This profile on the Tyson Wells Game Store is part of an ongoing series about Friendly Local Game Stores I’ve visited. Read other profiles here.
In the Arizona desert, just before the California border, sits the town of Quartzsite, which has a population of nearly 3,700. Folks driving into California often make a pit stop there as it’s about 2 hours west of the Phoenix area.
The Tyson Wells Game Store is open seven days a week.
Quartzsite is mostly known as a snowbird destination, as the town’s small population swells to about 250,000 during the winter seasons.
Snowbirds — people who move to warm weather locales during the winter — set up camp in their RVs and enjoy the town’s famous rock and gem shows, and vendor fairs. Most surprising, visitors can also purchase their favorite board games at the Tyson Wells Game Store.
This side of the store has a lot of new releases.
The Tyson Wells Game Store stocks over 2,500 games, and the selection is vast and top-notch — everything from new and Kickstarter releases, as well as old favorites and classics. The 2,000-square-foot store also sells miniatures, paint and supplies, and gaming accessories. It’s a board-gaming oasis in the Arizona desert.
Old favorites and classic games are also on store shelves.
The store has two rooms full of games, and it’s something you’d expect in the middle of a large-sized city, not one you’d find on a dusty road surrounded by RV parks.
In addition to the snacks and knick-knacks it also sells, the space is the home base for owner Kym Scott’s many businesses.
“I do rock-gem-mineral shows, arts and crafts shows, RV park and self storage,” he said.
Kym Scott is the owner of the Tyson Wells Game Store.
Scott was born and raised in Quartzsite. He grew up playing games such as Risk and Axis & Allies, and now plays Arcadia Quest, Star Realms, euros and worker placements. “Back when I was growing up here, it was about 400 people,” Scott said.
The store has a large room and one in the back with even more games.
The game store started small about seven years ago when Scott had extra office space. “Then four years ago, I connected with bigger distributors and game publishers and started carrying a full line of games,” he said.
The games in the other half of the back room.
The business is named after Charles Tyson who owned a well nearby during the 1800s called Tyson’s Well. When Scott’s stepfather started the business, he changed it to Tyson Wells. The Sell-A-Rama, Scott’s event where vendors sell their gems, art and jewelry, just wrapped up its 42nd show in January.
Scott is active in the gaming community on both sides of the Arizona-California border, attending meetups in Blythe, California, and Lake Havasu, Arizona. Scott also attends local conventions like Dice Tower West and Arizona Game Fair.
Of course Quartzsite has its own Monopoly game!
Scott said the gaming community in Quartzsite consists of snowbirds from across the U.S. and Canada, and people in RVs. “Because they’re so limited by space and the size of the games,” Scott says his best seller is the card game Five Crowns. Ticket to Ride and Catan are also popular.
Lastly, the best part of owning a game store is “Every time I get a delivery, it’s kind of like Christmas. I get to see all the new games,” Scott said.
Information and photos
Tyson Wells Game Store is located at 121 Kuehn St, Quartzsite, AZ 85346. It’s open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can find more information on its Facebook page and website.
My gaming group really loves 18xx games. But since there’s a whole lot of AP during our games, there’s no way we can really play one on a weeknight. Hence, we try to schedule our games on Saturdays as one game seriously takes an entire day for us.
Last Saturday, we punched out and busted a new 18xx game to most of us: 18CZ, set in the Czech Lands. As with most other 18xx games, the purpose of this game is to have the most personal money, and to increase the stock price of companies you own while also owning high-valued stocks.
The game is unique to other 18xx games we’ve played recently as there are a fixed number of rounds. Usually, when players break the bank, that’s when the game ends. In 18CZ, there are eight stock rounds and the number of operating rounds with each stock round increases as the game progresses, culminating in three operating rounds in the last phase. And trains rust after each set of stock round and operating rounds.
The game ends after 8 rounds, which include a stock round and three operating rounds.
But before the game gets started, a pre-stock round occurs where players can purchase private companies. The privates are randomly placed on this board based on their sizes (there are small, medium and large companies), which prices then in increasing order, and players take turns in a snake draft, buying them until they all pass.
These privates provide income to whoever owns them, and they can later only be purchased by a company of the same size or larger. For example, a medium company later cannot buy a large private company. They also provide a one-time use to build a special tile upgrade. Other than purchase price, they’re all identical.
The pre-round for buying private companies in 18CZ.
Small, medium and large sized companies — and their matching sized trains — make up 18CZ. Trains rust immediately when another player purchases a larger train of that type. And it’s printed on the train card itself too as a reminder.
Unlike other 18xx games, when you float your company, it’s fully capitalized. You don’t need to try to convince others to buy into it. But you suddenly flushed with $1,000 in your company coffers if you set its initial stock price at $100. Having all this money is great — you can immediately buy a train or two. But being fully capitalized makes it much, much harder to funnel money into your company when you need to purchase a very expensive train.
You’ll have to withhold payouts to add to your company coffers, which decreases the price of your stock. And unlike some other 18xx, regardless of how much you pay out to stockholders, your stock will jump once, and twice if you’re a large company.
Some of the early trains in 18CZ. How you orient them determines their scope.
Maximum ownership also varies for the different types of companies. Players can have 75% of their small company, and 60% of medium and large companies. Lastly, there’s no bankruptcy in this game.
Starting a large company can’t occur until later in the game. And players get to select their starting location from one of two hexes on the board. This is another neat mechanism of this game. You can start building your network over on this side of the map, but there’s a chance you won’t be able to build that large company near it to connect everything.
Mergers allow you to fold a company of the same size or small into your new company, and you can upgrade your trains this way as well. You can flip the orientation of your current train card or scrap it to get a larger train, and you’ll only have to pay the difference. This was helpful later to acquire larger trains.
Each company comes with fewer station tokens than other 18xx games I’ve played, so you have to be judicial during placement. In other games, you can use one to block another player, but there didn’t seem to be much blocking in this game as you couldn’t afford to waste a station.
Our recent 5P game of 18CZ. You can see from the red hexes that the large companies have been floated.
Our game ended up going for about 6 hours, which seems on par with the box description of 4 hours. My gamer group is slow and methodical, and we usually tack on some extra time to what it says on the box, even though we have cut time by not using actual paper money in the game. We just write everything down in our ledger. I highly recommend it!
I really enjoyed how unique 18CZ is compared with other 18xx games I’ve played recently. There’s a running joke among us saying that we play an 18xx game once and then never return to it. Maybe that pattern will change this year, and we’ll actually play the same 18xx twice! 18CZ is the one I’d totally recommend for that.
For those train folks, what’s your favorite 18xx game?
This review of Push was featured on Episode 78 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Ingenious, Deep Space D-6, Vindication and Legendary Encounters: Alien.
