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San Diego Historical Con 2020: Wargamers go online

By Meeple Lady | November 20, 2020 | Comments 3 comments

With in-person conventions falling by the wayside this year because of the global pandemic, a spate of online conventions have been cropping up. Last weekend, the San Diego Historical Games Convention — or SDHistCon for short — made the jump into the virtual convention world, and, as someone who has never been able to go in real life before, I’m so glad they did!

Run by Harold Buchanan — designer of the COIN game Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection — SDHistCon is a historical board and miniature gaming convention that’s taken place around the Veterans Day weekend. Buchanan said this year’s online convention took about five weeks to plan and it sold out in two weeks, with 170 gamers virtually attending. The in-person convention attracts wargamers from all over (there’s overlap with the Consimworld crowd), and who doesn’t want to spend a few days in sunny San Diego in November?

Buchanan has been running this convention since 2015. On this year’s experience, “first, we had an absolute blast managing the convention — a testament to the people involved. Second, the outpouring of appreciation from participants is overwhelming. I may have underestimated how much we needed the interaction with other gamers,” he said.

The entire convention was based out of Discord, which initially greeted you with the #Lobby, #Lounge and a few other general channels. The channels were then organized in alphabetical order by game designers, who then had their own subchannels (both for text and voice) for the games or sessions they were running. It made it easy to hunt down which room you were looking for based on the schedule on Tabletop Events. Inside the schedule, it also listed if a game or demo was going to be carried out via Tabletop Simulator or Vassal, online platforms many use for gaming, and whether you should download it ahead of time.

“We refused to go forward until we were comfortable the technology would work, we were properly staffed for support and we had the interest from the celebrity designers that have always made this con an unparalleled experience,” Buchanan said.

And that celebrity designers’ list? Impressive and consisting of many, many years of experience.

Friday

The COIN Reunion via Discord. I am totally fangirling here.

The first session I attended that Friday night was the COIN Reunion, a panel discussion with most of the great COIN designers of the GMT game series. The COIN designers present were Volko Ruhnke, Mark Herman, Morgane Gouyon-Rety, Bruce Mansfield and Brian Train. It was so lovely hanging out with them all in one space and learning more about each designer and their design processes, and what it took to get their game published. And here’s a hint: It definitely does not hurt to have Ruhnke look at your design!

I then popped into photographer Scott Mansfield’s “Photographing Your Games” session, and this was an absolute treat! Mansfield shared his presentation through the Discord stream, along with many tips for lighting and angles, as well as incorporating storytelling and compelling captions with your image on hand. Also, using simple tools such as foam core and flashlights, you can really make your image stand out. This was one highlight of my convention!

Look at how awesome all these wargames look! Scott Mansfield makes it look so easy!

After that, I hung out during “After Hours” with Moe & Harold while they caught up with designers Ananda Gupta and Bruce Mansfield, with Scott Mansfield joining in later on during the stream. Again, lots of fun, light-hearted discussion about each designer and their games, and the convention overall — like hanging out with a bunch of folks catching up.

“After Hours” with Moe and Harold on Moe’s YouTube channel.

Saturday

I popped into an afternoon demo for Hollandspiele’s Brave Little Belgium with designers Ryan Heilman and Dave Shaw. Two other players had signed up to play this, but I was observing the game through Vassal and listening in on the discussion on the Discord channel. Heilman was nice enough to navigate through how to find a room in Vassal, which I downloaded for the first time for this event. It’s always great when a designer teaches their game, and since I do own a copy of this, its time to get Brave Little Belgium on table soon.

Looking forward to playing Brave Little Belgium in person soon!

Later Saturday afternoon, I popped into Andrew Bucholtz’s table, where they were playing Liberty or Death, to say hello and watch a few rounds. I wanted to see how this game looked on Vassal, the online system I’m least familiar with since just downloading it for the first time during the Brave Little Belgium session. The board for Liberty in Vassal just looks so gorgeous!

Liberty, the second COIN I’ve played, has a gorgeous board.

On Saturday night, I joined Cole Wehrle during his panel discussion for a second edition of John Company. He his brother Drew streamed on Discord and Twitch, and it was neat seeing early iterations of John Company and learning what went behind its creation. I’m so looking forward to the updates to this sandbox-style negotiation game.

Cole and Drew Wehrle of Wehrlegig Games discussed upcoming second edition of John Company.

Lastly, I joined a game of Pax Pamir, my top game of 2019, with Dan Bullock and to other gamers. We played on Tabletop Simulator, with discussions on a table channel in Discord. The convention had a bunch of open tables for gamers to congregate in through Discord and get a game going. Our 4P game lasted two hours, and I won by getting the last dominance check, which doubles VPs for the check. Good times!

Sunday

On Sunday morning, I joined and watched a demo for Bullock’s latest game, 1979: Revolution in Iran. Like his previous game No Motherland Without, 1979 is another interesting and tense card-driven game. This game also adds a card-drafting mechanism to rounds — what an cool twist! Can’t wait until this game is out!

