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Essen Spiel 25 impressions


 
Seeing as going back to WTC was absolutely not an option for me this year I was at least lucky enough to grab one of the final tickets for the biggest board game convention in the world: Essen Spiel (attendance over the four days was 220.000 people, so yeah it's really really big). Importantly there are no tournaments for any tabletop games at Spiel. The only competition is Games Workshops Golden Deamon Painting Contest. The convention center is just a 25 minute drive from my door. Which in the end was the first problem. Being extremely naive I thought, well I just use the other parking lot and should manage being there at 10 a.m. when gates open. Famous (and honestly idiotic) last words. Over an hour later I finally got a parking spot. 7 km away from the entrance with about 2000 other people... Luckily outfitted with Shuttlebusses and after a casual 30 min more of waiting I got to sit in one for the 15 min ride back to the convention center. Should I be back there next year I'm going to use public transportation for the way. My consolation is that that would've probably been unbearably overfilled too 😅

Was the hustle and the 23,50€ entrance fee plus 8€ parking ticket worth it? For MCP it honestly really really wasn't 😕
There was exactly one demo table and the very nice Asmodee employee who was supposed to teach the game has clearly never actually played it himself. I had to explain how many things worked for some interested people coming over while I talked to him. I don't fault him for this at all, but Asmodee  was by far the publisher with the biggest presence, was one of the main sponsors and has their German head quarters in Essen. There's really no excuse here... Star Wars Legion was clearly the main focus though, which makes sense when you compare the player bases and Shatterpoint at least got two tables but if you don't present your game properly you kind of don't have to wonder why it doesn't sell in Germany... 


Buuuut the con otherwise was really cool and there was loads of things to see and I got some nice gifts for my son and wife so it wasn't a total waste of time. Here are some impressions: 








The one table they had was at least very awesome with custom Sentinel terrain. It came over from the US according to the Asmodee employee. 


Does anybody know who the guy on the right is? It's not Maximus, he's on the other side. There just wasn't any possibility to get a picture of the full art piece because there were always people standing in front of it. 
There were two more, one showing Blade, Ghost Rider and Moon Knight and one really awesome X-Men focused one. Again no chance to take good pictures of those. (None at all for the X-Men one). 






Star Wars Legion got a nice display under glass and four cool looking tables I didn't want to disturb in Demos. 

That was all for AMG focused stuff and the rest of the images here will just be random photos I took mostly of minis I found cool. Enjoy (or don't I'm not your mom 😅)! 

Tomorrow I'll try to get a stats article about WTC out. 
Cheers from Germany 🍻 
























Good sale, but I already own all these models and was staying strong not to get duplicates. 




Comments

  1. DomotoOctober 26, 2025 at 9:55 PM

    Seems like a fun time was had. That custom sentinel Terrain table is super cool. I believe the Inhumans art is showing Ahura Boltagon, Blackbolt and Medusa's son

    https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Ahura_Boltagon_(Earth-616)

    Thanks for the write-up and overview!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. SGP SörenOctober 26, 2025 at 9:59 PM

      Thanks 🙏 yes it seems to be Ahura. If he's coming to the game to that's an extremely deep cut. I even read some Inhumans comics and absolutely never heard of him...

      Delete

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