At first glance, Push looks like an Uno deck. And for full disclosure, Push was a giveaway at BGG 2018, and I didn’t pick it up because it looked very similar to an Uno deck. At the risk of sounding like a board-game snob here, I’m definitely not playing Uno with you. There are plenty of better card games out there, for even the most inexperienced gamers.
It wasn’t until about 6 months later that someone introduced me to Push, and I enjoyed it so much that I immediately purchased a copy. Push, a short card game published by Ravensburger and designed by Prospero Hall, is a game I often travel with because it’s essentially a thick deck of cards and one 6-sided die.
This 25-minute game works well with a midsize group of 2-6, and I love busting it out with new and older gamers alike. The deck has cards ranging from 1 to 6, in five different colors, as well as Switch cards and Roll cards, which I’ll explain later what they do.
The three types of cards in Push — and that very mean die.
On your turn, you draw one card at a time from the deck until you want to stop or you bust! When you draw a card, you must play them into one of three stacks in the middle of the table. The rules for placement in the stacks is that you cannot have the same number or same color in any of the stacks. If there’s a blue 2 already face-up in the center in one stack, you cannot place a 2 of any other color or another blue card into that same stack. As the active player, it’s up to you how you want to build out those stacks. You can even keep them all in one stack if you follow the rules of placement correctly.
The stacks are important because each card contains victory points based on the number on it. If you decide to stop before busting, you select any one of those stacks in play and sort them into your bench in front of you by color. The next person to your left grabs the second stack if there is one, and so forth.
The Switch cards that are drawn during this player’s turn change the direction of who picks the stacks next. Instead of the stack selection going to the player on your left, it now goes to the player to the right and so forth. Switch cards aren’t placed into stacks either; they’re just shown on the side for reference during that active player’s turn.
Cards on your bench as worth victory points at the end of the game. They are, however, not completely safe from the dreaded Push die. If the active player draws a Roll card, they must place it into one of the stacks that already doesn’t have one in it. Roll cards also follow the placement rules like all the other cards.
Which stack do you want? Are you willing to push your luck?
When a player grabs a stack with a roll card in it, they must roll the 6-sided die. Each side of the die has exactly one color on it, and then a black square. Whatever side the die lands, the player loses all of those matching colored cards from their bench. It’s quite devastating when you lose a bunch of points this way! If you roll the black die, all your cards are safe — for the time being.
Also, if you keep drawing and flip over a card that you cannot place, you bust. You also roll the die and you don’t get to pick up a stack. Instead, the next person gets first choice.
Lastly, on your turn, you can choose not to draw cards but instead bank one pile of your colored stacks. If you decide to do this, you flip over those cards and then it’s the next person’s turn. All those cards you’ve flipped over will be safe from the dreaded Push die.
Might be a good idea to bank this yellow pile in your bench on a future turn!
Game play continues until you finish the entire deck. Players calculate their VPs based on the cards that are both in their bench and those banked faced down, and the person with the most VPs wins the game.
For non-heavy gamers, I like to play a variant I created for this game. Instead of placing the Roll card into one of the stacks in front of you on your turn, the active player just rolls the die and faces the consequences. That sense of impending doom adds to the experience, as everyone can relate to that Jack in the Box feeling of will this next card wipe out the 12 points of Red cards you have sitting in front of you. Why, yes, it will. It most definitely will. I like to reserve the option of placing the Roll card into a pile for more experienced gamers.
Even though this looks like Uno, it’s nothing like that game! Push is actually fun!
Push is perfect for a chill night with friends, whether you’re gathering around the bar or dining table chatting. It has a very small footprint so it’s easy to transport. It unfortunately isn’t very color blind friendly, as there aren’t any symbols on the cards to differentiate the various colors.
Other than that, it’s a fun game that is easy to jump into and create lots of laughter and merriment when you egg on the active player by saying, no, no, there’s no way you’re going to bust. And then they do!
And that’s Push! 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!
Happy 2020, folks! Hope you all have recovered from the hectic holiday season! I know I have! I took one of the longest work breaks for a while as I traveled to Tennessee and Los Angeles to visit family, and then spent a few days at home recovering from all of that. Last year was a year of personal and professional milestones, as well as experiencing joyful memories of seeing friends and loved ones happy and healthy. And, of course, playing lots of board games with all those people!
Without further ado, here are my top 10 board games that I played for the first time in 2019.
10. Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India, 1917 – 1947
Gandhi is Volume IX from GMT’s COIN series, which stands for Counter Insurgency. I do love my COINs, and this one especially stands out. Gandhi takes us to India for a detailed look at the final decades of the British Raj. This is the first COIN to include nonviolent factions, which offer a unique perspective to these types of wargames.
Gandhi is the latest COIN game from GMT Games.
The are four factions: the British Raj, the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League and the Revolutionaries. The Congress and the Muslim League are the two nonviolent factions, and like most other COINs, factions somewhat work together until they don’t in order to meet their win condition. The map is beautifully done, and the game allows wargamers to study this historic period of European imperialism.
9. Gugong
I did a review on Gugong on Episode 58 of The Five By. It is one of those games that caught me by surprise early in 2019 by having a little bit of everything. It has hand management, set collection and worker placement, and plays 1-5 people. In Gugong, the emperor is working hard to ban corruption within the country, and the highest officials of the Forbidden City would pretend to uphold that ban on corruption by accepting gifts from petitioners instead, and returning a gift of a seemingly lower value. Players do this by playing a card from their hand to activate a location on the board.
I love using cards to activate locations in Gugong. It makes you to manage your hand well.
Players in Gugong also have to manage their supply of workers with the general supply, which replenishes at a different rate each round. The components are great, and the game scales for all players, with its two-sided board and solo variant. The game also comes with all sort of meeple shapes for various locations on the board.
8. Just One
Just One is my party game of the year. It’s so simple to jump into, it’s co-op, and it plays up to seven people! You never quite know if word games will be a hit with various gaming groups (I’m looking at you, Codenames), but Just One has never failed me. In Just One, the group is trying to get the active player to guess the clue on the card by writing a single word associated with it. Before the active player opens their eyes, the group reveals their word, and if there are duplicate copies of a clue showing, they are eliminated from being shown to the active player. The active player then opens their eyes to see the remaining clues and tries to guess the word.
Can you guess the clue in our Just One game? If you guessed pole, you’re correct!
I particularly enjoy when the group starts finding their groove after a few clues, and the game evolves into a metagame because people start assuming what everyone else will write based on their personalities. And everyone totally loves having their own dry-erase marker and nameplate to write answers on.
7. Escape Plan
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.
Your mission is to escape the police in three days!
Welcome to Escape Plan, designed by one of my absolute favorite game designers Vital Lacerda. 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. This is by far Lacerda’s lightest game, but it’s still just as tense as his other games — and you never, ever have enough actions to do what you want to do. Just remember: don’t get caught.
6. Abomination
Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein is a worker placement game that’s 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!
