SPIEL 26 | Diese EXPERTENSPIELE solltest du im Blick haben (inkl. Geheimtipp!)

0:28 So, hello and a warm welcome. It's great that you're tuning in. In just about a week, Spiel 2026 kicks off, and you're surely curious about what expert games are out there that you should have on your radar, take a look at, and be aware of if you're into the expert gaming scene. And it's quite funny. I feel a bit like I'm before my diploma exam. I'm actually quite well prepared, but I feel like I still need to research a thousand other things to be able to give you even more and better information. And I just hope that, uh, well, that I'll manage to give you a good overview. And the thing with expert games is always a bit tricky— just to say beforehand: for experts who play expert games, a lot is simply very easy because they know so many concepts . And then they play a game and say: " This might just be a connoisseur game for me, but definitely not an expert game." I'm more on the other side there , where I say, no, no, no, no, no, you're fooling yourself, you know so much, you're familiar with it. But when people are just coming from "Catan," have just played "Wingspan," just played "Cascadia," then for them, what you call an advanced connoisseur game is already truly an expert game, because there's so much going on, you have to understand so much, and you can't even really look at the player boards properly. But I naturally want to reach everyone, which is why today there will be a video about games that I think are truly expert games. So, definitely on the heavy side, but that's just the flow. There will also be a video on advanced connoisseur games. That will cover the slightly more challenging connoisseur games, and

1:59 then another video on normal connoisseur games that are more at the level of Cascadia and Wingspan. So I definitely want to reach everyone with that. But I generally want to reach everyone. Accordingly, feel free to write in the comments below while you're watching the video: what else do you want to see? If you really want to see something about two-player games, definitely want to see something about cooperative games, or definitely want to see something about solo games, then write that in the comments, because there isn't much time left. I can only do one video or stream about it each day. I’m just not managing to film, edit, and upload the videos right now. That’s why I'm doing this as a stream instead. It’ll be a bit longer, but hopefully you know and like that. But please let me know your thoughts. Then I can adjust my plans accordingly, or if you say, yeah, it's all exciting. Tell us what you're really looking forward to. I'd be happy to make a video about those for you, of course.

2:45 As I said, please feel free to let me know. And I’ve divided this video a bit into expert games that I still have on my watchlist. That’s exactly where we’ll start. These are generally expert games that I don't have here yet , haven't played yet, and in some cases , haven't even requested myself; I just see that they exist. Maybe I'll take a closer look, maybe not. We'll just see, and I’ll also tell you what my top picks are, and there's another side to this as well. There are always purists who say, no, that’s not a new game, it's been out for two months already. A new game is only a new game if it comes out at the Spiel fair. And this video isn't actually just for people deep in the hobby who just want to uncover one insider tip after another that they haven't heard of, because if you're in the hobby, you're well informed. The video is meant for people who are already well into it, know their way around, maybe haven't seen everything yet, but also if you say: "Man, I love to play, but in the last year, six months, summer, family, I just haven't had time, but now it's Spiel, I'm going there, and I want to pick up something cool." I want to reach those people too , and there are many who say, yeah, English games are all well and good, but I prefer it when they're in German so I can read a German rulebook and my fellow players can play in German.

4:05 That’s why some major releases that I think have been out for a year but are now coming out in German will definitely be in this video, and I don't want to talk about what might be in here, but just show you what is in here. I've tried to sort them a little bit by complexity. Kingdom Come Deliverance the Board Game. That is mega hot. A lot of people are super curious about it. Especially those, of course, who played the computer game. I have not done that. As some of you might know, I've been completely out of the loop with computer games for about 20 years or even longer; I played something like Slayer's Spy and stuff, but otherwise, it's just completely passed me by. The game is by Vlada Chvátil and Thomas Schollek. And here you can see the, well, it won't be exactly cheap, it will also be a giant box and yeah, basically you can see here already, right, an epic adventure game, rich storyline and quests, award-winning game designers, right?

4:57 Chvátil also made Mage Knight, among others, which many hope it has some elements of. Codenames, a thousand different, well, a lot of different things, and Thomas Schollek, for instance, has done things like, here you can see, 80 minutes per player. I think, I mean, on some 18xx it says 5 hours, and I assume they mean 5 hours per player, but otherwise, I haven't seen 80 minutes per player before. For that reason alone, we are in the expert range here. There isn't much visual material of it yet. This here is a relatively poor photo of the back of the box. In principle, we walk around, well, we are just like a citizen, like a human living their life, and we wander through the Kingdom of Bohemia and can hunt boars, collect flowers for a wedding, get our clothes dirty in the process, and then have to wash them.

5:47 There is a hype around this game from the fanbase. I do not belong to that group. I watched some gameplay of it. I found it terribly boring. But I will get it at the Spiel fair from Czech Games, also in German. That means, depending on how much prep time it needs, we will show it to you at the post-Spiel event, at the post-post-Spiel, because Chef is coming over on Saturday and he will stay until next Thursday. That means after the Nachspiel, our event after Spiel, where we spend a week playing all sorts of new releases, maybe it will hit the table then, but it could be that it's a bit too big for that, but just a quick note there, okay? You can also see below regarding the October Patreon, there are only 13 patrons left until we reach our preliminary goal of 333 patrons. There will also be a vote every day of the follow-up play, where you can then vote on which game we should bring to the table the next day or in the coming days. We will then try to prepare that. That means you can also steer the content a bit, and especially with the games here— because we will have to prepare them intensely, and so, ideally, we will show you one of them every day; that's not unrealistic, but you can have a say in what should actually be shown if you are a Patreon supporter. Thanks again to everyone who has become one in the last few days, and yes, so I am, uh, naturally curious and interested, as I am with every game I don't know. It can only positively surprise me because I don't expect anything from it, but I believe it will definitely resonate strongly with fans of the game, the original that is. Then, Karl von Line.

7:08 That's a game that, when you first look at it—and I haven't found much gameplay material yet—it seems a bit like Darwin's Journey to me in terms of the overall gameplay, just different, but I think the author has played a fair bit of Darwin's Journey. It is a game, and for the first time I've actually made a few notes, where the new exciting part is this lens system. When I take an action, I place my lens on an action space, and then I perform the action either once with the level one lens, twice with the level two lens , or three times with the level three lens, and the level three lens then, to my knowledge, blocks that action space for the next round. And then I have to see: I can also upgrade the lenses so that I can perform certain actions a bit better with these lenses. That is definitely the absolute catch of the game, and then it is, of course, interconnected. We have, for example, the shared garden, where we have a majority competition. So I'm not just playing solitarily by myself. We have a library, which is a small movement puzzle where you have to figure out how to navigate through it and get your points. You can convert research into books to generate permanent yields from them. But as I said, the key element of the game will, I believe, be this lens system. When do I take which action?

8:13 Once, twice, three times. Doing an action three times sounds powerful, of course, but just like in a good Lacerda or similar, it will likely need to be prepared so that I can actually do that . Then I have to see how I prepare that and make sure I get everything I need, and then I see, well, it goes here, here, and here. The annoying thing with many games is just—well, Spartacus, if you don't know what people are talking about—there are always other players who block things you wanted to go for yourself, and then the plan doesn't work out at all. Then you need, as Flo says about Ruda, not just a Plan A; you need a Plan B and a Plan C. I'm really looking forward to the game. I'm curious. I've also recently ranked all the Euros that I've played during this time. Many of them simply ended up here in my—collection. That’s also another honest assessment of this year’s batch. I also think many of the games I'm going to introduce to you in this video and the next two will be entertaining, they'll be good. Whether they are games that will eventually end up on the shelf where my Pax, an Arkwright, a Staus Buer, a John Company , or an Age of Steam, or an Innovation sits. So, the really good, established classics. I have my doubts about many, I don't know, I’m happy to be surprised, but they all look like nice, good games. I really want to get every single one of these on the table and try them out. But what will stand the test of time, we'll have to see. That's also a point where some people complain , saying, "Yeah, well, played a game two or three times, then the next one comes along, always something new." Hm.

