2025 is coming to a close. How did the year fly by so quickly? It simultaneously felt like the longest and shortest year of my life. It was the best of times, sometimes the worst of times, but there definitely was a lot of board gaming. This past year, I attended a bunch of game conventions, wrote a gaming piece for The Guardian and continued to manage our all stuff, no fluff board game review podcast The Five By. Go subscribe and listen! And with that, here are the 10 games I played for the first time in 2025.
Making sushi deliveries to please the boss and take over the syndicate.
This little tableau builder about delivering sushi so that you can be the top feline clan was a pleasant surprise for me. I barely just played it earlier this month, but I cannot stop thinking about it – and how many decisions I would’ve made differently! Each player begins with one card in their tableau, which gives you an option between two action choices. As you lay down more cards in a pyramid shape, the more actions you get with each round, but you’re limited to the action path you’ve created. Between collecting fish from your supply, transporting them along subway lines, and moving them up for sushi delivery – which sometimes requires rice for nigiri – it’s a hefty little puzzle that makes my brain work overtime. Highly recommend playing with sushi, of course!
That frantic dance when people are coming over and clutter is everywhere!
I often joke that I love having people regularly because that deadline is what keeps me on top of cleaning and keeping the house tidy. In Before the Guests Arrive, this cute little Japanese card game, there’s an impending deadline to pick up all the clutter before guests arrive, and everyone in the household has to help – including the grandparents! The game is played out over a series of cards dealt out onto the table in an interlocking series of columns and rows. On your turn, you pick up all the cards in a row or column, and then you can use one family member to put items away. The puzzle though is that each family member is assigned only to tidy up specific types of items and limited by the number of hands on their cards. One thing’s for sure, this game is much more fun than tidying up!
In Molly House, players take the roles of the gender-defying mollies of early 18th century London. This historical game theme about the queer community from that era is so unique that I never could have imagined it hitting store shelves. I’m so glad this game got published! I love everything this game represents, from the design process as a 2021 Zenobia Award Finalist to the message of the game: finding joy in your community, even if constables and others are trying to destroy it. Players draft cards representing gestures, desires and encounters frowned upon by society, so that they can host festivities with the help of their fellow mollies.
This massive board game offers players the chance to go on a luxury space cruise! As a first-time company, you’re building cruise rocket ships, enhancing the company network, inventing new technologies and growing your workforce. So many things to juggle at the same time – but ultimately, you will need to achieve company goals and keep your customers happy. This game very much feels like it was designed by Vital Lacerda game, in which game play is composed of small actions in order to eventually do a grand action, but it’s surprisingly not. Even the artwork is designed by Ian O’Toole, a frequent Lacerda collaborator, so it has the look and the feel of a Lacerda game. It’s crunchy, heavy and full of iconography. Thank goodness each player gets a personal book player aide for the game.
Racing school mascots! I’m always partial to the bear. Go Bruins!
Who knew a game about racing school mascots down a field – and betting on them – would be so fun? Who will win between the bear, king, hot dog or fish mascot? It’s anyone’s guess, kinda sorta! Players make bets but they also seed the deck of cards dictating actions for each mascot. When the game starts, each card is flipped over one at a time, and the mascots are off the races. It’s chaotic fun – especially when mascots get knocked down, and yes, you can also bet on that, in addition to who you think will win or place. The game is delightful and the packaging equally clever, with the grassy field they’re racing on unfurling from its game box like a giant paper towel roll.
Does Bohemian Rhapsody enter your head when you see this? Just asking for a friend.
Galileo Galilei takes us to the Scientific Revolution where astronomers like Galileo were looking upwards to the sky and observing constellations and major objects, while lecturing at the universities and writing books for libraries. What I love most about this game is the use of the rondel, shaped in a quarter circle for this game using a telescope and its arc. Where the telescope points, players have access to a fixed action and a moving action, and when the turn is over, the moving action part is removed and slid over to the bottom of the arc, where it won’t be in play for a few more turns after a couple more moving actions are used. It’s such a clever rondel mechanism, forcing you to make decisions about how to best combo your next action. But be careful! Having too much knowledge will bring suspicion from the Church, and heretical ideas will be punished with an inquisition.
4. MicroMacro: Downtown Detective
MicroMacro: Downtown Detective. Find clues and solve crimes while on your phone!
MicroMacro: Downtown Detective is an app available at the IOS app store or on Google Play. It’s the digital implementation of one of my favorite games: MicroMacro Crime City, lovingly referred to as Who Killed Waldo? It’s a game played over a large map, where you get a birds-eye view of a bustling city and people going about their business. But if you look close enough, you can see the crime and mischief that residents are up to, and you have to solve the case by observing what’s happening. This app does the same thing, giving you three cases free, and then 22 more with the app purchase. I love solving these mysteries, and now I can do it anywhere on my phone when I have 5-10 minutes of down time. They even released a few more cases as a holiday bonus this month! I successfully found the escaped reindeer!
Working to house the vulnerable populations so they don’t end up in the Corrections system.
Cross Bronx Expressway is the third game of the Irregular Conflict Series by GMT. It follows six decades of south Bronx history from the 1940s-1990s, and how urban development and construction of the highway negatively affected the Bronx population, a shifting demographic with each decade. It has a collective loss condition so players need to kinda work together while working to achieve their objectives, split between the public, private and community sectors. The game is brutal – and there is so much history represented in the game cards. It’s a rich gaming experience that highlights how quickly people can fall through the cracks and neighborhood problems can compound so quickly. Much like real life, there are a multitude of challenges to overcome to keep vulnerable people off the streets and out of the prison system.
Quite literally the game I’ve played the most this year. That’s Not A Hat comes in a small box filled with cards that shows a black and white doodled item on the front and an arrow pointing in a direction on the back. This game is all about gift giving. Everyone loves gifts, right? And, naturally, if you’re receiving a gift, you have to give a gift, too, to someone else. The game is literally memory musical chairs. Cards begin face up in front of you, but as people start giving gifts, those cards go face down – and they start moving around the table in front of a different person. It’s hard enough remembering what’s in front of you, let alone what someone else has given you. It’s hilarious fun, in a brain-melty quick sort of way, especially if there are adult beverages involved.
We found the alien race in S.E.T.I. There is intelligent life out there in the galaxy!
S.E.T.I., also known as the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, is my top game of 2025. It has all the things I love about strategic games: multi-use cards, technology upgrades, space aliens and a rotating board to represent ever-shifting planetary positions, making timing a key game mechanism. You’re a scientist on Earth upgrading equipment to analyze incoming data more efficiently, boosting telescope signal capacity or increasing resources. The board is laid out with three sets of rings that rotate when technology is researched, making planets orbit across the board, potentially making them farther from where your launched probes need to get to. And as you move through the galaxy, alien races wait to be discovered – and then even more fun begins!
And that’s my top 10 games that I played for the first time in 2025. What have you all enjoyed playing in 2025? Here are also my previous top 10 lists that go way, way back. Thanks for making it down this far, and I hope you had a wonderful holiday season with lots of gaming and merriment. Here’s to even more adventures in 2026!
Chris and I running away from the chaos that was 2025. Happy New Year, everyone!
It’s November, friends, which means SDHistCon! I decided to fly into San Diego this year for reasons, which then created a different set of problems because many of us weren’t sure at the start of the con if our flights were still going to exist by the end of the convention. Luckily, the worst that happened to me was a flight delay.
I flew in early enough on Thursday to catch the first of two pre-convention events, which was a late lunch and hanging out at Stone Brewing at Liberty Station. I know I’ve said it before, but I always appreciate pre-convention events because it gives you a chance to get to know people in person out of the Discord – before all the gaming commences.
The early arrivers to San Diego met up at Stone Brewing.
The second event was at Eppig Brewing, where OMG – they had an ube cider. It was delightful! Highly recommended if you like ube! These are the things I miss from not living in California anymore. Eppig Brewing is right on the waterfront and it was great catching up with even more people while enjoying the cool weather.
Hanging out with friends at Eppig Brewing!
Friday
I started the day with Indonesia. Thanks, Andrew Heim, for running two games of this simultaneously! It’s been a long time since I’ve played a Splotter game, but this one and Food Chain Magnate are my favs from them. In Indonesia, you’re producing and shipping goods – rice, spice, rubber, siap faji and oil – across the country on boats. The brutal thing about this game is that if you have product to ship, it has to ship, even if you lose money paying to use other people’s boats to get the city that demands it. Weirdly, our cities never made it past level one. Lastly, the font for this game always makes me laugh. It totally reminds me of the font that everyone used in the 2000s for their wedding invitations.
Shipping my goods across Indonesia. The fancy pieces for Andrew’s game was a nice touch.
Next up was Microverse, a game that I got to play at Origins this past summer. It’s a fast-paced 4x game that plays in about an hour where players are alien factions are fighting in space – and not have their home planet blown up. So this past summer, my home planet got annihilated because I miscalculated how much speed someone could use to get to me. I vowed to prevent that from happening in this game.
Microverse is currently on the P500 for GMT.
Well … I was doing so well until the end, when someone attacked me and blew up my home planet. GAAAHH! The designer, Sam London, assured me that I put up a good fight though! That made me feel a little better. Kinda. I did back this game on the P500 so I am very much looking forward to this game!
Sam London ran his game that included John Butterfield and me.
I then played a prototype from Taylor Shuss called Quantum Train. It’s a trick-taking that takes place in space! Normal trick-taking rules apply for this game, which has alien suits, but the two highest cards get taken back by the player who played them for the card to be turned into passengers, and the two remaining cards remaining in the trick determine which direction the rocket ship on the board will go.
Moving the rocket ship to make passenger drop-offs in Quantum Train.
The now passenger cards that sit in front of a player have a location on the card where they’d like to get dropped off. When the rocket ship moves to that matching location, players can score their dropped-off passengers for points. Manipulating the rocket ship is a fun trick-taking twist. It really makes you really think about what card to play when you know you cannot win the trick.
The alien suits — and where that passenger wants to go to — in Quantum Train.
The last game of Friday night was Sidereal Confluence. I love this game, and in the pre-pandemic times, I used to run this game at most conventions I went to. I wasn’t sure if this game was something historical gamers wanted to play, but after some discussion in the SDHistCon Discord, I put it on the schedule and a full table came out to play. Hurray!
I think most everyone here had not played Sidereal Confluence before. They’re in for a treat!
In Sidereal Confluence, you are alien factions with cool technologies that produce resources that you cannot use. So the crux of the game is negotiating, negotiating, negotiating. I put a timer for the negotiation phases so that the game can move along quickly. There’s nothing quite like yelling at people for small cubes and large cubes and grabbing pieces across the board with my giant tweezers.
Of course I busted out my tweezers for Sidereal Confluence.
Dan Bullock, Brooks Barber, Cory Graham and I ended the night at a tiki bar, of course. We hit up False Idol in downtown San Diego, and the vibe was so cool. And of course, I had to order an ube bae, a drink blended with rum and sugarcane. I can’t resist anything ube. Those are the Filipino rules.
Dan, Brooks, Cory and I doing what we do best — finding the nearest tiki bar.
Saturday
Saturday morning started like any other morning – asking Volko Runhke, THE VOLKO, creator of the COIN system and all-around cool dude, to film a Tiktok with me that used a trending music mix of 4 Non Blondes/Nicki Minaj. I was a little nervous asking him to lipsync a song that contained curse words, but he did amazing! Thanks for participating, Volko! And thanks to Yoni for filming my vision!
What's up, @volko.bsky.social? Having some fun at @sdhistcon.bsky.social with this TikTok trend! #beezinthetrap
Next up with a game of Cross Bronx Expressway, a game I had originally played at Origins as well, but this time, I played a short scenario that took place in the 1990s. This decade was BRUTAL to the community, the faction I played. The game is a 3P game where the community, private and public sectors work to house vulnerable populations and build infrastructure in the South Bronx during the 1940s-2000s when urban development was basically creating all sorts of havoc. It has a collective loss condition so players need to kinda work together while working to achieve their objectives. In my game, an event removed the one infrastructure the community had, and I could not raise any money because in order to fundraise, you roll a die based on how many infrastructure you had on the board. See the dilemma? I was spiraling!
The 1990s were brutal for Bronx residents, especially for the community faction.
I then played a quick game of Yubibo, which I’ve been describing as Twister with fingers. Players use one hand for the game, and the other to turn a card from their deck, which dictates which person and finger they need to place a stick in between.
As more cards are played, more sticks – and possibly squishy balls – are in play, making everyone really focused in order to hold the precarious stick structure together. If too many sticks fall, the game is over. Man, my fingers were kinda cramping, and it was so difficult getting a good group shot. My fingers were very occupied!
Bruce Mansfield and the rest of us focusing on not dropping sticks in Yubibo.
We then played a quick game of Cat in the Box. This trick-taking game without any suits is seriously a convention staple of mine. We play it all the time! It always amuses me teaching this game to people and telling them that you have to decide what the suit is for a card that you played, and that at any time you can declare you are out of a certain color.
What suit is this card? Only you know!
