I am glad you liked my fathers work. I had a worse experience with it. I think its way too long and it wasn't very interesting. Just not my type of game, I guess? My two friends I played it with also had different experiences: one loved it and the other was lukewarm.
My Father's Work was a miss for me as well. I agree that it was too long for what it was. I also had slightly mismatched expectations between the mechanics and theme and what I thought the game was asking of me. There were what felt to me a lot of heavy story being driven and choices you were being asked to make. I was pretty frustrated when after a few of hours I realized that there wasn't actually any payoff for the decisions I made, which is something that I was kind of counting on. The game led me to believe I was making meaningful decisions but they actually weren't.
If I played it again having proper expectations of the story really just being flavor at not a core mechanic I think I might enjoy it more, although I still think it was long for what it was.
A friend's family came over for Father's Day and we played Space Alert together, first time playing for all of us.
It's an older game where a recording plays for 7 minutes while all of the players decide which cards to play in which order. The cards dictate which room you move into and which button you press. Enemies are appearing in different lanes and within the ship. Energy has to be transferred and replenished before weapons can be fired. You place your cards in order of turns and when the time is up you go through each turn completing the steps you chose on the cards. We ended up being out of energy and pushing buttons fruitlessly or going out in fighters before enemies were close enough to shoot, etc.
My friend and I really enjoyed the chaotic comedy of errors but both of our wives hated it so we'll probably never play it again!
Space Alert is epic greatness, particularly for having the first-timers manual/script. There's also the various sound cues available online so you don't need to pull out an old timey CD audio player.
I loved it too but lots of folks can't handle the chaos.
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Played an intro game of Wehrle's ARCS with Leaders and it was just fine. Better than Oath--I'd play again--but for me too much emphasis on all the mechanics and rules. After four hours with four players, I wasn't quite sure what we were doing. I'm sure the campaign fixes some of that, but it's "paywalled" a bit by the designer, in that he wants you to play a few intro games THEN the campaign. But I have trouble wanting to get to the campaign with all the other games on offer.
Good to know. I really wanted to love Oath so much, but it just didn't work with my group of players. If you are not a specific type of player (aggressive and / or underhanded) I don't think it works really well. I think my group is just too nice to be good at playing it. Good to know ARCS is similar to it. I'll leave that alone then.
I did go in on the reprint of Earthborne Rangers. I am not sure if my group will like it, but I am really looking forward to trying it out and if all else fails, play it solo. Anyone here try it out?
I did go in on the reprint of Earthborne Rangers. I am not sure if my group will like it, but I am really looking forward to trying it out and if all else fails, play it solo. Anyone here try it out?
Not yet, but my ARCS-lugging friend cheerfully sold some organs to purchase it, so he's very excited about it all.
I played my first game of Arcs Sunday and I kind of like that the first couple games don't have all the campaign stuff. It lets me get familiar with the main mechanics before adding more. I definitely prefer it over Oath. Oath I feel like I would enjoy more if I had a group that wanted to play it at least semi-regularly but just playing it occasionally I can't remember everything I need to without a major refresher.
We played our first game of Arcs with 3 players and it took about 3 hours, and the second half of the game we were getting a lot faster at taking our turns as we got familiar with the actions. With Oath after a couple games I knew I was not going to get it to the table often enough for it to be for me, but with Arcs since the campaign is just 3 games I feel like we'll play it much more often and I can see it competing for table time with Root once all of us get a few games into playing it.
Because of how scoring in Arcs it seems like you could focus on generating resources instead of battling and still win, but I've not played enough to see that for sure. If that does pan out though I think it will be good for my wife who is not opposed to fighting others in games but prefers less aggressive strategies when that is an option.
I'm hoping to play again this weekend. If so I'll report back how much quick game 2 is. Once we got into the flow later into the game turns went quickly so I can see playing a 3 player game in 90 to 120 min like the box says.
I've really been wanting to get in a game of keyflower. Anybody want to give it a go? Settings are Normal Game + 2 moves a day.
I opened it to a couple folks outside of here but I doubt they will join.
I've really been wanting to get in a game of keyflower. Anybody want to give it a go? Settings are Normal Game + 2 moves a day.
I opened it to a couple folks outside of here but I doubt they will join.
Joined! A learning game for me.
Joined! A learning game for me.
no worries, I will start it sometime this evening. Just giving it time for anyone else if they want.
Finally got the family to play Obsession at the weekend. It's a vaguely Jane Austen / Bridgertonish type game where every turn you invite some guests to a social at one of your rooms. It's an engine game where you have to provide servants depending on the room and the guests you invite, and then get money (to buy better rooms), reputation (which unlocks better guests and rooms) and guests.
It took quite a lot longer than advertised (2.5 hours compared to the expected 1.5 hours), but we really enjoyed it. Each guest has a different photo / dagurreotype and flavour text, and it's fun to get into the theme a little bit.
It's really simple in concept but there are lots of little details going on to keep track of, and I forgot some of them just trying to keep the balls in the air. It feels like the kind of game that would play really well on BGA (I believe it's on there) to do that stuff for you.
Finally got the family to play Obsession at the weekend. It's a vaguely Jane Austen / Bridgertonish type game where every turn you invite some guests to a social at one of your rooms. It's an engine game where you have to provide servants depending on the room and the guests you invite, and then get money (to buy better rooms), reputation (which unlocks better guests and rooms) and guests.
It took quite a lot longer than advertised (2.5 hours compared to the expected 1.5 hours), but we really enjoyed it. Each guest has a different photo / dagurreotype and flavour text, and it's fun to get into the theme a little bit.
