Essen Spiel | Geekscape

Play your Cards Right – Highlights from Essen SPIEL Games Fair 2024

by MonkeyMagicJuly 29, 2025

Over the course of four days in October, thousands of people flock to Essen in Germany to celebrate their love of tabletop gaming, playing and buying (and buying and buying) games from a vast array of new titles making their world debut at the fair each year. As publishers and players begin to prepare for SPIEL 2025, now is a great time to reflect on the games from SPIEL 2024 that have remained hot titles since their introduction there last year.

If I say ‘Tabletop Gaming’ you probably either think of pen and paper RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, or conjure up in your mind the image of a big board in the middle of the table covered in wooden tokens, cardboard counters and plastic figures. There might even be some cards in there too, but you’re certainly less likely to immediately think of a card game. However, the same way board games have evolved a lot since Monopoly and Risk, the world of card games is now much bigger than the standard 52 deck of cards we’re all familiar with. Card games also hold several advantages: they are usually cheaper than bigger boxed games, making it easier to justify adding them to your collection; they are generally smaller and more portable; and because they are often easy to learn and quick to play, it’s often a simpler task to get them to the table in the first place.

One of the many Halls at SPIEL 2024

There is no better place to see a cross-section of modern card games than at SPIEL, the scale of which cannot be overestimated. SPIEL 2024 was no different, with 68,500 square meters of hall space occupied by 923 exhibitors from across the world. Some 204,000 attendees were able to sample over 1,500 new games over the course of the fair.

While many of the headline grabbing titles were more typical board games, the impact of the more humble card game should not be overlooked. The SPIEL 2024 games list on boardgamegeek.com categorised some 384 of the releases as ‘card games’. Now that some time has passed and these SPIEL releases have percolated their way through the gaming community to the shelves, pockets and gaming tables beyond Germany, we can take stock of some of the big hitters from the fair that have made a lasting impact, and that I would recommend you might want to consider picking up yourself.

Flip 7

While these are all new releases, some may seem familiar to you as they play on traditional card game mechanics — Flip 7, for example, feels a little like blackjack. On your turn, you have cards on the table in front of you and will either stick or twist/hit, hoping not to go bust. The important change here is that the goal and the ‘bust’ condition are completely different. The deck consists of twelve ‘12’ cards, eleven ‘11’s and so on down to one ‘1’, plus some special cards. The value of the cards in front of you is your score for the round, but if you ever get two cards with the same value you are out. So while a 12 and an 11 is great for scoring, you have a very high chance of going bust if you take another card. And although a collection of low cards wont score much initially, it increases the chances of you getting to the mythical seven cards in front of you. If you ‘Flip 7’ cards you get an extra 15 bonus points and end the round (and of course, you garner cheers and admiration from the rest of the table for your cojones). There are also special cards, some of which adjust your score, but the more in interesting ones give you an extra ‘life’, force a player to duck out of the round early, or make a player ‘Flip 3’. This latter card is great to play on other players to force them to take three cards in a row (making them likely to go bust), but occasionally it feels like the right thing to do is to really push your luck and play it on yourself.

The designers have self labelled the front of the box ‘The greatest card game of all time!’, and while this is more than a little hyperbolic, it is not totally unjustified. Of all the card games released at SPIEL, this soon became the most played and most purchased among the team here, and has remained so since.

Seers Catalog

If you have ever played the classic card game President (maybe you know it as A✱hole), then you have played a ‘ladder climbing’ game. In these games, one player leads the trick by playing a ‘meld’ of cards made up of a run or set of matching cards, the next player must then beat the played meld by playing a better meld (often of the same number of cards), or pass. The goal of the game is usually to be the first player to get rid of all your cards. Seers Catalog is a great new twist on this mechanic, standing out from the crowd for two reasons. Firstly the presentation, which starts with a nice little pun on Sears Catalog and some linked 1960s style box art with a twist. The card design is also great with lots of references to Werewolves and magical Seers, combined with clean art and a pleasing colour palette. Secondly the gameplay. A small twist is the addition of special power cards that disrupt normal rules and gameplay. More impactful however, the simple ladder climbing mechanic is subverted by the end of round scoring. Ideally, you want to hold on to a high value card in your hand at the point another player ends the round by playing their final cards, but the more cards you have the more your score is reduced, and if you have too many you will score only negative points. This creates a delicious balance between playing your high cards to win tricks and keeping them in your hand for scoring, and of shedding your cards quickly, but not too quickly. Since picking this up at SPIEL it has made it back to the table several times and I think it will likely gaining playtime for a while yet to come.

