I don’t play too many monster-themed board games. Unless it’s in the Cthulhu world, and even then I’m referring strictly to Arkham Horror or Cthulhu Wars, monster games don’t usually draw me in. That is … until Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein by Plaid Hat Games. This worker placement game is strategic and fun, and, surprisingly, oozes with a unique theme that even a sometimes curmudgeonly eurogamer like me can appreciate.
In Abomination, scientists are working in Paris to “collect” muscles, organs, blood and bone, and the occasional animal part when really, really needed it. And I say “collect,” because what you’re really doing is raiding hospitals, morgues, cemeteries and other suspicious Parisian locations for the freshest cadaver parts required to create your very own monster!
The board features locations across Paris where you can collect cadavers, atone or do research, which will help you gain expertise and make better creatures.
Each player comes with a player board to place your resources, and three dials that keep track of your humanity, reputation and expertise. They also get a character card, which gives you variable player abilities, as well as two assistants and one scientist meeples. Later in the game, as your reputation increases, you can add an additional assistant, and you can trade them out for scientists, too.
The player board features dials, which are various tracks that will give or take VPs, as well as other benefits.
Acquiring more scientists is important because locations on the board have placement restrictions and they show which type of meeple will activate that location. Some are either/or, but the majority of them are reserved for scientists. If you don’t have an available scientist during the round, you cannot place your meeple there. Also, some locations give you more benefits if you place your scientist there instead of your assistant.
Abomination goes for 12 rounds, with four phases each round. At the start of each round, the event phase happens, and the first player draws from a deck filled with events or encounters for the round. The city phase is when players place their meeples one at a time on the player board. In addition to locations to find cadavers, there are also places where you can work for money, gain expertise or reputation, buy and sell items at the market, or hire some questionable characters to acquire some resources.
Abomination plays for 12 rounds, with an event or encounter happening each round.
In most eurogames, when a meeple is placed at a location, that location is closed to the rest of the players for the round. This isn’t the case for Abomination. Players can pay money to bump a meeple, so that the location will be available for them to use. There are only three meeples that can be bumped in each round, and those meeples go to the bump track at the bottom of the board. The bumpee pays the person who is being bumped 1 franc (or 2 francs if it’s the third and last bump in the round) to go there (or pay nothing if you’re bumping yourself). There is a lot of bumping that goes on in the middle of the night.
Bump, bump, bumpity bump. Such a fun mechanism!
Lastly, the person who took the first-player spot can place that meeple can make a legal move to an open location. We always call this mechanism the Waterdeep move (because in Lords of Waterdeep, there are meeples that get to move after everyone has taken their turn.). The person who took the first-player spot cannot be bumped during the round.
When everyone passes or have no more legal moves to make, the lab phase occurs. This is when people turn in their resources to make body parts, according to the resource and expertise requirements. Complicated body parts like the head require more expertise than say an arm. You gain VPs based on the decomposition of the body parts, as well as 1 expertise.
If you time it correctly, you can actually gain the expertise and VPs by building body parts in a certain order, so that you can meet the next expertise threshold. Super neat! Players can also complete a monster part, which involves collecting blood in addition to body parts, by flipping over their body part from the muscle side to the skin side up.
These are the requirements to start a monster part. The head needs the most expertise of course.
Players can also throw the switch to shock their monster to life, but they also run the risk of inflicting damage, which can degrade your body part if you have enough of it. The dice rolls are this stage in the round can be a little punishing, but there are research cards you can gain at the Academy location that can mitigate the dice effects. Plus, gaining expertise will give you the option to use the more favorable blue dice.
When you’re ready to throw the switch, you roll 2 dice per Leyden jar you have charged.
The last phase of the round is the reset phase. This part, in my opinion, features the most clever mechanism of the game. On your player board, when you find a cadaver, the cadaver card will give players either expertise or body parts. If you go to the hospital, you will receive Stage I or Stage II body parts; if you go to the cemetery, you’ll get less fresh parts, more likely Stage III or Stage IV parts.
These are a few examples of cadavers and the body parts you’ll get for them. Or you can forgo body parts and move up in expertise, which is the brain symbol.
During the reset phase, after you’ve built your body parts for the round, all your unused body parts will decompose one stage. This timing element is important because when you build body parts with less-fresh body parts, you will net fewer VPs. If you haven’t used your body parts by Stage IV (or preserved your materials from the lab phase), they you lose them. You can purchase ice from the Market to stop the decay though. The reset phase also wipes cards on the board for new ones and moves the round marker forward.
The VPs you receive when you build a monster part depends on the resources’ state of decomposition. The fresher, the more VPs.
Abomination is great for horror fans and heavier gamers alike. Even though the box says 60-120 minutes, I cannot imagine ever getting through a game in under two hours. The 12 rounds take a while — even though there are events or cards that can move the round marker meeple forward — and there are a lot of difficult decisions to make, with decomposition creeping up on you.
I love the variety of locations on the board, including the Dark Alley, where you’ll get the freshest body parts — and a lot of them — for the dark price of some of your humanity. You can always visit Saint-Roch to atone though, but if you murder too many times, well, you’re irredeemable because the humanity dial locks you into that super negative space, and you lose a lot of VPs in the end. The events and encounters keep the rounds different, and the objectives also help factor into the decisions you make in the game.
I love the diversity in the cast of characters, even on the box cover!
The artwork in Abomination is gothicly interesting, and I appreciate the diversity in the cast of characters, even if it can be a bit too morbid for some folks. The game is not light by any means, so you’ll need to devote some time to playing it. The game really comes alive as people start assembling their monsters, which takes a few rounds to get going, and hopefully your creature is alive at the end as well!
Thanks Plaid Hat Games for sending me a copy of this game!
Do you like wargames, whether COINs or the hex-and-counter variety? Well, you need to come down to Consimworld! This 8-day wargaming convention happens every year in Tempe, Arizona, literally in my very own backyard. I love attending this convention every year it allows me to play some games that normally wouldn’t come out at other conventions, plus I get to hang out with some of the wargaming legends!
Look at all that cardboard, plexiglass and chits! Gaming is officially underway.
Consimworld was June 22-29. Sorry for the delay of this post; it’s been a whirlwind few weeks. Consimworld is located at Tempe Mission Palms, and the location is so convenient. You don’t need a car as the hotel provides a shuttle to the airport, or you can take the light rail to it. The best part too is that there are plenty of food options in walking distance. (I’m giving a lot of other conventions the side-eye here.)
I arrived on Day 1 and learned to play Maria with my buddy Dan flew into town from Milwaukee. This 3P game is so freakin’ awesome! It’s set during the War of the Austrian Succession. One player is Austria, the second player is France and Bavaria, and the third plays as Prussia and the Pragmatic Army. Each army has their own set of cards, and armies battle each other based on the suit of the location they’re fighting from. You have to manage your card hand, as well as ensuring your troops are still within range from their supply line. I really want to get a copy of this game!
Maria is such a great game! It’s a 3P wargame, where battles are resolved based on the suited cards your hand and which suitted terrain you’re sitting on.
Dan then showed me his game that’s he’s working on. It’s an Age of Sails wargame that plays in about 2-3 hours set during the Battle of Virginia Capes, a crucial naval battle during the American Revolutionary War. One player plays as the French, and the other as the British, and they move and position their boats along a checkered board (in accordance with the wind direction), and they take turns battling each other. You then both secretly decide which order your ships will fire, and you roll dice to fire upon your enemy.
Dan always has the fanciest prototypes! Here are the ships battling each other out at sea.