Overall, I had a great time at SD Hist Con. I particularly enjoyed the variety of games and panel discussions — there were so many events to choose from, and I’m bummed I couldn’t make it to more, such as the Wargaming Bootcamp! It’s also inspiring to see how battles or historic eras influenced these designers so much that they would devote a good chunk of their time to creating something for everyone to enjoy.

When asked what his highlight of convention was, Buchanan replied, “The chance to document and share the teaching of great designers like Mark Herman, John Butterfield, Cole Wehrle, David Thompson and Volko Ruhnke.”

But honestly, the real heroes were behind the scenes, folks like Bobby and others, who popped into sessions to make sure things were going swimmingly — technology wise — and were always so friendly when you popped into the #Lobby channel to ask a question. Thanks for everything! And a big thanks to Buchanan who enabled me to attend the weekend’s festivities. “It became personal for many to make the experience excellent,” he said.

And that it was. Whether gaming in person or virtually, the San Diego Historical Games Convention is a fun and inviting place to learn and play wargames.

Cinco: An underrated filler game on Board Game Arena

By Meeple Lady | October 19, 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

Those who follow me on social media know that I’ve been playing a lot of games online, namely Board Game Arena. I am still not comfortable resuming my weekly game nights at my place, which bums me out as now I have a lot more space in our new house. One game that I’ve discovered on BGA — and have never heard of before until a few months ago — is Cinco.

Cinco is a quick end-of-night filler game that my friends and I have all enjoyed playing online. Think Connect 4 but with 5! Plus, fivefold more strategy than Connect 4. It plays about 15 minutes and worth checking out online.

In Cinco, you’re first dealt a hand of 4 cards. The cards go from 1 to 90, and when it’s your turn, you can either play a card, draw a card, or exchange your entire hand of cards if you have exactly 4 cards in your hand.

When you play a card, you place a marker on the board, which is this numbered hexagon, on any space the value of the card or higher. So, if you play a 65, you can place your marker on the 65 or any open space higher than that. When you select a card to play on your turn, the BGA interface actually shows you where you can place a marker. When you or your team connect five markers in a row, you win!

The 1 and 2 are valuable cards, because you can place the almost anywhere on the board.

You can play Cinco with up to 6 people, either two groups of 3 players, or three groups of pairs. We’ve enjoyed it as a 4P, as you play in two teams. You have no idea what cards your teammate holds, so it’s always so satisfying unknowingly working together to maximize your five-in-a-row options.

Cards can also become wild if you play it and that number and all the numbers above it have markers on them. It’s sometimes strategic to fill up the higher numbered spaces to make one card you have in your hand wild. Having a hand-size limit of 4 cards though really makes the game tight. You should always try to have the most cards in your hand, but sometimes you have to play a card to block your opponent — and even more painful if it’s a low-numbered card — instead of being able to draw on your turn.

Lastly, it’s also advantageous to hold on to really low numbers because you’ll be able to use them for almost any space, and they can be placed in the tough-to-reach center of the hexagon. For a game I’ve never heard of a few months ago, Cinco has quickly been one of our go-to games each game night.

And this was the end. I could not stop the black player from getting five in a row. *Yells Cinco! into the void*

Pan Am: Travel the world in about 60 minutes

By Meeple Lady | September 14, 2020 | Comments 1 comment

We’ve made it to the ninth month of 2020, folks! Pat yourselves on the back. It’s been a busy two months for me, as I’ve been moving and undertaking some home projects in between organizing boxes and boxes of board games. I am seriously never, ever moving again.

In all honesty, I haven’t had much bandwidth or time to play a heavy game recently. I’m hoping to get back into that soon. In the meantime, a shorter game I’ve been truly enjoying is Pan Am, which plays in about 60 minutes.

Pan Am board game box — I’ve been really enjoying my games of Pan Am recently.

It has all the elements I enjoy: worker-placement, bidding and route building (and blocking!), all packaged in a gorgeous game. And for a company that hasn’t existed for almost 30 years, that iconic logo immediately transports you to the golden age of flying. And with my personal travel in short supply these days, it’s fun to travel the world via the beautiful destination cards that the game comes with.

In Pan Am, players are competing to build a network of air travel. They’re bidding for airport landing rights, purchasing planes that fly longer ranges, claiming routes, and buying Pan Am stock. You’re also trying to create favorable routes in order for Pan Am to purchase them at a profit so you can invest in growth for your company.

Pan Am event cards — There are a couple of event cards for each round to randomly choose from when creating your event desk. It creates a unique game each time!

The game plays for seven rounds, and at the start of each round, an event card is drawn. These events tweak the rules for the round and affect the stock price of Pan Am. The goal of the game is to have the most Pan Am stock, and while it’s good to purchase the stock early while the price is still low, you usually don’t have enough income to do so.

Pan Am stock price — The stock price of Pan Am will fluctuate throughout the game. Best to get it early — if you can afford it!

For our 2P game, you start with 5 engineers (this number varies based on player count), and you take turns placing one engineer on action locations on the board. Some of these locations have numbers on it, so placing your engineer indicates your bid for that action. Another player on a future turn can outbid you by placing their engineer on a higher-valued spot in that location. Your engineer is then returned to you to place somewhere else, or at a higher-valued spot in that original location on your turn. All the locations with a bid can only have one winner on it when resolving.

