SDHistCon North: Undaunted 2200: Revolution, Baltic Empires, Penitent

Last month, SDHistCon held its first ever North convention in St. Paul, Minneapolis, on July 11-12, 2026. SDHistCon North was held inside the Union Depot, a gorgeous location that had lots of hotels and restaurants within walking distance. The convention was held on the second floor, and there was ample space for gaming, demos and seeing everyone. Plus, it was an actual train depot! It was such a fantastic time.

I arrived in St. Paul on Friday afternoon in time to hit up the pre-convention mixer at MetroNome Brewery. There were scheduled historical tours Friday morning that I couldn’t attend because I wasn’t in town yet, but I heard good things about it from the people who went.

As always, I love having an event before the convention to hang out with people and catch up! Had a fun dinner nearby at The Bulldog, where I, of course, ordered some cheese curds. When in the Midwest!

Saturday 

Before heading to the Union Depot to start the convention, I walked over to So Yen to get an amazing ube donut and Vietnamese coffee with ube cold foam for breakfast. 

My first game of the convention was Shakespeare’s First Folio. I always love a good Shakespeare theme! This is my second time I’ve played this prototype, and I believe this is the first time I’ve played with historical patrons and personages who help score you points in the end. I love how this game is a quasi-trick taker because if you don’t win the trick, you get to collect the resources from the card you played. It’s such a neat balance! 

Next up was Undaunted 2200: Revolution, taught by one of the designers David Thompson! This is the latest space game from the Undaunted series, and it will be an Essen release, with some copies I believe sold at Gen Con.

This is a 4-player, 2 teams battle in space deck-building game. The game comes with four scenario-long narrative arcs, or you can play any of the 15 scenarios for a quick battle. I managed both aerial and ground units, and working together as a team made for a fun experience. Teamwork makes the dream work — for destroying your enemy.

After lunch inside the cafe inside the Union Depot – having some place to get food inside a gaming venue will always be a thing I appreciate – I played the prototype Waterways. Designed by Andrew Brailey, the game is about trading goods on the canals and other waterways in the U.S. and Canada during 1836, in the lead-up to the financial panic of 1837. 

At its current state, the game has an interesting turn-order mechanism based on how you spend your action points, and also during this time period, moving cargo over land takes a long time! We also never managed to trigger the economic panic, which the designer said he had never seen happen. A good playtest overall!

Sunday

I started Sunday with a game of Baltic Empires: The Northern Wars of 1558-1721. I played as Sweden, and the four other factions were Denmark-Norway, Russia, Brandenburg-Prussia and Poland-Lithuania. Players have to develop their economy, strengthen their administration, secure trade hubs, and build armies to become the dominant power of the Baltics.

Each faction would win via a Trade Monopoly, Cultural Hegemony, National Ambitions (these were unique for each faction, but oftentimes they overlap for control with another faction) or a Balance of Power occurs. We played a standard scenario, which goes for 8 to 12 rounds. There was a moment in the game around Round 4 where it as getting heated between Russia and Poland-Lithuania, but nobody achieved their national ambition and the game continued for a couple more rounds.

Later that afternoon, I played Penitent, a solo game about building a prison as a Quaker reformer. But for this convention, designer Dan Bullock orchestrated not one, but two large demonstrations with two teams of reformers building out their person, with a giant screen separating the two teams.

It was such a fascinating experience working with teammates to get prisoners released, and to build a — for the lack of a better word — better prison where illness doesn’t spread (ventilation is key, people). And then after our games were done, Dan removed the screen and it was wild to see how the other team’s architectural plans and how their prison varied so differently from ours. 

On Sunday night, we ate Ethiopian food for dinner at Erta Ale Ethiopian. It was again in walking distance from the Union Depot, and the food and company were great.

And that was the end of the convention on Sunday night. But before flying out on Monday afternoon, Dan and I had breakfast with Cole and Drew Wehrle at Keys Cafe. a St. Paul breakfast institution.

After breakfast, we visited the new offices of Buried Giant Studios in St. Paul and met a few other team members of the company.

And of course, we played a quick game. Stick Collection is a delightful game is all about bidding on a stick that’s propped up in a plastic holder. The goal is to collect sticks in your hand in increasing 5 mm sizes to make a sort of run with sticks. You can’t touch the stick up for auction, so you’ll have to rely on guesstimating from across the table how long that stick is. Spoiler: I am not very good at this.

After that game, I headed to the airport to fly home. The two days of SDHistCon North went by so quickly! I was really impressed by the convention space and its hours, and how easy it was to get around the area. I stayed at the Hyatt Place just across the street, so it was really convenient for me, but there were other hotels in walking distance as well. If SDHistCon decides to have this convention again next year, I will definitely be returning. And hopefully, they’ll add another day of gaming!