Just collecting some body parts in the lovely city of Paris!
The game is great for horror fans and heavier gamers alike but 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 of body parts creeping up on you.
5. The Quacks of Quedlinburg
Quack, quack! And not the bird variety. In The Quacks of Quedlinburg, quack doctors are conjuring up potions by blindly pulling ingredients from their potion bag and adding them to their cauldron. If you don’t bust during a round, you gain VPs as well as the option to purchase new ingredients to throw back into your bag and play a new round.
We are all quack doctors drawing ingredients from a bag to make potions!
This push-your-luck game is super fun and super addicting, and, surely, you won’t bust when you have a 1 in 10 chance of drawing the one ingredient that will cause your cauldron to spill over. But of course, you manage to pull out that exact piece EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I love this game so much that I even purchased the cloth bags and plastic bits for it via the BGG Store even though I rarely deluxify my games. This game is just delightful.
4. Wingspan
We can’t talk about last year without adding Wingspan to this list. This game for me — and what is represents — is peak 2019 inspiration. Seeing a female gamer design her own game based on her own interests with a well-known publisher hit the large stage, take flight and soar — pun intended — is exactly what the board game industry needs more of.
Wingspan is just so lovely to play and look at it. The giant blue bird is something I added to my game though as a first-player token.
Representation 100% matters, and I’m always beaming with pride when I show this game to casual gamers and explain Wingspan’s backstory. The game has enabled me to invite even more casual games to take the next step up in strategy games because of its presentation, subject matter and play style. I’d love to see more success stories like this. Plus, OMG the eggs!
3. Watergate
Watergate, a historical subject that’s near and dear to my heart, is one of my favorite games of 2019 and I believe the best 2-player of the year. In this day and age, there is something so supremely satisfying about stopping Nixon. But what I particularly love about this game is that you and your opponent can play a game and then switch sides and play another game immediately — and it still hasn’t taken up your entire evening.
Watergate is my favorte 2P game of 2019.
Watergate fits in a small box and can easily be set up and taken down. I love seeing all the historical figures brought together in this tug-of-war game that is easy to get into. The rulebook and the text on the cards are well done, and there’s even a lot of supplemental information about the presidential scandal in the back of the rulebook.
2. Dead Man’s Cabal
Skulls, skulls and more skulls! While Dead Man’s Cabal comes with a giant sack of bones, it’s the clever and unique game play that makes this game one of my favorites of the year. Players are working to collect and perform ritual cards that score VPs by collecting required skulls at various locations in the game.
Look at all these awesome skuls!
During a player’s turn, they take a private action and everyone else can take a public action based on skulls in play. Also, you can only activate locations on the board based on what skulls you have in your supply. It’s this midweight interconnected puzzle of skull collection in a 60-minute game that scratches my Vital Lacerda itch. The game has fantastic components, and did I mention it comes with a bag of plastic skulls? What else do you need?
1. Pax Pamir
And now we’ve hit No. 1. Pax Pamir was absolute love at first play at Consimworld. Oh. My. Goodness. Look at those gorgeous components. I’ve played other games in the Pax realm, Pax Porfiriana and Pax Renaissance, 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.
I can’t say enough good things about Pax Pamir. And look at how gorgeous that is!
But 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 visualize which faction is dominating. During the game, players are buying cards to expand their tableaus. These cards allow them to take actions to strengthen their factions and armies. Players score points when a dominance check occurs. The game comes with so many cards, which keeps each game fresh every time. Pax Pamir (second edition) is my game of the year, and my only regret is not securing a copy for myself. It is, sadly, sold out. Someone hook a lady up!
And that’s my top games of 2019. What are some of your favorites that came out last year? And what are you looking forward to playing in 2020?
Every year, my BGG recap gets later and later. Sorry folks! It’s so hard to rebound after Thanksgiving as I end up hitting the ground running for the holiday season. Anywho, I had a great time at BGG Con this year, especially since it moved into a new location in downtown Dallas — at the Hyatt Regency.
We are definitely in the state of Texas.
The new hotel is larger, with convention activities spread out across multiple floors. The vendor hall and BGG library are downstairs in the basement, the main ballroom is way larger than last year’s, and on the Atrium level and third floor are rooms that people can rent out for group gaming. There are also tables sprinkled across those floors for people to drop in and game. I personally love that this downtown location makes it much, much easier to take a rideshare in search of non-hotel food. Texas BBQ, anyone?
Look at the size of the BGG Library! And this photo shows just about half.
I volunteered again, which is always a great experience. And I was fortunate to meet new folks and game with old friends. This post will be a quick recap of each game I played at the convention.
Tuesday games
Woof Meow Biscuits and For Sale. Woof Meow Biscuits is a card game in which cats and dogs are trying to steal biscuits by playing numbered cards to get to exactly 14. These biscuits are so snazzy! For Sale is always a great filler for a group of 6 people.
Wednesday games
I played Heul doch! Mau Mau, a cute card game about crying onions. On your turn, you must play a card down that matches the color or number of a card that’s face up, but, of course, if you play it onto your opponent’s pile, they will get the points for it. But collecting a number of certain onions will count against your pile as well. My colleague Ruth on The Five By recently covered this game.
These poor, poor onions!
Shibuya is a small puzzle game about a Japanese crosswalk. Players are placing tiles on a grid to move their pedestrians across to their destinations. On each turn, a pedestrian can only move along one specific attribute — either all circles or squares, or all whites or black spaces.
The first of a few pedestrian-destination games I played during the convention.
Signorie is a strategic dice-drafting game from What’s Your Game in which players are trying to gain influence in Italy. I really like how you’re limited to actions based on the number of pips on the dice you select — or else it gets really expensive and you never seem to have enough money for the game anyway. I didn’t like though how the women were basically just there to get married off, and how the crests that folks were trying to gain were randomly placed in. I ended up not completing two sets of crests. Alas.
I finally got a chance to play Airship City. It’s a strategic worker placement from a Japanese game company, so it’s not widely available in the U.S., which is a bummer! This game is so neat! You move your airships to tile locations on a board to gain resources, and build and/or sell ships, but there are some locations that allow you to move those tiles around. I love the spatial puzzle of this! Thanks Matt Wolfe for teaching us this game!
I then taught a 6P game of Sidereal Confluence, one of my favorite games to run during a convention.
I love the chaos of Sidereal Confluence. And my giant tweezers make an appearance.
I ended Wednesday night with a chill game of QE, well as chill as it can be when you don’t know what exactly folks are bidding. QE is a set collection game where you secretly bid for tiles. The thing is that the person who bids the most during the entire game will immediately get knocked out. Such tense fun!
Sky’s the limit for bidding in QE! Just don’t bid the most money overall!
Thursday games
I wandered into Unpub Protoalley to play Matt Wolfe’s Squaring Circleville, which is coming next year. I love the historical background of this game, of a town in Ohio that was built in a circle but had to make way for modernity by squaring its streets and entire town.