It's really simple in concept but there are lots of little details going on to keep track of, and I forgot some of them just trying to keep the balls in the air. It feels like the kind of game that would play really well on BGA (I believe it's on there) to do that stuff for you.
There's a killer app on BGA. I found the physical version a bit too long at first play, but with the app I wanted to play the extended version.
One spot open for Terraforming Mars w/ corporate cards.
Play Terraforming Mars for free with me: https://bga.li/t/542386743
I grabbed Skyrim the Adventure board game off eBay for about half price. Should I grab the minis and expansions?
Gencon day 1 report. Holy cow there are a lot of people here this year. My usual plan of just sauntering up and trying out new games is completely derailed. Most vendors just do a quick demo and shoo you away.
I did meet up with pewpewrobo this year and played a game and it was lovely to see them again! Its becoming a tradition!
Gencon day 1 report. Holy cow there are a lot of people here this year. My usual plan of just sauntering up and trying out new games is completely derailed. Most vendors just do a quick demo and shoo you away.
I did meet up with pewpewrobo this year and played a game and it was lovely to see them again! Its becoming a tradition!
Shoot that's my plan too. Going for the first time. So far quite a mess due to car troubles.
Gencon day 1 report. Holy cow there are a lot of people here this year. My usual plan of just sauntering up and trying out new games is completely derailed. Most vendors just do a quick demo and shoo you away.
I did meet up with pewpewrobo this year and played a game and it was lovely to see them again! Its becoming a tradition!
Friday was crazy busy, I think it was busier than Saturday which is pretty unusual. At least I found it far easier to demo games on Saturday than I did on Friday which is generally not the case.
Will come back with a report soon, got to see and try out a lot of stuff!
In “people on a different continent to gencon” news, finally beat the Intruders/Wingard Cottage scenario in Final Girl.
That means I have now beaten all the sets I own, thus can justify getting more.
Leaving from Gencon now. Bit early but between car problems and stuff I'm exhausted. That said I did have a blast. So many cool games. When I'm back at my PC I'll see if I can list out everything before I forget.
Okay, so here's the elevator pitch on everything I played and saw. Most of these were new games at GenCon. The only old stuff is in the "What I played" section as we picked up some games in the consignment store and tried them out. Given how many games I saw and some of them were brief overviews given I'm just going to give a couple of sentences on each.
The titles in bold are my stand out games from the con and the ones I'm most looking forward to. Don't hesitate to ask if you'd like more details on any of them!
WHAT I PLAYED (full games)
* Reef Project - Big crunchy euro game. Move around the map, claiming your part of the effort of cleaning the reef in order to score points. Had elements from Great Western Trail, Hansa Teutonica and others with area control, claiming routes, etc. Really enjoyed this overall. It was a bit on the long side (took us over 2 hours on our first game) but I enjoyed all the elements and interconnected mechanics.
* Tesseract - Really good Pandemic-like; potentially the best I've played. Take apart a giant cube of dice that is threatening humanity. Felt challenging and gave you interesting decisions to make. My group has generally cooled on this style of coop but we all really enjoyed this and are looking forward to future plays.
* Shakespeare - I was surprised at how good this was as it really doesn't look like much at first glance! Essentially a worker placement game, you are hiring actors and building out your theater to put on the best play. It looks a bit dry but the mechanics are solid.
* Sanctum - I demoed this at GenCon back when it first released and wasn't impressed back then, but that's because it was pitched as Diablo the board game but mechanically wasn't that at all. The mechanics always kinda stuck with me and I picked up a used copy. Turns out this game is awesome! It's essentially a dice luck mitigation/push your luck game in the style of something like Spots. Roll dice to fight monsters and use your gear and skill to manipulate the dice which gives you loot. Rinse and repeat until the final showdown with the boss. Now knowing what this game is I had a blast playing it.
* NeuroRiders - Tile laying game (playing to a common board) where each player wants to influence the four colors/factions of pieces differently based on their secret scoring objective. The basic mechanics are simple but there's a lot to consider to set yourself up well. Main complaint is that the out of the box rules can seemingly result in an imbalanced three player game but we think there's an easy balance tweak. Even without that it was certainly fun enough.
* Grand Austria Hotel - I've played this online a few times and it was great to play it in person. Another crunchy euro worker placement game, this time you are running a hotel trying to attract customers and getting them rooms to stay in. It uses dice as the action selection mechanism which I'm always a fan of and gets some nice combos going which feels good as action efficiency is key. It's a bit long and downtime is very much a thing so I'd never play it with more than three (and it's probably best with two) but I really enjoy all the mechanics.
WHAT I DEMOED (on the show floor)
* Gorinto - Really cool abstract strategy game where you are trying to collect tiles to match against the rotating set of scoring objectives. Fun part is that the color of tile you move each turn determines how you collect tiles, and the more of them you've collected determines the strength of the ability. I was really surprised by this and felt like a great abstract game if that's your thing.
* Doggerland - Worker placement game about early human clans hunting and gathering to survive. I walked away fairly unimpressed. I enjoy complexity in games but there was far too much going on and felt like there were little exceptions to rules all over the place.
* Misfit heroes - Really cool combo-wombo tableau builder. The deck is made up of two-part cards that you combine together to form the deck (transparencies that slide into sleeves). One part of the card determines a criteria and the other says the special ability that triggers if you meet the criteria when playing the card into your tableau. What's really cool is that before each game you have the option of remixing any number of the card sleeve/transparency combos (the rules recommend each player take a few and shuffle them around) so you have a continually changing deck. I'll be keeping a real close eye on this one when it releases as it felt like a ton of fun.
