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Germans love board gaming in a way we could never match in the US or Britain—and the four-day Internationale Spieltage in Essen reflects this fanaticism. For four days every October, the hordes descend on this western German city by the hundreds of thousands, numbers that totally eclipse the likes of Gen Con or even San Diego’s Comic Con.

This year, more than 174,000 avid gamers, designers, publishers, and vendors showed up for the 33rd Essen Spiel. Exhibitors from 50 countries brought with them an estimated 1,200 (!) new games to show, indies nestling cheek by jowl with major companies like Asmodee, Pegasus, and Hans im Glück.

The scale of the enterprise is hard to put into words, but the crowds—not always made up of the traditional gamer types one might find elsewhere—are overwhelming. Buzz games from small developers sell out on the first day; big-name European game designers are treated like bespectacled rock stars, signing copies of their latest games (or in the case of the prolific Uwe Rosenberg, his two latest games).

American companies like Fantasy Flight are handsomely represented, too, but this isn't the main festival for fans of theme-heavy “Ameritrash” (the school of games most desperately in need of a rebrand). Instead, Essen feels like a treasure box full to the brim of so-called “Eurogames”—games which emphasize interlocking mechanics with a lighter dusting of theme tacked on afterwards. No place on earth is better than the halls of the Essen Messe for gamers who want to shunt brightly coloured wooden bits from one part of a board to another.

So Ars flew over to brave Essen’s crowds (and festival food) to bring you the definitive report on the hottest games of Spiel 2016.

A Feast For Odin

Z-Man Games, 1-4 players, 100-120 mins, 12+

One of Germany's most revered gaming auteurs, designer Uwe Rosenberg is responsible for evergreen titles like Agricola, Le Havre, and Caverna. After skipping last year, he's back at Essen with two games, one big and one little. Odin is definitely the big one, with a box the size and weight of a child's coffin, priced at a hefty €70 ($77) including show discount!

Vikings were the theme of the festival, but Rosenberg’s take on their culture was by far the most popular. English-language copies of the game were few and far between, but this one plays like a total Norse conquest simulator, with hundreds of components and several trees’ worth of cards and cardboard in each box. Players hunt, harvest, mine, refine, and build up their home islands before constructing ships, going a-raiding and stripping the mainland of all of its loot. There are dice, meeples, multiple player boards, action cards, cardboard tetronimos—the works. And from what I hear, even the solo game is itself deeply satisfying.

Terraforming Mars

FryxGames, 1-5 players, 90-120 mins, 12+

One of the most buzzworthy releases of the whole show, this title sold out by 3pm on the first day—a whole hour before Ars even arrived. The one table that FryxGames ran with a playable copy was booked every day. Fortunately, Ars US staffers already got their grubby little hands on the title and gave it a thorough—and hugely positive—review.

You're playing as a futuristic global megacorp attempting, as the title suggests, to terraform Mars. Your tools are lots of plastic cubes, which track your resources and which are traded to in for asset cards, which get you more cubes. (The game is a total engine-builder.) Though the art isn’t terribly exciting, this is a terrific thinky Eurogame of interlocking systems and finding the most efficient ways to exchange one set of numbers for a higher set of numbers.

Mombasa

Eggertspiele, 2-4 players, 75-150 mins, 12+

Another designer game, this time from Alexander Pfister, Mombasa actually came out in 2015. We mention it here, however, because it won the Essen prize for game of the year.

Mombasa is an ingenious game of trading across the African continent, everywhere from Cape Town to Cairo to (of course) Mombasa itself. There's a clever stock market in which players invest in different goods and companies, and a lot of counters keeping track of a lot of charts, several of which vary considerably from game to game. The mechanics include a smart card-retrieval system which rewards careful forward planning.

There's an enormous amount going on here, perhaps too much for some tastes, and this is on the heavier side for Eurogames. (Be warned that there's a lot of teaching time before you can set off with your first caravan, and there's a decent amount of bookkeeping in store, too.) One for people who prefer their satisfaction delayed—and who have a large table.

Inis

Matagot, 2-4 players, 60-90 minutes, 14+

Our vote for the most aesthetically striking game of the whole convention, Inis is an inhumanly gorgeous game of area control and card drafting. You play as Celtic tribes vying for rulership of new lands through an elegant system of card-based conquest, migration, and colonisation.

Matagot games always provide a beautiful combination of visual pleasure and elegant crunch, but with Inis, the company has truly hit its peak. The first arresting element are the board modules—jagged, vaguely triangular jigsaw pieces which fit attractively and seamlessly together—but it's the vivid card art that makes it all so special. Irish mythology—which is thematically underused in gaming in general—gets cast here in the lushest new light.

Mechanically, the game is something special too, finding depth in a simple system of 17 action cards which allow players to fight, colonize, and grow settlements alongside Celtic gods. We cannot recommend this one highly enough.

The Oracle of Delphi

Pegasus Spiele, 2-4 players, 70-100 minutes, 12+

Perhaps best described as “The 12 Tasks of Hercules: Part 2,” The Oracle of Delphi is one of those fun little games that rewards players with scoring opportunities. This design from Stefan Feld—the force behind classics like The Castles of Burgundy—sees you playing as a group of mortals vying for Zeus' personal invitation to Mount Olympus. Players have to scoot around an endlessly modular Aegean, raising statues, building sanctuaries, and currying favour with the gods.

In typical Feld style, this one is a “point salad,” a game with an abundance of victory points and ways to earn them. Each turn, players throw oracle dice, the colours of which determine which actions can be taken. This is a game of opportunity rather than of denial; the trick is learning to roll with fate and make the most of your options from round to round. The usual flimflam—like upgrades and companions and divine favour—make for a decently exciting midweight package.