Before we move away from classic card game mechanics, we need to mention the most well used mechanic there is – trick taking. One player leads with a card and the others then take in turns to play another single card to the trick, following or trumping the suit, highest card wins. There are numerous new twists on the trick taking game every year, and SPIEL 2024 was no different. Notable titles that we enjoyed included Bottle Imp, Fischen, Panda Spin, and Power Vacuum.

Agent Avenue

Card games often lend themselves well to team games of two vs two players, and a beautiful example of that is Agent Avenue. The theme is of anthropomorphic animals spying on each in other in 1950s suburbia, and the artwork is gorgeous. In the two player version you pick two cards to offer your opponent, one face up one face down. They pick one, you get the other. The cards either move your pawns round a circular track on the small central board until one wins by catching the other, or tick you towards sets of three cards that spell instant victory or instant defeat. The agony of which cards to put on the table face up or face down is nothing compared to the “I can clearly not choose the win in front of me” mental gymnastics you will do when choosing which card to pick. One might be terrible, but does that mean the face down one is even worse, or is it a double bluff and the face down card is actually amazing? While the game is great fun at two, it is even better with four. In your team of two, one of you must first decide, without discussing specifics with your partner (the other team are right there listening!) who will play a card face up, with the second player then forced to react with a suitable face down card from the limited selection in their hand. In the months since picking this up I don’t think I have ever sat down and played only one game of this, it’s just so compelling!.

Ito

Card games also have the ability to take a single deck and scale up to a multi-player party game. Ito does just that, accommodating up to 8 players co-operating together. First you will draw a category card, something like “Things you want to take a picture of” or “Best ever holiday”, then each player is secretly given a random card numbered between 1 and 100. On your turn you place your card face down on the table and try to give a clue to help put the card in the correct rank order relative to the cards the other players put down. For example, if the category was “Important life events” and you drew 91 you might say “Getting married” or if you drew 5 you might say “Brushing my teeth this morning”. Once all the cards are on the table the players discuss how to rank them based on the appropriate clue, and once agreed flip them over to see if you placed them in the right order. It’s a simple premise, but as you can see from the example questions, it usually generates some interesting discussion at worst, and some hilarious moments at best. It is so easy to teach, requires almost no table space, and a round can be played in just a few minutes. The perfect pocket game to take to the pub. One of the perks of SPIEL was picking this up early several months before it came to retail — unsurprisingly it sold out at the fair.

Castle Combo

Another card game that was so popular at SPIEL that it sold out was Castle Combo. A game about making combos in your castle, of course! More specifically, you are each building a 3 by 3 grid of cards, taking it in turn to choose and pay for a card from a common market of 6 on the table. Once you all have your 9 card ‘castle’ you calculate your score and declare a winner. Each card has a mediaeval character on it, but more importantly also has some kind of scoring mechanic. These are widely varied but might be: score 5 points if this card is on the top row, or score 2 points for every blue card beside this one, or score 6 for every card suit you don’t have in your castle at the end of the game. Some cards will also give benefits when you place them such as money to spend buying cards in future turns, or keys which are used to manipulate the common card market (and are worth points if unspent at the end of the game). The game rattles along at a satisfying pace with very little down time, and as the name implies there are plenty of ways to find combinations of cards that power each other up for maximum points. This game taps into that intrinsic joy of building combos such that even when you don’t win you usually feel like you achieved something.

Hopefully this snapshot of some of the hottest card games from SPIEL 2024 illustrates that games that come in small boxes can have as much impact as their bigger box cousins. Big games may grab the spotlight, but as SPIEL 2025 draws closer, we won’t forget to look for those surefire hits in smaller packages.