* Altay - A light civ-themed deck builder where the deck building mechanics are very heavily Dominion inspired. You'll be playing your cities out onto the map to collect resources and battle against other players for control of territory. Over time you'll add new cards and complete technologies that give you bonuses. I actually really enjoyed the overall loop of the game but it did feel like it'd be on the long side for what the game is.
* Defenders of the Dictionary - I was really looking forward to this demo and walked away really unimpressed. It's a cooperative word game, think of cooperative Scrabble, where you are working through a series of missions to beat some evil villains by playing words made out of letter tiles (exactly like Scrabble tiles) onto the map. The way you build words is one "threat" letter comes out each round and then each player contributes one face down letter from their set of tiles. Flip over and you have to try and collectively build a word ideally using the threat letter or you'll lose points. Let me tell you, collectively building words is awful. If we had each been building our own words like in Scrabble but collectively building on the map that would've been fun but the exercise of coming to an agreement on words was not fun.
* Belratti - A Dixit-like game where you are trying to identify the real art and not pick the counterfits. Each turn the collector flips over a few object cards, then says how many pieces of art they'd like. The other players put in cards from their hands that they think the collector can pick and then a few random cards (counterfits) are tossed in. Collector flips them all and tries to pick the ones the players put in. In theory good but the problem is the objects are so simple (bicycle, tree, cookie, etc) that there didn't seem to be much fun in sussing things out and not enough room for any form of fun creativity. Real miss for me.
* Comic Hunters - Another tableau builder, this time you are collecting Marvel comic books. Each round has a different mechanic for how you draft cards, and the goal is to build sets of cards with symbols that line up with that game's scoring objectives. This was a ton of fun, felt fast and easy and I liked the various draft mechanics. It's also $25 retail. Probably the best "cheap" game of the show, this is a no-brainer for me.
* AI Space Puzzle - Limited communication deduction game along the lines of Mysterium where one player is the AI giving clues to get players to put their tokens on the right spaces on the map while everyone else tries to make sense of the clues to figure out where to place. The demo was a little rough in that it used the first scenario which seemed like a tutorial and was far too easy. Looking at the rules I could see there being some fun game there though. Is it better than other games of this style? Hard to say. Feels like it has potential though.
* Neodreams - Clever worker placement tableau builder where you are corporations fabricating dreams for clients. Cards in your tableau give you abilities that you can level up as you put more tokens on them, and workers play on a grid that gives you a variety of actions, mostly getting the resources you need to play cards into your tableau. When you pass you move a token along the columns of the grid and then everyone gets their workers back from that column and gets a bonus when they take them back. The overall game loop was really satisfying and there's some fun combo-wombo going on.
* The Gang - Cooperative version of texas hold 'em. Instead of bidding money like in poker on the flop/turn/river, you are basically collectively coming to an agreement on who has the best hand with your only communication tool being tokens that rank your hand on a scale of 1-4. It's basically The Crew but poker instead of trick taking, but it wasn't as good as The Crew.
* Trio - Imagine if you took rummy, go fish and memory and mashed them up into a single game. This was as fun as you think that would be.
WHAT I SAW (overviews on the show floor)
* Cities - Pretty vanilla lightweight Euro about building out a city. Get your city layout to match objective cards. I think it looked like it would be quite fun to play even if it's a big bland with the theme and doesn't do anything mechanically new.
* Wandering Galaxy - The next Crossroads-system game from Plaid Hat, this looked far too similar to Freelancers which I demoed last year and was really unimpressed by. I was hoping this one would have something new but nope.
* Galactic Cruise - Another big heavy euro about building spaceships to take people on space tours, it looked good but it'll be far too expensive.
* Sirens - Really cool little two player card game where you build songs to try and compose a better song than your opponent. I wish I would've had an opportunity to actually demo it as it looked pretty fun even though two player games are not really something I ever get to play.
* Defrag - This is a little spatial puzzle game about defragging a hard drive. You are building out a tableau of cards, trying to use their abilities to collapse the cards with matching icons onto each other to score points. Looks like it'd probably be best as a solo experience. Another one I wished I could've actually played to see exactly how it works but I love the theme and it looked like it has potential.
* Rebirth - Another lightweight Euro, this time an area control style game. It's by Reiner Knizia and in a lot of ways looked like a simplified version of Samurai. Walked away really unimpressed, although it didn't help that the demoer was clearly having a rough go of things in their booth. Still it didn't look like there was enough to this one.
* Kronologic - Follow up of Turing Machine. I demoed Turing Machine last year and walked away really unimpressed. I didn't get an overview but skimmed the rulebook and this was basically a slight revision to Turning Machine as best I could tell. Not my jam.
* Box Top Pinball - Light dexterity game where you roll a die down a series of platforms to try and score points. It's basically a more fun, silly version of Tumbin' Dice and my goodness does it look awesome. I think it's going to retail for $30 as well? This is a no brainer for me and my kids.
* Mischief - Looked like a fun little card game where you are trying to set up the alliances between two factions to align with the cards you have left in your hand at the end of the game.
* Spooktacular - I'm an unabashed fan of Level 99 Games. Millennium Blades is one of my all-time favorites. This is essentially their take on Root, but simplified and streamlined. You play (fictional) B-movie monsters who have come to life and are spooking people at the movies. Mechanics look like you are trying to scare people into rooms to put them in configurations that are best for you to score. There are 20 monsters you can play as, each with highly asymmetric mechanics. This was easily the game of the show for me and I can't wait for this to come out as it looks like a ton of fun.
* Luthier - Worker placement game where you are creating instruments for patrons. There's a fair bit going on and while it all looks like it probably makes for a decent game loop (and I love the theme), my goodness is this game overproduced. I really want to like Paverson Games stuff but their approach to Kickstarter and game components is making it hard for me to give their games a chance.