Hit points are marked on individual boat cards and designated to an area on your boat based on your opponent’s directive, which makes for interesting player decisions of how to allocate damage. If your boat can no longer move, then it’s removed from the game. The French are trying to last 12 rounds — which killing British ships shortens the game — while the British are trying to move up a track by destroying French ships. The game was tense and super fun, and I liked being able to allocate where on my enemy’s boat they should mark the damage. (It’s like a wargame roll-and-write!) I’m crossing my fingers that it gets picked up by a publisher.
Dan created these ship cards that you mark you hit points on with a dry-erase pen. If your ship can no longer move, it’s out of the game.
Next up was Fire in the Lake. The last time I played Fire in the Lake was at last year’s Consimworld. Man, I was so rusty! And the last few times I had played as the NVA (because I like red), but this time, I played as the VC for the first time, and it took me a bit to start terrorizing and spreading out my VC guerrillas. This game lasted way late into the night, and we had to call it. It looked like the Americans were winning.
Fire in the Lake has the most vibrant board and is one of my favorite COIN games.
Day 2 began early by cracking open Gandhi. Fire in the Lake ended so late on Saturday night that it was a quick turnaround for a 9 a.m. game of Gandhi, one I had briefly looked over the rulebook, but luckily another player read the rulebook as well, and we all decided it was going to be a learning game that morning.
Gandhi is the latest COIN game from GMT Games.
I had been excited to see how a nonviolent factions play out for a COIN, and was equally surprised to see that two of the factions do not have any currency. The British Raj’s actions are tied to the Restraint track, and the Revolutionaries’ actions costs resources. I played as the British and particularly liked being able to affect how much my actions cost. I plan to write more about this after a few more games under my belt. All I can say is this: Gandhi is a great COIN and seems more accessible than the other ones. Here’s me playing Gandhi:
— Harold Buchanan 🔜 Gen Con (@HBuchanan2) June 23, 2019
I then played the first of many games of Pax Pamir (second edition) this convention. Oh. My. Goodness. Love at first play! I’ve played Pax Porfiriana and Pax Renaissance before, and while I enjoyed both of them a lot, the game ALWAYS seemed to take so much longer to explain than the actual game itself. And especially with Pax Porfiriana, it was difficult to visualize and keep track of who is dominating what.
Look at these amazing components! Pax Pamir is really well done.
That’s not the case with this second edition of Pax Pamir. The added map and individual player dials make this game much, much easier to see which faction is dominating. The components are gorgeous, and each game I’ve played of this has been different. There are just so many cards, and I ended up playing this game two more times during the course of the convention. I played it as a 3P and as a 5P. I think Pax Pamir plays best at 4P, even though I did end up winning my 5P game.
I absolutely cannot get enough of Pax Pamir! I wish I owned a copy of this game.
Saturday night ended with another awesome game of Battlestar Galactica. This is the second year in a row I’ve played with Dan, Mike, Harold and Jordan. We even got Kurt into the mix! These guys are always so much fun! I became a cylon sympathizer during sleeper, and despite two cylons and me as the sympathizer, we still lost to those awful humans. The worst!
These guys are so much fun! I look forward to avenging my loss next year!
I took a day off on Day 3 since it was a Monday. I played a quick game of Sekigahara, and by quick it was about 2 hours. The game continued through all seven weeks and came down to victory points. I love this game so much!
My favorite part of Sekigahara is the hidden info of which armies are going toward you.
I then played my other two games of Pax Pamir at the various player counts. I then got a chance to play Rococo. It’s a shame that this game isn’t more widely available! It’s a deckbuilder about making dresses. Players collect materials at various locations on the board, and ultimately, it’s an area control game in regards to where you display your dresses and coats. The game plays out over seven rounds.
Making dresses in Rococo can be cut-throat!
In the middle of Rococo was the welcome ceremony. John Kranz took time to welcome everyone and give expo updates. Altogether, over 350 people had signed up, with more than 60 newcomers. Very cool! He also highlighted those who came from afar — some as far as the Philippines and Bahrain! That’s super neat to see people travel for all the wargames!
Everyone’s all gathered! John Kranz likes to give updates about the convention, and there’s a giant raffle at the end of this meeting as well!
One slide featured a nice tribute to my buddy Tom Wells. I miss gaming with him; there was never a dull moment gaming with him.
I finished Monday night with another tense game of Maria! My buddy Mark and I did better this time, but Dan still beat us. (It’s one of his favorite games, after all.)
Dan and Mark are too much fun! Dan and I are heading to SD Historical Con in November. I’m looking forward to that!
The rest of the week I worked during the day but I stopped by afterwards to get in a game or two. On Tuesday night, I got a chance to play a prototype of Barrage. What a clever eurogame with very specific spatial and timing quality to it! You are all companies trying to harness the power of water to get electricity. You have to build dams, conductors and power factories on this hill so that you can capture that energy as water flows down.
There’s an intricate network of how things need to be powered, and when you spend resources to build your buildings, they’re locked up on this wheel on your personal board, and they can only become available to you again when you build more buildings, which you probably won’t be able to do since your resources are tied up in this wheel! What a dilemma! You can, however, spend actions on this main board to move that wheel along. The main board is where the majority of the worker placement happens.
Stuff rolls downhill! Here are are trying to harness the power of water, and hoping someone’s dam doesn’t get in your damn way.
Each player has a team of engineers, and you can allocate however many you want to an action spot when it’s your turn. Players take turns placing their engineers until they’re have no more workers and must pass. So you need to manage your pool of engineers with the actions you want to do, while also trying to complete objectives during each round. Lastly, the last piece of the puzzle is that water isn’t always available each round. It will flow according to the cards drawn, and if someone else’s dam blocks water flow to your buildings, well, that’s a damn shame.
On Wednesday, I fangirled sooooooo hard. I got a chance to sit in as the awesome Mark Herman taught one of his games, Pericles: The Peloponnesian War to John Butterfield, Nick Karp and Bruce. They all go way back to Victory Games, and it was like being among the wargaming legends.
Here’s me being chill, even though I’m fangirling so hard inside.
Mark taught one round of Pericles, and I jumped into a second round, (holding my own I might add!) and pushing the Demogogues forward. It was great hanging out with them and hearing about old industry stories. Also, achievement unlocked below: my dinosaur dress got into a C3i report!
The last night I attended Consimworld, I played Root twice, first with Kurt and Jordan, and then we picked up a fourth player for our second game. Kurt LOVES, LOVES Root (and if you want to be highly entertained, next time you see Kurt at a convention, ask him about COIN games.)
Our first game of Root that evening. I won as the cats!
And just like that, an entire week of wargaming ended. I always have such a great time at Consimworld, and I always feel included among all the gamers here. That said, I’d love to see more younger folks here, especially more women and people of color. If you’re interested in these types of games, please let me know and maybe we can schedule something special for next year. I’d love a chance to teach some of these heavy games! Save the date: next year’s convention will be June 6-13, 2020. You’ll find me in the back with some giant tweezers pushing some cardboard chits.
Thanks for having me, Consimworld! Can’t wait until next year’s con!
Sekigahara has been on my wishlist for a while, and I couldn’t have been more ecstatic when I saw this at game for $30 at a recent Arizona Game Fair flea market — unstickered!
Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan is a 2-player game published by GMT Games in 2011. According to the description, “the battle of Sekigahara, fought in 1600 at a crossroads in Japan, unified that nation under the Tokugawa family for more than 250 years. Sekigahara allows you to re-contest that war as Ishida Mitsunari, defender of a child heir, or Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan’s most powerful daimyo (feudal lord).”
Sekigaha plays out for seven weeks, with each week consisting two movement and battle phases for each player. The game comes with 119 wooden pieces, which you’ll need to sticker yourself. There is a lot of stickering. But it isn’t too bad as the wooden pieces are substantial and it’s not too hard to align the stickers with the edge. Mitsunari’s forces are yellow, while Ieyasu’s forces are black.