Board Game Hotness from the SPIEL Games Fair 2023: Nature Calls

by MonkeyMagicFebruary 19, 2024

As we move into 2024, it’s the ideal time to look back on what the past year has brought us, and if we want to get a snapshot of what the freshness in boardgames is each year then there is no better place to look than at SPIEL, the annual board game convention in Essen, Germany. It is arguably the biggest in the world, and this year it welcomed 193,000 visitors to see some 1,750 games spread across the vastness of 62,500 square metres of hall space.

Having all of these titles in one place can often make it easier to spot trends in board game releases, and this year was no exception. Everyone on the team felt the strongest theme that came across this year was ‘nature’. While there have, of course, always been a smattering of games with nature-based themes, most people would probably point to the massive success of Wingspan, released in 2019, as a turning point. Wingspan features almost 200 different real species of birds, all with amazing realistic artwork, in a well designed strategy game that also manages to be very accessible. Four years later it still sits as the No. 25 ranked boardgame of all time, and has sold over 1 million copies. This taught publishers that games do not need to feature high fantasy, space, war, or Renaissance Europe to sell, and that there was potentially an untapped demand for good looking games that feature plants, animals and all things nature. This has never been more evident than at SPIEL 2023, and so with that in mind let us have a look at some of the finest flora and fauna laden titles that were on offer at the fair.

There seems no better place to start than with Forest Shuffle. Not only does it epitomise the genre, but it was one of the most popular games in the show for the team. The game is made up of over 150 cards covered in realistic and biologically accurate illustrations of trees, birds, butterflies, mammals, mushrooms and more. On your turn you have one of two options: you can draw two cards from the top of the deck or a common face up discard display, or you can play a card. When you play a card it is placed in front of you to build your tableau. Tree cards, of which you will end up with several, form the core building blocks. Other cards are added to the trees, with certain types of cards occupying certain spaces around them. Birds and butterflies sit above trees, mushrooms and some animals live below, and other animals are placed to the side of the trees to signify that they live in the branches or the nearby forest. All the cards you play will have certain scoring criteria. Some may be worth a fixed number of points, some may score for other identical cards in your tableau, or for having other synergising cards, or collecting diverse sets of related cards. Add up your points at game end and see who is the king of the forest.

The game has many things going for it. One is, of course, the art and the skilful melding of theme and function — as you place trees and creatures there is a logic in where they go that is intuitive and satisfying. There are also plenty of meaningful decisions to make. When playing cards you may have to pay a cost by discarding other cards from your hand, which is always agonising, as you usually feel that you don’t want to throw any of them away. It is also a game in which you need to be aware of what your opponents are doing. Is someone else also trying to collect all the different butterflies, or have the most Linden trees? The end game is triggered immediately when a third “Winter Is Coming” card is drawn from the deck, forcing you to make decisions about whether you should push your luck and hold out to pull off that big combo with the cards you are building in your hand, or to just get some points on the table before the game suddenly stops. There are a number of different strategic approaches to the game you can experiment with too, meaning that you will often feel the desire to shuffle up the cards and start again as soon as the scoring is done.

While Forest Shuffle is at the quick and accessible end of the spectrum, towards the other end of the gaming complexity scale lies Arborea, in which players take on the role of a Patron Spirit, guiding your villagers to heal and grow the landscape around them by sending them on pilgrimages and building your personal Ecosystem. It would be foolish to try and explain the whole game in the space available here, but the heart of the game is worker placement. A lot of the game involves familiar interlocking elements; moving up different tracks to improve end game scoring, building a landscape of Ecosystem cards in your own landscape also for scoring purposes, investing in certain areas of the main board by giving gifts to improve your rewards when your workers visit that part of the board. While this fits together into a pleasing puzzle of optimisation, there are some unique elements in the game that add further interest. Workers are placed on sliding tiles rather than directly on to action spaces. When these tiles are triggered to move forward any player can choose to have their worker jump off onto one of the paths on either side. The longer you wait the better the path will be, but the longer you will then have to wait to get your worker back again. Workers that have stepped on to a path can then be activated on your turn to move through every step of that path gaining the varied rewards for each step along the way. Of course there are many varied paths to choose from across the board, all with different rewards.

Finally, we cannot possibly talk about Arborea without mentioning the distinct art style. It evokes nature, but some kind of 1970s Vaughn Bodē version with vivid purple hued colours and fantastical hippy versions of creatures and landscapes.

