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Spiel 2013: Sellouts, No Shows, Rankings, Surprise Appearances & Roads & Boats on the Boat

Spiel 2013: Sellouts, No Shows, Rankings, Surprise Appearances & Roads & Boats on the Boat
Board Game: Hansa Teutonica
• Possibly the most anticipated Spiel 2013 item that wasn't guaranteed to be at the show in the first place was Hansa Teutonica: England, an expansion for the highly-regarded Hansa Teutonica board game from designer Andreas Steding and publisher Argentum Verlag. According to Argentum's Roman Mathar, what happened is that in the middle of 2013 he had to submit a list of titles that he planned to bring to Spiel 2013 to convention organizer Friedhelm Merz Verlag, but in the end both he and Steding decided that Hansa Teutonica: England was not ready for publication. I checked in with Mathar during the show and learned that he and Steding had met in Essen and discussed a number of things that they wanted to playtest prior to unveiling any details about the expansion (although Steding has mentioned on BGG that they're working on new two-player rules for all versions of the game). Ideally I'll have something to report on this at Nürnberg 2014 in early February.

Board Game: Spellbound
• The award for most unexpected item to be found at Spiel 2013 goes to Spellbound. I saw a few copies of this monster blue box during the convention and was baffled as to who would have carted them to the convention for resale. Turns out that the Lamont brothers (i.e. Fragor Games) were themselves selling the game. Co-designer Gordon Lamont said that during their preparations for the show they received a call from someone who handles warehousing for them: "What do you want to do with these copies of Spellbound?" Said Gordon, "Um, what copies of Spellbound?" A few dozen copies were available, so the Lamonts brought them to Spiel, put one on display at their stand at the original €60 price, and slowly sold them off one by one without making a fuss over them. A smart investor — correction, a smart investor with free shipping capabilities — would have scooped them all up for resale, but I'll leave such dealings to others.

Board Game: Coup: Reformation
• In previous coverage of fastest sellouts at the show (various Japon Brand titles, Patchistory), I neglected to mention Coup: Reformation, an expansion for the hidden role game Coup from designer Rikki Tahta and publisher La Mame Games. I'm not sure how quickly the 300 copies disappeared, but on Friday morning while surveying the halls I noticed that La Mame's stand was empty other than two tables, one bearing a sign noting the Coup tournament later that day. Despite passing by several other times throughout the show, however, I never saw anyone at the stand, so I caught nothing of forthcoming releases Guatemala 1954 and Pied de Nez on camera. Sorry!

• Other sellouts at Spiel 2013 included English versions of Yunnan (Argentum) and Russian Railroads (Z-Man Games); English and German versions of Nations (although Asmodee was able to ship in more from its warehouse after blowing through its English copies in under 90 minutes on Thursday); Geister, Geister, Schatzsuchmeister! and Kronen für den König (with Mattel initially bringing only a few dozen copies of the latter title and twice as much of the former, then restocking both and pretty much selling out once again); Suburbia Inc. (Bézier Games); Buccaneer Bones from Wattsalpoag (with the tiny box size making the shrinking stock pile look even tinier); A Study in Emerald and the Collector's Edition of The Witches: A Diskworld Game (both Treefrog Games); New Haven (R&R Games); Koryŏ (Moonster Games); Lewis & Clark (Ludonaute); and Om Nom Nom (Brain Games). I'm sure that I've missed plenty of other titles, and selling out doesn't necessarily mean that a title was a smash hit at the show as perhaps the publisher simply didn't bring enough copies. Time will tell...

Board Game Designer: Brian Yu
Designer Brian Yu during press day at Spiel 2013

Board Game: Russian Railroads
• Russian Railroads ended up on top of the Fairplay list of ranked games for Spiel 2013 with a score of 1.73 (on a scale of 1-6, with 1 being the best) after 85 ratings. (Only Love Letter, newly released in German from Pegasus Spiele, received more ratings.) The only other titles with a sub-2 rating are Concordia (1.84, 64 ratings) and Glass Road (1.91, 65 ratings). The link to Fairplay allows you to view the results after Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with the number of votes required to make the list increasing each day. At some point Fairplay will release the entire list of titles voted upon, no matter how few the votes or how poor the score.

• Polish publisher Kuźnia Gier was a no-show at the convention, leaving a nice space in the midst of Hall 1 for people to step out of the aisles and collect their bearings. As former KG press person Piotr Zuchowski notes on BGG, "Since May 2013 Kuźnia Gier has been going through serious ownership problems. The two former co-owners decided to split into two smaller companies and lay some people off; currently they have no PR and no person responsible for media contact. And all the boardgame projects announced are now either delayed or cancelled."

• If you live in the U.S. and neither preordered Splotter Spellen's Roads & Boats — now available in a fourth edition — nor trekked to Spiel 2013 to schlep a copy home, you might be pleased with the following development, which came to light during the convention:

From gallery of W Eric Martin

I'm not sure when GTS Distribution will have Roads & Boats (along with the second edition of the & Cetera expansion) available in the U.S. — one of many things that I need to follow up upon in the days ahead...

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