9:31 And sure, some people only want games they can play 100, 500 times, but others say: "Hey, that's a new game, it looks appealing, I want to try it out, play it two or three times." I had two or three nice evenings with it, hopefully. And then, of course, you get something new because there's just such a huge selection, but I compare it to going to the movies, right? You go to the cinema once, watch a movie once. Usually, if there are four of you, you spend money on four movie tickets, four times for popcorn, maybe soda, then you're at over € 100 and you've had one evening. And here you can play it multiple times, and then just sell it again and try something new. Actually, I don't think it's that bad with board games. Comparable leisure activities are just as expensive or even more so, and you don't have to play every game 100 times; you can definitely part with games too. It's not that bad, I can tell you. Then Prestige, I already had that on the table here. Accordingly, you see a photo of it here, but let's go back for a moment. This is a game that ran through crowdfunding at Skellig. It was also an in-house development of theirs. And now my thing is gone. Exactly. Um, yes, it's basically a construction game where we build a castle. So, if you like building things up, then this could be your kind of thing. Bam, now it's all a bit mixed up. But here you can see the game board. You see your estate in the top right, though the picture is a bit blurry. You really have to build the building itself first, and in many games that's the end, but here you can also do the interior finishing. You

11:02 really want to build a beautiful castle , and for that, you need builders, you need plasterers, you need people who can lay the floors. You have to make sure you're active here on the market so that you move forward to get more resources. Um, where you can fulfill various orders up here. You have workers, sort of like supervisors, that you can place, who then go to the different actions, and depending on where you place them, you can perform actions of varying strength. The exciting thing is that at the end of the round, this entire track is pushed together, taken, and placed at the bottom in the turn order. That means if you perhaps do the strong actions at the very back three times in one round and say, "Wow, great, I was able to do some really cool stuff," you'll be late in the next round, and maybe you can't do such cool stuff anymore, or all the cool things are gone from the offer.

11:51 You play, I think, for five years with four seasons each, and you have about four or five actions per season. It takes a long time just because you have so incredibly many actions. And Stefan from Skellig, who was here—thanks again for that—told me as much. Uh, so we could have just played all the games that we played while he was here, or with setting it up, learning it, explaining it, and playing, you're easily looking at three or four hours. But if you, you know, then you have all your dudes here that you can gradually improve over time. So yeah, if you say, I like building games, I like games where I can, you know, set things up exactly how I want, then this could definitely be something for you. According to BoardGameGeek, it has a weight rating of 4.0, although that’s probably just from one single vote. That’s what I thought. I think it’s just now starting to be delivered to the Kickstarter backers. But again, if you say you like the setting and everything, then definitely take a look at it. Then we have expert games, maybe even this week, it's Monday today, the week is just getting started, and uh, some games are already here, and a few games are on their way. I just had to move one game to the other list. I hope it doesn’t fall off now, because just arrived is Diabolis, a game that is super pretty and that I’m very excited to try out. It’s by Danny Garcia, and yeah, it was actually still on the other list, but now it’s definitely here and will hopefully get played this week. If I want to do a stream like today every day for you, that takes a lot of time to prepare,

13:22 you should never underestimate that, and then you still have to play, you have to learn things, and you have to prepare for the fair next week. There’s a lot to do, but I’m really looking forward to it. I’m also really looking forward to the Spiel fair, though not so much for the games, because I already have a lot of exciting stuff here. Of course, I’ll still discover some new things before then. Above all, I’m really looking forward to seeing you there and talking to you a lot. So if you’re there, feel free to come to the community meetup. We’ll be at Pegasus every day from 1:30 PM to 2:00 PM. We’ll be at Meet and Play on Saturday at 2:00 PM. That means if you’re at Spiel, you can definitely meet us there. Due to time constraints, there probably won't be any further community meetups beyond that, maybe another one on Thursday, but that is the place where you can find us and I'm also happy if you meet us while we're out and about, you know? Well, me especially, I mean, I can't speak for them, but I think it's similar for them. Feel free to approach us, feel free to say hello if you want to chat with us. So, what's coming up this week? For one, Bean to Bar, and this is the story I was referring to.

14:17 With some games, you can't really say yet: Is this expert, is it a demanding hobbyist game, an advanced hobbyist game, or is it a normal hobbyist game? With Bean to Bar, just with its 180- minute playtime, for me that definitely falls more into the expert category, because it's not something that I would put in front of people when I'm at the game store, people I would otherwise play Wingspan or Meadow with—a 3-hour game that will probably take even a bit longer in the first session. There have already been comments. Is it a Food Chain Magnate light? I don't see that in there at all. It's more in the vein of Darwin's Journey for sure, where we also simply have a board here. It's about chocolate production and we can basically come to an agreement directly with the coffee traders here. We can become good customers there, we can get better yields—what do I mean, yields —better prices. Uh, we can then get these coffee, these cocoa beans, and produce various chocolate items from them. We have this here, right, this " in the vein of Darwin" aspect, this grid where we can move forward and then choose actions. We have a time track mechanic: certain actions cost us time.

15:28 If we run out of time, we can't take any more actions. That means you really have to plan exactly when I do what, when I go to the market, when I produce which things, you know, how do I do the whole thing? You also have a trend bar here; you can see what's currently trending, what's in high demand. Here you can then place your various, um, shops where you can then also sell the items directly. Or rather, shops. So, I think it will ultimately settle into the advanced hobbyist to lower expert range in terms of its actual difficulty level, but I'm definitely super excited about it. It says so right here, right? The German cover looks a bit different, right? You can see it here. Bean to Bar , so from the bean to the chocolate bar , and we almost played that yesterday. We were just one person too many, so we brought a few other very entertaining things to the table. Feel free to watch yesterday's stream, but I'm really looking forward to that one. It sounds, well, chocolate is unfortunately right up my alley. I wish it weren't so. My threshold for that is practically non-existent, but I'm excited about it.

16:26 I've already set that one up, too. It looked manageable. I'm curious to see how complex the whole thing really is. But let's just be surprised. Yes, Diables, I just showed it, a Danny Garcia game. With Danny Garcia games, it's often the case that they seem shallower at first than they actually are because the basic mechanics are simple and intuitive. When you play it, you realize, wait, no, that's linked to this, and that's linked to that. There's definitely a lot more to it. I mean Barcelona, I don't know what rating it has here. I suspect it's too low, but I've already played a few rounds where I realized: "No, no, no, 3.36, that might...no." It is much more interconnected and demands much more from the players than this weight rating suggests. And Diables, well, has this theme of some—I think they are Spanish—fireworks displays, where we then, well, you can see it a bit in the photo, where we basically have our action board...well, our player board is an action board, where the different spectators here on the edge, um, they basically give us a kind of action option that we can perform. But we're dancing through this crowd,,you know, breathing fire and setting off fireworks. That means these spectators are also passing by us. Our actions change every round and we have to see what we're doing. We also always have to give them some fireworks if we want to send them out or off. Depending on which fireworks they have, they have them here, right? Also, as you know from current games, not much of a mini-game, but four different action deployment spaces, uh, where we can

17:57 place them. And there, too, it always depends on which fireworks they have. I have to see: How do I get the fireworks ? How do I even get the workers? How do I ensure that workers are always moving up? How do I manage to win this scoring here? There is also a fair amount of interaction, which is why it should be a bit better with more people, because these scores are influenced by the players themselves. What might bother some people, though it is quite in line with the cultural background of the game, is that you have a social media track here where you can take photos with spectators, and you can get some crazy bonuses or advantages and points for that. Some might say, "Social media and mobile photos aren't for me," but it's a traditional thing that's being brought into the modern age, and naturally, they are happy and thrive on people paying attention and reporting on it via social media. And that is simply a connection between tradition and modernity that I find quite interesting, and I am really looking forward to the game. In any case, it says 120 minutes on it, so it will take a while. I hope we can get it to the table this week—and for me, the week lasts until next Monday—but the cover alone really excites me. The gameplay sounds interesting. It sounded more like a classic "we move up tracks, we take certain actions," you know, like the ones you often see. I still enjoy those, especially if they have that little twist and feel just a bit different. We will get to that in a moment; there are a few of them, but it definitely looks super beautifully illustrated, right? It was painted and drawn by the studio Amelia Sales,

19:28 really magnificent. And yeah, I hope it arrives this week. It is supposed to be sent by Pegasus. I received a package from Pegasus last week, which unfortunately didn't contain Recall but instead Res, which we played yesterday. That was also entertaining, but it doesn't appear in this video. Recall is essentially the successor to Revive. I haven't played it yet because I decided to just wait for the German version when it comes out from Pegasus. That's also a bit more interesting for you all . And I read through many comments about it, and they were very mixed. Some people said it's much better than Revive. Others said, nah, it's nice, but Recall is clearly, um, the weaker game and they just like Revive a lot more. Uh, some said you can easily have both side-by-side because they are actually quite different. Others thought, nah, they are actually very similar. I am going to choose it. I will hopefully get it on the table this week. If you want, you can of course already watch a lot of content about it because the game came out in English a year ago, but I’m excited for it, because it is, well, I think in that sense it will be similar to Revive. You will simply be able to fire off a combo machine. You’ll build it up bit by bit, and then you’ll make an upgrade here, have an improvement there, expand a bit further here, advance on the track here, and then do something, and then you say, okay, now I do this, that , that, bam. That is always a lot of fun and is something that really gets me, of course. I certainly liked Recall ...Revive a lot, and Recall will definitely hit the table as soon as it arrives. In case of doubt, it also has a solo mode, so I hope I find the time

20:59 to get it all to the table. Otherwise, there are still a few weeks after Spiel , after the post-Spiel, after the post-post-Spiel, after Essen, and before the Christmas season. So the year is actually almost over, but I’m definitely super excited about that. Then we have Grinville, and that is a bit of a hidden gem that isn't really a hidden gem anymore. It has spread around quite a lot that Grinville is a thing, and I’m curious to see to what extent it really is a thing. You might have never heard of it. It is by Rudi Pritenski. He developed it completely himself. He did the artwork himself. He wrote the rules. He developed the game, he did the crowdfunding. It really is a complete one-man project, and that’s the game set up. It is, above all, an interactive game, a city-building game.

