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SDHistCon 2025: Queen of Spies, Microverse, a video with Volko

By Meeple Lady | November 18, 2025 | Comments 4 comments

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

[image or embed]
— Meeple Lady (@meeplelady.bsky.social) November 8, 2025 at 1:13 PM

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.

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.

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.

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!

Origins 2025: Cross Bronx Expressway, Rebel Princess, Hot Streak

By Meeple Lady | July 10, 2025 | Comments 1 comment

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.)

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!

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.

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.

Lots of raffle prizes from Armchair Dragoons!

I then met up with Nathan Fullerton, who taught us a demo of his game Journey to Skyhaven, which will be published by First Fish Games.

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!