Essen 2024 Note 4

This was the last selfie I took before I left the Essen game fair on Sunday, the final day of the fair for 2024. What an amazing four days it was. For many years I have been hearing other people share their Spiel experiences. Now that I was experiencing it first hand myself, whatever I had heard before still didn't fully prepare me for the real thing. It really is something that has to been experienced in person. 

By the end of Day 3, I still hadn't covered all the halls. I hadn't yet covered Hall 1, and I had only covered about a third of Hall 2. I was a little nervous starting Day 4. Was I going to be able to cover everything, and then also have time to buy some of the games I was undecided on? In the morning I decided to start with one corner of Hall 1, and then once done with Hall 1, to work on Hall 2 from the opposite end from where I started the previous day, and work towards where I stopped earlier. As I started on Hall 1, I was relieved to find that it was mostly dedicated to miniature games and trading card games. Also some roleplaying games. These were not really my thing, so I passed through those sections quickly. There was a lot to see for those who are interested in these, but not me. I only skimmed and enjoyed the pretty miniatures.

Lots of nice miniatures, and terrains, and dice, and holders for dice, and dice towers. There were miniature painting workshops running. 

There was an area for the Pokemon trading card game. 

Very impressive terrain for miniature games

You can buy swords and lightsabers for cosplaying. 

Terrain

This was one of the Dune games

This looked like a race game

The player boards looked like console game controllers

The race cars are nice

Colour My Kritters is an introductory deck-building game. I found it quite clever. Clever in how the designer managed to simplify the deck-building mechanism. This game would work not just non-gamers but also with children. The age range was 6+. 

Your hand size is three, and on your turn you always buy just one card, which goes to your discard pile. The cost of cards are along the bottom. The ability of cards are in the top left corner. Card costs are in colours. Colours is your currency in the game. 

Some cards let you draw more cards. Some cards have victory points but have no ability, i.e. just like the victory point cards in Dominion. This is probably the simplest and child-friendly deck-building game I have ever seen. The cards only have a handful of different powers. 

Ninja Academy is a dexterity game. At the moment I think only the German version is available. The game comes with many different dexterity challenges, which involve using cards, wooden ninja pieces, and wooden blocks. 

Some challenges are done with the participation of all players. Some challenges will be competitions between two players. When two are competing, the others don't just spectate. They get to bet and they might score extra points. 

The classic Tikal is getting the deluxe treatment. This is Tikal Legend. Sometimes I wonder whether such deluxification is a good thing. Wouldn't it be better to have just regular reprints of these great games and make them affordable to more people? 

Deluxe Tikal

Keep the Heroes Out is from Canada. Similar to Dungeon Lords, it turns the fantasy trope upside down. You are monsters defending your dungeon from the pesky adventurers. This is a cooperative game. You win by surviving a specific number of rounds. You lose if the adventurers achieve a certain objective. 

Each player plays a different monster type. The dragon is powerful, but you only have one dragon piece. The mice are not as powerful, but there are many mice running around. 

There is plenty of humour in the game. Monsters have different abilities and weaknesses.

The monster pieces are absolutely lovely. 

Joyride Turbo is a race game. However, instead of obediently driving along neat tracks, you drive in the open, and you have to pass through gates in a specific order to complete a lap, and you have to complete a specific number of laps. 

You have a hex map, and pairs of markers indicate the gates you have to pass through. 

The dice go from 1 to 3, and the numbers determine how far your car moves. Your gear determines how many dice you have. It also determines how much you can adjust your direction. At the lowest gear, you can go in the reverse direction. 

Momentum is represented in the game, and I like how they do it. Of the dice you have, some make you move in the current turn, and others force you to move in the same direction next turn, before you are able to change direction (should you wish to). 

Based on the artwork, you might think this is a game which involves shooting at your opponents. No, there is no shooting (well, unless it's in some expansion or advanced rule). However you can push your opponents, change the direction of their cars, and even crash into them. Cars can get damaged with all this pushing and crashing, and damage affects maneuverability of your car. The art in this game is outstanding. 

Witchdom is light-to-medium weight card game about witches in training. You collect witches, spells and potion recipes. You use ingredients to brew potions. Witches need to brew potions in order to be admitted to the guild. Only those in the guild are worth points. 

The cards on the left are the potion recipes. The cards on the right are apprentice witches. The wooden discs are the ingredients. You play witch cards to collect one of these. The witch card played determines which region you have access too, mountains, plains or beach. 

Your player board is just a reference card. These two apprentice witches are eternal apprentices who can never be admitted into the guild. They are just your basic servants. 

By around noon, I had covered all six halls of the game fair. What was left was to go through those games I was undecided on, and decide whether I was going to buy them or not. I ended up buying most of them. Thankfully most of them were small box games and card games. Some of them had sold out. Too bad. That's life. Thankfully for the games I knew I wanted I had bought them on the spot. On Sunday I saw many booths offering discounts. Some were pretty steep. Of course there were also games sold out. 

One game that was a happy find this day was Ihtilal, a game from Turkey. It was a little like Twilight Struggle, but simpler, and of course it told the story of Turkey, from the 1950's to the 1980's. I'm looking forward to giving it a go. 

I didn't stay until the end of the day, i.e. 6pm. By 3pm I was done with my buying. I felt tired and didn't feel like looking for games to learn or play. So I decided to leave earlier, to avoid the crowd and to get some rest. 

It was an intensive four days of exploring the fair, checking out new games, listening to descriptions of some of them, playing some of them. I had information overload. I'm glad I did my sightseeing with my wife before the fair. I am now too tired to do any proper sightseeing. I need to catch up on some rest. I will be traveling home too. I'll write more about my first Essen experience.