Pan Am player board — In our 2P game, players start with 5 engineers, 2 destination cards, one hidden directive card, 3 planes and $12.

Other locations, like routes, resolve in placement order and don’t require a bid. This makes claiming routes especially tight as your opponent may want to build before you and foil your plans. To build a route between two cities, you’ll need landing rights either by having an airport in one of the cities you’re connecting, having the city’s destination card in your hand, discarding a card in your hand from the same region as one of the cities you’re connecting, or discarding two cards from the same region that’s different than the one you’re connecting. Lastly, you’ll need a plane from your fleet that can fly the route between the two cities. You place the plane on that route and then your income increases by how long the route was.

I absolutely love the bidding mechanism of this game. Even though I’ve only played this game as a 2P, it makes all your actions extremely tight and tense. Players might be fighting for that one destination card that satisfies the route they want to build, or maybe you’ll spend your action to be the first to build a route this round. You have to keep an eye out for what your opponents are planning!

Pan Am destination cards — There are always four destination cards in play, and players must bid on the card they want to take into their hand.

The last location that hasn’t been mentioned is Directives. This allows players to draw a directive card, which gives them a one-time or end-game bonus and can be powerful when played during the right phase. This location also allows your engineer to get Priority Access during the next round, meaning you’ll get to place your pawn first before the first player takes their turn.

Pan Am Directives deck — Directive cards offer bonuses and are kept secret from other players.

Once everyone places their engineers, you resolve each location in order, paying your bid if you need to. If you’re unable to pay your bid, you have to sell back any Pan Am stock you have at half price to gain some money for the bid.

The last phase of each round is the Pan Am phase. This is where Pan Am expands along one of its route, hopefully hitting a route you’ve already built so you can sell it to them. When you sell them a route, you get a payout based on how large it is and your plane is returned to your fleet. Your income, however, does go down, but the nice profit bump is well worth it. Players then get their income and move onto the next round. The player with the most Pan Am stock after seven rounds wins.

Pan Am routes — Here’s Pan Am expanding along its South America route.

Pan Am is super enjoyable, and the artwork is just delightful to look at. The game is widely available at Target for about $30. And while I personally am not flying anywhere in the near future, I can dream of faraway locations to visit while playing this game.

Fort: A deckbuilder where kids, pizzas and toys rule!

By Meeple Lady | July 27, 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

We are officially almost through the seventh month of 2020 — also known as the longest decade ever — and it’s times like these when I get nostalgic for a much simpler time. A time when kids could actually go over to their friends’ houses and play in their yard, a time when kids, pizzas and toys ruled.

Fort, now available on preorder from Leder Games, is a game that takes you back to that time — complete with endearing and whimsical artwork. This unique deckbuilder is all about recruiting friends and building forts, and it plays 2-4 players in about 20-40 minutes.

Fort includes four sturdy player boards and a score tracker.

The game box is compact, but it has a lot of neat components in it. The player boards are made of thick cardboard with cutouts to place your pizza, toy and fort tokens in. I love it when player boards do this as it eliminates the accidental swipe of pieces with certain body parts. The cards are glossy, sturdy and colorful, and just a delight to hold in your hand. The game also comes with made-up rule cards and perk cards, which are smaller in size but also made up of the same glossy card stock. Lastly, there’s a scoreboard to keep in the middle of the table and marks the park area for the game.

I love how the tokens fit nicely into the player board.

And then there’s the top-notch artwork from Kyle Ferrin, whose artwork has created the enchanting world found in Leder games. The kid cards come in all types and colors, and they’re are just so fun to play with. I mean, who doesn’t want to play with Puddin? She seems so sassy!

How freakin’ adorable are these kid cards?

So back to the game. On your turn, you play one card, and sometimes you can add extra cards of the same suit (there are six suits in the game) to improve some actions. The one card you played has a public action, which other players can follow, and a private action, which is something only you can do.

Actions on the card range from gaining resources to put into your stuff or your pack, adding cards to your lookout, recruiting friends, or upgrading your fort. The amount of items that can sit in your lookout or pack depends on the size of your fort.

The goal of the game is to upgrade your fort to a level 5, and you’ll have to spend resources to do so when you use an action card that allows you to upgrade it.

The private or public action can be played in any order, and then players can follow your public action if they spend a card matching the suit of the active card. Once that’s done, the active player recruits a kid card from the park, which always has three face-up cards in it, or from their yard or an opponent’s yard.

If you build your level 5 fort, you gain the macaroni sculpture card, triggering the last round of the game.

Then, all your played cards and your best friends — the kid cards with stars on them that you start with at the beginning of the game — go into your discard pile. The unplayed cards are then placed at the top of your player board, putting them in danger of being recruited by others! There’s something a little heartbreaking about the Rocket Bros being taken by your opponent but that’s sometimes how life goes.

Lastly, you draw five cards from your deck. If you can’t draw five cards, you shuffle your discard pile to make a new draw deck. When it’s your turn again, you first clear out your yard of kid cards not taken by others and place them into your discard pile.

