It’s been over three years since the last Arizona Game Fair. The previous one had been scheduled for March 2020, but we all know what happened two years ago. This year, the Arizona Game Fair came back in full force, and it was just awesome to see so many familiar faces again in person!
The convention was held on March 10-13, 2022, but I ended up attending just that Friday through Sunday. The previous week, I had been at Dice Tower West and was unable to take that many days off again. Nonetheless, I got lots of gaming in — old games and new ones!
Friday
I opened my new copy of Sidereal Confluence and dusted out my giant tweezers for the occasion.
An Arizona convention wouldn’t be complete without a game of Sidereal Confluence. I dusted off my giant tweezers to run a 7P game of space trading and bartering on Friday morning. I love this game so much, even if I never do well in it! It’s the perfect con game, where a large group of folks can dedicate a few hours respectfully yelling at each other.
I wanted to take a photo before the trading madness began!
After the game, I took a break for lunch and then played a series of shorter games while waiting for friends to finish up their game. First up was No Thanks! Always a fun filler and a quick teach!
In No Thanks, each card is worth the number that’s printed on it, and you’re trying to have the lowest score in the game. If you have a chip, you can refuse a card. If not, you’ll end up taking it.
Next up was Favelas, a game I’ve always wanted to play. This cute tile-laying game is based on the iconic buildings in Rio de Janeiro. You’re stacking tiles onto your player board and each round, you score for the color majorities, which are dictated by dice rolled at the start of each round. During your turn though, you can also increase or decrease the pips on a die so that one color can be more or less valuable during scoring. So colorful and puzzly!
Favelas was surprisingly a crunchy puzzle!
Then I taught a game of Seikatsu. I just adore the components of this game! My version, and the Arizona Game Fair library version, has these acrylic poker chips that are used during this tile-laying game. I heard that newer editions aren’t like this? You draw chips from a bag and place it onto the center board. You can either score groups of birds now, or score sets of flowers at the end of the game, based on your perspective from the garden. This visual mechanism to the game is pretty clever!
I love the poker chip pieces in Seikatsu.
I then learned a solitaire game called Orchard. What a neat game! I normally don’t play solo games but I liked playing this. It’s a good quick game to play if you’re waiting for someone at a bar or restaurant, and it’s about the size of a deck of playing cards. In Orchard, you’re laying 9 down cards and overlapping them in order to grow your fruit harvest, and you have mini dice to keep track of your crop size. The game comes with 18 cards, so after you finish your quick 10-minute game, you’re all set to play another with the 9 other cards you separated out.
The Orchard is a delightful solo game where you’re building up your orchards by overlaying cards of the same exact crop.
The next game I played was Khora. Khora is a civilization-building game set in ancient Greece whose main action turn is similar to that of Twilight Imperium 4 or Puerto Rico. You pick two action tiles to play, and they resolve in the order of the actions, and you spend the whole game working to increase military, economy and culture. Also, the player boards in this game were top-notch.
Lots of different tracks in Khora. The dual-layer player boards made it easy to track your progress.
I then played Match Me! This co-op game was so much fun! Players are given an identical hand of cards that are essentially color swatches. Each player is given one category on their turn and gives players a clue so that they can play one of their color cards that they think best matches the clue. As the round continues, players are left with fewer cards, making it harder to give a good clue! For example, if the category was fast food, the clue giver would say McDonald’s, and hopefully everyone will play the yellow color face down.
Match Me is such a fun party game! I wonder if I’ll be able to ever find a copy.
We ended Friday night of the convention with a game of Squaring Circleville, a game I had also played at Dice Tower West.
Friday night fun in Circleville!
Again, I love the historical background of Squaring Circleville, and I enjoy teaching it to folks — especially those who love the rondel mechanism! It’s so satisfying putting the giant cardboard pieces out to show which sections are upgraded.
The Ohio town of Circleville has been officially squared!
Saturday
We started Saturday with a game of Dune: Imperium. I’m enjoying this game more and more with each play. I’m not a huge fan of deckbuilders in general, but this game is the perfect blend of that and worker placement. The game ramps up with each round and it clocks in at under two hours.
The spice must flow in Dune: Imperium.
I then learned Era: Medieval Age, which is an interesting twist on a roll and write. Instead of filling out player boards, you’re using the dice rolls to build out your little kingdom. I enjoyed the puzzle aspect of this, while the resource management for building things and not get attacked. My only complaint was that the player board was a bright yellow and hard to see the different phases and symbols on it.
If I owned a copy of this game, I’d paint the board so I can see the resources.
We then played a 5P game of Macaron. This cute trick-taking game involves two types of betting — both on the number of bids you think you’ll take as well as which suit, or flavor, is trump. You can also win tricks using some of the cards’ special abilities. Definitely a must-have for fans of trick-taking games. Made me want to get some macarons after the game!
Trying to win tricks and fulfill orders in Macaron.
After dinner, I played a game of Vivid Memories, which I didn’t enjoy. We pored through the rulebook on the spot, and it felt like the most important mechanism of this game was just an afterthought based on how the rulebook was written. The game, while gorgeous, is essentially a drafting game where you’re trying to collect memory cards and fragments in order to thread them on your player board and score. I think the rulebook should’ve stressed the importance of threading more, instead of the drafting, because by the time we realized how the game was supposed to play, we were halfway through round 2. And the game only goes to 3 rounds.
This is your brain in Vivid Memories, where you’re threading fragments and creating memories.
We ended Saturday night with a game of Dog Lover. I love the artwork on this one, and it’s quickly becoming my go-to 30-45 minute game at the last few gaming events I’ve been to! Who can say no to these doggies?
Look at all these good doggos learning tricks and going on walks.
Sunday
Clinic was right up my alley! There’s just so many crunchy decisions you have to make!
Sunday morning was for Clinic! This was the game I was hoping to play at this convention, and I was so happy that Brian was able to teach it to me! In Clinic, players are building a medical clinic, which requires building rooms; hiring doctors, nurses and orderlies, and getting patients — all the while making sure everyone has a parking space! And the more efficient your clinic is, meaning fewer steps each person has to take to get treated, the better it will be for your bottom line! I also like the spatial element to this game when you’re building rooms, as you can build up and out.
The car supply situation on the main board is getting out of hand, much like the parking situation on your player board!
While I was helping clean up Clinic, two ladies came by and asked if I was Filipino. And I said yes. They then got super excited about seeing another Filipino lady, and immediately called over another Filipino lady so that we could take a group photo. It just warmed my heart that they got so excited over seeing another person like them at a convention, and just reminds me how important representation is in these gaming spaces. We all got to know each other a bit and exchanged information to schedule a game day sometime!
These super nice Filipino ladies all introduced themselves to me!
I then played Juicy Fruits, a darling fruit-drafting with chunky wooden pieces! In this game, you’re collecting fruit pieces to fulfill orders and build buildings.
These wooden pieces are so chunky and satisfying to hold!
It reminds me of those childhood puzzle games where you’re moving number pieces to put them back in order, but in this game, you’re moving fruit tiles on your player board, and the farther they move, the more pieces of fruit you collect. Then you can trade your fruit in to fulfill orders or buy buildings for victory points. As you fulfill your orders, your player board opens up and the game can really escalate quickly to the end condition.
Juice Fruits is similar to those childhood puzzle games where you’re moving numbered pieces.
The last game I played at Arizona Game Fair was Long Shot: The Dice Game. It’s also roll-and-write game where you use your dice rolls to fill out your player sheet to buy horses, place bets, influence race movement and use special abilities. And on each roll, at least one horse will move, so you can strategically purchase the horse, or even bet on it. It’s such a riot!
We’re off at the races! Will your horse win? Who knows!?
And that concludes all the gaming I did at Arizona Game Fair. Thanks for having me! The convention was so chill, and, while it got really busy on Saturday afternoon, there was always a place to game and people to game with. I can’t describe how awesome it felt to do some nonstop convention gaming again, though I don’t recommend doing back to back conventions! As much as I will deny it, I am not a young person anymore! But it does inspire me to attend more conventions this year. Let’s see where 2022 takes us!
My husband and I were going back and forth on attending Dice Tower West last weekend as it would be the first major convention we’d attend since the start of the pandemic. I had previously attended Consimworld in person last summer, but that was only about 200 gamers — Dice Tower West is probably nearly 10 times that amount. We decided to take a road trip to Las Vegas and had a fabulous time!
Thursday
We drove from Phoenix and arrived in Las Vegas on Thursday evening, and after a lovely dinner at one of my favorite restaurants ever — Firefly Tapas Kitchen and Bar — we checked into the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, where Dice Tower West is being held. Since my formerly-East Coaster husband, Chris, had never been to Las Vegas, I wanted to give him a tour of the town before we dove into board games.
Firefly Tapas Kitchen + Bar is one of my favorite restaurants! I celebrated my 30th birthday there a lifetime ago!
We went to see O at the Bellagio, my favorite Cirque du Soleil show, and bought third-row seats. It was pretty epic sitting so close! I could feel the cold air when the water came down and the heat when the fires were ablazing. After the show, we meandered a small section of the Strip and ended up getting Secret Pizza at the Cosmopolitan.
O by Cirque du Soleil is such an impressive show, a visual spectacle!
Friday
On Friday morning, we checked into the convention and scoped out the place. The Rio convention area is ginormous! I had last attended Dice Tower West in 2019, and this was much, much bigger and spread out, which made me feel safe to game with friends.
Me checking in at Dice Tower West. I accidentally matched the sign.
There were two main gaming rooms (one was mask optional and the other was mask required, where we stayed through the whole con.) The exhibitor hall was located in the mask-required room.
The convention area was so large and had many different rooms spread out at the Rio Hotel.
The convention area had the Dice Tower West library, panel rooms, lounge rooms, food rooms and breakaway rooms for gaming in a smaller space. There was no shortage of finding space or moving over to a quieter area.
The Dice Tower West library. They even had tables in the library!
The first game I played was Dog Lover. Such an adorable game! It’s the sequel to Cat Lover, a game I reviewed on Episode 117 of The Five By, and it introduces new elements such as Tricks and Traits to change up the card drafting. Players are rescuing dogs to feed them and can score even more points if the doggos become trained, go on walks and collect their favorite things.
I just adore the artwork in Dog Lover!
