Rick Thornquist: The Essen Preview

Wow, are my typing fingers tired.

Much of last week was spent adding new games to the Essen Preview and today was yet another marathon day of typing.  Since last week I’ve added more than 40 new entries to the preview and right now I’m at 118 entries (not all of these are distinct games, though, some of them are different language versions of the same game).  Yikes!

I’m now almost up-to-date - I have about ten more in the queue and after that I hope to have a day or two of rest before being doused with the next batch.  When it rains, it pours.

Putting together information on hundreds of upcoming games is quite a challenge.  The information on these games often comes from all over the place - I have to scramble to put together tidbits from many different sources (in different languages) to put together good preview of a game. 

You’d think that the game publishers would be glad to make information about their games readily available to press to make my job easier.  On the contrary, it’s often like pulling teeth to try to get the information I need from the publishers.  It’s like they are trying to keep their games a state secret.

While a lot of the publishers make my job more difficult, there are some that make my job a breeze.  One example of these is the new French game company Spiel-ou-Face - the publisher of the new game Metromania.  Their website is outstanding - there’s tons of information, pictures, downloadable rules, a slideshow explaining the game, and more.  There’s even a special section for the press with all the information and pictures that I need.  And all of it is in English, German and French!  I wish all publishers would have websites as good as Spiel-ou-Face.

On the other side of the coin are publishers like the Ragnar Brothers - the publisher of the new game Canal Mania.  Today I posted a first impression of the game from Craig Massey and I wanted to post some basic information about the game at the start of the article - things like how many players it plays, the suggested ages, the length of the game, etc.  I scoured their website for this most basic of information.  Couldn’t find it.  Come on, Ragnar, you are trying to sell your game - the least you could do is stick a few facts on your website!

Trying to get accurate information is sometimes very difficult.  The bane of my existence is trying to find out the number of players that a game will take.  You’d think this information would be easy to get, but different sources - even in different places on the publisher’s website - often contradict each other.  I think the publishers do this just to drive me insane!

Much of the information is not in English and needs to be translated - thanks again go to Patrick Korner for once again taking up translation duties.  Thankfully, more and more publishers are providing information in English - this makes mine and Patrick’s job much easier.

Note that much of the preview would not be possible without the Herculean effort of Knut-Michael Wolf, who does an Essen Preview on the German website Spielbox.  A lot of the information for my preview comes from Knut’s site.  Big thanks also go to Erwin Broens who has his own preview on the Dutch site Bordspel.  Together, the three of us work the best we can to get you all the information we can on the upcoming Essen games.

Games Played
A light week last week.  I played Pecking Order a couple of times, as well as Tempus, Voltage (an upcoming Mattel game) and Thurn und Taxis. 

Next week my local game store is having their yearly 24 Game Night and I’ll be there.  If you are in Vancouver (or, more precisely, Port Coquitlam) come on out to the Drexoll Games 24 Hour Game Night and play some games.  I’ll report back on the festivities next week.

See you then!

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