21:46 We are all building a city together, and in this city, we have residents lying in front of us who want to move in, they want certain things, they might want a lot of trees, they might want a kindergarten, and those who all need a kindergarten also settle somehow in the same vicinity. We have to develop new plots there. We might have to build that infrastructure there. When other people use this infrastructure, we get some kind of money for it, a cut, or points. I still have to play it. It's already here, too . I hope we can play it tomorrow evening. Then you can watch us play live. I hope it works well with two players so we can get an impression of it, and, yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. As I said, this is an absolute one-man project. There aren't many copies left of it either. If you want to know which game you really need to run to on Thursday morning because it will simply be sold out and won't be available again anytime soon, then it's actually Grinval. To my knowledge, there will be remaining stock at the Spiel fair, and it will be sold out by 10:30 AM on Thursday. I would swear on that. That means if you say, wow, right ? Interactive city building, and also this action rondel here—although it's not an action rondel, it's more of a time track mechanic. I always have to move forward, and I sometimes have to spend more time for an action, but I can use money to reduce that time again so I don't have to move as many steps.

23:06 But of course, I need money on all sorts of levels. I haven't played it, I've only read up on it, watched videos about it, and read a few comments. I personally really like this time track mechanic. It's one of my favorite mechanics, if you disregard all those standard deck-building and worker placement things. And, well, I just think city building is a cool concept. I always really like interaction. In Food Chain Magnate, we also interactively build up a city a little bit. This will be completely different from Food Chain Magnate, but it does have interaction. I'm curious how big the interaction is here, whether it ultimately just consists of building things and getting money when other people use them, or if it goes a step further. We will most likely see that over the course of this week. I hope as early as tomorrow evening. It depends a bit on how it fits into the schedule, but I'm definitely up for it, and it's definitely something I'm very much looking forward to. It's also a game that, well, I'm curious about. Vincent has already played it, and he said, yeah, it's pretty cool, not super outstanding, but just a nice game. I will definitely try to play that two or three times in a row right away. I also , you know, Heavy Cardboard played it too and they are very taken with it, very enthusiastic. We also said it can play out very differently depending on the setup, how the players interact, and how some players grasp certain key elements of the game in their first session. So, I can imagine that you could also struggle a lot with it. I can also imagine that it might not be as big a deal as everyone is making it out to be right now, you know? I mean, I have no idea. But one viewer, who basically brought it to my attention because she mentioned it again and again, saying what a great game it is —someone who has also played A of 7

24:37 —she said it's her highlight of the year, so that’s why I'm already curious about it. I'm going to test that out tomorrow and then see how big the hype really is. You will also find out, because there will naturally be more "played" videos, and I will report my impressions to you then. We can also take a look at it live, uncut, unedited , and authentic. Then, there is the significantly larger list of expert games that I have already played. That means if you watch the content on this channel, you will have already seen most of it. But at the very end, there will be another secret tip, where I'm not yet sure if it belongs in this video or the next one, but we will choose. It just came in brand new and hot, and um, it comes after that; I pushed it to the very back. First of all, I played Wireless, also a game where it's not yet clear where it will fall, so I think it will land somewhere around 3.5. Whether it lands at a 3.3 or 3.6 in terms of weight rating on BGG , I can't say yet, but we just played it about 3 or 4 days ago. I tried it out with Ragen. A game that is set at the beginning of the 19th. Century, beginning or end of the 19th. Century, beginning of the 20th. Century, uh, where it’s about us essentially discovering the world through radio stations and radio towers, and thereby being able to improve global communication more and more. And this is once the game board. It's just another one of those games where, when you play it, you think, well, the individual actions aren't actually that complicated, because you have the

26:08 option on your board to build a radio tower that can send out either modulated or unmodulated signals. You can send out signals here, or send out modulated signals, or get some money, or you can perform a retrieval move to unlock your actions again, which is a bit of a catch in this game. You can see this is upside down because my player board here looks very rudimentary. Um, Ragner has action discs here, and if he wanted to activate this right–I unfortunately don't have any pointers here right now, so I can't show you–but if he wanted to activate this track and take an action because he wants to build a radio station, he can't, because there's no action marker here, and there are three action markers lying here. That means if Ragner wants to activate this action now to send out radio signals, it costs one money, then he has to place this marker down there in his personal supply, and he can perform the action two more times. But it gets more expensive each time because there are fewer action markers left. And sometimes you can also get these tycoon action markers here from the board. Those aren't really action markers, they're just permanent markers that stay there, so you have to pay less money when you want to take the actions, and especially here on the right track, the radio tower building is split in two. That means whenever I want to take the upper action, it's already very expensive. The more tycoon tiles I've placed there, the cheaper it becomes. I built so many there that at some point I could just place a normal action disc and still perform the action very cheaply, but only once per retrieval move. And with the retrieval move, it’s like this: you can place markers there again, but only as many as you have factories. Factories are

27:38 really difficult to get, and you also have to place one of these round markers here on the board down here at the same time. There's an area where you can place them, and then you can get these factories. You can somehow get upgrades here so that you can have more action slots. So it's great to place things there. The only problem with that is, once again, that we have these goals here. Certain countries that I have reached must receive my radio signals, and if I manage to reach all these countries here, I get six points for every marker still lying here. But every time I make a recovery move to unlock my action again, I have to remove one of those markers, and that really hurts. We were both down to two markers by the end. There are still some markers printed on it sometimes, and then there are these multiplier tracks that we completely misunderstood in our first game. I had a massive multiplier of zero. That wasn't so great, but it was good; it was catchy.

28:27 There were a few, well, we were kindly accompanied by the editor and head of the publishing house on the stream; he was watching along. There were always little things where he would say, "We have to do it this way," or "It's actually a bit different." Although the rules themselves aren't complicated, they are, well, "fiddly" is somehow the wrong word, but you definitely need a game or two until you've truly internalized them. So, after the game, I said that was a ton of fun. That was a great game. I, I think I also somehow , yeah, I think I lost quite significantly, but it was still fun. But I also said that I think I need two more games until I've really mastered it. And that is, um, yeah, some games you grasp instantly, but with this one, you need a game or two. The board isn't super pretty with all those boxes sitting around, but it was, definitely, there’s a lot of interconnectivity, but also a lot of new things in the action selection, how you develop actions and such—it definitely has a certain appeal. So, I like it a lot.

29:20 Flo really wanted to try it out too, because for some reason he found the theme very exciting. And I will definitely play it with him again, or play it myself. I have to see how it fits into the schedule, but it is definitely a neat thing. It will be released in German by Spiel Fable, and I liked it a lot. Wiescape will be published by Karma Games; I had that on my radar even before Berlin. It’s another game where it will be seen in the long run once a lot of people have it. Right now there are only 43 ratings and 69 comments, so we'll see where it really fits in. I think the 3.5 rating is actually pretty good. That will deviate by 0.2 up or down. More likely down, given how I know Bortenwie by now . Experts are always like that, where they rate things that are a bit more intuitive a bit lower, because it's a very simple concept that you already know. The exciting thing about Widescape is primarily, among other things, this action area—it’s not really just a rondel, but this action space in the middle—where I can go anywhere, for example to this sector here, and then say, great, I want to do this action now. I place my marker there. I can just go anywhere I want, and then I have that action; they cost me two energy, three energy, three energy, and I can perform them as often as I have energy. And I have, what, 1, 2, 3, 4—is it four, is it five? I can't see it very well, I think it's four action markers. I sometimes have these bio-energy markers somewhere else , too. You can't really see them here, these green discs, and I can spend those additionally. And then I can perform all these actions, as often as I can until I've spent all the energy there, and then I place the spent energy into the sector, into the sector

30:51 , into the sector. And in doing so, I naturally make the action spaces more interesting for the people I'm playing with, because they can then also take those powerful actions. I need land here, so it feels a bit like Ark Nova, but it plays very differently. I need specific landscape tiles, have to build different habitats in them, can attract animals, and can then establish them later on. I have various contracts I want to fulfill, for which I get certain benefits. I can get specialists who make certain actions in the game a bit better if I’ve settled specific habitats with the corresponding animals before the other people; they then take longer to be able to do it. And when you play the pro version, where you draft them beforehand, and you know what you’re playing towards, then it's quite exciting and you definitely have a lot to do. You have to keep an eye on a lot, just looking at all the scoring on the board, balancing my goals, the animals, the contracts, the rondel, and so on. In my opinion, it's expert-level, but for experts, it might be a bit too little; I don't know. But to say: "You know it all, it's all very simple," and yes, it’s not complicated, but it is a lot for someone who only knows Mischwald to take in at first. But you can still follow a relatively good plan. I enjoyed it, it was good, it was entertaining. If something about it appeals to you and you're wondering if you should check it out or not, I can only say: go look at it. It is entertaining and definitely fun to play . To what extent, you know, you then say it’s something for me. That is something everyone has to decide for themselves individually. I'm still keeping an eye on the stream on the side to see what's happening, but yes,