Next up, I played Honey Buzz, which I purchased after talking with GameFreekGeekGirl at the Elf Creek Games booth. The awesome components drew me in, but the puzzly aspect of the game is what sold me! Honey Buzz is a bee worker placement game, where you place your beeples on a central board to expand your beehive, produce nectar and make honey. Expanding your beehive requires you to collect honeycomb tiles, which you then place into your area, and how you configure them will produce resources to complete objectives. There’s also a “bear market” where you can sell nectar, which are these semi-squishy beads in various shapes and sizes to correspond with different honey types.
The beeples and components in Honey Buzz are cute!
I then attended a Twitch streamer event and met these wonderful ladies!
All these hard-working ladies are making such a positive impact in the board-gaming community: Amanda Panda, Beneeta and Monique, from Before You Play!
I then ran into Ta-Te Wu, the designer of Art Decko, originally released as Promenade, and beloved cat games like Cat Sudoku and Cat Rescue.
I finally got to meet Ta-Te Wu in person!
I then had a chance to playtest a new game he’s working on! Players are using cards from their hands to take control of a suit and place their meeple on it. It’s a neat bluffing, majority control card game that doesn’t have an official theme on it but I’m excited to see where this goes as all of Ta-Te’s games have such cute artwork on it.
Chris and I got to playtest one of the games Ta-Te is working on.
I then got a chance to play So Clover! Uhh, this game is bonkers! Players are dealt cards with words on its four sides, and you randomly place it onto your plastic clover. You then write one word so that other players can guess which two words from the cards belong on that side of the clover. When it’s your turn, you remove the cards from the clover and are dealt a fifth dummy card, which then you place into the center of the board with the clover so that other players can choose which cards to place on which clover side. I can see how this is a fun party game, but man, the addition of the fifth card after you write your clues seemed to derail all of our games!
This game is bonkers! It still doesn’t beat my current party game at the moment, Just One, but it’s still fun!
I then played Floating Floors, a ninja dexterity game where you’re moving your piece across floating floorboards that you or your opponent have placed. Each turn, you roll three dice to determine which small shapes you’ll take and place them on the cards and add a floor on top of it. Ninjas then make their way across the matching squares in order to pick up bansen seals.
Our ninjas precariously balancing on floating tiles.
Dice Tower West had plenty of events throughout the con. We took a break and watched Paula Deming’s live show. She sang, did some improv and chatted with the audience, and showcased her videos. It was a nearly full house!
Lots of people came out to Paula Deming’s live show.
Amanda Panda then taught us Project L! This game is so neat! It’s a puzzly engine-builder game with polyominos where you collect objective tiles to place your puzzle pieces on it and as a prize, you receive another puzzle piece. The more puzzles you complete, the more pieces you’ll have to complete high-value tiles. The components and the square box are top-notch! It’s like a more brain-burnery NMBR9.
Project L combines engine building and puzzle-building!
I finished Friday night with two quick games of Seasons. My buddy and I always fall back to this game because neither one of us owns it, and it’s a fast-paced game since we both know how to play. Plus, chonky dice!
Seasons, an oldie and a goodie! I always love rolling these dice.
Saturday
I randomly caught the start of the Flea Market, which was hopping! We purchased an Oink game Mr. Face and Quixo, a wooden game that belongs to a series of games that my husband loves.
Tic-Tac-Toe-ing our way around this wooden puzzle.
I then played Squaring Circleville. Love this game! I first played this game as a prototype back in BGG Con 2019 (which seems like a lifetime ago!), and the Kickstarter finally delivered this game earlier this year. I love the historical background of this game, where Circleville, Ohio, which was built in a circle, razed down structures to square off its town into a modern grid. Plus, it’s got a cool rondel action mechanism.
I’ve been waiting for Squaring Circleville to be released, and it did not disappoint!
We then played Twin Palms with Greg and Stephanie, a very cool trick-taking game with only two suits and retro beach artwork that’s currently on Kickstarter. This game was so enjoyable, with such a clever twist on trick-taking! The Kickstarter is ending very soon, so if this is up your alley, I highly recommend backing it!
I love the artwork on Twin Palms! Plus, the unique trick-taking mechanism makes it easy for new gamers to join.
Next up was a party game prototype that my buddy Treg has been working on: My Soundtrack. I haven’t seen Treg for many years since we first met at GMT Weekend, so I was happy to run into him and his wife here. In the style of Apples to Apples, this music party game is all about building your life soundtrack.
My husband played this winning card for this song on the soundtrack of my life. LOL
There are two stacks of cards: soundtrack cards and cards with song names and the artist on it. If it’s your turn, you draw two theme cards and pick one. The next two people to your left will each play a song card, and you have to pick which song is best. The winner of that duel has to compete one by one with everyone else at the table to pick the better matching song. The owner of the winning song gets a guitar pick! I like how in this game you aren’t competing with the entire table, but one by one, and even if you don’t know the songs, the game still makes hilarious gameplays based on the title alone. The person with three guitar picks wins the game, and there’s one final round where players get to choose who has the best soundtrack!
Fun times gaming with Treg; his wife, Jenny (right); and Maddy!
We also then all played Meeple Party, a cooperative puzzle-solving game, where players are moving meeples into and around a house party. Each player has photo conditions they need to complete, such as having two purple meeples and one yellow in the Dining Room, but also disaster cards, in which the meeples get all stressed if you don’t avoid it. It was quite challenging throwing a successful party to last until midnight!
I haven’t been a house party this hectic since college!
After a lovely dinner off strip, I got a chance to finally play Merv, a game I purchased last summer but finally just pulled off my Shelf of Opportunity. I love the spatial puzzle of this game with the tile activations, and how in reality, you’re only taking 12 turns in the entire game, but each turn is so crunchy! Players are collecting resources to travel and trade along the Silk Road, as well as gain influence and power within the city walls. At the end of Year 2 and Year 3, there are Mongol hordes that will burn down your city, unless city walls are built or soldiers are placed at sites. Really enjoyed this one, and I can’t wait to play it again!
And that concluded two days of gaming and events! Since it was the first large-ish convention I’ve attended since the pandemic, I took a more laid-back approach to gaming instead of trying to squeeze every single minute with an activity. It was so fun to enjoy Vegas being the con, get some gaming in, and see old friends and make new ones.
The West Coast contingent of the Five By podcast: (from left) Ruel Gaviola, Jose Chavez and John Gonzalez.
I think next time Chris and I will want to stay for a longer time. And with back-to-back conventions, next up is Arizona Game Fair this weekend, I feel like the world is slowly starting to return to the Before Times. And that makes me so joyful.
A few weeks ago, on Aug. 28-Sept. 4, Consimworld held its annual convention in Tempe, and it was my first in-person convention since late 2019 because of the pandemic. My friends and I were going back and forth about attending something like this in person, and after attending the first day, we felt safe enough to attend during the week.
The convention was capped at 200 people, a group smaller than the usual amount, but in all honesty, even on the busiest day (the weekends), it did not feel like that many people were in attendance all at once. The convention kept the same space as previous years and tables were placed more spread apart. While masks were optional per Arizona rules, there were people masked up. I also didn’t mingle as much during the con and instead played with my usual groups. All these things helped calm my nerves about the whole situation, and I had such a great time gaming nonstop for many, many days.
The entrance to the ballroom for Consimworld. I mostly gamed on tables in the foyer, which was close to the outside doors.
Hollandspiele’s The Field of the Cloth of Gold is a perfect filler game.
Aug. 28
Dan and I arrived bright and early on Saturday morning to game. And like by early, I mean around 10 a.m. I am not a morning person.
We are ready to play games! As you can see, it wasn’t too crowded when we arrived Saturday morning.
We started this day by playing Red Cathedral as a 2P. I really enjoyed this game — I think its resource wheel is such a great game mechanism — but the scoring for two players threw me for a loop. The person with the second majority for a cathedral tower only gets one-third of the points. I think I will stick to 3-4P for this game.
I just love this resource wheel in Red Cathedral.
We then played what’s becoming to be our annual game of Maria. This 3P game based on the War of Austrian Succession is so good — and since we’ve been playing it every year, we’ve gotten much better at playing it.
Let’s go Prussia, Saxony and Pragmatic Army! I was holding my own until one of my armies transferred ownership.
Next up was a 3P game of Iberian Gauge. So this first game was such a learning experience, and we learned the hard way that the three people playing should not have started railroad companies far away from each other on the map! Our company stock prices were so low! Despite that — and the endless money exchanging that can bog down the game a bit — I already enjoy this game much better than its predecessor Irish Gauge.
Our first ill-fated game where us three did not start near each other.
We ended our day with Mexica, one of the meanest but most gorgeous games out there. Look at all those chonky, fun pyramids! *Making grabby hands gesture* This game is very cut-throat. Mean people will take over your district and block you from coming in. And by mean people, I mean me.
Mexica is such a gorgeous game. I adore these resin pyramids.
Aug. 29
On Sunday, Dan taught us Cuba Libre, a game I actually own but had never got on table. This is one of the shortest COIN games, clocked in at 3 hours, and a smaller deck with four propaganda cards. For those unfamiliar, propaganda cards are shuffled into the deck at certain intervals, and when one of those cards comes up, the table checks if one faction has achieved their objective and wins the game. We lost so badly to Dan.
First time playing Cuba Libre! This is one of the shortest COIN games out there.
Next up was Underwater Cities. My gaming group and I have been playing this game a lot online and it was a little chaotic to play in real life after being used to the program doing everything for you. There are just so many bits and pieces! Nonetheless, I enjoyed this game and won for the first time ever.
In Underwater Cities, I like how your hand of cards affects which actions you’ll take.
I then played another game of The Field of the Cloth of Gold. Seriously, best filler game ever. Including the teach, this game is probably about 20 minutes long. Easy peasy, and yet so agonizing!
I ended the day with a game of Meltwater. And while I feel like I’ve played games where the game board is disappearing on you (i.e. Survive: Escape from Atlantis), the bleakness of this game is just so brutal. Humanity is dealing with the effects of nuclear fallout, and the only habitable place on earth is Antarctica, which is slowly being polluted with radiation. My people did not survive.
The world is ending, and Antarctica is the only place that’s habitable for humans.
Aug. 30
I started the day with an in-person demo from Dan, co-designer of In the Shadows. I enjoyed the card play of this game, which involves suits, initiatives and action points, and how certain outcomes are resolved through its own deck. I like that much better than rolling a die. This game is on GMT’s P500 as part of the company’s Lunchtime Games series, games that run about 20-60 minutes.
We busted out Dan’s prototype of In The Shadows.
