RinCon 2024: The Expanse, Salton Sea, Raising Robots

The following weekend after SDHistCon, my husband and I drove to Tucson for RinCon to game. This convention happened a little later than its usual late-September time slot, so, for the first time ever, I had two back-to-back weekend conventions to attend. I powered through because I love attending this convention every year. It’s so chill and friendly, a nice respite after a hectic few weeks. And this year it was held at the Casino Del Sol for the second year in a row. The casino has a great gaming space, and there’s a hotel attached to it, with lots of food options. Very convenient! 

Friday 

We arrived in Tucson late Friday afternoon and the first game I played was The Expanse. This has been on my to-play list for a while ever since Candice Harris spoke highly of the game during an appearance I made on her BGG podcast where we discussed our favorite games based on TV shows. 

The Expanse is a card-driven game where players are working to control sectors of outer space. You can take a card from the market either for an event you’re eligible for or for its action points. The game feels very similar to Pax Pamir and a mini-COIN, such as some cards benefit you and not others. The game is a tense area control, but it plays in just about an hour. The person who is in last place during each scoring card will get access to the Rocinante, which can assist with area control. I was such a huge fan of the show and was super excited to see this game out in the wild as it’s out of print.

I then stopped by Dan Rice’s latest game, Trailblazer: The Arizona Trail, on display for demos and it’s currently on preorder. The game is just gorgeous, with its Southwest colors and desert animal miniatures. I haven’t had a chance to play this yet, but will make plans to do so with Dan after the holidays. 

Next up was a quick game of Penguin Party, a Reiner Knizia card game that I purchased in Japan. You are dealt a hand of very cute colorful penguin cards, and players are trying to empty out their hand by playing one card at a time in a pyramid formation on the table. The bottom row doesn’t have any restrictions for color placement — just a fixed number of cards, depending on the player count — but in subsequent rows above that, the card total gets smaller (like a pyramid) and the penguin card you play needs to have a matching color in one of its bases as it straddles two cards underneath. These Japanese penguins love to smoke, drink and party, as evidenced by the artwork on these cards. The U.S. version showcases more PG aquatic birds. 

I then played the card game Regicide where players are working together to take down the monarchy. Players have to use their cards to take down a stack of 12 monarchs who have a set number of hit points and get increasingly harder. The monarchs need to be defeated before the stack of cards runs out. And each suit (four, like a standard deck) has a different ability that makes this card game a tricky puzzle! We, unfortunately, did not win. 

The last game of Friday night was Arcs, which I taught a 4P game of. At that point, I had taught a game of it every weekend for the past four weeks, and each game has been such an enjoyable experience! I love the card play, which leads you down a specific set of actions following the leader, or you can take a single action with a different suited card you play.

Timing is key — as well as a useful set of cards — when seizing the initiative so that you can declare ambition, which are end-of-chapter goals that will score only when they’ve been declared. But be careful when declaring ambitions, as people will most definitely steal your resource tokens to get the majorities. I also love making decisions which battle dice to use. Do I go for the safe, yet lease-destructive choice, or go all out at the risk of suffering blowback? One thing’s for sure, if you go the safe route, there will be friendly teasing around the game table about being a chicken! 

Saturday

The next morning, Chris and I woke up early to play in the Shobu tournament. It’s an abstract two-player game in which there are two boards facing each player (a light board and a dark board) with black and white stones on them, and you’re trying to maneuver the stones so that your opponent gets completely knocked off on one board. 

Your turn is in two phases: the first phase is the passive phase in which you move one of your stones on your board, and then in the next phase, the active phase, the same exact move is replicated on the opposite colored board, either yours or your opponents. The game is easy to learn but setting up pieces to knock off your opponent requires some careful planning and strategy. Chris ended up in second place for the tournament and took home a copy of the game. I, too, took home a copy of the game, as the top four players received a game. Yeah, only four gamers showed up that morning, but we are all winners here. Nope, I will not be taking any questions, thank you.

I then taught and ran a 4P game of White Castle in the awesome women’s space. The Women’s Space is a relaxed and inclusive gaming, teaching and social environment for those who identify as female. It’s run by the wonderful Mari, and she works hard at each convention to make the space so awesome. 

White Castle is a game of resource management, where you use the dice that are rolled at the start of the game to carry out actions on the main board and player board. You technically only do nine actions throughout the game – so a majority of it is spent making those combos to do more than one thing with the limited resources you have. It’s a crunchy euro, and I think the four ladies at my table enjoyed their game. 

I then played a 2P game of TransAmerica, a simple rail game that my husband owns but I have never played. You’re trying to connect your cities across America on your objective cards by placing two rails, or one rail across difficult terrain. It becomes tricky because you don’t want to inadvertently make it easier for your opponent to reach their destination. It’s a quick race across the country! 

We then played a 3P game of Salton Sea. I picked up this game from a local game store right before the convention. The Salton Sea is a real and very unique body of water located in California near the border with Mexico. As a toddler in LA, my family and I used to take day trips to the Salton Sea to picnic and go fishing for tilapia. In this game, players are drilling to extract geothermal energy and lithium, and selling them to companies and completing contracts. The game packs a lot into a tiny box, as per usual for many Devir games. 

The last game of Saturday that we played was The Fox Experiment, which I also covered on The Five By Episode 147. I love how this game is rooted in a real-life Russian experiment to domesticate foxes. In this game, you’re breeding five generations of foxes with the friendliest attributes. Those fox pups then seed the next generation’s set of parents, eventually producing friendlier and cuter foxes.

The game is so fun with all the dice chucking, the dice representing fox traits, and did I mention that you can name these new fox pups? Chris’ fox is, unfortunately, having an existential crisis. 

During our game was when the Saturday night Eegee’s snack happened. Oh man, I love this stuff. Eegee’s is a Tucson chain that sells creamy icy treats in lots of yummy flavors. The flavor of the month was Cherry Cider, and it was delectable. 

Sunday

Sunday morning started with another game of The Fox Experiment, but this time in the women’s space. Thanks to the four ladies who showed up for that morning game!

After another quick game of Penguin Party, David Short arrived and taught us a 4P game of Raising Robots. What a delightful engine-building card game, with just the most adorable artwork! You’re a young famous inventor who is studying in their classes to get good grades and assemble robots.

The game is an equal mix of Wingspan and Race for the Galaxy, where you’re building robots into a tableau and can potentially activate them in a combo-tastic manner. During each turn, you get to choose two action phases you’d like to activate – as well how strong you want them to be, based on your energy cards in play. If someone chooses an action that places energy cubes on that action phase. You then all simultaneously activate action phases that apply to you in order to gain resources, build robots, activate robots, or upgrade your personal board. 

I then stopped by to say hello to Emily Vincent, designer of Pirates of the High Teas and Knitting Circle. I met her earlier this year at Phoenix Fan Fusion where she did a panel on how to get your games published. I’m very excited to try Knitting Circle!

The last game I played was the prototype Festoon. When bees are creating honeycomb, they connect their legs together to form a chain, called a festoon, and players are competing to be the first to form one. I had met one of the designers, Daniel Dutra, earlier this year as well when this game was part of his senior project at ASU.

And then it was time to go back home! Rincon was short and sweet, but after a chaotic few weeks before that, it was so lovely to chill in a very inclusive and friendly gaming space and play a few games with Tucson friends and others. It was the perfect way to end my year of convention travel.