This is the prototype for Squaring Circleville.
I really enjoyed the rondel mechanism in this game, which allowed you to do one action, and then a second action, based on the tile that’s sitting on that piece of the rondel pie. That tile then gets placed into your player board, which then strengthens your action powers. I’m so excited for when this game comes out!
Had a great time playing with these cool people!
Chris and I picked up Spring on a String after seeing players on a nearby table in the main ballroom looking like they were … sewing. Wut?! In Spring on a String, players are threading a shoelace through flowers on this felt board and scoring VPs based on the number of flower petals they’re passing through. The game gets surprisingly brain burnery though based on the number of flower cards per game. These flower cards place restrictions/extra rules based on which flowers you can pass through. It’s a charming little game you can play and chat around the table with — as long as there aren’t too many flower cards in play, in my opinion.
All the pretty flowers! But Spring on a String can be quite challenging!
We also picked up Brikks, a fun roll and write Tetris game. The active player rolls dice to determine which piece is in play, and you fill it out on your player sheet. You can also spend energy, which are hard to come by, to change the piece to another one instead, based on the piece chart. You score VPs and energy based on how you fill out your board. The higher rows are worth more, and closing out multiple rows at once nets more benefits.
Roll-and-write Tetris! Now realizing I wasn’t very good at Tetris as child.
I picked up a copy of Pret A Porter, a game I had never played before but was super excited to own and play. It’s a worker placement game about fashion shows! Squee! And I love this version designed by Kwanchai Moriya. It’s gorgeous. This game is intense! You have two quick rounds to gather cloth, designs, models and/or buildings until your first fashion show. And each show is unique in what it’s looking for, either trendiness, PR, etc. You win ribbons by winning these categories, which will net you VPs and income later. But the bigger your fashion company is, the bigger upkeep you have to pay for models and buildings. So good!
Fashion shows are stressful! But man, what a great game.
The next game I played was Draftosaurus. It’s a light drafting game with tiny little dinosaur meeples! So adorbs! Players grab a handful of dinosaurs, pick one to place in their animal park, and then hand over the rest to the player on their left. Rounds continue until there are no more dinosaurs to pass along. And your VPs are based on fulfilling requirements in your animal park.
Look at these cute dinosaurs! You literally place these guys in your hand when you draft.
We then played Randy Flynn‘s prototype, Rolling Up Roses, a roll and write where you’re collecting various flowers to make bouquets. I like how you’re choosing from a personal supply of rolled dice, as well as the rolled dice in the middle, to maximize the amount of flowers you get. Order cards are also phased in, so hanging onto those expensive roses might come in handy later!
I forgot to take a photo when we started playing, but I enjoyed the Rolling Up Roses prototype.
Friday games
I started Friday by teaching Lisboa, one of my absolute favorite games ever, to Marlene and Randy. It’s a heavy game to start the morning with, but I think everyone had a great time. I know I did!
We started Lisboa at 11 a.m. I love this game so much that I’d be happy to teach it at 8 a.m. — and I’m not even a morning person.
Chris and I then took a trip up the Reunion Tower to see a bird’s eye view of downtown Dallas. The tickets were $17, and it was a fun experience. We picked a time right before the sun started setting so we were able to see some daylight and the nighttime skyline. But man, it was freezing up there because of the wind!
It was so windy and chilly up here! You can see the grassy knoll where JFK was assassinated.
The Inside Voices meetup was next, and I absolutely loved being able to hang out with such awesome folks in a small conference room. We even had a bunch of snacks and prizes! I ended winning Horticulture Master and Netterplays Felt Trays in a raffle. James Nathan said it best on his blog when he said it felt like a home-style game night.
Had a great time with these folks during the Inside Voices meetup.
I played a fun 5P party game called Pictures. You’re secretly assigned to a photo on this 4×4 grid and you’re trying to get the rest of the players to correctly guess which photo is yours. The trick is that you’re given a random set of materials for the round. You either receive a deck of emojis on cards, string, an assorted set of 9 cubes, sticks and stones, or wooden blocks. Once the round is over, players move their supplies to the next player and the next round continues. It’s so unique! But also randomly fun.
Using sticks and stones to convey one of the photos in Pictures.
We then played Silver and Gold, a fun flip and fill where you write on the cards themselves and score victory points. There’s also a race to get the gold based on the squares you cross off.
I then got to play Aquatica with the wonderful Beth Sobel. Best described as Concordia light, Aquatica is this gorgeous underwater engine building game. It did come with plastic manta ray bits, which had symbols on them that were a wee bit hard to see. But otherwise, the game had great components, such as a cardboard tableau where you actually slide cards into, and it plays quickly at about 30-45 minutes.
Aquatica is just gorgeous and plays like a lighter game of Concordia.
ClipCut Parks is a neat roll-and-cut game! Dice are rolled to determine how much you’re clipping from your main parks sheet toss segment plots of land, in order to satisfy card requirements that have terrain and shape restrictions. If you can’t place your segment or a large strip of paper falls off your main sheet, you must CRUMPLE. It’s equally disheartening and satisfying! And the game includes scissors!
Snip, snip. ClipCut Parks is a neat roll-and-cut game!
Cinecitta 1936 is a game based on the real-life Italian movie studio of the 1930s. Each player is working to hire directors, producers and actors for their movie, as well as produce the highest-quality movie. The hiring of employees has a similar mechanism to Ponzi Scheme, where you secretly offer another player a worker and an amount of money. If they want that card, they’d have to pay you the same amount back, or if they don’t want the card, they can just take the money and add that worker to their movie.
Making secret deals in Cinecitta 1936. You have to pay your workers at the end of the game.
We purchased Imhotep: The Duel, which is the 2P version of the solid midweight game Imhotep. It has the same tense mechanism as its original where you don’t want to set up the other person to sail away with the boat. But this time, goods are randomly loaded in 6 boats, which are docked at the end of a 3×3 grid. Each player takes their turn placing a cube onto one of the 9 Harbor Spaces, and if there are two workers of the same color in any column or row, they can choose to unload a boat instead of placing a cube, and gain the goods for their player tableau.
Face to face, loading up boats and goods in Imhotep: The Duel.
Nokosu Dice is such a thinky trick-taking game that involves dice drafting. At the start of the round, players draft dice, which can be used like a card — color and pips included. But the last dice remaining determines which color/number is trump. And as you use you cards and dice during game play to win tricks, the last dice you have left in your pool marks your bid on the number of tricks you aim to win that round. You get a point per trick won, but lots of points for making exactly making your bid. So many tough choices!
I really liked this trick-taking game! Since you can see everyone’s dice, you have some information about what they can play, since dice act as cards — suit and number included.