Play with your friends close! Don’t let them start wandering into other players’ yards!

I love the mechanism of following the leader’s action. It allows you to take extra actions when it’s not your turn and reduce the amount of cards left over at the end of your actual turn. Both of these mechanisms — hand management and the follow action — are what elevates Fort from your standard deckbuilder. It keeps all players engaged throughout the entire game.

Fort is based on designer Grant Rodiek’s game SPQF from 2018. I love the retheme and update to it, and I think many others will, too. And even though I’ve only had a chance to play this game as a two-player, the game still had plenty of memorable moments. I can’t wait to get this on table with more people when it’s safe to play with other people again.

Thanks Leder Games for sending me a copy of this game!

Rap Godz: Living that hip-hop life

By Meeple Lady | June 8, 2020 | Comments 1 comment

Truth be told, it’s been a little difficult being inspired to write while we’ve been on lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. But in light of recent events and protests erupting across America, it’s important to take a stance. #blacklivesmatter. Period. There is so much racial injustice happening all over — it’s heartbreaking, and serious change needs to happen. We must do better.

Here in the board gaming community, we can listen, we can educate ourselves, we can speak out against racism and microaggressions, we can create a safe gaming space, and we can amplify black board game designers, artists and creators.

Rap Godz, designed by Omari Akil and Hamu Dennis, came out this year.

Omari Akil is a cofounder of Board Game Brothas and the lead designer of Rap Godz, a game about becoming a hip-hop artist. In this article written by Omari, he discussed how few black board gamers he encounters in the hobby — and even fewer game designers — and he wanted to change that.

I first encountered Rap Godz through my partner Chris who received his copy a few months ago. Chris enjoyed playing a demo of it at a local Unpub event in North Carolina in 2018 and ordered the game when it hit Kickstarter. We’ve had so much fun playing it since, often jamming along with one of our rap playlists!

This is hands down one of the most unique and colorful games I’ve ever played.

Rap Godz is a 2-4 player game that plays in about 60 minutes. Each player plays as an up-and-coming rapper trying to take over cities, hit career goals and earn the most record-sales plaques through three albums.

The whole board is laid out like a giant turntable, with crossfader markers indicating which album and track players are on. The entire game is three albums’ worth, with five tracks — or turns — for each album. That’s fifteen turns for everyone, which leaves a short amount of time to go platinum! Painted grooves on the record represent the three resource tracks: swag, skillz and street.

Turn up that track! Isn’t this crossfader piece just so cool?

On a player’s turn, they get a card and play a card. To get a card, they can draw one from the current album deck or discard three cards to grab one of the face-up Come Upz cards.

Cards give you resources and plaques. The ones with a lock and key can only be played if you’ve reached or passed that number on the resource track.

Players then play a card from their hand in front of them and create a timeline of their career. Played cards dole out plaques and resources to the player. Some cards though feature a lock and key, and players cannot play that card until they have equal to or more than the number of resources shown in the lock.

Players can also instead play a Beef card. When they do this, they pick another rapper to start beef with, roll their die and the red die. The other person rolls their die. The player with the highest number on a single die wins the beef. The loser puts the Beef card into their timeline and hands over resources and plaques on the Beef card to the winner. The winner collects a red Beef cube, which can help score an objective at the end of the game.

Do you have enough swag, skillz and street to be the top rapper?

As players cross resource thresholds on the record, they collect Pick Upz tokens, which gives resource, beef or card bonuses and can be used for a later time. The goal of the game is to score objectives by collecting Goalz, Citiez (each city has a different objective such as having the most Yellow cards in your timeline) and the most plaques. The player who has the most points after three albums is the Rap God.

The Goalz (pictured) and Citiez end-game scoring conditions change with each game.

The game has lots of replay value, as the Goalz and Citiez objectives change every game, and the interaction between the players by starting beefs always makes for a fun time. You also have 24 characters — and their distinct abilities and end-game scoring objectives — to choose from, and even Troopers and Cthudus want to be rappers!

The unique theme and components set this game apart. The game comes with a hefty gold medallion to indicate the first player, and I enjoy how the game ramps up with phased in album and Come Upz cards. Giving otherwise regular resource tracks a unique look is pretty creative. I also love and appreciate the diversity of artwork and experiences represented on the game cards.

I love the diversity of the artwork, including the range of looks on these female POCs.

One of the biggest things I’ve been an advocate for is representation in the board gaming community. Often, whenever I walk into a room at a game convention, there aren’t many people who look like me, and I want to see more people of color break into and thrive in this hobby I love. And we can do our part by taking action and fostering a more diverse and inviting community.

Pandemic — but in real life!

By Meeple Lady | March 30, 2020 | Comments 2 comments

My oh my, how much life has changed in the past few weeks. I hope this blog post finds you all healthy and safe — and with enough toilet paper! Yeah, I still don’t understand why people are hoarding that.

I’m now entering my third week of working from home, and, if I’m being honest, the extrovert in me had a really tough time in the beginning not being able to hang out with coworkers and friends on the daily.