The last big game of the night was Game of Thrones. Love playing this game, especially with Dan Bullock and Brooks Barber, who were in the game I played this past summer at Consimworld.
Kathryn, Justin Fassino, O. Shane Balloun, Dan Bullock, Brooks Barber and I are all smiles at the start of this game.
Players are GOT houses trying to capture castles in 10 rounds. There’s always backstabbing, intrigue (as you place order tokens face down and they are all revealed simultaneously) and watching out for the Wildlings. Unfortunately, with SDHistCon closing its doors at 10 p.m. each night, we were unable to finish the game. Conquering Westeros just takes up so much time!
GOT houses all trying to capture castles.
Afterwards we went across the street to Point Break Bar and Grill, where we played even more Yubibo and just hung out until it closed. As much as I love playing all the games at conventions, it’s the moments like where you hang out with friends and share life stories that make it all worthwhile. And man, there are some bonkers stories!
The gang enjoying some Yubibo and libations.
Sunday
Sunday morning was the annual in-person SDHistCon board meeting. As an SDHistCon advisory board member, I attended the meeting with other board members and we talked about the state of the convention, the growing attendee list, plans for the future and other administrative stuff. The meeting is always open to the public for anyone who would like to attend.
The SDHistCon Board of Directors and Advisers.
After the meeting, we went outside to play Medusa’s Garden, a game that requires some space and moving around. In this game, one person is Perseus, who turns away from the group and holds up a mirror, their only viewpoint of the group playing behind them. The rest of the group gets a secret card that says they’re Medusa or statues. The game starts when everyone freezes like a statue, and the Medusa player discreetly touches another player, who then falls to the ground after 10 seconds, like a shattering statue. Perseus must figure out who in the group is Medusa. If Medusa can shatter the majority of her statues, Perseus loses. If Perseus identifies Medusa, they win instead.
Medusa’s Garden is absurdly fun, as you can tell by this photo.
Next up was Harmony of Discord Shogunate, a prototype from Sam London where players are warring Japanese clans trying to take control and complete their secret ambition. The game uses cards in a Pax-style market that has two clans on it and two actions, and on your turn, you can take one of the actions on the card or do an action with any clans on the card. If you take the first card, it’s free; the farther along the market the card is, the more coins it will take to use it. During the game, alliances can be made and broken, and battle resolution plays out in a specific order regarding samurais and others. The designer said this was the very first time this game had been played out in the wild, and he thought we were going to break the design, but the game ended up being really fun with our large group.
Creating chaos in Japan in Harmony of Discord Shogunate.
After that, we played Steel Beasts, another prototype from Sam London. It’s inspired by Tank Duel, a game I first played in New Orleans this summer, except Steel Beasts is played with just a deck of cards instead of including player boards. My experience in tank games are very limited, but I was able to quickly pick up the rhythm of the game as all the stats are printed on the card itself. The game is quick and fast, perfect when you have a small pocket of time in between games.
Taking down tanks in Steel Beasts.
Mid-afternoon, I was on a panel titled “How do we talk about historical games?” with Dan Thurot and Liz Davidson, moderated by Akar Bharadvaj. We discussed how journalism about historical games fits into the broader conversation about history, how academics study and use historical games for teaching, and the moral/ethical obligations we have about historical games, and other topics. Thanks, Akar, for asking me to be on this panel with two heavyweights in the historical gaming sphere. <insert gif of here of a smiling cat that says “I’m just happy to be included”>
Liz Davidson (from left), me, Dan Thurot and Akar Bharadvaj.
After the panel, a group of us played Terra, a game about cooperation to save the world from environmental destruction. Players draw cards into their hand. If it’s a solution card, they keep it, but if it’s a crisis card, it’s placed face up into the middle of the table. Players then have a chance to play numbered solution cards to add into the crisis number on the crisis card. If they play the first matching solution card, they get 3 points, and the player that played the highest solution card gets 3 points. If crisis cards are not solved, they turn into full-blown crises and a collective loss can happen.
Terra is an old game, and it’s so weird seeing cutesy artwork on a serious-ish game.
Much like Terra, where players had to work together, players had to do the same thing in Bowie, a game from Dan Bullock. Four players are different versions of David Bowie, and you’re trying to visit locations to record albums while trying to prevent any version of Bowie from dying through the various things that happen living like a rock star, things like threats, dark princes and figures of the occult.
My Bowie successfully recorded a single in London and stay away from dark princes.
Monday
Monday was the last day of the con. It went by so fast! I started with a quick game of Close Assault, another prototype from Sam London. My experience in tank games has now tripled just from this convention! In this game, you’re playing as two teams of two players, and each team has a couple of cards that act as replacements if your officers die. Game play is similar to Rummy where sets of cards are played for an action that’s printed on the card, and a higher value set can partially or fully beat what your opponent played. I enjoyed the hand management aspect of this game, as well as sometimes hiding out in a house so that my tank doesn’t get destroyed.
Romero using a house for cover in Close Assault.
Next was a demo of Queen of Spies, a game coming to Gamefound next month by Liz Davidson and David Thompson. I had seen an earlier earlier version of this a year ago, and to see a game’s development and fruition are one of the highlights of attending conventions such as SDHistCon.
Look at the artwork for Queen of Spies!
Queen of Spies is a solo, story-driven game about espionage and missions in occupied Belgium during World War I where you play as Alice – a former journalist turned spymaster – who runs a secret spy network. The artwork on this is gorgeous, and completing your missions before you run out of time or getting someone in your network imprisoned is hard work!
So cool to hang out with Liz Davidson and see her game develop over the year!
I then picked up a game I won at an auction: The Plum Island Horror. And guess what folks, I’ve already played it! I’ve had a very productive post-convention week. I love the horror theme of the game – as well as all the side jokes in the cards and rulebook – and playing cooperatively like a wargame to stop the hordes of murder zombies will always be a good time.
The artwork on this is super cool! I love this campy horror look.
And after that, I flew back home on Monday night, after a two-hour delay. The plane was super empty, which was a rare thing for me to see.
I can’t remember the last time I flew in a plane this empty.
This is my fourth SDHistCon, and I will definitely be back again next year. It’s such an intimate experience being surrounded by designers and gamers alike, and the location is super convenient to the airport as well as plentiful hotels and restaurants nearby.
A full house on Saturday, Day 2 of the convention!
SDHistCon was the last convention I will attend this year – maybe one day I’ll make it to Pax Unplugged, but it’s smack dab in the middle of holiday travel, and I do not want to add another trip during that chaotic time. But for 2026, I’d love to attend an overseas convention. What are some of your favorite non-U.S. conventions? Let me know! And thanks for making it all the way down here. Until next time!
This is the true story of 14 wargamers picked to live in an airbnb. Find out what happens when people stop being polite — and start getting real. SDHistCon: New Orleans. Weekend spoiler: It was a great time!
I hopped onto a plane on Aug. 7 and visited New Orleans for the first time ever. Harold Buchanan, founder of SDHistCon, assembled the Board of Directors and Board of Advisors, which I am a part of, to hang out in the Big Easy, see some history, eat good food and, of course, play some games!
The SDHistCon group that came out!
Accommodations
We all stayed at the Joe Hotel, which was a lovely boutique hotel/airbnb that had a living room, dining room, kitchen and backyard patio with a grill — so plenty of space for lounging and gaming. We booked up the entire place.
We moved coffee tables around and put up the big tables for gaming.
Most everyone else went home on Aug. 10, but I stuck around for another day to explore the city even more — there’s just endless things to do! For my extra night, I got a room at the Higgins Hotel, which was a block over from Joe Hotel. It was really easy getting around and walking to places from this area of the city, and not as hectic as say staying in the French Quarter.
The Higgins Hotel is across the street from the WWII Museum.
Games I played
I played a total of four games during this long weekend. First up was Tank Duel, a card-based game for 1 to 8 players that depicts tank-to-tank warfare on the Eastern Front of World War II in the early to mid-1940s. It was my first time playing this — it was chaotic fun, even if my tank broke and then caught on fire. The deck is made up of multi-use cards, and they’re used for everything from initiative, actions, cover modifier, terrain effect, target number to card effects. We played a short scenario for 8 players, four tanks for Russia and four tanks for Germany. Such a good wargame option for a large group, and gameplay is anywhere from 60 to 180 minutes depending on the scenario!
My tank broke and caught on fire! Sad!
I also got a chance to play Dan Bullock’s Fruit game again about United Fruit’s banana trade and its economic and political effects on Latin America during the period of 50 years in the early 1900s. This version was pretty much the same version I had played the previous month at Consimworld, but Dan added drafting back into this play. Players’ primary interests during this game was an exciting mix as there was a lot of going back and forth, especially between Guatemala and Honduras over contested areas. The game ended up in a three-way tie at the end, which Akar Bharadvaj winning from a tie-breaker.
Some bananas were eaten during our play of Fruit.
Dan, Akar and I got a chance to play Arabian Struggle, a card-driven conflict wargame set in the Arabian Peninsula in the early years of the 20th century. Three players each play one faction seeking to gain power over Arabia: the Hashemites, the Rasheedis, and the Saudis. The game plays for 60-90 minutes, and plays take turns playing a card for their hand for action points, or they can trigger the event, which then the card will be discarded from the game. Each card shows your faction’s strength, and one card is flipped over during each battle, with strengths added to the strengths of pieces on the board. Events that are good for your faction also give you strength during battles, so it’s a constant battle deciding how to play a card on your turn. The goal of the game is to have the most victory points at the end of the three eras, or you can either have control of four key cities, or have more than 12 VPs at any time.
Three factions are trying to take control of Arabia.
I also got a group to play That’s Not A Hat, which I talked about in Episode 161 on The Five By. I always describe the game as a cross between Memory and Musical Chairs. It’s hilarious and I love it so much — surely it isn’t hard to remember what’s on the card face-down in front of you? Apparently, it can be, with even one person saying, “I can’t believe how bad my memory is.” This small card game is always a crowd pleaser at the end of the night. It’s so very easy to lose track of your cupcake.
Trying to remember what card you have in That’s Not A Hat.
Places I visited
One of our field trips was to the WWII Museum. This place is great! There’s so much information, immersive exhibits and historical artifacts. You can also buy a second-day pass for $15 with regular admission in case you want to return to check out more stuff, which I did! I enjoyed the showcase on the Pacific Theater as well as the exhibit on the Monument Men, an Allied WWII unit who returned works of art that were stolen by the Nazis.
One of the best museums I’ve been to!
We also enjoyed a ride on the Creole Queen riverboat to visit the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Chalmette Battlefield. I enjoyed the narration by a local historian while we sailed down the Mississippi River. New Orleans has such a storied history, including many battles over control by different nations, which definitely can be seen today in the diversity of its rich culture.
Learning about New Orleans history on a boat ride!
Upon arriving at the historical park and battlefield, we got a little tour of the battlefield, along with more information about its history, as well as a quick tour around the visitor center.
Learned about the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.
On my extra day, I got a chance to visit the Los Isleños Museum in St. Bernard Parish. An Isleño is a descendant of Canary Islanders who arrived in the territory of Louisiana during the late 18th century. Through their interaction with the natural environment and neighboring communities in the region, the Isleños of Louisiana have developed a unique identity and culture.
I ventured out to the Los Isleños Museum in St. Bernard Parish.
The museum has a plaque commemorating St. Malo, a small fishing village that existed nearby that was the first permanent settlement of Filipinos in the United States. Those Filipinos caught fish and shrimp as they were in an environment similar to the wet tropics of home in the Philippines. What do the Canary Islanders and the Filipinos have in common in this era? The Spanish, who ruled New Orleans from 1763-1803. The Filipinos were essentially escaped enslaved people who jumped from those Spanish Galleons.
Standing in front of the plaque commemorating St. Malo, the first Filipino settlement in the U.S.
I also got to visit Faulkner House Books, which is a small bookstore housed where William Faulkner lived in New Orleans. He lived on the ground floor of this house in 1925 in the French Quarter where he completed his first novel “Soldier’s Pay.” I took a lot of Faulkner in college, so the student in me was feeling a little giddy.
The doors to Faulkner House Books. Naturally, I did some book shopping.
Lastly, I got to see a concert at Champions Square in New Orleans. Champions Square is this outdoor festival plaza next to the Caesars Superdome. It was so easy to get to and enter, and I had a great time watching Teddy Swims live, even if I was sweating buckets in the hot humid heat.
I didn’t even realize Teddy Swims was on town and got lucky with a last-minute ticket!
Places I ate and drank
Oh man, the food and drinks were incredible in New Orleans. I am still thinking about all the places we ate. Here are the restaurants:
Brennan’s: Loved the duck confit mash I had. And of course, we ordered the bananas foster, which originated from this very establishment.
Brennan’s makes the bananas foster table-side!
Peche: Amazing seafood and even more amazing fried okra and grilled eggplant.
Half the group enjoyed a lovely dinner at Peche.
Meril: Their special that day was Chicken In A Waffle Cone. The chicken strips were so tender and flavorful. Sculpturally, a work of art, too, to look like an ice cream cone!