Queenz: To Bee or Not To Bee is a light pattern-building game about bees and flowers. The beekeeper moves around the board collecting orchids, which you later use to fill a polyomino fields in play. As you fill in more fields, you score more points for connecting orchid flowers. You can also use these hive structures to fill in a spot for a field, which then score points for bees surrounding them at the end of the game.
Working hard to be the Queen Bee.
One of the best things about going to a convention like #BGGCon2019 is being able to try games you normally wouldn’t have access to. I got a chance to play Electropolis and just found it darling! It’s a tile-laying city-building game that has a clever turn order mechanism built in. You have to take a certain number of connecting tiles on your turn, and the earlier you go in turn order, the fewer tiles you’ll be able to take.
Electropolis incorporates some elements of Patchwork when collecting tiles for your city grid. But if you decide to go earlier in turn order, you get fewer tiles.
There are parameters each round about where on your board you can build those new tiles, and you score points based on how you place those industry tiles on your board. It feels similar to Quadropolis but more strategic and gamey!
Always a great time with Netters and Mitch!
Saturday
Chris and I did some exploring on Saturday afternoon to visit the Dallas Eye Sculpture. We found it.
Feeling watched in downtown Dallas.
And we ate some BBQ at Pecan Lodge. The BBQ was excellent, but the sides were meh. I need to have my sides yummy, otherwise, what’s the point. We walked around downtown Dallas and Deep Elum, which was a nice change of pace after being cooped up inside for the past few days.
All the meats! They were yum, but the sides were meh. And Chris was mad that the collard greens were sweet.
Bus was one of my must-play for the cons! Brian Frahm taught it to me, and it did not disappoint. Players are trying to deliver passengers to various locations by building connections, and the passengers will go to whichever destination they need to go. It’s brutal, cut-throat and a typical Splotter game, even though it’s been republished by Capstone Games this year.
Passengers riding the Bus, not caring which route they take but that they just get to their destination.
I next played giant Container. I love, love this game. It’s a closed economic system in which you’re producing goods, setting a price for them to sell, loading them onto your boat, putting your boats up for auction and all to get those goods onto the island. The problem is that you can never buy from yourself, and a huge part of this game is pricing goods so that people will purchase it. Our game went completely bonkers, and we were so broke by the end of it.
The Container island is very full. We all spent way too much money to load it up.
We ended Saturday night playing a quick game of Werebeasts, which is a werewolf-type social deduction game but with bidding, and For Sale.
I got outted as a WereGhost. Womp womp.
Lastly, we played an adorable game of Fast Sloths. In the game, you’re trying to be the first sloth to collect all your leaves on the board, but being slow and sloth-like, you only move by jumping onto the backs of other animals. On your turn, you collect cards of various animals so that you can activate them for their animal powers — they’re all different — so you can travel around the board. The game lasts for about 45 minutes, but then it kinda slowed down a bit in the end. Nonetheless, we had loads of fun making random animal noises. Like for whenever we summoned the eagle, we all yelled, caw caw!!
Fast Sloths! The box for this game is just adorable.
The last game of Saturday is On The Underground: London/Berlin. In our 3P game, players are in charge building out their 3 different rail lines, hoping the tourist will take your lines to the closest destination and give you VPs. The pawn doesn’t like walking to stops or changing lines, so it’ll embark on the route that’s easiest for it. This version is a reprint of an older game, which I heard only has slight differences in game play and on the map. I do love the box art style though.
Another game where the passenger must make it to their destination, not caring which route they’ll take — just the easiest one for them.
Got a chance to play Pictures with these cool folks on Sunday. Explaining this game is so funny because you’re immediately met with incredulous looks, but after a round in, you start seeing everyone finding their groove.
One last game of Pictures. Fun times with Ross and Emma.
The last game I played for the entire con was Bruxelles 1897. This is the card game of the beloved board game, and it manages to feel just as tense in a small box format! To take an action, you play one of your architect cards, which has a cost value on it. Players are taking action to collect art, sell art, collect supplies or build buildings. Players can also take free actions, but then those architect cards go to prison, which means they won’t be available in your hand to take actions with later.
And just like that, five days of gaming was done! Next year’s BGG Con is the same weekend as Pax Unplugged in Philadelphia, which is causing many gamers to pick one over the other. It seems that more folks are picking Pax Unplugged. Sigh. Thanks kind folks who made it all the way down here! And let me know which game you’d most want to play!
It’s officially been five years since my first blog post. I wrote about last year’s anniversary, and with every passing year, I like to take a look back down Memory Lane.
As I sit at my dining table plugging away on my laptop, my back toward my Kallax shelves full of board games, I can’t help to think of the first games to enter my collection, the catalyst to the inevitable transformation of my dining room area to board gaming central — mini-studio lights and all.
The first five games in my collection were Catan, Ticket to Ride, Agricola, Arkham Horror and Twilight Struggle. Catan, TTR and Twilight Struggle were all gifts, and Arkham and Agricola I purchased after a deep dive into the BGG rankings.
The first five hobby games that started it all for me.
A few months ago, after a game of Agricola, nostalgia spurred me to share on Twitter these five games and asked followers which five hobby games first entered in their collections.
Feeling nostalgic since my Agricola game last night. What were the first five hobby games in your collection? Mine were:
I received over 850 board game submissions, and I thought it’d be fun to compile that information and see which games were most often mentioned. A good majority of my Twitter followers seemingly entered the hobby around the same time I did, based on their responses.
For clarity’s sake, I lumped versions/editions/expansions into the base game of the same name. For example, I grouped all of The Settlers of Catans and Catan Seafarers all under Catan. The top 12 results are below in a nifty data visualization I created. (You can hover over each bar to get more information.)
And here are the top 25 games mentioned, broken down by years. There appears to be a dark period there, based on the responses, between 1985-1995. (I’m pretty sure a lot of people were playing all those Milton Bradley games, such as Shogun).
Then in 1995, Catan debuted and helped usher in the Golden Age of board gaming. And as they say, the rest is history.
I still have a fondness for my first five games (which are all still present in my collection), but, in all honesty, I’d probably only play four of them if asked right this minute. I’ll let you guess which one wouldn’t make the cut.
What were the first five hobby games in your collection, and which of them do you still own?
Two weekends ago, I went down to Tucson for their annual board game convention RinCon! I particularly love how a bunch of us from the Phoenix area all trek down south to Tucson to game nonstop for a few days. I also love all the unique perks that RinCon offers its convention-goers — from nightly midnight snacks to the wonderfully curated Women’s Space.
Here’s one of the main rooms at RinCon. The tablecloths are color coded, so you’ll know if a table is reserved for scheduled gaming.
It’s the third year in a row I’ve gone, and the second year in a row I’ve been a special guest. About 600 people attended this year’s convention, which was held again at the Sheraton Tucson Hotel and Suites.
Gamers setting up giant Azul in the RinCon lobby.
