I don’t want to get melancholy but our trip here to SPIELE Essen has come to an end! It has been a wild and very busy trip for us as we have completed the 9th day of our European trip. I’m crazy tired but have had a fantastic time and have created memories that I’ll keep with me forever.

Today, we arrived at the convention hall and had an appointment to play a scenario of Assault Sicily Primosole Bridge with designers Wolfgang Klein and Erich Rankl from Assault Games.

The scenario chosen was a frontal assault on Primosole Bridge and it was a tough one for both sides. The Germans were setup nicely with a bunker, building and trenches to hide their units awaiting the British to cross over the bridge. I played as the Germans and had my Pak 40 pointed such as to be able to cover the entire approach on the bridge and then had an MG 42 team hid in the building facing the oncoming troops. I had a one elite Fallschirmjäger rifle and a few ad Hoc Service Personnel platoons who were put on the front line. Alexander’s Brits had a Valentine Mark 10, a couple of Armored Cars and a Bren Carrier with a mounted Piat with 3 parachute squads and a sniper.

Alexander deftly used his smoke assets to hide his units approach but I was able to eliminate a parachute regiment and reduce an armored car but my Service Personnel got wiped and my Fallschirmjäger attempted some close assaults and was bested. In the end, the Brits crossed the bridge and captured the 2 objective hexes to win the scenario. This game is so good. I love the custom dice and the units cards and the system is just clean and very playable.

Wolfgang informed us that they were working on a new Leaders and Heroes expansion that will be able to be bolted onto any scenario as well as a new purple Morale die to add a layer of depth and interest. He didn’t know exactly when that would be ready but I am very much looking forward to using them!

We then got a quick look at the near final production copy of Battle Commander Vol.1 – Napoleon’s Italian Campaigns designed by Carl Paradis. Battle Commander is a new Napoleonics system at Brigade/Division scale, which is very playable, with no downtime or complex computations or mechanics. Game pieces will be painted-on wood blocks of different shapes, so no annoying stickers to apply, you’ll have a couple dozen blocks per side in a game and there are no dice, almost no markers and the emphasis is on the gameplay.

The crux of the game engine will be a deck of event cards, that will also take care of all the combat results and other dice functions, and a cube-pull mechanism, that will manage player unit activations, but also turn end, when combat and rally happens, and other similar game happenings.

The production on this one is just unbelievably gorgeous. The units are thick wooden blocks, the markers are wooden and the board is just gorgeous with lots of well designed and laid out cards. All of this and the game is expected to retail for around €80.

Uwe thought that this one should be out by year’s end and we are very excited to give it a go.

We then were invited by the guys at Aegir Games to play a short demo of the newest expansion to Europa Universalis called Defying Destiny. Defying Destiny adds 240 bridge-sized cards and 156 mini-cards, including tons of new Events and Missions, as well as new Action Cards and Milestones. But the biggest addition is the new board which is smaller and more focused than the initial game we played a few years ago. There are also a bunch of new scenarios which place the nations closer to each other and start the game off with resistance and competition from the start. This was our biggest complaint with the other edition as it just took too long to get to the point we felt tension. This gets it going from the start and is a good change.

We only played one full turn but we enjoyed the new changes and are very much looking forward to getting this back to the table in the near future.

We the ran into content creator and upcoming wargamer Candice Harris formerly with Board Game Geek. She is always fun to chat with and it was great to see her again.

Next we went back to PHALANX’s booth and got a play in of the new Punica: Rome vs. Carthage.

Punica is an area control and hand management game, which plays in 20-30 minutes. The game is designed to give a strategic look at the Punic Wars with simple rules and a fast playtime.

I love the combat mechanic as players play cards from their hands that add the value of the cards to the final combat score from 0-6 but also have events that can do things like bring in reinforcements, retreat before resolution and even move troops on different areas of the board to other areas. Just a very slick combat system that is very uncertain.

The victory conditions are to conquer the opponents capital OR control any 3 of your opponents areas OR kill all of their units on the board. That is another key to the design is you cannot replace losses or add more troops. Each side has what they’ve got at start. This one is a nice lite game and we enjoyed it greatly!

We were supposed to get together with José Luis Barca to discuss his new A Bridge Too Far book wargame from PHALANX but we were involved in another meeting and just couldn’t break away to get over there. I felt bad about that, and want to apologize to their Marketing and Crowdfunding Director Adrian Turzański, but we did get copies and are looking forward to playing the game.

We then made our way over to the Nuts! Publishing booth to meet with Florent Coupeau to discuss their new and upcoming games. Nuts! really has some great looking wargames and we have very much enjoyed their offerings over the past few years.

Supremacy 2050 is a geopolitical card driven game that takes a look at the future of world politics designed by Pierre Razoux (FITNA). 1-6 players will compete in international trade for vital resources including strategic materials, oil and grain, and trade commodities on the world market, build armies, navies, nukes and a “star-wars” defense system, borrow money from the World Bank or invest in bonds to increase income.

To win, players need a balance of diplomacy, economic and military strength. They also must form alliances, negotiate, threaten and bluff. Many strategies can lead to victory.

This game is a redesign of the classic cold war game Supremacy and will have an updated map and currency for the 21st century, along with corrected and streamlined rules to make the game faster, simpler and more intense.

We also were told that Guerre Eclair, the next volume in the Combat Rations Series that we played at SDHistCon last November, would be out early in 2026 and that they are working on a new implementation of Bulge 20 with Joe Miranda for late 2026.

Thanks to Florent even though his voice was failing him and he was very tired, as were we. Florent is always so gracious and we appreciate his time and work with Nuts!.

Again we met a lot of people today who like to watch our videos and read the blog. Frankly, we have been blown away by the amount of people we have encountered over the past 3 days, but I will not try to name them as I will most likely get their names wrong but wanted to show some of their pictures.

Gonzalo Santacruz from Salt & Pepper Games.

The final event of the day was a dinner with the Sound of Drums team and the Aegir Games team. Great food, great conversation and great fellowship. A perfect ending to a perfect trip!

We have had such a great time on this trip and I have very much enjoyed sharing it with you through these daily posts. We shot a few interviews and travel videos and we will be doing a debrief upon our return and you can look for these on the channel soon. Thank you!

-Grant