Online shop for board games / tracked and fast delivery
Online shop for board games / tracked and fast delivery
SPIEL ’22 opens on October 6, which means that October 5 was a frantic day for many publishers as they raced to finish their booths (if they are large publishers who started days earlier), start-and-finish their booths (if they are small publishers), receive games (for those with just-in-time delivery), and otherwise prepare for the flood of gamers who will arrive when the Messe opens in the morning.
Only three people?! Surprisingly low turnout…
Some publishers also had unfortunate news to deliver, such as Plan B Games informing people via newsletter that due to shipping complications, only 40 copies of Great Western Trail: Argentina and 40 copies of Azul: Master Chocolatier will be available for purchase each day on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I imagine the publisher was expecting to sell ten times that many copies per day, so I expect many sad faces will be present at booth 3-O119.
The first booth I saw upon entering the Messe was Captain Games, a first-timer at SPIEL, although Captain Games owner Cédrick Caumont has plenty of experience at the show given that he was preciously co-owner of Repos Production.
Archetypal Wednesday set-up
I thought I had posted an overview of this publisher’s debut title —13Words, by Romain Loussert — but apparently I did that only in my mind. Here’s an overview of this 2-8 player game:
To set up, lay out twelve double-sided word cards on the perimeter of the game board, then place a word card in the center of the board. This round’s Captain wants to find the most obvious link between this central word and one of the outer words. The Captain indicates their choice on their answer wheel, and all other players try to guess the Captain’s choice. Each player who guesses correctly wins a star, and the Captain collects a star as long as at least one player earned a star this round.
For the next round, the player to the Captain’s left becomes the new Captain. They flip over the word card matching the previous Captain’s choice, place it in the center of the game board, then everyone guesses how the new Captain will link this newly revealed word to one of the remaining words on the perimeter.
After eleven rounds, the game ends, and players tally their stars to determine the success level of the team. The best possible score is 11 times the number of players. How did you do?
Even without SPIEL ’22 being open, the Czech Games Edition booth had a ton of activity, with masks being optional on set-up day.
CGE will be livestreaming from SPIEL ’22 for four hours each day on its YouTube channel, hosted by Eleni Papadopoulou (Cardboard Rhino), starting at 4:00 p.m. CET (10:00 a.m. EDT). You can see the schedule here.
For another type of archetypal SPIEL booth, we can turn to this number by Big Potato to promote party game Sounds Fishy: minimalist and art gallery adjacent, with small standing tables for demo purposes.
A number of publishers switched to standing tables for SPIEL ’21 to discourage long demo sessions, which were thought to lengthen potential Covid exposure, and to make clean up between demos easier.
Now that I think about it, that palette probably isn’t part of the booth display, but I kind of like it there anyway…
Another hallmark of convention game demoing: the large-scale version so that passersby will stop passing by and can more easily grasp gameplay. This example comes courtesy of Repos Production and Fun Facts.
Note that if you are visiting SPIEL ’22 from the U.S. and have any interest in Stupefy! from Repos Production, this being a Harry Potter-themed remake of Ludovic Maublanc‘s Ca$h ‘n Gun$, consider picking up the game at this show because a Repos representative told me that currently the game cannot be sold in the United States. Canada, yes! The UK, yes! Cuba, yes! Just not the U.S. due to restrictions from Warner Brothers.
One of the main things I was looking for in this first pass through SPIEL ’22 was games that are present at the show, but missing from BGG’s SPIEL ’22 Preview. Yes, I’m still obsessing about that, as I do every year.
The Bad Karmas And The Curse of the Zodiac, a design for the digital Teburu game platform, is one such game that I didn’t have on the list…although now I do. I hadn’t heard of Milan Uprising, and we don’t have a listing for it in the BGG database, so this pic is the only evidence I have right now of this game.
The drawback to this discovery: I didn’t include the booth number in this shot, so I know it’s in Hall 1, but beyond that…?
Yet another convention tradition, this time courtesy of Artipia Games: Cutting up the game bits at the last minute for a demo.
Masters of the Universe: Battleground from designer Jacek Karpowicz and publisher Archon Studio is another surprise release at SPIEL ’22.
Here’s another SPIEL specialty: The publisher that seemingly sprang into existence overnight with a nearly empty booth beyond a couple of signs. A search found a July 13, 2022 start-up date for HELDEN Games, but beyond that I know nothing and no one was at this Hall 6 booth. Maybe tomorrow…
Okay, that’s all the time I have before bed. Want to make sure I’m fresh for the actual show…