Friday
My buddy Mark and I arrived Friday afternoon, and we dove immediately into a game of Mexica. I love, love this game, and it never fails to disappoint! Everyone always falls in love with the game’s components, and, for me personally, I enjoyed easing into a hectic convention with a game I’m quite familiar with.
Mexica has such table presence! But it can be so mean! The new players in this game learned quickly that blocking people is the way to go.
I then taught a 4-player game of Irish Gauge, a stock-based cube-rail train game. It’s the first title in the Iron Rail series by Capstone Games, first published by Winsome games back in 2007.
These guys are always so fun to game with! I wish they all didn’t live clear across town and, for Mike, in Tucson!
It’s a 3-5 player game that plays in about 60 minutes. Learning the game is easy; there are 4 actions to choose from after the initial stock bidding around. Players are building track to expand their train company, auctioning of stocks, upgrading towns to cities, or calling dividends. When dividends are called, cubes are randomly pulled from a bag, and that determines which routes will pay out. It’s a very stripped down stock game — complete with adorable candy-like train pieces. Irish Gauge was the first of many train games I played during the weekend.
Irish Gauge is a quick 3-5 player stock–based train game.
I then taught a 3-player game Dead Man’s Cabal, a clever puzzly strategy game where players are trying to raise the dead. It has skulls, spells and zombie cards! Players have a private action, and then everyone does a public action, based on the skulls in play, and each skull represents a board that has actions associated with it. If you don’t have a particular color of that skull in your supply, then you can’t take the action. I really enjoyed this midweight euro!
So many skulls! This game has been delightful each time I’ve played it.
Next up was Tokyo Metro, an economic stock game from Jordan Draper games. This is probably the heaviest of his games — and a little busier and fiddly, too — where players are investing in stocks and working to increase the values of stocks, as trains pass through rail stations along a giant cloth map of the Japanese metro. Trains only move a certain number of spots, so you’ll have to calculate payout based on that train schedule, and only certain actions will come out each round, based on the action cards that are phased in. I’d love to try this again, as my train was totally melting down by this time of night.
So many trains, and so many rail lines! Tokyo Metro is based on the Japanese metro.
Then at 11 p.m., I hosted a Mega Game of Welcome To. About 20 people came out, and we used the Halloween expansion pack for our game. Welcome To is a roll-and-write game that doesn’t involve dice but instead cards containing numbers and special abilities that players use to fill out a map of their city. Everyone selects a number simultaneously so it’s a game that can be played out on the big screen in a large group.
GloryHoundd took this photo of me hosting Welcome To on the big screen.
And even though I was nervous running my first mega game ever, I had a great time, and I think everyone did, too. The winner was GloryHoundd, and she received the game, as well as a couple expansion packs, and the second- and third-place winners received some Halloween candy.
Winner winner chicken dinner! The winners of the Mega Welcome To game.
At midnight, RinCon served its first midnight snack of the convention: Eegee’s. For those unfamiliar, Eegee’s are Tucson-based frozen fruit drinks, and people lined up to get a cup of this sweet treat. All attendees get tickets with their badge, which they trade in for the midnight snacks on Friday and Saturday night.
Saturday
I then started early on Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m. by teaching a 2P game of Abomination. I love this game so much, and I believe it’ll be more widely available now for more folks to check out! But I like to preface that this is not a short game by any means. Even with our 2P game, it took well over 2 hours.
Building bodies early on a Saturday morning.
I then was invited to do a noon panel called “How to Teach a Game in 5 Mins.” Five us from the board game industry talked with a group of folks about methods that worked for us for teaching games, whether light or heavy. The discussion included how to teach teenagers how to win graciously as well as empowering new gamers to teach other gamers. Also, we had a legit space scientist Dante Lauretta among us panelists who is a board-game designer and does educational outreach at the Boys and Girls Club in Tucson.
GloryHoundd and I then hung out at the bar after our panel and caught up for a bit while drinking our respective signature drinks. Our drinks were super yummy and provided a midday breather to an already busy day.
Drannnnkss! GloryHoundd and I both enjoyed our signature convention drinks.
My next game was The Soo Line, where I learned that it’s pronounced like the name Sue and not so. That’s the Valley girl in me coming out!
Always a fun time with Greg, Dr. GloryHogg and Brian!
Anywho, The Soo Line is a 45-minute pick-up-and-deliver stock train game. I made some poor choices for bidding in the beginning and never quite caught up again! How does the Soo Line actually made any money when it has to come all the way across the board? Tell me your secrets, folks!
It was so hard getting the Soo line all the way across the map!
I then joined a group of a dozen people to play Blood on the Clocktower, a giant social-deduction game described to me as similar toWerewolf but gamier. Benjamin led many, many games of this during the entire convention, and it was SUCH. A. BLAST.
Our fearless leader Benjamin running Blood on the Clocktower.
Unlike Werewolf, when you die in Clocktower, you can still have one vote for the rest of the game so that you can help your side win the game. It’s humans vs. demons, and there’s even a character sheet so you can deduce who is which character, and strategically reveal information about yourself or others.
I was the ravenskeeper, and even though I died, I was instrumental in finding the imp, leading the humans to victory!
After a quick dinner break, I taught a 4P game of Tiny Towns. I was so involved in teaching this game that I completely forgot to take a photo, but friends, let me tell you that I crushed the game. I played a second game of Irish Gauge with 4 different players and immediately after a few games of Strike.
Strike is such a bar game, in which you’re tossing dice into the box stadium, and if there are any pairs, you take back dice into your hand. Players get eliminated when they run out of dice, and the last person standing wins the game.
Throw in your dice to get more dice! Strike is a fun filler!
I then got to hang out with David Short and taught him and my buddy Rob Watergate. I always get kind of nervous getting games I love to game designers, because they know game mechanisms so well and I’m afraid they’ll find something really off or broken about said game. Luckily, everyone ended enjoying the game!
The rest of the night was a series of shorter games. We played NMBR 9 (always a good time) and Illusion (I can’t for the life of me figure out these color percentages) before getting pizza for our midnight snack.
And then some late-night shenanigans 1 a.m. happened with my buddies Mark, Greg and Brian.
We then played Giant Rhino Hero, Point Salad and Skulls. This was my first time playing Giant Rhino Hero and it was a riot! Players are basically stacking cards to build a giant tower for the Rhino Hero to move up in.
This is when it got called than me, though some people might say that it doesn’t take much to reach a height taller than 5’3″!
The tower eventually got much taller than me, and its ultimate demise was captured on video. (Notice that I am in fact standing on a chair!)
Forgot to send this on Twitter last night, in case everyone was wondering how it ended. Tragically, I'm afraid. 🦏🦏 pic.twitter.com/F19ZnAzcwB
Point Salad is a quick card drafting game in which you’re collecting fruits and veggies to score objective cards. And Skulls is a fun bidding, bluffing game that has gorgeous artwork.
