Arizona Game Fair 2018

Arizona Game Fair happened last weekend, and I’m seriously still on a high from all the whirlwind weekend of gaming, hanging out with old friends and meeting more new ones. This is the second year of Arizona Game Fair, and I already can’t wait to see what’s in store for next year. Save the date, folks — March 29-31, 2019!

Gaming began on Thursday night at The Oak Room, a restaurant and bar behind the Mesa Convention Center, where people could pick up their badges before the con started on Friday. This restaurant is new within the past year, so it was a nice perk to have a late-night gaming location that served food and beer after the convention closed at 11 p.m. each night. I went there after work on Thursday and played Photosynthesis. This is the prettiest game that’s all kinds of mean! You’re building trees to score victory points, meanwhile the sun is moving around the board, and if you’re in the shade of another tree, then you cannot activate a location.

The convention then started on Friday, but I was unable to take time off work, so I headed there immediately after work instead. First up: Luna. This is a Stefan Feld game that’s new to me. I felt like it had elements of Trajan in terms of moving your meeples around the islands surrounding a temple. The main difference is that once you activated those meeples, you’re unable to use them again in the same round. You had to strategically use your meeples to get to the locations you wanted, in order to get abilities that maximize your moves.

I’m really surprised I haven’t had a chance to play Luna before as I’m surrounded by a bunch of Feld fanatics. I feel like Luna is an underrated Feld game, probably my No. 3 on his list. I was lucky to play this with Julie and Ken, folks I have gotten to know through Instagram but haven’t gotten to game with in real life. They’re super cool!

I then taught them Lorenzo, which they enjoyed. Such a great game, and I still can’t get enough of it.

Then I went to the Oak Game Room for late-night gaming again and busted out Mexica. In this game, you’re spending action points to build districts and drop your pyramids into those districts to gain victory points for area control. The pyramids are gorgeous, and the game just looks so great on table. But alas, I’m slightly spacially challenged when it comes to building out my districts, and you can totally block someone in a location by dropping said pyramids, which happened to me more than I liked.

Saturday started super early at 8:30 a.m. with Ginkgopolis. I’ve been interested in playing this game for a while but didn’t actually know anyone who owned it. Luckily, there was an “unofficial” game schedule thread on BGG, and I was able to sign up for this game. There’s also an official game schedule on the Arizona Game Fair site, so conventiongoers have two options for their gaming needs.

At first glance, Ginkgopolis looked like Quadropolis, with tiles and pieces on it, but it’s so much more! It’s about urbanizing the board, building up, managing your resources, card drafting with multi-use cards (which I love) and area control. So, so many things! What a great game! Now I totally want a copy, but I’m sure I’ll have to shell out a lot of money to get a copy.

I then played Gaia Project with a friend who came down from Las Vegas to game at the event with his gaming group. First off, I love, love Terra Mystica, so I had to remind myself to come into this game with an open mind, as folks on the internet have said that Gaia totally will replace Terra Mystica. Let’s see …

The games are definitely similar, but with a space theme and plastic miniatures for the board. I really enjoyed having a resource track and not bothering with cardboard bits. The technology tracks, however, seemed easier to go up and provided a whole bunch of other powers, effectively changing game play and possibly forcing players to specialize. It’s definitely good, but my heart still belongs to Terra Mystica. I am, however, trying to convince one of the gamer guys in my group to get it, as I would like to play it again.

I then ran into The Game Boy Geek and we had about an hour before our panel, so he taught me his most favorite game ever: Baseball Highlights: 2045. What a neat deckbuilding game! You’re drafting cards into your hand, and there’s three types of players: naturals, robots and cyborgs. Within each card, there are effects that take place immediately and things that are coming up. So, you go back and forth in this two-player game, trying to score runs and win a game. A full game is the first to win four games. I won one game, and Dan won the rest. He said though that he plays this game so much that me not getting swept was something to be proud of. I like the high-quality cards of this game, and I got to play the LA Team. Go, Dodger Blue!

Next up was our panel, “So you want to be a board game reviewer?” Speaking was Heavy Cardboard, The Game Boy Geek, Board Game Corner, GloryHoundd, Unfilteredgamer and myself. How lucky am I to be with such heavy hitters? (Total fangirling out.) We did an hourlong panel where members of the audience asked questions about how to start reviewing board games. The takeaways for the panel (which I believe Heavy Cardboard videotaped and I’ll pop in here when it goes live) is to make sure board games are your passion, just start creating content and don’t be afraid to fail. It was such a great experience for myself, even though I was totally nervous speaking in front of folks. But don’t tell anyone I said that.

After our panel, a bunch of us went to dinner at the amazing Blue Adobe Grill in Mesa. If you’re ever in the area, this place is so yum! It was great hanging out with these guys and picking their brains about the industry and content creating.

After dinner, The Game Boy Geek, Brian Frahm, a few others and I did some prototyping with David Short. We played two games of a roll-and-write that David is working on, and it was a neat experience to talk with other gamers about the game and see the designer himself make notes about things that were raised. Can’t wait to see the final product!

By now, Saturday was wrapping up, and guess where I ended up? Yep, back to The Oak Room. It was getting late, so we busted out some Azul. Still love playing Azul, though one of the guys suggested that I get a second bag so that the tiles that get tossed into the box can go directly into the second bag, and game play can continue pretty quickly when the tiles run out. Brilliant!!

Sunday morning was supposed to start with a 9 a.m. game of Dinosaur Island. Two of us in the game found each other, but no dinos were to be found! Alas! I managed to squeeze into @idontknowrules‘ game of Arkwright, as they had an opening, and my morning was excellent. That game is soooo brain burnery! Enough so that I need a small notebook to calculate my money and price my goods. Such a great game.

We then played a game of London and managed to not rack up the most poverty. The other gamer who did ended up losing 22 points at the end. Ouch.

Lastly, I got a chance to catch up with Paul Dean of Shut Up and Sit Down. I’ve chatted with Paul at previous BGG Cons, but this is the first time I’ve sat down with him for an interview. We talk about his experience at Arizona Game Fair, his favorite thing he did at the event, the board game industry, and how his gaming tastes have changed, among other things.

And just like that, Arizona Game Fair came and went. I had a wonderful time, and I can’t wait to do it again next year. The venue will be twice as big, and it’ll be all in the same space. This year, it was spread out in between two buildings, which wasn’t bad either since gamers were able to enjoy some sunshine during the quick walk to the other building. For those living on the East Coast, look at the wonderful weather Arizona has to offer during this time. And in case you missed it, I was interviewed about the Arizona Game Fair on the radio at KJZZ.