Me, working from home, my board games keeping me company.

Sure, I take my daily walks outside with my dog and then my partner comes home from his workday, but it’s really not the same when you can’t do all your favorite activities because of social distancing. Even my weekly game nights have been canceled in order to stay healthy and not catch the coronavirus.

So what have I been doing in the meantime? We’ve all jumped online.

I wrote about online gaming years ago, but now we are knee deep in it. Our current gaming workflow has been logging into boardgamearena.com and a Discord channel so that we can all talk to each other while we game. Though, just an hour ago, my buddy said that premium members can now activate the voice chat room on BGA. I’m very excited to try this out next time we game!

BGA has a bunch of games, and most are free. To play the rest of the games, you’ll need a premium membership, which is $4 a month. I like having access all the games and I feel like I’m doing my small part to keep the website running in tiptop shape now that we’re all online.

Some of the games I’ve been playing are Sushi Go, Takenoko, 6 Nimmt, Caylus, Race for the Galaxy and, of course, backgammon.

Who doesn’t love cute sushi? My girlfriends and I have been playing Sushi Go online.

I love how I’ve been playing with my gaming groups as well as my girlfriends, whom I all made sign up on BGA for the first time. Every online session with friends makes me feel a little bit more human during these uncertain times.

Luckily for me, my partner also likes to play games. We’ve been playing games that don’t take up a lot of table space, as my workstation has taken over half of the dining table. I’m home all the time now, but I have less space to bust out that giant Lacerda. Talk about bad timing!

Recently I really enjoyed playing Bruxulles 1897, the card game of Bruxelles 1893. It’s quite enjoyable and equally tight as the original, but with a much smaller footprint.

Bruxelles 1897 is a card game worthy of its predecessor Bruxelles 1893.

So what games have you all been playing, and what are some of the new routines life has foisted upon you? Also, is it too soon to play Pandemic? What about Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, my favorite iteration of the game?

Anyway, here’s hoping the state of the world improves quickly. Stay well, avoid others, wash your hands, and practice self-care and check in with your friends. We’re all in this together!

Friendly Local Game Store: Tyson Wells Game Store

By Meeple Lady | March 2, 2020 | Comments 7 comments

This profile on the Tyson Wells Game Store is part of an ongoing series about Friendly Local Game Stores I’ve visited. Read other profiles here.

In the Arizona desert, just before the California border, sits the town of Quartzsite, which has a population of nearly 3,700. Folks driving into California often make a pit stop there as it’s about 2 hours west of the Phoenix area.

The Tyson Wells Game Store is open seven days a week.

Quartzsite is mostly known as a snowbird destination, as the town’s small population swells to about 250,000 during the winter seasons.

Snowbirds — people who move to warm weather locales during the winter — set up camp in their RVs and enjoy the town’s famous rock and gem shows, and vendor fairs. Most surprising, visitors can also purchase their favorite board games at the Tyson Wells Game Store.

This side of the store has a lot of new releases.

The Tyson Wells Game Store stocks over 2,500 games, and the selection is vast and top-notch — everything from new and Kickstarter releases, as well as old favorites and classics. The 2,000-square-foot store also sells miniatures, paint and supplies, and gaming accessories. It’s a board-gaming oasis in the Arizona desert.

Old favorites and classic games are also on store shelves.

The store has two rooms full of games, and it’s something you’d expect in the middle of a large-sized city, not one you’d find on a dusty road surrounded by RV parks.

In addition to the snacks and knick-knacks it also sells, the space is the home base for owner Kym Scott’s many businesses.

“I do rock-gem-mineral shows, arts and crafts shows, RV park and self storage,” he said.

Kym Scott is the owner of the Tyson Wells Game Store.

Scott was born and raised in Quartzsite. He grew up playing games such as Risk and Axis & Allies, and now plays Arcadia Quest, Star Realms, euros and worker placements. “Back when I was growing up here, it was about 400 people,” Scott said.

The store has a large room and one in the back with even more games.

The game store started small about seven years ago when Scott had extra office space. “Then four years ago, I connected with bigger distributors and game publishers and started carrying a full line of games,” he said.

The games in the other half of the back room.

The business is named after Charles Tyson who owned a well nearby during the 1800s called Tyson’s Well. When Scott’s stepfather started the business, he changed it to Tyson Wells. The Sell-A-Rama, Scott’s event where vendors sell their gems, art and jewelry, just wrapped up its 42nd show in January.

Scott is active in the gaming community on both sides of the Arizona-California border, attending meetups in Blythe, California, and Lake Havasu, Arizona. Scott also attends local conventions like Dice Tower West and Arizona Game Fair.

Of course Quartzsite has its own Monopoly game!

Scott said the gaming community in Quartzsite consists of snowbirds from across the U.S. and Canada, and people in RVs. “Because they’re so limited by space and the size of the games,” Scott says his best seller is the card game Five Crowns. Ticket to Ride and Catan are also popular.

Lastly, the best part of owning a game store is “Every time I get a delivery, it’s kind of like Christmas. I get to see all the new games,” Scott said.