We then played Tigris and Euphrates. It’s my first time playing this Renier Knezia classic. We didn’t build many temples during the game, except for me, and that made a world of difference in my winning score. That said, I had no idea what I was doing the entire game. Beginner’s luck I guess, but would definitely play this again.
This temple ended up being the only one built in this game.
Monday nights are Consimworld’s welcome ceremony. I popped in for a minute to take this photo but didn’t want to spend too much time in a smaller room as it felt a little crowded to me. Nonetheless, the crowd was much smaller this year because of the attendance cap, for which I’m grateful for.
This room is usually super packed, but it’s a much smaller crowd this year. At left is John Kranz, convention organizer.
The last big game of the evening was Barrage. Dang, this game is so crunchy! I have only played it once two years ago at Consimworld 2019 (a prototype, no less!), but I knew back then that this brain-burner of a game would totally be up my alley. We played with the expansion, giving players asymmetrical powers. I love the game’s brutality, but also how everyone knows when all the water will flow so that you can plan accordingly.
Please send water. I love this deluxified version of this game with its 3D board.
We winded down the day with a game of Mandala. Along with The Field of the Cloth of Gold, Mandala is another recent favorite 2P game.
Once all six colors are represented, the mandala scores and cards are added to your cup for set collection.
Players are placing cards into their fields or mountains, and when all the colors are represented, the mandala is scored. Part area control, hand management and set collection, Mandala is a tense abstract in which you get to choose how your set collections will score. Pretty neat, and it has a gorgeous cloth mat that accompanies the game.
Aug. 31
During the course of the convention, Angola! was one of the games sitting on our table, which prompted a considerable number of people stopping by and commenting on the game. “This is such a good game!” they’d comment, which completely piqued my interest in getting it on table during the con, but we ended up scrambling to find a fourth player. At the 11th hour, like literally 9:59 a.m., we had found someone available to play at our 10 a.m. game. Success!
We wargaming with plexi and everything! What a fun experience!
Angola! is probably one of the most unique wargames I’ve ever played — it’s played in teams and you pre-program your commands. Wuuut!! Two factions are backed from the U.S. (FNLA and UNITA), and the other two are backed by the Soviets (FAPLA and MPLA). It’s a neat element I have not encountered. Also, if more wargames were team-based, I can see people being less intimated to jump into these types of games.
My deck of cards, which you preprogram for each turn. As the game progresses, you have more of your deck to choose from.
At the start of each turn, players program their cards, which represent chit stacks on the board, including the card that’s a blank bluffing card, and one by one, each player plays a card and takes an action. As the game progresses, your hand of cards gets bigger while the win condition thresholds get lower for the different teams. There’s also a mechanism for if your team is falling behind: you’ll be able to draw random cards from the foreign aid deck for reinforcement.
During the game, you assign column chits to your troops on the board. When you play the matching card, you activate the stack.
Next up was Pax Pamir 2, my top game of 2019 . So sleek, so entrenched in history, and so approachable, one that I can see getting on table often once I get my copy. (Which I hope is soon from the Kickstarter late last year!)
Lots of armies on the map!
The last game of the night was a four-player game of Iberian Gauge. Since this was a second play for most of us playing, we did make the error of starting too far away from each other. That combined with another player made our company stocks skyrocket, which made for a very different game than the last.
Sept. 2
Thursday of the convention was my last day gaming. I had been looking forward to a game of Dominant Species: Marine all week. I had only played the original one time many years ago, but I remember really enjoying it but also getting crushed by the glaciers. Also, that game was very long. Marine, however, is a 4P game, instead of the original 6P, and this immensely helps with the playtime. Alas, there are no more cones in the game.
Isn’t this gorgeous? Players also receive their own play board, where you keep your ability card and which elements you can survive in.
A big difference in this game is that each species doesn’t have base abilities; you get ability cards to choose at the start of the game that give you a special power. Also, when you put a pawn on an action location, it resolves immediately, instead of waiting for everyone to place their pawns and resolving the actions down the action board. Similar to the old game, once you take an action, you can’t take an action above where you’re just placed, unless you reset and take all your pawns back. I enjoyed the few times I had a special pawn (which is gained from when you dominate in an element), which unlocks special actions on the board only available to special pawns and can also bump regular pawns.
Dominant Species: Marine — where are all the cones? The removal of cones, and the streamlining of game play, makes this games shine.
Lastly, I got to play Praga Caput Regni. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to play this game. Instant love! It’s a crunchy euro that adds a timing element. Players are working to improve New Prague City by building city walls, bridges, the cathedral or other civic projects. On your turn, you take an action that’s depicted on the Action Crane, which moves every turn. Sometimes the action costs money if it’s too early in the wheel, while other times, the action will give you VPs because nobody has taken that action in a while. Very clever! Plus, the king loves eggs. (Those are worth VPs at the end, too).
This looks like a very busy board, and it is, in the most euro way possible.
And that was Consimworld 2021! Thank you for making it down to the bottom of this post. I took extra days off after this convention so I could isolate and take a COVID-19 test, which came back negative, just to make sure I don’t get others sick. Overall, I had a great time. Everyone seemed respectful of keeping their distance, and the Tempe Mission Palms, where the convention was held made sure tables were spread out and that regular sanitizing occurred. Thanks Consimworld for having me! And hope to see you all there next year!
Congrats! You’ve completed your bridge building. Now give me all the eggs!
With in-person conventions falling by the wayside this year because of the global pandemic, a spate of online conventions have been cropping up. Last weekend, the San Diego Historical Games Convention — or SDHistCon for short — made the jump into the virtual convention world, and, as someone who has never been able to go in real life before, I’m so glad they did!
Run by Harold Buchanan — designer of the COIN game Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection — SDHistCon is a historical board and miniature gaming convention that’s taken place around the Veterans Day weekend. Buchanan said this year’s online convention took about five weeks to plan and it sold out in two weeks, with 170 gamers virtually attending. The in-person convention attracts wargamers from all over (there’s overlap with the Consimworld crowd), and who doesn’t want to spend a few days in sunny San Diego in November?
Buchanan has been running this convention since 2015. On this year’s experience, “first, we had an absolute blast managing the convention — a testament to the people involved. Second, the outpouring of appreciation from participants is overwhelming. I may have underestimated how much we needed the interaction with other gamers,” he said.
The entire convention was based out of Discord, which initially greeted you with the #Lobby, #Lounge and a few other general channels. The channels were then organized in alphabetical order by game designers, who then had their own subchannels (both for text and voice) for the games or sessions they were running. It made it easy to hunt down which room you were looking for based on the schedule on Tabletop Events. Inside the schedule, it also listed if a game or demo was going to be carried out via Tabletop Simulator or Vassal, online platforms many use for gaming, and whether you should download it ahead of time.
“We refused to go forward until we were comfortable the technology would work, we were properly staffed for support and we had the interest from the celebrity designers that have always made this con an unparalleled experience,” Buchanan said.
And that celebrity designers’ list? Impressive and consisting of many, many years of experience.
Friday
The COIN Reunion via Discord. I am totally fangirling here.
The first session I attended that Friday night was the COIN Reunion, a panel discussion with most of the great COIN designers of the GMT game series. The COIN designers present were Volko Ruhnke, Mark Herman, Morgane Gouyon-Rety, Bruce Mansfield and Brian Train. It was so lovely hanging out with them all in one space and learning more about each designer and their design processes, and what it took to get their game published. And here’s a hint: It definitely does not hurt to have Ruhnke look at your design!
I then popped into photographer Scott Mansfield’s “Photographing Your Games” session, and this was an absolute treat! Mansfield shared his presentation through the Discord stream, along with many tips for lighting and angles, as well as incorporating storytelling and compelling captions with your image on hand. Also, using simple tools such as foam core and flashlights, you can really make your image stand out. This was one highlight of my convention!
Look at how awesome all these wargames look! Scott Mansfield makes it look so easy!
After that, I hung out during “After Hours” with Moe & Harold while they caught up with designers Ananda Gupta and Bruce Mansfield, with Scott Mansfield joining in later on during the stream. Again, lots of fun, light-hearted discussion about each designer and their games, and the convention overall — like hanging out with a bunch of folks catching up.
“After Hours” with Moe and Harold on Moe’s YouTube channel.
Saturday
I popped into an afternoon demo for Hollandspiele’s Brave Little Belgium with designers Ryan Heilman and Dave Shaw. Two other players had signed up to play this, but I was observing the game through Vassal and listening in on the discussion on the Discord channel. Heilman was nice enough to navigate through how to find a room in Vassal, which I downloaded for the first time for this event. It’s always great when a designer teaches their game, and since I do own a copy of this, its time to get Brave Little Belgium on table soon.
Looking forward to playing Brave Little Belgium in person soon!
Later Saturday afternoon, I popped into Andrew Bucholtz’s table, where they were playing Liberty or Death, to say hello and watch a few rounds. I wanted to see how this game looked on Vassal, the online system I’m least familiar with since just downloading it for the first time during the Brave Little Belgium session. The board for Liberty in Vassal just looks so gorgeous!
Liberty, the second COIN I’ve played, has a gorgeous board.
On Saturday night, I joined Cole Wehrle during his panel discussion for a second edition of John Company. He his brother Drew streamed on Discord and Twitch, and it was neat seeing early iterations of John Company and learning what went behind its creation. I’m so looking forward to the updates to this sandbox-style negotiation game.
Cole and Drew Wehrle of Wehrlegig Games discussed upcoming second edition of John Company.
Lastly, I joined a game of Pax Pamir, my top game of 2019, with Dan Bullock and to other gamers. We played on Tabletop Simulator, with discussions on a table channel in Discord. The convention had a bunch of open tables for gamers to congregate in through Discord and get a game going. Our 4P game lasted two hours, and I won by getting the last dominance check, which doubles VPs for the check. Good times!
Sunday
On Sunday morning, I joined and watched a demo for Bullock’s latest game, 1979: Revolution in Iran. Like his previous game No Motherland Without, 1979 is another interesting and tense card-driven game. This game also adds a card-drafting mechanism to rounds — what an cool twist! Can’t wait until this game is out!
Overall, I had a great time at SD Hist Con. I particularly enjoyed the variety of games and panel discussions — there were so many events to choose from, and I’m bummed I couldn’t make it to more, such as the Wargaming Bootcamp! It’s also inspiring to see how battles or historic eras influenced these designers so much that they would devote a good chunk of their time to creating something for everyone to enjoy.
