Oh no! Essen is just 2 months away!

Summer is done, time to think about Essen. But I'm not psyched yet. I have not picked up any buzz around an Essen release. It seems some good stuff was shown at GenCon. See the extensive but great report from Superfly Circus.

Phil Ecklund explaining the rules to Pax Porfiriana at Essen 2012

I'm interested in the Mice & Mystics expansion. The Wreck Age minis look good, but I'm at least going to wait till it's affordable. The Pathfinder coop RPG sounds great. And then there's the Firefly game (although I never saw the show), the Blackwater Gulch western shoot out miniatures and Bioshock: Infinite, yes a boardgame of the videogame.

Democracy, one of the few kickstarters present at Essen 2012
made its funding goal and seems to get published soon

What I fear is that this year Essen will  have more kickstarter/indiegogo stands, and fewer games in real development. That would change the atmosphere of the show. Anyway, not having a huge to-do list might actually make me more relaxed, even more so in the week after the show.

Of course, I'm on my honour to play every game I bought last year at least once and although I've managed Slavika and Kolejka once, and King of Tokyo and Gauntlet of Fools half a dozen times, Camp Roskilde has not been played since Essen. It leaves me with two games to play in the next two months:

Signum Mortis: now complete

and the

Expansion for Lupin the 3rd

The trouble in both cases is that I need to invest in reading the rules.

Last year I went full on with this list of interests at boardgamegeek. I followed up that list with a bunch of blog posts before and after the show.

Oh no... not another game!

Given that I am short of time I am thinking of not spending so much time this year on Essen reporting and of not committing myself to an Essen 2013 project (either by not buying games, or not forcing myself to actually play them. In which case: why bother buying them?). This all depends on big plans for writing books.