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Every October, the German city of Essen becomes the epicenter of tabletop gaming geekdom. Tens of thousands of visitors descend on the International Spieltage fair, where publishers from around the world debut their up-and-coming releases over four frantic days of dice chucking, card shuffling, and cube pushing.

For gamers, it’s an enthralling, bewildering, almost intimidating spectacle. Where gaming events in other countries, like Gen Con in the US or the UK Games Expo, incorporate celebrity guests, panel discussions, and side attractions, Essen is focused squarely on the games—everything from light and fluffy family favourites to impenetrable brain-melters.

Given that it’s the highlight of the global gaming calendar, I headed along for a barrage of board games and bratwurst. Here are the best new games I saw.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 2

Matt Leacock & Rob Daviau, Z-Man Games, 2-4 players, 60 minutes, age 14+

In 2015, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 took the core of the best-selling cooperative game Pandemic and added a story-driven campaign mode, creating a game world that changed permanently in reaction to player choices. Cities fell into anarchy, characters suffered trauma, and secret components and rule changes were revealed at key points in the unfolding narrative.

Now the game’s creators are back with Pandemic Legacy: Season 2, with some big changes to discover. Where Season 1 took place in a present-day setting, the new release is set in a post-apocalyptic future where sea-based colonies of survivors battle to preserve the remnants of human civilization. The board starts out largely empty, with players adding new areas to its map as they explore. And where Season 1’s characters were carefully designed to perform specific in-game tasks, the new game offers players the chance to build their heroes from scratch, starting out with a blank, RPG-style character sheet and customising their abilities as they go.

I enjoyed Season 1 immensely, but with hindsight I can see that its storyline, while twisty and engaging, often felt like it was running on rails. I’ll need to play quite a few games of the new release to see exactly how different its approach is, but on first inspection there’s enough here to make me very excited.

Disclosure: Game co-designer Matt Leacock once paid for the use of some of my photography.

A Handful of Stars

Martin Wallace, Treefrog Games, 2-4 players, 90-120 minutes, age 13+





The third in a series of deck-building board games by Martin Wallace, A Handful of Stars casts players as leaders of civilizations fighting for control of a war-torn galaxy. As you play, you’ll explore new worlds, develop powerful technologies, and fight to snatch territory from your rivals. You start the game with a handful of cards that let you move your ships or populate planets. But they also serve to boost your firepower in battle, which makes for some tricky decisions about which ones to play and which to keep in your hand for use in combat. You’ll add new cards to your deck as you colonise worlds and research technologies, becoming steadily more powerful as the game progresses.

The most striking thing about my brief demo was just how much variety the game packs into its setup. You’ll distribute planets randomly across the board and place impassable black holes at different points throughout the cosmos, restricting movement and ensuring that players start butting heads against one another from the word “go.” There are also a variety of factions to command, from hyper-aggressive warriors to peace-loving diplomats and technologically advanced cyborgs.

It all adds up to a hostile and unpredictable universe—and one that I could happily spend hours exploring.

Merlin

Stefan Feld and Michael Rieneck, Queen Games, 2-4 players, 75 minutes, age 14+





Designer Stefan Feld is known for his “point salad” approach to game-making, where players earn points for just about every conceivable action; the challenge lies in finding the most efficient way to maximise your score. Merlin, Feld’s latest release, continues the trend. With King Arthur reaching the end of his reign, players take on the role of knights vying to succeed him. To win, you’ll need to defeat traitors in the kingdom, grow your political influence, and construct buildings across the realm.

The game revolves around a circular track in the center of the board, where each player places a wooden knight. Each round sees you roll dice, which you can use to move your token, performing different actions depending on the space you land on. This means that the order in which you use your dice becomes all-important, although you’ll also be able to move a white figure representing Merlin once per round. While your knight is restricted to moving clockwise, Merlin can move in either direction, granting you a bit of flexibility.

The game’s Arthurian theme may end up buried under the abstract mechanical core, but if you’re a fan of Feld’s signature style of design, this is a thoughtful and engaging brain-teaser.

Transatlantic

Mac Gerdts, PD-Verlag, 2-4 players, 60-120 minutes, age 12+

I hadn’t heard anything about Transatlantic before heading to Essen, but the buzz in the halls and the long queues of people waiting for a demo suggested it was worth checking out. An economic game of rival shipping lines, Transatlantic sees players battling to build prestigious and profitable fleets in the age of mighty steamships.

The action takes place across multiple regions, with players buying ship cards and deploying them to various oceans. The result is a set of simultaneous arms races, with players adding newer, bigger, faster and more expensive vessels throughout the game and older ships disappearing from the board as they’re rendered obsolete.

You’ll also have to secure coal, build trading stations in different regions and compete to make the fastest Atlantic crossing. It’s a lot to keep on top of, but while there’s some real complexity to the game, it’s cleverly masked by a brilliantly simple turn structure where players choose a single action card from their hands and do whatever it says—buy ships, acquire coal, construct trade posts, send vessels on voyages. Once you’ve played cards, they’re out of your hand until you spend a turn to pick them up again, meaning that it’s critical to time your actions for maximum effect.

Transatlantic is a fantastic combination of strategic planning and short-term opportunism. My hour-long game seemed to fly by, keeping me completely engaged from beginning to end. This was my favourite game of Spiel 2017.

Listing image by Owen Duffy