The whole thing all comes together to present an appealing package. None of us really wrapped our heads around it until half way through the first game, but once things start to click it is a satisfying engine with much joy to be derived from pulling the various levers it offers.

While mushrooms certainly pop up in the artwork for Arborea, these fungi firmly take centre stage in Mycelia, in which the aim is to bring the sacred dewdrops from your forest to the Shrine of Life and receive the support of the Forest Goddess. Pretty self explanatory surely? No? Well, on your player board you have a grid of squares of different terrain types, and drewdrops (blue gems) scattered across it. You need to take actions to move these gems across the squares to the ‘exit’ tile, after which you add them to a cardboard tree stump in the middle of the board. When the Tree is full, it is then spun in a rather superfluous but satisfying manner, ejecting the drops from the bottom along with a die which will direct where each player has to reseed some of the drops onto their board. The first player to clear all the drops from their board is the winner. This feat is achieved via card play and more importantly deck building. This is the heart of the game, recruiting new cards with cute mushroom guys on them, and playing them to move gems or to buy even more cards. The deck building is not overly complex but is still satisfying with a variety of different deck construction strategies available. The game flows smoothly and there is pleasing interplay between the puzzle of creating chains of gem movements and the deck building and card play that allows you to do this. When paired together with the charming presentation of the dew drops, the revolving tree stump, and all the cute mushroom people on the cards, I am now regretting not picking this one up at the fair.

Speaking of presentation, a game that you could not walk past without stopping to look at closer was Redwood, even if just to ask ‘How does that work?’. This game can best be described as a wildlife photography simulator. The large circular board depicts five different outdoor terrain types with trees and flowers printed on them, and movable cardboard animals scattered across the landscape. Each player has a model photographer figure they control. On your turn you do two things, move and take a picture. To move you pick one of the available plastic templates, which are generally curves of differing angles and lengths, place it around the base of your miniature and then move your photographer to their new spot at the end of the template. To take a picture you pick one of the shot templates which vary between long narrow cones and wide curving ones, attach it to the base of your photographer, and then spin it until you have lined up the shot you like. You then reconstruct the shot in your personal display using a card to represent the terrain type you were shooting on, with tokens placed on it for the flowers, trees and animals you covered with your shot template. Each round you will take a new picture this way to add to your collection. You score points along the way for meeting specific objectives and then at the end of the game add on further points for your collected trees, flowers and animals as well as other aspects, such as diversity of different animals or matching adjacent terrain types in your tableau. It is a unique concept executed effectively, although it can suffer a little from the issues any game can have where your score can be determined by millimetre precise calls on if something is over a line (mark it zero!).

In Bonsai you are also trying to create a beautiful piece of art, but this time it is by nurturing your own diminutive Japanese tree. Your tree will be made up of hexagonal wood, leaf, flower and fruit tiles. On your turn you choose to either Meditate or Cultivate. If you Meditate then you draw one of the available card and tile combinations. The cards are added to your tableau and among other things can enhance your capacity to store tiles or your ability to place tiles. When you Cultivate you take a number of your stored tiles, as determined by your tableau, and then add them to your tree, obeying specific placement rules. Players take turns to repeat this sequence until the deck runs out, and will then determine who has grown the most stunning bonsai tree. Players may have collected points cards during the game for reaching certain tile targets, for example the first tree with 5 fruit tiles. These points are combined with set end game scoring for each tile type on your tree. All that then remains is to debate if the player who officially won the game actually has the most good looking tree. As should be evident from the description there are definitely decisions to be made, but this is a fairly simple game, generating a lo-fi relaxing experience.

While the above run down includes some of our favourites ranging from brain melting beasts to the relaxing cup of tea companions, there were just too many games to mention that leant heavily into natural world inspired themes. However, brief honourable mentions also need to go to the following SPIEL 2023 releases. The Glade is yet another game in which mushrooms prominently feature, although the main activity involves laying tiles with animal silhouettes on your personal forest board. It is an abstract strategy game with lots of player interaction that makes your head hurt, but in a good way. Planta Nubo is another title that deserves a nod, in which players are planting flowers and trees on their sky island player board, generating green energy and oxygen, and making use of tools and gardenbots. We made the mistake of playing this very late at night on the last day of the fair and trying to learn it from the rulebook as we went. It was well over an hour before we took our first actual turn. While this is more a reflection of our mental capacity at that time, it is another fairly complex, relatively abstract Eurogame with lots of interlocking moving parts, including some satisfying mechanisms in there.