This Chicken in a Waffle Cone was amazing.
Sun Chong: This instagram-worthy restaurant is an Asian American concept inspired by Korean and Cajun letters, and it’s the chef’s love letter to his Korean grandmother. I ordered the I Love You, which has vodka, lychee, dragon fruit and lime juice, as well as miso brussels sprouts with peanuts and a drum po’boy sandwich.
Started my amazing meal with an I Love You.
Cafe Du Monde: Of course I had to visit this place for beignets! It’s mostly outdoor seating, and I enjoyed very powdery fried goodness with a cup of cafe au lait. I should not have worn black that day.
The powder sugar got everywhere!
Cafe Fleur De Lis: Had a savory catfish and grits here, where the grits were so incredibly fluffy and not – dare I say – gritty. The bartender told me that their secret ingredient is cream cheese.
Catfish and grits for brunch. Yums!
And the list of bars:
A delightful meal and tiki drinks at Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29
Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29: What a delightful tiki bar! Great drinks and yummy Asian fusion food! On those rare occasions that I see pandan on a drink menu, I have to order it. And it did not disappoint!
Carousel Bar: This place was hopping on a Saturday night. Enjoyed a refreshing Fleur de Lis drink and checked out the rotating bar that looks like the center of a carousel.
The Carousel bar slowly rotates!
Napoleon House: A building intended for Napoleon to live in after his exile, this famous house has a restaurant and bar. Such a cool historic vibe!
Jason Matthews knows showed us all these cool bars.
Sazerac House: I signed up for a free tour of the three-story museum, which includes 3 cocktail samples. Lots of interactive displays and clips explaining the history New Orleans has had with its alcoholic drinks and why the Sazerac cocktail is officially the city drink. Such an elegant space and a nice break from the bustle of the city.
The vibe at the Sazerac House was just so cool!
And that was my time in New Orleans. Even though I am allergic to shellfish, I still partook in all the decadent food the city had to offer – and it was plenty. Loved learning all about the history from the field trips as well as walking through the French Quarter and being transported to another time in history.
I will never tire walking down the historic New Orleans streets.
I want to say a big thank you to Harold, Andrew and Pratik for planning this and for having me. I’m proud to be a part of the SDHistCon advisory board, as this organization works hard to bring historical games to a broader audience with its annual convention as well as its Summit Awards. Tickets are out for this year’s convention on Nov. 7-10 in San Diego! Hope to see you there!
Last month, I flew to Columbus, Ohio, to attend Origins Game Fair for the first time! It’s by far the biggest convention I’ve gone to – at almost 20,000 attendees – but even though it was large, the convention was easy to navigate and get around in.
The open gaming area on Saturday at Origins.
I stayed across the street from the south entrance of the Columbus Convention Center, so all I had to do was cross the street to enter the building. And that was totally convenient, as it was hot and humid during my time there, something this desert dweller was not at all used to.
My hotel, the Canopy, as well as a bunch of other hotels, was just across the street.
Wednesday
I flew out from Phoenix and arrived in Columbus on Wednesday late afternoon and immediately hit the open gaming room after getting my badge. The convention center had plenty of space to game, whether in the ginormous open gaming space, which had both open tables and tables for scheduled games, or just all the little tables and nooks found around the convention center. I never had any trouble finding a place to sit, game or charge my phone.
Lots of cute photo ops around the convention floor!
I met up with Amanda Panda, and we saw this giant gummy bear in the open gaming area, and I had to take a photo with it. (Please excuse my frizzy hair from the humidity.)
Do not eat the giant gummy bear.
The booth was selling Rummy Gummies, a little card game where you’re trying to make a Rummy-style set of matching color gummy bears. But there are also gummy worms in the deck, which activate if too many are discarded, making you do things like trade hands or go in the other direction.
I picked up Rummy Gummies to play with my nieces.
The next game I played was Rebel Princess, the first game of many played during this con. It was such a hit with every single I busted this game out! Rebel Princess is a trick taking game where you’re a princess trying to avoid proposals from princes and a frog, who is the absolute worst. The game goes on for five rounds, with rules that slightly change each round, and you play this like a normal trick-taking game but you don’t want to collect any of the prince suited cards or the frog, as they will give you point — and you don’t want any points. Unless you’re gunning to be the Rebel of the Ball, then you want all them, and it will subtract to your total points.
The artwork in Rebel Princess is just delightful. Watch out for that frog though. He is the worst.
We then borrowed Panda Panda from the convention library. The goal of the game is to collect a very specific combination of cards, which are lettered from A to G, with the A’s having 10 cards in the deck all the way to the G having one card in the deck. On your turn, you can play a card or discard a card, which may trigger the passing of a card to an opponent. You win if you start your turn with a completed set. I ended up buying the game in the vendor hall when it opened on Thursday.
This cute card game has you building out your hand of cards to be exactly like one on the cheat sheet.
Next up was Fork, a very adorable trick-taking game where you simultaneously play cards in a trick, and, depending on the hierarchy of the animals, you may be able to win cards for scoring. The hierarchy order is is Foxes, Owls, Rabbits and Kale. On your turn, you pick a suit to be played, and then everyone plays their cards. The player who then played a fox can score an owl or rabbit. If an owl survives, it can score on a rabbit, and so forth. Any leftover kale also scores points if it doesn’t get eaten by the rabbit.
Fork is a cute trick-taking game where your animals can eat other animals or be eaten.
I hung out with these cool people that Amanda Panda introduced me to on Wednesday as we played all the previously mentioned card games. And Jamie Daggers hung out with us and painted at the table!
(From left), Cosmic Ben, Amanda Panda, Jamie Daggers, me and Dicey Vim.
Thursday
At the crack of dawn on Thursday (OK, 7:30 a.m.), I met up with Tim Fowler and Patrick Hillier for coffee and 3P cribbage out on a patio at the convention center.
It’s always good to see Patrick (we usually see each other at Granite Game Summit), and I finally got to meet Tim in person!
I am very rusty at the scoring for cribbage, most especially in the morning hours when my brain hadn’t quite woken up yet to math, but I was able to hold my own in the end as white! The scores were so close!
Look at that photo finish! Patrick ended up beating us.
I then met up with Corey (idontknowrules), an old friend who had used to live in Arizona but had moved away to Ohio about four years ago. We miss you, Corey! That morning, Corey, his friend Jon and I had all signed up to play Fort Circle’s First Monday in October, a game about the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. I got a chance to take a tour of the Supreme Court in March during Circle DC, but did not get a chance to play with the designer then, so I’m so glad I got a chance to play it here! First Monday in October was among the many scheduled games offered by Armchair Dragoons in the open gaming area. I spent half my time time there during the con learning historical games.
Kevin Bertram of Fort Circle is teaching us First Monday in October.
The game recreates SCOTUS history from 1789 to present day, and players are advocating for the court cases they want to win and shaping the philosophy of the court, which are represented by four tracks: commerce clause, equality and liberty, free speech, and executive power. Players take three actions per turn, and actions include placing their clerks on cases on the docket track, encouraging justices to retire, supporting judicial nominees or moving up the robing room, which offers benefits during your actions. I really enjoyed learning about the history and made agonizing decisions between furthering my philosophical goals versus the court cases coming through. We all enjoyed the constant push and pull of the court, and bringing down the hammer when you were the last person to take a turn in the round!
We’re influencing the makeup of the Supreme Court of the United States!
We then had lunch at North Market, a cool indoor market with food vendor stalls, that was across the street from the convention center. Lots of yummy options! I ended up getting a Philly chicken steak from Marlow’s Cheesesteaks. The sandwich was so ginormous that I ate it over two meals!
North Market is one block away from the convention center. Lots of food options!
After lunch, we hit the vendor hall, which had board game companies selling games as well as all the cool nerd-adjacent gear such as dice, shirts, puzzles and artwork. The local bookstores even had booths there! I always love people watching, seeing all the different stalls and shopping, of course! I visited the Molly House booth and took this awesome photo with a local drag queen who was at the booth!
Two fancy ladies at the Molly House booth!
That evening, I finally got a chance to play Hot Streak. Omg, this game is such a riot! It’s a racing game about school mascots who run down a field, and the players make bets on who they think will win, place or get knocked down. The game also involves seeding a deck of cards that will provide actions for specific mascots. It’s chaotic fun — we all laughed so hard! It’s hard not to when you’re rooting for a hot dog!
This game is so chaotic but hilarious!
I then got a chance to learn Weather Machine from my favorite game designer Vital Lacerda. This was such a beast to learn! You are scientists who are tampering with the weather by collecting research data, conducting experiments, publishing papers and developing prototype machines to eliminate extreme weather. Like with any Lacerda game, it’s an intricate and complicated series of small steps to be able to finally do one grand action, and hope it scores points or an objective. My brain just about melted— and we probably should not have started learning it at 8 p.m. — but I enjoyed the brain burn and would definitely play Weather Machine again.
I think Weather Machine from Lacerda’s most complicated game, and this is coming from someone who loves Lisboa and can teach it on any given day.
To end Thursday night, we did a quick game of Mountain Goats, a quick push-your-luck game where you’re trying to get your goat to the top of the mountain by rolling a group of dice. You can divide your dice however you want so that an exact total of one or more dice will move your goat up its matching path. The goat meeples were too cute, but I think at 3P, the game felt a little long for what it was.
High on a hill was a lonely goatherd …
Friday
Friday morning, I signed up to learn Littoral Commander: The Baltic, which was being taught in the Armchair Dragoons area. The Baltic game pits Russia against the U.S., and we played the short scenario that included 3 actions per side for 3 turns. It was my first time playing a game in the Littoral Commander system, and there were so many decisions for those few turns, such as outfitting our ships with various technologies and managing resources for battle. Since we only had 3 turns in our game, we didn’t have to worry about using our powerful guns too early in the game, but ultimately, the dice failed the U.S. and we lost to Russia.
We tried fighting off the Russians in the Baltics but we were not successful.
Next up was Power Grid: Outpost, which is a version of one of my favorite games, Power Grid, but this time in space! If you know the base game, this will be easy to pick up because it is similar with a few interesting twists! First up, you have a player board where future power plants and worker shelters sit. Secondly, there is no resource market, but instead just a market for workers. You need workers to power your plants, and if you’re later in turn order, those workers can get very pricey because you’re hiring them each round, unless you have a shelter that can house them in space.
You need to make space for your power plants and shelter by placing these pieces on the main board.
Each planet functions like a city in the regular game except it can additionally house one shelter or one plant. These wooden pieces are removed from your player board and placed on the main game board, so that you can put a plant or shelter card that you won during bidding onto your player board. If you cannot put a wooden piece onto the main board, you do not have room to build a power plant, and thus cannot power cities.
Powering planets in space in Power Grid: Outpost.
We then played two more games of Rebel Princess, one at 3P and the next one at 4P. Each game has been so different based on the round cards and the variety of princess powers. At this point, I had purchased its expansion at the vendor hall, which included even more princess and round cards, as well as some special promos they had including the Carmenisa tile, which has a shiny metallic mirror on it.
Friday night, I met friends at Land-Grant Brewing Company, a beer-garden type place that had food trucks and great beer. I had the watermelon ale, and it was so refreshing! Good times hanging out in the fresh air with friends!
Such a fun brewery and outdoor space. There were three food trucks there that night, too!
Saturday
I started Saturday teaching two games, the first of which was Dune: Imperium. This game is such a solid deck-builder combination and worker placement game, and I am always down to teach it. We didn’t play with any expansions as there was one new person playing it but the game was still a hit!
Dune: Imperium is a solid blend of deck builder and worker placement.
Next up, I taught Arcs, one of my top 10 games of 2024. My two friends had never played Arcs before, and even though it so clearly states in the rule book that you shouldn’t play with the Lore and Leaders cards in your first game, I didn’t listen to it … and I think it created a lot of unnecessary chaos and a little bit of frustration. So listen to Cole, folks! Anyway, there was one point where I had no more ships on the board because they were all on my opponent’s boards and the warlord ambition had not been declared a that round. I eventually got them back, but there was no way to catch up to the person leading by a lot. Everyone still enjoyed the game though, but they definitely said they will try it first without the Leaders and Lore cards next time.
Battling it out in space and declaring ambitions in Arcs.
I then met up with Jason Carr to learn Microverse, a card-driven space 4x game that plays in about 60 minutes. Can you believe it? The game is played with a deck of cards, which have one of four actions on them: Build, Colonize, Explore and Mobilize. Players play as different factions, with a home planet on their side of the universe. On a player’s turn, they can play one or more cards to generate resource points to use toward an action. There’s also a Senate phase after each person takes their turn in a round that changes up the rules for that round. I got annihilated when an enemy traveled seven distance and attacked my home planet. I gotta defend my home turf better! Would definitely play this again, and with such a short play time compared to other 4X games, it would not be a problem to get this on table!
