Yes, that magical time of the year when good (grown-up) children get new toys is almost upon us.  No, not Christmas but Spiel – the biggest annual games fair held in Essen in Germany.  I shall be going as usual this year – making it my 9th year running.

With 61 days to go, I have started my usual preparations by going through all the new games that will be released.  There are still many to be revealed yet but plenty have been announced, so it’s the time of year when I find most of my reading is reading through board game rules.

Last year, I had a separate page where I mentioned forthcoming Spiel games that caught my attention.  This year, I’m going to do it a bit differently and will post about each game separately as that makes it easier for those of you that read this blog via RSS.  I’ll use a common tag so you’ll be able to filter just the Spiel 2013 entries, plus there will be a link to them at the top of the right-hand column.

James.

The prize for the Metagames 2nd Essen Game Giveaway will be Friedman Friese’s Black Friday. It’s a great stock market game without being dry. A lot of fun (and it’s Rio Grande’s English version too).

To qualify for the prize draw, you needed to be following my Twitter durig Spiel 2010 plus you could earn two extra entries too by tweeting about the giveaway competition and by completing the questionnaire about this blog.

Good luck,

James.