I'm sitting here in Carey's bathroom while Carey, Linda, Lorna, and Erik work on packing our various leftovers (not many!) and acquisitions into our return luggage.  It might all fit.

I want to say thank you to our booth helpers this year: Lorna, Jim, Marty, Erik, Tim, Carrie, Ben - thank you for your support of Sunriver Games and for donating your time and energy to making it another successful year.  We had a great celebration dinner at the Ystra tonight and the wine, food, and Narnia improv by Erik were memorable.

I got in a turn of Pillars of the Earth (Die Saulen der Erde) when Jim had to leave the game early to meet up with Ben.  This is a good game and I'm sorry I missed out on getting it (prices were going up during the day as the game was in short supply), but no fear - looks like Mayfair will have an English version early 2007.  This is the game to play if you want a shorter version of Caylus with an even stronger graphical design.

I'll do a more in-depth post-Essen report once I return where I can include some photos.

I managed to be just inside the main entrance in hall 12 (I forgot the cash box key in the hotel room) when the fair opened today - wow, what a crazy scene. People sprinting to demo tables to get a spot to try a new game.

Weather has been great, with only one day of rain and mild temperatures.

Just sold our first copy of 24/7 today - woot!

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.