32:22 nice that you are all here. There are almost 100 people in the stream right now. Feel free to say hello if you aren't already here live and chatting away, so I can see who is watching. I would be very happy about that. Meanwhile, I'll quickly plug in the device so I can see everything you write out of the corner of my eye. Then 60 Below, the new Fister game is there too. I was just walking to the Spieleburg, still chewing on my sandwich, and someone approached me. Saying, "Cool Benjamin, thanks again for your videos.""Especially the Six Below one helped me out." I was unfortunately chewing a lot, but it was definitely a nice, cool conversation right in front of the Spieleburg. Uh yeah, I'm glad it helped, and there is a stream for it, a video for it. You can take a look. The new Fister-Prinz game, it has to be said, there are two authors, so you don't know who did how much. It was simply a co-design and yes , it is also crunchy. I liked it. There is a lot of Fister DNA in it, like how we have this market here where we can get various specialists and put them on our action board. Then we have this wallet symbol here, and if I were allowed to use a station here that is blocked by cards because I encountered some storms, I could get money accordingly, depending on how many of these symbols I have. We have a worker placement area here, or a game board, with various worker places and spots on it. The special thing here is definitely that we place a worker once, and then they are there, staying for

33:52 the rest of the game. Except for the rare action where I can somehow convert something, which some people have criticized, saying it’s about finding these meteorites, yet there’s only one spot where I can place a worker once and then that’s it. That might be thematically bothersome if you look at it that way, but while playing, it didn't bother me at all. Why should I be able to place someone there five times? I have enough other things to do . So, it certainly won’t fail because you don’t have enough to do. You can also, well, at the beginning you can only lay down three cards here. You then want to move this marker forward to unlock these boards, so to speak, and get rewards for it, to be able to play more cards. You have a deck of cards here. You don't have cards in hand that you play strategically, but rather you can always reveal cards. And there are sometimes these storm cards included that cover up actions on the board that you can't take, or maybe don't even want to take. But they also provide energy that you need to get cards, and you definitely want to have cards. The good thing about the cards is that you might have a pool of ten cards lying in front of you. In normal games, there's always a bit of competition, like "someone could take this from me," which is annoying. But here you just know these are mine, I can build them, I can also partially pay with them; they are mine, nobody can take them away. That puts me at ease for sure, while still having competition and rivalry in other areas of the game. I liked that a lot, too.

35:07 It’s crunchy. We played a game where everyone involved with the game was there—Alexander, Peter, and Tino were all there, making sure we did everything right—and I’m really looking forward to playing it again. I am looking forward to my next game. Whether this becomes more of a Great Western Trail or—level-wise maybe a bit above—more of a Blackout Hong Kong, only time will tell. I definitely want to play this a second time, but there are just so many games, all the ones in this video I'd like to play a few times. I really enjoyed it, including the card-reveal mechanic and the decision of whether I want these storms out of my deck, because I have station upgrades that let me remove them. If I do that, I can't do all the other nice things, and those are also pretty great. You can definitely live with these storms just fine, but yes, a lovely game; we played with three people and it worked wonderfully. That was a good one. Then there's Ponzi Scheme, which I feel like I played two years ago or so. But it was in the spring, I think, in February, March or so. The 4th. February, that's when I played it with Rimond, who was there.

36:13 And here you can see it set up on my table. And it's also, well, this existed as a game before. It is definitely a eurogame that is quite crunchy and certainly has a certain level of interaction, right? We play industrial corporations in the Meiji era in Japan, and we always have this market of workers up there where we have to—let me check that we are live —think about which worker of which color I want to take from the board up there to perform actions in the corresponding column. We have our personal board where we can expand our company, build factories, and advance our production chains. We can also eventually reset our actions, so to speak. But we have to make sure we do that at the right time to get the corresponding advantages and also manage the wages and everything else.

37:07 We really build our corporation as a small production chain. There are fleets that we can send around the place. That is a mechanic I didn't like at all on these markets. You can see that in the middle. It feels a bit like Smash Up, where we also always have a card like that. Where we can vie for various majorities. It's quite similar here. We can also, you know, when we fulfill the contracts, place our markers, and depending on who has the most strength there, it makes for a good story during the scoring phase. That means we have a bit of area control, area majority in a Eurogame at a reduced level, but it is definitely there and yes, that was definitely exciting. It is definitely an expert game with an interlocking expert action and cost system. And what is especially exciting is not just that we have complicated individual actions–they are not that complicated, they are actually all relatively simple–, but we have to see: Which worker path do we choose, how do we pay the salaries, how do we handle the majorities, how do we expand our production so that everything somehow adds up, everything works, and everything works better than for the other people. That was definitely good, too. I think there are also various game groups that want to bring it to the table again. You can definitely play it well. And if you also like, let's say, classic crunchy interlocking Euros and you also say, wow, this Japan theme really appeals to me, then it is definitely a thing that can bring you a lot of fun. Feel free to watch the Let's Play for it. Rimund is practically working a bit for the publisher or working on the game a bit as a hobby. He also, I think, did a bit of work on the rules and was therefore

38:37 able to explain the game well, and uh, accordingly, the stream should hopefully convey a quite good picture of the game. You now also know where you can find it on the 4th. April and 4th. February of the year. You can just take a look, maybe I will post that in the comments later as well. We have to see about that. Then we have Avalon the Rivenveil. I will probably shoot a paid preview video for that today. Keep that in mind, but I am only doing it because I received it that way. There is indeed a crowdfunding campaign. I told the guys, I think it's cool, I'd like to create some content for it, and um, here you can see the game set up. It's an area control game, that I have to zoom out. Uh, what fascinates me most about the game, what I find good, is the card management. I need these cards that I have on so many levels in the game. I need them to take my action. I need them to pay for the action. I need them to bid on creatures with them. I have to have the right cards in my hand or prepared at the right time, and then also perform the appropriate actions to spread out on this board. The combat system is also card-driven with a push-your-luck mechanic, but one that you can also control very strongly yourself. has a certain combat strength . I can pick up combat cards during the round, and if I take a lot of combat cards, I can perform fewer other actions. Even though I only have three actions per round anyway. We only play two rounds in the basic version, and that sounds like very little, but it is absolutely sufficient. The long version with three rounds is also quite intense

40:08 , and I really have to get the most out of these cards. And in these battles, I can practically play my cards, which gives me a certain combat strength that I can achieve in addition to what I already have from my units and buildings. And then I can reveal cards from the deck, and I just have to stay below the value I set or reach it, and then I get that as extra combat strength on top. I also have cards called Battle Plans, which define this value. They also grant me certain prerequisites or special abilities in combat, depending on whether I win or lose, or if my opponent does certain things; if I lose a fight, I can move my units elsewhere and still influence the outcome. It is a combat system that I am starting to like more and more now that I have played it several times, and I like it better than, well, there is Camet, Camot also has a card-based combat system or this two-person thing, and so on. Just forget about that. That is child's play compared to what is in here. It is, on a..., well, it is really good and becomes more fun for me with every game. What you...and the entire game board is also essentially reset after every round, which I also like, because that way you can really ...I have to get the maximum out of these three actions I have per round, and really pack as much as possible into every action. It does not help to save anything, because I also discard the other cards at the end of the round , and that applies to my battles as well. I can go all-in on every fight, but I also have to consider if I might have card effects that allow me to influence other battles, how I do that, and I cannot just play cards everywhere . I have to get a good handle on that,

41:40 but I can always try to get the most out of it and then the next round it starts almost from zero again and so, if you like area control games—I generally like area control games, but few really blow me away. So, basically, um, Ankh or Root, if you want to classify that as an area control game. Those are the kinds of area control games that really blow me away. That is one game, this Everdell. It might flop a bit in the first game, but you should definitely play it two or three times because only then will you see the depth it has. And above all, you should see the first game as an introductory game, because the game only really gets going when you don't play your clans with the entry side, which is largely symmetrical, but when you flip the clans over and get the intense individual special abilities—that’s when the game truly begins. There will be a new crowdfunding campaign for it next week. That will just be a reprint because it’s simply sold out, and many people will probably find it a real shame that there aren't simply expansions or new factions. Because anyone who has this game and knows and likes it wants more factions, wants more asymmetry in it, and that is something I think—well, I hope that will happen next year. So, if you like area control games, I can definitely recommend this. Then Entropy. Here we are again in the realm of, wait, it is live. Wonderfully interconnected Eurogames. I naturally really like the theme here. Space, we are creating solar systems, we are creating planets.

