Occupational hazard: whenever I lay a selection out on the table, I end up looking at where things come from. I prep my geography lessons and my game scouting in the same spot, and it rubs off. This time, picking my notebook back up a month out from the show, I saw something other than a shopping list appear. Ten boxes, nine publishing countries, and not a single American publisher. It wasn't a stance I set out to take, it's just what the sorting gave me. So here's my last ba

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About a month ago, I shared my very first picks for Essen, nine boxes spotted three months out. Since then, summer did exactly what I feared: the announcements poured in, and my shopping list doubled while I was looking the other way. So here's the second layer, the two-months-out one. And this time, I'm taking a stance. While everyone stares at the big locomotives that haven't shown their hand yet, a handful of titles are slipping completely under the radar. Seven, to be exa

The other night, instead of sleeping, I was scrolling through publishers' Essen announcements. Bad idea for bedtime, great idea for what comes next: three months out, the first boxes are surfacing, and I already have an itch of a list. So I might as well share this first sort, hot off the press. One honest note before we dive in: this is a very first selection, based on what I've managed to catch of the announced releases. It's not a ranking, and definitely not the final list