ve got Wonder Bread to look forward to for about the next 11 months.
3. Hans Im Gluck gummy meeples – even though the HiG folks had a new giveaway with the Dominion mints, they still had a steady share of the Carcassone gummy meeples.  And, I’ll admit that every time I passed through that side of Hall 10, a packet or two of meeples were hastily consumed!
4. Eating Lunch for Breakfast – OK, before I leave the topic of German food, I’m also going to miss the nice German breakfasts.  At our first hotel, there was a really nice Caprese salad offered each morning.  While it seemed a bit out of place at first, it was really tasty and it went well as a first course to my typical salami and cheese sandwich which served as the rest of the breakfast generally.  It’s definitely a far cry from Pop Tarts.
5. Spiel des Jahres reception – Valerie and I were once again invited to the Spiel des Jahres reception, and as in years past, it was a delightful evening.  The evening is essentially just a chance to enjoy a nice meal and then give the press a chance to meet some of the game designers and publishers in a much more intimate setting than the loud and crowded halls of the Messe.  Additionally, there are always plenty of new games made available, so it gives the folks who are often too busy to actually play games during Essen to sit down and enjoy themselves for a few hours.  There isn’t much of a formal program at this event, usually just a few minutes from the Head of the Jury before dinner starts – but this year there was a very nice retirement ceremony for Tom Werneck.  Tom was the last remaining original SdJ jury member left on the panel, and he announed his retirement from the jury earlier this summer.





Tom Werneck accepting some of his (many) retirement gifts from the SdJ jury




6. Early Chance to Play the Ystari release – One of my favorite moments of the Wednesday at Essen is running into Cyril Demagaed from Ystari.  First, it’s nice to catch up with an old friend and see how things have been going since we last met.  Second, Cyril is often generous to us and offers us a copy of his new release to try out that evening.  This year was no different, and the Ystari game, Assyria, was the first game that I played while in my hotel room at Essen.  It’s been three years in a row that this has happened, and it’s a really nice tradition to continue.





Peek-a-boo!  Look!  It’s Cyril!




7. Massively Screwing up the Rules to an Essen game – So imagine that you’re at a huge games convention with more than a thousand new games being offered up for your examination.  You’re trying to learn as much as you can about all of the different games, and so you get a lot of rushed demonstrations from the very nice folks working at all the different booths.  Then, when you get home, you’re really really really tired from spending all day rushing around the fair.  So, your reading comprehension skills are pretty much in the dumper as you try to read the rules to a new game that you got a quick 3 to 5 minute demo earlier that day.  It’s no surprise that game rules are liable to get missed in this setup.  It’s truly a recipe for disaster, and we fell victim to it this year on a number of occasions – the biggest one was us royally screwing up the scoring for the pyramids in Assyria at the end of each round.  Luckily, it didn’t affect my overall opinion of the game…
8. The Annual New Form of Tichu – Tichu is still one of my favorite games around, and each year I stop by the Fata Morgana booth to see what new they have on offer.  For the past few years, there seems to be a new Tichu object offered.  Last year they had a nice wooden box that you could store your Tichu deck in, and the year before that they had a specially Bayern Munich themed deck.  This year, Fata Morgana offered a really nice tin (with the Dragon on one side and the Phoenix on the other side) and a deck inside.  Needless to say, one of those is stashed away somewhere in my baggage right now.
9. Trying to Guess How Late Friedemann Stayed Out Based on his Breakfast Appearance – We have stayed at the same hotel with Friedemann for a number of years now, and as we are generally leaving for the fair at the same time each morning, we often eat breakfast together at the hotel.  I will say that, as usual, I am completely amazed at how he is able to function during the Spiel week.  One particular morning this week, he came into the breakfast room looking a bit worse for wear, and we learned later that he had managed to be out until about 3am “drinking cocktails”.  By the end of breakfast (and after a bit of caffeine), he was his usual ebullient and gregarious self and ready to put in a full 10 hour day at the booth.  So not only is he a brilliant game designer, he can still party like a rockstar and work all weekend at the fair.  Friedemann, I salute you!
10. The DSP Award Presentation - This marks the second year in a row that I had been invited to the DSP award presentation, and it is quite a nice event.  There isn’t much suspense to the evening as the award winners had been named a few weeks earlier – however, it’s still a nice night to congratulate the winners of the award.  It was especially sweet as I was able to see Donald head up to the stage to accept the trophy for winning the DSP for Dominion.





