Essen '05

The Essen 2005 Game Fair is coming, October 13-16 in Essen, Germany. This is the biggest convention/tradeshow for Eurogames anywhere, many publishers release games to coincide with the fair. There's an excellent preview posted on GameFest, and tons of content on BoardGameGeek, including this exhaustive GeekList and this forum dedicated to the fair.

There are a number of games being released at the fair that I'm interested in. The two biggies for me are Caylus (William Attia) and Tempus (Martin Wallace). Caylus is an economic engine game set in the middle ages, and is drawing tons of buzz and favorable comparison to Puerto Rico. I read the rules for this one yesterday and it looks great. Tempus is a civilization game that supposedly plays in 90 minutes. This is sort of a holy grail for the game industry, it'll be interesting to see if it pans out. It probably won't, but it still looks like a really good game and is also generating tremendous positive buzz. I actually entered a contest to win a copy of this one (10 out of 10 for me).

To a lesser extent I'm checking out Gloria Mundi (James Ernest / Mike Selinker), Byzantium (Martin Wallace), and Mesopotamia (Klaus-Jürgen Wrede). I don't have much to say about any of these as all I know are vague descriptions, but based on what I do know of the game and the designer, these are ones I am keeping half an eye on.

Finally I have to mention the almost-obscene Settlers of Catan 10th Anniversary 3-D Special Edition Chest Set (Klaus Teuber). This is a lavishly overproduced edition of the all time German classic, with a pricetag to match (I think it's somewhere around $400!). I clearly have no desire to own this thing but it is fun to look at the pictures.