* Civolution - Stefan Feld doing his thing, this time with a Civ theme. Point salad, lots of interconnected systems. Castles of Burgundy is another all-timer for me so I always keep an eye out on Feld games. This one is big and complex. My main concern is the play time which looks to be on the long side, but it also looks like it could be quite a bit of fun. Will play wait-and-see with this.
* Sprocketforge - Upgrade gears and turn them to get stuff. Gears on boards was very much in vogue this year. Looked real light and breezy, maybe too much so?
* March of the Ants - Run your ant colony to control the map while leveling up your ant abilities. This actually looked like it'd be a quite a bit of fun as a really lightweight 4x-esque experience. This is a 2nd edition of an older game and while I don't know the original it seems like they've taken some of the rough edges off. Looks like it has potential.
* City of Myrkesh - Like deck builders? Like Magic the Gathering? That was the pitch. I'm not sure it's as good as what that could look like but the game overall seemed like it has some potential. Main concern is that there's not a ton of cards and no variability in the box (a la Dominion) so hard to say what the replay value is like.
* Panda Royale - Draft dice that all have crazy special abilities. In theory I should love this but the abilities on the dice kinda seemed too crazy to the point where it'd be a lot of book keeping and complexity.
* Finest Fish - Looked like another really pleasant abstract strategy game where you are getting scales on your fish in patterns to score points.
* Lairs - Imagine Battleship but instead of putting ships in the ocean and trying to sink them you built a fantasy dungeon and need to try and blindly navigate your opponents. This looked really awesome and a ton of fun with my kids. Will be keeping an eye on this for sure.
* Moon Bunny - Move your bunnies around the moon to collect tiles. That's pretty much all I took away from this, didn't look like my thing.
* Starship Interstellar - Here's a crazy big complex Euro style game that actually looked like it could be quite a bit of fun. Players are collectively trying to build starships to escape Earth because we've over-harvested resources from the sun and it's going to explode. Build ships, fuel them up (and make sure you have enough fuel!) and make your way to a new home. In a lot of ways this looks like a version of High Frontier that I could actually figure out how to play. The price was high so I'm unlikely to pick it up but I could see this totally being someone's jam.
* Tree Society - A bit of a tableau builder where you level up the cards in front of you to earn you more stuff. Looked fairly lightweight and I didn't get a super deep overview. That said it's from the designer of Guild of Merchant Explorers which I enjoy quite a bit so I'll be keeping an eye on it.
* Sprout - Probably the most fun overview I got as they didn't even have the game out but the designer was willing to pull out a prototype copy and walk me through it. Really lightweight push your luck game where you are basically playing blackjack to try and get matching symbols on your plants. If you get too many symbols your plant got too much love and dies! I love a good quick push your luck game and this looks like it has the potential to be a lot of fun.
* HiFi - Mix songs to make the best tracks for your artists. The graphic design and components of this game are absolutely stellar, look up some photos, it's awesome. You play soundwave cards to try and match a variety of elements which give you opportunities to score points. I love the theme and the design, it looks like quite a bit of fun.
* Sardegna - Lightweight area control game, looks like it's a reprint of an older Stefan Dorra title. Looked fine enough, but the coolest part was the magnetic clamshell on the box that unfolds to be the board.
* Ada’s Dream - Yet another midweight Euro game. This is themed around Ada Lovelace and you are building up a computing machine. Mechanically it looked fine, you draft dice where the color determines actions you can take and the value impacts the scoring of your machine. My main concern is that it seemed like you have a windfall of points at the end which I don't always love.
* Rock Hard: 1977 - Designed by Jackie Fox (of The Runaways fame), you play a rock and roll band member in the 1970s trying to make it big. Have a job, stop showing up to job, get fired from job to become a rock star, do drugs and stay up all night. Mechanically it looks pretty solid and the visual design is stellar.
* Leaf - Abstract strategy tile laying game where the tiles are in the shape of leaves and you get actions based on the type of leaf played and how many points of the leaf touch other leaves. I liked the non-standard shape of the tiles you play out. It looked like a fairly solid abstract with a pleasant theme.
Excellent write up, thank you! I will do my yearly gencon write up as well sometime this week. I thought Sardegna looked fantastic and picked up a copy.
Thought I lost my photos of the games I played but guess my phone is just weird. Here's some of the games I've played or viewed without any sense, reason, or editing.
Lost Ruins of Arnak - Probable liked this the most. Fun worker placement and deck builderish game. Good theme and seemed interesting. Which we could do more then a round.
River Valle Glass-works - Fun and quick point scoring game. Neat pieces with real glass in the fancy version and this sliding mechanic for the river. Fun and quick to learn. Though I messed up how scoring worked and lost hard.
The A.R.T Project - Very middling game with cool art and theme. Where you are a bunch of agents coop trying to save paintings and beat up henchmen. The actual game play was really plain, and has the leader problem. Where its easy for one or two people to sort of control it all. Also was kind of easy. Odd game.
MCDM roleplaying Game - Draw swords I think - Didn't get a chance to play but did check out there other books. Looking forward to it. So more me just hyped for it.
Paradox Initiative - Man this was kind of dull. Has a high sci fi theme about saving realities/universes. Just a point scoring game with a semi bejewel style grid to use. Probable my least favorite game. Art was odd to as it felt like there were two different styles at once.
Avalon - Really cool looking Arthurian area control will neat minis. Really cool style and seems really good from the demo. Kickstarter is coming out soon, and will probable have so many minis.
Oathsworn - Same guys as above. they chatted about it and I checked it out on my own. Looks good. Semi gloomhavenish. And amazing minis again. Tempted again.