The top three games for DSP and the folks behind them




11. German/European Women in Tights and Boots – Yeah. I’m totally waiting for American fashion to catch up with their more progressive European counterparts.
12. Confusion about the time change – About every other year when we’re at Essen, the time changes – similar to our Daylight Savings Time.  However, since we changed our schedule for the time change a few years ago, the timing of the switch no longer coincides.  On Sunday morning, Europe gained an hour – putting the European timezone five hours ahead of the Eastern US.  While it was very nice to have an extra hour to sleep at night before getting up to catch the plane home, the time change always provokes a bit of anxiety in myself as I constantly am checking to make sure that I know what the time is.
13. Luggage Tetris and Weight Issues – And finally, what trip to Essen would be complete without a Saturday night game of luggage Tetris.  Oftentimes I have to defer my packing arrangements to Brian and Valerie who have a much better sense of how to make 60 games fit into two suitcases, but this year it turned out that I managed it all on my own!  One of the main reasons for this is probably because there wasn’t much opportunity for nesting games within each other.  As it turns out, many of the games that I bought this year were in completely standard sized boxes (which additionally didn’t nest within each other nor any of the other common sizes of boxes).  But in any event, this year it turned out the weight was more an issue than volume.  As I mentioned earlier, I did have a new digital scale which immensely helped in maximizing the weight distribution across the luggages.  We got our plane tickets early enough this year that we still had the customary baggage allowance of two checked bags of 50 pounds each.  I’m not sure how the ever-increasing rules on baggage will affect how many games or which type of games I’m going to bring back.  Hopefully the rules will relax on that during the coming year.  I’m trying to put a good word in with Spirit Airlines and see whether they can spearhead an industry wide change to lower the fees or at least just add them to the base ticket price so I don’t have to think about them.

The list of things I brought home

Well, I finally unpacked my bags – and here’s what is currently on the floor of my bedroom.  It did take about an hour to reconstitute all of the games (as many of them had their heavy boards and wooden bits removed from the boxes and into my carry-on luggage for weight reasons)… My two checked bags weighed in at 49.9 and 49.8 pounds respectively – though they were mostly filled with empty boxes and laundry.  My carry-on was 42 lbs – chock full of boards, metal tins, cards and wooden bits from all of the games.  My backpack was about 30 lbs with the rest of the cards, boards and camera equipment.

1. 2 Meeple T-shirts
2. A La Carte
3. Aladdin’s Dragons the card game
4. AoS Madagascar
5. Arena: Rome II
6. Assorted cloth bags for carrying games
7. Assyria
8. At The Gates of Loyang
9. Atlantis
10. Basket Boss
11. Buffy the Vampire Slayer in French (Tilsit)
12. Captain Pirate
13. Cardcassone
14. Colonia
15. Das Magische Labyrinth
16. Dino Business
17. Dominion chest
18. Dominion Hat
19. Dominion mints x 8
20. Dominion: Seaside (English)
21. Dominion: Seaside (German)
22. Dungeon Lords
23. Factory Fun Exp.
24. Fzzzt!
25. Genial Spezial
26. Gipsy King Exp.
27. Gonzaga
28. Hansa Teutonica
29. Heckmeck das Kultspiel (mini) x 3
30. Hotel Amsterdam
31. Igel Argern & Tante Tarantel x 2
32. Jaipur
33. Kaleidos Limited Edition
34. Koplopers & Dwarslingers
35. Mosaix x 3
36. Numeri
37. Opera
38. Peeper Mahjongg version
39. Peloponnes
40. Penguin C
41. Power Boats Exp.
42. Rabbit & Carrot
43. San Francisco Cable Car
44. Santa Timea
45. Shipyard
46. Star Wars Stratego
47. Strada Romana
48. Super Stocks!
49. Take It To The Limit
50. The BoardGameGeek Game
51. The King of Fishermen
52. Tichu in a tin
53. Time’s Up Game Geek deck
54. Tobago
55. Trader
56. Tricky Trek
57. Turandot
58. Unanimo
59. Uno
60. Uno Flash

Some pictures of the games

Part 1 of the Games

Part 2 of the games

Part 3 of the games

Part 4 of the games

The whole haul up against the wall of my bedroom

I better stop now.  I hear that the airlines charge a fee if you type on a laptop for more than 4 hours on any given flight.  It’s time to read some game rules and maybe catch a nap!

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

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