:strip_icc()/pic5221573.jpg)
/pic5212744.jpg)
Oh, and a game preview to write, then game preview videos to create. The end of my to-do list will recede forever...
While in Nürnberg, Germany, the BGG team (Lincoln and I) recorded video overviews of roughly one hundred upcoming games, and those videos will be published on the BGG Express YouTube channel and the individual game pages before the end of February 2020. Note that the components and artwork shown in the images below is non-final and not necessarily representative of what you'll find in print once these games appear on shelves.
:strip_icc()/pic5220619.jpg)
Okay, that's a pretty sweet paint job on Cthulhu, but I think you'd expect as much in the CMON Limited booth. After all, you don't want a sloppy-looking spokesgod hawking your wares.
:strip_icc()/pic5220617.jpg)
Speaking of nicely-painted miniatures, I wish that I could have shot these figures from Ankh: Gods of Egypt in a whitebox to better show off the detail, but alas, I could take a pic only in this glass case. I'm sure CMON will post such pics once this title heads to Kickstarter.
:strip_icc()/pic5220618.jpg)
I did not realize that Zombicide was going to have a Washington Z.C. campaign expansion, but that's because I don't follow the majority of Kickstarter announcements, instead focusing on announcements of games heading to market the old-fashioned way: in the back of a truck to retail stores.
Thus, everyone who followed the Zombicide second edition Kickstarter campaign already knows about this item, and if you didn't follow that campaign, then you might not care about this item, so let's move on!
•••
:strip_icc()/pic5219096.jpg)
This game and the next might be as different from a miniature-filled CMON game as possible — Capio from biwo spiele is a real-time dice-grabbing game in which you're trying to complete task cards before anyone else can.
:strip_icc()/pic5219102.jpg)
I first saw Calcool at the Deutsches Spielearchiv in Nürnberg on Friday night when we recorded a tour of the museum stacks and attended the Duali ceremony. Someone had handed one of the museum employees the game as a donation, and I spotted it in his hand as we were leaving, said, "I don't recognize that game!", then snapped a pic so that I could contact the company for info:
:strip_icc()/pic5220638.jpg)
Evidence!
I wrote to biwo's Otmar Bettscheider and Karin Herrmann on Friday night, they responded on Saturday morning, and we filmed overviews of these two games on Sunday. Convention magic!
•••
:strip_icc()/pic5221013.jpg)
Italian publisher Cranio Creations had a handful of upcoming games on display, including a much more finished version of its new version of Kramer and Kiesling's Maharaja than we saw in 2019.
:strip_icc()/pic5221012.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic5221014.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic5221015.jpg)
Aside from a mock-up cover for Golem, the only other item Cranio had on display for the game was an incredibly rough version of the action distribution device. I didn't even peek inside to see how it might work since it didn't seem to matter. We have a non-final cover and a somewhat thorough game description, and we'll have to live with that for now.
•••
:strip_icc()/pic5221017.jpg)
Late on Sunday I came across the booth for Italian publisher Dal Negro and gave a little sigh that Leo Colovini's tricky card game Corsari (lower right) is still available with its original pirate look in Italy, while the North American market had only the blandly empty version called I Go — and now not even that.
I wondered what else Dal Negro might have available, its most recent original release in the BGG database being from 2012, so I took a catalog and a business card and made yet another entry in my "to follow up" list for who knows when given that FIJ 2020 and NY Toy Fair 2020 and GAMA Expo 2020 and all sorts of other events are rushing toward me even now. Sigh...
•••
:strip_icc()/pic5221016.jpg)
Mostly I took this pic as I thought my wife would be amused by the idea of a game called Prosecco Queen. Only afterward did I realize that the game isn't in the BGG database. GeekGold awaits whoever wants to chase down this lead to discover all the party games from this publisher that await cataloguing.
•••
We'll end this post not with a game, but with a 3D building system that I ran across late on Sunday afternoon in Hall 10 when Romain-Guirec Piotte, designer of the INSIDE3 rolling ball mazes, grabbed me to ask why they could not be included in the BGG database. We talked for a while about the distinction between puzzles and games — a topic I've also covered in this thread — then I realized that I was staring at something amazing: a 3D building system called "CARAPACES".
:strip_icc()/pic5221570.jpg)
The system, created by Stéphane Villain, uses triangles in ten shapes — depicted in the center column — and in whatever colors are produced. Here's how they clip together:
:strip_icc()/pic5221571.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic5221572.jpg)
You can see the male and female snaps along the edge of pieces in the strip below the skull. Piotte pointed out that while the system is widely flexible in what you can build, how you build is complicated by you building across three dimensions and needing to work out the angles of what fits where. (Yes, you build in three dimensions with LEGO blocks, but they mostly have you building at 90º angles, which is not the case here.)
Here's a closer look at that bear on the wall, followed by a rhino:
:strip_icc()/pic5221574.jpg)
Very cool system! That said, I've seen plenty of things at Spielwarenmesse that I never hear of again outside the Messe walls, so I hope CARAPACES pans out for them on the market. We'll see...
•••
One more post to go, with it serving as both a wrap-up of Spielwarenmesse 2020 and a peek at the future.
:strip_icc()/pic5207324.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic5221994.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic3212496.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic5220593.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic5198815.jpg)