Divinity Original Sin - This looks amazing. I only got a peak but looks like good fun. And heavily pulls from the game. Definitely want to try.
Invincible board game - Looks very sentinels of the multiverse. Which is a good thing. Demo looked like solid fun. Nothing crazy new though.
20 Strong - Weird little solo game about fighting monsters in space. Really cool golden mecha art style. That said the balance was a bit weird and random. I tried a class with lowish health and it was basically suicide. That said I did play one of the rules wrong which made it harder.
Pokemon / hunter x hunter/ dbz - All card games nothing crazy in breaking the mold but honestly all fun. Mostly did them all for some free decks. Fun though.
Aquatica - Neat mechanics and cool theme about being underwater mermen. Interesting engine and mechanics but sort of found it boring. Nothing wrong but honestly felt average.
Star-ship Captains - Really cool light star trek like game. You get a ship and exploring planets and manage your ship. Pretty light but honestly a lot of fun. The whole ship and crew thing was also really cool.
Oh and one funny one which I'm sadly missing a photo for. So I forgot the name. Two guys basically made a stock market game, that's roll and play, and basically using a monopoly board. Honestly was fun even if it was like years behind design wise and basic. Plus the guys were quite fun to chat with.
Starship Captains is great! I picked it up after trying it out at GenCon a couple of years ago and really enjoy it. The theme does some of the heavy lifting but it's also a fun game of managing your cargo to get cool abilities that help increase your action efficiency. Not a lot of player interaction but I enjoy seeing everyone go around the system map, claim their things and complete their objectives.
Paradox Initiative is a reprint of an old game called Paradox. I still like paradox and have a copy on my shelf, but yeah.. its older and feels older.
I disliked ART project a lot. Its not a great game.
Oathsworn looks amazing. Would love to try it out.
Allright. Buckle up. This is Fred's Annual GenCon report with photos and words. Don't forget to scroll up and read through others reports for great and not so great games from this amazing 4 day weekend. Btw, I got curious and it seems I have been writing these reports since 2014, so here's to 10 years of Gencon reports!
Trickdraw. We started to con right away with a quick head to head card battler. The theme could be anything, but they chose magic using cowboys which perked my ears up. The game is pretty straight forward; from a hand of 3, play one card in front of you. Each card has a power that activates when you set it down. Do this until you are the last cowboy standing. It wasn't fantastic nor was it horrible. Mid. If you are looking for an excellent 2p card battler, I would highly recommend Wizards of the Grimoire instead.
The Game of Wolf: Not bad! It's a trivia game where you answer 5 questions of increasing difficulty. The twist is that before the round starts, after you hear the topic, you pick your partner and together you try to answer as many of the questions as you can. This way, if your friend is a sports fiend, you want to hook up with them for that round. It's fine. It works. It's alright.
Land vs Sea: Now we're cooking! With islands! This is a head to head game where you try to build as large pieces of either land or sea (one player is land, one is sea) as possible. As you lay the tiles down, you score any lands / seas that are closed off, so you will want to interrupt the other players plans as much as possible. The super nice part of this game is the 3 and 4 player modes. With 3 players, the third one is building mountains that disrupts both land and sea. With 4 players, you play as partners but are not allowed to talk about your strategy, but can only place little markers where you hope the other player will build. Or not build. I think it was excellent and look forward to playing it again.
Super Snipers: Well, this was something different! You play as a sniper in a head to head game where you are trying to be the fastest to find, isolate and kill your target which is the other player. The first thing you do is place little polyminos on to the smaller board to surround the target in the middle. Once you are done, you flip over one of the enemies markers above that board to see if your target is in it (1 in 3 chance). If it's correct, you place the large version of that map into your sniper scope (the large board under the smaller square maps) and take the polyminos from the small map and start surrounding both innocents and the large red square which contains your target. Once that is done, you flip your ready marker over and take your shot. If you are done, you win the round and do it again two more times, resetting everything to start.
I liked this game, but I am terrible at it. It was definitely something different and something I hadn't seen before in a board game. Would I buy it? No.
The Gang: This was super neat. We actually sat down with three people and played it again after the demo for a full round. Because we are super smart (read: not very smart) we won the game handily (read: barely), but had a great time. It's a cooperative texas hold 'em game where you are trying to synch up your hands so that the lowest hand is revealed first, then the rest of the hands in ascending order. Do this 3 times and you win the game. Like Dreaded Gazebo mentions, if you have played The Crew, it feels very similar to it, but it's a bit more streamlined. I do think it might run it's course faster than Crew, but I had a great time playing it and would again if it got on the table.
Nunatak: Temple of Ice: You place those little plastic pieces of your color to build the levels. In certain configurations, you will earn points. I thought it was.. meh. I had to look up how to play it as I am writing this so it really didn't stick in my mind.
Burncycle: I saw this last year, but never got around to trying it out. We got a short demo, so it might be better or worse than what I am writing here. First off, we Chip Theory's other big poker token game Too Many Bones and didn't like it at all. Burncycle seems much more interesting to me. It's a heist game where you are breaking into both a physical space as well as electronic space (like hacking) and have to balance the two so as not to be overwhelmed by the security forces. I liked the AI movement. I liked the powers. I liked the simple but effective way to activate the hacking area. It seems really neat. Maybe someone here can give some more information whether it's good or bad or excellent?
Crow!
Prey: Well, this was neat. It has flavors of Oink's excellent Scout mixed with the goals of Crew and mixed liberally with good old fashioned trick taking. You get 10 cards in your hand. For the first half of the hand (5 cards), you play the darker numbers of the cards. For the second half, you flip your hand around and play the lighter side. You are trying to get as many tricks as one of your dice that you rolled. We tried it out with only 2 people and the box says 3-6 players and it showed, but the core of the game is absolutely rock solid. A+ would play again.
