Top 10 Most Anticipated Board Games - Essen Spiel 2022

hi everyone today I'm talking about my top 10 most anticipated games due to be released at Essen 2022 so if you don't know what Essence Spiel is it's basically a huge convention that happens every year in Germany and where a bunch of new games are released now I've used the board game geek preview list about these releases and I do understand that there is some ambiguity and it's not 100 certain that some of these games will be there but you know despite that they are coming out in the near future so I'm sure you'll see these relatively soon I'm not physically going to essenceville but it's nice to know that these games are coming out soon and again are on the horizon and you'll probably see them on the channel now I have automatically disregarded games I've already previewed or um pre-ordered I should say games such as Autobahn the new Hannah mccosy geisha's Road and I believe the new Stephen Feld releases such as Hamburg Amsterdam and the new Marrakech um are coming up with Essen as well and again I'm not going to cover these on this list because I've talked about them at nauseam um through the last couple of years but before I get started I want to give a shout out to the show's sponsor keyienda dot Co dot UK who are my go-to online retailer here in the UK and if you use my link in the show notes or the QR code then you can get five percent off your first order but let's get on with the list at number 10 I have swindler which out of all these games is probably the one I'm most intrigued by rather than the most excited by and a big part of that is because of the designer so um this is designed by Matthias Kramer who I think is an outstanding games developer he's brilliant at what he does and everything he's done has been to a certain degree of quality but this is is being advertised as a push your luck and take that game so I love pushy luck games but I'm not often so keen on take that but considering who the designer is here I'm pretty confident that they take that isn't going to be as abrupt or you know silly as you'd expect with a lot of games it's going to be something clever here about how that take that is used but from my understanding and just my general vibe from looking at the um the game it seems like this could be his twist on something like the quax equivalent bug so I'm interested to see a designer like you know like Matthias creamers take on a game like that now you're talking again that's less than an hour or the lighter end of the Spectrum which is normally not his Forte so for all those Reasons I'm definitely I'm gonna give this game a look and hopefully it's going to be something special so that is swindler at number 10.

at number nine I have rice so I don't know a tremendous amount about this game but um one of the things is being touted about this game is that there's going to be 10 different tracks that you can climb up now I love tracks in board games it's my favorite elements you know I love just seeing how far I can progress about what all they can do and I'm assuming that these different tracks are going to interact with each other as you go unlock your benefits and like you points all that kind of stuff which I love um this has the industrial vibe to it which is a setting I tend to enjoy in general and another game that is being advertised as taking less than an hour to play so hopefully there's some bite here hopefully there's some meaningful decisions and that Track Climbing is satisfying variable and lots to explore each time you play so um yeah the look of the game looks you know it looks great um and hopefully the gameplay is gonna match that so that is rise at number nine at number eight I have Applejack which is an uve Rosenberg design so if you watch my content regularly you might know that Rosenberg is a designer that I'm kind of hit or miss with and the games I tend to like of his are the lighter ones and I believe Applejack is going to fall into that category it looks like it has some puzzly element to it a bit of you know a spatial puzzle I think this entire placement as well so um hopefully this is going to be up there with his you know great top basement games such as Nova Luna or Patchwork and but a different take on it then you you know a new take on the whole genre of um yeah puzzly tile placement games um it looks cool I love the name of it another game that's going to be relatively quick to play so games like this tend to hit my table quite often um so yeah who knows this one could be something special so that is Applejack at number eight at number seven I have a gallonus so gallanus is a game I've actually had my eye on for many years um I think it's just about to come out I think this is one that's a bit touchable go on whether it's going to be there at Essen or not but this is a medically themed game as I believe you're trying to you know conjure these postures you're trying to publish theories um I love that kind of you know thematic setting um but the thing that really intrigued me about this game was the fact that it you know it is a work placement game but I believe in this one you can not only place your workers but you can also remove them from the board when you want so that you can kind of camp on spots if you think somebody's going to sneak in there and you know triggering the um to resolve the actions is as important as taking the action in the first place and you can decide which order and how to prioritize those different things so I think that's going to unravel some strategy there and um you know prioritizing actions and triggering things in the right order could be a big part of the game which I tend to enjoy now I could be misinterpreting you know misinterpreting how this game is going to work but I know some of the people who've um you know tried it and placed yesterday have very good things to say and um yeah my um you know my optimism is high with this one so that is going to be galness at number seven at number six I have Ready Set bet so this game is a real time racing and betting game so basically one person is going to be constantly rolling dice or I believe there's going to be a companion app as well um and that is going to determine how far these horses move or I believe if you roll uh like a two the two horse is going to move if you've rolled it twice in a row it gets like another boost and things like that now also that's going to mean that the horses in the middle are the sevens sixes and eights are going to be a lot faster because those numbers are going to get rolled more often but when you roll the higher numbers I believe they move further so it is kind of balanced that way and I love this idea of the real-time thing of you know the seven might be really running running away there people are chucking their um you know betting chips down on this big kind of betting mats getting the best odds um and I believe there's like variable different bets you can put on as well for lots of you know variability so it sounds really interesting that way now I am a little bit apprehensive about the real-time thing because generally I tend to like real-time games for the first few plays and then I quickly Tire of them um but the idea this one seems relatively simple I tend to like betting games and you know wagering um so who knows this one could be good um maybe gonna be a little bit chaotic but I suppose only time will tell but again I like racing games I like betting games this one sounds simple but fun and um yeah okay high expectations for Ready Set bet at number five I have deal with the devil so this game is