When asked what his highlight of convention was, Buchanan replied, “The chance to document and share the teaching of great designers like Mark Herman, John Butterfield, Cole Wehrle, David Thompson and Volko Ruhnke.”
But honestly, the real heroes were behind the scenes, folks like Bobby and others, who popped into sessions to make sure things were going swimmingly — technology wise — and were always so friendly when you popped into the #Lobby channel to ask a question. Thanks for everything! And a big thanks to Buchanan who enabled me to attend the weekend’s festivities. “It became personal for many to make the experience excellent,” he said.
And that it was. Whether gaming in person or virtually, the San Diego Historical Games Convention is a fun and inviting place to learn and play wargames.
Arizona Game Fair took place recently at the Mesa Convention Center, and I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome the convention was! Now in its third year, the con had over 1,200 attendees. That’s pretty fantastic! Convention founder Andrew Long said the first year had over 300 gamers and the second had 785. I am constantly in awe at how wonderful the Arizona gaming community is.
The convention was one I had been excited about for many, many months. For starters, I never thought I’d ever in a million years meet the designer of one of my absolute favorite games, Lisboa: Vital Lacerda himself! I mean, dude is from Portugal and attends a lot of overseas conventions, which I obviously don’t attend. And they say never meet your heroes because they’re sure to disappoint, but, my friends, I was not disappointed at all. Lacerda is passionate about gaming, friendly, humble and just lovely to be around. He is all about making sure gamers have a good time playing his heavy, intricate games.
It was so freaking hard not to fangirl scream every two seconds when Vital Lacerda was teaching his game. You should all be proud of me, folks!
I arrived Friday afternoon at the convention after working a half day, and I had scheduled a game at 3 p.m. with Chris, Julie, Ken and me to learn On Mars, Lacerda’s upcoming game.
Here we are playing it cool as Vital Lacerda teaches us On Mars.
On Mars is by far his heaviest game, in which astronauts are trying to settle the red planet. This game is nothing like Terraforming Mars, other than the location of the game. Players are collecting resources to explore Mars, build buildings, improve their technologies and gathering scientists. There’s an added element of moving back and forth between the space station and on Mars – for free on the rocket ship that moves as the game progresses or using one of your ships, which can be expensive – which then enables you to take any action on that side of the board. The actions in itself are not hard; the challenge is figuring out how to make your actions work together, in a puzzly interconnectivity that is Lacerda’s signature style. I cannot wait for this game to come out!
I naturally had to bring out the giant tweezers for On Mars. I am so excited for this game!
Chris and I then ordered some Vital LaCider from @CiderCorp and attended a Q&A on Lacerda, with the wonderful special guest Suzanne hosting the panel. She asked some really cool questions about what it’s like to be a game designer all the way to what his favorite pie is. My favorite part of the conversation was when Lacerda said that he’s always learning about new stuff about designing games and that he doesn’t feel like a game designer completely yet. I beg to differ, sir!
I live-tweeted some of the conversation. You can read the whole thread below:
After the panel, there was a Hungry Hungry Hippos tournament. My blue hippo was defective, and I got knocked out in the first round. I did not win one of these cool meeple trophies. Womp womp.
Everyone’s getting ready to chomp down some marbles!
There were plenty of tournaments at all game levels happening throughout the convention, as well as a contest for miniatures painting.
Here’s Andrew, Lord of the Board, sitting with some of the cool meeple trophies for the tournaments.
On Saturday, Chris and I hit the ground running with a 6-player game of Flamme Rouge. These guys placed some chocolate eggs on the track so that we passed them, we got a candy treat.
Benjamin and Steve both run g3gamenight in the northwest Valley, while Scott and Mike live down in Tucson.
In Flamme Rouge, players simultaneously draw four cards and pick one to play for both of their cyclists, their Rouleur and Sprinteur, and you go through the course dealing with inclines and other areas, while utilizing slipstream and avoiding exhaustion if you’re in the front of the pack. I started out strong, but my cyclists lost steam halfway through the game. Super fun!
Flamme Rouge is a fun simultaneous-card-selection and deckbuildng game!
Next up, we played Imhotep. My buddy Mark loves to 3D print things to deluxify his games, and it was really satisfying dropping cubes into these structures. He found these files on Thingiverse.
These structures hold all the giant cubes. I probably should’ve taken a better photo from the side so you can see how they all stack up. Next time!
I then taught a game of Teotihuacan, which meant I busted out my giant tweezers. I’ve taught this game a few times, and I finally feel like I got the hang of this teaching this beast. We ended the game by building the pyramid, and Chris nearly lapped all of us. The worst.
We finished our pyramid, which ended the game a few rounds early.
We then played a quick game of Catch the Moon, which is always a hit with gamers!
Catch the Moon is another great filler that always looks great on table.
Afterwards, I joined 10-player game of Welcome To. I’m pretty bad at this game, but it was still fun to game with all these cool peeps.
My Welcome To neighborhood wasn’t well developed. People trigger those objectives so fast!
Chris and I got asked on Friday to take some photos in costume for a live game on Saturday of The Usual Suspects, hosted by the Game State Show. The suspects’ photos were all lined up in the hallway after their show. Who looks the most suspicious and is guilty? Indeed it is not I.
Look at all these suspicious people! I do love having giant mugshots at home now.
I then took a break to get ready for one of my favorite things to do at a convention: run a ginormous game of Sidereal Confluence. I was able to gather 9 players for this game, which uses ALL THE ALIEN FACTIONS. I had never run a game this large before, but luckily, a few had played it before I had some help in answering questions. There’s a trajectory at the start of the game where I start explaining the rules and then I get a lot of puzzled looks about this game, which makes me worry that I’ve accidentally dragged folks into a 2-hour grudge match, but then once the first round gets underway, things start sorta clicking and people embrace the absurdity of the game, and we just all start yelling at each other for cubes.
Here are all nine players for Sidereal Confluence. Everyone is still pretty relaxed since we haven’t started yet, except GloryHoundd and me, who are already uber excited.
Luckily, we were seated in the far end of the convention floor, as we were all pretty loud, and lots of folks stopped by to see what the game was all about. And they’d see me standing with giant tweezers in hand counting down which players can take a colony they’ve successfully bid on. One person said it sounded like a craps table was happening on the convention floor. That is exactly what it look like – yelling, people throwing cubes, and hands going everywhere on a giant table with a million cards on it.
This game by Peer Sylvester is a neat twist on trick taking. I wish it was widely available!
On Sunday, we began the day playing Passing Through Petra, which is a neat puzzly tile/trading game from J. Alex Kevern, who has designed crunchy one-hour games like Gold West and Sentient. Traders travel on a caravan through the desert, and you can welcome various traders into your market and facilitate trade with people who have the goods they want. But filling your market happens in a specific order, so timing your market with the appropriate tiles at the right time for maximum trades is just delightful. I just wish the caravan on the board wasn’t so fiddly though.
I enjoyed the puzzly aspect of Passing Through Petra but not the fiddly caravan mechanism.
I then taught a game of Mexica, which is always a hit with people and has such table presence that people stop by to take a look at the game.
I love how Mexica gets all kinds of mean!
I ended Arizona Game Fair chilling with Kevin Russ and Suzanne, and we played a first games. First up was Krass Kariert.
Chris, Kevin, Suzanne and I all hung out until it was about closing time on Sunday.
Krass Kariert is a quick fun card game in which you’re trying to beat what’s already played, through a simple hierarchy of singles, pairs, runs and triples. But you cannot rearrange your cards! If you need to play a pair, they have to be sitting next to each other. But as you pull cards from your hand, naturally, the gap closes, and you can find new combinations with the cards remaining. Super fun!
Krass Kariert is a fun quick card game from Amigo where everyone wins except the last player to clear their cards.
We of course played some roll-and-writes, too! I did spectacularly horrible in Metro X, but won Cartographer! Suzanne said there’s a bunch of roll-and-writes out there, and it’s all a matter of finding one that you resonate with. I guess I do better with placing tetris tiles and completing objective ones than filling numbers on subway routes.
Cartographer is a puzzle style roll-and-write set in the Roll Player world. It has four objectives for each game, with two scoring during each of the four seasons.
Lastly, there was a special tribute at the entrance for my buddy Tom Wells who had passed away recently at an all-too-young age of 50. I had fond memories playing Arkwright and The Colonists with him in previous conventions, as well as gaming with him on the occasional Saturday morning. His badge was hanging up all weekend.
We’ll miss you, Tom. I still can’t believe you’re gone.
And just like that, three games of gaming came and went. The chill atmosphere, friendly volunteers and wide open space made the convention a pleasure to attend. There were also vendors there such as Eagle-Gryphon Games and Gamelyn Games, as well as wood workers and artists. The convention also had a designated women’s space, which is pretty fantastic, and a separate area for RPGs. There was plenty to do for all the different types of gamers!
There was a lovely space for female gamers who were more comfortable away from the main convention floor, and lots of games scheduled in the space, too.
Thanks again Arizona Game Fair for having me as a guest. I can’t wait to see what’s in store next year. And folks, save the date for next year’s convention: March 20-22, 2020. Hope to see here! We’ve got sunny skies, perfect for outside gaming, and giant cactus!
Chris and I visited the Desert Botanical Gardens after the convention. Fun times!
I initially was unsure if I was going to be able to attend the inaugural Dice Tower West convention due to the impending birth of my niece, but when I found out she wasn’t going to make an appearance until after the convention, I decided to make a quick stop to Las Vegas.
I arrived just after midnight on Thursday night, enough to basically head over to the Westgate Resort (the former Hilton on the north side of the Strip for those familiar with Vegas) and go to bed so that I could hit the ground running that morning. I had a list of four games I wanted to play, and ended up playing three of them, so I was pleased with myself. They were Captains of the Gulf, Wingspan, Forum Trajanum and Passing Through Petra.
Ran into Suzanne and Mandi of the Dice Tower first thing on Friday morning. These ladies are truly inspirational and bring so much to the hobby.
I checked in Friday morning and received a super cool swag bag with the Dice Tower West logo on it. Inside was a free game, a Dice Tower Pin and Dice Tower dice. I also liked that the lanyards were of the thick variety, so that I could decorate it with my Meeple Lady pin as well as all the cool flair I’ve collected from various conventions. Dice Tower West had a decent library, and I particularly enjoyed the section on the convention floor that featured large games like Giant Azul!
Squeee! Look at this Giant Azul! You definitely will not mistake the pieces for Starbursts.
