Spiel 2014: A Few Thoughts & The Haul

Spiel 2014 has been over for a few days, and while I'm still carrying the hoarseness that started there, I no longer sound quite so much like an asthmatic bandsaw. I'm unsure whether I'm "merely" exhausted or actually sick, but in either case I've been sleeping nine hours a night and waking with the energy tank barely above E, so I'm going to do the unthinkable and take a few days off from posting. (I also have a non-BGG project that needs my full attention through the end of the month, so that's an issue.) We'll see — maybe I'll just jump in every other day for the next week or so...

My overall opinion of Spiel 2014 is that the show was fun, despite me not being able to speak like a normal human for two of those days, which forced me to void my host seat for the Japon Brand marathon on Saturday and hand over interviewing duties to John and Beth for some off-site game demos.

My overall opinion of the games presented at Spiel 2014, on the other hand, is a big question mark — or rather a shrug and a dismissal of such issues. I'm surprised to see some ready to judge "the overall quality of the games this year to be very poor", but after seeing such remarks each year I should be over my surprise. For my part, I suggest waiting a few months to play some percentage of the games before trying to assess whether these hundreds of new releases measure up to hundreds of releases from some other arbitrary time period. Actually I suggest forgetting the whole thing and not worrying about it. Did you find some games you like whenever you went out looking for new games? You did? Success!

Maybe that's just me, though, as I can often recall the release years of games, but I can't collectively picture these games as being grouped into "seasons"; instead I think of them all individually as for the most part the release of one game in a certain year had no influence on whichever other games were released that same year. To flash back five years, for example, we find the following titles at the top of the 2009 Fairplay voting list:

• Vasco da Gama, 1.38, 34 votes
• Power Struggle, 1.81, 58 votes
• Macao, 1.88, 106 votes
• Endeavor, 1.92, 48 votes
• Dungeon Lords, 1.94, 48 votes
• At the Gates of Loyang, 1.94, 51 votes
• Egizia, 2.00, 91 votes

Does this group of titles collectively say anything about Spiel 2009? Not that I can think of. They just happened to have been released at the same time, just as I happened to be released when and where I was (May 1968 in Chattanooga, TN).

Speaking of Macao, some people have wondered whether Ravensburger/alea might reissue this title or other out-of-print alea titles in the future given that San Juan is returning to the U.S. market in a new edition at the end of 2014. I asked alea developer Stefan Brück, and the answer was what you might expect: Maybe. After all, those games were on the market for a fair amount of time, and it's not clear how big the customer base might be now for these games. If San Juan sells extremely well, then perhaps that will be encouraging enough for Ravensburger USA to move forward with new editions of other older titles — but of course the company needs to focus on new and forthcoming titles at the same time, such as La Isla (which is just now hitting the U.S. market after being out in Europe since Sept. 2014) and an as-yet-unannounced title that will be shown at Spielwarenmesse 2015 in a few months.

For whatever it amounts to, here's the final Spiel 2014 standings from Fairplay, with 1 being the best possible score:

With a minimum of 40 votes for each game

Games with scores better than 2.5, but with only 20-39 votes

If nothing else, I have unpacked my bags, which is something of a miracle as I typically let them sit for days on end, slowly pulling things one by one as I get the desire to play this or that. I've played a couple of games — minuscule proved to be more involved than the recommended 5+ age range, and Kaleidos Junior was smack dab on target, with the 5yo not wanting to stop for dinner — and hope to play many more as soon as time and work allows.

For those who haven't flown home from Spiel, here's graphic evidence of how you can fit more than you thought possible into your luggage, namely by playing Luggage Tetris in your hotel room during the evening. The rules are simple: Punch out all of the bits in all of your games and bag everything to take up as little space as possible. Starting with the smallest games you have, pack them inside empty spaces in the next largest games. Slowly work your up in game box size until you can fit everything in your luggage. If you exceed the 50 lb. maximum per bag, remove game boards, cards, etc., pack those in your carry-on, then reweigh your bag.

For this show, I mostly avoided titles that I expected to find through normal U.S. distribution and instead focused on games that would be tough to find outside Spiel. I didn't get everything that I had hoped for — Dark Tales sold out of the base game, for example — but I think this lode should last a fair amount of time. (I'm bringing the remaining "Partybody" Agricola L-deck cards to BGG.CON 2014, so feel free to hit me up for one at that show.)

First appearance of the Spiel 2014 haul

Inside every box lies another — or possibly several

Exploded view of the Spiel 2014 haul

Update, Oct. 22: Whoops! Forgot to include this image of the BGG crew during Spiel 2014. One of the publisher representatives on hand to demo games took it, but I don't recall who at the moment.