Welcome to my first (only?) Essen Spiel 2019 roundup. Ten games I’ve played that were released at the show, or shortly before/after.

With more than 1,000 games released at Essen Spiel 2019, you simply can’t cover them all. I’ve reviewed a few already (see links below), but here you’ll find shorter reviews of games I’ve played just once or twice.

Some of these simply aren’t to my taste, or I’d struggle to get them played, despite being good games. Others are long and will take a lot of time and plays to cover in detail. I may get to them later in the year, but with the clamour for fast reviews they’ll be off the hotness lists by the time I get to them. Others are simply proving tricky to get hold of. Or I absolutely hated them! See if you can guess which are which…

But I hope you’ll find something worth checking out, as there are some real gems here.

Alice in Wordland (3-8 players, 15-30 mins)

There’s been a spate of word games released over the past few years, but this is a great addition to the genre. Against the clock, players try and think of a word in a given category – but that doesn’t include particular letters.

The game also has player powers and a scoring system for those that want extra complexity, but it’s a hoot either way. And if you still need convincing, it comes with a musical teapot timer.

Bus (3-5 players, 120 mins)

This is a re-release of the old Splotter game from 1999. It has a very high price point for a game with frankly poor art, graphic design and component quality. Game play features incredibly aggressive network building and pick-up-and deliver. So, if you don’t have a head for a spatial puzzle and a love for player interaction, forget it. It has many fans, but I found it dated, frustrating and overly long for what it was.

Barrage (1-4 players, 120+ mins)

One of the heavier euro games released at Essen Spiel 2019, Barrage is half action selection and half spatial puzzle.

While the action selection and resource management are pedestrian, thankfully the real game happens on the board. It’s a mean network builder with very clever interaction and multiple routes to victory.

But it is dogged with dodgy components (wait for a reprint) and was far too heavy and punishing for a simple soul such as me. But it will be a deserving hit for the heavy euro crowd.

Crystal Palace (2-5 players, 120+ mins)

While considered almost as heavy as Barrage, I got on with Crystal Palace much better. Largely because the interaction is more forgiving and short-term, with more emphasis put on building your own tableau. It’s a dice placement action selection game, with the twist that you choose (then pay for) the dice faces you want. It works very well, as long as you’re willing to wrestle a tough economic puzzle throughout.

Dizzle (1-4 players, 30 mins)

A fabulous little roll-and-write that may go to the top of this particular pile for me. The push-your-luck element works well, scoring is simple, and there’s a bit of interaction.

It’s probably cleverer than That’s Pretty Clever. And has the added addition of having more complex sheets in the box, much like Galaxy Trucker.

So, as you perfect the simpler sheets you simply move on up to the next level. A great game with real replay value.

Hurlyburly (2-4 players, 15 mins)

If you’ve ever played Rhino Hero, imagine if you each had a tower – and were firing catapults at each other. That’s Hurlyburly – and it’s every bit as fun as it sounds. It’s that rare breed of family game that all ages can have fun and be good at, while having enough extra bits to keep gamers happy too. Upgrade your tower, build up defences, then fail miserably to hit anything. Proper, proper fun.

Jaws (2-4 players, 60 mins)

Fans of thematic games may get a kick out of this one-versus-all luck fest. In part one, 1-3 players try and find and attack the shark (the other player) as it terrorises the beaches. Think: sub-Scotland Yard.

The faster you hit it, the more equipment you’ll have for part two (or vice versa). Then, it’s out to sea for the showdown. Think: any ‘high rolls equal more hits’ action game. But with less strategy. A lot less.

Outback Crossing (2-6 players, 30-45 mins)

I really wanted to like this one. It’s a light tactical family game, with the tension being in whether to make columns better or claim them for yourself. The earlier you claim, the more other people can mess with your scoring capability. A bit like the Coloretto series, but different enough to be intriguing. Unfortunately, it falls between two stools. Too fiddly and thinky for youngsters and too random and fragile for gamers. Shame.

Point Salad (2-6 players, 30 mins)

This had to be good to get over the punny title – and it was. It’s a clever small-box filler card game, where you either grab veg or scoring cards each turn.

Scoring cards can be contradictory (some give minus points for certain veg), but you can always flip them over to their veg side later.

Yup, it’s hard to explain in 100 words. But basically, it’s set collection where you also choose your scoring conditions.

