That was most busy and exhausting and amazing at the same time Essen so far. I need to catch up with sleep, with rest, with everything, but hey, it’s Wednesday – I owe you a post, right! Here is some cool photos from Essen. Those of you who follow me on Twitter already saw them, for rest of us – here it is, Essen how I saw it.

Three big personalities of our hobby, from the left: Eric W. Martin, who covers for us all board games news, Tom Vasel, who covers for us reviews of nearly every game that is published in the world, and Brad Jr. Tolton, designer of publisher of great games (like Pixel Tactics or BattleCon). As we clearly see, Eric is just announcing that he heard about 600 new games that will be published and which need to be reviewed…

They say that in Essen you can buy everything for your board games. Well, I couldn’t find sleeves for this Settlers card…Best trolley ever!

Zee was stealing my thunder and signing box of Imperial Settlers. C’mon man, design a game by yourself! 😉

We all knew that Essen will be like a heaven for Ryan Metzler. It indeed was. 🙂

Don’t worry, I can fit one more game here! Everything is under control!

Runar had one suitcase. I had one car…

My Essen haul in all its glory!

Let’s face it. Sometimes we all get a little bit too excited with new releases. It’s not our fault, obviously. This is totally fault of publishers and their marketing teams. They attack us by surprise (I am talking about you FFG and your Imperial Assault), they attack us by having great license (Alien Legendary? How can anybody resist that?!), they attack us by super combo of great components, great author and great brand reputation (Days of Wonder pay attention, I am talking about your Five Tribes now). They even use crazy approach like having blog about games written by a dude who can’t speak English (Portal Games your strategy is super unique!). Back to topic!

So we get excited. We buy the game. It looks gorgeous. We set it up, we begin to play and…

And it is great. It is damn good. Exactly as we dreamed of. Exactly as those cunning marketers told us. It’s hard to believe but it is really that good.

We feel excitement, we feel freaking joy. We feel like in heaven.

Round after round we feel growing tension and – I know this is crazy but before even we finish the first game, we dream about rematch, about playing it again and then again. Man, what a feeling!

We finish the game, we win, we look at our beloved wife to share this pure joy that we feel now and to ask her how she liked it.

'I didn’t like it. It’s boring. Sell it. I won’t play it again.’ she says…

***

It’s like getting hit with a shovel. Huge one shovel. Right in your face.

I had it with Dungeon Twister.

I had it with Railways of the World.

I had it with Doomtown: Reloaded.

I had it so many times. And I bet you had it too.

You wife or your husband hit you with shovel right in your face.

Any dreadful stories to share? 🙂

It’s hot time. I mean it. It’s hot like in hell. Our office is quite a place, with mine cabinet, with our main office, with sales department office, with small warehouse, kitchen, with huge warehouse downstairs… And when I say it is hot time, I am basically saying that not all of these rooms have air conditioning. So you can imagine.

But of course, it’s not just about the temperature. It is a hot time in terms of production too. We’ve just published Ruins expansion for 51st State so there is lots of shipping to retailers and distributors. And lots of questions about The Ne Era (out of print) and Winter (out of print). Releasing Ruins was like awakening the beast. Now everybody is reminded about 51st State line.

We also released Mississippi expansion and we released it both as a 3.0 version and 2.0 version. All players who supported us for years won’t feel abandoned – we still support 2.0 version. So yes, now we have to explain to every damn retailer what’s going on and why there are two Mississippi products in our offer. We produced Polish, English and French edition. Quite a ride. There is lots of fun also because Mississippi is spelled MiSSiSSiPPi in English and MiSSiSiPi in Polish. So this is crazy when I produce marketing stuff for English and Polish markets and I have to remember about this small detail. I won’t lie. There was some misspelling these days.

Did I mention Origins this weekend? I am not there. Pitty. But I will be at Gen Con. And Gen Con is getting close. Oh yeah!

Gen Con operation. This is so much fun. It is going to be the adventure of the year. At this point I am no longer praying for wooden pieces for Imperial Settlers because they are ready. Now I am beginning to pray for safe shipping to US and for mercy at US customs. Customs may mess with our Gen Con release in so many ways. Just keep games for week or two and I am done.

But this is August issue. Now we are in June. In June we need to send files for Polish Resistance to print and answer all questions about reprint of Avalon. And reprint of Winter. And reprint of Convoy. And reprint of Robinson. And this one is huge. In March we announced that Polish new print will be available in late June. So since 8th of June we answer 10 phone calls per day about it. It seems that all retailers find 8th of June as a late June. And because we’ve just presented at our website that new print of Robinson has custom wood pieces and 7 scenarios and stickers for players pawns, and thick cardboard player characters sheets and basically looks fuckin’ gorgeous now we answer 20 phone calls per day from retailers. And you know, 11th of June is still not late June in my opinion.

Most retailers disagree with me on that point. Keep calling and calling.

Which is fun, because our sales dept guys, Mirek and Greg just shipped 500 copies of Boardgames That Tell Stories and are not in a mood to answer phone calls about Robinson every damn two minutes. But the best is coming. We just published Polish edition of Trait cards promo for Robinson and we will offer Beach expansion promo for Robinson next week. And today we put in offer whole line of new t-shirts for Neuroshima (8 different designs!). Yes, there is always something new to send to gamers! Our sales guys know no word 'vacation’

So, yes, it is hot and yes, we are busy, but this is just a glimpse of things that run here. We have new scenario for Robinson (it was supposed to be published today, but I decided to give it one more final round of testing), it will be published as a free PDF next Wednesday and believe me – you WILL love it. I am so proud of it. This was few months of work. Believe me. In the meantime we work on Polish Pixel Tactics and we work on Polish Imperial Settlers and additionally I just finished my old design of kids game (Land of Shadow) and we are at the stage of writing down final rules set. This is Sparta!

