Well, to be truthful, I haven’t been doing too much reading this past week as I’ve been readying myself for a trip to Germany!

I’m taking a long overdue vacation to Bavaria this week, and my wife was a little surprised to discover that our trip coincides with the Spielwarenmesse in Nuremberg!  [/sarcasm]

Honestly, it’s mostly a tourist trip, as I’ll only be at the fair for a single day for a few important meetings and hopefully a look at three new games that I’ve had a hand in designing/developing.

The Toy Fair is not just about boardgames – in fact, TGOO only take up a small part of the floor space at the show.  This is the page describing the board game section of the fair:

http://www.toyfair.de/the-industry/games-books-learning-and-experimenting-multimdia/?L=1

If you look closely at the map, the yellow halls (10.0, 10.1) are the only ones with games in them – the rest of the grey halls are filled with other stuff!  I read somewhere that the baby section alone is 12,000 square meters!

In any event, I’ve never been before, and I’ll really only get the barest of glimpses of the show – but it’s better than nothing!  Keep your eye out on Eric Martin’s reports from the fair on the BGG News feed.  I will try to take some pictures and write up my thoughts when I get back.

—

In case you missed it, the blog turned three years old last Friday!  There must be something about January and the birthing of gaming blogs – BGG just turned 14 last week as well.

—

Larry Levy (who is a big fan of all things Martin Wallace) notes that the announcement for the newest Treefrog games came out in the past week:

http://www.treefroggames.com/mythotopia

http://www.treefroggames.com/ships

—

If you’re read some of our post-Essen reports, a lot of the OG writers are fans of Patchistory, a super-exclusive release from Deinko at Essen 2013.  Only 50 copies were brought in English, and I think the OG can account for 6-8% of the total print run…

For the rest of us, the good news is that the game is coming out in English soon from a new company – StuntKite

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1108865/official-english-na-release

—

For the luddites in the crowd, don’t forget about Counter Magazine – a PRINT magazine about games.  A number of the writers here also contribute to Counter.  http://countermagazineonline.wordpress.com/

—

Larry Levy chimes back in with this:

—

From Jonathan Franklin –

This Downton Abbey Board Game Will Destroy Your Friendships
http://jezebel.com/this-downton-abbey-board-game-will-destroy-your-friends-1506752004

While he won’t admit it, I am guessing that Jonathan is also awaiting the Jane Austen games as well…  (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1008284137/the-jane-game-a-jane-austen-trivia-board-game)

—

Dale Yu: Posting that link made me think about other weird book-related games that I’ve played… I found this list online – I am sad/happy to say that I’ve played 5 of them!

http://flavorwire.com/363897/10-literary-board-games-for-book-nerds/view-all/

—

From our newest member, Karen Miller –

“I have no idea if this link is the kind of thing you are looking for so it matters not if you include it or not, but I was kinda blown away by it. not BG related but a physics thing…which is pretty cool!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ukMId5fIi0″

—

Finally, one more note from Essen, Germany (which is really the only tie this has to gaming) –

http://fashionablygeek.com/costumes/seniors-reenact-famous-movie-scenes-in-this-nursing-home-calendar-cosplay

I can only hope that your grandparents (and mine) are that cool…

—

I think that’s it for now.

While I’m trying to do this weekly – probably nothing next week as I recover from the jet lag back from Germany.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor