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Essen 2005 Report: Wrap-Up
Posted on Oct. 18, 2005 by Rick Thornquist
By Rick Thornquist
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
 I'm back home, after an uneventful and relatively quick trip back.
One funny travel story before I get to the wrap-up. I was going through security at the Dusseldorf airport and was stopped after they x-rayed one of my carry-on bags. The guy opened my bag and went through it pretty thoroughly, finding mostly games and a few miscellaneous things. He seemed perplexed. He took the bag and ran it through the x-ray machine again. He then asked me, "Are you carrying any diamonds?". I was stunned for a moment and was like, "Diamonds? What are you talking about?". He showed me the x-ray and there was what looked like a bunch of little tiny stones. I thought for a moment and then laughed - they were the Ys gems that I had bought from the fair and stuck in the outside pocket of my bag. I took them out and when he saw them he laughed as well. It seems I don't look much like an international jewel thief.
Anyway, onto the fair. It was, as usual, great. Lots of great games, lots of great people, and lots of fun. I was very pleased with how the fair went for me - I was able to get everything I wanted out of it and am quite pleased with the reports that I posted. My experience in previous years went a long way to helping me get the most out of the fair. One day I'll have to write up some tricks and tips for people heading to the fair - I've got quite a few of them.
Before we continue with the wrap-up, I do have one correction to a report. I noted in my description of Daimyo that the idea was to eliminate the other players' Daimyos - whoever is left standing is the winner. This is not correct - as soon as one player defeats another player's Daimyo he wins the game (you also win by occupying your opponents home spaces with a certain amount of armies). Thanks to Johan Berglind for pointing this out and apologies for the error. I have added a note to the report noting the error.
Now on with the wrap-up. A few notable things about this Essen:
The crowds felt a little smaller than they were last year. Last year on Saturday, the crush of people was unbelievable - this year you could actually move around. I don't know if this was because there was less people or because they opened more hall space and spread the people out.
The weather was fantastic. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter so much when you are inside a convention hall all day. It was nice to see the sun and be warm when you went outside, though.
The number of Sudoku games was just ridiculous - over 10. Talk about bandwagon jumping. There were lots of soccer games as well. The other trend was games about tropical islands, there were at least three of them - Kaivai, Big Kini, and Aloha.
There were a number of incidents of misprints. Freya's Folly had one card where the graphic was switched with another and I understand HAVOC: The Hundred Years War had a problem with one of the cards. The promised 6 Nimmt! expansion didn’t materialize because it was misprinted. If you got any of these, you now have a collector's item!.
The Phalanx game Mesopotamia arrived at the fair with a box insert that didn't fit the components - they ended up selling the game at a reduced price (the rest of the print run should have the proper insert).
A number of games didn't even make it to the fair. Pro Ludo's Tempus and Ostia were both no-shows (except for playable prototypes) and the English versions of Euphrat & Tigris - Das Kartenspiel and Hazienda supposedly missed the show by a week. A display copy of Gloria Mundi was there, but I don't think it was played.
It seemed to be much easier this year to find English rules for the games. Of all the games I brought home, almost every one of them had English rules in the box or available for downloading. Last year I had a number of game without English rules. Most of the games were there were only German versions were from bigger companies and were coming out in English anyway, so I can wait for these. I have only two games without translations - Fettnapf (where I was able to cobble together a computer translation from the German rules) and ZwergeZocken (if anyone has an translation for this, I'd appreciate a copy!).
Part of the reason for more English rules may be the increasing international nature of the fair. We are seeing more and more publishers there from all over the world. As it's impractical to have rule sets in innumerable languages, it makes sense for publishers to include the rules in English, which is the first or second language for most of the attendees.
There was quite a bit contingent of Americans this year. More and more people from the U.S. seem to be going every year and there was quite a big group of newbies this year.
Fragor Games did spectacular business with their newest game Shear Panic actually selling out of the game before the fair even opened. Later in the show, copies of the game were spotted at dealers selling for much, much more than the original price.
And now onto the games…
In previous years my wrap-up was a long list of games with short comments about them. This year I thought I'd just list my top picks along with my least favorite games. Note that in this evaluation I'm including the thirty different games I played at the fair plus seven other Essen games that I played before the fair.
Here are my hits:
The obvious choice for best game was Caylus - a game I've been talking up for a while now. I'm pleased that almost everyone who'd played it at the fair was as excited about it as I am. It also topped the Fairplay poll. Though there were other games I liked a lot, no other game came close to this one.
A number of games fit into the very good category. Mesopotamia from Phalanx was a very nice pick up and deliver game, with very nice components. I found Elasund to be a very interesting city building game. Siena has a great deal of potential, if you can get over the learning curve hurdles. I'll need another game or two to make sure, but this one could very well settle into the very good category.
I had played the Martin Wallace games Byzantium and Tempus before the show and was impressed with both. Byzantium has a lot of rules but has some neat gameplay while Tempus is more medium weight but still engrossing.
Big Kini was a very nice surprise from a first time publisher. A bad rules explanation gave a bad first impression, but as the game went on it got more and more interesting. By the end of the game I was ready to buy it.
My 'Geschenkt' award for the best lighter game of the fair was Rotundo from Adlung. A very nice little game and at 6 Euro, a steal.
And my misses:
In one evening I played both Trading Routes from Van der Veer Games and Giza from Fun Factory Games. Both were basically luckfests with Giza throwing in a 'take that!' mechanic. The games do work, but there are much better games out there that actually give you something to think about.
My other miss was Drachenreiter / Dragonriders. There was really not much strategy in the game and the components were just too fiddly. I thought it was just okay, but the Fairplay voters obviously thought even less of it than I did - they sent it to the bottom of the poll, only to be saved from last place by Banana Republika, a game I didn't play.
Some that may be hits:
I did buy a number of games that I hadn't gotten a chance to play at the fair. These ones got some good buzz, to they may just become hits for me. These include Indonesia, Anitke, Il Principe, Kaivai and Das Ende des Triumvirats. I hope to play these soon.
And that's it for my coverage of Essen 2005. I hope you enjoyed it - I know I enjoyed putting it together. See you next year!
| Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version |  | Me - At work on Wednesday, in the back of the Rio Grande booth |
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Email GameWire's editor, Rick Thornquist, at gamewire@gamefest.com.
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