As you may have heard, we will be making a trip to Europe to attend SPIEL Essen in Essen, Germany this month. SPIEL Essen, often referred to as Essen Spiel, is the world’s largest public fair for board games. The convention is held annually in Essen, Germany, typically in late October, and attracts a massive crowd of visitors and exhibitors. The fair is intended for board gamers to be able to discover new games, play demos, meet with game designers, and purchase new products. The convention is more about board games than wargames but we are going over due to the generosity of Sound of Drums and Uwe Wallentin.

While there at the convention, we will be meeting several European wargame publishers such as the likes of Sound of Drums, Assault Games, PHALANX, Nuts! Publishing, Black Mask Verlag, NAC Wargames, Salt & Pepper Games, Portal Games, Osprey Games, VUCA Simulations and others. I am very excited to meet several content creators who are headquartered in Europe such as Clio’s Board Games and The Boardgames Chronicle amongst others. We also hope to talk with designers, play some prototypes and just have an overall great time. This has always been somewhat of a bucket list item for me and Alexander and we are finally getting the opportunity. We do hope to meet many of our European followers and chat and maybe play a game or two.

At the time this post uploads to the blog at 8:00am on Thursday, October 16th, we will be frantically packing and getting ready for our trip. We are leaving my house at around 11:00am to make the 3 hour drive to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois for our flight which leaves tonight at around 6:30pm. We land sometime tomorrow in Frankfurt, Germany and will be renting a car for a short 6-day driving tour of some historical sites that we have always wanted to see. The following is our planned itinerary:

Friday, October 17th:

  • Ouvrage Hackenberg (Maginot Fort)
  • Metz
  • Verdun

Saturday, October 18th:

  • Bastogne
  • Sedan

Sunday, October 19th:

  • “Paris” (we are really just driving through and will wave to the City of Lights!)
  • Caen

Monday, October 20th:

  • Sainte-Mère-Église
  • Omaha Beach
  • Pointe du Hoc

Tuesday, October 21st:

  • Mons
  • Waterloo

Wednesday, October 22nd:

  • Eindhoven
  • Nijmegen 
  • Arnhem

I know that this is ambitious and that we might not get to spend a lot of time at each individual spot and that we will be spending a lot of our time in a car but I am very much looking forward to this trip. As we drive, we are going to listen to The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman and hope to do a From Cover to Cover video together upon our return.

We plan to arrive in Essen the evening of October 22nd and then will be attending the convention on Thursday, Friday and Saturday leaving sometime on Sunday to return to the airport for our flight home.

At the end of each day, I will be putting together a very short blog post summary of what we were able to see that day on our trip but also while at the convention and documenting the games we play and the people we speak with. I would like to keep this to just a few paragraphs with several pictures to give you an idea of our journey. We are still planning on doing some videos that will be released on the YouTube Channel over the next few months but this written coverage will supplement the videos.

One final note. We would love to meet many of you at the convention or even along the route of our trip if you would like to reach out and coordinate something. I cannot promise that we will be able to get to everything and meet everyone but we will do our best! You can email me at theplayersaid@gmail.com to make arrangements.

-Grant