The last game on Saturday was Cross Bronx Expressway. I have been trying to learn this game at the past few historical game conventions I’ve been to, so I was so happy to get in on a demo with Jason. First up, look at that cover! Definitely the coolest board game cover I’ve seen on a historical game. The designer, Non-Breaking Space, had a personal connection with the graffiti artist BG183 and was able to use his artwork for the box.
Look at that cover! I don’t think I’ve seen a GMT game this size that’s done a horizontal cover.
The game follows six decades of south Bronx history from the 1940s-1990s, and how urban development negatively affected the Bronx population. It’s a 3P game where players take on the roles of Private, Public and Community institutions, as they try to save the city from bankruptcy and protect the vulnerable population. At the end of each decade, a census is tallied to determine which factions have achieved their objectives — and at what cost. It is such a rich gaming experience that highlights how quickly people can fall through the cracks and neighborhood problems can compound in the blink of an eye. I cannot say enough great things about this game, and I’m so looking forward to when my copy will arrive. You can still preorder this game on the P500!
The Cross Bronx Expressway board showcases the different neighborhoods in South Bronx.
Sunday
Unbeknownst to me, as it was my first time at Origins, the convention also offers all sorts of panels for people to attend. I started my Sunday at the “All About Self-Publishing” writing panel featuring Sarah Hans, Cat Rambo, Aaron Rosenberg and Laura VanArendonk Baugh. I particularly enjoyed how they started the session by collecting questions from the audience in order to know what types of topics to cover. It was a great discussion about some ins and outs of self-publishing. I wish we had more time, actually to talk more!
The panel included (from left) Laura VanArendonk Baugh, Cat Rambo, Sarah Hans and Aaron Rosenberg.
After the panel, I returned to the open gaming area for the Armchair Dragoons Sunday raffle. You received a raffle ticket every time you played a game that they had set up on the schedule, and there were so many prizes! Alas, I did not win anything in the end, but that’s OK.
Nathan and I have run into each other at the last four conventions I’ve been to!
Journey to Skyhaven is a card-driven cozy herding game where you are hiking across terrain while trying to have the most sparkling, content and plump little creatures when you finish your hike. When you play a card, you move a certain number of spaces while using up stamina. Playing cards in a certain order can combo some victory points or net you some resources to continue your trek.
This is the prototype for Journey to Skyhaven, which will be published by First Fish Games.
Lastly, we played one last game of Rebel Princess with three people. It was good to end the convention on a high note with such a fun game!
The last game at Origins! Like Cinderella, I had to leave the ball (and grab my luggage) to go home.
I went back to my hotel, grabbed my luggage and headed off to the airport. In the beginning, I was a little nervous heading to this con by myself, as my husband had to cancel last minute (and he’s actually been to this convention before), but I was able to easily slip into games and meet up with some friends and make new ones! It was also great seeing people I’ve gamed with at Circle DC and SDHistCon and play historical games with them, and I finally got to meet Armchair Dragoons in person!
Armchair Dragoons had a whole bunch of historical games scheduled. Loved hanging out in this area!
And for those wondering, I did do some shopping at the vendor hall. The Rebel Princess expansion was not the only game I bought! And I totally had to buy the Origins dice set as it had the cute little Origins mascot Crit on them!
Overall, I played 18 games, including a couple repeats of Rebel Princess, which I do not mind at all. I have since taught my local gaming group the game, and they all enjoyed it. Did any of these games tickle your fancy? Or have you played any of the games I purchased at the convention? I have yet to get Galileo Galilei on table, but hopefully soon! My next convention is coming up! This weekend, in fact, is Consimworld, happening right here in my backyard!
I was so amused by this giant Agricola happening at Origins!
This year, Circle DC, an annual convention held by historical game publisher Fort Circle, was held on March 28-30, 2025. It was mostly held at the DC History Center, with a few gaming opportunities at satellite locations, and while that main location presented some challenges, mainly closing at 8 p.m. each day, we figured out how to make it work and continue gaming even later.
The former Carnegie Library now holds an Apple Store, which is why the Circle DC had to shut its doors at 8 p.m., and the DC History Center upstairs.
Fort Circle did the best they could do with the upheaval in the nation’s capital. Plus, one of convention highlights, in addition to all the gaming and seeing friends, was the cherry blossoms. I was in heaven! I mean, look at that!
Oh my! The cherry blossoms were in full bloom in D.C.!
I arrived in D.C. on Wednesday night to meet some non-convention friends (and play some backgammon in Arlington) and then I wanted to spend Thursday sightseeing. I ended up at the Jefferson Memorial early Thursday morning and made my way on foot through the city.
The Thomas Jefferson Memorial is across the Tidal Basin.
I also visited the Spy Museum, which had all kinds of neat exhibits and history about spies and their contraptions. Lots of secrets!
Yes, the Germans strapped cameras onto pigeons to take spy photos during WWI.
The current special exhibit “Bond in Motion” is about the vehicles used by superspy James Bond. I’m a sucker for James Bond movies and couldn’t resist this photo-op.
Channeling my inner spy while racing down the mountainside.
I then walked over to the National Portrait Gallery to roam the halls and see some artwork, such as see this lovely angel.
Angel by Abbot Handerson Thayer.
And of course, I sauntered over to the Presidential Portraits to look at former President Barack Obama’s presidential portrait.
Obama’s portrait was done by Kehinde Wiley, whose colorful work I adore.
Near the National Portrait Gallery portrait gallery was where the guys and I met up for dinner. We had Cuban food at Cuba Libre, and a few Cuba Libres, too!
We did not play Cuba Libre at Cube Libre. But we ordered some!
Afterwards, we went to Astro Beer Hall for the pre-convention mixer. These pre-con events are always a good opportunity to catch up with people who arrived in town for the convention.
Circle DC reserved a side room for convention attendees.
Friday
My first event on Friday was a VIP tour of the U.S. Supreme Court. I was bummed that I couldn’t take any photos in any of the main areas, but we did begin our tour in the very room where the justices rule on the law. Outside in the hall, however, I was allowed to take some photos of some architecture and this fancy elevator.
The fancy elevator inside the SCOTUS building had an attendant inside running it.
Our nice tour guide took us to the law library and a few conference rooms, where previous chief justices’ portraits were hanging. The tour guide did verify my question about the basketball court in the building, which sits above the courtroom, “the highest court in America,” he said.
Our cool SCOTUS VIP tour. We are all standing in front of the statue of John Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and the longest-serving one, too. Photo from Nathan Pinckney
I then took a Lyft back to the DC History Center and checked in to get my badge. The convention was held on the second floor of the building, in two large rooms, one open space in the middle and a few smaller rooms.
The DC History Center had two larger rooms for gaming and one open area space in between the two rooms, as well as a few smaller rooms.
My first game of Friday was Painkillers, designed by Brooks Barber, about the American opioid epidemic in the 1990s. This prototype centers on five states: Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia, and players are different pharmaceutical companies expanding into these areas to get people hooked, but without them dying. Meanwhile, evidence is being collected from federal officials in order to potentially prosecute these companies. The game is bleak, and playing as one of the Big Pharms showcased how insidious those companies were. We all ended up losing as the game had a collective loss condition once so many deaths occurred. Brooks said he was going to tinker with the end-game conditions, and I’m very much looking forward to see where this game goes.
Painkillers showcases the devastation that the opioid epidemic did in this part of the U.S. in the 1990s.
After that, I taught a game of Castle Combo, one of my favorite shorter games of late, a game that lasts a quick nine rounds. Players are buying either castle cards or village cards for their 3×3 tableau, and depending what you buy, you can combo end-game scoring and/or collect resources for purchasing future cards.
Building out my little 3×3 tableau in Castle Combo.
Building out your tableau a certain way in the hopes of finding a card for a specific slot is such a fun puzzly experience. Very satisfying when it all works out!
Everyone enjoyed learning and playing Castle Combo!
I then popped by to see a demo of Fruit, Dan Bullock’s prototype. I first played this last year at Circle DC and it’s neat to see the development of this game with each convention.
The Fruit board has had some tweaks since I last saw it.
Next up was Tournament at Avalon, a Medieval-themed trick-taking game with special abilities. You’re battling players with different suits: arrows, swords, deception, sorcery and alchemy, which is wild. Each player is a character with a companion, and the goal is to take the fewest number of tricks while inflicting injury onto others. Players play cards into a melee, and if you cannot follow suit, you will be shamed and get 5 points of injury. Also, if you play the same number as someone else, you enter a feint and can’t lose in the melee. It was all kinds of chaos.
Ready for some melee with alchemy!
After a nice dinner of Southeast Asian food at Laos in Town, we walked on over to Wunder Garten, where we had rented some cabanas to continue gaming. On Friday night, we ended up in the main center booth and played a few games. Naturally, the place was decked out for cherry blossom festival.
Of course I had to take a photo in the cherry blossom throne!
While there, we played another trick-taking game called Man-Eating House, a Japanese card game about a haunted house. There are children in the house who are trying to get out, ghosts, a dog and an old man. Depending on what’s played in the trick, some actions activate (there’s a flow chart that comes with the game), but ultimately, the old man can’t be beat – unless you’re the dog. He’s a good boy.
I had the old man in Man-Eating House.
The last game on Friday night was Phantom Ink. I’ve ended many long convention days with this game – and it is still a hit! Players break up into two teams and each team has a ghost and the rest of the players are mediums. The two ghosts agree on the same clue, and each team has to guess the clue before the other team does. A team does this by handing two questions to their ghost, who picks one question and reveals an answer one letter at a time. The active team at any time can stop the ghost from writing out more letters as this is all done in front of everyone. Sometimes you think you have no idea what the clue is, but when it all comes together — and it often does — it’s just so magical.
Phantom Ink continues to be a crowd pleaser!
Saturday
I started the day with a WWI – Tactics to Doctrine prototype from NB. So full disclosure, I signed up for this game because there was an opening, not knowing that this was an actual hex and counter! TIL that day that Tactics to Doctrine is one such system, and while at times I felt like that dog learning the rules in that board game meme, NB did a great job explaining the game at the Battle of Verdun. I soaked in as much information as I could, read the chits and quickly understood that yes, that is indeed a giant hill that the Germans need to travel up. Our demo did one push, which was four turns.
France trying to hold off the Germans, who are trying to move up a really big hill.
After a quick lunch, I saw some convention friends, including Rodney Smith, who I have not seen in years, since BGG Spring 2018! We had a fun chat about conventions and it was just so cool to see him and catch up.
Rodney Smith is one of the nicest people in the industry!
I then said hi to Candice Harris, who, unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to game with this con. I had a great time gaming with Candice at SDHistCon last year when we played Gibberers. Last year, she also invited me on the BGG Podcast Episode #40 where we talk about our favorite board games based on TV shows.
Always such a pleasure to see Candice!
I then got a chance to play Chalice of Poison, a prototype from Akar Bharadvaj about Iraq invading Iran in the 1980s right after Iran’s Islamic Revolution. This 2P game pits the two countries against each other, with Iraq, starting from a military disadvantage, pushing its way across the center of the board, and Iran desperately trying to hang onto their cubes before they get lost to dissident groups. The game ended in 1983, which pretty much every bystander who walked by and had previously played the game said it had also happened to them that year or 1984.
It’s Iraq vs Iran in 1980 in Chalice of Poison.
We then played two quick games of Rainbow, first as a 2P, which I don’t recommend, but the game was so fun at 4P. It’s an ADORABLE trick-taker! It has regular trick-taking rules, with some tweaks and there are no suits. Subsequent players must follow with a higher value run or set, or they can play a single card. At the end of the trick, whoever played the biggest combo (i.e. the number of cards), they get first pick from scoring cards placed in the middle of the table. The cards they played into this trick will then become scoring cards for future rounds. It’s such a cool mechanism seeding future scoring cards, and you can be strategic in which cards you play because it might not be worth it to play double 6s if you are only scoring 2 points this turn. It was also nice meeting Board Game Apprentice who joined the game.
Look at all the rainbows and horsies! Such a delight!
After the DC History Center closed at 8 p.m., we found ourselves back at Wunder Garten, this time under the glorious fuchsia lights in a different cabana. It was a little hilarious setting up for a conclave under this environment.
Dan Bullock explaining how to play Habemus Papam.
Yes, we played Habemus Papam, where up to 6 players are using influence to elect the next pope. I love negotiating games, and, while I did poorly in this game, it was still fun wheeling and dealing with fellow cardinals to push your agenda.
Using my influence to get the pope I want elected!
Sunday
I started the day with a stop by Pearl’s Bagels for a yummy breakfast lox sandwich. The line wasn’t too long like it was the day before when it was seriously a block long. I also love their little french bulldog logo. So cute!
I love me a good lox bagel sandwich!
Then I walked on over to the DC History Center and arrived a little before it opened at 10 a.m. Got to chat with these fun people!
Day 3 of Circle DC!
I then sat down for a demo of Junfa: Struggle for China, a prototype from Carlos Felipe Sanchez. The game takes place in 1920s China when competing warlords were fighting for power.
This prototype takes place in 1920s China where warlords were trying to take over.