either going to be absolutely amazing or it's not going to be right for me I think it's going to be you know one of those Polar Opposites um so this is a game that requires exactly four players to play and it's a you know a resource management Euro game but with hidden roles so the one person is going to be the devil wants like a cultist I believe once like an instant bystander and so on and you are just trying to do you know standard Resource Management all that kind of stuff but there is a blind trading phase that uses an app to facilitate you know trading between the players but because nobody knows who each other are you're going to be doing these things on this app so you're not you don't quite know who you're trading with and um I believe that everybody has different incentives so like the devil um I believe they can give away resources quite you know quite frugally not quite frivolously I should say but in exchange for those resources they can acquire people's bits of soul and um you know strike up these deals that are going to be tempting for the other players so thematically this game sounds pretty amazing can it be pulled off to a high standard I I'm pretty sure it will do because this is designed by matus and mccotary who is the designer for Alchemists which was one of the pioneering games when it came to app integration into board games and it was pulled off to an exceptionally high standard and that game still holds up pretty well now so I know this game has been in development for many years so I'm pretty confident it's going to be fine-tuned well developed and do what it's supposed to do so the app integration the four player strict Play account and the idea that this is going to take probably at least two hours to play could be obstacles to make this one perfect for me but if the gameplay is strong enough this could be a home run so that is deal with the devil at number five at number four I have find off by freedom and freeze so fries is a designer or who really intrigues me you know everything he puts out I'll cast my eye apart his games normally work for me I do tend to like his designs especially when they are a bit bigger and a bit more grandiose so find off is being described as a economic uh engine builder I believe and I believe you're building these buildings and these buildings are going to dictate a ton of different strategies you can go down so I think every approach you take the game you can do go a different paths I believe the resource Market in the game is similar to something like power grid with a supply and demand of your particular resource types which again is a mechanism I love in board games supply and demand in general so I'm again another game I'm optimistic about this could be up there with his grace who knows um but um yeah at the moment just looking from the outside in it looks like it's taking a lot of boxes for me so definitely intrigued intrigued by findoff by freedom and fries three I have lacrimosa so most of my excitement about this game is based on the setting and theme of the game because this is all about finishing Mozart's Requiem now I have a huge classical music fan I'm a big fan of Mozart and I'm surprised that this theme has not been used more often because music is such a it's a it's a genre that or a setting that lends itself to board gaming so well because it is you know patterns it's for me lake and a lot of those things suit board games but in this game I believe you are commissioning different composers to finish his work um and it's all done through a car driven system where you can use these cards in two ways um I'm not quite sure how that works but Decker building is something that I'm yeah I'm just like slightly terribly but if it's kind of contained and pretty tight in the way it works and doesn't constantly need new material to keep it interesting then this could be the deck builder for me considering the setting and theme and the idea of it so yeah very excited about how this is going to get pulled off and again another game where the Intrigue factor is high so that is alacrimosa at number three at number two I have Woodcraft which is the latest co-design by Vladimir tsuki so Suki games over the last few years have been absolute colossal hits for me so whenever he releases a game now I'm pretty much sure that I'm going to like it and I have confidence in his design pedigree so this one it has all the Hallmarks of a Suzuki game you'd like you know the combo actions together that domino effect to get big satisfying terms and the fact that this is a dice game just UPS the anti even more for me so I believe one of the key concepts of this game is that when you acquire Dice and use them you can actually carve them up to what you need so for example if you have a dice with six Pips on it you can carve that up into say two threes or I know a three or two and a one that kind of thing so I'm interested to see how how that works in practice but out of all these These are probably well this is probably the game I'm most confident that I'll like and it's going to be again uh just just gonna fit into my collection well just has its place reserved I suppose so that is Woodcraft at number two and finally at number one I have to let him which is the latest design by Daniel toshini as Simone Luciani so this is part of the T-Series of games and I must say over the last couple of years the T-Series hasn't been as strong as it initially was because I thought that they started to lean a bit far to um to try and be different and try to be Innovative and they lost a lot of the you know the clean rules they lost a lot of the sophistication of the earlier games because it became again a bit too clunky a bit too complex for the sake of it now from my initial impressions of Teleton it seems like they're going back to basics and using dies in a simple but interesting way so and this one I believe the dice only has two meanings so if you're drafting say a a dice of the value five on it the five is going to represent the uh the number of resources you'll take of that type but the higher the number of resources you take it means the weaker action you'll have in association to that so in comparison if you take a dice with only say one resource on it then you'll get a stronger action and I'm quite interested to see how that works they're not convoluted straightforward but compelling decisions and this is also stepping away from that South American ancient theme and going into the more traditional Euro you know European Renaissance team which is one of my favorite settings so hopefully this is going to be a you know a revamp of the genre and put things back on track after it's been a little bit misguided over the last couple of years but I'm surprised this did come out at number one because of again the the way that the last couple of games didn't quite resonate with me but um they managed to drag me back in with this one so hopefully they don't let me down again so that is toletum at number one so there we have it those are the 10 most anticipated board games that I'm looking forward to coming out at Essen this year please do let me know what games you're anticipating because no doubt I've missed a few here there's a ton of games coming out as there is every year and I just cannot cast my eye over them all and of course there's going to be some games that have flown under the radar that are going to be hit that nobody knows about for a long time if you have enjoyed the video please be sure to hit like And subscribe to my channel but for everybody else I'll see you next time on chairman of the board bye-bye