Tag: board games
Friendship Con 2023: Ark Nova, BSG and multiple Chudyk games

Friendship Con 2023: Ark Nova, BSG and multiple Chudyk games

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Hello, friends! It’s been a busy few months (I feel like all of adulthood is saying this phrase over and over again but I digress). In between multiple trips and family coming to visit, I managed to get some gaming in. Most notably, last month I saw my friends in Atlanta where we met up for our annual Friendship Con. 

Upon arriving in Atlanta on a Wednesday night, we all went out for dinner at Ponce City Market. This place is so neat! It’s a big fancy food court inside a converted Sears building from the 1920s. I most definitely enjoyed this Thai iced tea popsicle from King of Pops. 

This mixed-use place in Atlanta has so many different food stalls and shops — something for everyone.

My friends in Atlanta surprised us with swag bags that contained this amazing Twilight Imperium 3-D printed war sun. Behold its gloriousness!

This war sun is ready to do some damage! It’s ginormous!

The swag bag, which had our names printed out, also contained the Critters of War board game and game and card component holders. Always a fun surprise! 

My friends who hosted Friendship Con this time around gave us these awesome goodies! Plus a war sun that I forgot to add to the photo.

The first game to kick off the convection for me was Air, Land and Sea: Critters of War. This was a fun 2P game where players use 12 of their 18 cards to try to win majorities in the air, land and sea theaters. Some cards are played face-up or you can use the backside of a card, which is the same for all the cards in your deck. The game is fast-paced and tactical, and you play 3 quick rounds to determine the winner.

We immediately opened Critters of War to play.

We then played Red 7. I can’t believe I keep forgetting how great this game is! The goal is to play all the cards in your hands first by beating a card that’s always been played. If you can’t do that, you can also play a card to change the rule in play so that you can somehow beat the cards that have been played. I really should add a copy for my collection. 

Thursday

The next day, I taught a game of Trajan, my favorite Stefan Feld game. It’s a point salad where your actions are determined by moving your pieces around a rondel, and if you end certain pieces in a space that matches the pieces where a Trajan tile is sitting, you can combo your actions. There are a lot of ways to score — from shipping cards, having points in the Senate to pick up end-game goals, construction and even area control. 

Love me some rondels and Trajan!

I then learned how to play Ark Nova. This game has been on my radar for a while but have never gotten a chance to play it. Friends, I LOVE THIS GAME. It satisfies many itches for me — puzzle placement, hand management and cute animals, and I especially enjoy the mechanism to trigger the end game, which is when your two opposing scoring tracks (prestige and conservation points) cross each other, and the biggest gap between those two points results in the winner. What a fun race! 

I’m building out my zoo in Ark Nova! Gotta get those conservation points!

While we played Trajan and Ark Nova, another group of folks were playing Fortress America. Old school! 

The other table was playing this classic!

I then played FlowerFall, a unique game by Carl Chudyk, who designed Glory to Rome. In this game, you are literally making flowers fall! It’s an area control of sorts, think Carcassonne, where you’re making the biggest continuous path of flowers with patterned cards that are at the mercy of gravity. It’s very hard to beat gravity. 

If you told me that Carl Chudyk made a gravity-based card game, I’d think you were lying to me.

We then played Scout, my favorite trick-taking game of late. The game has a twist though: once you’re dealt your cards, you cannot rearrange them at all. You can either use the numbers at top, or flip the entire hand over and use the cards at the bottom of the card, for which they’re different. It feels like Bohnanza in that sense, but you can take card or cards from the middle of your hand, and then make runs or pairs with the leftover cards as they slide together. Super fun and since it’s an Oink Game, it comes in a very small-size box. 

Scout is such a great game! Love how you’re stuck with how the cards were dealt to you.

We ended the night with my absolute favorite game ever: Battlestar Galactica. We played a 6P game, and us humans narrowly avoided disaster! The game ended really late, and there was a point that people were asking, “are they a cylon or just super loopy and tired?” I love this game so much. 

So say we all! The humans were victorious against the toasters.

Friday

On Friday morning, we played another Chudyk game: Bear Valley. This was a push-your-luck game where you’re trying to make a path in the woods and not run into the bar.

Is this Cocaine Bear the game?

I’m so bad at push-your-luck games because I tend to take it all the way to the edge, and unfortunately, the bear got me. You can also end up lost in the woods if you don’t plan your escape correctly. 

You don’t want to get lost in Bear Valley!

I then played a 2P game of Revive. Ever since I played this game a few months prior, I have not been able to stop thinking about it. I love the combo-ing of the actions, the hand management (in the sense that you can’t play your cards again until you refresh), and the multi-use cards, which you can tuck into your board from either side, so you can get different benefits. This game is so fun! 

Revive is a game that I want to play over and over again.

Next up was Tyrants of the Underdark. I hadn’t played this in years, but I remember when I first played it years ago I played it a lot. It’s a cool deck-builder area control set in the Dungeons and Dragons world (a world I’m not too familiar with). Cards enable you to send and move troops out, or send spies infiltrate the board for control. There’s also an action to promote cards, which removes them from your deck but will still score VPs for you at the end of the game. Just don’t do what I did and promote powerful cards too early! 

Look at my red army taking over! But alas, that didn’t last too long.

The rest of the evening was spent playing a few more casual games as some of my friend’s family came over: Giant Codenames and Just One. These are always a hit!

Akropolis is one of my favorite filler games.

We closed out the night with more Scout and Akropolis. Akropolis, one of my favorite games of 2022, is a quick and elegant filler game that streamlines drafting and tile-laying. Players are building out their cities with tiles they’ve drafted (that are shaped with 3 hexagons), and scoring each colored district requires acquiring the scoring tile for that same color. It’s a neat puzzle, whether you build up or out! 

Giant Codenames makes it easy for people to gather around a table and read all the cards.

Saturday

Saturday was an epic day of Twilight Imperium! We busted out our giant war suns, which definitely set the mood for this game. I played as the Yssaril Tribes, a faction I had never played before, but unfortunately, I got super pinned in the far reaches of the universe and wasn’t able to be as effective as I wanted to be. Our game lasted from morning to early evening. 

Look at how bonkers that war sun is! Seriously, one year I will figure out how to do well in this game.

After dinner, we played a game of Villagers. This game is so fun! I like to joke how it’s tech tree the game with cute artwork, and I don’t think that description is too far off. Players are drafting characters into their village, and some villagers can hold more specialized versions of themselves, which give better bonuses or powers. Sometimes though to play a specific person, you’ll need to unlock a technology for that card — if you have it, you pay yourself; if you don’t, the bank will pay the person who has it. As you build out your village, you can draft even more people and/or build more buildings. Scoring happens twice in the game, and then you calculate end-game bonuses to see who wins. 

The artwork in Villagers is delightful.

And if you’ve been reading along, we played another game of Red 7 to close out the night. Good times!

Sunday

Sunday was the last day we were all going to be in Atlanta. Friendship Con went so fast! We started the day with Dune Imperium and added the Rise of Ix expansion, which was my first time playing that expansion. It added airships to the game, and a new board where you bid on some really strong technologies. I thought about purchasing this expansion but haven’t gotten around to it yet. 

I played an expansion to Dune: Imperium for the first time.

Lastly, we played a final Chudyk game: Impulse. This felt like the most Chudyk game that we played all weekend (sorry, Cocaine Bear!). Impulse uses multi-use cards to explore, expand, exploit and exterminate in outer space, and the game comes with these little rocket ships. The game has a map of cards, and you seed the Impulse track with tech cards from your hand. The game is a race to 20 points. It was so hard to wrap my head around this game, but I feel like now that I’ve got a play under my belt, it’ll be easier to jump into. Shoot, it took me quite a few games to understand the flow of Glory to Rome and now can almost jump into any game without a problem. 

Exploring space and collecting multi-use cards in Impulse.

And with that, we had to leave for the airport to fly back home. I had a great time in Atlanta with all these people. There’s something so special about spending five days with the same group of folks, year after year after year. Lots of laughs, yummy food, conversation and, of course, gaming. Can’t wait for next year! So, which of these games have you played?  

