Recap of Strategicon: Gamex 2016

Strategicon holds its board-game convention three times a year in LA. I had so much fun the last two times I went (at Gateway and OrcCon) that my friend and I decided to make the trek west again.

Over the span of the 3 days I was there, I played 12 games, one that lasted 11 hours. (We left early Monday but the con continued until late that afternoon). It was a great mix of personal favorites and learning a whole bunch of new ones. Brace yourself, folks, there’s a lot of photos ahead …

The first game I learned and played was 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis. The description said this game is  just like Twilight Struggle but it lasts about one hour, vs. about 3-4 hours. It’s a 2-player card-driven area-control game where the U.S. and U.S.S.R are trying to push the other to the brink of nuclear war, without actually triggering it. It’s a tense game, and I’m totally looking forward to this when it’s released.

The next game I learned to play was Thurn and Taxis, which is an older game by board-game standards. Released in 2006, players are trying to connect routes of at least 3 cities to score victory points. When you claim a route, you move onto a larger route adding one more city. Players can also put post offices on the map to score VPs. It’s a step up from Ticket to Ride and I had a great time playing it.

Next up was Carson City. It was a little hard for me to grasp this game; I seriously had no idea what I was doing until it was nearly over, and the game ended quickly in four rounds. Each player picks a role for the round (which I thought was a neat element), and you take actions by placing your worker along action spaces that resolves in a certain direction. You are trying to gain victory points for plots of land, pistols and buildings. The other interesting element is that you can duel each other for an action space (it is the Wild West, after all!) and if you lose duels, your players remain with you, and you technically are stronger in future rounds. By the time I realized that I should’ve been cashing in on victory points, it was too late and I didn’t do so well in the game.

The last game of Friday was Eldritch Horror. I love all the games in the Lovecraft universe, games such as Arkham Horror. I hardly ever get to play Eldritch since Arkham is the game of choice for one of my gaming groups.

Anyway, my head just about exploded as the guy hosting the game had all the character miniatures! So freaking cool! It was a 4-player game, which was optimal since only one gate opened per round. In the Eldritch game a table over, they were playing with 5 players, which opened 2 gates per round. We worked hard to to defeat Shub Niggurath in a little over 4 hours (2 players were new to the game).

Saturday was the day I had been looking forward to for months! It was Mega Civilization day! My friend played the game last time and loved it so much that he hunted down a copy from Canada.  I got a primer from him on how to play the game as our game was slated for 14 hours! Only 10 people ended up playing, and the game (with 2 meal breaks) lasted 11 hours. It was amazing!

The goal of the game is to expand your population, build cities and gain enough money to purchase technology cards. Sounds simple, right? It technically is, but there’s a lot that can be going on at the same time. You’re battling for space on this giant map, cities can be fought over between players, and calamities can wipe out your forces. One big element of the game is a timed trading round, in which you trade goods with other players in order to collect sets of cards and trade them in for technologies.

During this trading, you must trade at least 3 cards, 2 of which you have to be honest about. The third card can be whatever, which is where minor and major calamities come in. There are some awful cards out there that can decimate all the progress you’ve done with your civilization. As you purchase more technology cards, you can mitigate some of these awful effects.

The game ends when a player satisfies all the requirements to move along the Archeological Succession Table (AST). Each time period requires a certain number of cities and/or technology to progress; if you don’t have it, you stay where you’re at on the table.

When the end of the game is triggered, victory points are added up, and the person with the most wins the game. This game was so epic; I’m totally addicted and want to play again next time. Hopefully, we can set up a game here in Phoenix.

After ending Mega Civilization a few hours early, I was able to game with Ruel Gaviola from islaythedragon.com, who I’ve talked to on Twitter but just met in real life at this convention. We played a quick game of Quadropolis and had a great time chatting about games and our similar backgrounds.

Lastly on Saturday, I played Survive: Escape from Atlantis and Lords of Waterdeep: Scoundrels of Skullport with folks I had played with during Mega Civilization. It felt good to play something light and familiar after such a long day of gaming. We all really enjoyed the Waterdeep expansion, playing with the corruption skulls.

On Sunday, I slept in and had brunch at the beach with my old college roommate. I got some sun after being cooped up inside for two days straight. But I quickly returned to the hotel to play Manila. I actually purchased this game, in honor of the Motherland, but have yet to get it on table. This game is a riot! There was a lot of yelling and betting. The point of the game is to gain the most pesos.

Players first bet to become harbor master, who then decides which 3 of 4 goods go on a boat. Then payers can bet on which boats will return to Manila and which boats get damaged. Players can also manipulate a boat’s placement or choose to be pirates and plunder a boat. Boat movement is determined by a dice roll; three rolls ends a round. The stock whose boat first makes it to Manila go up in price, and play continues until one stock is worth 30 pesos. Players also have random shares in those stocks. Seriously, so much fun.

I then played a 2-player game of Seasons as I had 90 minutes to kill before my next scheduled game. I’m such a sucker for these large colorful dice! Game play went pretty quickly with two players. I’m still not familiar with all the cards so I didn’t do as well. I seriously need to get this on table more often. I have no excuse really as this game is available at one of my biweekly gaming groups.

I returned Seasons to the Strategicon game library. I took some photos of the signs that were hanging up in the room. This is a pretty clever way to help people select a game. Such a great idea!

Sunday night I learned to play Bruges, designed by Stefan Feld of Trajan fame. I really enjoyed playing this game! It plays in a little over an hour.

Four people are collecting character cards, from which you can gain workers, gain money, remove a threat, build a house or hire a character. Every card can be used for the same actions, but the color of the card determines what you can do, i.e. to to gain blue workers to build a blue house, you need to play a blue card. There is deck management as well, as you draw up to five cards and play four cards (for the most part) in a round. In the end, you count up victory points from your characters, houses and canals to win the game.

I ended Sunday night with an impromptu game of Terra Mystica, one of my favorite games! I randomly found myself playing another game with two guys I had played Bruges with, and we started the game at 11 p.m. I thought it was going to be a long night, but we went through the game pretty quickly and finished it at a record-breaking page of 2 hours and 15 minutes. I have NEVER played this game with my gamer guys back home this quickly, even with only four players. These guys were on point and knew exactly what to do. So fun to end the convention with a personal favorite.

And that’s a recap of all the gaming I did at Gamex 2016. For those who made it all the way down here, thanks for reading! One big change about this convention was that no outside food was allowed inside gaming areas. This was surprising to me as I’ve been to other gaming conventions and no other hotel had ever had a mandate like that. My friend and I ended up driving back early to Phoenix so we didn’t get any gaming in on Monday. We both had so much fun during the convention and hope to make it back in September!