Stickering took some time, and I thought I had lost one sticker but I accidentally placed it on a second side of one block. This is what happens when you’re up late stickering. Friends don’t let friends sticker after midnight.
Sekigahara also comes with 110 cards as each player has their own deck to draw from. Lastly, there’s a mounted map, rulebook and a handy-dancy player aid for each person. The game isn’t difficult to learn compared to other wargames, as the rulebook is well written.
The game lasts about 3 hours, but the time goes by quickly because there’s little downtime, as there is constant movement on the board, and you’re always strategizing your next move.
In a nutshell, Sekigara is a card-driven wargame that involves blocks on the board, which represent a unit that warriors that correspond to a daimyo You are marching your forces across Japan to defeat your opponent’s leader, and using cards in your hands to deploy warriors and inflict war casualties. The cards are suited, and their symbol must match the daimyo warrior block you’re deploying.
This is the setup for Sekigahara. Starting blocks have a symbol for their starting position on the board, and a few random blocks drawn from a bag are added to various locations.
The coolest thing about this game is the hidden information. Your warrior blocks are facing toward you; and your opponent’s blocks toward them. You can see a giant formation of blocks marching toward you, but you don’t always know how strong the warriors are who are coming down to attack you and which leaders accompany them.
At the start of each week, players must play a card to bid for turn order. If your card has the highest number, you get to decide if you want to go first or second in each phase. Turn order stays the same throughout the week.
When it’s your turn, if you play zero cards, you can discard any number of cards and redraw from your deck, or you can move exactly one stack. If you discard one card, you can move three stacks. If you discard two cards, you can move all your stacks. Additionally, you can muster blocks from your recruitment box in place of a stack movement. The recruitment box is filled with a specific number of blocks at the start of each round, and they just sit there until they’re recruited.
Decisions, decisions! The cards in your hand are used for movement and battle.
Cards also come into play during the movement phase. Each stack has a base movement of one space. Highways; leadership from a leader, castle or capital; and a force march from discarding a card will give you movement bonuses, while the size of your stack will negatively affect your movement total. The larger the army, the slower they’ll move. And to get a leader bonus, you’ll actually have to show a leader from your stack, which can make for some revealing moments. When you enter a space with your opponent’s blocks, the movement stops. If you have four times as many forces than they do, their block is overrun and it gets removed from the game. Otherwise, battle occurs.
When players battle, the attacker deploys the first block by playing a card with the matching symbol. Initiative is calculated based on the number of symbols, plus bonuses for matching special attack symbols as well as matching the symbols from previous blocks deployed in this battle. The losing side holds initiative then and keeps playing cards to deploy blocks until they take the initiative lead. There are also Loyalty cards that can be played as an interrupt, and if the recipient doesn’t show a card with the matching symbol, the impact for that block gets calculated for the other side.
The battle continues until one side declines further deployments. The impact is then calculated. For every 7 points worth of impact, the opponent removes one block from the game. And the losing side also removes one block. For every two blocks removed, that side gains 1 card. Both players then redraw for every card used in battle.
These are some cards I used in a battle. The one with the double symbol allows you to deploy two blocks, with impact resolved for each block individually.
When the two phases are done, the week ends and the reinforcement phase begins. Players discard half of their cards, draw five cards and draws blocks from their bag to add to the recruitment area. There are also various locations on the map, that when controlled, either give you more cards at the start of the week or more blocks to add to your recruitment area.
The game ends immediately if the Tokogawa block is destroyed, or the Ishida block or Toyotomi disk is destroyed. If neither of these things happen after seven weeks, VPs are calculated — 2 VPs per castle and 1 VP per resource location to whoever controls it, and the person with the most points wins the game.
Ishida’s forces are surrounded! This battle might not have ended well for the Ishida side.
Sekigahara is so much fun to play! The combat is very in your face, and you have to make tough decisions about how to spend your cards. You need a lot of cards to move around the board quickly and to be successful in battle, but you also need the right type of cards to be able to deploy your warrior blocks. There were some moments when one of my blocks just got annihilated because I didn’t have any cards that corresponded with that stack. I’ve learned that it’s a good idea to keep your armies varied, so that you can be prepared for anything. But you’re at the mercy of which cards are drawn, and which blocks enter the game. And man, you can blow through your hand so quickly when discarding to move stacks around.
If you’re looking for a great introduction to wargames — and have a few hours to spend — Sekigara is just so much fun! The game is visually appealing, and the blocks and use of suited cards make the game accessible to many types of gamers. The game mechanics are simple and streamlined, but there’s so much strategy and history in the game. I immensely enjoyed the hidden information aspect of it, and I can’t wait to get this on table again! Hopefully at next week’s Consimworld — let me know if you’re going to be there!
Sekigahara is just delightful. Have you played this?
I love boba. Growing up in Los Angeles with predominantly Asian friends, we didn’t say, let’s get coffee. Nope, instead we’d say, let’s get boba, also known as bubble tea in other parts of the world. For the unfamiliar, boba are marble-sized tapioca balls that you can order in a drink, drinks such as milk teas and slushies, in all sorts of flavors as well as other add-on toppings. My personal favorite is taro milk tea with boba. So yummy!
So you can imagine my excitement when I found out that Renegade Game Studios has a new game called Bubble Tea, another real-time game by Aza Chen, complete with the adorable animal artwork that he’s also known for. He’s also the designer of one of my favorite games of 2017, Shiba Inu House.
Bubble Tea is all about making boba drinks! At left is a taro milk tea with boba at Milk Run, one of my favorite drink cafes in the Phoenix area.
Coming out in July, Bubble Tea is a 20-minute game for 1-5 players. The game comes with wooden dice, Customer cards, Tea Base cards, Moji Moji cards (which are these transparent square tiles for layering ingredients), and a drink shaker! Just like when you order boba and they mix up your drink at the cafe, so will you, except with dice that feature drink ingredients drawn as cute animal characters. Characters such as the Milk Tea Cow, the Green Tea Frog, the Tapioca Dog, and the Taro Ball Bear.
Oh. My. Goodness! These cards are just so freaking cute! And I see the cute doggo from Shiba Inu House.
Bubble Tea is actually two games in one, which was a pleasant surprise! In both games, players are trying to craft the best drinks the fastest and get the most victory points. The first game actually involves shaking up the dice in the drink shaker. The current player places the dice inside the shaker and shakes them up. They flip over the shaker, the dice land on the table and then everyone yells, “1, 2, 3, Go!” to start.
Simultaneously, players are trying to match the tea base and ingredients shown on the dice by arranging and stacking the Moji Moji cards on their Tea Base card. This is trickier than it sounds because the nine Moji Moji cards that each player has are all unique, with different ingredients situated in various squares. The Tea Base cards are gridded, so you’ll have to arrange the transparent cards on top of each other in varying orientations, while following the grid on the Tea Base card, to match the dice that have just been tossed out of the shaker.
Players quickly stack and place their transparent Moji Moji cards to match the dice shown.
When a player finishes their drink, they take the shaker lid and cover the dice. Players check to see if they made the drink correctly, and if they did, they gain a Customer card. If that player didn’t make the drink correctly, they lose a Customer card and the other players continue playing. The game ends when a player gets three Customer cards.
For the second game, players are again simultaneously competing, this time to complete their Customer cards and gain victory points. In this game, you don’t need the dice, just the shaker, which will sit in the middle of the table. Each player draws 5 Customer cards and place one card of their choice face down in front of them. When everyone is ready, they all say, “1, 2, 3, Go!” and flip over their chosen card. Just like in Game #1, players must arrange their transparent Moji Moji cards onto the correct Tea Base card, according to what their Customer card is asking for.
If a player is first to complete their drink by placing their Moji Moji cards to match the ingredients on the Customer card, they receive the VPs on the back of the card.