As we draw to a close, what better game to finish off with than one that brings us back full circle to where we started, with Elizabeth Hargrave, the designer who brought us Wingspan and turbo charged the whole nature genre of boardgames. She had a new game at SPIEL in the form of The Fox Experiment. In homage to a real experiment from the 1950s the players are breeding foxes to generate desirable traits. The game not only has a satisfying dice pool building (and rolling of course!) element but even better each new generation of foxes are individually named by the players before being added back into the display for selection the next round. Add on top a tight action selection mechanism and you have a solid mid weight Euro.

So, now that we have digested the releases of 2023 and are into 2024 it is time to start looking at what will show up in Essen this October. What hot new titles and boardgaming trends will emerge this year? If you are not lucky enough to be there in person then check back here this time next year for our thoughts and analysis on SPIEL 2024.

These Are The Hottest Boardgame Releases from the Essen SPIEL Games Fair

by MonkeyMagicMarch 7, 2023

It is hard not to notice that geek culture has been making its way into the mainstream more and more in recent years, and this holds true of boardgames also. But if you want to deep dive into the heart of the hobby there are few better places to start than at SPIEL; it’s here that lockdown favourite Codenames was unveiled back in 2015, and more recently that the highest ranked release of 2021, Ark Nova made its debut. For those who have not heard of it before, SPIEL is the name of the world’s largest boardgame convention, held in Essen, Germany, every October. 2022 saw 147,000 attendees flock from all over the word to play a selection of over 1,800 games over the course of the four days of the fair. We were there, and while we only scratched the surface, we did our best to seek out the hot release, and get a feel for the latest trends on the tabletop. Now that we move into 2023 and have had a couple of months to put some of the most promising titles through their paces a few times, we are ready to bring you our highlights from the SPIEL 2022 releases.

Usual Suspects

As is often the case, much of the pre SPIEL hype was focused around a cohort of new Euro games. You will find a variety of definitions of a Euro game out there on the interwebs. For my money these are games that typically have a fairly high strategy / low luck ratio, play in a couple of hours, will usually feature some wooden pieces, have low to middling levels of direct player interaction and have multiple possible paths to victory.

One highly anticipated Euro we got a chance to play a few rounds of was the new release from Uwe Rosenberg, of Agricola fame. This was Atiwa, in which you are trying to develop a small community in rural Ghana, with a strong focus on conservation. Central to this are the local fruit bats, with many of your actions focused around building habitats for the bats and encouraging the growth of fruit trees to attract and feed them, all while feeding and housing the local people without allowing pollution to blight your card tableau. At its heart this is a satisfying worker placement game with some nice decisions to be made about what kind of strategy you focus on. One of the central mechanics sees you removing pieces from tracks on your player board when placing them on your card tableau. In doing so you uncover production icons underneath. The more trees you plant, the more fruit pieces you receive each round. The more fruit you have lifted from the track the more bats you will attract, and so on. Conversely when you spend these resources they go back on to your tracks and reduce the output of the engine you had built. This is where a lot of the balancing comes in as you try to create a satisfying feedback loop without running into problems with food supply or population overcrowding. Sadly the setup the publisher had for the fair did not allow us to play the full game, but everyone enjoyed the time we did get with it.

Oak was another Euro that drew a lot of interest. It is a truly good looking game with a strong and unique theme. Each player is the leader of an ancient druidic order. Play focuses around placing your druids (workers). This is mostly to the central main board, and often in combination with cards from your hand that alter the outcome. Alternatively you can commit druids to paths on the branches of the eponymous Oak where they can advance to get powerful payouts. The core game plays as a fairly conventional but engaging mid weight Euro with lots of options to make combos and forge different paths to victory. However the twist it brings to this familiar tale is with the ability to upgrade your druids. When you unlock an upgrade there are six different options, each of which bestows a unique power on that druid when they are placed in future actions. The icing on the cake (stone on the henge?) is that each upgrade is indicated by a unique piece of miniature kit which is placed onto the wooden druid meeple. This might be a cape, a satchel, a raven, or for the mega upgraded ‘Ancient’ a hood with a set of antlers on them. It is a great touch which is both a neat gimmick and a fully functional integrated part of the game play.

