Essen Game Fair (messe.com/en/">Internationale Spieltage SPIEL) is the world’s largest boardgame trade show. No one could hope to cover everything (and we won’t try!) We brought Nick on to help us with our top picks from Essen Spiel, accumulated through BoardGameGeek and other media. Did you know that in Germany, 118 is the directory inquiry phone number? We’re going to give you the 1-1-8 on Essen Spiel! What We’ve Been Playing Since Halloween just passed, Nick has been playing lots of Monster Crunch, and a lot of Batman: The Animated Series Dice. They also tried cute ghostly puzzle BOO and they’re still playing a ton of Dinosaur Tea Party, of course. Nick played Camel Up (Camel Cup?) for the first time and really enjoyed it, and finally had a reasonable showing in Small World. Andrew and Anitra have been really busy with Halloween preparations. We finally wore our Voltron costumes, and everyone thought we were Power Rangers (of course).   On their anniversary, Andrew and Anitra finally beat a game of Spy Club! We figured out that a key to solving a case completely is to heavily manage the movement of the suspect pawn to limit the “bad things” that can happen. Now that we’ve won once, we’re ready to start the mosaic campaign mode and write a review! (Spoiler: We really like it.) We got in a few plays of Chupacabra: Survive the Night. Not much strategy here, but it’s a fun “spooky” 10 minutes, stealing other players’ dice. Peaceable Kingdom sent us two games. Gnomes at Night is a vertical two-sided puzzle. Players must move through the maze on their side without going through walls – but may drag the other magnetically-connected pawn through the walls they can’t see. Also a clever turn-taking mechanism that allows for “team” play, extending the game to allow up to 4 players. Catch! is another cooperative game; players move cats to trap a mouse. The mouse’s moves are determined by a die and are unpredictable. Anitra was pleasantly surprised that such a simple game could have the same tension we’d expect from a more complex cooperative game like Pandemic or Forbidden Island. Andrew and Claire played Machi Koro, and it still suffers from the runaway winner problem, exacerbated by the luck of the dice rolls. We might look into Space Base or Valeria Card Kingdoms instead. Tournament of Towers – Draft cards that determine which pieces you can use in your tower. We reviewed this a year and a half ago, and the interview with Donovan and Jeff is one of the most fun we’ve ever done. The pieces in the final version are so solid and fun to build with, that we just couldn’t stop playing with them. VISITOR in Blackwood Grove – Andrew picked this up at Boston FIG a few weeks ago, and had a chance to play it with some friends last week. He made some unfortunate choices, but it was a good learning experience. Steampunk Rally – Race zepplins and don’t take too much damage. Add parts, get dice to activate powers and assist your movement/defense, etc. Remove zepplin pieces to pay for damage; only your cockpit must make it over the finish line! Frenetic feeling, simultaneous play.