The player to finish their drink first grabs the shaker. Game play stops, and they check the player’s card to see if they have the right number and type of ingredients in their drink as well as the correct Tea Base card used. If they did, they flip over the Customer card for VPs. The harder the drink, the more VPs it’s worth. If the player incorrectly created their drink, the round continues until someone correctly makes their drink.
At the end of the round, everyone passes the leftover cards from their hand to the player on the left. This game ends after five rounds, when there are no more cards to pass. The player with the most points wins the game.
Bubble Tea is just so adorable, and it comes with its own shaker!
Bubble Tea is so fun, and I just love, love, love the theme! Seeing a mainstream board game company create a game about a possibly niche food theme — but one that’s been a major part of my life — just warms my heart.
Bubble Tea is perfect to bust out with your friends at the boba cafe or when you need a quick filler for up to five people. The artwork is colorful and adorable, and having an actual shaker is just super duper cool, even if the dice can be a little bit loud when you’re tossing them around. But it doesn’t matter, because that action is such a small part of one game, and more often than not, you’re just frantically working to place that Sugar Monkey in that one sweet spot on your Tea Base card.
Thanks Renegade Game Studios for sending me a copy of this game!
A few months ago, I started seeing a lot of buzz online about Tiny Towns, a new game from AEG. It wasn’t until recently that I got a chance to play it, and, what can I say, this game is delightful. If I’m being honest, I initially dismissed it because it seemed too light for my group, but after playing it multiple times, I discovered it’s a great crunchy, puzzly short game.
I’ve had so much fun every time I’ve played Tiny Towns.
In Tiny Towns, each player gets a 4×4 cardboard grid in which you’re building out your little town. Each square can hold exactly one resource or building. On your turn, you become the Master Builder — yes, there’s a cute little hammer included in the game — and you choose one of the resources: wood, wheat, brick, glass or stone. Then, everyone grabs that resource to place in their town to place on a square that’s empty. After everyone places their cube, they have the option to build any of the buildings in play for your game.
There are seven buildings in play every game. One building is always the Cottage, and, for the other six, players randomly select one card from four of that type to use. Players also receive two monument cards, and they keep one of them to potentially score in the game.
Tiny Towns comes with a lot of wooden buildings and cubes, and one hammer. The pink building is your monument, and everyone only gets one of those pieces.
Each building has resource and spatial requirements that must be fulfilled, and if a player has laid out their resources in the exact pattern on their grid, they can remove those resources and place that building on any of the spaces those resources occupied. After everyone builds (or not), the hammer moves to the left, and the next player starts their turn.
The game feels like a mix of Patchwork and Bingo (and I mean that in the most positive way because I love Bingo!). You’re anxiously awaiting the caller and hoping they pick the resource you need so you can place it in a beneficial location. Or you hope that you can place a resource you don’t need at the moment in a space that won’t mess you up too badly.
In each game, the Cottage is always in play, and then one random card from all the other types. Each card indicates what resources and pattern you need to build it, and what the building’s benefits are.
Game play continues until everyone fills up their grid, either with buildings or resources. There’s player elimination, but the entire game isn’t very long so it’s not a big deal if you’re eliminated early. When everyone is done, you remove all the unspent resources on your grid, and any unused space is -1 point. Players then calculate their VPs based on the building’s benefits.
Tiny Towns, which plays in 45-60 minutes, is for 1-6 players, which is great, as I’m always on the lookout for solid games that satisfy large player counts. And the best part, it keeps all the players engaged throughout the game — at least until they’re eliminated.
I’m the Captain … oh wait, the Master Builder. Isn’t this hammer so cute?
The game also offers opportunities to be a just a teeny bit mean, as you can pick to see which resources your neighbors are waiting for, and then select something else. There were more than a few moments during our games when someone would yell, “Why did you pick that??” The one complaint I’ve encountered so far was that you were at the mercy of the Master Builder’s selection, which, to me, adds to the puzzle of the game. You have to be flexible in placing resources but also deal with unwanted cubes.
You also don’t want to build in a way where you’ll trap yourself in a corner, unable to clear cubes for a future building. It’s the perfect mix of resource gathering and pattern building. When you plan and place your buildings perfectly, it’s so very satisfying. But more often than not, you’re staring at your 4×4 grid saying, “Gah, poor choices were made!”
Have you played Tiny Towns? What are some of your favorite crunchy short games?
This review of Teotihuacan was featured on Episode 60 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Dragon Castle, Blue Lagoon, Iron Dragon and Circle the Wagons.
What was the most complicated game that came out in 2018? I actually don’t know the answer to that question. But I can tell you which game was most complicated to say for a lot of people, so much so that there were video tutorials on its pronunciation. I grew up in LA and was surrounded by all types of languages. So seeing and saying a word like Teotihuacan comes pretty naturally to me. But in case you needed a tutorial, the word is luckily spelled exactly how it sounds, which isn’t always the case with Aztec words.
This average-sized box comes with an insane amount of components, which makes each game unique.
Teotihuacan: City of Gods was published in 2018 by NSKN Games. It’s designed by Daniele Tascini, who has also published The Voyages of Marco Polo, Council of Four and one of my absolute all-time favorites, Tzolk’in.
In Teotihuacan, which plays in about 90-120 minutes, players play as powerful noble families trying to achieve everlasting glory while planning the construction of the pyramid. In its essence, the game is a giant rondel, with, when completed, a gorgeous pyramid sitting in the middle.
The board is incredibly busy, which is a detriment to the game. People see that beautiful pyramid and then slowly back away when there’s a million things they seemingly have to decipher on the board.
I’m here to tell you to come on back and don’t be freaked out by board!
This board is way to busy, which can make the game more daunting than it is.
There are 8 action boards on the entire board. Instead of worker meeples players use dice to represent their workers, and the pips on the dice indicate which power level that worker is at. On a player’s turn, they can take a normal turn by advancing one of their dice 1, 2 or 3 action spaces in a clockwise direction.
After moving that worker, that player must perform one of three possible actions on the action board they’ve landed on. They can either collect cocoa, worship or perform a main action.
Cocoa is needed to enter an action space where there are other dice present and if you want to take a main action. To collect cocoa, you count the number of different colored workers already present on the action space, and you receive that number of cocoa plus 1.
If you decide to take a main action on an action board, you must pay cocoa equal to the number of different colored dice on that action location already there. Each action board has a different main action.
Three of the action boards are locations where you receive resources to build houses and/or pyramids. Those resources are wood, gold and stone. When you land on an action board, how strong your worker dice is determines how much you’re receiving. Also, when you land on a location that already has your dice, you’ll also receive more resources because your workers are more powerful there.
Another action board allows you to pay gold in order to receive a technology or benefit for the entire game. If you have two dice there, or you enter the location with a 4- or 5-level dice, you can pay gold for higher-level technologies. Many of these technologies will trigger when you activate a certain action board.
Even though there are a lot of dice on the board, this is by no means a dice game.
Another action board allows you to use wood to build buildings. The earlier you build these, the more victory points you’ll score, but the houses are relocated from Building Row on the Main Board, which comes to play during the scoring round.
The last two Action boards deal with the pyramid, either selecting decoration tiles that sit on steps of the pyramid, or building the pyramid itself with resources you’ve collected. The pyramid tiles are study square mah-jong-type tiles and are just delightful to play with. Taking either one of these actions moves you along the pyramid track.
Now instead of performing a main action, you can always worship. When you worship, you enter an action board’s worship space and claim a discovery tile, which are benefits or masks for end-of-round set collection victory points, or you can go up a temple track. If you want to do both things, you’ll have to pay with cocoa. There are three temple tracks in the game, from which you can receive more benefits or masks as you advance on them. When your worker worships, that dice is locked until you pay to free them on a future action or until someone pays cocoa to bump you off if they want to worship as well. Also, during your turn, you can unlock all your dice for free, but that’s all you do on your turn.
