Two of our wonderful Members went to Essen Spiel this month and we were fortunate enough that they shared their adventure with us. So, a big thank you to Val and Joe for their photos, the games they brought back to share, and a special thanks to Joe for writing up this article to share with all of you!

Written by Joe Mortimer

Let me start off by saying, this event is massive. We knew it was big, but … hot dang!

Val and I were on vacation in Europe around the time of Essen Spiel 2023 so we figured, why not?! For those unaware Essen Spiel is the kickoff/launch to the new year of board games. All the future hot titles are being demo’d, played (in short), and sold here.

They had 6 massive convention rooms packed with booths from designers, publishers, social media content creators, manufacturers, miniature paints/pieces, gaming tables, and more. Four days and six rooms of games!

Our Journey:

Prior to getting to Essen we were on a magical 2 week trip in Italy hitting Sardinia, Rome, Florence, Vernazza, and Venice (it was amazing). During that trip we had a slow day where we just hung out and relaxed at an agriturismo and we’re able to do a little planning of what games/booths we’d like to see (more on that later).

Our flight from Italy on Thursday got to Düsseldorf Airport in the early afternoon, but we took an Uber in to the Messe Essen (convention center) and checked out the scene for the last 2 hours of Day 1 and even that short period of time was awesome!

The entrance we found our way to led us directly to one of the games I was most interested in ‘Nekojima’ (think Jenga with wooden dowels instead of blocks, but there are cats hanging on wires in between them). We were able to get on a table in about 5 minutes and had a blast playing it with another couple. We immediately bought it and then learned the gentleman who was running the booth was one of the designers and he (as well as the other designer) autographed our copy!

We wandered around a bit more and found another card game Val had been scoping out called ‘Trio’ which is a new version of a Japanese game called ‘Nana’ (this plays like a more adult-level ‘go-fish’). Again we sat with a member of the team, played a round and boom, game number 2 in the bag! What a start in just 2 hours!

What helped us organize our way around the halls the most was a website I had heard from the Dice Tower called tabletoptogether.com this site was made by a gamer which helped them prioritize things to do at game conventions. Val and I watched a few review videos about games that would be at Essen and then we were able to list those games in a priority of need, want, like, maybe, ignore.

Once you have the games organized it will group all of the games based on the hall they are located at for the event! It made it so much easier to have a list of what we would like to see or REAAAAAALLLLY like to see in each of the halls.  We only used the need and want features since there was over 1,000+ games there.

What also helped was the Essen Spiel App, which had a search feature (pull up the game or designer you wanted) that more or less dropped a pin on the location of the booth they were at in the hall. Once you were in the hall you wanted it made getting around the walkways a bit more organized.

Things that we noticed on the tail end of Day 1 were that there were definitely some really hot games. ‘The White Castle’ definitely had the most tables playing it with ‘Rats of Wistar’ as well as StoneMaier’s ‘Apiary’ and ‘Expeditions’ were also being played a bunch. Another thing we saw was loads of folks wheeling around large carry-on luggage to carry their games, which is a brilliant way to know just how much space you have to bring things home, and not have to carry things all day!

We started off Day 2 a little later than opening (opening was 10am) and the story was quite the same for the games above … despite there being SO MANY tables we still couldn’t find an open one for those games. We tried multiple times through the day… nothing. As far as we could tell, Stonemaier was the only booth organizing plays of their games and when we got to them at the end of day 2 they said all of their time slots were booked 20 minutes after opening … so we knew what the plan was for the next day.

The rest of Day 2 was spent walking some of the other halls we didn’t see on Thursday, grabbing our copy of the ‘Ark Nova’ Expansion (Marine Worlds), grabbing a copy of ‘The White Castle,’ playing and grabbing a copy of ‘Match of the Century.’ We swung by the booth for the game ‘Bonsai’ and they only had Italian copies left for the day. They were apparently releasing 50 copies of the English version the next day, but the game itself is language independent, we can get a copy of the English rules online … and Val can read (and speak) Italian so we grabbed it! We stopped by the Dice Tower booth and saw Tom, Zee, Camilla, Chris, and Mike all hanging out as well as swinging by the EagleGryphon Games booth and got to see Vita Lacerda teaching his new game ‘Innovations’ (Val was fan-girling pretty hard). We ended playing a small boxed game called ‘Vaalbara,’ which is very much little-libertalia and the table of 5 we sat at (recommended 4-5 players) all had a great time, unfortunately they were not selling it at the convention, but it was a REALLY nice filler game we would have grabbed for the lounge!