The new game designer said he was really interested in this era and hasn’t seen a game on this topic in the historical gaming sphere. The game had area control and a political theater, as well as tracks marking influence from Soviet, Chinese, Western and Japanese powers.
Carlos Felipe Sanchez, the designer of Junfa, is the guy second from the right.
Each day of Circle DC had a raffle for a bunch of board games and other cool prizes. On Sunday, one lucky person won this glorious Sebastian Bae shirt, and that person was Brooks Barber. Brooks, I better see that shirt at SDHistCon!
The iconic Sebastian Bae shirt. It’s called fashion, look it up!
Giant Diplomacy was also in full force! I think there was actually a second room for Diplomacy as well.
If I had an extra day to spare, I would’ve gotten in on that Giant Diplomacy action!
And with that, I left DC to fly back to Phoenix. Despite some of the chaos leading up to the convention – and my Airbnb canceling on me the month prior, leaving me scrambling to find a new and affordable hotel room in Arlington – Circle DC was such a fun, intimate convention, full of games and prototypes alike. I like hearing about people’s historical interests and learning new mechanisms and projects. I can’t wait to go again next year. And maybe I’ll get to see more cherry blossoms. What a treat!
Yes, more cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin. I am 100% that person enjoying the scenery.
And for those wondering, the next two conventions I’m planning to go to are Origins in June (it’ll be my first time – send me advice if you’ve gone already!) and Consimworld, an annual favorite right in my backyard! Come out to the desert in July — it’s a dry heat!
Earlier this month, my husband and I went to Granite Game Summit in Nashua, New Hampshire, for the second year in a row. The weather was very chilly (by desert people standards), but the people and gaming were fire!
This year, G2S was held on March 6-9, 2025. Chris won a badge last year so we decided to attend again this year after having such a great time last year. We flew from Phoenix straight into Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, which was about a 15 minute drive from the convention hotel, the Doubletree in Nashua. We landed on Thursday afternoon and headed to the hotel where I saw some snow.
I know it’s muddy snow but I was still mesmerized! It was 90 degrees the previous week in Phoenix.
We checked in and said hello to Kimberly, an amazing human and one of the co-organizers of G2S. She said that about 600 tickets were sold for the event. The convention had lots of seating, in both masked and unmasked areas, and two food trucks came to the hotel each day, so lots of food options on site, including the hotel restaurant.
Saying hello to Kimberly, one of the Granite Game Summit organizers.
The first game we played was House of Fado, designed by Vital Lacerda and João Quintela Martins. Marc, a local gamer we had met last year, taught the game on the fly as he just took the box off the gaming shelf and started reading. Very impressive!
Marc, in the back right, taught our first game of the convention: House of Fado.
The game is set in Portugal when restaurants serve traditional food alongside musical performances of fado, a music genre that can be traced back to the 1820s. It’s a 4P game where players are managing restaurants, attracting customers, and contracting and promoting fadistas and musicians to gain prestige for their fado house. It features a similar bump mechanism as Lacerda’s The Gallerist, and true to a Lacerda game, a lot of different actions need to be done in order to do the one big action you want to eventually do. Over the past few years, Lacerda has been releasing shorter versions of his flagship games. And to me, House of Fado feels most similar to his longer crunchy games, even though it only plays in about 30-60 minutes.
The action spots sit between two sections so you have choices. If you get bumped, you get a bonus!
A group of us then went to get dinner at Chen Yang Li, which is down the street from the hotel. We ordered drinks and multiple peking ducks and feasted like kings! So yummy!
Scorpion drinks come with giant straws for sharing!
After dinner, a group of us played I’m Stuck in the Lift, a bonkers party game in which you and other players guess which floor the elevator will stop on. But you all secretly and simultaneously have the option to push the elevator up and down floors. If you guess correctly – or get really lucky with your predictions – you score VPs. The game lasts for 11 very quick rounds and plays up to 8 players.
I’m Stuck in the Lift was very on-brand for the evening as the hotel elevator had some issues that night.
We then played a 8P game of Chicken!, a unique push-your-luck game about chickens and eggs, but really, you’re really pushing the luck of the next player. Players roll up to two times in an attempt to get the most chickens, but if you roll three foxes, your turn is over. Also, if you get eggs during your roll, you add more dice to your hand, and some of those dice can be higher rewards but with more risks.
Counting your chickens before the foxes get you!
On Friday, we began the day by playing the trick-taking game Fibonachos, taught by Daniel Newman. At the start of the round, nacho cards are dealt to players, and a “spicy card” from a separate deck is flipped over for scoring after the round. The player left of the dealer starts the round by playing a card.
Daniel always has so a bag of trick-taking games so it was cool to try them all out this weekend.
Other players have to play suit if they can, and if they can’t, they can play a fibonacho card instead. The fibonacho card does not become trump though if there’s only one card in the round. A second fibonacho card must be played, and the higher value card wins the trick. I like the unique twist of the uncertainty of being able to take a trick is dependent on if another player plays a fibonacho card. When everyone plays their entire hands, everyone counts their spicy points and if your total equals a Fibonacci number (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21), then you score the next Fibonacci number instead as your total.
Spicy cards in Fibonacho. The name just cracks me up!
Next up was Castle Combo. I’ve been playing this game a lot recently and even reviewed it on the latest episode of The Five By where we talk about affordable games. Castle Combo is a tableau-building game where players will draft 9 cards to create a 3×3 grid at the end of the game. There are two market rows – the village and castle – and players can only purchase a card from the row that the king’s messenger is in. Once purchased, players place that card into their tableau, potentially receiving immediate benefits or end-of-game benefits, depending on the card. I really like the spatial puzzle in this game, as some cards give you victory points based on its location in your grid or what it’s surrounded by, and you may spend a few rounds waiting for that perfect card to show up in the market. Players also can receive keys to wipe the market or move the king’s messenger to a different row. A lot of depth in a small card game!
Creating my 3×3 tableau in Castle Combo. The artwork is so cute.
We then played another trick-taking game called Kansas City. I loved the look of this game with its sleek black art deco design and a stylistic representation of different industries in Kansas City. In this game, players are trying to win a fixed number of tricks. In our 4P game, zero tricks is zero points, 1 trick 5 points, 2 tricks 10 points, 3 tricks 15 points, 4 tricks 5 points and 5+ tricks zero points. When you lose a trick, you can designate a card to be trump by removing it from your hand and placing it in front of you. This gives people information about what cards are left in play in people’s hands and also allows you to manipulate your game play to win the optimal number of tricks. You don’t want to be stuck with trump cards after you’ve won three tricks because then that might mean you don’t gain as many points as winning just the three tricks.
The art style for Kansas City is so pretty!
We then headed out for a fun lunch at The Hidden Pig, a gastropub in Nashua. Everything was yummy and these guys are always so fun to hang out with!
So happy we got a chance to hang out with Patrick, Eric and Chip!
After lunch, we played Party Mix, a new prototype from Chip Beauvais where you push your luck to collect your favorite snack mix items. Players get a secret starting ingredient and at the end of the game, those ingredients are worth 2 points instead of 1 point for other ingredients. On your turn, you can stick your hand inside the party mix bag and grab as many items as you’d like. The more you grab, the more likely you’ll bust. For every pair of the same item, you must return another item to the bag. If you collect three pairs of items, you bust and it’s the end of your turn. The items you do collect, you place into your muffin cup and count them up at the end of the game. The player who received the least number of items for the round gets a card that gives you an ability.
Chip handed out a bag of Chex Mix for the winner of each demo.
Chris and I then played a quick 2P game of Othello, which was one of the door prizes for G2S, which you receive for spinning the wheel. We also received This Is Not A Hat, which is insanely hilarious but got to play after this weekend. Anyway, in Othello, one player is white and one player is black, and on your turn, you place one of your tokens onto the board. If you trap your opponent’s pieces in a row or column and have one of your pieces at the other end, you flip over all those pieces into your color. Such a fun classic game! And I was reminded that I used to play a lot of this game on a phone app called Reversi.
I have not played Othello in years! Yes, I beat Chris.
We then played the Japanese card game In Front of the Elevator, a game I had purchased during our Japan trip last year. In this game, players are trying to get more of their family members to the front of the line to get into the elevator. The order of who can sneak past another person is as follows: girls can sneak past boys, boys in front of moms, moms in front of dads, dads in front of grandmas, grandpas in front of grandmas, and little girls in front of grandpa. At each elevator, only the first three to four people will score points each round.
I love the artwork for Saashi games. This bottom elevator will score four people, with the fourth person in line scoring the most points.
I also brought Before the Guests Arrive, a game where you’re cleaning up your home before people arrive. Nobody likes a messy house! At the start of the game, you lay out 10-13 cards in an interlocking series of rows and columns, and on your turn, you choose a row or column and take all the cards in it and place them in front of you. After taking cards, you can tidy up with one family member, and depending on how many hands they have on their card, that’s how many items they can put away. Each family member can also only up specific types of items, so collecting the matching sets of cards would help score more VPs. The game abruptly ends when the guests arrive, a card shuffled into the bottom of the deck.
Nothing like a deadline of people coming over to make you tidy up!
We then played Not It, a very fast-paced card where you play a card from your hand that doesn’t match any of the elements on the three dice that come out of the dice tower. The dice have symbols, colors and backgrounds on them (white, stripes or polka dots). If your card has any of these matching elements, you get a penalty card. The first player to get rid of their cards wins the game. For anyone who has played the card game Set, this is the reverse of that game!
The peace sign card would give me a penalty since the stripes match one of the dice characteristics.
The last game we played on Friday was Stationfall, taught by the awesome Tiffany Leigh. So glad I got to meet her in real life! Our Stationfall game included 7 people, and it was all kinds of bonkers! In the game, there were 17 characters in play, and players are secretly two of those identities, one being your main person and the other your secondary identity, leaving 3 characters not tied to anyone On your turn, you can activate any of the characters and have them do your bidding, which ideally would be helping your character achieve their objectives for more VPs, but dang, that space station is so large and it takes so long to get anywhere! Also, the game lasts a fixed number of rounds and at the end, the ship blows up, so if you aren’t able to evacuate the blast, you won’t be eligible to win the game. Our game was especially tough as nobody was the medical robot, which make it really difficult for people to heal while the telepathic rat was just running amok on the ship. What an experience!
The chaotic adventure of Stationfall! Watch out for that telepathic rat.
After our game ended, we spent some time with Kimberly and Suzi just chilling before the convention doors closed up for the night at midnight.
Love hanging out with Suzi and Kimberly!
On Sunday, we started the day with a demo of The Transit of Venus designed by Nathan Fullerton, who I had met at SDHistCon last year. Nathan lives in New Hampshire and it was good to see him again at this convention!
Nate Fullerton was one of the guest designers at the convention.
The Transit of Venus is a cooperative cribbage game where four centuries of astronomers are working to see the celestial event. It was a little mind blowing working together to set up the crib for other players because all players need to be able to surpass the Venus peg on the board at the end of the game or else everyone loses. Cribbage scoring rules apply otherwise, and players get milestone cards with abilities when they pass certain spots on the track. Such a neat cooperative twist on a classic game!
The cooperative nature of the Transit of Venus through us for a loop — a good loop!
I then taught a 3P game of Fromage, also one of my favorite games of 2024! I love the timing mechanism of the game and how crunchy it is for a game that plays in about an hour. Players have three cheese workers in their hand, and you can place one worker to make cheese and one to collect resources in the cheese board quadrant that’s immediately in front of you. This is simultaneously done and after everyone is finished with their placement, the cheese board rotates, placing a new quadrant in front of everyone. You also only get your worker back when the worker is facing you again at the start of the round. So your cheese worker can be held up on the board from 1-3 rounds depending on the rewards you gain or the type of cheese you produce.
The rotating board timing mechanism for Fromage is so good!
The big game we played on Sunday was Galactic Cruise, and it took up a majority of the day. Galactic Cruise is gorgeous and very crunchy. It feels like a Lacerda but it’s not, and it even looks like it because the artwork was done by Ian O’Toole! In Galactic Cruise, players are creating cruise rocket ships to send passengers to their favored destinations. Naturally, that requires a lot of planning, and again, much like Lacerda games, a lot of turns have to be taken in order to do the grand thing you want to do.
Lots of things happening in Galactic Cruise. So crunchy!
Players also have a personal board with bonuses they can unlock as thresholds are met and rocket ships are sent into space. Action spots on the main board have two actions you can choose from, but you can also expand your network to take actions on adjacent spots if you are connected to them. Each player has a little menu of actions available and what all the symbols mean on the board. Had a great time playing this heavy euro, and I really liked all the details they put into this game, from the dual-layer player boards to the unique rooms you can add to your cruise rocket ship, including a board game convention and a massage lounge. Sounds like it’d be a fun trip!
We finished the game after 5 hours, which included about an hour of teach. Thanks, Ryan, for teaching!
Chris and I then attended a G2S trivia event. For those that know me, I LOVE TRIVIA, and this was such a delight to join up with gamer friends and collectively pull all the random-knowledge bits stuck in our brain. We had a great group, and we played 2nd in the game. My favorite category was the final category in which board game covers were printed on sheets of paper, but if you look closely, other elements that don’t belong to that board game cover were photoshopped onto it and it was our job to name those other games.
