I met my friends the day before today. We had a great dinner and chatted about whats hot and whats not last night. Today, we continued the discussion at breakfast. This was THE day of the ultimate games meetup. Our breakfast had a lovely buffet spread. Delicious Swiss cheeses, fresh fruit juices, sausages and salami. Ate a lot and had nice coffee. I secretly tried to spot other gamers in the breakfast room. One or two tables could be occupied by gamers. Not sure, though. We left the hotel around 9 am, and after a short drive, got caught in a traffic jam near the Essen Messe. Shyam thought this was strange, as usually, being a Thursday, the first day of Essen Spiele was normally pretty quiet. We were in a jam which nearly rival a KL rush hour jam, but more civilized. What was going on? What made it worse was the really fast-changing traffic lights which we encountered along the way. I guessed they were not used to this type of heavy traffic. When we finally reached the Messe, there were tons of people! Queues were building up at every entrance! What was going on? I dropped Shyam and daughter off by one of the entrances, as the queues were disconcerting and I was directed to a very distant car park. I found a parking space really far away from any of the entrances into the Messe. It was a long walk to my first Essen Spiele, but as I reached the nearest entrance. there was a buzz of excitement amongst the people there. Everyone was in a jovial mood. Ahh...the group effect of mass endorphin release...

I had a pre-issued four-day ticket so, I went straight in. The first game I saw being played was Carson City. Admittedly, I had not heard about this game before, even though I trolled the various Essen lists. I put this at the back of my mind as I headed past the Ultra-Pro stand (they had no freebies today) and made a bee line towards the Cwali stand, where I met Corné van Moorsel, the game designer extraordinaire and boss of  Cwali games. I wanted to get this year's Tricky Trek and Basket Boss, and also last year's Powerboats, and the older Street Soccer, which I missed out on. I am a fan of racing games, be they racing power boats, racing cars, or racing horses, racing sleds or racing ostriches. Had a nice chat with Corné. Great guy. I also got my expansions for Powerboats and other Cwali games that I don't own (yet). [Update: 2 November 2009 Corné posted recently on BoardGameGeek that he was surprised that Powerboats sold out so quickly at Essen 09]. I am not surprised. It's a great game with great components. What's more, it's a Cwali game!

Lots of children AND adults playing games! See- there is no shame in playing games in public.

Next, I went speedily to find Richard Breese (another game designer extraordinaire) of R&D Games to collect my pre-ordered The Board Game Geek Game (TBGGG) and Aladdin's Dragons Card Game. Had a nice chat with Richard too. He was wearing a tee-shirt with of them fishmeeples from Reef Encounter. I want! I also had a peek at people playing TBGGG at the R&D Games booth and it looked really good. After hanging around a bit, I had planned to find the Repos stand next to collect my pre-ordered Ghost Stories expansion, Ghost Stories: White Moon. On the way there, I got distracted by the huge Amigo Spiele gaming area. The Amigo game promoters were very interesting as they were made up of atypical gamers: young, chatty, great-looking girls! They were teaching all sorts of games, especially Pokemon CCG. I have never played Pokemon CCG before. Perhaps this is a good time to start?

I wanted to learn to play Pokemon.

But I had a mission to do: get my copy of White Moon. I veered back on course for the Repos stand...and got distracted again by the colourful CirKis game. This game looks like Blokus, but the pieces are circular in whole and in parts. Mmmm...interesting. Then someone caught my eye: someone wearing an American Football shirt with the name "Derk" on his back. Hey, it's Derk Solko from BoardGameGeek.com! He was also wearing a black kilt. Okaaay! No comment. Where was I going to? Oh....Repos... (a few steps later) hey this looked like a great game: Power Struggle, by Eggertspiele. I stopped by to have a look. It looked complicated...great! Must get this later, as it came in a big box and I didn't want to carry this all day. I finally reached the Repos stand, and asked where I could get my White Moon. I was directed by an over-enthusiastic Repos promoter who wore a Mexican hat (all Repos reps do) to the collection stand. I went promptly there. There was a queue. What WAS with today? Everyone I know who went to Essen Spiel before said the attendance was low on the Thursday!  Well, I queued patiently. It finally came to my turn. I was given my White Moon, with all the other stuff like Chuck No-Rice and B-Rice Lee cards, customized chopsticks, etc. I also bought the Times Up! Geek Edition cards to supplement our Times Up! Game.  I then asked about my replacement cards for my original Ghost Stories. These was kept in the Repos room, specially for me. He he...I got them at last. You see, there is a weird story about my cards from Ghost Stories: When I got my copy last year, there was a card missing (the Ghoul card). So, I wrote to Repos. No reply from them, but, pleasantly, I received a whole deck of cards in the mail. Now, this deck sat on my desk for a few months. Last month, I discovered that this new deck was missing. So, when I pre-ordered my copy of White Moon, I requested to get another replacement deck to be collected at Essen...and hoped for the best. There was a reply this time, and lo and behold, Repos surprised me again: they gave me a new deck (again)! This is what I called great service! I visited the Repos stand several times in the next few days and met the designer and artist. They were doing autographs and the artist was drawing on the inside of the game boxes. How cool is that? I raved about the art in my earlier Squark Blog. Nice guys, and thank you Repos!