Battle Bosses: This is a simple battler where two people try to kill each other by playing cards from their hand. Each card has special powers or you can move your boss around the board. What it ends up happening, though, is that movement doesn't really matter which makes it a game of who has the best luck drawing cards out of a deck. Might as well just pull a card each and declare a winner. Pass.
Bomb Busters: A lot of people seemed to like this game a lot. I was not one of them. So you see those little tokens with numbers and wires on them? What you are trying to do is match that yellow wire token with another player at the table who has the same type of wire. Each turn you pull two tokens of the same number out to cut them, thereby narrowing down what number you have hidden. Once you take a guess on where the pair of your yellow cable is and are correct you win. I know it was set to easy mode for the demo, but the problem is that the gameplay is not very interesting with no interesting decisions.
Godzilla Card Game or something. I can't remember. The game was uninspired. The theme meant nothing. The frustration of nothing happening on your turn was real. Trash.
Grackle: We played a demo of grackle a few years ago and liked it. This year my friend found a super cheap copy and we decided to try it out over dinner. It still holds up as a light abstract puzzle game where you are trying to make the longest lines of dots across other dots. It's a perfectly fine, light, puzzler.
Rolling Realms: The idea of this game is super neat. It's a roll and write, but the game changes for every round. Those 3 little cards at the top are the games we were playing this round. Once we do 9 turns, the game changes and you count how many stars you get on each of those 3 games. Then you remove them and replace them with 3 others. The idea is very neat (new games all the time!), but what happens is that you don't really have time to form strategies or combos which, to me, are the heart of the roll and writes. So you end up with with 2 fun mini games and 7 that are kinda meh.
Sumo: Took a chance on this tiny game and it was.. ok. On each turn you play a card and the winner pushes the opponent one step towards the edge of the ring (the pink cards on the right). If you manage to win twice, you win the game. It's super fast to encourage "one more round" feeling. The game also has special moves build in.. so if you play a 1 against a 6, you win immediately no matter your position. If you play a 4 against a 5 when you are on the edge of the ring you win. So.. like sumo moves. It had a little more depth to it than I expected after the first couple of rounds we played, but still too light for my tastes because of the shortness of the rounds, the game ends too quickly to be able to form strategies.
Kabuto Sumo (new version): I have played a bunch of Kabuto Sumo with my kids and friends and we all love it. With this new version, they restrict where you can push your pieces from and have a new system where after you push from all 4 corners, you special power activates. I think both versions are great and if you find either of them, give it a try. I played in a tournament and got second place. So close!
Nexus Infernum: This is an area cont.. no.. that's not right. This is dudes on a map.. no.. not right either. This is a game where you are all necromancers who summon skeletons to do your infernal biddings. Each turn you summon, then move your minions, then fight other players skeletons and then draw power from nexus. With this power you summon powerful demons to be bound to you. All these things allow you gain VP and the first one to 14 wins. It was a super solid little war gam... no.. that's not right.
Sardegna:This little area control game for two players sold me almost immediately and I picked up a copy of it. It's apparently a reprint, of an older game which I didn't know about. I am a huge fan of Cesar: Seize Rome in 20 minutes, and this game really felt like something similar to it. Place your workers by playing a card from your hand. Score points. When you feel like the round is over, play a certain card and score one of the two available objective cards. There was a ton of strategy in a tiny package and I am super excited to give it a full try.
Donuts: The game I am most disappointed it sold out because I was too slow to pick up a copy award winner. So.. let's get down to it. One player plays a donut anywhere. The opposing player must play their donut following the line under where the first donut was placed. This passes back and forth. Get 5 in a row. Ok... Easy Peasy, Lemon donut. But wait.. if you manage to place a donut BETWEEN your opponents donuts, this flips ALL of their donuts over to your color (like a reverse othello play). This game sent me into a rage (not really) with how clever and insidious it is. I absolutely loved it.
Astarion!
Wandering Towers: We got a demo, but wasn't able to play this game. It seems like a lot of fun, though. Get all your meeplies into the black tower is the goal. How do you do that? Well, you can simply move your little dudes around the table, but you can also move entire tower pieces. If you place a tower piece on top of a tower piece you can't peek at what's under so you have to kinda remember what's there. It's light with a touch of memory game. Not bad!
Crossbows and Catapults: I have no idea if there is a game here or not, but it was fun playing with the catapults. Pew pew!
Keep the heroes out!: Surprisingly great dungeon game alert! Woo woo woo! Ok.. so you are a monster species (I was those adorable little pink slimes) and you are trying to: 1. Keep the invading heroes from overwhelming you in the dungeon and 2. Satisfy the scenario's goal. In the scenario we played we had to summon little toads from the swamp tile and bring them to the witches cave tile. If the witch shows up and there is no frog there, she gets mad and summons in more bad.. uh.. good guys. So it looks like a straightforward dungeon game, but what I liked about it was that it was super straight forward combat that is over super fast (combat, to me, is the least interesting thing). Each race is asymmetrical so you can get some really cool synergies going between them. All the actions are easy and fast so the game moves at a super fast click. From knowing nothing when we sat down to play, to absolutely adoring it at the end is quite the feat. Excellent game.
Four humours: Last time I tried this game, I spaced out and didn't remember anything about it. This time when I found it I thought I would check it out again and give it a fair shake. I shouldn't have. It's a bidding game where the bidding is done blind until revealed. Each color has a rank so if you bid a certain color vs a certain color you may lo... I can't be bothered to go on. It's just not good.