There were of course a number of other Euro games sparking interest this year, with Tiletum, Woodcraft and Hamlet: The Village Building Game all being popular examples, but as is always the case, we were in search of games that did something a little different.

The Games Is Afoot

One of the themes that could not be missed at the SPIEL this year was that of deduction, with several of the most sought after (and sold out) games asking the players to put their little grey cells to good use.

Turing Machine was a perfect example. Each player competes to solve a logic puzzle using less questions than their opponents. The solution to the puzzle is a three digit number, one blue, one yellow and one purple, with each number having a value between 1 and 5. Each game will have a different set of available questions on the table for players to choose from, and these questions can all be asked in different ways. For example the question might be “The blue number compared to 3 is…” and a player could use this card to ask if the blue number is greater than, equal to, or less than, 3. Or the the question card might allow a player to ask of any coloured number, if it is the smallest of the three numbers. Players will use their powers of logic to build up information until they feel ready to make a guess at the final answer. Guess right first and you win, guess wrong and you are out! One of the nicest features of the game is the way you ask these questions. There is a selection of old school computer style punch cards on the table and players will choose three of these depending on what colours and values they want to ask about. These are then stacked together like misaligned Swiss cheese and will leave only a single hole passing through all three. You then lay these on top of the key cards for each question and will see a tick or a cross to give them the ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer to the exact question you just asked. How they built this kind of blows one’s mind. There are a vast array of puzzles of various difficulties available. Each key card has a matrix of almost 150 ticks and crosses on them. There is something satisfying about the way that all the combinations of fenestrated punch cards and complex key cards match up in every case to give the correct answers to solve that puzzle. A couple of criticisms we did have was that we found that most of the players in our group reached the correct answer at pretty much the same time, often with a similar choice of questions, and also that there is not really much player interaction. Ultimately this felt to us like it might be more satisfying played as a single player game, in which case it could be a nice one-a-day kind of logic puzzle experience.

Elsewhere in Hall 3 was another competitive game of logic and deduction, Tiwanaku. However, despite these similarities, this is a very different game. Players move their pawns around a square gridded board. To begin with this board is completely blank, but it is actually secretly divided into different coloured regions, ranging in size between 1 and 5 contiguous squares of the same colour. Also, upon each tile will be planted a specific crop. For example, within a 3 tile region there will be a 1 crop, a 2 crop and a 3 crop. Importantly, a crop will never be found in the 8 tiles surrounding a crop of the same size. As you can see, these strict rules allow players to make calculations about the locations of other tiles and crops as the board is gradually revealed. The more information you have the better you are able to score points as you move around the board. While the ultimate ‘solution’ for each game is predetermined, there is no printed map to consult. Similarly to Turing Machine, the game has a very satisfying physical mechanism to allow you to effectively ask questions. There is a cardboard wheel into which a different disc is inserted for each game. When you are ready to ask a question about the colour of the tile you are on, or the crop to be planted there, you dial in the coordinates of your location, and slide open a little window to find the answer. For my mileage I enjoyed Tiwanaku more than Turing Machine, it just felt there was more of a game to be played. It also has a simple but beautiful aesthetic, and if you plump for the luxury version there are some nice chunky wooden pieces for all the square tiles and round crop tokens.

Time… Enough

Gardeners is a game that not only requires deduction, but also features what seemed to be another common theme this year: real time play. Players co-operate to try and appease a fickle and capricious king, who has a very specific idea of how he wants his magnificent garden arranged, and also sees fit to disseminate his different directives separately to the different gardeners. Players arrange tiles in a 6×6 grid, each of which is a specific colour and depicts different garden features, such as trees, flowers, benches, fountains and paths. Each player also holds a certain Constraint tile which must be obeyed. Maybe one player knows that each bench must face a tree, and another that all red trees and flowers must be at the edge of the garden. For the garden to be complete all the Constraints must be met, once this is achieved one of the players draws a new constraint and play continues. The game itself takes place simultaneously and in real time. And in total silence. Each of you will be placing tiles to try and deduce, and then meet, the Constraints of other players, while removing tiles that don’t meet yours. The goal is to fulfil as many Constraint cards as possible before the timer runs out. This experience is an interesting mix of a frantic race against time and a puzzle solving experience.