43:02 It will be released by Frosted Games and it looks super daunting at first, I find, but once you’re into it, it’s actually quite cool. We have an action rondel system and that’s a bit of the catch. I can move my marker forward and the further I move it, the sooner I can collect my action tokens here again, which I need to boost certain actions. That’s what I want to do. I can also upgrade these action tokens so that I can perform even better actions. Of course, it costs me actions again to upgrade these action tokens, but I want to have them, I want to upgrade them, I want to use them to perform the upgraded actions. And that is great. But if I take many steps on this rondel , I can take between one and three steps. If I only take one step, I get a massive boost for the next action. If I take two steps, I get a medium boost for the action after that, and if I take three steps, I think I get a very small one or no boost at all for this action space here. That's zero. You can see it right here. If I go here, you know, just one step, I get two extra matter here. If I go, you know, two steps from here, I get two extra matter , and if I go like one, two, three steps, then I get no extra at all. And that alone is a very nice twist, that I always have to choose between the two, which also gets tougher the further I’ve upgraded everything here, and then there's so much more to it. I have my solar system, where I need a sun. I can further develop this sun here, because I get more points and other benefits for it. Then I have planets, and on these planets I want to have certain microbes, certain asteroids, you know? These are the astro-asteroids up here, which then need certain

44:33 elements so that life can even emerge there. Once they are there, I can build up these ecosystems here where I can play some animals again, and these ecosystems bring me some benefits in some actions, and you want to do so much in this game. There are three different goals. When a few milestones are reached, the game is also over. Truly, if you like interconnected Eurogames, if you generally find this action rondel exciting, then this is definitely a good thing. That, um, yeah , I played that at Frost. It took me a little while to get into it. The first game was a disaster. I really struggled with it. In the second game, which we played live on stream, it was already significantly better. There, I was definitely able to explain parts of the game to the other players, and um, yeah , so even there, especially if you say, okay, the theme doesn't really matter to me in Eurogames. For me, the theme really added a lot here, and it might be that you'll like it less if you say that the theme actually doesn't matter to you. But in the end, it's also just a, I move forward, I take an action, I get resources, I convert them somehow.

45:33 So it's not just about managing resources, but often using those resources for something meaningful that pushes me a bit further in the game, but expert games are also super versatile, aren't they? I mean, something like Avalor is a completely different story than Entropy, but it's also relatively high up on the hotness list and it will definitely find its fans, I'm pretty sure of that. Then we have The Old King's Crown and I think that's one of my personal top picks. You can already see it if you look at the weight rating here; I simply sorted the games by weight rating and this one already came out in English last year. That was a crowdfunding project. It will now be released by Spielbox. It actually should have been in the "maybe still this week" section, because it's in the mail. I got the shipping notification today and it will be here. I don't know yet if we'll play it. There is a livestream where we play it, where Vincen also explains it, and accordingly, it's a very good explanation. And afterwards we did a " Fresh from the Table," which I watched again last night to get back into it a bit, where we roughly introduce the game to you again in 20 minutes. And this is again a game where I say that compared to Entropy—which is nicely interconnected and all, but feels like a very classic Euro—that's not the case here at all. It feels really special, and it's also a game that I think you might initially bounce off hard because it's so different from things you know, but that's exactly what I like. What I definitely like is the artwork. It is definitely, I think, one of the prettiest games in the expert category recently. The cover is definitely great already. And the game board too, with the light in the camera and everything, it looks much better in

47:05 real life than what you see here in the photo. And basically, it’s broken down into a lane battler, right? We have 2D play areas here where cards are placed, where we can play cards, only one at a time, and then we fight over them and get certain advantages if we win the whole thing. Our cards have a strength, but they can also give us some specials. We have, you can see that here—no, you can't see it here. Um, there's also a personal card deck where we can gradually unlock cards that get crazier and cooler, but also have subtle effects that you have to know how to use well. Everyone has a faction, those factions always change the game significantly, and they have many actions that you can only use once per game. You have to think carefully about when to do that, how to time it, because in our game that we played, I had this ability that said if you play a battle, you get one point, and I was like, what am I supposed to do with that? Great. Our game ended 15 to 16 to 17 after, I don't know, three hours of playtime. A game where really every single point counts. That card deck I just told you about, Flo simply unlocked it. I think he got one or two extra points for it. That just won him the game. Because of that, he slipped ahead of me, and for some reason, I was right in front of Vincens—a game I definitely want to play again. We're going to do another classic Euro month next January or February, or at least one where we play things that aren't brand new and influenced by the Spiel fair. This should definitely hit the table again. So, I'm really looking forward to that. There's so much depth there, like how we can bid on cards up

48:37 here that we then take, which then kind of change the game for us a bit. But I have these cards, and we can bid on them again next round. And if a fellow player bids a higher strength than the protection I've set for the card, they can say, "Oh, you know what? The cards lying up there are nice, but yours is really good, I'd like that one now," and there's a lot of interaction involved, wild things can happen. I can't even begin to do justice to this game in this video after only playing one round. I liked it very, very much. I'm curious to see what it's like after more games, but it's a game that feels special to me, just through its visual presence alone—once you have the board, you just want to try out all these factions. I am very certain that there will be a crowdfunding campaign for this game next year, featuring an expansion with even more factions, because that's relatively easy to do and it’s definitely a solid story.

49:28 Then we have, uh, that also came out last year. It’s coming now for Spiel, or I think it’s actually already available. You can already buy it in the shop from PD Verlag. That was one of the classic Euros from last year among the games I played beforehand. It's my personal highlight, because it simply has a lot of what I like. We have a card-driven game where I have a display here where I can pick up many cards that all—well, depending on which area they come from—do all sorts of different things. Sometimes I can use them to get upgrades for my ant field here. Sometimes I need certain prerequisites to be able to build up things. I can use them to spread out on the board here, where we also have interaction, where we can build food chains with pheromone chains. We can defeat enemies to get certain advantages, so that we can achieve things faster than the other players.

50:14 We have our ants here. Depending on how many ants you have in a certain area, you can make the actions correspondingly stronger. And when they are all gone here, you have to perform a retrieval turn. And you know from normal games that you want to squeeze everything out of the game until that retrieval turn and don't want to do it too often. Here you realize very quickly that I actually want to do it relatively often to get food and new workers. Everything makes sense, and it’s just a nice interlocking of many elements that I, um, enjoy. And if I compare this now, let's say, with Euros , even in the demanding category, that feel rather classic because of moving up tracks and using markers and making things better or worse, then—well, I just really like card-driven games, and this is very card-driven. I like that a lot in this game. I have a great variety there, and many decisions. I can still recommend it. It is still a highlight for me, and I would say, if you like crunchy Euros, if you like it a bit card-driven, and don't get the idea to compare it to Terraforming Mars or Ark Nova. Yes, it's card-driven, similar to those two games, more in the direction of Ark Nova. Terraforming is really just card-driven. In Ark Nova, I do other actions as well, and it's the same here. But I really, really, really , really like it. Then we have Covenant . We only played that once last year after Spiel, I think. I gave it a seven back then. That's actually not a bad rating for me for, let's say, a classic Eurogame. Here we can see the whole thing set up on my game board. It is a game where, well, I felt a bit like I

51:46 was playing The Hobbit in terms of the rules or the setting, where we simply have dwarves, and these dwarves, similar to Caverna, can gain more strength and then perform stronger actions. It's a bit pedagogically tricky, since it's based on this fantasy theme. Dwarves drink beer, haha , I can make the dwarves stronger with beer, and then they can perform higher-value actions. But they don't really stand out as anything special. That would perhaps be a bit more interesting from a moral perspective, but they just have different strengths, and depending on which strength I use there, I can perform different actions on this game board. Um, I have, um, tools; those are the things in the top right of my tableau where I can place my workers and perform various actions. I can expand my board in a variety of ways. I can place different markers up there when I activate certain areas in the game, which determines what I can do with these actions, which is limited per round. The mine is also a shared board where we gradually explore this mine, encounter enemies, build buildings, and want to have majorities there. We have tools, as mentioned, that we can get and upgrade, which in turn make certain things in the game better. We have plenty of tracks here that we can move up, all of which do very different things, and we have a total of three eras that we play, and then there are points again for progress made in certain areas. So, there is a lot packed into it. I also liked that one a lot. I even still have it here. It actually wants to hit the

53:16 table again, too. I don't know if it will become a huge long-term favorite for me, but it also has these contracts that I want to fulfill and so on. So, this is also by Hermann P. Milan, right ? We know him from a few projects, like what he did here, right? Kind of like a Bitoku-fair Sabik; if you say, "Wow, I'm a huge Bitoku fan," and if it's not just the Japan theme, but a dwarf fantasy theme also sounds good to you, then this is definitely a game worth checking out. There's a lot packed into it. It's also definitely an expert game . It has a 3.73 rating here, but at least the story will be released in German by Stroman Games at the fair, and a quick spoiler: it won't be in this video because it won't be available at the fair. Just like Elders Grows. That won't be available at the fair either, but barely, it's somehow at the port. It won't be there for Spiel, but you'll likely be able to order it during Spiel and buy it at the fair, and something quite nice is that it weighs 15 kg or so, so it weighs quite a bit. I almost gave myself a hernia lifting it. Um, you just get it sent home and can play it right after Spiel. That's why I actually could have included it, but you should definitely take a look at it anyway. The successor to Too Many Bones. So Covenant is also a nice crunchy Euro with nice engine building, upgrading my action board, building structures, area control, and a thousand bonus advantages; there will be a lot of people who find that a lot of fun, then Molly House, also actually from last year by Spielworks, now available. I think it's been getting delivered for a few days or weeks now.