Metrorunner: We played a full game of Metro Runner with the designer of the game. Quick rundown: You move around the board in a circular fashion. Each location has an action you can do. You collect little cubes to finish up missions. You can also do a "hack" and do a pipe game in the middle. I did not like this game.. Well, it's fine, but it has problems. First problem: If you suck at the pipe game you will cause an extreme slow down of the game to the point that there was 10 minutes between each of my turns and there were two other players who weren't good with pipes out of 5 players. Secondly, the circular motion around the board, can quickly be avoided by paying a credit to move anywhere. No-one used the circular motion after round 2. Why even have it? There are better cyberpunk games out there.
Portals: A game I had high hopes for as I am a big fan of Azul and Sagrada. So in this game you draft stones from two separate containers (use both or either) to place them on little drafted cards (the smaller ones in the middle) and when all the drafting is done, you transfer all stones from the finished cards onto a bigger personal card. The stones must stay in the same shape, but you can rotate the shape. If you manage to match the color of the stone to the color of the box on the card, you get a point. It had some interesting head twisty puzzle parts as you try to finagle the most points out of what you have drafted, but in the end.. it just wasn't super interesting. Azul does it so much better.
Post Office: So. Ok. Alright. First off this game broke my brain. Secondly look at that art. Adorable. So you are a post office worker who is tasked with sorting incoming mail. You will want to place the mail (the blue squares in the left) so it forms nice large chunks of the same type. But you can only place them in the row or column that your cat helper (the little standee) is on. And he moves 1 step each round. So you get two pieces of mail to fit into that one column. Great. None of them is the right type. But wait.. ok.. if you pay a stamp you can move him an extra step. that works! Those two pieces of mail will fit great now! But now you will want to tape those boxes together without covering the icons using the little tokens in the bottom right. Those are score multipliers. You can see how this game completely made me feel dumb as a piece of mail. Excellent.
Ogre Sandwich: A dumb stacking game with little to show for it. Avoid.
FOR SUPER EARTH!
Color Addict: Very simple card shedding game. You start with a stack of cards. You can play a card if the color of the word or the word itself matches. You win if your hand is empty first. It's a game, I guess?
Wormhole: I wrote about their game Dicey Devices a couple of years ago and thought it was pretty and had some good ideas, but I wasn't sold on it. This one, though, I am sold on. It's a tile placement game where you are trying to match colors to each other (the bigger the section is the more points you get), but if you accidentally (or on purpose) make a square a giant space worm crawls through and eats whoever is close by. It's in early stages still, but the theme and presentation is on point and I look forward to learning more about it.
Infiltrators: A really solid deduction game from Pandasaurus. In this game, you have a bunch of cards in your hand that has a color, a number, and a series of smaller numbers down the side. Each round starts off with one or two or all players getting an infiltrator in front of them that only they know what color and number it is. On your turn you can either play a card towards another player or yourself and then state if the card is true or false. Either the color or one of the smaller numbers must be true and same thing if you state that it's false. Eventually you will start to get an idea what the hidden infiltrator card is at in front of the other players and you can try to guess what that card is. All players have a total of 5 guesses before they fail. I think it was a super solid little deduction game!
Nocturne: You know.. I am not even gonna.. ok.. I'm gonna try. It's a bidding game with a bidding mechanic that is a puzzle at the same time. It's also a set collection game. And a hidden goal game. Also it has public goals. It's bewildering and overwhelming in the best way. I absolutely loved this game and I can not wait to play it again. Phenomenal.
Turnip: It's a whole game based on a really bad pun (turnip / turn up). It wasn't very interesting. Pass.
Borderlands: Arena of badassery: It's your standard dudes on a map shoot em up. If you can imagine how it works, that's how it works. It did nothing interesting or new. If you like Borderlands the video game, go play that instead. Or play Keep the Heroes out! instead.
Dinositters!: Absolutely adorable, super light, cozy game. You draft baby dinos into your play area. Place them next to other dinos with the same icon and generate happiness. Put little food pieces in there as well to generate more happiness. This was the cutest, most adorable, happiness generating game I've seen in a long time and I am here for it.
Malifaux: I have a long history of trying and disliking miniature games. I have tried most everything big out there and bounced off hard on them. The randomness of the dice rolls. The tedious measuring. The cost of the whole thing. Malifaux may have changed that. I had an absolute blast playing this game and it was all because they threw out dice and introduced a deck of cards. So there is still the measuring the movement which I am not a huge fan of, but once that's over it's just good times. When you try to do an action, you check your card of the mini and find the stat number (basically how good they are at something). You then flip a card from the deck, add the stat number to it and that's your score. Your opponent then flips a card, adds it to their defense number whomever number is larger wins. BUT! you can "cheat" and play a card from your hand which replaces your flipped card. Your opponent can also play a card if they really want to win. But you only have 6 cards in your hand, so you better think twice if you it's really worth winning that confrontation.
Battles are quick and tense with health pools in the single digits. Then the characters have some special powers that may kick in. All is laid out logically and easy to find on the character cards in front of you. No flipping through giant rule books. No tables to look up things. Everything flows really fast and easily. I may be a convert now.
Skyrockets: I thought it was a game about creating fireworks. It's not. It's a stress inducing card game where you are, as a team, trying to move one timer down a track while avoiding the other timers to run out. You do this by playing cards with the little colored dots on them. When you play a card, that timer flips over. It's all about timing and timers. If you like stress inducing games with high tension, this might be for you. For me, it was.. ok.
