HFC on Tour: Spiel 2012 in Essen, the world’s biggest consumer fair for gaming

Gaming tables everywhere!

This year, we attended SPIEL 2012 in Essen, the world’s biggest consumer trade fair for gaming. The fair was held in the Messe Essen from Oct 18th – 21st, which means four days of playing and testing popular and new (even unpublished) games and, of course, the opportunity to buy games. This attracted about 150,000 visitors from all over the world.

On 46,000 square meters of exhibition space, you can find all kinds of games and gaming equipment – from Eurogames to classics (like Chess and Go), consims and wargames, board games, card games, electronic games, role-playing games, tabletop games, up to LARP equipment such as armor, weapons, costumes, and clothing. In addition there is “Comic Action“, a Comic fair, which is part of Spiel. Here you have the opportunity to see, read and buy all kinds of comics and comic related stuff, from European and US mainstream comics up to quite bizarre Japanese Manga products.

Home of Wargamers!

Spiel 2012 was a really big event (the exhibition area, which extends over 10 halls, is even larger than Gamescom, the annual European video games fair in Cologne) and attracted visitors and exhibitors from all over the world. You could find the big players (for example Hasbro, German company Ravensburger…) next to small and highly specialized game shops, independent publishers, smaller companies and publishers (GMT Games, Matrix Games / Slitherine, UGG, Twilight Creations, Days of Wonder, Eagle Games…), organizations and clubs (the German consim society GHS, The Guild of Role Playing Gamers), and special booths, giving an overview over games from a certain country, for example Russia, or South Korea. Even companies who specialize in proofreading game concepts and producing your components (counters, maps etc.) were represented. There were also gaming championships and open tournaments going on, as well as workshops and tutorials.

Entire sections were dedicated to gaming equipment, for example dice, tabletop painting and modelling equipment, or card sleeves, and clothing and weapons for knights, orcs, and the medieval LARP household.

The Location

The Galeria

Essen is one of the 10 largest cities in Germany and located in the heart of the industrial Ruhr area. The infrastructure is very good, the city can be reached easily by plane (via airport Düsseldorf), train, or car. It takes only a few minutes from the central station to the fair grounds “Messe Essen” and shuttle busses as well as subways connect the Messe to the inner-city.

We went to Essen by car, which took probably longer than getting to the fair grounds by subway, because the sheer size of the fair led to a minor traffic collapse around the Messe. There were several parking lots, but some were reserved for exhibitors or journalists, and most of the public parking lots in the Messe vicinity were already occupied by the time we got there. A parking guide sent us to a remote parking lot and advised us to return with the (free of charge) shuttle bus, but fortunately, we discovered a secret parking garage near the Gruga park, a large city park close to the Messe.

Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game… Expansions!

Fantasy Flight Games recently announced that certain games will henceforth be supported with their new Print on Demand service. Games that normally would not have been supported with new expansions will get new game stuff called micro-expansions. The first two micro-expansions available are two card expansions for the game Space Hulk: Death Angel and here’s what the players who own this game can expect according to the FFG website:

Death Angel: Mission Pack 1 Expansion

Your mission is not over, and failure is not an option.

While you may have survived the harrowing challenges of Death Angel, the mission is far from over. The Mission Pack 1Print on Demand expansion brings twelve new Location cards to provide alternate missions for players. These cards are seamlessly incorporated into your Death Angel game – simply choose whether you want to use the standard Location cards or the ones found in this Mission Pack and build your mission as normal.

But beware! New terrors have emerged in the form of Adrenal Genestealers: deathly agile and relentless. These dangerous new foes will pop out from every dark corner, unleashing attack after attack.

Also included in Mission Pack 1 is an all-new Terrain card, that will threaten to thrust unfortunate space marines out into the cold embrace of space.

 

 

Death Angel: Space Marine Pack 1 Expansion

Rally your battle brothers with the Death Angel Space Marine Pack 1 expansion!

Space Marine Packs introduce brand new combat teams to your game, ready to blast their way into the carnage that is Death Angel.

The Space Marine Pack 1 Print on Demand expansion comes complete with two new Combat Teams and their respective Action cards. The deadly Chaplain Raziel brings his ironclad faith to the fight while Brother Adron readies his Cyclone Missile Launcher for absolute devastation. These new Combat Teams can be seamlessly incorporated into your Death Angel games to provide more versatility and more options.

Also included in the Space Marine Pack 1 are 8 Combat Team cards, which replace the original 6 Combat Team markers from the Death Angel game, making it easier to randomise and select your teams.

 

That’s an interesting idea and hopefully now good games that perhaps didn’t fulfill FFG high expectations regarding sales will now get cool new stuff for those players who own them and enjoy them. We would like to see Print on Demand expansions for example for games like Marvel Heroes – The Boardgame or Middle-earth Quest.

The Space Hulk expansions can be ordered here

 

LOTR Living Card Game (FFG) – Rules & Video Tutorial

Well then, you heroes of Middle-earth, prepare yourself with all you need for the forthcoming journey of your life. Courageous folks gather, allies come to help, weapons are handed out while the Eye of Sauron is watching and a great evil is lurking in the shadows…

…and that you as a player might be well prepared for what to come, FFG has the rules online now for the highly anticipated Lord of the Rings – The Living Card Game.