Information and photos

Tyson Wells Game Store is located at 121 Kuehn St, Quartzsite, AZ 85346. It’s open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can find more information on its Facebook page and website.

18CZ: Building tracks in the Czech Lands

By Meeple Lady | February 12, 2020 | Comments 4 comments

My gaming group really loves 18xx games. But since there’s a whole lot of AP during our games, there’s no way we can really play one on a weeknight. Hence, we try to schedule our games on Saturdays as one game seriously takes an entire day for us.

Last Saturday, we punched out and busted a new 18xx game to most of us: 18CZ, set in the Czech Lands. As with most other 18xx games, the purpose of this game is to have the most personal money, and to increase the stock price of companies you own while also owning high-valued stocks.

The game is unique to other 18xx games we’ve played recently as there are a fixed number of rounds. Usually, when players break the bank, that’s when the game ends. In 18CZ, there are eight stock rounds and the number of operating rounds with each stock round increases as the game progresses, culminating in three operating rounds in the last phase. And trains rust after each set of stock round and operating rounds.

The game ends after 8 rounds, which include a stock round and three operating rounds.

But before the game gets started, a pre-stock round occurs where players can purchase private companies. The privates are randomly placed on this board based on their sizes (there are small, medium and large companies), which prices then in increasing order, and players take turns in a snake draft, buying them until they all pass.

These privates provide income to whoever owns them, and they can later only be purchased by a company of the same size or larger. For example, a medium company later cannot buy a large private company. They also provide a one-time use to build a special tile upgrade. Other than purchase price, they’re all identical.

The pre-round for buying private companies in 18CZ.

Small, medium and large sized companies — and their matching sized trains — make up 18CZ. Trains rust immediately when another player purchases a larger train of that type. And it’s printed on the train card itself too as a reminder.

Unlike other 18xx games, when you float your company, it’s fully capitalized. You don’t need to try to convince others to buy into it. But you suddenly flushed with $1,000 in your company coffers if you set its initial stock price at $100. Having all this money is great — you can immediately buy a train or two. But being fully capitalized makes it much, much harder to funnel money into your company when you need to purchase a very expensive train.

You’ll have to withhold payouts to add to your company coffers, which decreases the price of your stock. And unlike some other 18xx, regardless of how much you pay out to stockholders, your stock will jump once, and twice if you’re a large company.

Some of the early trains in 18CZ. How you orient them determines their scope.

Maximum ownership also varies for the different types of companies. Players can have 75% of their small company, and 60% of medium and large companies. Lastly, there’s no bankruptcy in this game.

Starting a large company can’t occur until later in the game. And players get to select their starting location from one of two hexes on the board. This is another neat mechanism of this game. You can start building your network over on this side of the map, but there’s a chance you won’t be able to build that large company near it to connect everything.

Mergers allow you to fold a company of the same size or small into your new company, and you can upgrade your trains this way as well. You can flip the orientation of your current train card or scrap it to get a larger train, and you’ll only have to pay the difference. This was helpful later to acquire larger trains.

Each company comes with fewer station tokens than other 18xx games I’ve played, so you have to be judicial during placement. In other games, you can use one to block another player, but there didn’t seem to be much blocking in this game as you couldn’t afford to waste a station.

Our recent 5P game of 18CZ. You can see from the red hexes that the large companies have been floated.

Our game ended up going for about 6 hours, which seems on par with the box description of 4 hours. My gamer group is slow and methodical, and we usually tack on some extra time to what it says on the box, even though we have cut time by not using actual paper money in the game. We just write everything down in our ledger. I highly recommend it!

I really enjoyed how unique 18CZ is compared with other 18xx games I’ve played recently. There’s a running joke among us saying that we play an 18xx game once and then never return to it. Maybe that pattern will change this year, and we’ll actually play the same 18xx twice! 18CZ is the one I’d totally recommend for that.

For those train folks, what’s your favorite 18xx game?

First 5 hobby games in my collection

By Meeple Lady | October 24, 2019 | Comments 4 comments

It’s officially been five years since my first blog post. I wrote about last year’s anniversary, and with every passing year, I like to take a look back down Memory Lane.

As I sit at my dining table plugging away on my laptop, my back toward my Kallax shelves full of board games, I can’t help to think of the first games to enter my collection, the catalyst to the inevitable transformation of my dining room area to board gaming central — mini-studio lights and all.

The first five games in my collection were Catan, Ticket to Ride, Agricola, Arkham Horror and Twilight Struggle. Catan, TTR and Twilight Struggle were all gifts, and Arkham and Agricola I purchased after a deep dive into the BGG rankings.

The first five hobby games that started it all for me.

A few months ago, after a game of Agricola, nostalgia spurred me to share on Twitter these five games and asked followers which five hobby games first entered in their collections.

Feeling nostalgic since my Agricola game last night. What were the first five hobby games in your collection? Mine were:

1. Ticket to Ride
2. Catan
3. Agricola
4. Arkham Horror
5. Twilight Struggle
— Meeple Lady💃🏽🌵🇵🇭 (@MeepleLady) June 19, 2019

Well, the Twitterverse did not disappoint.

