Circle DC 2024: Meeple Lady goes to Washington
Last week, I traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend Circle DC, a convention held on April 5-7 hosted by Fort Circle in the nation’s capital! Votes for Women was my top game of 2023, so I wanted to support the game’s publisher, plus check out some sights and sounds in D.C. One of my goals this year is to attend more conventions. Circle DC is a great convention for historical game designers; I actually played more prototypes than published games!
Prior to the convention’s start, Fort Circle hosted a reception at Astro Beer Hall, where we got to meet fellow convention-goers and eat some yummy food. These mixers are always a nice start before all the gaming about to take place for the next few days.
Friday
The convention was held at Planet Word museum in a private events room. I stayed a hotel a little over a mile away and walked to the convention.
I first played a prototype by Liz Davidson of Beyond Solitaire and David Thompson called Night Witches. This is coming to Kickstarter soon from Fort Circle, and the game is about the all-female pilots of the Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment working together to fly harassment missions on the Eastern Front during WWII. The game will include a 10-mission campaign, with individual maps bound together in a spiral notebook. Players go on missions as pilots to avoid spotlights, evade attacks and ultimately kill Nazis, while managing their resources such as fuel, stress levels and bombs. This is Liz’s first design and I can’t wait for it to come out!
Next up was Volko Ruhnke’s newest prototype, Hunt for Blackbeard, which will also be published by Fort Circle. I’ve played multiple COIN games from Volko and this was quite a departure from those usual games. This is a 2-player hidden movement game where the colony of Virginia and its Royal Navy are tracking down the notorious pirate Blackbeard, whose fleet is living that pirate life down in North Carolina. The game is set up with blocks placed in a recessed board, with the Royal Navy side seeing all blanks, while Blackbeard is sailing from point to point carrying out his piracy.
A big group of us went out to dinner to Ella’s Wood Fired Kitchen with Sebastian Bae and friends, some of whom are members of the Georgetown University Wargaming Society.
The last game of the night was Fruit, Dan Bullock’s latest prototype, about United Fruit in Latin America during a period of 50 years during the early 1900s. Each country has its own national objective, and the players, as business people, have secret priorities, ranked in priority The game begins with drafting cards and then taking actions with those cards while triggering events on the card itself. This is a very early playtest, but I’m excited to see how this game develops!
We ended Friday night with drinks at the Moxy Hotel at Lucha Rosa. Cheers!
Saturday
The first game I played on Saturday was Chicago ’68 by Yoni Goldstein. This game takes place during the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests. One side plays as the Establishment, and the other side plays as the Demonstrators. The game takes place over five rounds; each round has two phases that is daytime and nighttime. Each player plays from two decks of action cards, depending on daytime or nighttime. Players are attempting to seed the bag with their delegates, as one delegate is pulled at the end of each round. Whoever controls the majority at the end of the game wins. I really enjoyed this game, and while this is a prototype, the game feels pretty solid to me.
Next up was Rafter Five, a cute little Oink game that I’ve been carrying around recently. Players are building planks with skinny strips of paper that one of the rafters have to stand on. The rafters are originally standing on top of the two Oink game boxes stacked on top of each other, and the game quickly evolves into a dexterity game of paper, rafters and placing a treasure chest on the newly placed plank. Placing all your treasure chests are required for victory.
It’s a delightful yet nerve-wracking dexterity game in which you’ll eventually have to pick up a rafter meeple that may or may not be keeping a bunch of planks in place. Or if you’re really mean, you place the plank in a precarious place so it’ll fall off and penalize your opponent.
I then played a prototype for Peace 1905, which is about the Treaty of Portsmouth during the Russo-Japanese war. It can be played as a 2P game with Japan vs Russia, or a 3P game, adding Teddy Roosevelt as the third nation who is trying to achieve balance between the issues the other countries are negotiating. Players place face-down cards one at a time to vote on issues, and if there’s a giant difference between the two sides, the tension increases between the two nations. If tensions are really high, an event card will trigger where the two countries can participate in some party or billiards to reduce the tension. Teddy wins if both sides are in a tie.
I then played Union Stockyards, an economic game about the meatpacking district in Chicago during the Gilded Age. I had such a hard time making money in this game, as the livestock market was constantly in flux! Players are also increasing brand recognition, building polyomino shaped buildings to connect to a network, and constructing houses in various cities in the hopes the train network will enter that market. But if there is worker dissatisfaction, they strike, essentially losing one action during the round.
Circle DC held a raffle each day; the grand prize for Saturday’s raffle was the Dune bucket.
I totally put all my tickets for this but did not win. Liz Davidson was the lucky recipient!
I then played Arcs, the latest game from Leder Games and designed by Cole Wehrle, who taught us how to play. I enjoyed playing this game so much – I think it’s now my favorite Leder game! Set in space, Arcs is a sci-fi strategy game that uses multi-use cards to construct ships, battle, move and repair.
Players play cards to take actions, and if you can beat the initiative order and suit of a previous player, you can play multiple actions related to that suit. Players also need to declare ambitions, which are objectives by which you can score VPs, but each round starts with a blank slate as to which ambitions will score. The board and components are gorgeous, and I can see a lto of replayability with this game, as your actions are tied to the hand of cards dealt to you each round. Cole said this game will be shipping soon to backers.
Sunday
On the last day of the convention, I signed up to play Bosses of the Senate from Chonky Fire Games, a prototype set in the ambitious political world of the Gilded Age. Players take on the roles of different political ideologies and play as teams in order to pass your faction’s legislative goals and balance that with the will of the people. I love historical games that are team-based (e.g. Angola, a game I love to play at Consimworld), and this one did not disappoint. There was negotiation and trash-talking, and I enjoyed the back and forth of the politics to control seats in Congress. It also had some luck regarding how different types of agendas gain approval points, which was a fun touch.
I stuck around for the Sunday raffle, held at 2 p.m. that day since people were heading home and eventually, I made my trek to the airport to catch my flight back to Phoenix. I had a great time at Circle DC and met so many new people and got to hang out with some of my favorite people in the industry.
The convention was nonstop, and it seriously felt like most everyone I talked to was working on some type of historical game. I loved hearing about their projects, their interests, how they got into game design and just hanging out with so many smart and interesting people. I definitely have plans to attend Circle DC next year, and hopefully explore more of the city!
And the touristy stuff …
I landed in DC a day prior to the start of the convention and was able to do some exploring. I took a nice long walk from my hotel to visit the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.
I then walked by the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court and took some photos there.
Lastly, I joined some board gamers at the Nationals Game that Kevin had organized. We got some sweet seats, even though I was a little unnerved by the foul balls coming over the net. We were that close!
It was so easy getting around the D.C. area via subway and bus. I love being in a walkable city! There’s so much more to see for next time. And with that, the next historical gaming convention I’m attending will be Consimworld here in the Phoenix area, which will be in July. Hope to see you there!