Another real time game which is definitely not played in silence is Ready Set Bet. The concept is simple, a day at the horse races. In fact it is so simple it is a wonder nobody has thought of it before. There are 9 horses running, in 4 different colours. The centre piece is a large table where players place a limited number of betting chips on different possible race outcomes. Each horse has spaces for Win, Place (first or second) or Show (first second or third). In addition there are other options such as ‘a Blue horse wins’ or ‘the Black horse will place ahead of the Blue horses’. The race itself is run by rolling dice and moving different horses depending on the results, with some clever mechanisms that prevent the number 7 horse from winning every race, and also allows for outsiders to suddenly make a break for the finish line. The real magic is the fact that the race takes place in real time. Players take it in turn to ‘run’ the race, frantically rolling the dice and moving the corresponding horses, ideally all while calling out a running commentary in your best horse racing voice. Meanwhile the other players place their bets, right up until just before the horses enter the final furlong. If you place too late all the highest paying spots on the board will be gone, if you go to early you may have dropped all your cash on a horse that started well, but never makes it over the line. Perhaps one of the indicators of how much fun we had playing this in the hotel, was the fact we became so raucous that we had to stop after a few races because the table behind us kept asking us to keep it down!

There were a couple of other real time releases that deserve a quick mention. Sync or Swim is a cooperative game where players have a very limited time to quickly place coloured number cards down in slots in front of them with specific rules, while also passing cards to their teammates to allow them to do the same thing. Kites was also a co-operative game that required players to simultaneously play cards from their hands, but in this case the time pressure comes from using those cards to flip corresponding coloured sand timers at just the right moment to stop any of them from running out, trying to keep them all running until all the players have managed to get rid of all their cards. This was a game I foolishly delayed picking up at SPIEL, and am now still waiting for it to come in stock with retailers.

Three Games to Rule Them All

It is at this point that the few months between attending the show and writing this report pays dividends. In this intervening period it has been possible to see which games have risen to the top. The three following titles are the most played and most purchased releases from SPIEL 2022 within our group, in addition to also drawing a fair bit of attention in the wider gaming community. The other advantage of a little time is that you might actually be able to pick a copy of one of them yourself if you fancy. All three were released at SPIEL ahead of retail and all three sold out there before the end of the show, two on the first day. Two became available in retail in late December, and the other will hopefully be out imminently.

Let’s start with Cat in the Box, or to give it the full title Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition. The original version was published in Japanese only in a small print run last year. Cat in the Box is a trick taking game. One player leads the hand by playing a card, other players must follow by playing a card of the same colour if they have one, or another colour if not. One colour is ‘trumps’ and beats all other colours when played. Winner of the trick leads the next one. The aim of the game is to win points by predicting how many tricks you will get in each hand. Cat in the Box preserves almost all these conventions, but adds one crucial twist. Where Schrodinger’s cat in the box was neither dead nor alive until the box was opened, these cats (or the cards) have no colour until they are played. All the players have a hand of numbered cards with no colour. Only when you play a card must you declare what colour it is. Crucially this information is tracked on a central board and if you are forced to play a card that cannot exist then a Paradox is created, the hand ends and you score negative points. Such a paradox can occur for a couple of reasons, firstly there will be five cards of some numbers in each round, and there are only four possible colours. Secondly you might choose to strategically declare you have no more cards of a given colour. This might allow you to play the trump colour when others cannot and pick up extra tricks, but it comes with a risk. This game is genius. The concept is simple and clever, but importantly it also translates to a truly great game. Of the seven of us in our core SPIEL group, all seven have purchased a copy of this!