My first game of the day was Captains of the Gulf. @boardgamegeekCA taught me this game, designed by @jasondingr and on my list of to-play games, which is about fishing in the Gulf. The game has multi-use cards and a rondel for actions, which can affect the pacing of game. It has a very Glory To Rome feel to it, where the strength of your actions are based on various upgrades or licenses you have on your fishing boat. And man, overfishing the Gulf has some negative consequences, which made our game resource poor toward the second half. And as I’ve mentioned before, I love how Jason designed this game in honor of his grandfather who was a fisherman in the Gulf. Had a great time playing this!
I was so happy I got a chance to play Captains of the Gulf!
Next up was a bird-themed card game that was surprisingly a little mathy: Piepmatz. @Nettersplays taught this game, in which you’re trying to match sets of birds and collect the most seeds from the bird feeder.
It’s me and the lovely @Nettersplays!
Sounds simple, right? Well, you have to play stronger birds than what’s displayed in the main tableau, which then you’ll receive into your personal tableau the bird you just knocked out, all the while avoiding squirrels and crows. Nobody likes these guys because they will take your cards! The mathy part comes from playing certain cards to overtake the birds in the middle tableau while avoiding the predators.
Piedmatz is not the only bird-themed game I played this at this convention.
I then played a game of Push, which is a fun, quick push-your-luck game that I regret not picking up at BGG Con last year when it was offered as convention swag. I do love push-your-luck games and egging others on by saying, what’s the worst that can happen? Well, you can lose all your points in one particular color! You keep drawing cards and placing them however you want into three columns, with none of the same color or number in each column. If you can’t place a card, you bust. If you don’t bust, you can pick up one of the columns for points, and the next player takes the second column, and so forth. There’s also a card that forces you to roll a color-sided die, and if that color pops up, you lose your entire stash in that color.
Push is a fun push-your-luck card game that anyone can play. It’s a much better Uno.
I then played The Estates. Played it for the first time back at BGG Con, and I most enjoy screwing people over in the game! It’s super cut-throat bidding on blocks, developing the streets and building high-rises.
The bidding in The Estates is so tense and brutal!
Next up was Obsession: Pride, Intrigue and Prejudice set in Victorian England, a deck-builder and worker management game, which was super neat. This particular theme is usually reserved for lighter games and/or card games, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a substantial game set in this era, which, if we’re splitting hairs, the Jane Austen books were actually set in the Regency era, but I digress. I had never heard of this game before so I was happy that @erykmynn taught it to me!
These dapper dudes would probably be fun at your party!
You build your deck of fancy ladies and gents, and sometimes the occasional selfish cad who will just ruin your parties! Each turn, you choose to host an event and play the matching cards from your deck and worker meeples to activate the location and/or the cards, and gain resources. The cool thing about this game is that in addition to managing your deck, you’re also managing your worker meeples as they rest up one round until they’re available again. Unless you spend your turn and reset, in which case, all your cards and workers are available again.
These workers are so exhausted from working your events that they need to rest for one round.
After dinner, which we then discovered our hotel rooms varied WILDLY, we hung out in our friend’s room, which had THREE BATHROOMS. Oh, and a pool table, vintage Playball pinball machine and decor that immediately sends you back to your grandma’s basement.
In case you were wondering what it was like to party in the 1970s.
We played a quick game of Push, and then we launched into my favorite game of the whole convention: Wingspan. Oh. My. Goodness. This game is so darling! It’s a lighter game than I usually would bring to a table, but man, HAVE YOU SEEN THESE EGGS? it’s a chill, short engine builder with gorgeous artwork, and I’m so happy that Netters taught this game to me.
Wingspan is just darling. I can’t wait until I get my copy!
The game plays over four rounds, with objectives that’ll score each round, and you use your allotted set of action cubes to play bird cards on different terrains, collect resources, lay eggs or gain more cards. As you build out on you tableau, when you activate that row next time, you’ll get to activate each card that’s already placed in that row. Bird cards come in various VPs and abilities, and the whole game is just delightful to play.
I love the scientific look of the cards, especially with all the information on these birds.
Next up, I played Mayday! Mayday! It’s a 45-minute drawn-out hidden-role in which good and evil players are trying to make their way into an airplane cockpit. The first group will take 4, and then it gets whittled down to 2, and then one last vote. Each player has three cards, and if you have more broken hearts than whole hearts, you’re a bad guy. I pretty much laid low the entire time and refused entry anyone because I was suspicious with everyone! And guess what? Us baddies won. Woot!
GloryHoundd, Dr. GloryHogg and I are the best cylons ever.
After that, I entered exactly one round of Just Two, a variation that @whatseplaying created using two sets of the game Just One. Instead of writing clues for one word, there’s two words in play, and the rest of the folks just get to pick whichever one they want to give a clue to. Per the usual rules, when two clues match, they’re discarded, and the guesses has a chance to look at the leftover clues. Epic, especially when the guesser picked the correct two words!
We all then went grabbed a nightcap at the casino bar at 2 a.m. and hung out for an hour or so. Good times with all these fun people!
Drannnkkksss with all these cool people!
I began early Saturday with a mind-melting game of Forum Trajanum. My buddy Karlo, who I had met when he lived in Phoenix for a brief period, taught one of the new games from Stefan Feld. Players are working together to build a monument on the main board, while developing their own Colonia on their player board.
Forum Trajanum is one of Stefan Feld’s newest games and it’s super heavy!
The cool mechanism in this game is that you remove two action chits on your player board, pick one and give the second one to the player on your right. Then, you have two actions to choose from, or if you want to do both, then you have to spend workers from your pool. So many agonizing decisions!! But figuring out how it all works together, while trying to score objectives during three periods, was something I couldn’t wrap my head around until way too late into the game. I would definitely play again, probably on more than a few hours of sleep. It’s definitely Feld’s most complex game to date, in my opinion.
Making agonizing decisions about which chit to pass to your neighbor and which one to keep for yourself.
Next I played Gugong with @ruelgaviola and @geekygaymerguy, who I met for the first time and is just as fantastic and friendly in real life! Theo taught Ruel Gugong, and the game immediately went onto his to-buy list. Gugong is set during the Ming Dynasty, and officials want fancy gifts in exchange for favors. On their turn, players use cards in their hand to activate various locations on the map by playing a card in higher value than what’s sitting there already. You place your card down, pick up the old card and put it into your discard pile. Your pile of discarded cards will then become your hand of actions in the next round.
I had a blast playing with all these wonderful people! Insert all the heart-eye emojis!
The game has an added element of managing your cubes from the general supply to your personal supply, a mechanism that I personally love, as well as moving up various tracks on the board and getting bonuses for picking up the right card for the round. I heard the KS version is just gorgeous but I think the base game is just as beautiful, and really, you can just spend a few bucks buying glass beads to replace the jade on the board.
Gugong is such a great midweight euro, and I totally want to add this to my collection.
I then purchased the only game at the con: Targi. Targi is a tense, puzzly 2-player game that I just learned the month before, and it definitely has moments where you can be so mean. I love it! A grid of cards are laid out on the table between two players, and they take turns placing one of their meeples on action spots on the outside border. Where their three meeples intersect can create a fourth and fifth action for the round. But you can’t place your meeple in front of your opponent, so they can block you from gaining resources or collecting cards, and forcing you to take a less-than-ideal action because that’s the last space left. Meanwhile, you’re also building your tableau of tribe cards you’ve collected, which gives you VPs from the cards itself and how you arrange it in front of you. I highly recommend this game! (Even if my buddy Mark is all kinds of mean.)
Mark plotting to take a mean action against me in Targi.
Next, I checked out Drop It from the library, and boy, am I horrible at this game! It’s a light, dexterity game in which you’re dropping various pieces into this plastic contraption, and you get points based on where it lands, a la Plinko. But if your piece lands and touches a piece of the same color or shape, you get zero points. Fun for the kids and light gamers!
I could not for the life of me drop my pieces in a way that they would score!
I then ran into Kevin and showed taught me his new game Calico, which is planning to be on Kickstarter out in the fall. This quilting game that features cats is a puzzly tile-laying game. Players have two hex tiles in their hands, and they place one on their turn into their player board, which starts with three objective tiles on it. The objectives will score points based on what surrounds it as tiles come in various colors and patterns. There are also cat tokens you can gain based on pattern requirements or clusters on the board as those pretty things keep the cats happy.
Calico is a tile-laying game in which you’re scoring objectives and keeping cats content.
We then played Carpe Diem, another Feld game that I really, really like! You’re building a district onto your player board by picking up a tile on the main board at one location. Then, you can only move your meeple into two different spots from that location (making a five-pointed star on the board), so getting somewhere may require a few turns. But by then, the tile you need might not be there. At the end of each round, which there are four of them, you are required to fulfill two objective on the side board. If you cannot fulfill an objective, you get negative points. Each objective intersection can only be scored by one person during the entire game, so it’s also a race to score them first if you can. The game itself is plagued by some production issues (the green and dark green are very hard to distinguish), but overall, it’s a smooth Feld game that plays in about an hour.
I’ve played Carpe Diem twice and have won both times! #winning
Lastly, I taught a game of Newton. It has been about 6 months since I’ve played this so I was a little rusty on the rules, but it’s a fun midweight tight euro game that plays in about two hours. You play cards onto your player board, which allow you to take a specific action depending on the symbol of the card. If you play another card with the same symbol in the same round, then that action’s strength will increase — either moving farther along your route or accessing more powerful cards or covering harder-to-reach bookcases. It’s really satisfying when you make some good combos!
Newton always ends so quickly, and I can never fill up my bookcase!
And then just like that, two days in Las Vegas were over. I’m pretty surprised that I didn’t even hit up the casino because in a previous life pre-board games, I went to Vegas a lot! And like growing up in Los Angeles, it was an easy weekend getaway for fun and some debauchery. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?
I got a chance to meet Rahdo. What a nice guy! He said the top of my head was really warm.
Before the drive back home to Phoenix, I also visited Meepleville Cafe, but I’m planning to write a longer piece about that cool place next time. Stay tuned! All in all, Dice Tower West was a chill and fun convention. I had a wonderful time hanging out with friends and meeting lots of new gamers! I can’t wait to go back next year, hopefully for longer than two days, as there were lots of other folks I wanted to game with but just didn’t have time for.
Until next time, Dice Tower West! Thanks for creating an inviting and fun gaming space.
