Top 10 Essen Releases!

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It’s Essen Spiel this week! Europe’s biggest board game convention. All the big companies are there, as well as lots of the small independent European games companies (let me give a shout out to the UK teams in the region of booth 2-E121!). There are also an exciting array of new games being released so here is my list of new games that I am chomping at the bit to get hold of!

I decided to restrict myself to new releases in Europe (some may have had a US release at Gencon earlier in the year) and to not include expansions. Right! Here we go. Put on your best Eric Summerer voice for

#10 – T.I.M.E. Stories

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[/one_third][two_third]Space Cowboys  1-F122 and 3-B108

Time travel is a tricky subject to get right, particularly in board games! I don’t know yet whether T.I.M.E. Stories has pulled it off but I’m very interested in finding out! It presents players with a “deck-sploring” (deck… exploring) puzzle that must be completed within a certain amount of actions. When you inevitably fail, you must go back to the beginning and use what you learnt on your previous attempts to make more progress, in board gaming’s equivalent of Groundhog Day!

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#9 – Porta Nigra

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[/one_third][two_third]Stronghold Games  3-D109 3-M110 and 3-M107

Porta Nigra, the great gate leading into the Northern most parts of the Roman Empire is the centrepiece in this building game in which the very board will quite literally grow vertically with lovely plastic 3D building pieces. The game features a mancala like mechanism with your master builder roaming round the city, which means I will probably be rubbish at it. Excellent!

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#8 – Tides of Time

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]Portal Games  3-N113

A 2 player card drafting game with the most beautiful art. It is played with a small deck of cards over three rounds, each card having a suit and a scoring objective. Between rounds one card is kept as a “relic of the past” to drive your strategy. I’m always on the look out for good 2 player games and this one has really caught my eye!

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#7 – The Gallerist

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]Eagle-Gryphon Games  7-E107

A delightful worker placement game this, with one of the best box covers I’ve seen. Not that the box cover is the only reason it’s here! The Gallerist first came to my attention during my regular Kickstarter article (check out my thoughts here). Lead the search for new artworks and promote new artists. A game full of lovely details and a wonderfully original theme.

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#6 – Thunderbirds

[row][one_third] [/one_third][two_third]Modiphius Entertainment  2-A126

To celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the legendary TV series, Thunderbirds is a new cooperative game from Matt Leacock, designer of the legendary Pandemic and Forbidden Island/Desert games (you can read our Let’s Plays here and here). As a fan of his games, I’m extremely excited. As a fan of Thunderbirds too, I can say without a doubt that I can’t wait to give it a go! Dum duhde-duuhm, duh-duh-dum-dum dum duh de dum dum duuuum!

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#5 – 504

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]Stronghold Games  3-M107

504 games in a single box. Based on combining 3 different gaming mechanisms. Featuring a whole flip-rulebook system. Will it work!? This is either going to be genius or a total flop! I have faith that the game will function but will the lack of any theme make this an empty feeling experiment? I am extremely excited to find out!

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#4 – … and then we held hands

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]LudiCreations  1-D129

A fascinating 2 player, cooperative game of finding emotional balance. Facing a series of emotional challenges, the players must progress from node to node by discarding beautifully illustrated (by Dixit artist Marie Cardouat) emotion cards without direct communication, instead empathising with the other player’s intention. A unique concept that I can’t wait to experience.

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#3 – Between Two Cities

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]StoneMaier Games  1-F131

A tile drafting game that has you working with the players either side of you to build the best possible cities in the space between you. The winner is the player that scores highest for their worst city. Such a neat idea for a collaborative/competitive project! Trying to help your partners build your cities, without helping them too much with their other cities is going to be fascinating!

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#2 – Codenames

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]Czech Games Edition  1-D138, 1-D140 and 1-F145

The new party game from Vlaada Chvátil (designer of Space Alert, Galaxy Truckers and a whole host of others) is based around the brilliantly simple premise of matching words to a single phrase. Get it right to find your fellow agents but for God sake don’t hit the assassin! A game focussed around communication, and the hilarity when it all goes wrong! Yes, I know it was released in the US at Gencon, but I live in Europe, so stop rubbing it in!

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And finally…!

#1 – Pandemic Legacy

[row][one_third][/one_third][two_third]Z-man Games  3-P113

And of course my top pick is Pandemic Legacy, combining the classic cooperative with a Legacy system, so that every game counts and you never know what is going to come out of those sealed packets next! Oh man I am so excited for this game though I am having trouble with the 4-player max limit. There are a few groups of people I could see myself playing this with too… maybe I should get multiple copies? There is that suspicious choice of red and blue box covers…

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So that is my list! While some may not have been terribly surprising, I hope there were some interesting choices! There were obviously many more games that just missed out on this list. Are there any games you are excited about? Let me know in the comments below!