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Hashtag hashbrown huntdown11/4/2023 I also grabbed Combi-nations from Cawali games, the kickstarter ended on the Friday before Essen, it was fun saying I had travelled from Antarctica to pick it up. Radlands was a recommendation from UncleWills and Willem. But LOOK! I'll be back no doubt! The Onverse series are predominately solo games the designer is a dedicated solo designer and way before it was trendy to include solo variants in games. The Z-Man label has been dropped and Shadi Torbey has started this publishing house to reprint these games and finish the series. In 2018, I walked all over Essen looking for Nautilion, and couldn't find it anywhere, until on Saturday, I found it in a single pile forgotten about in the Asmodee shop. So with the necessary HiG purchases out of the way, I headed to InPatience to pick up Stellarion, the latest game in the Oniverse Series. What actually happened was 10 people stole Dan's meeple. We made little baggies, and hid some Dan meeple around the fair and asked people to hashtag a photograph of Dan with their favourite game, and then hide the meeple somewhere else for someone to find. We also played another game at the fair using Dan's meeples. We headed over to the other HiG booth so I could grab the same for Rich The Fish. More than enough to get me over the Spiel 22 limit. So my first purchases from Essen were the obligatory, Ukrainian tile, Ukrainian Map, The new mini-expansion The Bets, and Mists over Carcassonne. That was a good time for Willem to share photographs of his collection. Later some friends joined him, and a lady boasted about selling her Carcassonne Spiel tile for 15€. Willem and I spoke to a nice guy who had managed to nab a copy of Great Western Trails, apparently only 40 were available. In previous years I've just wandered up to the booth and been served immediately. We split into to groups to recce both Hans Im Gluck booths as quickly as possible. Team A was Willem and myself, while Team B was Dan and Meepledrone. We also played another game where members of the public could receive temporary tattoos. A few weeks earlier I suggested the concept of a Carcassonne shirt with: "No tile left unturned" and I had the shirts printed for us to wear. We were all wearing T-Shirts designed by Carcassonne Central's MMike. I was disappointed not to have a hashbrown, but they made up for it with a broad selection of cake. We started bright and early then headed to the fine eatery of Mc Donalds. Thank you so much! I'm always particularly nervous of Dan around tile-towers but this one left unscathed. Meepledrone finally arrived in the hotel, and had brought a tremendous number of Carcassonne paraphernalia for Willem, but he also had gifts for Dan and myself. After much pointing, apologizing, and Willem acting as mediator, we had 3 beers in the park, and got attacked by spiders. "Three Beers" got a painful "Was?!" in response. It was Dan's turn to practise his German. On the way back, we stopped for a beer in a pizzeria opposite the hotel. We had dinner in the traditional Hans Im Glueck. We unpacked out things and headed to the Messe so that Willem know where it was. The traffic in Antwerp was particularly rubbish. I blinked for a minute of two, and we were suddenly in Essen. Klaus-Jurgen Wrede was recently interviewed about the 5 games he'd like to play if we was trapped in a log cabin during an apocalypse. On the way in Dan, Willem, and I listened to the 5 Board Games of Doom podcast. One of the most enjoyable parts of the trip is passing the town you left: Thanks to Willem's driving we managed to arrive at the Tunnel crossing a train earlier than expected so we were able to cross a little earlier. I drove down the length of the carpark hoping to jump the fence, but we discovered that the fences were about 15 foot tall so had to spin the car around to park a bit nearer to the main entrance and walk to Willem's car. Finally we got to the Ashford International Station car park. The only clue I had was to not run over pedestrians or drive into lampposts. To top it off Ashford doesn't use conventional roads, instead they've decided to block pave large sections of road and pavement, nor use any form of recognizable road markings. All in all, I was very surprised to find how busy the roads were from a Wednesday morning. The traffic meant we were a little late to meet Willem. Thankfully we had time for breakfast in one of our favourite establishments. I think I got to Dan's around 6.30am and we trundled through a lot of traffic cutting across the M4/M25. I had to be out of the house by 4:30 to give us enough time to drive across the country to mean Willem in Ashford. It was an early start for me over in Wales.
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