Just as it isn't Christmas season until after Thanksgiving, you shouldn't speculate about Essen until October. So while I haven't been able to avoid it completely, I haven't really been looking at it. Hell, I haven't violated all the games I made in my last two orders (although I've managed to play most of them ... only Shadow Hunters and Say Anything untouched, and Arabian Nights only once).
But that doesn't stop lots of people from putting up their Essen decorations early, and while my general strategy of not being an early adopter has served me well, that's no reason not to window shop.
I'm glad to see AEG trying to break into board games, even though I have no reason to think I'll like their catalog (since, you know, I haven't investigated it until just now). There's a soft spot in my heart of L5R (although I haven't played much this decade).
JKLM's Ascendancy? Well, a space empire and whatnot in a few hours would be nice. But I went through the Civ in two hours grail search. Lots of dead knights, there. Some good treasures, but no grail.
So, this is the open question thread? Any games at Essen making you squee like a child? Fabrikmanager? That unknown game with 25 copies only? What?
Haven't heard about much else that I'm excited by.
Dungeonlords and Stronghold appear to aim both at the euro and videogamer in me. Greed...Splotter's new baby seems closer to Indonesia than Duck Dealer, so I'm interested. Rise of Empires from MW looks like a combination of other great games like Struggle of Empires.
Nope. :)
I'll have a friend pick up Aladdin's Dragons: The Card Game, but that's about it. I'm content these days to watch them trickle out into the regular distribution. Given that I think the hit rate of those tiny print run games has, for me, been exactly 0, I can live.
I am looking forward to the new alea game, of course, even if alea seems to have shifted from being a hugely prestigious label into just being Stefan Feld's personal design shop. But the odds are it'll be decent at least. It does have language, so who knows when we'll see it from RGG - maybe next summer. We still don't have Alea Iacta Est in English, which was good enough if not a world-beater.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the Valley Games RoR release. I hope it'll be out by BGG.con.
For the games that haven't been released yet, I seek out the prototypes that you avoid, Brian, so I can attest that Fabrikmanager, Macao, Dungeonlords, Campaign Manager 2008, and Burger Joint are all very good. BasketBoss appeals to me, since it's an approach to sports gaming (a GM building a team where the players' abilities change with time) that I've tried a few times in the past with my own designs. Loyang also looks promising, although I might try before I buy.
Other tempting titles includes the long awaited sequel to Roma, the Agricola expansion, Alcazar--the new version of Big Boss (which I've never played), Rise of Empires (although the length scares me a bit), The BoardGame Geek Game, Ad Astra (could I possibly find happiness with a Bruno game?) and Vasco da Gama. I also may not be able to resist the quirkiness of Cleopatra's Caboose, which might actually do a better job of bringing the elements of the Railroad Tycoon PC game (namely, building up cities as well as rail lines) to a board game than the RRT boardgame did itself.