Thanks for another fun Friendship Con!
We went to the Philippines and played some games! 

We went to the Philippines and played some games! 

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In February, my husband and I went to the Philippines and had an amazing time with family in the Manila area. We even visited two other islands! For those unfamiliar, the Philippines has over 7,500 islands, with Luzon the biggest and most populous island and it’s where the nation’s capital Manila is located. It has been decades since I’ve gone back to the motherland, and there is something truly special about connecting with relatives you haven’t seen in person in a long while, while being around the culture and people just like you — all the Filipinos! 

During my trip, I was able to squeeze in some gamine and visited a Gaming Library store (the one inside Alter Ego in Mangaluyong City) and buy some games. The employees were really nice and answered my questions about games, mainly if the Tagalog version of a particular game was similar to the English version or was it something different. I ended up purchasing Just One — in Tagalog! 

The cards in this version of Just One are all in Tagalog.

I also asked if they had a copy of the card game Darna at ang Nawawalang Bato, and they searched high and low to give me a demo copy that was a little beat up. It absolutely did not matter to me its condition, as I was so happy to take it! Darna is a Filipina superheroine that first appeared in 1950. 

I’m so happy to finally own a copy of this game, which is now out of print.

I also purchased my own sungka game at another store in the mall. Sungka is a Filipino mancala-type game that uses this wooden board and seashells as the counters.

I played a lot of games of sungka with my grandma growing up.

I also played a bunch of games with my game-loving family. During one weekend, we played a bunch of games outdoors near the pool. My cousin gifted us Games of the Generals, a Stratego-type “fog of war” game where you’re trying to capture your opponent’s Flag by marching your army pieces, which has a hierarchical order to their strengths. The game can play 3 players, with one person playing as the arbiter, who determines which piece wins battles, as you and your opponent can only see what’s behind your metal pieces. You and your opponent then only can deduce which army piece eliminated your piece, and a lot of the game is remembering where your opponent’s potentially strong pieces are. You can also play as a 2-player game, and in that version, when a battle happens, players reveal the two pieces in the battle, and you both can figure out which piece is stronger. I also learned this game is also called Salpakan, which means to slap. Let the slapping commence! 

I eventually could not hide my flag and my opponent captured it during this game.

Next up was chess. (I am very bad at chess but I know all the rules to play it. My nephew totally kicked my butt!) I also learned that when their pawn gets to the other side of the board, it gets promoted to a stronger piece. I told Chris that I never saw that on “Queen’s Gambit,” and he’s like, it doesn’t happen when people are good at playing chess. 🙃

I really should be playing more chess to improve my game. It’s one of the first games I learned.

We also played backgammon on an old set from Greece. My cousin owned this board after a neighbor gave it to her before they moved, but she never played it, so she gifted it to us. One of the pieces is missing, so there’s a 10 peso coin on the board in its place, and it’ll always remind me that it came from the Philippines. 

My cousin gave me this older backgammon set from Greece.

If you ever attend a Filipino party, there’s always mahjong. This is the quintessential gambling game that Filipinos love to play. The rules are a little different depending on each culture, but it’s a game that I’ve grown up playing and it always makes me feel nostalgic for the family parties of my childhood. 

Trying to complete my hand of tiles during our mahjong game.

My other cousin also owned this charming deck of Byzantine-themed playing cards that Byzantine Time Traveler designed and sells. I was able to buy a deck when we visited the Ayala Museum in Makati later in the trip.

The artwork for this deck is just delightful and super informative!

Lastly, we also played a lot of Pusoy Dos. According to Wikipedia, “Pusoy dos (or Filipino poker, also known as chikicha or sikitcha), a variation of big two, is a popular type of “shedding” card game.” The object of the game is to be the first to discard your hand by playing poker hands to the table. I played A LOT of this game in college because it’s fast, strategic and can be played with any deck of cards. The lowest value card, according to the rules I play, is the 3 of spades and the highest is the 2 of diamonds. I use the the mnemonic Daly City High School to remember the order of the suits. When someone plays a pair of 4’s, then the next person has to play 4’s of a higher suit or a higher pair in general. If everyone passes, then that person can lead the next thing to beat.

I have the 2 of diamonds, which is the highest card the version of Pusoy Dos we play.

In addition to spending time in the Manila area, we island hopped to Coron in Palawan as well as Boracay. Though a little remote and rural, Coron was breathtakingly gorgeous. I had never ever seen water so clean and clear — it was just like a movie set!

The water in Coron is so crystal clear, with a bright turquoise tint to it!

We took an all-day boat tour to explore small nearby islands and we snorkeled, kayaked, hiked and swam, even eating a seafood lunch on picnic tables with food cooked on the boat. We especially loved seeing the fish, the Twin Lagoon Lake and Kayagan Lake, which requires climbing 163 steps up and 204 steps down to access the lake. And then you need to climb the reverse of that to get back to your boat! Just stunning! 

We purchased a Go Pro right before we left, and we got so many photos during our water excursions!

During our time in the Philippines, we also visited Boracay, which has a completely different vibe than Palawan. Boracay is a resort town with lots of hotels, restaurants and water activities.

The white sand beaches of Boracay. It was about 9 a.m. and the crowds hadn’t woken up yet.

We signed up for helmet diving, which is walking across the ocean floor in a pressurized helmet. It takes a little getting used to to pressurize your ears as you climb down the ladder, but nothing too bad. It was so much fun! We did helmet diving on Valentine’s Day and snapped this photo. 

Happy Valentine’s Day from Boracay!

Overall, the Philippines is a must-recommend travel destination! The Manila area is just like a big city — densely populated with lots of traffic — but it was nice staying in a walkable city with access to so many restaurants, malls and things to do. For the other islands, we took small planes via Philippine Airlines, and stayed at beautiful resorts there. Most everyone speaks English in the country, the food is so diverse, yummy and cheap (based on the U.S. dollar exchange rate), and the hospitality is top-notch.

Some Filipino street food — chicken and pork isaw — at a small eatery on the University of the Philippines campus.

We did so much and visited so many places in two weeks, and I’m so grateful to be able to spend time with my relatives. Can’t wait to go back (hopefully it won’t be decades until we return) and visit other islands next time!

An overhead shot from the airplane of Coron Island in the province of Palawan.
War Room: Where Axis and Allies meets Diplomacy

War Room: Where Axis and Allies meets Diplomacy

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I recently got a chance to play another all-day game of the global WWII game War Room. And by all day, the game continued on for about 8 hours before folks decided to wrap it up because it seemed inevitable that the Axis were going to win in one to two turns. After 8 hours, we had taken seven turns, so it could conceivably have continued for another one to two hours — and it was getting late already. I’ve played this game twice already, and this time I was on the Axis’ team as scrappy little Italy holding on to assist stronger Axis powers and being a big pain in the butt against Great Britain’s navy in the Mediterranean. 

War Room is a 2-6 player game where players take on nations during WWII: three people will be the Allies as the U.S., Great Britain and Russia, while the rest will play as the Axis: Japan, Germany and Italy. Players can also play only the Pacific theater with 2-3 players if you can’t manage to round up enough folks for an all-day game. While it plays similarly to Axis and Allies (with some streamlining during combat), the preplanning of military orders and discussing strategy with teammates are very reminiscent of Diplomacy — but without the backstabbing!

War Room is so large that players need command staves!

First off, to play War Room, you need a very, very large table, and preferably another side table or two to place the battle boards. The player board is a puzzly configuration of a giant circle, similar to those world maps you’ve seen in war movies. Each player receives a slim rectangular box containing command markers and flag tokens, as well as a cardboard pegboard and pegs keep track of their resource tracks.

The game also comes with a million plastic pieces, representing infantry, tanks, planes and bombers, and an assortment of ships, from submarines (yellow ones specifically!) and aircraft carriers and others in between. For those who opted for a game upgrade, the game also comes with large branded sand timers and command staves to move your forces across Europe.  

Each stack of units is assigned a number, which will come into play when you assign orders for them.