After performing a main action, at least one die will level up. This is how you get more powerful workers that move around the board. Once you hit level 6, you ascend. You then advance your marker one step on the Avenue of the Dead and select a reward on the Ascension wheel, which includes unlocking a level 3 dice for the board. Your die that ascended then starts at Level 1 again and at the Palace Action Board. When a player ascends, they advance the white disc on the Calendar Track.
Tracks galore in Teotihuacan, whether you’re going up the pyramid track or one of the temples shown here.
The calendar track controls the pacing of the game. A normal round consists of everyone taking their turn, and then advancing the white disc. When the white disc reaches the black disc, an eclipse is triggered. Players gets VPs for their step on the Avenue of the Dead (which is multiplied by the lowest visible number on the Building Row on the main board), and for their step on the Pyramid track (which is multiplied by 4, 3 or 2 points depending on if it’s the first, second or third eclipse.) The player farthest along the pyramid track also gets 4 points, and the pyramid track is reset for the next phase.
Players also get points for collecting sets of masks and each player must pay 1 cocoa for each of their worker that’s a level 1 to 3, and 2 cocoa for their level 4 and 5 workers. The game continues for three eclipses, with fewer rounds each eclipses to trigger end-of-round scoring, and the person with the most victory points wins the game.
Some have said Teotihuacan is a re-skin of Tzolk’in. The time mechanism and sheer genius of Tzolk’in is unmatched, even by Teotihuacan. I feel like Teotihuacan is more forgiving, whereas Tzolk’in is straight up mean, which I love. You can always enter a space in Teotihuacan; what you receive or action you take is determined by whether you have enough cocoa.
Look at our glorious pyramid! But that also means that the game is suddenly over.
But Teotihuacan is still a solid game and worthy of its predecessor. The beauty of this game is managing your workers around the rondel as well as the timing of when to level them up. I enjoy the variability of each play. The game comes with a lot of components, from the cool pyramid tiles to a bunch of sturdy cardboard tiles. I just wish the board wasn’t so busy with unnecessary artwork.
And that’s Teotihuacan! This is Meeple Lady for The Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as Meeple Lady, or on my website boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!
This review of Escape Plan was featured on Episode 59 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Monopoly Deal, Village, Ticket to Ride: New York and Piepmatz.
We’ve all watched countless heist films. A group of skilled individuals lay out a plan, execute said plan and grab the loot. And then what’s the saying? The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
Well, then shoot, Plan B. Hide the loot and lay low – for now.
But now the time is up, and we’ve all got to grab our hidden loot and get out of the city.
Welcome to Escape Plan, the latest game designed from Vital Lacerda, with artwork from Ian O’Toole, published by Eagle-Gryphon Games in 2019. Escape Plan picks up right this moment of the heist narrative: players have three days to evade the cops, get their money and get the heck out of the town.
Escape Plan, published in 2019, is Vital Lacerda’s latest game.
Lacerda himself has said that he just adores movies and is constantly inspired by them when designing board games. And Escape Plan manages to capture the tenseness of those heist films we’re so familiar with, all the while figuring out the game’s puzzly inteconnectivity that is a signature of Lacerda’s board games.
Each day has six phases: players get their income, the police start to close the exits, the city gets revealed, change turn order, player take their turns, and then prepare for the next day. At the start of the game, you don’t know which one of the three exits is the correct one, and you also don’t get to see where different locations are on the board because the city hasn’t completely been built out yet.
I really enjoy this aspect of the game because it forces you to make decisions with the new information and locations presented to you at the start of each day.
On your turn, you either move or rest. That’s it. Simple, right? But wait, it’s a Lacerda game! When you do a move action, you move 1-3 spaces on the board, try and avoid the police, and visit a location. The most common locations to visit are businesses and safehouses, where you can either collect end-game VPs or up-front cash to help you with your getaway.
Eachh player gets their own board, which tracks their income and has spaces to hold their contact cards, asset and equipment tiles.
Each player receives a different escape plan and a player board, which holds asset and equipment tiles, and contact cards, as well as tracks your income, wounds and executive actions, which are free or paid actions you can take during your turn at any time. The more of certain actions you complete, the more locations on your player board unlock, thus increasing your capacity to hold all these various items.
Your income goes down goes the more locations you visit, as you drop off a cube from your player board to indicate you’ve done an action there.
There are also various locations on the board that assist with movement (the subway stop and helipad), the convenience store (where you can purchase equipment to evade the police or you can raid lockers for money if you have a key), and the clinic and hospital (where you can heal your wounds.) There’s also the chapel where you can decrease your notoriety.
Notoriety is a huge element of the game. Doing just about anything will increase/decrease your notoriety, which re-calculates after every single action round. Notoriety is a track that allows you possibly get more money at the lockers and unlock asset tiles, but it essentially puts a target on our back because when you cross certain thresholds on the notoriety track, all the other players will move the police toward you. And that’s not good in this game.
Notorious!! Having the most notoriety is good and bad, but probably mostly bad.
Also not good is getting caught by the police. When you enter a hex with police on it, nothing happens. But when you leave that hex, you will get wounds.
Players can also employ biker gangs to help evade the police or reduce notoriety as an executive action.
Lastly, if you decide not to move on your turn, you can rest. Resting means you flip back your contact cards and equipment tiles on your board, as well as the First Aid tile. Those items are now all available again. And you can only rest once per day, a total of three times in the entire game. But since you have so few actions, I wouldn’t advise taking this action unless you absolutely have to.
The game does an excellent job of making you feel the weight and pressure of being hunted. There are so few actions in the game, about 12-15 actions total, that every single step has such huge effects on the game.
You’re constantly looking over your shoulder and wondering if another player’s actions will send the police over in your direction.
Everyone starts at the center of the board, but the city isn’t built out yet.
Do you risk looking for more loot or just run over to the exit as soon as you can? Well, if you delay, once someone exits, each action will cost each player one more dollar, and depending on when you exit, that costs more as well. The first person to exit pays nothing.
If you don’t exit the game, you’re just out of contention from even potentially winning the game. For those who escaped, they count their cash in hand and money they’ve collected from visiting locations, and the person with the most money wins the game.
The game board is double sided and scales differently for player counts. For fans of Kanban, the character of Sandra shows up in Escape Plan and is the automa for the 1-player game. I just realized that Sandra is Lacerda’s wife’s name, and that made me chuckle. Cool beans, I think.
A sampling of the contact cards and equipment tiles. And some gas cans when you really need to hoof it through the city.
Overall, I just love this game, and probably his lightest to date, but, and that’s a big but, it’s still a Lacerda game, which means it’s still a heavy game and there are a lot of rules to remember. The rulebook is written well and clear and the iconography is great, so it’s just a matter of if you want to invest time in learning this game, which plays in about 60-120 minutes.
The first time I played this game, it was over in about 90 minutes, and it felt really short for one of his games. But the more times I played this game, the richer game play has become. The game shines when people are actively trying to send the police over to your opponent’s neck of the woods when the options are there for placement.
The theme for Escape Plan works well for the mechanisms, and because of that, it seems more intuitive and easier to pick up than his other games. I also love the variability of each game because the board will be built out differently each time.
And that’s Escape Plan! Thanks, Eagle-Gryphon Games, for giving me a copy of this game. This is Meeple Lady for the Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as meeplelady. Or on my website, boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!
This profile on Meepleville Cafe is part of an ongoing series about Friendly Local Game Stores I’ve visited. Read other profiles here.
When I went to Las Vegas for Dice Tower West last month, I knew I had to visit to Meepleville Cafe, which amazingly has a giant meeple cutout inside the cafe!
