I was pretty determined *not* to go. Not least because I'm going broke faster than an Icelandic bank. But a weekend spent at the UK Games Expo demoing for Tony Boydell showed me that it's entirely possible to spend a whole weekend surrounded by new games and not buy a single one, and that I simply cannot stay away from such things. So I'll be at Essen, and probably on the Treefrog stand three days out of four. I expect other people to do the playing and scouting for me this year, and want them to tell me which three new games are so outstanding I simply have to buy them. Pathfinder doesn't count, of course, because I'm already hooked on that.