Go team Mechanical Keyboard Switch Sampler Pack!
And with that, Chris and I grabbed a quick dinner and then said bye to friends because it was late Saturday night. We had to leave early for Boston the next morning to catch our flight, and it was also the weekend of the time change, so we were losing an hour of sleep. Chris and I love coming to this convention and we had a wonderful time hanging out with friends and playing new games. All in all, I played 15 games over the course of a few days.
Love attending G2S. Lots of gaming in such a chill and inclusive environment!
The next convention for me will be Circle DC, which starts on March 28 in Washington, D.C. I’m also excited to do some sightseeing before the con and see some friends in town. Cross your fingers for me that I get to see cherry blossoms in bloom!
So it’s 2025, and I know I’m a little late with my best of 2024 list, but hey, it’s still early January! That’s got to count for something! 2024 was another memorable year. I attended two conventions for the first time – Granite Game Summit and Circle DC – enjoying some touristy stuff while I was there. I also attended my usual ones – Consimworld, SDHistCon and RinCon. Last year, I also rejoined a weekly gaming group, so I’ve been fortunate to be able to get in more gaming than I had done so in the past few years. Without further delay: here are the top 10 games I played in 2024.
Chicken! is a fast dice-rolling game that plays 2-8 players in about 20 minutes. It’s a dice-rolling, push-your-luck game that comes with 4 white dice, 4 orange dice, 4 yellow dice, 8 player tokens and one very snazzy cloth board. All these things fit into a tube canister adorned with yellow orange retro chicken artwork.
Are you chicken?! Chuck some dice and count your chickens before the foxes arrive.
The goal of the game is to chuck your dice to get a bunch of chickens before rolling 3 foxes, ending your turn. As you roll dice, you may spawn even more dice for your next roll, doubling the reward but also increasing your chances of getting those pesky foxes. If you don’t bust though, you count your chickens and then roll all those dice to the next player. It’s pretty fun seeing them sweat with the handful of dice you hand over. They can roll their dice or just forfeit their turn, which can prompt some playful “are you chicken?” teasing. The first person to get 25 chickens wins the game.
In Bonsai, players take on the role of bonsai masters growing their own tree. It plays 1 to 4 players in about 40 minutes. It’s a charming card-drafting and tile-laying exercise in tranquility, with a bit of puzzle play. The game comes with a slim horizontal board to hold a deck of zen cards, and each player begins with a pot tile and a seishi tile. There’s also over 156 bonsai tile, which will be used to create individual bonsai trees.
Enjoy some peace and tranquility as you build the best bonsai tree.
On your turn, you do one of two things: either meditate or cultivate. If you meditate, you choose one of the face-up cards from the board. Depending on which spot you take the card from, you may receive one or more types of bonsai tiles in four varieties: wood, leaf, flower and fruit. Each type has a distinct placement restriction and scoring value. If you instead decide to cultivate on your turn, you can build as many bonsai tiles in your tree as seishi growth cards allow. As you collect more tool cards from the meditate action, you can potentially drop a lot of bonsai tiles all at once when you take the cultivate action. The game is so zen and it’s so fun seeing the fruits of your labor in the bonsai tree in front of you.
I got a chance to play Let’s Go to Japan right before my own Japan trip this year, and the game pretty much mirrored my life leading up to the trip because I am an insane trip planner! I mean, how can anyone stay organized without spreadsheets and lists? In the board game, players draw activity cards to strategically place them on different days of the week during their weeklong itinerary. Players must decide if which attractions they have to go to
If you love planning trips, Let’s Go to Japan does just that!
In Let’s Go! To Japan, you are a traveler planning, then experiencing your own dream vacation to Japan. The game consists of thirteen rounds in which players draw activity cards illustrated by Japan-based artists and strategically place them on different days in their week-long itinerary. These can’t-miss tourist attractions will have you bouncing between Tokyo and Kyoto as you try to puzzle out the optimal activities to maximize your experience while balancing your resources. The game ends with a final round in which you ultimately go on your planned trip, activating each of your cards in order along the way. The player who collects the most points by the end of their trip wins, and it’s so fun reading over the cards of the trip you planned in front of you.
In White Castle, players are working to become the most influential clan in Japan’s Himeji stronghold. It’s a Euro-style game where you take three actions in each round, a total of nine actions in the entire game, but of course, you may be able to combo actions depending on which of the dice you choose for your action.
Trying to train warriors and schmooze my way up the castle doors in White Castle.
The red, white and black dice (equal to the total number of players plus 1) sit on these dainty cardboard bridges in ascending order, and you may have to pay to place a dice on an action slot or receive money depending on what dice is sitting there already. Overall, players can tend the gardens, defend the castle or progress up the social ladder of the nobility. The economy is extremely tight and if there’s a bad roll, everyone is choosing from less-than-ideal dice, but I love how crunchy the game is for a game that’s under 2 hours, even shorter with 2P! There’s an expansion that just came out for this game, and I’m totally looking to buy a copy when it’s back in stock.
Part Wingspan, Part Race for the Galaxy, Raising Robots is a delightful engine builder tableau builder where players are young famous inventors attending school, getting good grades and creating robots. In each round, players secretly and simultaneously assign two of their five phase cards to two energy cards they’ve drawn. When everyone has picked their phase cards, they’re revealed and those selected phase cards will be the only phases in play for the round for everyone. Additionally, if an energy card has a cube printed on it, that cube goes onto the main board to show that action is available for everyone should they do those to do it.
We’re building robots in our tableau in Raising Robots.
Then players on their own go through each of their phase areas, activating actions they’re allowed to do this round, whether collecting resources or building robots in various rows on their personal tableau. Gameplay continues for eight rounds, and if you’re an efficient tableau builder, you’ll have a whole army of cute little robots pumping out resources and victory points for you. The artwork is just adorable and lots of punny names for the robots themselves.
Fromage is a delightful cheese-wheel of a game! Players are simultaneously making, aging and selling cheese blocks (yep, little plastic pieces) by placing them onto inlaid spots on the quadrant of the cheese wheel that’s facing them. When players have completed their turn, the circular board rotates, and another section of the board is now facing you for you to take your turn.
This cheese player board! Fromage is such a clever game with its aging/timing mechanism.
I love the timing element of this game, a less brain-burnery version of Tzolk’in. You only have three cheese pieces for the game, and you don’t get that piece back until it’s facing you again on the board. Placing your workers in high-return slots will delay their return to you for possibly up to three turns, so planning your moves is a huge part of this game. You don’t want to start a turn without any workers in your hand. The game plays under an hour and pairs perfectly with cheese and crackers, of course!
Rock Hard: 1977 came out in 2024 and is designed by a real-life 1970s rock star, Jackie Fox. In the game, players are up-and-coming musicians and are working hard to practice songs, play gigs, get a record deal and become a famous rock star of 1977. Turns out, the road to stardom is a challenging one as players need to balance working an actual job and collecting money in order to follow their dreams. Players can dabble in “candy” to accomplish more each day, but too much “candy” will land you recovery.
Do you have what it takes to be a successful 1970s rock star?
I love the entire retro look of this game as well as its top-notch components of this game, including dual-layer cardboard to place the character you’re playing, the groovy music dials that represent your various tracks, and cardboard candy and guitar picks. It’s one of those rare cool euros that oozes with theme!
Volume 12 of GMT Games’ COIN series takes us to an unexpected place: Mars, more specifically the Martian revolt and revolution in the 2250, 200 years after Mars was colonized. This setting is quite the departure from previous COIN games, a change that I wholeheartedly can get on board with. Each faction — Martian government, Corporations, Red Dust Movement and Church of the Reclaimer — have their own different win condition, with a fifth non-player faction, the Earth Government, also in play.
A COIN game that place on Mars! I appreciated the theme of this game.
The Marvian government, Corporation and the Earth Government are friends with each other, creating the counter insurgency mechanism of this game. The Reclaimer faction, however, behaves unlike any other faction in any COIN game I’ve played. They can actually discard asset cards to move forward on initiative. Your turn in a COIN has always been at the mercy of initiative on event cards, so this is a neat addition. I love the dusty red look of the board and am amused by the dust storm markers, called haboobs, in the game. In Arizona, we, too, call dust storms haboobs.
I’ve been talking a lot about Arcs toward the end of last year and teaching many, many games of it, so it was a tough choice between No. 2 and No. 1. Ultimately, I placed Arcs at No. 2, because the top game edged out Arcs a little bit more for the types of games I most enjoy playing. Arcs is epic, there’s no denying that. It’s a card-driven space opera, a sci-fi strategy game of multi-use cards, initiative and declaring ambitions.
Arcs is equally gorgeous and enjoyable. Take down your enemies in space!
The board and components are just gorgeous, and each game I’ve played feels fresh and engaging, because for better or worse, you’re at the mercy of the hand of cards you’ve been dealt. With each card that gets played, a menu of actions are available to that player. But that hand of cards forces you to make tough decisions about surpassing the lead card, copying, pivoting or seizing the initiative so that you can play a lead card first in the next round. The game continues for five chapters, or if a player reaches enough points, which can happen as early as Chapter. 3.
And my top game of 2024 is Windmill Valley! This crunchy euro is about tulip farming and selling tulip bulbs and enhancing your windmills. What makes this game stand out is that each player has a windmill board, made up of two different sized-wheels that rotate at different speeds, which then determine what actions you’ll be doing on your turn. It’s such a clever mechanism, one that requires you to really plan out your turns!
Windmill Valley has many of the elements that I enjoy in a crunchy euro.
At the start of your turn, you can choose how to set the floodgate markers, which determines the number of action spaces your wheel turns for your turn. Most of the actions take place on the main board, where you’ll be taking farm enhancement cards, windmill board upgrades, visiting the market, building windmills and conducting foreign trade. Meanwhile, you’ll also be planting tulip bulbs in your personal board to score points, and as you get more windmills off your personal board, different sets and colors of flowers will score. I’m a sucker for beautiful games, as this has lovely wooden windmills and tulip pieces, and it being a crunchy euro as well sold it for me as the top game of 2024. And now I just want to tiptoe through the tulips …
And that’s a wrap for 2024! Thanks for making it all the way down here through this list. What are some of your favorite games you’ve played last year? And even though it’s almost mid-January, I, and my dog, want to wish you a very Happy New Year! May this year be filled with lots of gaming!
It took a lot of treats for my sweet boy to pose like this.
I think about the conventions I go to every year, and half of them are in the historical gaming sphere. Am I a wargamer? Some people would say I am not because I haven’t actually played a hex and counter game — like ever. But I love learning about history, I love learning about people’s design projects, and I love playing all types of games. And I’ve been lucky to have met and gamed with some of the coolest and interesting people in the hobby!
Earlier this month, I attended SDHistCon in San Diego, held in the SES Portuguese Hall in the Point Loma neighborhood. There is a good selection of hotels and food areas within walking distance from the convention, and it’s really close to the San Diego Airport. I arrived from Phoenix on Thursday late afternoon, checked into my hotel, and went over to the pre-convention meetup at Eppig Brewing.
The turnout at the Eppig Brewing pre-convention event on Thursday night.
I love this meetup as it gives people a chance to meet in person or catch up with old friends before all the gaming gets underway on Friday. This year, SDHistCon continued through Monday, Veterans Day, instead of ending on Sunday like previous years. I enjoyed having that extra day to game before driving back to Phoenix!
SDHistCon founder and game designer Harold Buchanan.
Friday
The first game on Friday was Queen of Spies, a prototype from Liz Davidson and David Thompson. Queen of Spies is a bag-pull game, inspired by female spies and their networks during the world wars. Alice is the leader, and the other women belong to different cells, and they move through the town to fulfill objectives, train up, research technology and deal with officials when one of them gets caught. Our mission for our game was to gather pigeons and train them to become spies. Players decide which spies enter which locations to take an action, but those decisions require time, which is in short supply. And if strangers meet at once location, an alert token gets placed into the bag, making them more susceptible to getting caught.
I really enjoyed the tension created by the limited number of time cubes. When you decide to place a spy at a location, a certain number of cubes get placed there as well, and they come off one at a time during turns. When different locations use different amounts of times, it delays that space’s activation, creating an interesting puzzle about where to place your resources. Can’t wait to see this printed!
Always a great time hanging out with David Thompson and Liz Davidson!
Next up was Gibberers. This game was bonkers — and so incredibly innovative! Taylor Shuss brought this gen of a Japanese game from Gen Con where players create a new language with a specific number of words, and they must use those new words to get other players to guess new words on a card. You always start with words for Yes, No, I and Understand. We then created new words for 14 more words. Some of the useful words we created were living, hot, thing, person, etc.
Gibberer was one of my favorite games this weekend. It’s the type of game that you’ll be talking about for a long time!
