We have our crew plus Matthias and Ina Catrain - Matthias is our artist for Incan Gold. I'm sipping a Paulaner Weissbier and we are having some great conversation. Cool note - most of the waitresses you'll see along our street are wearing our "Gamers do it 24/7" buttons. Another good day - sold out of the Havoc expansion and we are running out of Havoc. 24/7 did well - sold about 30 today and we shipped a bunch to Funagain. We need to project final sales and send the rest out tomorrow. Had a great meeting with the folks at Kosmos who are thinking of adding 24/7 to their abstract line (Ubongo and Ingenious). We'll see but Wolfgang Ludtke seemed to like the game. And they like the multiplayer / partner aspect. All I bought today: Vallhala for Mike and 3 copies of Bohnanza and saboteur for the games class. Very restrained I must say. Oh, and KC's dad's name is Marty not Mary (if you looked at the photos). Till next time...

I'm trying out the new Zoch zum Spielen game Salamanca. This is a tile laying game that feels a bit like New England to me. Players take control of buildings attached to various landscapes that can produce points. Tiles are placed in an 8x8 grid and the producing tiles grow out orthogonally from buildings. The goal is to end rounds with a 7 point or higher farm under your control, which scores 2 gold. You also have opportunities to sell your farm, allowing you to move your worker (control marker) to another building. There are some turn-order building cards that give some special abilities like plagues and building destroyers. If it sounds pretty dry, it is. Nothing really grabbed me about the game and I think I'll pass. Very much a thinking game and it might be a good fit for some folks - just not for me.

I'm sitting here at the Ravensburger booth playing Arkadia, a new game that recycles the tower pieces from Torres. We are playing 2-player which I suspect isn't ideal, but the game is pretty nice. On a turn you either build a new building or place workers to surround buildings on the board. Surrounding a building earns one of 4 different colored tokens (and likely multiple of them) that can then be cashed in later for gold. Players trigger their own personal scoring rounds and the end of a turn, but each player only has 4 in the game. As the game progresses players have the ability to influence the value of the different colors by placing a tower (the Torres bit) in the center, usually covering up another color. This has the effect of increasing the value of one color while decreasing another. So it is a game with a bit of geometry (building tiles and surrounding with workers) and a bit of a market system. Pretty nice and I think I'll pick it up.

I'm here in the Messe hanging out in smoke-filled hall 4A between 4 and 5. Sorry for the lack of posts, but it is such a non-stop craze that it is hard to find time to even sit down for 5 minutes.

So far the day has been great (it is 6pm here). Havoc continues to be our best seller and we've nearly sold out of our remaining supply, including the expansions we brought. 24/7 is gaining momentum but wasn't the first day hit that Havoc was last year. The good news is that when people sit down to try it we almost always convert the demo into a sale.

Games I purchased today (I'm on about a $300 budget this year):

• Through the Ages - automatic purchase from the Czech Games dudes
• Turfmaster Deluxe - this is my big buy at 69 euro, but the game is a blast and I love the components.
• The Experiment - a cool little Belgian card game that won a design competition and got a free 1000 copy print run from Carta Mundi.
• 3 copies each of Pickomino and Cartagena for my games class - all of the above for a total of about 50 euro.
• A bunch of small stuff for Peter Loop and Mike Deans.
• Astoria - I don't care if the game is good... 20 euro for an engraved wooden box with 4 glass bottles and gems in it. Great value for bits.
• I pre-ordered the three train games / expansions from Winsome and picked those up today for 75 euro.

One highlight of the week so far is spending an hour in Reiner Knizia's hotel room getting pitched about 6 of his games for possible publication by Sunriver. We are going to try out 3 of them.

We've had great support from our demo team, and many fans have come back to say hi after purchasing Havoc last year. Most ask where my family is :-(.

Hard to tell what the big buzz of the show is. On the Underground is getting some hype but reviews are mixed from the folks I talked to. Gloria Mundi and Perikles look pretty nice. I have room for 1 or 2 more games so I'll be picky and get something on Sat or Sun.

I'll try and get another report out tomorrow!  Check out some photos over at Flickr - I'll keep adding to the set.

We made it safe and sound to the Arosa in two taxis. It is almost fortunate that three of our bags didn't make it (they are held up in Frankfurt and will arrive later today) as we wouldn't have fit in two cabs. The hotel is just as we remember from last year with a nice surprise waiting for us in the lobby: three large boxes from Ludo Pakt containing our first shipment of 24/7: the Game! I got some choice photos of Carey unpacking and opening the first box - we are very pleased with the quality and everyone was able to breathe a huge sigh of relief (what do you do if the games don't show up?). After unpacking it is off to the Messe to check out our digs, make sure the furniture arrived, and start setting up the booth.