Did I mention video trailer for Imperial Settlers?

Did I mention that this week there is Pionek con – biggest board game con in South Poland and our company is very strong involved?

Did I mention Portalcon, con dedicated to Portal Games with keynotes and presentations of our new releases and lots of events for our dedicated fans? It will take place exactly in a month, on 12th of July.

Did I mention that in 2 weeks I go to Spain for a week to run workshops about designing games and such stuff?

And that Michal Oracz is nearly done with Theseus expansion?

There is so much going on. This is crazy. I could work 24/7 and still I would need to catch up.

But there is one more thing.

Tomorrow in Brasil World Cup begins.

So tomorrow I am taking 30 days off.

I have no idea what will happen without me at office. But I believe things will sort out. Somehow. Wish my team luck. Boss quits.

For 6 years I was organizing boardgames con called Pionek (Pawn). It was a great fun and a great lesson about gamers community. One of the events I held was a voting for the best game of the con. It had super simple rules – when you were leaving home, you were allowed to take a voting paper, write titles of 3 games you liked the most at con and leave the paper in a special voting box. From among all those who left papers with votes we randomly choose 3 people who win a free game. As you can imagine, voting was popular. Who doesn’t want a free game, right?

After the con I was the guy who open the box and count the votes. It was a hell of a lesson.

Let me show you some numbers before we move on – these are from three different edition of Pionek con:

One year 84 gamers voted for 65 different games.

Other year 104 gamers voted for 65 different games.

Other year 77 gamers voted for 81 different games.

You see that? There is no one ultimate best game. There is no one game that everybody likes. In a fact, the situation is exactly opposite. Every gamer has a different taste. Every gamer likes something different. Every damn gamer votes for different game. I run this voting for nearly 20 editions of Pionek con and it is always the same. The whole wide range of games that particular gamers find best. One loves Terra Mystica, the other loves Love letter. One loves Neuroshima Hex, the other loves Jenga. Look at those numbers. This is crazy.

Why I am telling you that? Why I am showing those numbers?

I try to show you that the game you love is not the best. And what is more important, the game you hate is not crap.

We gamers too often tend to go for a crusade. We often say that this or that game sucks and we give it 1 at BGG and we crash it in reviews, we go to the forums and we attack the game and gamers who like it. We can’t stand the fact that someone actually likes and plays the game we hate so much. So we fight. We make internet busy with our comments. We try to convince other players that they should immediately stop playing this shit.

Here is a deal.

I personally hate Terra Mystica. Worst game ever.  I don’t like Power Grid. I don’t like Trajan. I don’t like Summoner Wars…

So what?

Do I troll fans of those games on forums?

Do I publish negative reviews of those games?

Do I bully them on Twitter?

No. I simply don’t play them. That’s all.

I don’t like the game I don’t play it. I don’t bully people who like the game. I don’t visit their forums and tell them they are stupid. Please, act the same.

My message is: You don’t like some games so you don’t play them. That’s it.

Please, consider this mind blowing strategy.

This week in his Ivory Tower segment of Board games Breakfast Scott Nicolson was telling us about reflection after the game. Gaming experience is something we do love, but to make it even better we perhaps should try to talk about the game after the game, discuss our strategies, point of view, discover why opponents played that or that way. After game reflection.

There are two main after game types of reflection about Robinson. The game is super narrative and thematic and playing it was a true adventure. I observed that players like to retell the most thematic moments of the game they’ve just finished. And the second one type of reflection. The game is super deadly. Players tend to discuss if they had any chance to survive and if there was a turning point, a bad decision that head them towards the final end.

And at some point Tim Norris wrote that:

Finally played our first game of Robinson Crusoe. We died. @trzewik

— Tim Norris (@GreyElepntGamin) May 20, 2014

Train of thoughts head me towards session reports which are some sort of after game reflection and… you know, in Robinson if you want to write session report it’s simple – either this will be epic novel, either it will be concise as the inscription on the tombstone.

So I asked my Twitter followers about shortest Robinson session report they can imagine. 144 characters seemed like a perfect format for this task.

The answers? Made me laugh. That was a flow of super fun reflections about Robinson! Look at them:

@trzewik Ready to play. Ooh we are in trouble. Dammit we lost.

— The Cardboard Jungle (@CBJPodcast) May 20, 2014

@trzewik Let’s hunt. Ouch! R.I.P.

— Wayne Walker (@wwalker98) May 20, 2014

@trzewik We’re doing ok. We can still do this. Let’s try again.

— Kirdy (@VetruvianGamer) May 20, 2014

@trzewik Yay Ignacy!! Grrr IGNACY!!!!!!!

— The Cardboard Jungle (@CBJPodcast) May 20, 2014

@trzewik 😀 🙂 :|. 😮 🙁 (no words required) 😉

— The Cardboard Jungle (@CBJPodcast) May 20, 2014

And my personal winner of this series of reports:

@trzewik For sale: signal fire. Never used.

— Joshua Buergel (@JoshuaBuergel) May 20, 2014

The last one made me LOL.

I show you this fun example of reflection about the game, but being serious for a moment I have to say, I 100% agree with Scott. I do love gaming experience, I do love play games, but without reflection, without these debates, after game bantering, without all that’s after the game, it wouldn’t be the same.

So gamers!

Let’s play.
Let’s discuss.
Let’s live our hobby!