54:46 You will also be able to buy it at Spiel as long as supplies last. A core game that is actually developed by Joe Kelly, from Co., so it also benefits heavily from the Coverle name, and it's a game about the queer community in London in the 1720 s—a theme that some people might resonate with more, others less. I've played a lot in my life, and for some games, I say I need about two sessions until I've figured them out. And this thing here actually has, I think, what’s the weight rating? 3.74. It surprises me a bit, because basically, everything you do isn't that complicated, but I've played it five or four times now, and I could neither explain this game, nor have I been able to try out all the elements you play, nor do I know exactly how they work or what impact they have on the game. This is the kind of game for me personally that I actually want to play again and again and again. It leans a bit toward Age of Steam, where I also say that for Age of Steam, thank God, I have a crowd that celebrates the game just as much as I do. And when I know these three or four people are here and I say, "Guys, we're all here."

55:51 Sure, let's play Age of Steam, "then I know it's going to be a blast. No matter how bad the map is, no matter what happens, no matter how early, it’s just great. And exactly, so if I had a group for Molly House, and I have at least one fellow player for it already, that could somehow be made to work. Um, this is also a game I really want to get to the table more often because it just has many interesting, exciting mechanics and dynamics. It’s like a classic co-op game where things happen, you have a certain state on the board, it's just there, and then you look and think, okay, this isn't going well for me at all. What levers does this game give me so I can change things in my favor? And we’re playing this community here that is supposed to stick together, and where I, you know, through balls and dances I organize, want to collect prestige points for myself, but if only I get the points, it’s useless. I always have to make sure that the community itself is doing well. If that isn't the case, then I lose anyway, even though I have the most points. I can also say at some point, ah, that might be thematically and morally a bit tricky, but things aren't working out for me right now.

56:57 I’m going to become a traitor now. I betray this community. I do this by placing a marker of mine down, so to speak. And the others don't know for sure if I'm doing it or not, and can even bet on whether I've done it or not . Extra points for that; the basic mechanic around it is a roll-and-move, similar to Monopoly, where I just roll the dice and move across this board to certain action spaces, and usually don't land on the spaces I actually need. We have, well, it’s not really like a—no, poker is the wrong word, but when those dances happen, we can play cards into them to influence that dance, that ball, a little bit. It can also get completely out of hand, and so , how to play it well so you can somehow reach your goals and be the one who benefits from the game situation at that moment, I haven't figured that out yet. I also played it with a buddy who was there too. At least he and I played it, and he was like, well, not exactly: " I played it now, it was cool, but what, how, and where exactly, you don't know, "and that can scare people off.

57:58 It's definitely nothing like—take a Covenant, for example—you go in, bam bam bam bam, get all the rules drilled into you, and then you have it down fast and know: Okay, I have to do this, control there, build here, expand my actions here, everything is straightforward, move this track, great , I'll do it; I can always do less than I want to, but I already know exactly what I want to do next turn. I have that, I don't know, maybe you feel differently. I don't have that with Molly House. Molly House is a game for me that I definitely want to explore further, unlike many other things like. e.g., from Covenant, where I say: Okay, sure, I'll play it, it's good, it's fun , I'm happy to join in if I go somewhere and players have it and say," Hey, we want to play Covenant, "I say: Sure, I'm in, because it's a cool thing , but not where I say I need this at home in my collection, where I already have many games that don't get played anyway. With Molly House, I would say I need that, I want to explore it further . It's a game that can sit right next to Root, Age of Steam, and Arkwright, because it's a game where I always have the feeling of wanting to explore more.

58:56 And these are actually the games where I say: If I have a heavy Eurogame, it doesn't have to be another interlocking " ooh, we're moving up tracks, ooh, we're swapping resources "type of game, as we've seen and will continue to see a few of this year. Many people like that, many people have fun with it. It is also entertaining. I have fun when I play those too, but they are rarely games that really thrill me. Something like Molly House is more up my alley. Then Queen, which is now the complete opposite of Molly House. That’s just a standard Eurogame, a game—but hey, standard at first, boom, you’re hitting things, and it’s actually not that standard at all. It naturally has that one special twist, and we see it right here in the middle. We have a chess game, but I’m not playing one specific piece. The pieces are just there. I have cards in my hand, and when I play a card, the card tells me which piece I can activate. In this case, the white bishop. It could also be that it’s red and white. Then I could play the red one as well. So I can always use the one the card tells me to. And I have to see: What cards do I have? Which piece do I want to move?

59:56 What advantage does the card give me if I play it to move the piece? But also —well, it’s not just about hitting pieces—which column do I land in? Because that determines which mini-game I can play. And which row do I land in? Because that determines what extra resources I get for it. And that alone is quite interesting. Then we have these four different mini-games around it, where we can build on the wall and get some benefits for that. This track here is perceived as very strong and very overpowered; that's where I get these books. I can basically trudge up there with the two dudes, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and pick up various bookmarks. There are a few of those that give me end-game scoring points, and it's already been asked a few times : oh, is that really balanced? On the track up here, I feel like I get absolutely nothing. Over here, I get the really crazy end-game modifiers.

1:00:45 Well, let me put it this way—pardon me—I already won a two-player game using this track, which we actually played incorrectly at the beginning to my own disadvantage. And then we have these here, right, more tracks. We have a red Alice and a white Alice, and we want to try to keep them balanced somehow, but we also want to get onto these spaces here to be able to take an extra action. We have a board where we want to gradually unlock these things by playing various mini-games. When pieces are captured on the board, they simply go here into prison. Anyone can then free them from there, so that the person who captured them gets some kind of benefit for it. Depending on which piece I capture, I also get some kind of advantage in return. So again, if you like crunchy Euros, if you like Euros with various mini-games, action spaces, if you like games with lots of tracks, with cards—well, cards shouldn't be underestimated here either . And there's also a specific mini-game , namely this one down here, where I can decide, okay, I want to go all-in on that, load up on cards, maybe I'll have many strong cards, but I can also neglect it. I can say, okay, I'll put my focus more on other mini-games. You won't be able to play all mini-games equally well, but you get these markers that unlock actions on your player board, and there's just a lot in there.

1:01:57 It's good, it's fun, it's entertaining; Flo also took it home, he played it two or three times, and it works wonderfully with two players. Number 2 on Board Game Geek currently signals something, I think, that this game cannot deliver on. I believe many will be disappointed because, due to this high ranking on BGG, they expect an absolute gaming revelation. People like to be influenced by that, saying," It's up there, so there must be reasons for it. "And, well, many people will naturally make videos now saying," Hey, I'm looking forward to this, it looks super cool. "You get a bit hyped by that, and most people haven't even been able to play it yet. This means a hype builds itself up, and I don't think the game can live up to that. It is a good game, though. I really enjoyed my game session. I have—what have I docked here? Only played it twice so far, and I don't even have it anymore, I have to send it on. Uh, at Brettbalett you've probably already seen plenty of content about it, because it was very important that it get there quickly. That's why, in any case—I don't even know what Sen's take on it was, surely you guys can write that in the chat—but I'd also love to, if I go to a game night again and people say," Ben, we want to play Queen, "I can say," Hey, cool, awesome game, I've played that before.

1:03:04 "If you don't know it, I can surely explain it to you in a minute, and I'd be up for that. So, it's entertaining. Then we have The Winged Pass and my God , did I have fun with that. We played that on Saturday when Hesi was here. And that is also one of those games where, when you have it explained to you, you first think, bam. Wow, that's intense. Especially when you look at all these game boards, but once you start playing, you realize, yeah, no, the actions are actually quite simple. But as you keep playing, you realize:" Okay, I want to advance in this area, which gives me the multiplier, which I get by advancing in the area where I can increase the multiplier, which I get increased here, where I get the other things for, which gives me more points, and ah help, what do I want to do? "What's also exciting is that it's a Eurogame based on the Voynich manuscript, where you don't even know, what does it actually do? What is its meaning, what language is spoken there?

