Peter Struijf
Netherlands
Zoetermeer
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This is a continuation, or possibly an appendix, or a chewing of cud, of the series of reflections I wrote about my adventures at the Spiel 08 fair in Essen. That series you may find in the Essen folder of this forum, but were also presented neatly and nicely, with much kind comment, on the site of NYC Gamer.
If you found the previous installments to be tedious, grossly exaggerated, full of bluster and self-aggrandization, or in any other way annoying or depressing, I would recommend against reading this article. It is probably going to be the same kind of stuff, and why bump your head twice against the same tree, especially if that particular tree just told you it is still standing here, enjoying a bit of the winter breeze?
If you enjoyed that series of writings, I hope you will enjoy this next episode as much as the earlier ones. If you have chicken in the oven, I recommend you let a significant and present other keep an eye on the fowl for a few minutes, or switch off the machine if you have no such other present.
Of course I can offer no guarantees to anyone, that this installment may be interesting or funny, as this is largely based on my real life. It is hard to predict what other people might find funny or entertaining. Except if I fell flat on my face in the mud, which is an act considered funny by almost any human audience on the planet.
Right, enough introductory nonsense: let’s continue the story.
Sent Packing
Monday, the day after Essen, I still had the rental truck at my disposal. So I decided to make the most of the machine, drive to my printer’s place (100 km away) and collect a good number of games for storage at my home and at Melchior’s house. It was a beautiful day and I was in high spirits, despite the few hours of sleep I had managed to catch that night. Unlike a week ago, when I was shaking with nerves just to reverse the rental truck a few meters, I could now maneuver it like a real van man! After loading the van and chatting with Frans (the owner of the printing company), I was ready to drive back home. Then I noticed a missed call on my phone, with a voicemail message from Piotr, of Polish distributor Rebel, whom I had met at Essen. I called him back and found out he had sent me an important email - I promised I’d read it as soon as I got home.
I did as I had promised, but could not have expected what was waiting for me: Rebel placed an order for 100 games, to be shipped to Poland, if I could just let him know the price and shipping costs. Within several days, we had agreed on all the details and his bank transfer was on the way. This was amazing: a straight-up order for 100 games and a distributor in Poland who would take my game to 50 shops all over the country!
This spectacular order was soon followed by several other orders from shops in the UK and Germany. Now came the challenge: how to pack and ship all these (120) games? I asked my friend Alert, who lives nearby and is in his third year of ASL-understudy, to come over to my house and "do some packing". I offered the man a free meal and a six-pack of cola as incentives.
Alert arrives and we take stock of our playthings: 20 boxes of 6 games each, weighing a total of 130 kilograms; a huge roll of bubbly plastic, lots of sticky tape and wrapping plastic; and an online computer program, which enables you to pre-register your shipments and print bar-coded stickers. At least I had tried out the online program the previous day, when I sent Tom Vasel’s review copy to South Korea: if I was going to mess this digital stuff up badly, it might as well be Tom’s, I reckoned, but it had somehow worked.
I was less confident about the actual packing: during my student days, I had worked in a factory in the Rotterdam harbor for a few weeks, where I took part in the Bosnian war. We had re-packaged container loads of brown beans into 2-kg packets, which were then shipped to the hungry Bosnians. At least, that’s what we were told by the company. Twenty years later I know most of those beans were probably sold off to buy cigarettes and other essentials excluded from the aid package, but that does not matter here. It does place my last significant packing experience squarely at the late 1980’s. I hoped Alert would pack some punch when it came to packing, but was quickly disappointed: his first statement while looking at the pile of stuff was: "I hope you know what to do with this, because I have never been very handy.” Bummer, those ASL friends, sometimes!
During the next five hours, Alert and I struggled and sweated, taped and wound, heaved and gripped, carried and loaded the boxes. Most of the work was done in the near-freezing corridor of our "bicycle" cellar. Fortunately for Geode Games, my wife and I do not like cycling (which is a major cultural crime in this country, but we hide the fact)and we were happy to re-designate it "games cellar" as it was now full of Kraków boxes. The corridor was just wide enough for the roll of bubbly plastic to be unwound. It took us an hour to figure out how to tape, wrap, strap and label the first two boxes. As the afternoon wore on, we became a well-oiled, confident little team. By the time we had stuck the final label on the last game four hours later, we were ready to start a removal company.
When the shipments reached my foreign customers, I received praise for the high quality of the packaging. I am happy they never saw us sweating in the bicycle cellar...
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Matthew Bond
United Kingdom
Norwich
Norfolk
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Inspiring stuff and a good read. Thanks.
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Tim Goose
United Kingdom
Hitchin
Hertfordshire
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Peter
Great news! Today Poland, tomorrow the world. (Or was that someone else?)
Tim
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DC Clark
United States
Houghton
Michigan
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peterstruijf wrote: ... I asked my friend Alert, who lives nearby and is in his third year of ASL-understudy ...
This may have some actual legitimate meaning outside my poor American knowledge, but I love the idea that Alert is still working on his batchelor's degree in Advanced Squad Leader.
One more year and a master's to go, and maybe he can compete!
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Peter Struijf
Netherlands
Zoetermeer
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The meaning is, certainly, that he is a tactical boardgame understudy.
He has not learnt American Sign Language, Automatic Surge Levelling or Antique Slippers Lecturing - nor anything else that would be worthwhile in normal life !
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peterstruijf wrote:
... my wife and I do not like cycling (which is a major cultural crime in this country, but we hide the fact) ...
What?! You're dutch and you don't like cycling?!?!?
... neither do i ...
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Randy Shipp
United States
Irving
Texas
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What's the game? :-)
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Scott Everts
United States
Foothill Ranch
California
MITCHELL!!!
Push the button, Frank!
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I just got my copy recently. I loved your Essen articles and looking forward to this new series.
Keep writing, your stories are great! 
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Randy Shipp
United States
Irving
Texas
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rshipp wrote: What's the game? :-)
Ah, never mind. I see now that it's Krakow 1325 AD. Congrats on your success!
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United Kingdom
Great Barford, Bedford
Bedfordshire
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rshipp wrote: rshipp wrote: What's the game? :-) Ah, never mind. I see now that it's Krakow 1325 AD. Congrats on your success!
Well worth trying out. Had a lot of fun when we played it (apart from everybody guessing I was green almost straight away, i'll never be any good at poker  )
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Peter Struijf
Netherlands
Zoetermeer
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giving away your "Secret Identity" in the first round of cards by some obvious move is NOT the most direct way to victory......
Try again, a little less obvious ????
Thanks for your kind comments guys, I hope to write one or two more installments about the post-Essen experiences I have had.
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Tom Rosen
United States
Arlington
Virginia
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Yay, Peter is back with more stories!
For those of you who missed the first ten parts of this series, you can see them collected on my website by clicking here. It's really a great read and well worth perusing.
Also played the game itself for the first time last night and enjoyed it very much. Thankfully we played 2 years as the concepts and ideas really started to gel and make sense in that second year as we began to scratch the surface of understanding the tension between supporting your team's efforts to get cubes on the board and your secret identities efforts to win Intrigues in your color. It's also a gorgeously produced game! Not only is the artwork amazing, but the components are impressive. It's far better produced than most games put out by large game publishing houses... sorta puts GMT to shame, among others.
Hope you keep these stories coming Peter
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