Situated a few miles off the famed Las Vegas Strip, Meepleville Cafe was the brainchild of Timm Metivier, a professional entertainer who had lived in England before moving to Las Vegas in 2006.
Meepleville Cafe is just a few miles off the Strip.
A lifelong board gamer and self-described “typical dry euro guy,” Meltivier opened Meepleville Cafe in 2016.
“I’ve loved board games all my life. Once I saw Snakes and Lattes open, I knew I wanted to do it,” he said. “I saved up and got everything together, and decided to open up a board-game cafe here.”
When I visited Meepleville Cafe, a majority of the board games were at the Dice Tower West for use in the library. The shelves are usually much fuller than seen in my pictures!
Meepleville Cafe is just over 4,000 square feet of gaming bliss, with a couple different partitioned spaces and rooms to choose from. With over 2,000 games in its library, there’s a game for everyone.
Meepleville Cafe has a meeple cutout inside. Isn’t this just the best?
Cafe visitors pay a cover charge to play games, with the average cover charge $7. Certain days have different cover specials, such as $3 Mondays or $10 group Tuesdays (up to five people), and there’s a whole calendar for special events such as game tournaments.
Meepleville Cafe has lots of space and tables!
Meltivier enjoys proselytizing about games and getting people together in a nice, clean, safe environment and enjoy each other’s company, “to put away their phones and look each other in the eyes.”
“I had a family come in today. Three generations – a grandmother, mother and son – sitting down and playing a game today,” Meltivier said. “I like being able to facilitate that.”
Play a game, and, if you like it, you can purchase it at the Meepleville Cafe store!
The cafe also has a large selection of board games for sale, from standards to heavy euros. There’s even a section labeled $20 and below to highlight more affordable choices. Meltivier takes pride in staffing his cafe with board-game enthusiasts who can provide great customer service.
“I love the fact that I myself to go all the conventions. My staff is all board game,” he said. “We are able to really, really help customers. That’s all we do.”
Steve was manning the store when I visited. He’s super friendly and helpful!
For the past few years, Meltivier and Dave Millette had been running Meeple Con, the local Las Vegas board game convention, until this past year when they partnered with Tom Vasel and the Dice Tower to turn Meeple Con into Dice Tower West. The convention doubled in size, and they were able to move to a larger and newer venue.
“Tom gave us the marketing we couldn’t have gotten, and we gave him the logistics, the boots on the ground and organization of getting the convention done,” Meltivier said. “It’s the perfect relationship. We have good synergy between all of us.”
A group of gamers hanging out on a Sunday afternoon at Meepleville Cafe.
So, what’s next for Meepleville?
Meltivier said eventually he’d like to open a location in Henderson, a city southeast of Las Vegas, but mostly, he wants to continue making Meepleville Cafe the best it can be.
“It’s a great community here. I love the fact that we’re able to turn people on to games and have a place to enjoy that,” he said.
Information
Meepleville Cafe is located at 4704 W Sahara Ave, Las Vegas, NV 89102. It’s open seven days a week. You can find more information on its website: meepleville.com.
Arizona Game Fair took place recently at the Mesa Convention Center, and I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome the convention was! Now in its third year, the con had over 1,200 attendees. That’s pretty fantastic! Convention founder Andrew Long said the first year had over 300 gamers and the second had 785. I am constantly in awe at how wonderful the Arizona gaming community is.
The convention was one I had been excited about for many, many months. For starters, I never thought I’d ever in a million years meet the designer of one of my absolute favorite games, Lisboa: Vital Lacerda himself! I mean, dude is from Portugal and attends a lot of overseas conventions, which I obviously don’t attend. And they say never meet your heroes because they’re sure to disappoint, but, my friends, I was not disappointed at all. Lacerda is passionate about gaming, friendly, humble and just lovely to be around. He is all about making sure gamers have a good time playing his heavy, intricate games.
It was so freaking hard not to fangirl scream every two seconds when Vital Lacerda was teaching his game. You should all be proud of me, folks!
I arrived Friday afternoon at the convention after working a half day, and I had scheduled a game at 3 p.m. with Chris, Julie, Ken and me to learn On Mars, Lacerda’s upcoming game.
Here we are playing it cool as Vital Lacerda teaches us On Mars.
On Mars is by far his heaviest game, in which astronauts are trying to settle the red planet. This game is nothing like Terraforming Mars, other than the location of the game. Players are collecting resources to explore Mars, build buildings, improve their technologies and gathering scientists. There’s an added element of moving back and forth between the space station and on Mars – for free on the rocket ship that moves as the game progresses or using one of your ships, which can be expensive – which then enables you to take any action on that side of the board. The actions in itself are not hard; the challenge is figuring out how to make your actions work together, in a puzzly interconnectivity that is Lacerda’s signature style. I cannot wait for this game to come out!
I naturally had to bring out the giant tweezers for On Mars. I am so excited for this game!
Chris and I then ordered some Vital LaCider from @CiderCorp and attended a Q&A on Lacerda, with the wonderful special guest Suzanne hosting the panel. She asked some really cool questions about what it’s like to be a game designer all the way to what his favorite pie is. My favorite part of the conversation was when Lacerda said that he’s always learning about new stuff about designing games and that he doesn’t feel like a game designer completely yet. I beg to differ, sir!
I live-tweeted some of the conversation. You can read the whole thread below:
After the panel, there was a Hungry Hungry Hippos tournament. My blue hippo was defective, and I got knocked out in the first round. I did not win one of these cool meeple trophies. Womp womp.
Everyone’s getting ready to chomp down some marbles!
There were plenty of tournaments at all game levels happening throughout the convention, as well as a contest for miniatures painting.
Here’s Andrew, Lord of the Board, sitting with some of the cool meeple trophies for the tournaments.
On Saturday, Chris and I hit the ground running with a 6-player game of Flamme Rouge. These guys placed some chocolate eggs on the track so that we passed them, we got a candy treat.
Benjamin and Steve both run g3gamenight in the northwest Valley, while Scott and Mike live down in Tucson.
In Flamme Rouge, players simultaneously draw four cards and pick one to play for both of their cyclists, their Rouleur and Sprinteur, and you go through the course dealing with inclines and other areas, while utilizing slipstream and avoiding exhaustion if you’re in the front of the pack. I started out strong, but my cyclists lost steam halfway through the game. Super fun!
Flamme Rouge is a fun simultaneous-card-selection and deckbuildng game!
Next up, we played Imhotep. My buddy Mark loves to 3D print things to deluxify his games, and it was really satisfying dropping cubes into these structures. He found these files on Thingiverse.
These structures hold all the giant cubes. I probably should’ve taken a better photo from the side so you can see how they all stack up. Next time!
I then taught a game of Teotihuacan, which meant I busted out my giant tweezers. I’ve taught this game a few times, and I finally feel like I got the hang of this teaching this beast. We ended the game by building the pyramid, and Chris nearly lapped all of us. The worst.
We finished our pyramid, which ended the game a few rounds early.
We then played a quick game of Catch the Moon, which is always a hit with gamers!
Catch the Moon is another great filler that always looks great on table.
Afterwards, I joined 10-player game of Welcome To. I’m pretty bad at this game, but it was still fun to game with all these cool peeps.
My Welcome To neighborhood wasn’t well developed. People trigger those objectives so fast!
Chris and I got asked on Friday to take some photos in costume for a live game on Saturday of The Usual Suspects, hosted by the Game State Show. The suspects’ photos were all lined up in the hallway after their show. Who looks the most suspicious and is guilty? Indeed it is not I.
Look at all these suspicious people! I do love having giant mugshots at home now.