There are seven phases of War Room: Direct National Economy, Strategic Planning, Movement Operations, Combat Operations, Refit and Deploy, Morale, and Production. 

Game play isn’t too difficult, if you’re familiar with either Axis or Allies, but there’s plenty of room to make errors. During the Strategic Planning phase, players secretly write out orders on their O&P chart to reveal simultaneously at the end of this phase. Some countries have more command boxes than others, so you’ll have to strategize which units you want to move to which location, and orders can’t be changed once the phase ends.

These fancy sand timers will tell you when time is up!

During this time you’ll also be bidding with your oil resources to pick turn order. Sometimes it’s better to go after everyone has made their move, while other times you want to first so that your troops get pinned. 

Players write down commands on their O&P chart. Italy has 6 commands; others have more.

Pinning happens when an enemy unit moves into your location. If you had planned to move that unit out during Strategic Planning, it now is stuck. During the Movement phase, armies can move one space, or many spaces along the train rail route in friendly spaces. 

You can see the railroad tracks going through Germany and other countries.

As forces move into contested areas, battles happen! Players move their units to the provided combat boards, both both sea battles and land battles. Each side places their forces based on the chart and they roll color-sided dice to determine who is the victor. Various units give you a different number of dice (increasing your odds of winning), and they also may take more damage, while others will get wiped out upon immediate hits. The chart makes it so easy to figure it out. Player roll all their dice and assign hits. If units are damaged, players can spend resources to keep them in play. If they’re destroyed, they go to the Morale Board, which then calculates stresses for the next round. 

This combat board simplifies battles. It tells you how many dice to roll and how much damage units can take.

A country suffers morale penalties when it receives too much stress at the end of the round. Such penalties include no rail usage or disrupted supply lines. These are not good, and it’s hard to lower these penalties once you’ve moved into a higher category, which can be seen in a circle on the turn order track in the middle of the board. 

After the stresses are calculated, players can order new troops or forces by buying them during the production phase. You can write down the calculations for these on your player board. When you put new pieces of plastic on the board, they enter the game at your factory locations, and the factories’ smokestacks show how many items may be placed there for production. But they are not quite available yet to your armies. They’re being “produced” and will be available for use in two rounds. When you produce forces, you move your resource markers down based on how much you’ve spent. 

Units that were destroyed get placed on the Morale Board, which is used to calculate a nation’s stress level.

Then so begins the next turn, which is the first phase: Direct National Economy. You calculate your income based on all the territories you control. This is really easy to figure out because you’ll have the individual card for that territory and it’ll tell you how much oil, iron and OSR (other strategic resources), and you’ll move your little peg up your box. 

Each player gets one of these boxes, which stores your command markers underneath the peg board that tracks your resources. These were all the territories I controlled at the time.

The game continues until the Allies control both Greater Germany and Japan, or the Axis controls two of the following areas: the Eastern United States, Great Britain or Moscow. Players can also play a 6-turn variant if they are unable to devote that much time for a full game.

I’ve quite enjoyed my two plays of War Room, with each game being completely different. I’ve learned that moving across the Pacific takes a long time (I played as the United States in my first game), and Italy, while small, can be strategically helpful to Germany and Japan. War Room is such an epic game — to look at on a table and to play! The tension never eases up, and while it does require a time commitment, the game moves quickly and there’s never a dull moment! 
Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2022

Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2022

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The end of 2022 is almost here! Dang, that went by so quickly! In all honestly, this was the first year that it felt like life in general was returning to a somewhat new normal. I feel so fortunate that I got to travel and attend multiple game conventions, where I played a lot of games and hung out with some good people. Here are the top 10 games I played for the first time in 2022. 

10. Dune 

The spice must flow! But watch out for the storm and sandworm — they’re both pretty treacherous.

This Dune is a streamlined version of the 1979 game that many people grew up playing. I played this game for the first time this past Consimworld, and I had a great time. It’s definitely a convention game because it can run a little long, depending on how experienced the gamers are, but it’s a great implementation of all the different warring factions in the source material (for me, it’s just the 2021 movie — I’ve never read any of the books. Don’t take my nerd card away from me). There’s treachery, secrecy, negotiations, battles for spice, an always-moving storm and the most dangerous thing of all — the sandworm! I would definitely love to play this again at the next con I go to. 

9. Project L

Project L is a Tetris-inspired engine builder that comes in a small minimalist box.

I love puzzles, and Project L is a Tetris-inspired board game that is also an engine builder. Pretty cool, right? It comes in a sleek little black box, with lots of plastic tetromino pieces and decks of thick-cardboard puzzle cards, in which you place those plastic pieces to complete a puzzle. When you complete a puzzle, you gain victory points and/or new puzzle pieces, enabling you to complete more challenging puzzles that require more pieces for more VPs. Placing all those colorful pieces to create a mosaic puzzle feels just so satisfying, as does the stack of puzzle cards you accumulate throughout the game. It’s a great short game, one that I’ve played a lot throughout the year. 

8. Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road 

There are literally many paths to victory in Merv but you’ll need to do it in 12 actions.

Merv is a crunchy, city-building economic game, one that follows a trend in the past couple of years where the entire game comprises of very few actions — 12 to be exact in this game — but many things will happen as a result of that one action, making the game both brain-burnery and fulfilling. Players make their way around the board three times, and on each side, they take a turn, first by placing a building on a location in the row or column where you decide to place your meeple or activating a building in that row or column if there’s a building already there. Buildings will net resources, and then you can choose a site action (caravansary, palace or marketplace), gain a favor or deploy a soldier. If you move ahead on your turn farthest on a side, you’ll start as the last player on the next turn, unless you pay camels to bump ahead. The goal of the game is to gain favors with the palace, collect resources to fulfill contracts, move along the Silk Road to trade and build city walls to avoid the Mongol destruction that happens at the end of the second and third year, which is the last round of the game. 

7. Heading Forward 

The days are counting down on your rehabilitation process in Heading Forward.

I never play solo games but was intrigued by Heading Forward. Based on designer John du Bois’ own experience, in this game you assume the identity of someone embarking on the long road to recovery following a traumatic brain injury. This solitaire card game mimics the choices one must make while rehabilitating, deciding which skills to relearn or which will atrophy based on non-usage, while under a deadline pressure before your medical insurance will run out. It’s a unique experience that offers a glimpse into rehab’s long and difficult process, and the uncertainty of recovery, the result of which could be uplifting or heartbreaking.

6. Stonewall Uprising 

Lots of support tracks in Stonewall Uprising that could have dire consequences for the Pride side.

I got a chance to learn how to play Stonewall Uprising at SD Hist Con with the designer Taylor Shuss himself! Stonewall Uprising is 2-player asymmetrical deckbuilder in which one side plays as The Man and the other as Pride and they fight each other for or against civil rights. It is a notable moment in board game design when a game with this subject matter that’s near and dear to the designer can be published by a wargaming company. Taylor told me about all the research he did on the various historic people who helped the Pride movement get to where it is today. Each side starts with a basic deck of cards, and the game eases you into building your deck. It plays through the 1960s-1980s, which leads into the catastrophic losses the gay community faced with the AIDS epidemic. There are also rule twists that set this apart from a standard deckbuilder. When folding early, which will give your opponent some traction on one of the support tracks, but you’ll be able to draw more cards the following round. 

5. Long Shot: Dice Game 

Which horse will win? It’s anyone’s game! But make sure you bet on the right one.

Who knew betting on horses would be so fun? Long Shot: The Dice Game manages to capture the chaos and excitement of a day at the races — all in a compact roll-and-write package that plays 1 to 8 people. With each turn, the active player rolls two dice, one that pushes a specific horse and the other one by how many spaces along the race track. Players then take one action based on the horse die, and they can either take a concession, mark a helmet on a horse, mark a jersey on a horse, bet up to $3 on a horse that matches the horse die, or straight up purchase a horse. The helmets enable you to make bets on that horse after they pass a certain point on the track, and the jersey allows you to attach a second horse to a primary horse to move one spot after the primary horse moves. The concessions action allows you to get bonuses when you cross off a row or column. The game is fast-paced, and you’ll never know whose horse will cross the finish line! The person with the most money at the end of the game wins.