1:03:58 Why did someone write that at some point? And we have this little book, and in this book we can turn different pages, and then we can say," Okay, I want to take some actions from this page here. "So I want to take the action up here, to somehow send two of my droplets into this water game here; then I get certain steps on these tracks for it. And I can maybe also send droplets through here and get some advantage on the tracks down here or move some markers, and then I can place an extra marker, get an action for that , and I can put a magnifying glass on a puzzle piece here in the middle. This is super important, because we’re all putting this puzzle together, placing pieces of different colors in there. And if I now have three green pieces on the edge here and have my magnifying glasses on them, I can remove them and use that to upgrade this card. You see it here, the cards have multipliers, right? Here, for instance, a two-times multiplier. If I flip it over again, I have a four-times multiplier for this green track, which I move up during the game. And um, but when I, you know, the actions I take here, these green ones, they just give me, I hope it’s red, absolutely red, something for the red multiplier, and balancing that is just really crazy. In that game, I only played by looking at how the puzzle was laid out and what I could likely upgrade and how. I ended the game very quickly with that, Hesi said it was super fast, and I won quite easily. So that was, I scored a lot of points during the game. I managed to drive up the multiplier tracks to score a lot of points, but the way I was going, had the game lasted two turns longer, Hesi

1:05:28 could have triggered a scoring phase here where he would have gotten 100 points, and then I would have been completely wiped out. Um, but also here , this book, flipping through the book, looking at: Which actions can I take, which ones help me, which ones do I want to upgrade? Where can I, on this puzzle—it’s really a puzzle, right —how can I piece it together and how can I influence it on my turn so that I can make this upgrade? I can do the upgrade before my turn, I can do it after my turn. It just has to be on the exact side where I’m taking the actions. So, there are so many interlocking parts in there. Also all these markers that I’m placing here on the game board. Here you see these stars. If I place a star, I can trigger this whole row of actions again. Doesn’t matter if the actions are mine or someone else’s, but here, for example, I also have to place these stars. You only have, like, four or five stars; once they’re all placed, well, then, or also here in this area, I can place a star up here as well.

1:06:17 Then I might have activated a super crazy row here, where I got mega awesome benefits that I don't want to grant anyone else, and then at some point I have an action that just says, yes, you have to place a star here now. I get some great stuff for it too, but I know then, now any fellow player can use the whole thing here. It's a game where you can do cool things with every action, but where you also always prepare something exciting and great for your fellow players, maybe knowingly, maybe you don't even know it because you don't know what they have in their book. And I have fellow players who will play it in such a way that they definitely want to strictly prevent enabling anything for anyone there. You shouldn't focus on that too hard, because then you'll end up playing the game for 5 hours. We, I think, snacked through it in 90 minutes . That went very quickly. You always build something for your fellow players that is good for them. Although in the game for Sparta it didn't go quite that well. I was able to get through, it went quite well for me, but it was a lot of fun. So, that was really a great joy, I felt like playing it again immediately. Here too, I can't say whether it will sustain me in the long run. But also there, when you play, you have the feeling of more of a connoisseur thing, like connoisseur plus, but it is, in total, such a mental load that it is definitely well-placed in the expert range, even if it's in the lower expert range. And there too, I thought it would feel very standard before I played it, and it feels like a lot of standard Euro-stuff , but the interlocking, so here the interlocking really is, all these different elements, how they interact with each other. That just makes it a lot of fun to play. So, Wage Mysterium was a lot of fun for me. Then a game

1:07:48 that I haven't even played myself yet, Railways of the Lost Atlas. Vincent told me about it, I think. I asked, what kind of game have I not already been told about. That is, as I understood it, it's also listed as an 18xx style, so an entry-level 18xx. 18xx is practically, compared to that, Age of Steam is kindergarten again, right? You're building rails and tracks here in the photo, but it's also a lot about stocks, about shares in some companies, really wild stuff. I once played an 18xx game that was supposed to be an entry-level game. But I played it in a way that I essentially had nothing to do with the track building. Because of that, this element completely passed me by and the game has very mixed comments on BoardGameGeek. Many say it's a cool introductory system. Some say, nah, Eurogamers like it quite a bit, but it doesn't have much of what really defines 18xx. We have people here in the community who just played it, I think even yesterday, and it's nice.

1:08:50 But you definitely need someone who hosts and guides you through it. That's why I really hope we play it while Vincent is still here so he can prepare it accordingly, find the time, and we can play it, because I always feel well guided through a game by Vincent. And I'm up for it, if we play this 18- something Shink Shikoku, I think it was called, which is also supposed to be an entry-level 18xx game, but it still took about, I don't know, 6 or 7 hours. Um, it didn't do anything for me at all . Shinkansen, I think it was called. Exactly. And I have hope that this one will resonate a bit more with me. I’ve already sent a message about it. I haven't even checked if I got a reply yet, but I'm really looking forward to it. I definitely want to select that one. It was also a crowdfunding project that you can now buy in Essen, though only in limited quantities. There won't be an endless supply, but I’ll definitely take a look at it because an entry-level 18xx sounds like something I could have on my agenda for next year . Then we have, um, No, not Shok, that's already something else, my mind went blank there. Uh, then we have Revenant. It’s been out for a few weeks from Skal Games, but it’s a new release. The successor to Wfall, the lighter Wfall. It doesn't have four pages of symbol explanations, just two.

1:10:21 I was totally hooked after the first game and played it again right away. The first game with learning, setting up, and playing took 5 hours, maybe 6 hours. We said exactly right after, let's reset it, set it up again, and play it again. We were done in two hours and I had a ton of fun with it. It’s going to get some people hooked hard, I believe. It really is a game that you have to want, you definitely have to want it. Um, it sort of looks like the Battlestar Galactica board game. We have a ton of spaceships here flying around. We have a" Void " that’s always threatening these ships and destroying them. And when such a, such a, such a large ship here, like a, uh, what’s it called, the frigate Sager something, a large ship, is, uh, basically out, then actions are missing from the game. Then they're gone, you can't do them anymore, or only in a complicated way. You can bring the ships back, but, you know, you have these tracks here that you go up, and you basically have influence with the families—they’re always such nice family ships, um, well, influence—and then at the end you check, oh, here’s my marker, how many of those ships are on the board, that’s how many points I get. There are secret cards that also give you steps here. But the others don't know which ones you have in your hand. The annoying thing is, you’d naturally love to collect, collect, collect and then drive up the multiplier and great, but unfortunately , you also always need those cards to pay for things. That’s a bit annoying . You have a captain here with a special ability where you can also basically spend actions to get better, to unlock better special abilities for your captain. You have crew members, two of them, that you can place on these ships to perform actions with

1:11:52 them. I also have cards for that, which I can use to improve these crew members . This means when I perform an action with one and I place them there, I have some advantage, but maybe not for that specific action. I really have to make sure I use them in a way that gives me some benefit if it’s not a universal advantage. I have a frigate that I can fly around with and also perform actions, land on planets, and use to attack enemy ships. I can also really upgrade my frigate quite extensively. I have storage spaces where I can store my resources, which I can then convert again or use for other actions. After the main action, I can perform a special action, unless I get some" Void "effect because I did something with the Void, then I can block certain actions again. And here too, I mean these actions and the setup, it’s just crazy. The cards are definitely the soul of the game here. You want to do everything. You want to develop your work, level up your captain, upgrade your frigate, and unlock various other perks. You won't be able to do everything, so you have to limit yourself. Then you have to check, how is it going on the board, right?

1:12:48 Because we also have a shared board where we can all move things around. And if I’m focusing on orange from the start and unlocking a lot, and someone else says, I’ll boost orange too, I have to see how I can switch things up and maybe move to another track where only I get the benefits, otherwise the others will have just as many points as I do. I’m going very fast, I’m sorry, but there’s just a lot going on. The nice thing about this game board lying here is that you just go through everything in order from the top, right? Here is basically the first , in the first round you basically do all these actions here. Then you go into this phase, where you handle all of this. Then you go into this phase and handle all of this. It looks wild in terms of iconography, you just have to learn it once. It is time-consuming. But once you’ve done that, everything you need is written right here. You can easily play the game just using this board. Everything for the final scoring is also listed on the back. I had a lot of joy with it, it was fun, but it’s a game some people will struggle with, which also takes place in the world of Worldfall, but is quite independent.