Trails of Tucana (1-8 players, 15 mins)

This is a route-building roll-and-write using cards instead of dice (as in Welcome To…). Here you’re trying to connect locations to score points and trigger bonuses. It works well and is receiving some good reviews, but I never felt overly engaged. I think this was because it is very solitary. And that’s strange, as that isn’t usually a problem for me. I think I just want a bit more interactivity in a game of this style.

Essen Spiel 2019 roundup

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Essen Spiel 2019 roundup. If this is a style of post you want to see more of, let me know in the comments below.

• For more in-depth analysis, check out my full-length board game reviews.
• For more games from Essen, check out my Spiel 2019 content page.

And so the madness is over for another year. More than 200,000 game fans, checking out more than 1,500 new game from 1,200 exhibitors. So it;s time for some Essen 2019 game reviews.

I always do a post highlighting the reviews I’ll do in the coming months – and here it is. I picked up a few less than usual, avoiding heavier games, but hopefully there will plenty to pique your interest. And yes, I’m sure this initial list will grow in the coming months.

Essen 2019 game reviews

• 1987 Channel Tunnel (2 players, 45 mins, Looping Games). A tight two-player worker placement game with a unique theme and in a small box.
• The Artemis Project (1-5 players, 1-2 hours, Grand Gamers Guild). A cut-throat worker placement game with some familiar yet fresh mechanisms.
• ArtSee (2-4 players, 30 mins, Renegade). A clever take on set collection and tableau building, where you have to keep a close eye on your opponents.
• Dawn of Mankind (2-5 players, 45-60 mins, TMG). A worker placement euro continuing the ‘lots of game in a small box’ trend.
• Dizzle (1-4 players, 30 mins, Schmidt). A roll-and-write that keeps everyone involved; and with multiple levels of difficulty across different sheets.
• A Fistful of Meeples (2-4 players, 30 mins, Final Frontier). A fast-playing and interactive worker placement game, set into a mancala-style board.
• Ishtar (2-4 players, 45 mins, Iello). A gorgeous, simple abstract tile-laying game packed with interesting choices.
• It’s a Wonderful World (1-5 players, 30-60 mins, Boite de Jeu). A fast card drafting game with a cascading engine building/set collection system.
• Kingdomino Duel (2 players, 20 mins, Blue Orange): A roll-and-write version of the SdJ-winning domino game, with added spell powers.
• La Cour des Miracles (2-5 players, 40-60 mins, Lumberjacks Studio). A lively, interactive twist on worker placement, area majorities and secret worker strength.
• No Return (2-4 players, 30 mins, Moses). Abstract numbers game with solid Bakelite tiles, with an intriguing player-driven tipping point mechanism.
• Pharaon (1-5 players, 30-75 mins, Catch Up). Worker placement and resource management combine on an action wheel, with forward planning essential.
• Robin of Locksley (2 players, 30-45 mins, Wyrmgold). Racing game where two players make (chess) knight-style moves to claim what’s required to progress.
• Sierra West (1-4 players, 60 mins, Board&Dice): Part deck-builder, part resource management, part action selection, all modular euro.
• Welcome To… Summer expansion (2-6 players, 25 mins, Deep Water Games). A new neighbourhood for the popular ‘flip and write’ game.

The ‘hopefully’ list

I’ve also got my eye on: Conspiracy, Cooper Island, Crystal Palace, Die Macher (reissue), Fast Sloths, Maracaibo, Miyabi, Paris: City of Lights, Paris: New Eden. Plus the ‘Turmoil’ expansion for Terraforming Mars.

Please post in the comments if there are games you want to see reviewed and think I’d like. With more than 1,000 games coming out it is easy to miss some real gems!

(Although, as always, a shout-out needs to go to the fabulous Tabletop together Tool).

Essen 2019 is almost upon us. If you’re not aware, Essen Spiel is the annual release fest for board games. Every publisher worth its meeples is there, along with tens of thousands of gamers.

I usually spend the two months leading up to the event slowly going through the 1,000+ releases, slowly building my anticipation. Not this time. A two-week holiday to America, plus a bunch of real life stuff, has forced my research into a tiny window. And I mean tiny. I forced my research into a week. And I’m actually pretty fascinated to see if it makes the slightest bit of difference (guess: probably not).