I walked around and saw Macao, a trading & development game, being played. I was a new fan of the designer Stephen Feld after playing his 2008 Name of the Rose a few weeks ago. I wanted to buy Macao but was told the English version was not available yet. Boo! This normally would not be a problem as the game promoters also teach in English, but I did not want to be tied down playing a game just yet, because I wanted to have an overall view of the fair and do my shopping tasks first and get the tasks out of the way before actually starting to play new games. I walked past Tobago games being played. This treasure hunting deduction game was on my shopping list too, and it looked really good. I then walked past the big impressive Haba area which was really impressive. They has all sorts of games for the whole family in their trademarked yellow boxes. Dancing Eggs was one of my favourite Haba games I've never played. It was going for €12. Tempting, but it was heavy.

Stephen Feld's Macao.

I bumped into the Board Game Geek Stall and saw Derk (from the front this time), Aldie, and Doug, all wearing the American Football shirts with their names on the back.

The BGG Booth.

Derk - rearview.

I then went to the Tree Frog booth to get Waterloo, Last Train to Wensleydale, God's Playground, all numbered and autographed,  and also Way Out West, which was going for €10! Nice friendly chaps and lady. Apparently, I read somewhere on a post-Essen report, they were friends of Martin Wallace and comprised of professional people like lawyers, etc. Nice work! Martin Wallace was not there at that time though.

Next was the Mayfair and Phalanx stands where Rise of Empires were played. Cool-looking game. I then saw the Koplow stand opposite-lotsa dice! Then on to Splotter Spellen to get another game I missed out last year: Duck Dealer, and also to get their 2009 game Greed, Incorporated - about greed in mega corporations or something. Who cares, it's a freakin' Splotter game!

After wandering around in wonder, I saw my Holy Grail: Master Thieves. It was in an illuminated glass shelf, beautifully glowing in the artificial light that bathed it. I finally beheld it in real life. As in all things and actors, it's smaller in real life, but it looked beautiful. The wooden construct beamed back at me, and the plastic gems sparkled not unlike the real thing. There it was-the game I have always wanted to own: Master Thieves. Then I asked how much it was (sound effect: wondrous musical tune stopped suddenly to the sound of stylus scratching across the record). €105! Wow. Wow! WOW! I then concealed my disappointment by distracting myself by walking to the group playing Planet Steam, made by the same company. Planet Steam was a beautiful huge game, with great components which I also wanted from last year. I did not bother to ask about the price, but it looked good...and I like M.U.L.E., the Atari game which Planet Steam was supposed to be based on. Dream on!

I wanted to learn to play Albion, too.

The rest of the day was spent by my goggling at beautiful games, new and old, strange and normal. There were so many games and so many toys there that could lead to information overload had I not prepared myself mentally by going to games stores a few days before going to Essen Spiele. I also saw Uwe Rosenberg and his game At the Gates of Loyang. This game looked a bit minimalistic, but many people were playing it, and judging from the laughter and also concentration from the players, it looked like a great game, even though it pre-dated Agricola in conception. While winding up for the day, I overheard someone saying that today was a holiday in Germany. No wonder, lah! That explained the atypical huge crowd today.

I was amazed at the huge response for the two Dominion expansions: Intrigue and Seaside. Many people were tearing off the shrink wrap after buying these expansions and added to their copy of Dominion which they brought to the show and started reading the rules and playing everywhere around the Rio Grande stand-even on the floor when no free tables were available. Fantastic! See:

Dominion - it's a better game playing on the floor.

It was a good first day, but I think I overdid the shopping a tad - for myself and my friends who tumpang-ed me to but these big and heavy games... In the evening, we went to a lovely Italian restaurant nearby the hotel. Again, fantastic cuisine. There were some Spiel attenders there, and at least one table playing a card game and another playing a party game. We later wanted to play a game in the hotel pub, but only Andreas and I turned up. Other friends aeroplaned and could not make it, so we chatted about the games we saw and the general gaming scene during rounds of German beer.

My next Squark Blog will focus on Day 2 of Essen Spiel 09. Find out which game celebrity I had breakfast with.

Comments (0)