4. Akropolis

Akropolis is a short yet strategic tile-drafting and tile-laying game.

Akropolis was a total surprise for me. It’s a game that was introduced to me at the end of a game night when we had about 30 minutes left before calling it a night. What I thought would be a quick filler is an elegant, streamlined drafting tile-laying puzzle, a game that plays in under 30 minutes. On your turn, you choose a tile from the construction site; the first one costs zero, but if you want to get one farther down the line, it’ll cost you one stone each spot. You then place the tile into your city. The tiles themselves are one large shape made up of three hexes. When you place the tile into your city, it must border at least one edge of another city tile, or you can place it on another level as long as it covers three hexagon tiles underneath it. The three types of construction: quarries, plazas and districts. Quarries don’t score points but get you stone when they’re covered. There are five types of districts, which score differently and have their own placement rules. Lastly, the plazas are multipliers for these various districts. But a district won’t score any points until you get a matching plaza of the same color into your city. The result is tense drafting and an enjoyable city-building puzzle.

3. Paint the Roses

This is the deluxe version of Paint the Roses, where the tiles are made of acrylic.

I am not the best at deduction games, but there’s something about Paint the Roses and its semi-cooperative deduction gameplay that makes this game so worthwhile. The theme is Alice in Wonderland, and you’re all trying to finish the Queen’s garden before she cuts off your head. On your turn, you choose one of the four tiles face up and place it in the garden next to other tiles. Each tile has a colored flower and a shrub behind it, one of the four symbols, a heart, clubs, spades or diamond. You and others then place cubes to determine if the placement satisfies the secret objective card in each of your hands. After each turn, you have to make a guess about someone’s objective, based on the cubes on the board. They can either be colors or shapes, or both, as objectives get harder. If you guess wrong, the Queen starts chasing you across the board — faster and faster as the game progresses — and you need to win before she gets to you. And because nobody exactly knows what everyone’s individual objective is, there’s no problem of one player taking over the game and making decisions for everyone. 

2. Honey Buzz

The bees are buzzing along and collecting resources to complete orders.

Honey Buzz is an excellent worker-placement economic game, all packaged together in the cutest way possible: bees, flowers and whimsical animals. This game is delightful and crunchy, and you place your beeples on the board to collect various tiles to place into your hive. If there are already beeples at that action spot, you must place exactly one more beeple to take a tile. When those tiles create a pattern, all the symbols on the tiles activate, either producing nectar, coins or more beeples; selling items to the market or completing an order; or activating any other symbol in the pattern if you have a wild symbol. As various types of nectar are sold to the market, their price drops and multiple nectars drop too low, the market crashes, triggering the end of the game. There are also objectives that players can claim throughout the end or at the end of the game. Honey Buzz is a fantastic combination of economics, worker management and puzzle-laying. This game is definitely buzzworthy! 

1. Twilight Inscription

The most epic of roll and writes: Twilight Imperium. Everything about this game is just so slick.

And here we are at No. 1: Twilight Inscription. I seriously have not stopped talking about this game since playing it for the first time. It’s the most epic of roll and writes, an ambitious project set in the world of the galactic classic Twilight Imperium. It feels so much more than a regular roll and write, while maintaining the feel and characters of the TI4, all in a game that’ll last about 2 hours. The game can also look intimidating upon first glance, but once you get started, the symbols are all easy to interpret and gameplay feel sintuitive. The hardest part of the game is deciding which direction to go and which boards to invest in. Each player has four boards: Navigation,  Exploration, Warfare and Industry, and each round begins with an event. There are 25 event cards in the game. During an event, there are dice rolls preprinted on the event card, and each player can choose to cross off those symbols on one board of their choosing. Once everyone is done, the dice are rolled, and players must cross off those new symbols to the active board they’ve already chosen from the event card. This is how everyone’s game can branch off in different directions. Should I explore more systems, or should I invest in warfare? Or maybe it’s worth unlocking these technologies and collecting bonuses for later. So many choices! There are also bonuses for reaching Mecatol Rex first, naturally, and other game objectives scored at the end. Overall, Twilight Inscription just looks so slick, especially with the fancy orange shiny markers that really pop against the blue backdrop of each sheet. Plus, the big chonky dice feel good to roll. 

And that’s my list for 2022. Thanks, friends, for making it all the way through this list. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season, and here’s to bigger and better things in 2023! What are some of your favorite games you’ve played in the past year?

Flashpoint: South China Sea

Flashpoint: South China Sea

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The first card-driven game I learned to play was Twilight Struggle. It was early on during my entrance into the hobby, and, at the time, the game was No. 1 on Board Game Geek. I used to play it often way back when but, times have changed, much like the rankings on BGG, and I don’t often have the time to devote to that particular 2P game. Luckily for gamers, GMT Games created a Lunchtime Game Series, and Flashpoint: South China Sea is the latest game of the series, which consist of smaller-format strategy games designed to be played in 20-60 minutes.

Flashpoint: South China Sea’s box is slimmer than other GMT games.

Flashpoint: South China Sea, designed by Harold Buchanan, is a tense yet much more accessible game than its CDG predecessors. Set in the conflict between the United States and China in the disputed region around the South China Sea, the game pits two players against each other as they try to assert economic and diplomatic influence across various regions and countries using cubes and event cards. 

But first, a big thank you to Harold for sending me this game!

The game begins with a board, event cards, scoring cards, wooden cubes, player aids and rulebooks. There’s also another deck of cards for those who like to play games solo. First and foremost, I appreciate how the rulebook immediately indexes and explains important terms and concepts on the first page — this makes jumping into this game less daunting for less experienced wargamers. 

In the Philippines, you can see the darker-colored triangle corner in the square to indicate starting cubes belong at that location.

Setup is really easy. On the board, squares with a darker-colored triangle at its corner shows where starting cubes begin. You then set up the 7 scoring cards face up near the board and shuffle the 48 event cards. Deal out 6 event cards per player, and set the tension to low and the campaign track on the 1. The game plays out through three campaigns. 

On campaigns 2 and 3, the person with the fewest VPs gets to decide who goes first, but in campaign 1, choosing first player is a little different. Each player secretly bids the number of victory points they’re willing to give to the U.S. player in order to play as China. I’ve never encountered starting instructions like this before, but it immediately puts pressure on the players before even starting the game! You probably don’t want to give the U.S. too many points to play as China, but maybe you’ll be better at this than me! 

Here are the different type of event cards: red is for China, blue for the U.S. and the third card is neutral.

Players then alternate playing event cards until each side’s hand is empty. Event cards are friendly to one side, and they have an operational value, a mode and a scoring impact. If you play a friendly card to your side, you can play the event or use the operational value to conduct actions. If you play it for the scoring impact, score one of the scoring cards sitting next to the main board, execute it and turn it face down. That scoring card cannot be scored again during this current campaign. 

There are 7 scoring cards altogether. Here are four of them.

Cards are then discarded to a discard pile, and the next player takes their turn. If you play a card that matches the mode as the top card in the discard pile, you can either execute the discarded card’s event or scoring impact. There are three different modes in the deck. 

China and the U.S. both have an available pool and reserve pool of cubes. The available cubes can be brought onto the board through cards, while moving reserves to available will cost 1 Operation value. Certain actions will also cost more to carry out as the tension level increases throughout the game. 

Here’s the setup of the game, along with all 7 scoring cards visible.

At the end of the first and second campaigns, each country moves economic influence cubes to available, and the tension level moves one space to the left. If a side reaches 15 VPs during play or final scoring, it’s an instant victory. If no one reaches 15 VPs after the third campaign, the side with the most VPs wins the game. 

The game is a constant tug of war for political and economic influence, and there are never enough cubes to do everything. Plus, timing is absolutely key when activating the scoring cards. But sometimes your opponent will score before you, or, based on the random draw, you do not have the matching symbol to activate that scoring card. The game’s well-written rulebook shows plenty of examples, and even provides several Spotify playlists, depending on how intense you want your game to be. I most definitely always crank up the HIGH tension playlist. 🤘🏽

I was so surprised by these playlists at the end of the rulebook. Super cool!

