Report Spiel'03 Essen
The Doctor
and lasted too long :) We ran around a bit through the halls after
having taken the side entrance to get in quick.
We had to rush to some booth that had a limited printrun of some game,
since one of our group wanted it.
After getting that game (I have no idea which it was) we wandered around
together a bit, and we went to the Fantasy Flight booth to shake hands
with the people there, since my friend is in their demoteam, and I've
met these people often as well.
After that I moved over to the Pegasus booth to meet Birger (German MIB
CellLeader) and the other german MIB, as well as my own CL who was
already helping out at the booth.
The place was already packed completely full of people who wanted to
play the German Munchkin. I stayed around for a bit to get a feel of the
german version of the game and met Ross(SJG sales manager) in the
meantime. I told Birger I'd be around to help the next day at about 14:00.
I wandered around the halls aimlessly and unfortunately alone, and was
unable to secure any tables or demos that way, I found that being with
more then one person is much easier, as you can simply go borrow a game
and play it in your group.
At some point I reconnected with my travelpartners and found one of them
very chagrined, as the other 2 had managed to secure one of those little
Carcassonne expansion packets that were handed out for free, yet she had
not gotten one, coz they had run out just before she got there (or such)
I took her to the Schmidt booth and after having been misled by someone
there about a guy in knight costume wandering around and handing them
out, we searched all halls for this guy, only to find out he no longer
was doing this, since he had run out of these expansions as well.
Well, we felt we really needed that expansion even more now, so we
decided we'd be the first to get it the next day.
By the time my group (which had grown from 4 to 10 by now) wanted to
leave for the hostel, I had simply not playd a single game, nor bought
any, yet I had been wandering the halls all day.
Something was wrong with that picture, so I rushed into the hall and
quickly bought Carcassonne: Der Burg, so I would at least have some
prove in the hostel that I'd been to the fair :)
But after that, the rest of the group was so slow in actually leaving,
that we secured ourselves a table in the Kosmos booth and tried Bridges
of Shangri-La for a few rounds while the group got ready. Interesting
game, and I bought it next day.
Second day of our trip was Saturday, and we were at the doors before 10,
and when we were in we almost ran to the Schmidt booth, where we
shamelessly ripped Carcassonne expansions off their table. I'm sure we
were considered rude, but they had fooled us twice the day before into
thinking we could get these things somewhere else, and we felt they
deserved this treatment :) We had our expansions and were much happier now.
3 of our group went together to the Adlung booth and tried a nice game
there, and I believe one of us bought it later. After this we moved over
to the Cwali booth to meet Dutch gamesmaker and aquaintance Corne van
Moorsel, and try out his new game Logistico. There was a long list of
peopple waiting for a tbale hoewever, so after we had been put on the
list we decided we had about 2 hours before he'd be ready for us.
We moved over to Queen Games, where we borrowed Spiel des Jahres
Alahambra and sat down on the floor to play it. We played only a few
rounds of the game, as time went by fast enough for us to have to return
to Cwali.
We waited for a few minutes at Cwali, and much to the surprise of the
people who were hired to do demo's at this booth, author Corne came over
to our table to explain the game himself :)
We played the full game there (which I won btw), which lasted just over
an hour, and then I ran over to the Pegasus booth to get to work. (well,
I wanted to run, but it was impossible with these crowds)
I arrived there a bit later then planned, but it wasn't a problem
according to Birger, because we were 7 MIB, with just 3 demotables.
So at first all I could do is wait for a game to finish, then suggest to
the MIB at the table to take a break.
Ross took a picture of all MIB that were present, and claimed it would
be on the next "Where we're going". If so, I'm glad it's a picture of
our backs :)
After a little while, some other game that Pegasus sells stopped
demoing, and the MIB got their 4th demotable (while also claiming 2
tables for the semi-finals of Munchkin tournament, so that's a total of
6 tables already) and I took that table immediately and started a game
of Munchkin with two visitors and the Benelux CL, who was later subbed
for another visitor.
I was glad the two germans understood english, so I could explain the
game in english, becuase while everyone reassures me my german is fine,
i still feel more comfortable using english, not having to search for
words. It was still tough using the german version of Munchkin however,
as some words just do not ring a bell and you have to read a complete
card to imagine what the english one might have said. With some help
from germans around me we managed fine though.
Unfortunately the visitors got busy in trying to steal eachoters stuff
and levels and backstabbing and such, and I accidentally managed to win
this game that lasted about 2.5 hours, just after Birger came around to
announce a prize for the winner :)
Much fun was had, not in the least since the final of the German
Munchkin championship was played on the table next to us, and bookmarks
were used over there :) Of course that immediately led to handing out
some bookmarks at our table as well (which were not used though)
At 18:00, my ride told me they needed to leave in 30 minutes, and I had
not even bought any games yet. So I said goodbye to the German MIBs and
Ross, and rushed off to go buy some games in the 15 minutes that I had
left. I managed to spend some 80 euro's on games in those few minutes,
and went home with 7 games: Industria, Alexandros, Cosmic Encounter,
Carcassonne:Der Burg, Wo ist Jack the Ripper, Um die welt in 80 Karten,
Die Brucken von Shangri-La. And I also got a carcassonne expansion, 2
beautiful dice with weird rubber tips, a very large blue pawn and a
bunch of bookmarks and other SJG handouts.
Somehow this Spiel was stressful, yet fun. While in past years, it had
been esygoing, i felt as if I had much more to do this time around,
while doing much less. I'll have to find a way to fix that next year.
Of course, having a much lower budget did not really help, as I'm used
to buying at leat twice as many games.
//Doc.
--
"Wees jezelf, er zijn al zoveel anderen." - Loesje