Holy forkballs! It’s December already! Where did November go? Man, it’s been a busy, fun, amazing few weeks, and now that I’ve had some to come up for air, let’s talk about all the gaming I did at BGG.
This is my fifth consecutive BGG Con, and my fourth year volunteering for Team Geek. If you’re on Team Geek, you work eight 2-hour shifts throughout the course of the convention. And you get to do so in a sweet, sweet jersey. There’s also a volunteer dinner the Tuesday night before the convention so you can meet and hang out with fellow volunteers before the con gets underway on Wednesday. Here’s a photo of Team Geek from Jenny, who is also on team Geek:
I arrived in Dallas on Tuesday morning, had a wonderful breakfast with an old Phoenix friend at Yolk. What an adorable breakfast place, and my skillet was hearty and tasty. I was pleasantly surprised that they had an option for turkey sausage, considering I’m in the heart of Texas, where everything is all about other meats that I don’t eat.
I arrived at the Hyatt Regency at DFW after breakfast, checked in, took a quick nap (don’t judge — I flew out of Phoenix at 5:30 a.m.), and started volunteer shifts. As a veteran Teek Geek member, I got the first selection on volunteer shifts, so I was able to knock out three of my shifts on Tuesday before our welcome dinner of Mexican food. Yums!
Julie was leading volunteers on Tuesday who had signed up to work that day. Jon of JonGetsGames stopped by to help, too!
After dinner, we got our badges and free games, one of which was a sweet Everdell glass pint, and started gaming! First up was Teotihuacan: City of Gods, which was high on my to-play list for BGG. Kevin Russ, who I had met at RinCon two months prior, taught us how to play, and man, do I love this game!
Teotihuacan was my favorite game of BGG Con this year.
In Teotihuacan, each player is a powerful noble family working to build the temple of Teotihuacan. You’re using your workforce of dice to move around the board like a giant rondel. Depending on the value of your dice, you receive various resources at each location, and then at the end of your turn, your dice levels up.
The board looks incredibly intimidating but the iconography is clear in terms of what rewards you’ll receive at each location, and game play, in my opinion, is pretty straightforward. Making the most of those actions is much more difficult.
As with its predecesor Tzolk’in, the game is a lot about timing your actions correctly. Instead of the giant wheel cogs in Tzolk’in, the game is all about moving your dice in a way so that it levels up at the right moment, so that you can get resources to build temple steps and gain technology, among other things. Dice are moving in one direction in order to ascend to 6 pips, and then you get a reward and start over again at one location. Can’t wait until my game group gets of a copy of this game!
Next up, I learned and played Catch the Moon for the first time from Eric. I can’t say enough great things about this darling game. It’s one of the few games I purchased at BGG Con because I immediately fell in love with it. And true story: Eric is really good and mean at this game!
Catch the Moon is darling! Don’t mess up and make the moon cry!
Besides it being just adorable to look at, this dexterity game is easy enough for people to jump into and interesting enough to keep even the heaviest of gamers engaged. On your turn, you roll a die, and you place a ladder onto the cloud either touching one other ladder, two other ladders, or it has to be the highest point on the cloud platform. If you make ladders fall, the moon gets super sad and you receive a teardrop. If you get the last teardrop, the game ends and you’re eliminated, and the person with the fewest teardrops wins the game.
Getting some pre-con gaming in with Netters, Mitch, Eric, Daniel, Kimberly and Sum Fat Kid.
I then played Tokyo Jidohanbaiki, which is a game about Japanese vending machines and drinks. It’s a little — literally, teeny tiny — game where place your smol soda bottles on drink crates and not have them explode, but also when you choose for them to explode, you can wipe out your opponents.
Look at these teeny tiny soda cans!
Wednesday
Today was the first day of the convention. I worked two shifts at registration, which I love doing. I love greeting folks and seeing everyone’s excited and happy faces on Day 1.
I then met up with some Arizona folks to play some games before dinner that evening. I got a chance to play Meeple Circus for the first time. That game is a riot, and the circus soundtrack adds a nice touch for this game. I’m not normally a fan of adding apps or tech to board games, but this was stupid fun. I mean, who doesn’t love stacking meeples in a dexterity race while circus music is playing in the background?
Stacking meeples and animals in real time in Meeple Circus, which has its own circus soundtrack.
We then all went out to dinner to a vegan restaurant called Spiral Diner. This was all of our first time visiting this place, and, even though it’s quite a haul from the Hyatt Regency, it’s definitely worth checking out.
It’s Greg Dickson of Hooked on Geek, Andrew, Dr. GloryHogg and GloryHoundd!
I ordered an El Paso burger with a cashew patty and pistachio ice cream for dessert. Both were super yum and tasted like what I would normally eat as a non-vegan.
I ordered a cashew-based patty for my El Paso burger.
I had to try the pistachio ice cream. Excellent!
We then arrived back at the hotel to teach my favorite game to run at a convention: Sidereal Confluence. I enjoy having a large amount of people playing this game since it makes for a better economy, and luckily, seven people signed up to play. And I know live negotiation games aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, or that maybe I’m not even the best teacher of it, but I do enjoy sharing this game with others as I feel like it’s not a game that would normally get on table on a regular game day.
Sidereal Confluence is a table hog! I also love using my giant tweezers in the game.
I then ran across Eric teaching Eco Links, which is another real-time path-building game in which you’re trying to connects animals through a path. Even though the game is light, it reminded me of playing an 18xx because you’re playing these tiles on a board and looking for that sharp curve.
Eco Links is a real-time tile-laying, road-building game where players connect all the bears.
Thursday
On Thursday, I woke up early (for me) to game with Moe and play Fort Sumter at 9:30 a.m. Fort Sumter is a 2-player card-driven game that pits the Unionist and Secessionist player against each other. The game plays for 25-40 minutes, and takes place over three rounds and ends with a Final Crisis confrontation.
Here’s Moe teaching me to how to play Fort Sumter early Thursday morning.
Similar to other CDGs like Twilight Struggle, players have a hand of cards and play them for events or action points. What’s different about this game, besides it taking a fraction of the time of a game of Twilight Struggle, is that in each round, you get a secret objective that you’re playing toward for extra victory points.
Fort Sumter plays in 25-40 minutes, and it’s a tense CDG!
I enjoyed the push and pull of this game, and that escalation of the game as more cubes come into play. This game is part of the GMT Lunchtime Games series, strategic games designed for the lunch hour. It’s a great game to play if you’re interested in learning how to play a card-driven game and don’t have an entire half-day to play.
Next up was lunch with Netters and Mitch, and then Netters taught me The Estates. Jeremy and @fencedingates also joined in on the game. This game is right up my alley! It involves bidding and blocking people, and is all kinds of mean! You are bidding to build pieces to place along three different streets, and any incomplete streets will score negative points in the end. Players can also dictate how long the game will go, and I love the closed economy of it.
Netters did a great job teaching this game. I enjoyed the bidding and just hanging out with all these cool folks. I wish Netters and Mitch lived closer to me!
I then taught this game I had heard about on Tuesday from JonGetsGames: Eye My Favorite Things. This game can be a tad absurd but it’s fun with the right folks. You pick a category for the person on your right, and they write down their top 5 items for that category and rank them, as well as something they hate in that category and rank them as a zero. Then you get the cards they wrote on, and then it becomes a trick-taking game based on what you think they ranked all the items they wrote on their cards. You do this three times, and then the person with the most VPs wins the game. It’s a game that compares random categories like soup, world problems, board games and ice cream flavors altogether.
Eye My Favorite Things was the biggest surprise of BGG Con!
I then met up with some friends at a meetup for female content contributors and their friends. Netters and I organized one last year and it was a nice refuge from the hustle and bustle of the main convention floor, and it gave people a chance to get to know each other in a smaller setting. The two games I played were — yep you guessed it — Catch the Moon and Eye My Favorite Things.
Oh, hai, friends! A great time was had by all!
FridayF
I started my Friday with a lovely game of Coimbra with these cool folks, Joe, Julie and Chris. I absolutely adore this game, and, even though I’m completely horrible at it, I’m always down to play it. It was a wonderful way to start my morning.
Coimbra is soooo good! So many tough decisions and working hard to make all your character cards work well together.
Chris and I then went to meet Jason and Donna Dinger for lunch, and Jason taught us Ground Floor, designed by David Short. In Ground Floor, you’re the CEO of a company, and you have to manage hiring new employees, expanding your office and scheduling your shipments. In addition, you’re literally building floors into your office building. That was a neat visual component to the game! The game plays for about two hours, and man, you quickly start running out of actions and can’t do everything you want to. I had a great time playing this!
Each player has their own board, which you start to build out for your company.
Jason then taught us another game, The King of Frontier. It’s one of his favorite games, and he managed to secure a copy of the first edition, since the new one has been completely revamped with a completely different aesthetic. I mean, who doesn’t want to play a game with these stick figures?
This little stick-figure guy is ready to build his lan, and do some funky dance moves, too.
It’s a neat tile-laying game that has a follow mechanism, and you’re building out a little kingdom and collecting resources on your player mat. Jason showed me photos of what the new edition looks like, and I think it has lot a lot of its charm with the new art.
I then attended a meetup from the Inside Voices Network. I played Wangdo with a different Eric and Chris. It’s a cute little area-control game where you draw bears from a bag in order to place them on the board. But you can only place a bear when you have the appropriate colored bears matching the spots surrounding that location. There are also cards you can play to benefit yourself or hurt an opponent, and the game is a race to collect all the tokens.
Wangdo is a fun quick area control, set collection bear game.
And the bear pieces look like yummy gummy bears.
Squee! These cute bears are not candy though.
Next, we played a prototype that Chris was demo-ing called Hour Town by LO5 Games. This game is a real-time worker-placement game where you collect resources to build buildings, some of which are multiple levels tall. And there’s also an area-control element in which you contributed the most resources toward a building. I like the up and down frantic-ness of this game, which lasts about 20 minutes. I hope this game gets published!
Hour Town is a fun prototype that Chris taught Eric and me. Sand timers galore!
I then played a game of Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra. I was a little skeptical about this game, mostly that it was relying too much on being gorgeous and like how could it be better than Azul, which was one of the top games I played in 2017.
I didn’t think it was possible to make Azul tiles look more like candy, but here we are!