I received over 850 board game submissions, and I thought it’d be fun to compile that information and see which games were most often mentioned. A good majority of my Twitter followers seemingly entered the hobby around the same time I did, based on their responses.

For clarity’s sake, I lumped versions/editions/expansions into the base game of the same name. For example, I grouped all of The Settlers of Catans and Catan Seafarers all under Catan. The top 12 results are below in a nifty data visualization I created. (You can hover over each bar to get more information.)

And here are the top 25 games mentioned, broken down by years. There appears to be a dark period there, based on the responses, between 1985-1995. (I’m pretty sure a lot of people were playing all those Milton Bradley games, such as Shogun).

Then in 1995, Catan debuted and helped usher in the Golden Age of board gaming. And as they say, the rest is history.

I still have a fondness for my first five games (which are all still present in my collection), but, in all honesty, I’d probably only play four of them if asked right this minute. I’ll let you guess which one wouldn’t make the cut.

What were the first five hobby games in your collection, and which of them do you still own?

Tucson’s RinCon 2019: Trains, skulls and a giant rhino

By Meeple Lady | October 14, 2019 | Comments 1 comment

Two weekends ago, I went down to Tucson for their annual board game convention RinCon! I particularly love how a bunch of us from the Phoenix area all trek down south to Tucson to game nonstop for a few days. I also love all the unique perks that RinCon offers its convention-goers — from nightly midnight snacks to the wonderfully curated Women’s Space.

Here’s one of the main rooms at RinCon. The tablecloths are color coded, so you’ll know if a table is reserved for scheduled gaming.

It’s the third year in a row I’ve gone, and the second year in a row I’ve been a special guest. About 600 people attended this year’s convention, which was held again at the Sheraton Tucson Hotel and Suites.

Gamers setting up giant Azul in the RinCon lobby.

Friday

My buddy Mark and I arrived Friday afternoon, and we dove immediately into a game of Mexica. I love, love this game, and it never fails to disappoint! Everyone always falls in love with the game’s components, and, for me personally, I enjoyed easing into a hectic convention with a game I’m quite familiar with.

Mexica has such table presence! But it can be so mean! The new players in this game learned quickly that blocking people is the way to go.

I then taught a 4-player game of Irish Gauge, a stock-based cube-rail train game. It’s the first title in the Iron Rail series by Capstone Games, first published by Winsome games back in 2007.

These guys are always so fun to game with! I wish they all didn’t live clear across town and, for Mike, in Tucson!

It’s a 3-5 player game that plays in about 60 minutes. Learning the game is easy; there are 4 actions to choose from after the initial stock bidding around. Players are building track to expand their train company, auctioning of stocks, upgrading towns to cities, or calling dividends. When dividends are called, cubes are randomly pulled from a bag, and that determines which routes will pay out. It’s a very stripped down stock game — complete with adorable candy-like train pieces. Irish Gauge was the first of many train games I played during the weekend.

Irish Gauge is a quick 3-5 player stock–based train game.

I then taught a 3-player game Dead Man’s Cabal, a clever puzzly strategy game where players are trying to raise the dead. It has skulls, spells and zombie cards! Players have a private action, and then everyone does a public action, based on the skulls in play, and each skull represents a board that has actions associated with it. If you don’t have a particular color of that skull in your supply, then you can’t take the action. I really enjoyed this midweight euro!

So many skulls! This game has been delightful each time I’ve played it.

Next up was Tokyo Metro, an economic stock game from Jordan Draper games. This is probably the heaviest of his games — and a little busier and fiddly, too — where players are investing in stocks and working to increase the values of stocks, as trains pass through rail stations along a giant cloth map of the Japanese metro. Trains only move a certain number of spots, so you’ll have to calculate payout based on that train schedule, and only certain actions will come out each round, based on the action cards that are phased in. I’d love to try this again, as my train was totally melting down by this time of night.

So many trains, and so many rail lines! Tokyo Metro is based on the Japanese metro.

Then at 11 p.m., I hosted a Mega Game of Welcome To. About 20 people came out, and we used the Halloween expansion pack for our game. Welcome To is a roll-and-write game that doesn’t involve dice but instead cards containing numbers and special abilities that players use to fill out a map of their city. Everyone selects a number simultaneously so it’s a game that can be played out on the big screen in a large group.

GloryHoundd took this photo of me hosting Welcome To on the big screen.

And even though I was nervous running my first mega game ever, I had a great time, and I think everyone did, too. The winner was GloryHoundd, and she received the game, as well as a couple expansion packs, and the second- and third-place winners received some Halloween candy.

Winner winner chicken dinner! The winners of the Mega Welcome To game.

At midnight, RinCon served its first midnight snack of the convention: Eegee’s. For those unfamiliar, Eegee’s are Tucson-based frozen fruit drinks, and people lined up to get a cup of this sweet treat. All attendees get tickets with their badge, which they trade in for the midnight snacks on Friday and Saturday night.

Saturday

I then started early on Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m. by teaching a 2P game of Abomination. I love this game so much, and I believe it’ll be more widely available now for more folks to check out! But I like to preface that this is not a short game by any means. Even with our 2P game, it took well over 2 hours.

