Spiel or why my unplayed shelves are so big

So I've just got back from Spiel which is the largest board game fare for consumers in the world (previous post here as I tend to go every two years).  It's really big – no bigger then that. I swear after 2.5 days of being in that hall and just walking and walking I played only a fraction of the games and only saw a fraction of the things. It's held in Essen in case your wandering and uk games nerds often use the term “Essen” and Spiel interchangably.


Spiel is very different from a UK games convention – because a UK games convention is about playing games and it might have a table down one end to buy stuff from where as Spiel is about selling games and ends at 7 o'clock. In fact for local people (ie Germans) it's a case of storming in buying everything and storming out again but then there so much closer. Our plan involves overnight ferry’s and a hotel who's bar gets invaded by gamers every night.....

That is not a convention – it's just what happens when you fill a hotel with gamers.


If you and your play group can read German you can pick up some amazing bargains but if you are an English speaker the bargain aspect is much less significant (although the rise of international versions is helping with that -as long as the 'German' version also contains English then the price will be very low)  and very quickly outweighed by the cost of doing it at all. So your going for an experience rather then a cost saving exercise. It is an experience because where else would you be able to find people selling a game based around running a heavy metal festival who got meeples throwing the horns made?

If it had been in English – we'd have totally brought it.....


It is possible to save money – bargain hunt, by an awful lot of games, pick up things you might otherwise have had to pay delivery from states (for example anything kick started) but I don't buy enough to actually save money and this is the amount I buy.:

Which looking at it is pretty similar to two years pile.

Of the things I brought 7 were not on my list before the event – so why did I buy them?


Sylla was brought because it was 5 euros and I've seen it in the works sale previously and it's got a reasonable right up. And it was 5 euro's.


La Isla was brought because it's by Stefan Feld and well I was only going to buy one Stefan Feld game but then it was there and it was only 25 Euro's and I was already buying something from that stall and....


Kings Pouch I played and quite liked – pouch drawing mechanics are in this year so I thought I'd best get at least one of them.


Camel Up I brought because it won a game of year award which is generally a good sign – it's not going to be a terrible game even if it's not your favourite game.


Istanbul I brought because it also had a game of the year award and I rather liked it.


Praetor was a last minute impulse buy because it had an interesting mechanic about retiring workers once they got to the top of there tree – and having played it on the ferry home I suspect another play through will want me to write a review about it.


Fields of Arle I brought because I managed to haggle 5 euros of the price and it's by Uwe Rosengerg who's game I generally like. Although quite how many different farming games I need is a bit of mystery – and when I'm going to play a two player game is rather unclear.


And finally the Antike 2 conversation kit which I did not know exist – and I'd been tempted by the the new version anyway but decided I could not justify it......


Comparing my purchase with the Hotness at board game geek is interesting - because a lot of the stuff in the hotness I've not even heard off....

One other thing you might not be able to see is some bags of little bits – as I brought a pile of meeples and disks in matching colours to try and help me get back into doing stuff. I suspect this is the game designer equivalent of buying a nice fresh notebook......  But hopefully there



It's very tiring – and you know what – I think a nap might might a really nice idea....

Essen and GSH

So this weekend I headed out to Essen to attend Spiel - the worlds largest board game fair.

And believe me when I say it's massive.  Multiple halls - each one as big as I've ever seen a UK games con manage (and possibly bigger) and swarms of people.  Endless milling swarms.  The latest release - all the hot games. Last years hot games at knock down prices - and 2nd hand games stores for the years before that.  The companies also setting out tables and just let you play - with people explaining the rules.  So you can get a look at something before you buy.

Yes most of it is in German - and if I was German it would be even more awesome - but it's still damn good.

There is nothing in the way of evening events - so your left to your own entertainment.  We found a hotel with a large downstairs area and just play games there.  Along with about half the hotel making it an impromptu games convention and really quite awesome.

This year we also branched out and headed out to a metal pub and then a metal club until about 4 in the morning.  The bouncer seemed unsure about letting us in - but we convinced him that we were in fact Metal enough to get in - I think he spotted my hair.

It's not cheap  - but it is awesome.  I normally only go ever other year - but for some reason I'm tempted to go again next year.  But you need a group of people to go with, hang out with, and play games with.

One day I want to be there with a pile of my games and my own stall.  It can happen - there was a man selling his own game based on the gangs of Rome and the proscriptions of Sulla with a count of how many of the 100 games he had left to sell.......  By Saturday he'd stopped trying to sell it as he only had twenty left and just treated it as his own personal table to play games.  But then he was clearly treating the whole thing as sunk expenses since he was selling his games for 50 euro's and they cost 35 to make - not including the £1000 he had spent on art....  or the time he'd taken to make little boxes.......  A real reminder that self publishing board games is not a way to make money.

I also discovered that a luggage allowance of 22 kilos is a lot of games.....  My loot came to just under 18 kilo's not including two copies of infinite city (3 euros!)  that were in my hand luggage.  If your wandering what 18 kilo's of games looks like.....

Including funky metal money for Libertalia for only 3 Euros - bargain.


I did however get a play test of GSH in - and with people who had played one of the earlier version.  Generally positive feedback - it was clear it was not right - and that the new mission cards were not doing what I wanted them to do  But the general feedback was "heading in the right direction" - and better that a lot of there concerns in earlier version had been taken away.

One person specifically liked the resource card - as a nice simple way of giving people choice - but preventing a resource gap opening up between players.

It was interesting listening to people talk - I've been trying to encourage people to attack but because stone heads are worth more VP's at the end of the turn - they are encouraged to defend more.  So I want to try something - it's a pretty big flip - but make stone heads worth 3 vps to the person that builds them straight away.  However give 1 VP to any player that takes a freshly built stone head off another player - while introducing a card so that at the end of the round you can get a bonus point for a stone head. Inverting the current point system in effect.

This may result in non stop overly aggressive attacking if defending is not seen as worth doing.  But I want to give it a try.......  Mr P will roll his eyes at me of course.