The verdict is that this sequel is worth playing! It changes up gameplay to make it more puzzly, and more importantly, it’s a fixed amount of rounds. You’re working to complete vertical columns, and there’s an added element where you only score columns to the right of the pawn. Thus scoring can ramp up if you build your window in the right order. I enjoyed that extra elements to the game. And it comes with this little cardboard box to discard pieces in it, which makes it easier to pour back into the bag. I don’t need both copies though. One should suffice in your game collection.
I ended Friday night with my usual BGG Friday Night Shenanigans by playing Yummy Monster and Coconuts with my girlfriends.
My girlfriends and I are ready to feed the monsters! Now where’s the food items?
Yummy Monster is a flinging dexterity game in which each player is feeding a monster. Each player wears a mask over their face and slides cardboard claws onto their hands, and you throw pieces of food into the monster’s mouth, which is depicted as one of four walls you set up in the game box. It’s super ridiculous, but we had a lot of fun.
And of course, we love Coconuts. So much shenanigans.
Fun fact: the longer we play this game, the worse we become at it. How does that happen?
Saturday
Saturday began with seeing some sun (even though it was freezing outside) when Rand, who is originally from Dallas, invited us and took a car-load of us to his favorite BBQ joint Lockhart. The place is a tad farther from the convention, but definitely worth checking out if you have access to a vehicle. The meat was tasty, and there wasn’t a 40-minute wait for the meats, which is the case when we go out to Hard Eight This place is casual, homey and right in the middle of the Dallas arts district.
Amid the chowing down of the meats, I completely forgot to take a table photo of what we ate. But trust me, guys, this place was yum!
Saturday gaming began with Rescue Polar Bears. I’ve already been bracing myself for this game because everyone has been telling me how hard it is, and when you lose, these little guys die.
Please save my polar bear family!
This game is a co-op action-point-allowance game where you’re trying to save the polar bears before all the ice melts. Brutal! But these components are just darling, and they make you super motivated to try to win the game by getting polar bears onto your boat and helicoptering them away!
We gotta rescue the polar bears before all the ice melts!
Saturday night was closing ceremonies. This is always a great time because so many game prizes were awarded! One year, I’ll totally win a prize package.
The main ballroom is packed for closing ceremonies. People want to win games!
I then unknowingly started a new tradition with my friends: teaching Battlestar Galactica immediately after closing ceremonies. This is my absolute favorite game, and I love teaching it to new people. I played this with Greg, Chris, GloryHoundd and DrGloryHogg. It’s my third year in a row that I’ve done this on the Saturday night at the convention.
All of our happy faces before the cylons tried to take over. Those dirty toasters!
GloryHoundd even had this shirt on, which I totally should’ve guessed she was the cyclon. She later revealed she was, after DrGloryHogg brigged her and Chris. DrGloryHogg has no reason to brig Chris but Chris ended up being the other cylon. Good job, humans!
GloryHoundd was absolutely the cylon.
The final game of BGG Con for me was Iki. The game is based in Edo, Japan, where artisans, street vendors and professionals are setting up shop. Players move their meeples along the city like a rondel. There’s also a track showing how protected your stores are from fire, and that determines the order for choosing how many spaces you want to move in the next round and the order to purchase character cards. This entire game has many clever elements! And some of the Japanese professionals are charming and based on historical writings.
When you do business with shop owners, you get resources and the shop owners gain experience. Timing also plays a large role because as shop owners maximize their experience, they move off the board and into your personal supply. So you might be expecting some resources, but another player has triggered your shop owner to be removed from the board. Iki is such a hidden gem, and I’m super sad that I can’t find a copy of it that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
And then just like that, six days came and went, and it was time to return to Phoenix, which was Chris’ first time visiting. Every year I say that I had an excellent time at BGG, and this year is no exception. It’s my one giant con for the year, and it’s truly an amazing experience hanging out and gaming with people I call my friends, even though they live all across the U.S. This year’s BGG was particularly special for me. Board-game Twitter just brings people together, you know?
I miss all these cool people and many others who had left by Saturday night! Can’t wait until we can all game again!
Anywho, if you’re interested in going to BGG Con next year, it’ll be moving to a bigger location in downtown Dallas, which means more tickets will be on sale! Staying at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Dallas will result in access to restaurants and nearby attractions, something I’m very much looking forward to. Because, man, does it get expensive uber-ing out of DFW to get some good grub.
If you made it all the way here, thanks for reading about my experience at BGG Con! I hope everyone is having a wonderful December!
This past weekend was RinCon down in Tucson, which is a two-hour drive from Phoenix. Last year, I was only able to attend for one day. This year, the convention invited me to be a special guest, and I got to speak on some panels regarding subjects that are near and dear to me! How frakking awesome is that?
I drove south to Tucson on Friday after work and immediately jumped into a 7-player Sidereal Confluence, my new favorite con game after I busted it out at Strategicon. I’ve been bringing this game to conventions because I figure I can get a large player count for this game, which is absolutely fun and bonkers — if you love live negotiating! I got a chance to play this with friends I saw at Gila Monster, and a good time was had by all.
Sidereal Confluence is a live negotiation and trading game with asymmetrical alien factions.
We then played two games of Deception: Undercover Allies. The original Deception game is my favorite deduction-style game, so it was great playing this expansion. The new roles such as the Inside Man and Protective Detail made for some real nail-biters in finding the murderer. Plus, the microscopes and the police badges are a sweet addition.
I got a chance to play the expansion of my favorite social-deduction game.
On Saturday, I hopped into a game of At the Gates of Loyang, which is from my favorite designer Uwe Rosenberg. This has been one of my grail games to play, as I don’t know anyone local who has it. It’s an older game from 2009 and has the farming and harvest elements that are similar to his other games. I really liked the card-drafting mechanism for Loyang, in which players are placing cards from their hands into the courtyard to later pick two action cards. The player has to both pick a card from their hand and from the courtyard for their two card actions in that round.
I’m playing an Uwe game where I’m planting and harvesting fruits and veggies!
Then in typical Uwe fashion, you can plant and harvest your fruits and vegetables and complete orders from various customers. If you can’t satisfy some customers, then you’ll get a penalty. I need to find a copy of this game for my collection!
I then spoke from my first panel for the convention on diversity and inclusivity. Personally, I don’t have much experience doing public speaking so I’m always a little bit nervous doing these things, but everyone was so friendly that you can’t help but get caught up on discussions about making board gaming a better place for everyone. Topics such as how to promote welcoming spaces came up and how to best amplify those diverse voices in the industry. I was on the panel with Erin Escobedo, Jamie DuBois of Do Better Gaming, Jahmal Brown and Camdon Wright.
There was some good discussion on making gaming more welcoming and inclusive. (Photo by CritHitAZ)
I then met up with RinCon special guest Sarah Reed who taught me how to play her games Oaxaca and Project Dreamscape. It was a real treat finally meeting her in person and hanging out with her all weekend. I love the colorful artwork of Oaxaca and had a little too much fun activating some of the Handicraft Cards to target my opponents.
I love the colorful artwork in Oaxaca. You can target some of your opponents with some of the cards. But ultimately, the game forces you to specialize and be more efficient with gathering and crafting.
Come to think of it, we also started getting a little mean for Project Dreamscape! There’s an option to flip over cards, making it more expensive to get the cards we all want. Both games were really fun to play. I also learned about how Oaxaca came to be and gained useful information about creating prototypes during Sarah’s panel on Game Design, which also included David Short and James Earness of Cheapass Games.
It’s me and game designer extraordinaire Sarah Reed, who is originally from Sacramento. I’m glad we got a chance to meet in real life and hang out!
After that panel, I participated in a women in gaming panel with these lovely ladies: GloryHoundd, Marissa Kelly of Magpie Games, Sarah Reed and Griffin Maria. We talked about our experiences — good and bad — of being a female gamer, the role models we have or wished we had, and what motivates us to create content in a sometimes inhospitable environment. We all had different experiences and come from various corners of the board-game world. It was inspiring to listen to all these women speak.
Loved being on a panel with all these wonderful ladies. Karen Arnold Ewing (behind me in purple) is in charge of the convention and moderated the panel.
The Women’s Space came up in discussions as well. For the first time ever, RinCon dedicated a separate space for women to game in. This room was beyond fantastic — it had fresh-baked goods, snacks and a well-kept stash of products people could dig into.
Who doesn’t love fresh-baked goods? Women do it right!
Whenever I went into the Women’s Space, most folks were gaming but there were a few who just needed a quiet break away from the hustle and bustle of the main gaming areas. I think this is such a wonderful idea and hope that more conventions set up a place like this.
The Women’s Space was set up in a hotel suite away from the main convention floor. It was a nice retreat.
After the panel, I learned Gizmos, which is nothing like Potion Explosion despite marbles and a contraption from which the marbles come out of. It’s a quick engine-building game where you’re building these machines and scoring victory points. Certain machines will increase your capacity to hold various cards, which then will make your engine more efficient.
David Short taught us how to play Gizmos, a quick engine-builder that has marbles and a contraption that spits out marbles.
I then played Coimbra, which is my second time playing this game after Gila Monster. I cannot get enough of this game, with its crunchy decisions in a not-super-long eurogame. It’s essentially dice drafting in which pips matter for the first half of the round, and then the color of the dice matter for the second half of the round in receiving income or resources of the matching dice color. So crunchy! This is one I would love to add to my collection.
I love love this game, even if I’m not very good at it.
Lastly, I played Ginkopolis, which I first played at Arizona Game Fair. This game has card drafting, area control and multi-use cards. We played a 5P game that lasted into the wee hours of the night, briefly interrupted by some Eegee’s frozen treats at midnight. Also, on Friday night at midnight, the convention brought in some free pizza for a pizza party. Such cool perks from the con!
We played a 5P game of Ginkopolis that lasted in the night on Saturday night.
On Sunday morning, I signed up to teach Lisboa, one of my absolute favorite games and which I actually learned at last year’s RinCon, to some women in the Women’s Space. It’s a beast to teach, and I wanted to share my love of this game in a chill environment where people can ask all the questions they want. We got through the first half of the game before the time ended, but it seemed like most of them got the gist of it, enough to figure out if they would want to buy it. Also, the giant tweezers were a bit hit and made it very easy to point out iconography.
Had a good time teaching these ladies Lisboa. Hope they enjoyed the session!
After Lisboa, I purchased Oaxaca and found Sarah to say goodbye to her and have her sign my new game before making the trek back to Phoenix. The biggest surprise of the convention was finding out that RinCon named a drink after me! That is seriously the coolest thing! The drink was super yum and had a dragon on it to match the convention’s theme! Squee!!