1:13:45 And if you say it’s a heavy game at most half a complexity level below that . Um, I thought that was good too. It was definitely fun for me. Is it easy to get into if you know WF, is being asked here. Um, I think so, because you generally get along with the iconography. And above all, it’s easier to get into because if you know WF and have already read the Worldfall manual, that definitely helps. Because if I don't know that yet and I read this, you’ll struggle quite a bit at first because a lot of things are really quite unusual. But it is definitely different from Worldfall, for sure. Then John Company too, yes, it came out four years ago, I believe. I don't even know when the edition was released, but the German one—I know it was already available in German, I'm a bit stumped at the moment, but it will definitely be available at the Spiel fair. You'll be able to buy it there. Also a game—actually Vincent shouldn't be allowed to move away, but thankfully it's not that far, it's one I definitely want to play more because Corle games have a special place in my heart, but I've just played it far too rarely. As I said, I wish I could clone myself, be connected everywhere, so I could do this, learn about new games, shoot videos, and somehow play a whole lot more. I’m sure you feel the same way. Um, there’s so much you want to explore, and as you can see—I’m introducing, I don't know, 25 games in this video, or 20, and you’d be busy for a year just with those if you wanted to fully exhaust them. And then you still have all the other old games at home that are also good. Honestly,

1:15:16 you don't really need a lot of it, but that is one game I definitely want to keep playing. We're playing East India Company and I once played it at a convention, but it was so late at night that we didn't even finish it. We eventually stopped because I said I wasn't having much fun at that moment, even though I think the concept is super cool, but I would like to play it again sometime in a smaller setting to get into it, and then in a larger setting. That’s still the case, even though it’s been two years since then . The exciting thing is simply that in this game, we play people in the East India Trading Company. Wild things happen there; storms can destroy harvests, break ships, so you can't do certain things. We just want to, you know, toil away for 10 or 20 years and somehow exploit these colonies. That's tough for me now, but it's really well implemented in the game, in a way that you can see how terrible what happened actually was. But I just want to retire in the end and then score some points, and then I roll the dice and either it works or it doesn't. So, you just have to accept that that's how it is in this game. You also have to learn how to deal with that, perhaps. You can also increase your probabilities there somehow if it doesn't work out a few times. We basically are all one company and we assign different roles in this company, and you always place your player marker there, which can then make the decisions for that position.

1:16:27 And we are constantly coordinating with each other, saying:" Look, we're currently doing this. "Um, if I do this here and you give me that, then we can work together on this and that. You can take that into account again, and positions can be changed again, and there is so much in there, even with this half-game, I can't even remotely do this game justice. This is also a game where, like with many Cowder games , you definitely need a few introductory games. But for me, definitely the most exciting designer at the moment, where I say: these are games where I don't say, okay, I'll play it twice and I've seen everything, but where there is a ton to explore. So I think with Age of Steam and the Cowder games, I would be absolutely satisfied in the expert gaming area. Maybe one or two other things a year, but I could have fun with that alone all the time, also this new Famous Traffic that is currently in crowdfunding. That definitely interests me a lot, too, and it's great. So really a game with a lot of potential that I want to continue playing. And then we have Hephaestus Odyssey. I discovered that on the, um, preview page; it's already four years old. It is a bit like, imagine it, if you know it, Kingdom Death: Monster meets Cthulhu: Death May Die. When you see this image in a moment, you'll also know, if you know the image from Kingdom Death, okay, it is heavily inspired by it in many aspects, but here we have a story in it. With Kingdom Death: Monster, there is just a lot of atmosphere, a lot of setting, but little real story. We never really find out what this mysterious world is

1:17:58 all about, but we still feel like we are a part of it. Here we have, somehow , a bit of Greek mythology as the theme . We have some, I don't know if they are Titans or something, that we fight against. We have a map on which we sail a ship around. We can continue to build up our ship, the Argonauts, and then we have enemies that we fight. And we also have an escalating combat system here, similar to Cthulhu: Death May Die. That means the longer the fight lasts, the wilder the participants get, the stronger they become, the more intense they get. And in the end, crazy things happen on both sides, and it can end well or badly. I played the prototype back then, I made a preview video for it, and um, I have it here, I have to ask Marcel again, it would be super nice if he could print an insert for me for it, because this game without an insert is a disaster. This game without time, this game without an extra board game room is unfortunately not realis, or realistically playable for me, which is why it's been lying on my shelf for three years. I definitely want to play it. I think if–don't know–whoever, Ragnar. For example, if he were into it and said," I have four days this week, I can play, "and maybe Meer comes along too and they are both up for it, then we could sit down for four days, 10 hours a day, and just, well, not finish it in that time, because it's a massive campaign. There are three massive campaigns in it, and Hesi from Trusted has already played it and is also in the chat right now, he also said, yeah, the first campaign is quite nice, it gets even more intense the further you play. I don't know in which life one is supposed to play all of this, because I would like to play Kingdom Death

1:19:30 Monster again, but long story short, the thing might be old, but Intown will be at Spiel and they simply wrote in a post that you can buy their games there . Accordingly, you will have the chance , perhaps—this is without guarantee —that you can simply pick up an Aeon's Trespass Odyssey at Spiel if you're curious about it. Bring a hand truck with you. The thing weighs quite a bit. I mean, if you, you can take an Aeon's Trespass and a Gloomhaven, you can do your fitness training with them. Um, also a cool thing. I am curious if I'll get around to playing it again in this lifetime. I would really love to. Maybe the successor will also be teased at Spiel, although even there it might just be a successor campaign or a standalone game. We'll see about that there. And exactly, Mario is also writing just now:" Backed the successor to it. "And Exactly with Eos Tress, you need inserts, even says Hesium, the insert-hater. And if you've been watching my stream, how someone brought a game, you know: it really has no inserts. And yeah, that's almost it.

1:20:35 That means if you've watched until here and said:" Wow, cool, awesome, I stayed tuned, "feel free to use a weightlifter emoji. I wanted to put a female weightlifter emoji in there, but it only showed up as a female symbol for me, so I didn't include it. Sorry, but you guys are included too. So feel free to use either one, depending on what shows up for you. I have another little insider secret tip, really a last-minute call, where I can't even judge myself yet if it's um really an expert game or more of a connoisseur game. Much suggests that, even though it seems like a connoisseur game, it might fall into the expert category. That is really an absolute secret tip. It is so secret. How long does the stream last? The stream lasts um one hour 18. I've known about it for an hour 25. And that is, imagine you have a kind of 4X game, but where all that annoying fighting and such has been removed, and only trading is included.

1:21:27 Then you have Kata Imperia Rise of Rome , it also says a fast-paced mini 4X game. It could also be that this definitely belongs more in the other video where we talk about these can-games. Many thanks again to Lars. I just recorded that, which is why the stream started 5 minutes late. I took a very quick look at it. There isn't that much content about it yet. But it's supposed to be at the Spiel fair. If I saw it correctly, not just as a demo. But it could be that it's only there as a demo. Don't pin me down on it, but it is a game, if you like negotiation at the table, then definitely check this thing out. So there is, here we have the crowdfunding page, where you can see the whole thing. I think it's also supposed to be delivered in October, right? A Tiny Epic scale with a touch of Queen's Dilemma and exactly, right?

1:22:14 Everything is negotiable in this game. You can watch Play Place to look at it and it's also something that he wrote about, it gets him excited, it gets me excited too. Historical setting, negotiation. That means we have a game where we're not just climbing tracks, converting resources, or upgrading actions, but where we are actually actively trying to reach our goals and shape our fortunes the whole time by interacting with our fellow players. And it also says" Semi-cooperative Empire Building Boardgame "for one to six players. That will be very different from John Company, but even in John Company we play a bit semi-cooperatively because we are all in the same firm. Here we are just, I don't know, maybe all emperors or something. We definitely want to advance the Roman Empire, but a bit more for ourselves, right? Fun the Table Talk. I am super curious about this game. It just landed fresh on my radar and shot straight to the top and exactly uh it also has I think a price that is definitely listed there. So let's see if you can get it there. If not, you can definitely take a look at it there. And besides Grinville, I have a secret tip that you've probably heard somewhere else. Don't know. I haven't had much time to watch other videos lately, but that's definitely something worth checking out. Katter Imperia, Gunter Games are definitely there too.

1:23:27 They will also get an email from me in a moment. And that was my overview of the expert games for Spiel 2026. If you found this stream helpful, feel free to put this emoji in the comments. Also let me know which of these games you want to see. Then I will try to get hold of them. I have already had most of them here. If you want to say, if you say I would like to see certain games from this on the follow-up, check out Patreon. There will be a vote every day where you can decide what we prepare for the week. And feel free to write in the comments which preview videos you still want to see. I will try to do a stream like today's for you every day this week, as a way to look forward to the fair, where I just show you games from different areas. But there are, I think I have 12 different lists I could pull up, but I don't have 12 days left and I won't do three such streams in one day. That's why I'd love for you to leave comments. Thank you so much for watching, and we will probably see each other again in 10 to 50 minutes, when we will jump right into playing new games with the support of some younger and smaller players. We'll see, uh, it won't just be children's games on the—well, maybe a children's game too, but it will also be a bit more challenging. Look forward to it.

1:24:42 I’m happy when you watch. I look forward to your comments. I’m happy when you stop by Patreon. I’m happy when I see you at a con. I appreciate everything you do, especially an emoji that you leave in the comments. I’ll say thanks a lot for watching. Take care, see you soon, and bye.