You then speak and try to communicate in this new made-up language that probably sounds like gibberish to someone walking by. And having yes and no to pair with new words helped communicate if the object is something that it’s not. And as you progress with each new round, you add words to your new dictionary. Readers, let me tell you that we were talking in this language throughout the rest of the con! What a lovely experience. Zeby lopa-lopa! (translation: I understand.)
I then attended a seminar called: Games as History: Academic Preservation of Board Games that featured three professors (2 from Stanford and 1 from UC Irvine) who digitally archive board games. Liz hosted the talk, and I learned about the challenges of collecting archival material for game preservation, which aren’t necessarily about the board game itself. The panelists also discussed the changing mindset about how libraries can indeed rent out board games like any other resource material they have on hand, but that sometimes they don’t have the hobby knowledge and/or space for them, and they don’t know where to start. Yay for libraries!
The panel included (from left) Aaron Trammel of UC Irvine, Henry Lowood of Stanford and Kathleen Smith of Stanford. Liz moderated the panel.
I then got a chance to play a prototype of Shakespeare’s First Folio. I love me some Shakespeare and this trick-taking, resource gathering card game fits the bill. Players start with a hand of cards (cards are divided into three suits: histories, tragedies and comedies), which are used to win tricks during the first phase of the game. If you win the trick, you collect that card into your score pile for later. For the rest who didn’t win the trick, you collect the resources printed on your card, either paper, type, ink or money.
Fort Circle Games said the artwork in the middle of this card is pretty final.
The second phase of the game starts with players trading resources (one of each) to publish a play from the market, or paying money to hire workers who give you special abilities. You can also take a gamble to draw chits from the bag, which could potentially net you more resources, or take a rolled dice from the market that also has resources on it. At the end of the game, the cards in your personal pile are scored if you have sets of the same number, or if you have straights of the same suit. I love the artwork for this game, and I can’t wait to play it in Washington, D.C., in 2025 at Fort Circle’s Circle DC convention, which will be held at the Folger Shakespeare Library in March.
The cards I had at the end of the game. I could not for the life of me make a run!
One of the restaurants we eat at frequently at the con is Ketch. It’s close and nearby, and the menu is large enough for all kinds of eaters. Unless it’s a busy Saturday night, you can usually just walk into here to get a meal.
Dan Bullock, Kathryn, Sebastian Bae and I at dinner at Ketch.
The last game of the night was Rock Hard: 1977. This game is a worker-placement euro, but was very surprised how well the theme was incorporated into its design. Gameplay just oozed rock ‘n’ roll! Players are up-and-coming musicians who have to work their regular job to pay for recording demos, create records or hire PR. And those jobs are either day, night or after-hours!
The hustle of an up-and-coming musician! It’s a rock hard life!
As your chops, reputation and song list grows, which are tracked on these very cool dials on the player boards, you’ll be able to perform at bigger and bigger venues, gaining more money and potentially more chops or reputation. And yes, you can crank that dial to 11! If you want to make a second action during a phase, you can spend “candy” to do so, but if you use too much “candy,” your craving might get too high and you’ll end up in recovery. You might end up with a skiing problem. As the game progresses, you’ll be able to skip your regular job because gigs are paying enough, paving the way to become a full-fledged rock star. Rock on, party people!
I loved the dials and the character boards for this game. The money felt pretty authentic, too, with those nice design touches.
Saturday
I started the day with Pax Pamir, which has become a staple at every single convention I’ve gone to. It’s always so nice to slide into a game you’ve played before countless of times!
Love getting Pax Pamir on table! It’s such a beautiful game to look at.
It was a tense 4P game, which ended in a three-way tie, with yours truly a few points away from the rest of the pack. I should’ve switched my alliances!
Dan and I played with Brooks Barber (second from left) and Artur Carvalho.
I then got to meet this lovely gentleman in person. Pete Skaar always leaves a nice comment on my blog posts. We got a chance to talk about games and his family in the San Diego area. Thanks, Pete, for always reading along!
It was nice finally meeting you in person, Pete!
I then played a prototype from Taylor Shuss called Love Potion Factory. Players are placing meeples into a factory to collect resources and trade them in for potions and victory points. If you’re the first player to come into a space, you get one resource of that type. The second person then gets 2 resources, etc. As the main board fills up, there’s a danger that the meeples will come together because they’re magnetic, which then ends your turn and clears off the board. It starts to get a little stressful placing your meeples, and there were a few times I jumped because the meeples snapped together. Super duper fun!
When meeples get too close in the Love Potion Factory, it shuts down the factory and all the meeples go home.
I then taught a quick game of Bonsai, a tile laying game where each player is cultivating their own bonsai tree. I really enjoy the choices for this game (essentially gather resources or lay down resources), and the game creates such a gorgeous table presence when over. Each game randomly chooses three sets of objectives, where you can claim one or push your luck to claim a higher-valued one, skipping the lower-valued one permanently. If you want to learn more about the game, I did a review of Bonsai on The Five By Episode 148.
My bonsai tree may look wonky but I got achieved some high-value objective cards!
Next up was a pretty-finished prototype of Hell-Raisers of Kanawha County from Milda Mathilda and Luke Evison, coming next from Wehrlegig Games. This game is set during the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike, a confrontation between striking coal miners and coal operators in Kanawha County, West Virginia: The strike lasted from April 18, 1912, through July 1913.
In Hell-Raisers of Kanawha County, two people are playing as the companies and one person is playing the side of the miners.
Games like this are exactly why I attend historic gaming conventions — to learn about these moments in history that affected a group of people and/or culture and how this event influenced present day. The strike was one of the most violent conflicts in American labor union history, and this game captured the tension between the miners and coal companies. The game also featured prominent labor figures such as Mary “Mother” Jones.
Drew Wehrle (second from right) and Joe Schmidt (right) teaching me and JP the game, with Amanda and Nathaniel looking on.
I then attended a seminar called How Professional and Hobby Wargames Connect. I learned a little bit about the unclassified processes of real life wargamers who work with the military and how they have turned some of that work into published games into the hobby industry. Liz also ran this panel, and I enjoyed attending these very academic seminars. Thanks, SDHistCon, for having these on the schedule!
Liz running the panel that includes Akar Bharadvaj (from left), Maurice Suckling and Sebastian.
I then played a quick demo of another game from Taylor Shuss, this time about parking requirement laws when creating a shopping area. You’re drafting various tetromino shapes and objectives to place on your board. The first half of the game features various businesses with a whole bunch of parking spaces. Then in the second phase of the game, you’re adding different businesses on top of those parking squares while trying to fulfill a second set of objectives.
This prototype deals with parking lots and shopping centers.
On Saturday night, I got invited to participate in the celeb game of giant John Company. This game was ginormous, including plastic ships, a substantial elephant, and our family members enclosed in these Victorian-looking photo frames. In John Company, players assume the roles of ambitious families attempting to use the British East India Company for personal gain. According to the Board Game Geek description, the wrestles many of the key themes of imperialism and globalization in the 19th and 19th centuries and how those developments were felt domestically.
Look at all the cool people I got to hang out with during our game! This was before the yelling started.
The game featured 16 players, split into four people per family. The Hastings family included venerable war game designers Mark Herman, Ananda Gupta, Sebastian Bae … and me. LOL Ananda suggested using the strategy of putting a bunch of writers out there on the board, which helped for a bit, but it did no good under the bad leadership of a chairman who seemed to just completely mismanage the funds.
The Hastings family: Mark Herman, Ananda Gupta, Sebastian and me.
The game included a lot of wheeling and dealing, and some forceful yelling to get the chairman to do our bidding. (The yelling mostly came from Sebastian.) What an awesome experience to play with all these cool people! Cole Wehrle did a great job of making his game ginormous!
Love all the work put into this giant game, including the Lego cannons!
Sunday
I started my morning attending a public SDHistCon board meeting. I wanted to hear about the state of the convention as board members discussed how to make it grow and be more accessible to all types of historical gamers. SDHistCon does online conventions a year, as well as SDHistCon East held in Newport, Rhode Island, at the U.S. Naval War College Museum.
The SDHistCon board had a public board meeting to talk about the organization
I then attended an announcement of the Zenobia award winner. The Zenobia Award is both a competition and a mentoring program in which game designers from underrepresented groups develop and submit historical tabletop game prototypes. This year’s winner was The Porters, designed by Lucas Cockburn, Neco Cockburn and Alex Goss. The game tells the story of Black porters on the Canadian railways who were working to organize unions. The grand prize for the award is $1,000 and a travel grant to a game convention of their choice.
Akar and Liz talked about the Zenobia finalists and announced this year’s winner.
I then taught a game of Arcs to Trevor and Treg. Arcs is quickly becoming one of my favorite games of the year, and I’ve been teaching this game every week for the past few weeks to different groups of people.
Arcs is just gorgeous! I’ve been teaching this game every week for the past month.
It’s a sci-fi strategy game where you seize initiative using multi-use cards and declare ambitions, while destroying opponent ships and capturing their workers. I love the gameplay mechanisms and the look of the board and components.
Had a great time playing with Trevor Bendor and Treg Julander, even if I did lose because people kept taking my resources, costing me majorities!
I then got a chance to play LetterLine Junction from Ido Magal, a roll-and-write railway game where you’re creating words with the limited number of letters you have in order to complete your path. If you love word puzzles, this was a fun challenge, as we did not get good letters! At the start of the game, you roll the dice to determine your letter pool, and as you collect more iron from the map, you can roll for more letters or buy shares in various columns or rows, from which letters in those columns will boost your share price. You also have to collect wood from the board in order to cross mountains, while making sure revenue is higher than your debt.
In LetterLine Junction, you use a small pool of letters to spell words and make a route between cities. We probably should not have used Q’s!
I always bring a couple of non-historic games to events like these because it amuses me a little bit to get a bunch of wargamers playing offbeat games. I mean, last year’s My Favorite Things was a big hit! After dinner, we played Wandering Towers, which, I think, is always a fun time. You move towers to fill your potions, and you move your wizards into the keep. But that darn keep won’t stop moving, and now you’re accidentally stuck inside a tower that someone moved over you. Sometimes people forget where their wizardis, which often leads to “Hmm, I thought my dude was in this tower.” It’s hilarious fun — and it’s a short game!
Did I park my wizard here? Who can remember in Wandering Towers!
The last game of the night was Phantom Ink. This game is AMAZING! It’s a clever party large-group game that manages to keep everyone engaged throughout the game. Players split off into two groups of mediums who try to guess an object that one person on their team, the designated spirits, knows. The mediums choose two cards from their hands that have random questions and give them to their spirit, and the spirit chooses one to answer — one letter at a time.
Can you guess the clues? Yeah, sometimes we couldn’t either, and it was hilarious.
The mediums at any time can say “Silencio!” if they can guess the answer. Or if they don’t want too much of their word revealed as it may give the other team a clue, even though they don’t know what the question is. It’s really entertaining when a round goes off the rails, but it rarely completely comes undone. One team usually ends up getting the word before the end of the game. I also did a review on it on The Five By Episode 150.
Phantom Ink was a big hit to close out Sunday night!
Monday
Monday was the last day of SDHistCon. Some friends had already flown out this morning, but I got a chance to play a few games before I drove back to Phoenix. I played Nathan Fullerton’s prototype of The Most Insignificant Office, a card game about who will become vice president to George Washington. The different suits represent different men, and players are playing one card into their scoring pile and, depending on the round, a card or two or three into the middle, which then will be shuffled. Players then vote for or against the cards to be tabulated into votes for a specific person, and if it gets approved, that person moves up on the track. Hopefully the cards you put into your pile match the person in second place behind George Washington at the end of the game. Because if George isn’t No. 1, then everyone loses.
Back during George Washington’s time, the person with the second-most votes became VP.
The last game of the convention I played was Bread by Xoe Allred. It’s the end of the world, and you need bread to survive. Players play through a deck of cards where they can gather or build in their bunker, but you need bread in order to quell unrest. I love the artwork on this, and working together is harder than it looks!
We are all looking for bread to survive the apocalypse.
And that ended my four-day convention in San Diego. It had been an exhausting few weeks leading up to this convection, so I was glad to step away and unplug for a few days with good company.
Taylor, Liz, Andrew Bucholtz and I before Taylor and Liz left town.
The convention is always so inviting, and I love meeting new people and learning about their game designs. By the time this post goes to print, I have already attended Rincon in Tucson (more on that coming soon), but the next historic gaming convention I’ll be going to will be Circle DC in March. Hope to see you there one day. And let me know which of these games you’re interested in!
The main gaming area at SDHistCon has tons of seating!
Last weekend, Chris and I got invited to Tucson to play some games for the weekend. It was a nice trip out of town to see board gamers, and while I was there, I played a dozen games, some of which were new to me! And by the way, I did not misspell Arizona; that’s from “What We Do In The Shadows.” Highly recommend that show!
We began Saturday morning by teaching a game of Iki. It’s been so long since I’ve pulled this from my shelf, as we have the first edition version. The game is set in feudal Japan, and you’re hiring professionals to set up storefronts with their trade, but you’ll have to watch out for fires, which can burn those stores to the ground! I really enjoy the rondel mechanism of this game, traveling across the streets of Edo, to take your turn.