I probably wouldn’t have spent as much time as usual whatever the circumstances. My patience for the ridiculous amount of games debuting each year is giving me serious release fatigue. And it’s not just me: I hear that more and more, from everyone from publishers to gamers. Yet the steady influx of newcomers to the hobby is proving too tempting for said publishers to resist. And while those same suckers – sorry, punters – continue to fund dross on Kickstarter, that number is unlikely to decrease.

How can I possibly sift through 1,000 new games?

Glad you asked. Using the Tabletop Together website and its fabulous Essen tool, that’s how. You can use it to view all 1,000+ games and watch videos, look at stats and link through to rulebooks etc.

Once you’ve done that, you can take your nerdiness to the next level. Print hall maps showing which hall your chosen games are in, rating them from ‘need’ (cos we all need games) to ‘ignore’. Now you can also share your list with friends, look at the top games (as chosen by all the other users) or look at game stats. These range from what these picks will cost you (ouch) through to how many games you’ve picked in a number of categories. You can really geek out.

It’s also worth mentioning Board Game Geek has upped its game in this respect. It’s own Essen list now has some pretty good functionality, but is largely still less useful (for me) than the TT one. However, the BGG list is worth looking at if you want to do pre-orders, as many games can be booked directly through the one site. This is a great innovation and has proven very popular with Essen attendees.

Essen 2019 – Top 10 anticipated smaller releases

This list excludes games that will probably end up on a table near me soon (big publisher releases, Knizia games etc). These are games I think I may miss out on if I don’t check them out myself (links go to my reviews – or each game’s BGG page):

• It’s a Wonderful World (1-5 players, 30-60 mins): This sci-fi themed euro sees you card drafting and tableau building, setting up an engine to complete projects to get more powers and points. Simple and short, but using a lot of mechanisms I really enjoy. Nothing new, but enough big ticks to hit my list.
• 1987: Channel Tunnel (2, 45 mins): 1906 San Francisco was a surprise hit for me last Essen. In the same series, this two-player game action selection game looks to have some interesting mechanisms. There’s mini tech trees, upgrades and some interaction – much more than you’d expect from a small game.
• Outback Crossing (2-6, 30-40 mins): This fast-playing abstract game has lovely cartoony artwork and simple game play. On turns, you either draw a tile or claim a row/column to score at the end. So it should have a nice tension: claim lines (max three) to try and build them up later, or place and hope to claim them later.
• No Return (2-4, 30 mins): Another underused mechanism is variable phases; where players decide at which point to move from phase one of the game to the second. This does it in a simple abstract mathsy game, where you draw tiles and place them on your board – before later trying to score them.
• A Fistful of Meeples (2-4, 30 mins): I like a good mancala/rondel game and this looks to have boiled things down into a simple yet interesting puzzle. Different coloured meeples interact with the spaces in different ways, leaving you plenty of options in how to score your points.

• La Cour des Miracles (2-5, 40 mins): An action selection game with a twist, as your ‘workers’ have a hidden number – which is revealed when an error fills up. The player with the highest numbered workers getting an extra bonus. This sounds like a really nice twist on a genre I already enjoy.
• Robin of Locksley (2, 30-45 mins): New publisher, old designer (Uwe Rosenberg). A two-player race to complete tasks by claiming and manipulating tiles from a central display. If he’s got it right, this could be the perfect game for Sarah and me to play at the end of an evening.
• The Magnificent (1-4, 60-90 mins): I enjoyed Santa Maria from these guys, even if it was rough around the edges. This looks similarly interesting in a ‘loads of euro mechanisms in a box’ way. You power can increase with each action in a turn, leading to interesting decisions on when to trigger your various powers.
• The Artemis Project (1-5, 60-75 mins): Dice for worker placement is usually fun and here there’s a clever use of limited resources. Lower dice are brought nicely into the mix, as you get less stuff, but definitely get it. Add tough competition for upgrades and engine building, and I’m definitely in.
• Sierra West (1-4, 40-60 mins): An interesting action selection system looks to elevate this game above most of the competition. While a scenario-based set-up also promises extended replayability. Already receiving positive reviews, so now firmly on my radar.

Essen 2019 – also on the radar

• Expansions: Both Welcome To… and Terraforming Mars are favourites and the upcoming expansions for them look interesting. Welcome To… has ‘thematic neighbourhoods’ – from zombies to egg hunts. While TM: Turmoil offers further strategic depth via global events.
• Oldies: A couple of reprints have caught my eye. I kickstarted Egizia already. I also have my eye on Bus, the classic Splotter Spellen route-building, pick-up-and-deliver and worker placement game. As well as Die Macher; German election game I’ve played once and loved it.