Sunday
I began my day teaching Watergate at the Women’s Space. Folks, I cannot tell you how amazing this space is. I love that RinCon sets aside a suite for women to relax, get away from the crowd, and learn scheduled board games from female GMs. Mari runs the space, which is fully stocked with meeple cookies, snacks and drinks.
A nice couch to chillax on during the convention!Here’s Mari, who keeps the lovely Women Space up and running.
Two ladies signed to learn Watergate, and they enjoyed the game so much that they switched sides and played again. The same player won both times!
These ladies are ready to go head-to-head in the battle for the White House.
I ended the convention playing another game of Mexica and Coimbra, which was the top game I played in 2018. And in case you were wondering, I crushed my two opponents in Coimbra.
Coimbra is such a good game. We need to get to get it on table more often!
And just like that, another awesome time in Tucson was had at RinCon. This convention never disappoints, and I love how friendly everyone is here. Karen Arnold Ewing is the chair of the convention, and she succeeds in making this con inclusive and inviting, especially with the incredible women’s space. There are gamers of all ages, and there is definitely something for everyone!
Here’s RinCon’s fearless leader Karen Arnold Ewing, who, along with an army of volunteers, works tirelessly to put on a wonderful convention.
And just like that, three days of gaming came and went. I had a lot of fun hanging out with friends and meeting new ones, and hosting/teaching games. Thank you so much for having me, RinCon, and I can’t wait to be back next year!
I love these pronoun badges that are provided at every RinCon convention.
This review of Watergate is featured on Episode 69 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Shards of Infinity: Relics of the Future, Hundreds of Horses, Lines of Action and Point Salad.
When I first heard that Capstone Games was releasing a game on former President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, I immediately knew I had to play this game. Political history and journalism — well, for those who know me in real life, this is exactly right in my wheelhouse.
Watergate, published in 2019 and designed by Matthias Cramer, is a 2P card-driven game that plays in about 30 to 60 minutes. It’s similar to one of my absolute favorite games, Twilight Struggle, but much less punishing while still maintaining the historic tug-of-war feel of this scandal — and in a fraction of the time.
Watergate is a tense 2-player card-driven board game that plays in 30-60 minutes.
In Watergate, one player plays the side of a Washington Post Editor trying to connect Nixon to his informers, while Nixon is trying to hang onto his presidency and not resign. Each player gets their own individual deck of cards to play with, and a small evidence board that contains a research track sits in between the players.
There are also cards that keeps track of Nixon’s and the newspaper’s win conditions, as well as who has the initiative for the round. The player with the initiative will draw 5 cards in a round and go first, whereas the other player only gets 4 cards.
On your turn, you play one card, either for its value part or its action part. The value part shows a number that you can move either the initiative or momentum token toward you on the research track or move an evidence token the same number as spaces as well.
When you play a card, you can either move tokens or evidence toward you on the research track, or take the action on the card.
There are three random evidence tokens placed face-down on the research track at the start of the round. They get flipped face up when they move, and these tokens are important for the Editor to connect Nixon to his informants on the board, or for Nixon to block those connections.
The evidence board looks like a giant corkboard with a bunch of lines and push pins printed on it. When either side claims an evidence token (either by placing it on the 5 spot on their side of the research track or when the round ends), it’s placed on the board face up by the Editor or face down by Nixon. As the board fills up, it starts to look like those investigation boards you often see in the movies when someone is working hard to uncover a conspiracy and connecting all the dots.
Every conspiracist needs a cork board and push pins.
Also, instead of using the value part when you play a card, you can also play the action portion. Sometimes these actions are one-time events that are so powerful that you then have to remove the card from the game.
A few examples of the Editor’s cards. Go Woodward and Bernstein!
These events are also how you can get informants onto the board. Each informant has exactly two cards; Nixon has one, and the Editor has one. If Nixon plays his card first, the informant is placed face down on the board, thereby closing off that pathway to victory for the Editor.
A couple examples of Nixon’s cards.
After all the cards are played, the round ends. Momentum and initiative tokens are awarded to the side they’re sitting on, and evidence tokens are placed by their respective winners as well.
The rounds continue until one side reaches their objective: Nixon manages to gain 5 momentum markers on his card, or the Editor connects Nixon to two informants on the evidence board.
In order to win, Nixon must gain 5 Momentum tokens. As the Editor collects tokens on their card, they gain benefits.
Unlike other card-driven games, Watergate gives each side their own player deck to cycle from and playing cards from your hand does not trigger good things for your opponent. And while I’ve heard some criticism of not having a large deck to cycle through and people getting too familiar with all the cards, I think this is a benefit as when players get more familiar with the game, there’s additional built-up tension bracing for that one particular card that your opponent still hasn’t played that could totally mess with you.
What I particularly love about this game is that you and your opponent can play a game and then switch sides and play another game immediately — and it still hasn’t taken up your entire evening. It also has a small footprint and can easily be set up and taken down. The box is small, about the size of a personal pizza box or for those familiar, a Patchwork box.
Watergate has a small footprint, and its box is easily transportable.
I love seeing all the historical figures brought together in this tug-of-war game that is very easy to get into. The rulebook and the text on the cards are well done, and there’s even a lot of supplemental information about the scandal in the back of the rulebook.
And if you’re interested in more of the Watergate scandal, I’d highly recommend watching “All The President’s Men,” a movie about the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal, whose reporting helped bring down Nixon’s presidency.
And that’s Watergate! 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!
Thanks Capstone Games for sending me a copy of this game!
Two weekends ago, I attended a small gathering of Arizona gamer friends for Gila Monster. This is the second year in a row we’ve done this, which originally sprung up as a way to play new Gen Con releases in an intimate setting. This year, we shelled out extra money to rent space at the Tempe Mission Palms and extended it over almost three days, starting with Friday night at Snakes and Lattes.
I didn’t start gaming though until early Saturday morning. I arrived at 8 a.m. and immediately jumped into Hadara. What a neat civ building, card-drafting game! We played with 5P, and I particularly how the first player can choose which pile to start drafting in, and then everyone else drafts where your crest is showing on the main board.
The first player In Hadara gets to move the wheel in the center of the board, determining which cards player will draft first.
On your turn, you pick two cards from the pile. You discard one into the discard pile, and for the remaining one, you can either purchase it or remove from the game for money. When you purchase a card, they give you resources on your various tracks on your player board, either income, military, culture or food (which you’ll need at the end of the era to keep your cards in your tableau.)
In between each phase, you then purchase colonies and erect statues, if you have enough military and/or culture, for VPs. Game play continues through three epochs, with cards getting more expensive and more powerful each round. The game is really straightforward and the iconography is easy to understand, but still tough decisions about which way to build your civilization. I can see this game being really popular with larger groups of people who have about an hour of game play.
Here’s the start of my civilization where I’m pretty even on the four tracks.
