Hot off the presses! The Essen Spiel press conference that is. 🙂
Here’s the lowdown on this year’s Spiel:

“Come and play!” Is this year’s motto for the convention with around 160,000 people expected to walk through the gates.  Many have already called it the biggest one ever with a 9% increase in space to 63,000 square meters, with 908 exhibitors from 41 different countries!

Messe hall all ready to go.

Plenty of stuff going on too: Carcasonne World Championships, A record breaking 1000 Catan game(!) , R.I.S.K. Event and more.

This morning’s press conference.

Also officially announced were the Winners of the DSP: Voyages of Marco Polo and Spinderella (children’s category).

And present was Klaus Teuber (Catan designer) and his son Benjamin. They briefly talked about their co-design for Tumult Royale.

Genius runs in the family? We shall see!

But we all know it’s really about the games right? So here are some highlights from the games preview gallery.

Where oh where do we start? Hmm…

How about some Through the Ages love? Okay, okay… Kaz’s a bit bias here.

Party. Game. CGE. MegaHit. What do they all lead to? 😉 Whispers have it that there a new word to that list: “Pre-order”

Pirates seems to be a big theme this year… shiver me timbers matey!

Expansions galore:

Where’s the tortillas? Nevermind…

Horseys!

You can finally yell “Release the Kraken!!” without getting dirty looks.

The race is back on!

And this years big (annoying?) trend: Star Wars everything!

Okay what…

Really.

Like that also can?!

After the break, more great looking games!