The next most purchased game by our group at SPIEL was Challengers! This is again a game with a simple concept which sounds like it should not work when explained, but actually really does. Each round is played head to head between two players, each facing off to try and capture the flag. You take it in turns to play cards from your deck to try and match the power of the card in front of your opponent who is currently holding the flag, if you match or beat them you then capture the flag. It is then their turn to try and do the same, rinse and repeat. Crucially though, once you shuffle your deck, you have no control over which card you play, flip the top card of your deck, then the one after, and so on. No choices. So where is the game? Well the choices are actually between the matches when you deck build. You will draw a handful of cards and add one or two to your deck, also choosing if you want to cull any of the older cards out of your deck. Then shuffle your deck and hit the next match. The game works so well for a number of reasons. There is a central conflicting mechanic at the heart of each battle; the flag passes back and forwards between players until one is eliminated, either because their deck is empty, or because they have run out of slots to place their exhausted cards on at the side of the play mat. So in deck construction you are constantly balancing between risking the former loss condition by having too small a deck, and risking the latter by having too large a deck. As identical cards stack together to use only one ‘slot’ this also affects your choices. When deck building there are lots of options to build combos and synergies as most of the upgraded cards you acquire will have some kind of special power on them. Another strong point is that the game plays up to eight players, with multiple 2 player games all running at the same time. There is a set order of rotation for each player count to mix up who you play against. It is genuinely exciting to see what kind of deck your new opponent has built, and to find out how your own newly finessed deck will fare against them. This tension and discovery more than offsets the fact that you will, certain card powers excepted, make no actual choices for the short duration of the actual match. A great game, roll on the inevitable expansions.

My personal favourite, and the game which has seen the most plays among the team since SPIEL, is War of the Ring: The Card Game. There were a very limited number of copies at the fair, and we only managed to snag two. As of writing it still has not made it retail, making this a real SPIEL exclusive at present. As the name implies, the game casts you in the role of characters from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Two players are on the side of Shadow, while the other two players are the Free Peoples. Each faction has a unique deck of 30 cards. Play focuses on large format Battleground and Path cards in the centre of the table, with the default position being that one if each is contested every round. As expected the Battlefields focus on the classic military clashes such as Helm’s Deep, Isengard and Minas Tirith. The Paths on the other hand relate to the journey of the Fellowship and include locations all the way from Bag End to the Crack of Doom. Players take it in turn to play a card to one of these locations, or to their reserve for a future round. The cards are mostly Armies and Characters, although there are some one time Events, as well as Items that can attach to certain characters. Once all players are satisfied that they have played enough cards then the round ends and each Path and Battlefield cards goes to the team who won the contest there, earning victory points. New hand cards are drawn and a new Path and Battlefield added to the table, starting the next round. Play continues until 9 Paths have been resolved, or before if one team gains a 10 point lead for an instant win.

The core gameplay is simple but there are so many ways in which the game mechanics make for an engaging and tense experience. Some of this comes down to the unique powers many of the cards have. While some will simply contribute a certain amount of strength to a Battlefield or a Path, many have unique abilities which come into effect when they enter play, or simply by having them in your reserve. Really though, much of the joy comes from agonising decisions. Every time you play a card you must discard another card from your hand to do so. These cards have a chance of coming back into your hand later, but you never know quite when . This leads to real dilemmas about which cards to keep and which to let go of. There is also a very satisfying ebb and flow of the game with the Free People starting stronger but the Shadow players building momentum as the game goes on. There are great opportunities for team work as you figure out which of you is best placed to contribute to which battle in any given round. Deciding when to go all in, spending lots of valuable cards, and when to concede a battle is yet another example of the satisfying predicaments the game presents you with. Finally there is a really satisfying learning curve. The four decks are all unique, and play slightly differently. There is nothing so complex as to make the early games futile, but you do feel truly rewarded as you become more familiar with the contents of not only your deck, but that of your ally, and your two opponents. I am confident this will be hitting the table repeatedly over the coming months and beyond.

Finally a special mention to the Spiel Des Jahres Kid’s game of the year Magic Mountain or Zauberberg! This had us on a knife edge with tension building throughout as we rolled balls down the beautifully crafted mountain trying to save the princess from the evil witches. Think Plinko but with theme and a modicum of strategy. Yes this is a kids game but this game was unashamedly enjoyed by a us, a large group of adults.

So here ends my selected highlights from SPIEL 2022, and while with so many new releases we have only scratched the surface, I like to think that between the preshow research, a bit of a nose for the the unusual, and the 100+ games the team played, we have identified some of the classics that will will endure going forward. Having said that, our hotel rooms are booked, and the clock is already ticking down to SPIEL 2023….