A Show Like No Other: John-Paul at Essen 2012

A Show Like No Other: John-Paul at Essen 2012 There are many gaming and hobby shows around the world that are attended by thousands and tens of thousands of people. The biggest of them all is the Essen Spiel, held every year in mid-October in Essen, in northwest Germany. Those of you who have been lucky enough to go to some of the big shows in the US will get an idea of just how big this ‘board game’ show is, as the area it takes up is six times the size of the main hall area at Gencon. Over 150,000 people come into the halls over four days. What started as a German board game show has grown into a place to try out and buy games of all types from across the world, with more than 800 new games being showcased (that is not a typo; it was 800+ games this year, according to the guys at BoardGameGeek) by over 600 different companies.

This year the Battlefront Europe team had two perfect reasons to go along to ‘strut our stuff’, as we are launching German-language versions of both Open Fire! and Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery next month. We are actually translating both of them into all of the major European languages, but with Germany being both the largest European country and having the most fanatical board gamers in Europe, we simply had to come this year in full force.

As you can see from the images, we had demo games of Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery and Flames Of War running throughout the weekend. Some lucky victims even got to have me as their host (it is a free demo, so I don’t feel too bad). Once you have run a few dozen games of Spartacus, it is amazing how quickly you can run a group through a demo.

The show was a massive success from every perspective, and we have now had two groups of gamers at the biggest US and European shows give us the thumbs-up on our first board game. I could not have picked a better year to be here in person. You might also have noticed an image showing our new D&D Collectors Series display, which was also there to give people a taste of what is to come. I will finish by saying to all of those people who we talked to, ran demo games for or who just came along to ask what we had going on, thank you for your time.

Being at shows like this in person is a great way to hear feedback about how we are doing, both good and bad, and I would not have missed it for the world.   ~ John-Paul.