Final thoughts

What was refreshing this year was how much information was available about most of these games long before the show itself.

Lack of information pre-Essen has been a bane of planning up until now. This is the first year almost all games have a video, rulebook or review well in advance. So well done to the publishers for that.

But it’s also worth noting how many games looked fine – but not original in any way. I guess its inevitable, with so many releases and so many new publishers/designers. And sure, the older I get the more cynical I am. But it still feels like a largely disappointing Essen 2019 crop at this point.

For older musings on Spiel, check out my previous Essen related posts.

I’ll write more about LoBsterCon when I’ve got more time (spoiler alert – it was awesome), but as I was writing/thinking about the games I’d played over the weekend elsewhere last night I got my thoughts down here too.

These are all games I had some interest in before I went to Essen Spiel 2018, but that didn’t come home with me. Will they be making it into my collection – or was I right to leave them off my final list? I played each once over the weekend, so take that for what it’s worth: these are first impressions, hence ‘mini’ reviews.

Fool

(4-8 players, 45-60 mins)
Don’t be fooled (ho ho) by the 15 minutes on the box: it will only be that short if you have a player who is terrible, or incredibly unlucky. If you’re used to trick-taking, it’ll likely go a lot longer.  Fool (formerly ‘Foppen’) is more trick making than taking though, as you don’t collect tricks won: your objective is to get rid of all your cards, which you do by by staying in as many rounds as possible – if you have the worst card in a trick, you’re the ‘fool’ and miss the next hand. A typically clever Friedemann Friese design which I’d pick up if I was likely to play this type of game more often.

Decrypto

(4-8 players, 45 mins)
This is being described as a ‘Codenames killer’ by many and I can see why. While I love Codenames Duet, the multiplayer Codenames can be a little fragile: it puts the clue giver under a lot of pressure while having the potential for long downtime. Decrypto partly fixes this, giving shorter time in the hot seat for each player and keeping both teams engaged simultaneously. It’s a clever design which I’d happily play again, but I don’t feel the need to own two games in this genre (I don’t play them enough) and am happy to keep Codenames for now.

Coimbra

(2-4 players, 90-120 minutes)
I only wanted to bring back one dry euro from Essen this time, and I chose Crown of Emara over this – and I think I made the right decision, just (review incoming). Coimbra is a really solid euro design, with pretty standard card play, light engine building and point gathering being supported by an enjoyable and competitive dice auction mechanism. It reminded me a little of Lorenzo in weight and decision making, but I think I enjoyed Lorenzo a little more – but that’s a game very near the top of my wish list, so that’s no criticism. If you like auctiony sub-two-hour euro games, check it out.

Underwater Cities

(1-4 players, 2-4 hours)
This has gone from ‘how did I miss it?’ to ‘top of my want-to-play list’ to ‘dead to me’ in a weekend. Vladimír Suchý designs tend to be clever but too dry for me, but this had been compared to Terraforming Mars so I really wanted to try it. Sadly, it fell well short of my expectations. I suppose the varied cards led to TM comparisons, but they’re lazy comparisons at best: the game play is miles from it. The card play starts out engaging, but the player board (which should feel like a puzzle) adds nothing and things soon started to drag as no arc emerged. We went nearly four hours: it justified about two.

Passing Through Petra

(2-4 players, 60 minutes)
An ugly game, which wouldn’t bother me if I’d enjoyed it – but I really didn’t. For me it got the luck/strategy mix all wrong. If I play a 60 minute euro I want fun/luck/tactics or thinky/strategy: with Petra, I was thinking hard but relying on luck (cards and tiles). Get good cards or combos, you can do well – if not, you won’t. Sure, you’d get better with practice – but it will still be too luck driven. It is also very fiddly, while the ‘clever’ movement grid isn’t – you have to do a bit of everything, so moving in a grid is largely arbitrary (and done much better in Ulm).

So, my wallet is safe! For now… Apart from Petra I did enjoy my plays of the other four games (although maybe only the first two hours of Underwater Cities) and would recommend those to players who think they sound interesting – especially the top three. But I’ll definitely be passing on Petra (I’ll get me coat…).

Oh, and before anyone accuses me of liking/not liking them because I won/lost, let me assure you that is not the case and I can prove it: I didn’t win any of them 😀 And they were all played in good spirit with good people (cheers all).