So if you’re looking for a 60-minute, two-player wargame, Flashpoint: South China Seas is worth checking out. And with that, I’m off to Harold’s San Diego Historical Con for the weekend. I’ll be writing about that convention next time!
Rincon 2022: Surviving Rincomicon

Rincon 2022: Surviving Rincomicon

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The pandemic has changed many things in our lives, and that rings true for board game conventions. A few conventions have folded up during this era, while others have had to tweak their programming. Case in point: Rincon, Tucson’s Tabletop Game Convention! Last month, Rincon paired up with Tucson Comic Con during Labor Day weekend to feature gaming at the convention and after-hours gaming and dinner at a nearby hotel, the Ramada by Wyndham Tucson.

Rincon attendees needed to purchase a ticket to Tucson Comic Con and Rincon after-hours if they wanted to participate in both things each day. And while the setup wasn’t ideal, it was still great to see the wonderful people who work so hard to get this convention back on its feet. I even received a pencil from the a conventiongoer that said “I survived Rincomicon!” Yes, indeed!

An overhead shot of the exhibitor hall at Tucson Comic Con. So much shopping!

I only attended RinCon for two days — Friday and Saturday — as I couldn’t stay away from home for too long (more on that at the bottom of this post). I arrived in Tucson on Friday afternoon to get ready to teach Cascadia at the women’s table in the gaming hall.

I personally love teaching all types of games at the women’s table because it gives us a chance to learn a game in a stress-free, ask-as-many-questions-as-you’d-like environment. I taught two games of Cascadia, one 2P and another as a 3P, and it was a hit! 

I am always so happy to teach Cascadia. It has such a pretty table presence.

After teaching the game, I was able to walk the Tucson Comic Con floor and see all my fellow nerds — and buy some nerdy things, like a giant Kirby fan (which came in handy as it was hot that weekend) and some D20 earrings.

I love this giant Kirby fan!

Once evening hit, Keep it Rollin’ w/RinCon festivities moved over to the Ramada, which was a quick walk on the other side of the freeway from the Tucson Convention Center, where Comic Con was being held. Evening tickets provided dinner and ballroom space for gaming and smaller rooms for LARPing. 

The gaming room at the Ramada by Wyndham in Tucson, where scheduled gaming took place.

On Saturday, I spoke on a panel called Diversity and Inclusion in Tabletop Gaming. We had a great discussion about inclusion and diversity, which touched on topics such as themes, game choices, welcoming spaces and many others. 

I was on the panel with Lizzy Jayne Took (from left), Mariah Johnson, Darrell Lynn aka Sosha Justice, and Karen Arnold Ewing) at the Diversity and Inclusion in Tabletop Gaming panel.

I then walked the other half of the exhibitor floor to for more shopping (as one does at a Comic Con) and literally squealed when I saw this: The Batmobile! 

Holy smokes! It’s the Batmobile!

The 1960s Adam West Batman is my absolute favorite version of Batman. I grew up on this show in reruns and literally know every single episode and famous cameos on the show. I also own a copy of The Official Batman Batbook and spent childhood memorizing it. Ah, the days before the internet!   

I then taught a game of Honey Buzz to three other women. One lady said she had wanted to learn how to play the game before purchasing it, and everyone enjoyed the game! Plus, the components are always so delightful to play with!  

Honey Buzz is just so adorable and it’s a quite a strategic economic game! Plus, who doesn’t love beeples?

After leaving the convention center and walking over to the Ramada, I met Zach of Korrosive Games, who brought their prototype Fate of Venterra. It’s a 4x game with a gorgeous build-out of various terrain, and there are five different factions you can play from. The company is local to the Phoenix area, and the game is still being developed, eventually getting on Kickstarter.

Fate of Venterra is a 2-5 player strategy game that’s being developed.

The Ramada had some signature drinks at its bar, so naturally I ordered a drink that was named after me.

Being on the drink menu was a nice surprise!

It was yummy and sweet! And that garnish was of a fruit roll-up consistency.

I need to figure out how to make these small meeple garnishes!

And with that, I drove back home to Phoenix on Saturday night. It was wonderful seeing gamer friendsI hadn’t seen in a few years because of the pandemic, especially Karen, chair of the Rincon Convention. She is truly one of the nicest people out there in the gaming sphere and worked hard to make it happen this year. Thanks for having me, Karen!

It’s always a pleasure seeing Karen Arnold Ewing!

And for those who have made it down this far, I’ll circle back to why I couldn’t stay at RinCon for the entire four days. The day before Rincon …

My husband and I adopted a new dog! He’s a 10-year-old dog that we adopted from the Arizona Small Dog Rescue. He’s a handsome boy, and we’re so happy to have him. My husband was originally supposed to come with me to Tucson but he stayed home with our new dog, and I just couldn’t wait to get back home to this smiling face.

The face of a handsome doggo who is always looking for snacks!
Friendship Con 2022: Phoenix

Friendship Con 2022: Phoenix

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It’s July and the summer is halfway over! The heat in Phoenix is getting to be unbearable (112 degree days, anyone?), and one way to combat the heat is by staying inside and playing board games. During the last week of June, my two friends flew to Phoenix to visit my friend and me so that we could host this year’s Friendship Con! I look forward to this week every year so that I can disconnect from work and just hang out and play games with friends for five days! 

We love good swag here at Friendship Con. We got water canteens for everyone, plus a variety of stickers.

Wednesday

We kicked off gaming with QE! This has been my go-to short-ish game of late. The game is just bonkers because it’s essentially no-limit betting! Nations are secretly bidding on industry tokens, which are worth VPs and other points for set collection purposes, and the winner is the one with the most VPs. But if you’re the person who bid the most during the game, you’re immediately ineligible to win, despite possibly having the most VPs. It also has an element of hidden information because only the starting bidder on each turn can see everyone’s bid.

QE is a delightful game of no-limit bidding!

We then played a game of Container. I can never quite wrap my head around this economic simulation game, in which you’re building factories, producing goods, selling goods, storing goods, auctioning off goods and storing them on your island, but I always have a good time playing it! The trick is that you can’t really do any single of these things from your port (except build factories and produce goods), but instead they have to come from other player’s supply chains and warehouses. I also enjoy the auction element of this game: bidding on ships that get to the island, ships that you don’t always completely full of goods. The final score is also calculated based on a personalized secret objective card where goods are worth different points, but the goods that you have the most of are removed from scoring. 

Shipping and bidding on goods in Container. Dang, those supply chain issues just get to you!

Wingspan was next. From its superb components (don’t you just want to chomp on those eggs like they’re filled with chocolate?) and engine-building game play, Wingspan never disappoints. And while I haven’t deluxified my game (other than a giant 3D printed bird that I use as the first-player marker), the game just feels so lux and fun to play with. There’s also something super satisfying about the combos and activating your birds, while learning all about them. I also enjoy that as the rounds progress, you’re left with fewer real actions, yet with the birds you have laid out in your tableau, it feels like you’re doing even more with each turn. 

All the pretty birds — and some murder birds — in Wingspan.

We decided to continue the nature theme with a game of Cascadia. This puzzly tile-laying drafting game is always such a delight to play, even if the player to your right keeps taking your salmon tokens! It was one of the top 10 games I played in 2021, and every game is slightly different based on the random animal goals that are selected for each game. It’s gorgeous and easy to teach, and I can’t stop recommending this game to people!

The beauty of the Pacific Northwest is evident in the artwork of Cascadia.

We then took a quick break for dinner. I cooked a giant pot of chicken adobo. Yay! I’ve been trying to learn more Filipino recipes, so I’m glad everyone enjoyed this dish. We ate this over rice and had plenty for leftovers the next day.

Chicken adobo is a Filipino dish made chicken, garlic, soy sauce and vinegar, and served over rice. It’s yummy!