I then played a game of Kingdomino: Duel. This puzzly roll-and-write manages to capture the essence of the original game, now instead with dice! The first player rolls four dice, and they pick one. The second player then picks two dice, and the last die goes back to the first player. You fill in these symbols on your score pad, mapping out your country like in Kingdomino for matching terrain and multipliers. It also becomes a race to gain dice manipulation powers based on which dice you pick up.
Kingdomino Duel is a 2P roll-and-write that’s quick and puzzly!
I then played Barenpark with the Bad News Bears expansion. Oh my, look at this monorail! I’ve always been kinda lukewarm on the original Barenpark game, but I really enjoyed it with this expansion. It made the game more strategic with extra boards and more options for winning, and the monorails are a nice touch as they provide more meaning to the lowest base tiles. They can also be exchanged in tandem with other tiles for the giant bear tiles.
Look at my adorable monorail in my bear park!
I then got a chance to play Black Angel. This game is absolutely gorgeous (with artwork by Ian O’Toole, who designs most of Vital Lacerda’s games), and Black Angel is from Sebastien Dujardin of Troyes’ fame. I think Troyes is a great game that we don’t nearly get on table enough, so I was really excited to see to see what Black Angel had in store.
The artwork and colors in Black Angel are just striking!
In Black Angel, AIs seeking planet Spes after humanity destroyed Earth. Each player has a tableau in which you can gain technologies that trigger when you play a card from your hand. The many dice on the board enable you to take various actions across the main board. Players also draft mission cards, which then you send you bots onto a second board representing space. This entire board is made up of space strips, which then through the course of a game during a reset (when a player runs out of available dice to spend or doesn’t have resources to use someone else’s dice) flips over and moves to the front of the board, advancing the spacecraft Black Angel. Imagine a scrolling video game screen.
Black Angel is a dice-drafting game from the same designer as Troyes..
This core mechanism controls the timing of the game. Once Black Angel reaches Spes, the game ends. It’s a dice rolling, worker-placement game much like Troyes, and while I enjoyed playing it, it didn’t seem as punishing as Troyes, which is what I enjoy about that game.
I them played a quick game of Planet, which is a quick drafting game where you’re trying to score objective cards based on land terrain placement.
I’ve got the whole world in my hands! Isn’t this darling?
These magnetic tiles are placed on your soccer-ball-esque contraption, which makes for an adorable and tactile game. You literally have the whole world in your hands!
My planet is so pretty, even though there are forests right next to the frozen tundra!
I then taught folks Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein. Such a great game, and it seemed like everyone had a good time. Our 4P game took about 3 hours, and that included a couple rounds shaved off because of a few cards.
We are building monsters in Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein!
After dinner, I got a chance to play Blackout: Hong Kong. This is a game from Alexander Pfister, of Mombasa, a game I really like for its hand-management mechanism of your playing cards. Blackout has the same mechanism featured here. In this game, a giant blackout has hit Hong Kong, and you’re trying to locate resources and expand your network of specialists in order to claim a position of power.
We are trying to locate and collect resources in Blackout: Hong Kong.
At the start of the round, dice are rolled to determine which resources are available for that round, and then you pre-program your cards to collect those resources. Meanwhile, you’re trying to complete objectives on cards you’ve picked up in order to place them into your deck. When you get down to your last remaining cards, you pick the longest discard pile from your tableau to use them again in your deck. The board looks really sleek, and all the iconography is easily understandable. I’d love to play this again.
I love how the player boards have step-by-step instructions to guide you through the rounds.
On Sunday, I started super bright and early again with a chaotic game of Sidereal Confluence at 9 a.m. (Can you tell I’m so not a morning person?) I needed a lot of caffeine for this because there is a lot of yelling of course!
I didn’t run this game officially, so it was nice being able to concentrate on my faction and use its ability to my advance. As the whale squids Eni Et Ascendancy, I used my bargaining skills to hand out some really cool resource techs! I probably helped one guy too much as he came in first, and I came in second. Not too shabby! I love this game so much, or maybe I just love yelling across the table for cubes and somehow negotiating 3-way deals.
Next up was Ragusa. When my friend was teaching this game, he kept saying, “You only have 12 actions.” I responded, “This kind of reminds me of that Calimala game.” He’s like, “it’s the same designer!” And then I was kinda proud of myself for recognizing similarities in his games as I had never heard of Ragusa until that afternoon.
We are placing our structures in Ragusa, Italy, not to be confused with the Ragusa that is now present-day Dubrovnik, most recently known as a Game of Thrones film location.
In Ragusa, you place one structure on a corner of hex on the board exactly twelve times — and that’s the end of the game. The trick is that when someone else places on that hex, then you may get to activate that action again. You’re also placing strategically to collect resources, which allow you to build in the country or the city, as well as how many structures you can build on the same hex. You can also build walls or process resources for other goods, which then you can sell onto a ship for VPs. It’s such a neat game where every single placement really counts!
Insert all the Baby Shark renditions here …
I then got to play a game that I had been basically pestering people all weekend to teach me: Jaws. (Insert ominous theme song here.) This game is ridiculously fun! It’s a 4P game, where one player is the shark vs all the rest. The game takes place over two phases. In Act 1, the shark is doing hidden movement along Amity Island snacking on some swimmers, while Brody, Hopper and Quint are working to prevent that. When they locate the shark or when the shark has eaten a certain number of swimmers (like a bunch!), the game enters Act 2. The shark then gets some special power cards, while the rest get equipment cards, based on how well Act 1 went for either side.
Here you can see Jaws circling the two players in the water after destroying large chunks of the boat. Eeeeps!
Then it’s to the death! The board flips over and it’s an image of the Orca with tiles on it. The shark attacks the characters, and then Brody, Hopper and Quint get their turns. As the shark attacks, the boat tiles become damaged or lost, and players can end up in the water, which is no good! A series of dice rolls and action cards make for a very frantic and bloody finish, and, like I said, Jaws is thematically ridiculous and fun!
I then got a chance to play Copenhagen, a tile-laying puzzle game where you’re building the facade of your cute little Danish house. On your turn, you either pick up colored cards or turn in a group of cards for various polyominos of the matching colors of the cards you just turned in. You score victory points for filled in columns and rows, as well as some other extra objectives. A super cute light game!
Copenhagen! It’s like Patchwork but on the front of the building and with cards. This the deluxe fancy version. I’ll be forever spoiled by it.
I then ended Gila Monster by teaching a 5P game of Hadara. It was a perfect bookend to a chill weekend of gaming with friends and trying out games that I normally wouldn’t have had a chance to otherwise. We had our convention at the Tempe Mission Palms this year, the same location fo Consimworld, and it’s seriously the best spot because there are lots of food options within walking distance.
I’m already looking forward to next year’s event as well as seeing a lot of these guys down in Tucson for RinCon in October. And if any of these games were intriguing to you, let me know down in the comments!
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!
