We are in the home stretch.  We had a great dinner at one of the nicer places I've seen around here - the name escapes me, but the food was on the gourmet side of things and a nice change from the regular fare.  The not-so-nice change was the tray full of water and apfelschorl that was spilled on my back and down my pants before I had my first beer. Apparently the waiter's first night as a waiter and not a bartender, and I think the balance of the 1/2 liter beer he served me through him off.

What a crowd today!  Busier than I remember last year and it was damn tiring going through the distributor/retailer booths (where the good deals can be found) let alone just getting from hall to hall.   Sales for 24/7 picked up a bit today - about 20 units sold and several given out as review copies (Moritz Eggert, Spielbox, Spiel des Jahres committee).  We have a cute teenage girl across the aisle that played each of our games at least twice today - apparently she's bored with her father's action hockey game.

I picked up the 20,000 Rails Under the Sea Age of Steam expansion for Peter plus a few of the freebie Settlers expansion given out at Kosmos.  I didn't play much today - it is very hard to get a seat at a demo table on Saturday.  KC and I had a great meeting with a product manager at Queen Games and we saw some sincere interest in his Metro 2 sequel.  We also ended up on the great side of a trade of games between our companies that landed me copies of Shogun, the Alhambra dice game, and the new Thief of Bagdad game. My only "real" purchase today was the Baumeister von Arkadai game for 22 euro - so far the hit of the show for me.

This morning I spent some time in the heart of Essen for the first time as I went downtown with Erik to ship some games to Lorna and Erik's gaming slave master Doug Garrett.  I think the two have shipped at least 6-7 boxes total.  I've been restrained enough that I should be able to fit everything in my two suitcases.  There's a nice little downtown here that I'm sorry I missed last year, and it is convenient enough that it may be worth staying at sometime in the future.

Jim and I are comparing notes on what we need to check out for tomorrow.  I think I'm done getting new games (unless I can swing a new trade or two) but we do have a few we want to try:

• Leonardo daVinci
• Space Dealer (real-time ship construction and trading)
• Perikles
• Yspahan

The game with the most buzz so far is what I've resolved to calling the Ken Follet game - a Caylus-style game based on a novel with a name I can't pronounce.  I've been worried about the card text in German, but Rick Thornquist assures me that cards are open and transalations are easy, so I shouldn't be afraid.  Maybe I can get a game in tomorrow before cleanup.

Trying out the Amigo card game Der Elefant here in the conference room at the Arosa. This is about the classic "elephant in the china shop" story (? I thought it was a bull).

According to Erik it has a series of scoring rounds similar to Too Many Cooks. I've played that game and have no clue what he's talking about, so I'll ask what to do each turn. Interesting element: everyone plays with their cards face up, so there's no hidden information in the game.

We are now scoring our first round and I have no idea what I've done except I scored the worst. Apparently I score my own china shop and I get to choose whether to count it as the lowest in each color, highest in each, highest overall, or sum of a total color.

Like many German card games the subtleties are... well, subtle. You've got to play a game or two to understand how to control the scoring. At least that's my excuse.

Second round - scored ALL of my cards for 26, which seems like a decent score. And I'm hardly paying attention (I'm blogging after all).

Third round - things are going really well. Scored highest in each color for a 22, which is very decent. Even excellent.

Final round - did well again and won the game with 75. Have no idea why. Hmmmm.

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.

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!