It’s feudal Japan yet people still need to travel the streets of Edo for goods in Iki.
Next, we played Carnegie. This is a game I’ve been wanting to learn since its release, especially since it’s on Board Game Arena, but I never got around to it. It’s a strategic euro, so I knew it would be right up my alley. Carnegie was inspired by the life of Andrew Carnegie, who became one of the major players in the rise of the United States’ steel industry. During the game you will recruit and manage employees, expand your business, invest in real estate, produce and sell goods, and create transport chains across the U.S. as well as become an illustrious benefactor.
Trying to build connections among U.S. cities in Carnegie. And make philanthropic donations as well.
I really enjoyed the action-selection mechanism of the game. There’s an action board set up randomly for gameplay, and when it’s your turn, you choose a main action, which could also correspond to a section of the map activating or other actions, and then everyone else has the opportunity to follow through with those same actions. Meanwhile, you’re building out your player board to add buildings, hire workers and increase your income.
Next up was Montana. I have not played this game in forever (even though we actually own it!). And seriously, more gamers need spinners. Wheeee! In Montana, it’s a race to build your settlements on the wide open land. On your turn, you can recruit the right workers to later purchase matching goods, deliver goods on time, and choose your settlements tactically. The first player to build all their settlements onto the board wins the game.
This version of Montana is deluxified. Those cow meeples are so cute!
I then taught a game of My Favorite Things. This trick-taking game can always be so random but I like knowing more fun stuff about who I’m playing with. One didn’t like the work of taking a card out of the sleeve to write answers in the middle of the game, as it goes for two rounds, but I think the game is just delightful as it is.
I love the randomness of the categories in every game of Eye My Favorite Things.
We then played a quick game of Tinderbox, a tiny dexterity game about building a campfire using teeny tweezers. You draw a card on your turn, and you have to complete that structure and put it onto the existing campfire. Sometimes you have to use your non-dominant hand, too! It’s silly and short, and I like that it fits into a small tin about the size of a deck of cards.
Look at this demure campfire! Very mindful.
After dinner at Serial Grillers, a fun restaurant with menu items named after movie serial killers, we played a couple of party games. First was Belratti: Is This Art or Can It Go? This neat deduction game splits the group into buyers and painters, and they’re both playing against a dirty counterfeit painter rat named Belratti. Buyers ask for a certain number of cards from artists to match a theme, and artists submit paintings of items face down into a pile, as well as four cards from Belratti. Buyers must then pick which cards are from the artist. If you pick one of Belratti’s paintings, he scores the point, and if he scores too many points, everyone loses the game.
What is art and what is a counterfeit? The buyers have to figure it out themselves!
The next party game was Green Team Wins! This was super fun but I’m so bad at it! A card asks a question, and everyone has to write down an answer. It’s not about writing down the right answer; it’s about writing the answer that you think everyone else will write down. If you’re in the majority, then you get on the green team and score points. If there’s a tie among the answers, then Green Team Wins!
Whatever the answer is, Green Team Wins!
The last game of the night was Sandbag, a trick-taking game with a mechanism that allows you to delay playing cards, i.e. sandbagging, because you do not want to win any tricks. You can play a card from your hand, or play it face down in front of an opponent to play one of the two cards in front of them that are face-up. As these face-up cards get replaced and played, the trump card changes based on the majority of the colors showing. Players also have one face-down card that represents the actual sand bag, which then basically becomes almost zero when playing, thus preventing you from taking that trick.
Sandbagging your turns so you don’t win any tricks in Sandbag.
On Sunday, we played three games before heading back to Phoenix. Chris and I played a 2P game of Nanga Parbat, where you’re a member of the Sherpa community establishing base camps and trapping animals. On your turn, you take an animal off the board in the section where the guide is situated and replace it with one of your meeples. The guide then moves to the location matching the number of the space where you just placed your hiker meeple. Once you have meeples all lined up in a group, you can replace them with basecamps and score them. Also, once you have a certain number of matching or different sets of animals, you can score them as well . Each scoring threshold can only score once, so if your opponent has done it, you can only score something larger or smaller. I really enjoy the mechanism of choosing when to score things, as you only have a certain number of scoring cubes to do so.
Collecting animals and placing camps in Nanga Parbat.
We then played Isle of Skye, a bidding tile-laying game. Players draw three tiles each round, and behind a screen, they price out the cost of two tiles with money in their bank and ax one of them (to be returned to the bag). When ready, players go around buying tiles based on their cost, with the opponent’s money and the money you placed to price it going to you, to place into their landscape. If your tile doesn’t get purchased by another player, you send the coins placed to price it to the bank but you get to keep the tile. There are four scoring objectives chosen for each game, and for each round, two to three of those scoring objectives will be scored, so you can play your strategy around that.
Building my landscape with ships, stables and animals. Hope they all score big!
Next up was Wandering Towers. This game was a hoot! And like, I had never heard of this game before until that day. The game comes with these cute cardboard tower sections that can be stacked and it begins with everyone’s meeples placed on top of them. The black Ravenskeep then sits at the end of a circle of towers. Players get dealt a hand of cards, and using those cards, you can either run your meeple toward the Ravenskeep a certain number of steps, or move towers to stack on top of other ones, potentially trapping meeples that were originally at the top-most level of the tower. It’s up to you to remember where your meeples are because once they’re covered, they cannot be uncovered until you or someone else decides to move levels of the tower that will reveal you.
These meeples can leap tall towers in a single bound! Unfortunately, those towers keep wandering!
There’s nothing more satisfying than trapping meeples in the middle of a tower level. And once a meeple completes their way to the Ravenskeep, the Ravenskeep tower itself moves. The moving target makes for a fun race and its gorgeous table presence is an added bonus!
The last game of the weekend was Windmill Valley, where players take on the roles of tulip farmers and entrepreneurs to build and enhance windmills, look for tulip bulbs in foreign trade or among vendors, and plant them in your garden for VPs. This game also has a cool action mechanism board, in which your two wheels rotate based on the dyke’s water level, which then determines which one of the two actions you can do. I love timing out your movements, and the game somewhat forces you to move along your wheel faster than others so you can gain better end-of-season bonuses. It’s such a crunchy euro, one that I hope to play again soon!
Tiptoeing through the tulips and windmills in Windmill Valley.
I had a great two days in Tucson gaming with old and new friends. Which of these games have you played? For funsies, I’m sharing a photo that my husband took. He told me to stand in front of this giant saguaro cactus. I think it just wanted to give me a hug! 🌵
Last month, my husband and I went to Japan! It was our first time visiting the country, and it was such an amazing trip! Chris and I spent 6 days in Tokyo, and then we took a cruise with family members around Japan, with stops in Kagoshima, Akita and Aomori in Japan, as well as Busan, South Korea. I loved every minute of it!
Visiting the Sensoji Temple.
The months leading up to our trip really did feel like Let’s Go To Japan, a darling board game about planning your visit to Tokyo and Kyoto. We didn’t make it to Kyoto, but we definitely will be back again!
A few things I learned about Japan during my trip:
It’s hot in June and very, very humid. (This desert lady was struggling!)
A digital Suica card does not work on Android phones. I had to purchase a physical card and load it up at kiosks inside the stations. The card is also very handy for buying drinks from vending machines.
If you want to make reservations at popular places, reservations open on the 10th the previous month you’ll be going. Our trip was in June, so I made sure to log into places on May 10 to make reservations. Reddit is a good source of information to secure in-demand reservations. I wanted Studio Ghibli Museum tickets. We tried on three computers, and we still couldn’t get tickets.
Tokyo is ginormous, but it’s very easy to navigate using their train system. We only knew a few key Japanese phrases, but didn’t encounter any difficulties in communicating.
Trip highlights
The moment you set foot in Tokyo, the image of Mt. Fuji is everywhere! But nothing compares to seeing it in person. We lucked out and it was a clear day during our day tour, which included a visit to Hakone, a boat ride on Lake Ashi and taking the bullet train back to Tokyo.
It was a good day to see Mt. Fuji!
Chris and I got to see a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome. The Yomiuri Giants were playing the Orix Buffaloes. Baseball is serious business in Japan, and the energy at the game was nonstop! There were sections for each team that included musicians and hard-core fans who all had some kind of choreographed cheer.
Our baseball game was packed! Lots of food options, too, from bento boxes to American fare, including alcoholic drinks, which workers with mini-kegs on their backs will pour at your seat.
We also got tickets to the Kirby Cafe. I got these tickets by staying up at 2 a.m. on May 10 since they released reservations at 6 p.m. May 10 Tokyo time, and frantically hoping for a time slot that fit our schedule. And we succeeded! This place was just so adorable!
I wish they had giant utensils for sale! It would be perfect for my Filipino kitchen. #iykyk
The food isn’t anything fancy, but the experience was just delightful. Since it required reservations, the place was not too crowded, unusual for most of the places in Japan we visited. They also had a Kirby Cafe, where you can buy lots of Kirby souvenirs. I bought a Kirby Cafe kitchen towel, among other things.
This very sleepy Waddle Dee was too almost too cute not to eat!
And what’s a trip to Tokyo without shopping! I brought a carry-on backpack with my clothes, which I then stuffed into a giant suitcase, which was essentially empty for all the souvenirs, Japanese beauty products and board games I wanted to buy there.
One of the Yellow Submarines in Tokyo.
We visited Yellow Submarine in Akihabara. It was so cool seeing all the games that aren’t readily available in America, as well as Japanese versions of popular board games.
I wanted to buy all of them!
I was on the lookout for Nokosu Dice and Come Sail Away, but alas, they were both sold out. We did, however, buy a bunch of games! Our lovely vacation haul!
Our Yellow Submarine haul. Which games have you played?
Lastly, what’s a trip to Tokyo without visiting Don Quijote. This massive store has endless flavors of kitkats, beauty products, Sanrio and Nintendo merchandise, all the snacks you can imagine and so much more. A lot of tourists visit this store, and I can see why. It’s a one-stop shop for a lot of things you’d want to bring back home. I bought so many face masks, skincare products and makeup here.
It’s seriously sensory overload at Don Quijote. Make sure you stick to your shopping list!
I also visited not one, but two Sanrio stores. There’s a cool stamp machine where you can create your own Sanrio stamp. I bought two: one of Hello Kitty and one of Keroppi, both with my name on it. I also bought a cool black Hello Kitty purse that I used for the rest of my trip.
I love Sanrio almost as much as I love board games!
The second week of my trip was aboard the Diamond Princess, which was an 8-day cruise that included four ports of call. Chris and I played a lot of trivia during our sea days, and it was nice hanging out and traveling with family.
Dressing up for formal night on the cruise.
Our first port was Kagoshima, known for their sweet potatoes and green tea. We visited the Chiran Peace Museum and Sengan-en, a Japanese garden attached to a former Shimazu clan residence.
Chris being the perfect height to take this funny photo in Kagoshima.
Our one visit outside of Japan was to Busan, South Korea. It was my first time visiting Korea but Chris’ second time. The day’s highlights included Haedong Yonggungsa, a large temple built overlooking the ocean, and Gamcheon Culture Village, dubbed the “Machu Picchu of Korea,” a densely populated community built on a very steep hillside that’s accessible by narrow roadways. I could’ve walked around there for the whole day!
You can barely see the narrow winding streets, but they’re down there!
In Akita, we got to see Akita dogs, visit a geisha house and enjoy a tea ceremony, and learn about the Kanto Festival, where people would balance a bamboo pole that held a large number of paper lanterns, at the Neburi-nagashi Museum.
Me trying to balance a bamboo pole with a small amount of lanterns.
Lastly, in Aomori, we rode the Hakkoda Ropeway up the mountain, and visited both the Nebuta Museum and the Jomon World Heritage Site. The Nebuta Museum Wa Rasse exhibits the four Nebuta floats from the previous year’s festival. The artistry in these exhibits was a sight to see, and to have a dedicated space for them year-round showcased how high these artists were held and how important the festival was for the prefecture.
These lanterns were massive and so detailed!
The Jomon people were hunter gatherers during 14000 to 300 BC, and remnants of their coastal village, as well as tons of pottery, were excavated in Aomori. The Sannai-Maruyama Site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.
This is a replica of one of their structures.
The room where they excavated the original foundation, which still had remnants of wood inside.
Chris and I were on vacation for two weeks and a day. We flew to Tokyo out of LAX, and then caught the cruise out of Yokohama, which is still in the greater Tokyo area. I can’t wait to go back and explore even more of Japan — and buy more games! I’ve already played Let’s Make a Bus Route twice, and each time I’ve introduced it to new players, they enjoyed it.
Walking around in Yokohama. For those who play Yakuza: Like A Dragon, this area would be familiar.
If you do make it to Japan, wear comfy shoes (you’ll be doing so much walking!) and bring a coin purse. There’s endless machines for refreshing drinks and capsule machines, which pop out little toys and charms. I may or may not have come back with lots of Hello Kitty and Kirby figurines. Have you all been to Japan? And for those who have, what’s your favorite thing about visiting?