I got a drink named after me! My life has totally peaked, and I can die happy.
And just like that, the weekend was over. I had a wonderful time gaming with old and new friends. I loved that the convention is so supportive in creating a safe and inclusive space for all types of gamers, especially with the addition of the Women’s Space. And thanks, RinCon, for having me as a special guest! Can’t wait until next year!
Cheers! And hope to see you at the next convention!
I had the pleasure of dropping into one day of Strategicon in Los Angeles this past weekend. I love going to this convention, as I can visit family while board gaming, to make for a really productive weekend. I arrived early on Saturday morning ready to start gaming with wonderful folks from the board-gaming community. I was very excited to meet Jac, Ben and Albert, as well as see Ruel again, all of whom I had scheduled various games with.
We’re gaming early! Well, at 10 a.m. It was wonderful meeting Jac, Albert and Ben, who just moved to the U.S. recently, in real life!
Our first game for the day was Newton with Jac, Ben and Albert. Even though I had played this game already at Gila Monster, I totally didn’t mind playing it again. This game is super combo-tastic! Jac did an excellent job teaching Newton, and I loved being around her positive and enthusiastic energy. Albert and Ben were also equally fun to hang out with, as all of us ended up gaming together the entire day!
In this game of Newton, I didn’t do as well as my first play of it. My cards did not work as well together this time. We decided to draft cards for our masters, and it really helps even the playing field. (We didn’t draft in my first game of it.) So if you get a chance to play Newton, I highly recommend drafting so that no one player can be overpowered.
Newton is a great midweight game by the same designer who did Lorenzo Il Magnifico, which I love, and Grand Austria Hotel.
Next up was Trickerion, which I volunteered to teach. Ruel was supposed to join us, but his previous game and math trade ran long so he was unable to make it. I brought my beloved copy from home, which includes a gorgeous Meeple Realty insert. This game is a beast to teach, and I’m lucky that the group was patient with me, as there are so many things to remember. I do love this game so much.
Trickerion is one of my absolute favorite games! It’s a heavy worker-placement game that has programming and puzzly aspects. And the board is just gorgeous.
During our game of Trickerion, I ran into Michael of Unfiltered Gamers. We first met at Arizona Game Fair, where we were both part of the “So you want to be a game reviewer?” panel. Michael is a veteran content creator, and it’s always great talking shop with him and learning from him.
Got a chance to catch up with Michael of Unfiltered Gamers, who is based in Southern California, since meeting for the first time in February at Arizona Game Fair.
The gang and I then took a quick dinner break in shifts, as we didn’t want to lose our table in the basement. I love going to Strategicon, but my only complaint is that the basement is HOT AS BALLS. Either the air-conditioning isn’t as strong downstairs or the lack of air circulation, combined with the size of the crowds, makes the entire basement level really, really uncomfortable.
We found ourselves surfacing to the main level to get stronger air-conditioning and fresh air. The basement level holds open gaming and some RPGs, while the main convention floor is strictly for the scheduled gaming. That floor, by the way, is absolutely freezing. I hope the folks who run the convention either get fans in the basement or boost the air-conditioning down there. And this is coming from a person who says 100 degrees in Phoenix is a nice day!
The insanely warm and stuffy basement, in an otherwise wonderful and fun convention.
I then reconnected with Ruel, as our gaming schedules finally aligned, and he taught Welcome To … to me and five other folks.
I love meeting and hanging out with all these cool folks from board-gaming community!
Welcome To is a fun roll-and-write where you’re trying to place numbers into your neighborhood, score objectives and maximize your points, but instead of using dice, the game uses three different decks of cards that are flipped over at each turn. What a neat little game! We played it twice, and it’s a nice short game can play a bunch of folks. The box actually says 1-100 people!
Building my neighborhood in Welcome To. I didn’t realize the blank space is for the name of your city, not your name. Welcome to Meeple Lady sounds a bit odd …
After Welcome To, I impromptu taught a game of Gunkimono, a new retheme of an underrated game I adore, Heartland, which is a cut-throat tile-laying game about farming. Gunkimono uses samurais instead, but I personally love the look and theme of Heartland.
Gunkimono is a retheme of an old classic I love, Heartland. You’re trying to score victory points or honor points based on tiles you put on the board.
I wanted to grab some air and get a drink so I resurfaced up to the ground floor. I ran into the Brothers Murph, who are on one of my favorite podcasts, This Game Is Broken. I completely fangirled out and told them how much I enjoy their antics on the show. They were both super nice!
It’s me and the Brothers Murph! (This is me totally trying to be chill but secretly fangirling inside.)
Lastly, I had time for one more game and busted out Sidereal Confluence. This game is absolute bonkers, and I’ve secretly been wanting to play this at a convention so I wrangle up a lot of folks to play with me! It’s a live trading/negotiation game that plays up to nine players in about two hours. Each player is a unique asymmetrical alien race trying to use their technology converters to create resources.
The thing is, though, you don’t have the resources to run your converters, but the other aliens do. And this is where trading comes into play. Sidereal Confluence plays through six rounds, with each round comprised of 10 minutes of trading, as well as an economy phase and confluence phase. Anything goes during trading, and agreements are binding or else you’ll lose victory points.
Sidereal Confluence is an asymmetrical live-trading card game. And yep, it’s just as fun as it sounds!
If you like trading games, this game is soooo much fun! And while the game is strictly just cards, Sidereal grows into quite a table hog as more converters come into play. In each round, alien races can also research technologies, which will net victory points for the researcher, and then that technology will be available for all players in the next round. When I first stated teaching the game, I could see some confused looks and, to be honest, I wasn’t 100 percent sure folks would be down for it. But they assured me they wanted to play, and everyone ended up having a good time. I know I sure did!
I got to run a seven-player Sidereal Confluence game at Strategicon. Achievement unlocked!
Note to self: I am definitely bringing Sidereal to every convention I now to go. It’s so much fun! I also believe that a higher player count makes for a better experience, as the resource economy isn’t so starved. And with that, my very full day of hanging out with amazing gamers came to an end. I know I say it often, but I’m truly lucky to be part of such an awesome community. I can’t wait to hit up Strategicon next year!
This past weekend, I was at the Game On Expo in downtown Phoenix at the convention center. Game On Expo is a large gaming convention that covers all types of gaming — from video games to arcades, to RPGs and board games.
The convention took place from Aug. 10-12, and among the big guests are voice actors from popular video games such as Overwatch and The Walking Dead series. There were guest panels, signings, a vendor hall, vintage arcade games and even a cosplay contest.
Lots of vendors sold artwork and other nerd-related merchandise. I think I see Link in this photo.
Attendees were also able to listen to music each night. I caught this band called Sergio and the Holograms, which literally was a dude and holograms of himself playing music. That’s actually kind of a brilliant idea, if you know how to play all the instruments!
it’s Sergio and the Holograms. This is a very cool concept, and the music was fun!
I also attended a panel hosted by voice actor Troy Baker. He told a story about how he initially rejected a gig to voice the Joker because he didn’t think he was good enough. The head of the video game finally convinced him that he was perfect for the part, and that was huge turning point in his career. The takeaway, he said, was to believe in yourself and don’t let doubt or fear get in the way of that.
Troy Baker gave some heartfelt advice regarding his career and his dreams during his panel.
Time for some board games
At Game On, the board-game library provided by Arizona Game Fair and Crit Hit organized scheduled board gaming among content creators in the Valley. My buddies GloryHoundd, Greg Dickson, and I were all on the schedule to showcase and teach some of our favorite games to conventiongoers.
It’s me with Andrew Long, who runs Arizona Game Fair and SpielPro.com, and GloryHoundd.
GloryHoundd taught me how to play Starship Samurai, an area-control and action-point game. The game comes with these detailed miniatures of all the samurai, which all have different abilities.
Here are two of the samurai miniatures for Starship Samurai.
For my scheduled demo, I picked Sentient because, in addition to it being my favorite, it’s a crunchy game that can be taught and played in about an hour, perfect for this convention’s atmosphere. There’s no way I’m busting out Lisboa to random passers-by — no matter how much I wanted to! A couple groups walked by looking interested in the game and sat down, so I was able to teach it and spread the love for this excellent, mathy game. Everyone ended up really enjoying, so that was a total win in my book!
One of the groups that came by to play Sentient. They all seemed to really enjoy the game.
A totally new experience
The biggest surprise for me at this convention was that I played an RPG — FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME. Yes, that’s probably a shocker to most of you folks, but I never grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons or anything of the like, and my core gaming group are all eurogamers, so it has NEVER EVER come up ever in any of my game days.
I randomly happened upon this game starting when I saw some friends sitting at a table. I asked them, “what are you guys playing?” Andrew Long of Arizona Game Fair responded, “An RPG.” I’m like, “I’ve never played an RPG before.” And he’s like, “Well, sit right down!” and before I could take off my backpack, a few character sheets were placed in front of me to pick from. I picked The Bard, and the GM, Adam of FullMetalRPG, was super friendly and helped me fill it out, and the game started. FYI, I named my Bard Lisboa. (You can take the lady out of board gaming but you cannot take the board gaming out of the lady.)
And we’re off on our Dungeon Worlds adventure!
I had no idea what to expect! It was like an interactive movie unfolding before my eyes. I kept staring down at my character sheet, trying to figure out all the different things my character could do, and a little freaked out as I had no idea what I should do next. As a true eurogamer at heart, I had to just let go and enjoy the ride on this chaotic adventure. We were playing out of Dungeon Worlds, which a lot of folks on Twitter said was a good one to get into as your first RPG.
One guy, another Andrew, kept randomly setting things on fire. (I think he was a giant lizard, but I wasn’t 100 percent sure). The arson kept angering the fish folk, leaving the Bard unable to use his true skills of conversation to diffuse the situation. One of the guys later was impaled by the giant trident, and in a deal with the God of Death, tried to kill me. The scenario then went downhill after that. I rolled for my last dying breath and was able to also make a pact with the God of Death, survived and took another traveling companion down. It was glorious. And lastly, there was a giant sea creature being ridden like a jet-ski by another character. End scene. It was loads of fun.
This cool guy hosts Crit Hit events all across the Valley.
Lastly, I’d like to thank Crit Hit for reaching out and having us showcase our favorite games. I had a fun time at Game On Expo and hope to see even more board gaming there next year!
Here’s Mario and me. Alas, still no love for Waluigi.
