After a short sleep and a big breakfast, it’s the opening day of Spiel 2018 and the start of the adventures of thousands of board game lovers getting together and create what is the Internationale Spieltage SPIEL. The crowds were absolute bigger and the time it took to get to the press parking lot and inside the Messe, was crazy. I don’t think in the last 3 year’s I saw a busier day.
Today is also my start of all the pre-planned meetings with various publishers, other content creators, picking up pre-orders or meeting up with new & old friends. It’s a process which starts months in advance, which may sound a little crazy and artificial, but for me, it really is needed to get safely through these hectic days. On the agenda were meet-ups with Katie from PSC Games, Rafael from Game Brewer, Daniel from TMG and also at midday the German Blogger Meet-up, where I got to hang out with some of the local content creators from Germany and my Spiel buddy, Andre!
Paul is another one of those souls in the hobby having his heart in the right place and deserving more love for his contribution he is given to the hobby. The hours and love he puts into his content is bonkers! So if you feel that too, have a look here and maybe chip in a little?
After Messe hours I went to Fitzpatrick for a more social event put together by Adhil to hang out with a bunch of board game Instagrammers, which after a bite to eat, fish & chips in my case, lead into joining Paul Grogan’s Gaming Rules event later that evening. These nights are just plain fun, with a huge variety of people from designers to casual gamers and the raffle they did had a TONS of games for everybody. For me, that is no incentive to join these meet-ups, all about relaxing and meeting fellow gamers, but it’s cool seeing people having fun with them.
One of the highlights, and a tradition really, is playing games with my American friends. Normally Steph is included in these play’s, but she was crushing it at the BGG booth with the live streams and the board game demonstrations. So, this time it was an all boy’s activity, Ron, Derek and my half brother from another mother, Rand, played Lift Off! by Hans im Glück. We got the pre-booked press table and got to play half a game. Besides the weird draft mechanism, it does what it sets out to do, quite well. There is more going on that meets the eye and what you are doing, does make sense with the space launching theme.
See here the other posts for more fun on Spiel 2018
Press day post, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.
Day 1
Some random snaps from around the Messe and late night farm racing in Iceland
And that’s it for Thursday, which already went into Friday when finishing up our play of Reykholt with Adhil, and how fitting, Oskar & Magnus from Iceland! That was a bunch of fun, while to be honest, Reykholt is not the game for me.
Like they would say on television, stay tuned and be back to check out my Friday coverage of Spiel 2018 and more fun stuff to share with you all!
~Marlon
El Crosso a board game life! 
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