Customs and security didn't slow us down too much and we are sitting on a B737 for our flight to Dusseldorf. Carey, Linda, KC, Marty (KC's dad), and Lorna Wong are all with me on this flight. We'll split two cabs for our trip to the Hotel Arosa. Hopefully our luggage will make it given the tight connection. This is my 3rd time in Frankfurt this year for a connection, though the first time I'll be staying in Germany since last year's Essen trip. The rest of today will involve staying awake (maybe a run in the park?), getting settled in the hotel, and prepping for setup tomorrow at the show. More on that soon - we should have a much nicer setup this year.

Racing to catch our flight to Dusseldorf. Hopefully they'll hold the flight or we may arrive in Essen much later than palnned!

The time is quickly approaching where I'll board a Lufthansa flight here in Portland to join a bunch of my partners and friends for the trek to Essen.  Sunriver Games will again have a booth at the fair (hall 4, booth 69) and we'll be selling 24/7: the Game, Abagio, Havoc: the Hundred Years War, and the Havoc Expansion.

Preparing for the show has been nowhere near as involved and tiring as last year.  Ludo Fact handled all of the final production for 24/7 and the first set of copies will be delivered directly to our booth.  Quite a bit easier than hand assembling, shrinkwrapping, and carting the games to Essen in our luggage.

Not to say that we don't need to bring any games with us.  We are going to take about 35 copies of Abagio and KC came up with the brilliant idea of packing 4 Havocs inside each Abagio box (yes, there's an excess of air in the box).  This will allow us to bring about 100 copies of Havoc (supply is dwindling, and what we have leftover after the show will be sold through Funagain).  There are currently no plans for a reprint though we will reconsider in 2007.

We have a few special promotions going on at the show:

• We are giving away some very nice "Gamers Do It 24/7" buttons to folks that try a demo of 24/7: the Game at our booth.
• We will be giving away the very cool Start Spieler spinning fingers to folks that spend 20€ or more at our booth.
• We are running some 24/7 contests and raffle giveaways of a very nice handmade wooden board for the game.  We will also raffle off some spiffy Sunriver Games t-shirts.

We also managed to pack our buttons and the Havoc Expansion into the dead space in the Abagio boxes.

Carey purchased three travel trunks to cart all of the goods.  With my Star Alliance Gold status, I should be able to check all three of the trunks without any extra cost with Lufthansa.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) this should give us lots of space to pack up purchased games on the home trip.

If you are heading to the show, you might enjoy listening to my segment in the Dice Tower, episode 23 where I talk about 10 things you need to know about going to Essen.  See you at the show!

I recently picked up the Avalon Hill game Nexus Ops from Toys R Us (great deal - $19.99 with free shipping) and we all sat down to give it a try today.  The game is meant to be a fast-moving build-your-units-and-attack style game and it certainly achieves this goal.  Originally it was just going to be the three boys playing, but Jacob and Matthew managed to talk Julie into joining us.

Each player starts with some money (Rubium), with early player advantage offset by a lower starting bankroll.  On your turn you produce units, move them, flip over any discovered exploration tiles (which can be mines, new units, or both), resolve combat, receive income from mines, and finally draw a secret mission card.

The goal is to achieve 12 victory points (we set our limit at 10 to speed up the game), and you get victory points primarily by attacking and winning.  There are other ways to get points - Secret Mission cards - but most of those involve winning battles in certain locations, winning with certain kinds of units, or destroying certain kinds of enemy units.  Given that all players are racing to the VP condition, there's no way a player can turtle and build up and win the game.  This keeps the game moving quickly and encourages confrontation.

Matthew raced out to an early lead with 5 VPs while the rest of us were at 1 or 2.  The rest of us caught up quickly and we were facing a close contest with everyone in the 5-7 point range.  On what turned out to be the last turn of the game, Jacob asked me if I was going to be able to win on my turn (I think I had 6 points at the time) and when I said "no" he said "oh, I think I will then."  And he did, winning a few one-sided battles that triggered some 2 point secret mission VP cards.  Final score was Jacob: 10, Chris: 9, Julie: 7, and Matthew: 5.

Ratings on the game by the group were high - all 8s and 7s.  Given the short play length (easily played in an hour or slightly more depending on the ending conditions) I think this one will come out more than usual.

Time for a quick update on my unplayed games burndown project.  In my last update, I mentioned that I need to kick the playing and possibly the getting-rid-of into high gear.  I think I did pretty well in August and September.

The top line (red plus the blue) shows the overall size of my game collection that has been unplayed at some point in the year.  It dropped down significantly in August as I sold and donated a number of games.  It bumped up a bit as I picked up a few games: Antiquity, Roads and Boats, and Canal Mania, but net I made good progress.  I'm down to about 30 or so to play, so I should be in good shape by the end of the year.  The key, though, is this: not buying games at Essen that I don't play at Essen!