In addition to the rules, the first part of the – again extremely well done  – video tutorial is also online now and new sections will be added over the next days to explain the game so that at the end of the week we should have the complete tutorial available.

The release of this solitaire/coop game is drawing nearer and although no concrete release date has been given by FFG so far, rumors say the game will be out in April.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

Boardgamegeek

Boardgamegeek – the nerd page!

“CSW, Web Grognards and Boardgamegeek make up the ultimate trinity in Wargaming!”

Boardgamegeek is not a pure wargame/consim website, but it belongs to the key pages and most important central information sites for The Hobby on the web. Boardgamegeek was founded in the year 2000 and it grew into a page with information about board and card games in a very extensive way. So wargames also belong to the games listed there and the wargame area is already very large and still growing.

The database contains over 45,000 board games (January, 2010) and each game has its own game entry which gives information about a game, user ratings and fora for specific discussions on the game and topics related to it.

BGG is an extremely active platform

Boardgamegeek is interesting because it allows the readers to get all information in a very accessible and compact way. Each game has its own page and there you can find everything related to the specific game: pictures, reviews, ratings, publishers, downloads, strategies, discussion, player aids, files etc.. Everyone can upload files, so these games are supported with information on a steady base.

The website is done in a very clear style and you can start searching from the main page within different categories, say looking after the designer, the year of publication, game mechanics, map/cover artists and so on.

A game page offers detailed information about a game: Publisher, year, players. In addition, you find photos, a forum, files, player aids, comments....

The game statistics allow insights on how you would rate the game for yourself, for the page is not only giving abstract ratings, but personal commentaries as well. These are most important because some players like to rate a game even without ever having it played, just based on what they think the game is about or whether they like the topic or not. This makes the ranking a bit pointless but the true information lies in the reviews given by players who actually played the game, in their comments and in the pictures of the game components. This usually gives you a useful first impression whether a certain game might be for you or not.

Geeklists put together various games on the base of different topics so you can easily see  how many games on a  certain topic exist and  what  could fit your playing style and expectations. Through the marketplace you can get thousands of games and it also allows for a quick check what a game you want to sell is currently worth. Everybody can also start his / her own journal to let other gamers take part in their hobby and their thoughts regarding it. Overall BGG offers a tremendous resource site where you can find many fan made or official player aids, rules and useful stuff to enhance your enjoyment of a game. Registered members can also customize the look of the site a bit to their personal liking so you  always get the info you actually need to know.

It’s free of charge to become a registered member of BGG, although you are certainly encouraged to help improve the site by adding your own reviews and thoughts on games to the existing database or by giving a donation. If you want to see what BGG has to offer: check out the Guide to  BGG .

Web Grognard

“If you don’t know this website, you don’t know the wargaming hobby – period!”

The internet offers websites for almost any field of interest. There are also so-called “Link pages” for these fields, i.e. pages which collect addresses of all websites dealing with the respective topics. Such key pages are very important because they allow easy access to all sources of information in one location instead of forcing people to search the entire web where relevant information is often hidden in an informational chaos.

The wargaming hobby isn’t an exception to this rule; its key website in the internet where you can find everything related to wargames is called WebGrognard.

‘Grognard‘ is slang for someone who likes playing wargames, so this site is chock-full of information about The Hobby.

It’s subtitle “the page for wargames in the internet” doesn’t reflect its important role, because it actually is the number 1 resource for wargaming – there isn’t any other website offering more information and data about almost any wargame ever published! This incredible project was created by three men: Alan Poulter, Eric Pass and Skip Franklin. The site is updated each (!) sunday to add even more information to the gigantic data amount already online and the site was founded 1995. All three of the founders are still organizing the site while Alan Poulter is paying for the service.

If you enter WebGrognard, you will see an alphabetical list which leads to all wargames beginning with the respective letter: A includes A3R, Totaler Krieg can be found under T etc.. This allows comfortable and quick navigation if searching for information about a specific game without the need to scroll through endless stuff you don’t need. Once you found your game, there is another listing of all data available to this game. By clicking on the links you eventually reach your destination.

The website design is text-based and without modern graphical knick-knacks. Nevertheless, it's the No 1 wargaming resource page in the net.

WebGrognard offers almost anything, for example reviews, articles about strategy, errata, Q&A, FAQ, rule variants, zine indices, links to individual websites about the games, the publisher’s website, computerbased game assistant programs (GAPs), Mailing lists, replays, scenarios etc.. The information isn’t limited to boardgames, but does also include computergames, magazines, game conventions, PbEM aids, datafiles for download, shops, RPGs, card games, miniatures, reports etc..

If you don’t find it on Webgrognard, it doesn’t exist!

The site depends on submissions for new material, so please contribute if you can!

Entries for the letter "A". FAQs, Reviews, AARs, add-ons, card listings, rules summaries, tactics from various sources and even in foreign languages, are listed here

© 7/03 by HFC (www.homefrontcenter.de)