After dinner, we busted out Hello Kitty Monopoly. There is something super Boss Lady about asking your husband and three male gamer friends to play this adorable version of Monopoly, which actually ended up being really cut-throat because we played with the real rules. None of this Free Parking cash collection nonsense. I remarked during the game that its second half felt like the wheeling and dealing chaos of Sidereal Confluence, because we needed to make those monopolies to start bleeding our opponents dry. I loved the metal Hello Kitty character tokens, but for those who aren’t familiar with Sanrio, it was a little difficult to figure which piece was yours. Overall, the game was intense and it did eventually end (not like those games during childhood where everyone just got bored because it went on too long), but I was disappointed that I was never able to buy Hello Kitty’s Hotel (aka Boardwalk).

Hello Kitty Monopoly — all the characters may look cute but they will cut you for your property.

Thursday

Thursday was our D&D day. My friend has worked so hard at painting minis of our individual characters and setting up a game for us as DM. He also gave us sparkly dice to play with! My character was a monk tiefling named Sevi Olum, and she kicked so much butt!

Friendship Con swag also included these sparkly dice for each player for our D&D game.

Our group was Earth’s last hope against an alien invasion, and we worked hard to complete some adventures in a tavern, cave and the sinewy tendrils of a giant eyeball. Ewww! Despite my aversion to eyeballs in general (and not being familiar with too many D&D campaigns), I had a good time with my friends!

The minis are painted, and ready for battle and to save the planet!

We ended our Friday with Just One. Last year, we played a lot of Just One, and I was especially amused that a lot of our inside jokes carried over from those games. It’s truly one of the best party games I’ve ever encountered, and it plays up to seven people. 

Just One is a guaranteed good time!

Friday

We started Friday morning by playing Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition, but changed it up by adding the Prophecy of Kings expansion. Since we had never played this expansion before, we dealt out three characters from the expansion to each person and chose one to play. This expansion adds mech leaders with some special abilities. I chose the Naaz-Rokha Alliance, which basically looked like space cats with monkey aliens on their backs. 

These space cats look so intimidating!

Our game lasted about 7 hours, which is quite speedy! The game randomly ended though during Agenda, which gave one player 1 VP to put him at 10! We all got thrown off by the agenda card, but the game was close anyway between him and another guy. 

The most epic of board games: Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition!

After dinner, we played Battlestar Galactica, one of my absolute favorite games ever! I will only play the base game and with 5P, so we enlisted our friend to come over to run the game. I can’t tell you how much I love this game: the paranoia, the semi-cooperativeness, and the fear of secretly being activated halfway in sleeper phase to become a cylon. It’s always such a great experience, no matter if you win or lose, and especially if I get to play as Helo (which I did!). Unfortunately, us humans did not win this time!

Sadly, us humans could not fight off the cylons. But my man Helo is still looking fine.

We ended Friday night with a 3P game of Dune: Imperium. I’ve been enjoying this worker-placement deck builder the most I play it and wish that more games have this combination of mechanisms. The Lost Ruins of Arnak is the only other game that feels similar to this one! Are there other deck builder worker placements that you can think of?

The more times I play Dune: Imperium, the more I’m liking it!

Saturday

We started Saturday with Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile. I love, love the adorable artwork and quality components of this game but honestly, something about the chaos of a game in which you need to hang on to your win condition until the start of the next round drives me bonkers. I do enjoy the exploration of the action spaces of the game and moving around the board, but I’ve come to accept that Oath is just not for me. And that’s totally fine! We like what we like!

The gorgeous board and world-building in Oath is top-notch.

I then taught a game of Project L. If you want to learn more about Project L, check out my latest segment on The Five By Episode 123. Project L is a neat engine-builder puzzle where you’re using Tetris pieces to complete cards with puzzles on it for VPs and/or more puzzle pieces. The more cards you solve, the more pieces you’ll have to tackle even bigger puzzles that are worth more points. 

In Project L, you complete the puzzle cards in order to gain VPs and even more pieces.

I then learned how to play Tranquility, a cooperative card game where you work together by putting a card down so that cards fall in ascending order — in silence! This was such a neat yet mildly stressful game because you have to figure out which cards you need to save in your hand to play, or which ones you can discard. If you discard the wrong cards, you and everyone else will get backed into a corner in the display and will be unable to complete the objective. What a fun filler! We actually played this twice because we did badly the first go-around, and we won in our second game!

Tranquility: a silent game of card-counting.

Next, we played Shipwreck Arcana, a deduction and logic game in which players are trying to figure out which fates (numbered chits 1-7) are in your hand while placing drawn fates onto logic cards that can help others figure out which fates are in your hand. I liked the dedication aspect of this game, which reminds me of those logic puzzles growing up.

This logic game relies on placing the correct fates under a card so others can guess which fates you have.

After that, we played Long Shot: The Dice Game. This roll-and-write captures the chaos and excitement of a day at the races. Horses move along the track with each dice roll, and players can choose to bet on horses, buy horses, or collect bonuses. It’s seriously a lot of fun, and even though it’s not your turn, you’re still highly invested in how the race is going and making decisions to win the most money. 

Which horse will cross the finish line first? It’s anyone’s guess in Long Shot: The Dice Game.

For dinner, we ordered some Korean corn dogs for dinner from Two Hands, since these things aren’t readily available on the East Coast. Behold!

Korean corndogs have some crazy combinations such as spicy dogs and potato dogs.

The last game of the night was Alea Iacta Est, a dice worker placement game. I honestly hadn’t heard of this game before, and, despite its goofy 2000s Roman art, I really enjoyed this! Alea Iacta Est is Latin for “The Die is Cast,” and players are using their dice to conquer new provinces and recruit patricians for those provinces. I also thought it was hilarious that unused dice end up in the latrina. 

The artwork on this game just takes me back to the 2000s in board gaming.

Saturday night was the last night we were all together gaming. One guy had to fly back home on Sunday, while the fourth guy was flying back on Monday. Here we are very chipper after long days of gaming!

These guys are the best! One guy from Atlanta couldn’t make it this year. Hopefully he’ll join us in 2023.

Sunday

We began Sunday with a quick 2P game of The Field of the Cloth of Gold. It’s incredibly tense, and the passive-aggressive gift-gifting is just so amusing to me! The game plays in about 20 minutes, and it’s perfect to bust out when you have a small pocket of time.

A gift for me means a gift for you!

My friend who was still in town and I did some thrifting looking for board game deals and books at various second-hand stores throughout the Valley. My big scores for the day were Pipeline, Kraftwagen and Star Cartel. I’m very excited to try out Pipeline next game day! 

My friend also wanted to try Sonoran hot dogs, something of a specialty here in Arizona. A Sonoran hot dog is a hot dog that is wrapped in bacon and grilled, topped with pinto beans, onions, tomatoes, and a variety of additional condiments, often including mayonnaise, mustard, and jalapeño salsa.

You can’t see it underneath the sauce but those hot dogs are indeed wrapped in bacon.

After that, we drove to my friend’s house to play Alien Frontiers, another dice worker-placement game! It’s a game of resource management and planetary development, where you roll your dice and place them on various action spots on the board. You can unlock new technologies as you control locations on the planet as well as by gaining technology cards. This was the first time I had played this game, and I actually won! But I think I got some practice the night before from learning Alea Iacta Est. Apparently, manipulating dice pips to take action spots is my jam! 

It was my first time playing Alien Frontiers, and I won!

In true Friendship Con fashion, we then played a game of Glory to Rome, with Imperium rules, and our game was so ruthless! I built the forum, which required me to have every type of card in my clientele for a victory, and my alleged friend kept preventing me from doing that. Good times though! 

Rome demands all the things!

And lastly, the final game of Friendship Con was another play of Dune Imperium. It was really nice ending our convention with a game I’m very familiar with.

