Thursday, November 9, 2017

Obligatory 2017 Essen Spiel Post Part V: Top 10 List (Games 1-5)

Okay, it’s time to continue on with my seriously late (oh moving and interweb problems…how you suck!) posts and take a look at my top 5 game anticipations that came out at 2017 Essen SpielThese 5 games all look amazing and they will be on my shelves as soon as I’m able to get them.  Before I move on to the post feel free to take a look at the previous four posts in the series.





Man this year’s Essen Spiel seemed to be a really good one and I wish I could have been there!  There were so many interesting releases coming out and I think it actually topped last year (2016) in the amount of games that really looked interesting!  That being said, let’s move on to my top 5 anticipated releases that came out at this year’s Essen Spiel!



Riverboat is a card-drafting and tile-laying game designed by Michael Kiesling and published by Lookout Games and Mayfair Games.  This game puts players in the role of 19th century farm owners on the bank of a river.  They need to organize their workers in a way to make sure that they are able to harvest crops in time to put them on a boat to sell in New Orleans.  In order to accomplish this, the players will place their workers in the fields, organize their crops into same types, harvest the crops and then place them into riverboats and finally get victory points according to what they shipped.  This game popped up on my radar due to the publisher and also the designer.  Kiesling really seems to be on a roll lately and I’m excited about all of the releases that he has had this year.  He has an extremely impressive Euro-style design repertoire and everything I’ve played with his name is amazing elegant.  These are all the reasons that I’m excited and plan on buying this game when I am able to.



Nusfjord is a worker-placement and economic game designed by the great Uwe Rosenberg and published by Lookout Games and Mayfair Games.  This game puts players in the fishing village of Nusfjord, Norway at a time when the village was developing and building itself into what it would be.  The players are the owners of major fishing companies who are all vying to be the best one and satisfy the elders.  To do this these companies must manage their workers in order to cut down trees, develop the harbor, enlarge your fleet of fishing vessels and erect new buildings.  This has some classic Uwe tropes where you have workers that you place on a central action board in order to do what they want to do.  Once a worker is in a place no one else can go there.  The players also have their own boards where they’ll be clearing trees and building different structures during the game.  This game seems really interesting where the players can put shares of their companies up on the market to get some quick money but they may lose them to other players who decide to pick them up.  I unabashedly love Rosenberg games and can’t wait to get this one!



Dinosaur Island is a worker-placement, tile-laying and set-collection game designed by Jonathan Gilmour and Brian Lewis and published by Pandasauras Games.  This game has players building up a dinosaur park and attempting to have the most thrilling exhibits in said park.  To do this the players will have to collect different dinosaur DNA, research the different sequences of the DNA and then correctly combine them in order to bring these extinct creatures back to life.  After sequencing and brining back these dinosaurs the players will place them into parks that they’ve built.  The players can be safe and sequence herbivores that are large but relatively docile or they can create the large carnivores that want to eat your visitors!  The players have to make sure they have enough security to protect their visitors or else mayhem could ensue.  This game uses heavy doses of worker-placement and tile-laying during the rounds in order to complete the mechanisms of the game.  This game looks absolutely beautiful with a large retro-influence in the art.  I’m very excited for this game and can’t wait to try it out!



Charterstone is a worker-placement, city-building and Legacy-style game designed by Jamey Stegmaier and published by Stonemaier Games.  This game has players taking on the roles of a citizen in the Kingdom of Greengully who has been tasked by the king to go out and create a charter in the world.  These players will build up their charter over twelve games by opening up different boxes and cards and placing stickers on the board where it will change up the look and actions that the players can take.  The game primarily uses worker-placement as the players will be placing one of their two meeples on a board space and then takes the appropriate action.  This game has a cool idea where the players will place their meeples and will have to take an entire turn to get them back unless some other player kicks them off the space.  This is a great mechanism as it gives the players more decisions to make because they will want to go to places they think other players will kick them off of.  This game looks like a very fun Legacy-style Euro-game and I can’t wait to get my hands on it!



Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 is a co-operative, set-collection, Legacy-game designed by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau and published by Z-Man Games.  This game is the second in the series by the talented designers.  Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 was an absolutely incredible experience as we had a group that played through the 12 months (we played 15 total games) and ended up with an overall win!  We had such an amazing time that the follow up was absolutely going to be my number one anticipated game when it was released.  I’m not going to go too far into this game as I don’t want to give any spoilers and to be honest I’ve tried to stay away from them myself.  I will say that I love the idea that this is somewhat like Pandemic turned on its head.  This game is on my Christmas list and I can’t wait to be able to try it out!

Well, there we have it!  These are my top 5 anticipated releases that came out at this year’s Essen Spiel and they all look great!  With my top 10 complete I think I’ll do one more post in the series that will take a look at my most anticipated games that weren’t available for sale at the convention.  Many of these were demos but couldn’t be purchased.  Thanks so much for reading and I hoped you enjoyed!  Until next time, game on!

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