Ancient Knowledge: This is a couple of years old game from iello and we liked it a LOT. Let's start with the best bit of the game. Above your tableau you play cards from your hand. You can play two cards each turn or do some other actions like get more cards, remove bad things from cards, etc. Anyway! So you play a card above your timeline into a slot. You then place "knowledge" markers on that card. At the end of your turn, all your cards in your timeline will slide down one step. When they fall into obscurity (off the edge of your tableau), you will gain victory points for the card and minus vp for all the knowledge lost if there were any little knowledge markers left on it. You can also accumulate technologies and artifact that assist you with rescuing knowledge from the timeline cards and help you accumulate cards. It's a fairly straight forward game, with some deep, deep, strategic thinking of what and how you should play your cards into your timeline. I think it is a phenomenal game.
The expedition: Super easy, super fast, game. You explore the universe and leave little markers behind on planets. These markers form shapes that you will score points from, from your hidden goals. If you move away from a planet with your opponents marker on it, you remove it from the tableau. Some planets have little powers that can do special things such as "take an extra move" or "remove a marker adjacent to this planet" when you leave it. I thought it was a clever little game that takes about 5 minutes to play. 1 minute to set up and 1 minute to explain. Very solid game that knows what it is and doesn't try to be more.
Captain Flip: I was of two minds of this game. On one hand it's a clever little tile laying, tableau builder, that does some clever things. On the other hand, it seems aimed at younger kids, but it's just too hard for them as there is a lot to remember as you lay tiles down. The "flip" in title comes from the fact that each tile has two sides. You pull a tile out and look at one side. Either you put it down or you flip it and put that side down. The thing is that other tiles can flip previously laid down tiles so you have to remember what each tile does on both sides. So.. if it's for kids, it's too hard. If it's for older kids (like me) there's not enough meat on the bones there.
Everdell Duo: Didn't get to play this, but got a quick demo. It's a worker placement game that is based on the Everdell world. It seemed fine and competent, but there are a million of them out there and you should just play 7 wonders duel or Targi instead.
Ziggurat: The new game from Matt Leacock. Didn't play it myself, but got a quick demo of how it works. Couldn't be easier: On your turn, draw a card from a deck. That card tells you how far you can move as you are trying to get to the top of the ziggurat. Also on the card tells you if a sprite will spawn and in what color, or maybe a sprite moves. The players cooperatively are trying to get all of their dudes to the top of ziggurat, while avoiding the sprites. If anyone gets hit by a sprite you have to reset the game. It seemed... fine. Even though the game has unlocks with new rules and new enemies, the board never changes and the gameplay goal doesn't change. Maybe it's great, maybe it's maybelline. I'm leaning towards meh.
Hamster Roll: Fun little dexterity game where you are placing your pieces into the hamster wheel that rolls. The trick is that you have to place your piece higher than the previous piece. So eventually the wheel starts to toss pieces out. It's quite fun to try to balance your piece in a moving target, but it's a one note thing and for the price not enough game there.
Fairy Ring: The last game I played at the con was Fairy Ring. So each turn you place a mushroom into your yard. That mushroom card has both vp as well as a distance the fairy moves. So you place your card, move your fairy across all the players yards and where you end up will score both you and the card owner victory points. Try to mitigate other scoring off you and you giving up VP to them. It's very light and both me and my kid said it there wasn't enough interesting decisions. Granted it was just us two playing, so maybe it's better with more players.
All in all, a lot of games were just ok this year. The real stand outs for me was Ancient Knowledge, Sardegna and Malifaux which all had some great fresh gameplay and interesting decision making space in them. I did pick up a few games and some expansions, but there wasn't a ton that was too alluring so my wallet wasn't too bad off.
My shopping:
Thanks for reading! Until next year!
Awesome writeup!
Burncycle: I saw this last year, but never got around to trying it out. We got a short demo, so it might be better or worse than what I am writing here. First off, we Chip Theory's other big poker token game Too Many Bones and didn't like it at all. Burncycle seems much more interesting to me. It's a heist game where you are breaking into both a physical space as well as electronic space (like hacking) and have to balance the two so as not to be overwhelmed by the security forces. I liked the AI movement. I liked the powers. I liked the simple but effective way to activate the hacking area. It seems really neat. Maybe someone here can give some more information whether it's good or bad or excellent?
A friend picked up a copy of Burncycle the year it came out (funny story on him sniping a copy on the cheap in the GenCon consignment store). We've only played it once and it was interesting but hoo boy was it long for what it was. We did inadvertently end up playing one of the longer forms of a mission (two floors) so maybe a single floor would be better. My memory of the game is also a bit fuzzy as I was pretty tired when we played but we all agreed that it has a lot of good elements but too many things kept getting in the way of the fun.
Ziggurat: We watched this demoed a bit and wow did it look boring. The mechanics seemed so simple I wondered if there's even a game there? Didn't stick around to try it out ourselves.
Wandering Towers is a lot of fun, and it's even a little tiny bit spicier than you might expect for game with its theme and mechanics. Collective fun in trying to remember where your meeples are hiding at and lots of good fun messing with each other's plans as you move around the board. If you don't mind games with a little bit of a take that element it's a blast.
Nice to hear about Post Office! I really wanted to give it a demo but they weren't demoing on the show floor and I didn't feel like tracking it down. I actually have yet to try any ticketed events, it feels like a hassle and I don't want to buy general tickets that I might not ever use. Seems like more publishers are moving towards ticketed events for demos though which I don't love.
Yeah. You should start buying tickets to bgg’s hot room instead. Its basically a library stocked with nothing but the latest games released that year at gencon. We have attended the last three years after the vendor hall closes and its been a godsend to be able to actually play new titles.
Thanks for the writup on burn cycle. Chip theory’s games seem to be too fiddly and too unreliable to be up my alley.
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