Despite being at a Board-Game convention, a pretty sedentary hobby, we got in over 22,000 steps that day, and it was awesome! It was a great day overall but we wanted to get a few more games under our belt and it sounded like we needed to get there early.

Day 3 the plan was to get there early, run on over to StoneMaier and see what the rest of the day had in store.

We got there at 9:30 (doors open at 10:00) and it was already very crowded … by 9:55 the waiting area (an empty hall) was COMPLETELY FILLED with people, it was amazing to see that many people all interested in the same hobby as us. As the doors opened we kept our elbows wide and sped-walked to StoneMaier booth, conveniently on the OTHER END of the massive convention center from where we entered. We got in line and got the next available ‘Apiary’ time slot … 4:20pm that afternoon. That’s right. We lined up 30 minutes early, went quickly immediately to that booth and got the second to last demo play of the day. (We later noticed/remembered there was an entrance closer that we could have used but … the drama was better!)

With several hours to kill we went looking for a few other games on our list. ‘Satori’ was one we had been eyeing up the first two days, but they only had one table they were teaching it at. We walked by their booth and the game was “Sold Out” but they had a large stack of pre-order copies that people had not yet picked up. If they were not claimed by 12:00 then they were going to sell them. We were there at 10:45 the table opened up for a teach, we played it and they gave first dibs to us since we had been there the longest (and trying the game) and we snagged a copy!

On a buyers-high from getting that copy of ‘Satori’ we were already happy with our day. We had heard about a game that had big elephants as part of their game called ‘Amristar.’ A table conveniently opened up as we arrived and holy crap, that game took both of us by surprise. Our play of one round definitely left us wanting more … so despite our solemn swear to buy no more games … we grabbed it, then came back later for an autograph from the designer! After all this we still had about 40 minutes to walk around before our ‘Apiary’ play which was probably the best teach/explanation we had and that game is gunna be fun as crap.

Loaded with plenty of games thus far we went back in for day 4 with hopes to play a few games and enough space to get one small boxed game. We explored some of the nooks and crannies that we hadn’t yet explored and found a game that looked familiar, it was Chess, but with only half of each piece. This game, ‘Paco Sako,’ was a cool twist on chess where no pieces are ever taken off the board, they join together and become a new black and white piece with each player can use! It wasn’t a new game, but we thought it was a cool twist on a classic game.

Overall, it was so cool to see just how many people there were in attendance that all love games!

Val and Joe’s top tips if you ever were to go… (or to another game convention)

1- Do research ahead of time (game releases and future distribution)! This is particularly helpful for games that may not make it to the US (an example was a Korean Game we wanted to check out, but we’re sold out by day 2!) plus if you know a game is going to come to a friendly store near you then you can save some space for other rare gems!

2- Get there early! The really hot smaller titles were mostly gone by day 3 and if there is a game you are looking to play, getting there as doors open is for sure your best way to play!

***also watching a quick video of the rules/gameplay for the games you are eagerly waiting for is highly recommended. Some descriptions and teaches were great, others were tough to understand, or were rushed because the booths/workers are trying to get people in and out of tables, and other people not at your table are asking questions, so having a baseline of info before you head in would be great!

3- CASH! There is only one ATM at the Messe Essen and while a good amount of places took cards almost none of the food spots (which there were plenty of and with a lot of great options) were cash only. The tabletoptogether.com site also has a cool feature where it will add up the costs (if they are listed by the publishers) of each of your ‘needs, wants, …etc’ so you have a rough idea of how much you’d spend/need to bring.

4- Public Transit is likely best. It was really easy to use, most (definitely not all) people speak English and the Kiosks also have an English option to get tickets, it was also nice to walk around some of the local eateries near the Messe Essen on our way to and from the subway we used.

5- Have fun 😁