And just like that, five days came and went so quickly! Thanks for making it all the way down here. I played a total of 20 games, sprinkled in with endless snacks, mostly home-cooked meals, and lots of catching up with my dear friends. Last year’s Friendship Con was in Atlanta, and I hope they had as great of a time coming out here to the Valley of the Sun as I did going there in 2021. And with that, we sail into the second half of summer, hoping the weather will cool down, even just a wee bit. Like seriously, I will gladly take 105 degrees here in Phoenix. What are some of your summer plans?
Trailblazer: The John Muir Trail

Trailblazer: The John Muir Trail

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Growing up, my family and I would go camping at Yosemite every summer. We’d have a blast swimming in the river, enjoying the outdoors and hiking up waterfalls. While I haven’t been to Yosemite since my late-teens, I’d always wanted to eventually make it back and try some of the more difficult trails. 

The John Muir Trail, which begins in Yosemite, is a trail that runs through the Sierra Nevada for 211 miles and passes through several national parks in northern California. Instead of taking weeks to hike the strenuous yet picturesque trail, you can traverse it in the comfort of your own home by playing Trailblazer: The John Muir Trail, a game available on Kickstarter by Mariposa Games. 

(Full disclosure: Mariposa Games provided this review prototype copy, and I received compensation for proofreading services for its rulebook.)

The artwork in this game is just gorgeous!

In Trailblazer, players have 10 days to hike the John Muir Trail — rain or shine! Players must have enough supplies in their backpacks to make the trek, while also gathering resources to collect Field Guide Cards and Destination Cards, which go toward end-game goals and victory points.

Each player has a player board that represents their backpacks, which fill up with up to 12 items and also has space for a limited number of natural and personal resources. These resources are vital to making your trip across the trail, as represented on the main playing board. 

Each player has a board that holds their supplies and equipment.

Each day has three phases: sunrise, daytime and sunset. During sunrise, players draw and play a Trail Card, which will allow you to place items into your pack or “activate” them. Activation comes into play later for increasing your elevation. When you complete a row of items in your backpack, you collect the bonus depicted on the board. The sunrise phase also determines the weather everyone is having that day. Sunny skies mean no extra resources are needed to move on the trail, but other weather conditions require something extra. 

Each day, the weather dictates whether you’ll need more supplies to make your journey. For a more family friendly version, the game can last 12 days instead of 10.

During daytime, players use their Tracks Tokens to take an action on the main board. Players start out with 3 Tracks Tokens but can gain up to 2 more as the game progresses. One action is hiking, moving at most one space per day if they fulfill the hiking requirements on their map pack, as well as weather and trail conditions, if any. Each player has a different map pack at the start of the game, a booklet of the same resource requirements but in a different order. 

These two map packs require different resources for the first leg of the trail.

Another action is acquiring natural resources: water, earth, wind and fire. Placing your Tracks Token on these locations on the board will net you a specific number of tiles based on the resource. You then place them in your pack if you have room for them. 

A third action you can do is discover Field Card Guides. These require various natural resources based on their location on the board, and when you pay those resources for them, they give you a backpack item, which you can place in your backpack or active if it’s already there, and some kind of reward. These cards also come in five varieties, which score points based on each unique set you have at the end of the game. 

Field Guide cards picture the native flora and fauna of the John Muir trail.

A fourth action is exploring destination cards. These cards require you to trade in natural and personal resources to receive backpack items and victory points. The cards are also one of four types, and when you receive the first card of a type, you can activate a one-time bonus on your player board. As hikers move along the John Muir Trail, the destination card decks will substitute out for harder cards that are worth higher point values. Both the destination cards and Field Card Guides could also go for end-game bonuses if you acquire a matching type of Journey Bonus Arrowheads. 

Destination cards feature the picturesque scenery along the trail.

Lastly, you can also use your Tracks Token to visit the High Sierra Lodge to resupply personal items, but only if you’ve filled your backpack up with 9 items. Personal items are food, a water bottle, Zzzs and condition. 

If a card pictures a backpack item you already have in your pack, you can choose to activate it. When you activate it, you move your tent along the elevation track on the main board. Moving up this track will give you bonuses, as well as your fourth and fifth Tracks Token, and the chance to collect Bonus Arrowheads for more victory points. At the start of the game, the Arrowheads are placed in three piles, with the top tile flipped over for everyone to see. There’s also one Arrowhead placed in the center of the board that everyone can score at the end of the game. When you collect a personal Arrowhead, only you can score it. The person who reaches the end of the Elevation Chart gains 7 points, and the rest will score fewer points. 

As you increase your elevation, more bonuses and Tracks Token become available. I love the elevation info on these peaks.

The last two locations on the board are the Mountain Pass Trail Cards, where you can draw cards and collect rewards without receiving the benefit of the backpack item, and the First Light location, which enables you to become first player the next round. If no one takes that action, the first-player marker moves left and a water tile is added to this location to make it more enticing as an action. 

The last phase of each day is sunset. Players must turn in one food and one water bottle (which players can trade in two water tiles at any time to gain a water bottle). Players also take their Tracks Tokens from the board and pass the first-player marker to the person who took the First Light action or the next player to the left. 

As you continue along the John Muir Trail, more resources or equipment are needed to continue.

The most important part of this game is that hikers need to get to the end of the John Muir Trail. Anyone who doesn’t make it to the end of 10 days is ineligible to win. And naturally, the players who get there first will get more points than the rest. This kind of deadline forces you to plan ahead and move so that you’ll finish the trail. You can always move without having resources but you’ll gain a Hardship Token for each missing resource, and the more of those you have, the more negative points you’ll have at the end of the game. But you can also stop by the High Sierra Lodge to get rid of them, if you have access to the lodge. 

Trailblazer: The John Muir Trail will appeal to both nature lovers and board gamers of all levels. It comes with gorgeous artwork and quality components (I especially liked the tent and hiker meeples, and sturdy player boards for my prototype). Games last about 1-2 hours, with each journey unique based on the weather conditions, map packs and trail requirements. The requirement to finish the trail for a chance to win adds some weighty strategy to this game. Overall, it’s a fun experience without having to load up your pack and dust off those hiking shoes. If Trailblazer sounds right up your alley, check out its Kickstarter page or visit the Mariposa Games website. 
Arizona Game Fair 2022: Our local convention is back!

Arizona Game Fair 2022: Our local convention is back!

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It’s been over three years since the last Arizona Game Fair. The previous one had been scheduled for March 2020, but we all know what happened two years ago. This year, the Arizona Game Fair came back in full force, and it was just awesome to see so many familiar faces again in person!

The convention was held on March 10-13, 2022, but I ended up attending just that Friday through Sunday. The previous week, I had been at Dice Tower West and was unable to take that many days off again. Nonetheless, I got lots of gaming in — old games and new ones! 

Friday

I opened my new copy of Sidereal Confluence and dusted out my giant tweezers for the occasion.

An Arizona convention wouldn’t be complete without a game of Sidereal Confluence. I dusted off my giant tweezers to run a 7P game of space trading and bartering on Friday morning. I love this game so much, even if I never do well in it! It’s the perfect con game, where a large group of folks can dedicate a few hours respectfully yelling at each other. 

I wanted to take a photo before the trading madness began!

After the game, I took a break for lunch and then played a series of shorter games while waiting for friends to finish up their game. First up was No Thanks! Always a fun filler and a quick teach!

In No Thanks, each card is worth the number that’s printed on it, and you’re trying to have the lowest score in the game. If you have a chip, you can refuse a card. If not, you’ll end up taking it.

Next up was Favelas, a game I’ve always wanted to play. This cute tile-laying game is based on the iconic buildings in Rio de Janeiro. You’re stacking tiles onto your player board and each round, you score for the color majorities, which are dictated by dice rolled at the start of each round. During your turn though, you can also increase or decrease the pips on a die so that one color can be more or less valuable during scoring. So colorful and puzzly!

Favelas was surprisingly a crunchy puzzle!

Then I taught a game of Seikatsu. I just adore the components of this game! My version, and the Arizona Game Fair library version, has these acrylic poker chips that are used during this tile-laying game. I heard that newer editions aren’t like this? You draw chips from a bag and place it onto the center board. You can either score groups of birds now, or score sets of flowers at the end of the game, based on your perspective from the garden. This visual mechanism to the game is pretty clever!

I love the poker chip pieces in Seikatsu.

