I've lived in Germany for nearly 8 years (4 years several years ago & then almost 4 years right now). I have never attended the Spiel Convention in Essen in those 8 years. It's been on my bucket list forever, but we've never been able to work it out so that we could go.
Spiel '22 was my year to finally make it happen. This convention is the biggest board game convention in the entire world. It takes place in Essen, Germany for 4 days at a convention center there & there are 7 huge halls full of board games! I LOVE BOARD GAMES. I always played board games growing up (my dad, brother, & I played for hours. . . all our spouses refuse to play clue, trivial pursuit, & monopoly with us.). Once we moved to Germany the first time, I was introduced to Settlers of Catan & it's just been an obsession ever since. Strategy games are my jam & I could play them all day every day.
We have 2 families here that we LOVE to play games with. We try to have a game night once or twice (or 3 times) a month for 3-5 hours, just playing through board games & learning new strategies for them. We've never played the same game twice. We're all obsessed. When I found out both Travis & Kevin were going to Essen this year, I HAD to find a way to make it happen for Trek & I. I'm so blessed to have Trek. He loves to play games too. . . he's not as obsessed & strategic as I am, but he always plays because he enjoys it & because he loves how happy it makes me.
The convention was the same weekend as Homecoming at the high school which made me feel completely defeated. I had my hands full of work for both of my girls' dates/parties & didn't think we could manage Spiel Essen. Trek surprised me by taking a day off of work so we could go Thursday night & Friday instead of Saturday (when homecoming was happening).
We drove up on Thursday evening & stayed at a cute hotel about a mile from the convention center. The breakfast there was absolutely amazing.
After breakfast we headed out to walk to the convention center. We knew that parking was going to be a nightmare, so we left our car in the hotel parking lot & walked. We got there SUPER fast.
We arrived about 30 minutes before the doors opened so we got to get excited with all the rest of the people hanging out outside. This seriously was SO MUCH FUN FOR ME.
Once we got inside, I realized the scope of this convention. There were 7 massive halls filled wall to wall with board games. Each company had their own sections where they displayed their games, sold their games, & had tables set up to sit down & play their games. I soon realized that you could spend an entire month playing these games & still not play them all. Four days is NOT enough time & we had only 1. We had to be strategic in what we sought out & played. But it was so big I didn't know where to go or what to do.
Luckily we had Travis & Kevin to help us. They were there for all 4 days & showed us the ropes a bit. Travis had sent me a list of the 2,000 NEW GAMES they were showing at the conventions with all the artwork & game rules & I quickly glanced through them & picked out about 10 favorites I wanted to check out. We got the app that helped us find things & then we PLAYED.
I know the first game we played was "Hamburg" by Queen Games. We played for nearly 2 hours & still didn't finish the game, but it was a lot of fun. Then we met Kevin at another game (I don't recall it's name) & played it for 1 hour. We ran into some D&D cosplayers there.
After that we wandered through a few halls looking around until we found the game I really wanted to visit. . . "Feed the Kraken!" I knew I had to have that game. There weren't any open spots to play so we wandered around to play something else while we waited. There was a cute animal cafe game that was fun so we played that for about 20 minutes.
We continued to wander around & played anything that looked fun. Almost everything we played was a blast. We seriously could have bought everything, but we didn't. I knew we had agreed on ONE game (& I knew it would be the Kraken game).
We found a fun little game where you paint a mini-figure as part of the game. You work your way around the board & collect "paint" as you go. Then when you drew a "paint" card, you had one minute to paint your figurine with ONLY the colors you had collected around the board. It was REALLY FUN. We liked our little figures. I made a ranger/archer & Trek made a wizard.
We pretty much stopped at every game that had something to do with Rome or Roman history. Trek has always been obsessed with the Roman empire so he really liked those games.
There were so many fun games. It was hard not to sit down & play them all.
But the "Feed the Kraken" game did win our hearts. We all bought that one & it's amazing. It's a social deduction game like "Werewolf" where some of you are sailors, some are pirates, & some are cult leaders. The sailors are trying to get the boat to the good port, the pirates to pirate cove, & the cult leader to be fed to the kraken. There is lying, there is spying, there is all sorts of fun things involved & we knew the kids would love it, so we bought it. Plus, what's not to love about pirate ships, Kraken tentacles, & guns? Such a fun & beautifully put together game.
There were so many fun games. Even thought we only got to experience it for one day, it was absolutely AMAZING & I'll never forget that experience. It was SO MUCH FUN.
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