I then took a break to get ready for one of my favorite things to do at a convention: run a ginormous game of Sidereal Confluence. I was able to gather 9 players for this game, which uses ALL THE ALIEN FACTIONS. I had never run a game this large before, but luckily, a few had played it before I had some help in answering questions. There’s a trajectory at the start of the game where I start explaining the rules and then I get a lot of puzzled looks about this game, which makes me worry that I’ve accidentally dragged folks into a 2-hour grudge match, but then once the first round gets underway, things start sorta clicking and people embrace the absurdity of the game, and we just all start yelling at each other for cubes.
Here are all nine players for Sidereal Confluence. Everyone is still pretty relaxed since we haven’t started yet, except GloryHoundd and me, who are already uber excited.
Luckily, we were seated in the far end of the convention floor, as we were all pretty loud, and lots of folks stopped by to see what the game was all about. And they’d see me standing with giant tweezers in hand counting down which players can take a colony they’ve successfully bid on. One person said it sounded like a craps table was happening on the convention floor. That is exactly what it look like – yelling, people throwing cubes, and hands going everywhere on a giant table with a million cards on it.
This game by Peer Sylvester is a neat twist on trick taking. I wish it was widely available!
On Sunday, we began the day playing Passing Through Petra, which is a neat puzzly tile/trading game from J. Alex Kevern, who has designed crunchy one-hour games like Gold West and Sentient. Traders travel on a caravan through the desert, and you can welcome various traders into your market and facilitate trade with people who have the goods they want. But filling your market happens in a specific order, so timing your market with the appropriate tiles at the right time for maximum trades is just delightful. I just wish the caravan on the board wasn’t so fiddly though.
I enjoyed the puzzly aspect of Passing Through Petra but not the fiddly caravan mechanism.
I then taught a game of Mexica, which is always a hit with people and has such table presence that people stop by to take a look at the game.
I love how Mexica gets all kinds of mean!
I ended Arizona Game Fair chilling with Kevin Russ and Suzanne, and we played a first games. First up was Krass Kariert.
Chris, Kevin, Suzanne and I all hung out until it was about closing time on Sunday.
Krass Kariert is a quick fun card game in which you’re trying to beat what’s already played, through a simple hierarchy of singles, pairs, runs and triples. But you cannot rearrange your cards! If you need to play a pair, they have to be sitting next to each other. But as you pull cards from your hand, naturally, the gap closes, and you can find new combinations with the cards remaining. Super fun!
Krass Kariert is a fun quick card game from Amigo where everyone wins except the last player to clear their cards.
We of course played some roll-and-writes, too! I did spectacularly horrible in Metro X, but won Cartographer! Suzanne said there’s a bunch of roll-and-writes out there, and it’s all a matter of finding one that you resonate with. I guess I do better with placing tetris tiles and completing objective ones than filling numbers on subway routes.
Cartographer is a puzzle style roll-and-write set in the Roll Player world. It has four objectives for each game, with two scoring during each of the four seasons.
Lastly, there was a special tribute at the entrance for my buddy Tom Wells who had passed away recently at an all-too-young age of 50. I had fond memories playing Arkwright and The Colonists with him in previous conventions, as well as gaming with him on the occasional Saturday morning. His badge was hanging up all weekend.
We’ll miss you, Tom. I still can’t believe you’re gone.
And just like that, three games of gaming came and went. The chill atmosphere, friendly volunteers and wide open space made the convention a pleasure to attend. There were also vendors there such as Eagle-Gryphon Games and Gamelyn Games, as well as wood workers and artists. The convention also had a designated women’s space, which is pretty fantastic, and a separate area for RPGs. There was plenty to do for all the different types of gamers!
There was a lovely space for female gamers who were more comfortable away from the main convention floor, and lots of games scheduled in the space, too.
Thanks again Arizona Game Fair for having me as a guest. I can’t wait to see what’s in store next year. And folks, save the date for next year’s convention: March 20-22, 2020. Hope to see here! We’ve got sunny skies, perfect for outside gaming, and giant cactus!
Chris and I visited the Desert Botanical Gardens after the convention. Fun times!
I initially was unsure if I was going to be able to attend the inaugural Dice Tower West convention due to the impending birth of my niece, but when I found out she wasn’t going to make an appearance until after the convention, I decided to make a quick stop to Las Vegas.
I arrived just after midnight on Thursday night, enough to basically head over to the Westgate Resort (the former Hilton on the north side of the Strip for those familiar with Vegas) and go to bed so that I could hit the ground running that morning. I had a list of four games I wanted to play, and ended up playing three of them, so I was pleased with myself. They were Captains of the Gulf, Wingspan, Forum Trajanum and Passing Through Petra.
Ran into Suzanne and Mandi of the Dice Tower first thing on Friday morning. These ladies are truly inspirational and bring so much to the hobby.
I checked in Friday morning and received a super cool swag bag with the Dice Tower West logo on it. Inside was a free game, a Dice Tower Pin and Dice Tower dice. I also liked that the lanyards were of the thick variety, so that I could decorate it with my Meeple Lady pin as well as all the cool flair I’ve collected from various conventions. Dice Tower West had a decent library, and I particularly enjoyed the section on the convention floor that featured large games like Giant Azul!
Squeee! Look at this Giant Azul! You definitely will not mistake the pieces for Starbursts.
My first game of the day was Captains of the Gulf. @boardgamegeekCA taught me this game, designed by @jasondingr and on my list of to-play games, which is about fishing in the Gulf. The game has multi-use cards and a rondel for actions, which can affect the pacing of game. It has a very Glory To Rome feel to it, where the strength of your actions are based on various upgrades or licenses you have on your fishing boat. And man, overfishing the Gulf has some negative consequences, which made our game resource poor toward the second half. And as I’ve mentioned before, I love how Jason designed this game in honor of his grandfather who was a fisherman in the Gulf. Had a great time playing this!
I was so happy I got a chance to play Captains of the Gulf!
Next up was a bird-themed card game that was surprisingly a little mathy: Piepmatz. @Nettersplays taught this game, in which you’re trying to match sets of birds and collect the most seeds from the bird feeder.
It’s me and the lovely @Nettersplays!
Sounds simple, right? Well, you have to play stronger birds than what’s displayed in the main tableau, which then you’ll receive into your personal tableau the bird you just knocked out, all the while avoiding squirrels and crows. Nobody likes these guys because they will take your cards! The mathy part comes from playing certain cards to overtake the birds in the middle tableau while avoiding the predators.
Piedmatz is not the only bird-themed game I played this at this convention.
I then played a game of Push, which is a fun, quick push-your-luck game that I regret not picking up at BGG Con last year when it was offered as convention swag. I do love push-your-luck games and egging others on by saying, what’s the worst that can happen? Well, you can lose all your points in one particular color! You keep drawing cards and placing them however you want into three columns, with none of the same color or number in each column. If you can’t place a card, you bust. If you don’t bust, you can pick up one of the columns for points, and the next player takes the second column, and so forth. There’s also a card that forces you to roll a color-sided die, and if that color pops up, you lose your entire stash in that color.
Push is a fun push-your-luck card game that anyone can play. It’s a much better Uno.
I then played The Estates. Played it for the first time back at BGG Con, and I most enjoy screwing people over in the game! It’s super cut-throat bidding on blocks, developing the streets and building high-rises.
The bidding in The Estates is so tense and brutal!
Next up was Obsession: Pride, Intrigue and Prejudice set in Victorian England, a deck-builder and worker management game, which was super neat. This particular theme is usually reserved for lighter games and/or card games, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a substantial game set in this era, which, if we’re splitting hairs, the Jane Austen books were actually set in the Regency era, but I digress. I had never heard of this game before so I was happy that @erykmynn taught it to me!
These dapper dudes would probably be fun at your party!