I then was invited to do a noon panel called “How to Teach a Game in 5 Mins.” Five us from the board game industry talked with a group of folks about methods that worked for us for teaching games, whether light or heavy. The discussion included how to teach teenagers how to win graciously as well as empowering new gamers to teach other gamers. Also, we had a legit space scientist Dante Lauretta among us panelists who is a board-game designer and does educational outreach at the Boys and Girls Club in Tucson.

GloryHoundd and I then hung out at the bar after our panel and caught up for a bit while drinking our respective signature drinks. Our drinks were super yummy and provided a midday breather to an already busy day.

Drannnnkss! GloryHoundd and I both enjoyed our signature convention drinks.

My next game was The Soo Line, where I learned that it’s pronounced like the name Sue and not so. That’s the Valley girl in me coming out!

Always a fun time with Greg, Dr. GloryHogg and Brian!

Anywho, The Soo Line is a 45-minute pick-up-and-deliver stock train game. I made some poor choices for bidding in the beginning and never quite caught up again! How does the Soo Line actually made any money when it has to come all the way across the board? Tell me your secrets, folks!

It was so hard getting the Soo line all the way across the map!

I then joined a group of a dozen people to play Blood on the Clocktower, a giant social-deduction game described to me as similar toWerewolf but gamier. Benjamin led many, many games of this during the entire convention, and it was SUCH. A. BLAST.

Our fearless leader Benjamin running Blood on the Clocktower.

Unlike Werewolf, when you die in Clocktower, you can still have one vote for the rest of the game so that you can help your side win the game. It’s humans vs. demons, and there’s even a character sheet so you can deduce who is which character, and strategically reveal information about yourself or others.

I was the ravenskeeper, and even though I died, I was instrumental in finding the imp, leading the humans to victory!

After a quick dinner break, I taught a 4P game of Tiny Towns. I was so involved in teaching this game that I completely forgot to take a photo, but friends, let me tell you that I crushed the game. I played a second game of Irish Gauge with 4 different players and immediately after a few games of Strike.

Strike is such a bar game, in which you’re tossing dice into the box stadium, and if there are any pairs, you take back dice into your hand. Players get eliminated when they run out of dice, and the last person standing wins the game.

Throw in your dice to get more dice! Strike is a fun filler!

I then got to hang out with David Short and taught him and my buddy Rob Watergate. I always get kind of nervous getting games I love to game designers, because they know game mechanisms so well and I’m afraid they’ll find something really off or broken about said game. Luckily, everyone ended enjoying the game!

The rest of the night was a series of shorter games. We played NMBR 9 (always a good time) and Illusion (I can’t for the life of me figure out these color percentages) before getting pizza for our midnight snack.

And then some late-night shenanigans 1 a.m. happened with my buddies Mark, Greg and Brian.

We then played Giant Rhino Hero, Point Salad and Skulls. This was my first time playing Giant Rhino Hero and it was a riot! Players are basically stacking cards to build a giant tower for the Rhino Hero to move up in.

This is when it got called than me, though some people might say that it doesn’t take much to reach a height taller than 5’3″!

The tower eventually got much taller than me, and its ultimate demise was captured on video. (Notice that I am in fact standing on a chair!)

Forgot to send this on Twitter last night, in case everyone was wondering how it ended. Tragically, I'm afraid. 🦏🦏 pic.twitter.com/F19ZnAzcwB
— Meeple Lady💃🏽🌵🇵🇭 (@MeepleLady) October 6, 2019

Point Salad is a quick card drafting game in which you’re collecting fruits and veggies to score objective cards. And Skulls is a fun bidding, bluffing game that has gorgeous artwork.

Sunday

I began my day teaching Watergate at the Women’s Space. Folks, I cannot tell you how amazing this space is. I love that RinCon sets aside a suite for women to relax, get away from the crowd, and learn scheduled board games from female GMs. Mari runs the space, which is fully stocked with meeple cookies, snacks and drinks.

A nice couch to chillax on during the convention!

Here’s Mari, who keeps the lovely Women Space up and running.

Two ladies signed to learn Watergate, and they enjoyed the game so much that they switched sides and played again. The same player won both times!

These ladies are ready to go head-to-head in the battle for the White House.

I ended the convention playing another game of Mexica and Coimbra, which was the top game I played in 2018. And in case you were wondering, I crushed my two opponents in Coimbra.

Coimbra is such a good game. We need to get to get it on table more often!

And just like that, another awesome time in Tucson was had at RinCon. This convention never disappoints, and I love how friendly everyone is here. Karen Arnold Ewing is the chair of the convention, and she succeeds in making this con inclusive and inviting, especially with the incredible women’s space. There are gamers of all ages, and there is definitely something for everyone!

Here’s RinCon’s fearless leader Karen Arnold Ewing, who, along with an army of volunteers, works tirelessly to put on a wonderful convention.

And just like that, three days of gaming came and went. I had a lot of fun hanging out with friends and meeting new ones, and hosting/teaching games. Thank you so much for having me, RinCon, and I can’t wait to be back next year!