You build your deck of fancy ladies and gents, and sometimes the occasional selfish cad who will just ruin your parties! Each turn, you choose to host an event and play the matching cards from your deck and worker meeples to activate the location and/or the cards, and gain resources. The cool thing about this game is that in addition to managing your deck, you’re also managing your worker meeples as they rest up one round until they’re available again. Unless you spend your turn and reset, in which case, all your cards and workers are available again.
These workers are so exhausted from working your events that they need to rest for one round.
After dinner, which we then discovered our hotel rooms varied WILDLY, we hung out in our friend’s room, which had THREE BATHROOMS. Oh, and a pool table, vintage Playball pinball machine and decor that immediately sends you back to your grandma’s basement.
In case you were wondering what it was like to party in the 1970s.
We played a quick game of Push, and then we launched into my favorite game of the whole convention: Wingspan. Oh. My. Goodness. This game is so darling! It’s a lighter game than I usually would bring to a table, but man, HAVE YOU SEEN THESE EGGS? it’s a chill, short engine builder with gorgeous artwork, and I’m so happy that Netters taught this game to me.
Wingspan is just darling. I can’t wait until I get my copy!
The game plays over four rounds, with objectives that’ll score each round, and you use your allotted set of action cubes to play bird cards on different terrains, collect resources, lay eggs or gain more cards. As you build out on you tableau, when you activate that row next time, you’ll get to activate each card that’s already placed in that row. Bird cards come in various VPs and abilities, and the whole game is just delightful to play.
I love the scientific look of the cards, especially with all the information on these birds.
Next up, I played Mayday! Mayday! It’s a 45-minute drawn-out hidden-role in which good and evil players are trying to make their way into an airplane cockpit. The first group will take 4, and then it gets whittled down to 2, and then one last vote. Each player has three cards, and if you have more broken hearts than whole hearts, you’re a bad guy. I pretty much laid low the entire time and refused entry anyone because I was suspicious with everyone! And guess what? Us baddies won. Woot!
GloryHoundd, Dr. GloryHogg and I are the best cylons ever.
After that, I entered exactly one round of Just Two, a variation that @whatseplaying created using two sets of the game Just One. Instead of writing clues for one word, there’s two words in play, and the rest of the folks just get to pick whichever one they want to give a clue to. Per the usual rules, when two clues match, they’re discarded, and the guesses has a chance to look at the leftover clues. Epic, especially when the guesser picked the correct two words!
We all then went grabbed a nightcap at the casino bar at 2 a.m. and hung out for an hour or so. Good times with all these fun people!
Drannnkkksss with all these cool people!
I began early Saturday with a mind-melting game of Forum Trajanum. My buddy Karlo, who I had met when he lived in Phoenix for a brief period, taught one of the new games from Stefan Feld. Players are working together to build a monument on the main board, while developing their own Colonia on their player board.
Forum Trajanum is one of Stefan Feld’s newest games and it’s super heavy!
The cool mechanism in this game is that you remove two action chits on your player board, pick one and give the second one to the player on your right. Then, you have two actions to choose from, or if you want to do both, then you have to spend workers from your pool. So many agonizing decisions!! But figuring out how it all works together, while trying to score objectives during three periods, was something I couldn’t wrap my head around until way too late into the game. I would definitely play again, probably on more than a few hours of sleep. It’s definitely Feld’s most complex game to date, in my opinion.
Making agonizing decisions about which chit to pass to your neighbor and which one to keep for yourself.
Next I played Gugong with @ruelgaviola and @geekygaymerguy, who I met for the first time and is just as fantastic and friendly in real life! Theo taught Ruel Gugong, and the game immediately went onto his to-buy list. Gugong is set during the Ming Dynasty, and officials want fancy gifts in exchange for favors. On their turn, players use cards in their hand to activate various locations on the map by playing a card in higher value than what’s sitting there already. You place your card down, pick up the old card and put it into your discard pile. Your pile of discarded cards will then become your hand of actions in the next round.
I had a blast playing with all these wonderful people! Insert all the heart-eye emojis!
The game has an added element of managing your cubes from the general supply to your personal supply, a mechanism that I personally love, as well as moving up various tracks on the board and getting bonuses for picking up the right card for the round. I heard the KS version is just gorgeous but I think the base game is just as beautiful, and really, you can just spend a few bucks buying glass beads to replace the jade on the board.
Gugong is such a great midweight euro, and I totally want to add this to my collection.
I then purchased the only game at the con: Targi. Targi is a tense, puzzly 2-player game that I just learned the month before, and it definitely has moments where you can be so mean. I love it! A grid of cards are laid out on the table between two players, and they take turns placing one of their meeples on action spots on the outside border. Where their three meeples intersect can create a fourth and fifth action for the round. But you can’t place your meeple in front of your opponent, so they can block you from gaining resources or collecting cards, and forcing you to take a less-than-ideal action because that’s the last space left. Meanwhile, you’re also building your tableau of tribe cards you’ve collected, which gives you VPs from the cards itself and how you arrange it in front of you. I highly recommend this game! (Even if my buddy Mark is all kinds of mean.)
Mark plotting to take a mean action against me in Targi.
Next, I checked out Drop It from the library, and boy, am I horrible at this game! It’s a light, dexterity game in which you’re dropping various pieces into this plastic contraption, and you get points based on where it lands, a la Plinko. But if your piece lands and touches a piece of the same color or shape, you get zero points. Fun for the kids and light gamers!
I could not for the life of me drop my pieces in a way that they would score!
I then ran into Kevin and showed taught me his new game Calico, which is planning to be on Kickstarter out in the fall. This quilting game that features cats is a puzzly tile-laying game. Players have two hex tiles in their hands, and they place one on their turn into their player board, which starts with three objective tiles on it. The objectives will score points based on what surrounds it as tiles come in various colors and patterns. There are also cat tokens you can gain based on pattern requirements or clusters on the board as those pretty things keep the cats happy.
Calico is a tile-laying game in which you’re scoring objectives and keeping cats content.
We then played Carpe Diem, another Feld game that I really, really like! You’re building a district onto your player board by picking up a tile on the main board at one location. Then, you can only move your meeple into two different spots from that location (making a five-pointed star on the board), so getting somewhere may require a few turns. But by then, the tile you need might not be there. At the end of each round, which there are four of them, you are required to fulfill two objective on the side board. If you cannot fulfill an objective, you get negative points. Each objective intersection can only be scored by one person during the entire game, so it’s also a race to score them first if you can. The game itself is plagued by some production issues (the green and dark green are very hard to distinguish), but overall, it’s a smooth Feld game that plays in about an hour.
I’ve played Carpe Diem twice and have won both times! #winning
Lastly, I taught a game of Newton. It has been about 6 months since I’ve played this so I was a little rusty on the rules, but it’s a fun midweight tight euro game that plays in about two hours. You play cards onto your player board, which allow you to take a specific action depending on the symbol of the card. If you play another card with the same symbol in the same round, then that action’s strength will increase — either moving farther along your route or accessing more powerful cards or covering harder-to-reach bookcases. It’s really satisfying when you make some good combos!
Newton always ends so quickly, and I can never fill up my bookcase!
And then just like that, two days in Las Vegas were over. I’m pretty surprised that I didn’t even hit up the casino because in a previous life pre-board games, I went to Vegas a lot! And like growing up in Los Angeles, it was an easy weekend getaway for fun and some debauchery. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?
I got a chance to meet Rahdo. What a nice guy! He said the top of my head was really warm.
Before the drive back home to Phoenix, I also visited Meepleville Cafe, but I’m planning to write a longer piece about that cool place next time. Stay tuned! All in all, Dice Tower West was a chill and fun convention. I had a wonderful time hanging out with friends and meeting lots of new gamers! I can’t wait to go back next year, hopefully for longer than two days, as there were lots of other folks I wanted to game with but just didn’t have time for.
Until next time, Dice Tower West! Thanks for creating an inviting and fun gaming space.