I then learned a solitaire game called Orchard. What a neat game! I normally don’t play solo games but I liked playing this. It’s a good quick game to play if you’re waiting for someone at a bar or restaurant, and it’s about the size of a deck of playing cards. In Orchard, you’re laying 9 down cards and overlapping them in order to grow your fruit harvest, and you have mini dice to keep track of your crop size. The game comes with 18 cards, so after you finish your quick 10-minute game, you’re all set to play another with the 9 other cards you separated out. 

The Orchard is a delightful solo game where you’re building up your orchards by overlaying cards of the same exact crop.

The next game I played was Khora. Khora is a civilization-building game set in ancient Greece whose main action turn is similar to that of Twilight Imperium 4 or Puerto Rico. You pick two action tiles to play, and they resolve in the order of the actions, and you spend the whole game working to increase military, economy and culture. Also, the player boards in this game were top-notch. 

Lots of different tracks in Khora. The dual-layer player boards made it easy to track your progress.

I then played Match Me! This co-op game was so much fun! Players are given an identical hand of cards that are essentially color swatches. Each player is given one category on their turn and gives players a clue so that they can play one of their color cards that they think best matches the clue. As the round continues, players are left with fewer cards, making it harder to give a good clue! For example, if the category was fast food, the clue giver would say McDonald’s, and hopefully everyone will play the yellow color face down. 

Match Me is such a fun party game! I wonder if I’ll be able to ever find a copy.

We ended Friday night of the convention with a game of Squaring Circleville, a game I had also played at Dice Tower West.

Friday night fun in Circleville!

Again, I love the historical background of Squaring Circleville, and I enjoy teaching it to folks — especially those who love the rondel mechanism! It’s so satisfying putting the giant cardboard pieces out to show which sections are upgraded.

The Ohio town of Circleville has been officially squared!

Saturday

We started Saturday with a game of Dune: Imperium. I’m enjoying this game more and more with each play. I’m not a huge fan of deckbuilders in general, but this game is the perfect blend of that and worker placement. The game ramps up with each round and it clocks in at under two hours.

The spice must flow in Dune: Imperium.

I then learned Era: Medieval Age, which is an interesting twist on a roll and write. Instead of filling out player boards, you’re using the dice rolls to build out your little kingdom. I enjoyed the puzzle aspect of this, while the resource management for building things and not get attacked. My only complaint was that the player board was a bright yellow and hard to see the different phases and symbols on it. 

If I owned a copy of this game, I’d paint the board so I can see the resources.

We then played a 5P game of Macaron. This cute trick-taking game involves two types of betting — both on the number of bids you think you’ll take as well as which suit, or flavor, is trump. You can also win tricks using some of the cards’ special abilities. Definitely a must-have for fans of trick-taking games. Made me want to get some macarons after the game!

Trying to win tricks and fulfill orders in Macaron.

After dinner, I played a game of Vivid Memories, which I didn’t enjoy. We pored through the rulebook on the spot, and it felt like the most important mechanism of this game was just an afterthought based on how the rulebook was written. The game, while gorgeous, is essentially a drafting game where you’re trying to collect memory cards and fragments in order to thread them on your player board and score. I think the rulebook should’ve stressed the importance of threading more, instead of the drafting, because by the time we realized how the game was supposed to play, we were halfway through round 2. And the game only goes to 3 rounds. 

This is your brain in Vivid Memories, where you’re threading fragments and creating memories.

We ended Saturday night with a game of Dog Lover. I love the artwork on this one, and it’s quickly becoming my go-to 30-45 minute game at the last few gaming events I’ve been to! Who can say no to these doggies?

Look at all these good doggos learning tricks and going on walks.

Sunday

Clinic was right up my alley! There’s just so many crunchy decisions you have to make!

Sunday morning was for Clinic! This was the game I was hoping to play at this convention, and I was so happy that Brian was able to teach it to me! In Clinic, players are building a medical clinic, which requires building rooms; hiring doctors, nurses and orderlies, and getting patients — all the while making sure everyone has a parking space! And the more efficient your clinic is, meaning fewer steps each person has to take to get treated, the better it will be for your bottom line! I also like the spatial element to this game when you’re building rooms, as you can build up and out. 

The car supply situation on the main board is getting out of hand, much like the parking situation on your player board!

While I was helping clean up Clinic, two ladies came by and asked if I was Filipino. And I said yes. They then got super excited about seeing another Filipino lady, and immediately called over another Filipino lady so that we could take a group photo. It just warmed my heart that they got so excited over seeing another person like them at a convention, and just reminds me how important representation is in these gaming spaces. We all got to know each other a bit and exchanged information to schedule a game day sometime! 

These super nice Filipino ladies all introduced themselves to me!

I then played Juicy Fruits, a darling fruit-drafting with chunky wooden pieces! In this game, you’re collecting fruit pieces to fulfill orders and build buildings.

These wooden pieces are so chunky and satisfying to hold!

It reminds me of those childhood puzzle games where you’re moving number pieces to put them back in order, but in this game, you’re moving fruit tiles on your player board, and the farther they move, the more pieces of fruit you collect. Then you can trade your fruit in to fulfill orders or buy buildings for victory points. As you fulfill your orders, your player board opens up and the game can really escalate quickly to the end condition.

Juice Fruits is similar to those childhood puzzle games where you’re moving numbered pieces.

The last game I played at Arizona Game Fair was Long Shot: The Dice Game. It’s also roll-and-write game where you use your dice rolls to fill out your player sheet to buy horses, place bets, influence race movement and use special abilities. And on each roll, at least one horse will move, so you can strategically purchase the horse, or even bet on it. It’s such a riot!  

We’re off at the races! Will your horse win? Who knows!?

And that concludes all the gaming I did at Arizona Game Fair. Thanks for having me! The convention was so chill, and, while it got really busy on Saturday afternoon, there was always a place to game and people to game with. I can’t describe how awesome it felt to do some nonstop convention gaming again, though I don’t recommend doing back to back conventions! As much as I will deny it, I am not a young person anymore! But it does inspire me to attend more conventions this year. Let’s see where 2022 takes us!

Dice Tower West 2022: Board games in Las Vegas

Dice Tower West 2022: Board games in Las Vegas

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My husband and I were going back and forth on attending Dice Tower West last weekend as it would be the first major convention we’d attend since the start of the pandemic. I had previously attended Consimworld in person last summer, but that was only about 200 gamers — Dice Tower West is probably nearly 10 times that amount. We decided to take a road trip to Las Vegas and had a fabulous time!

Thursday

We drove from Phoenix and arrived in Las Vegas on Thursday evening, and after a lovely dinner at one of my favorite restaurants ever — Firefly Tapas Kitchen and Bar — we checked into the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, where Dice Tower West is being held. Since my formerly-East Coaster husband, Chris, had never been to Las Vegas, I wanted to give him a tour of the town before we dove into board games. 

Firefly Tapas Kitchen + Bar is one of my favorite restaurants! I celebrated my 30th birthday there a lifetime ago!

We went to see O at the Bellagio, my favorite Cirque du Soleil show, and bought third-row seats. It was pretty epic sitting so close! I could feel the cold air when the water came down and the heat when the fires were ablazing. After the show, we meandered a small section of the Strip and ended up getting Secret Pizza at the Cosmopolitan. 

O by Cirque du Soleil is such an impressive show, a visual spectacle!

Friday

On Friday morning, we checked into the convention and scoped out the place. The Rio convention area is ginormous! I had last attended Dice Tower West in 2019, and this was much, much bigger and spread out, which made me feel safe to game with friends.

Me checking in at Dice Tower West. I accidentally matched the sign.

There were two main gaming rooms (one was mask optional and the other was mask required, where we stayed through the whole con.) The exhibitor hall was located in the mask-required room.

The convention area was so large and had many different rooms spread out at the Rio Hotel.

The convention area had the Dice Tower West library, panel rooms, lounge rooms, food rooms and breakaway rooms for gaming in a smaller space. There was no shortage of finding space or moving over to a quieter area.

The Dice Tower West library. They even had tables in the library!

The first game I played was Dog Lover. Such an adorable game! It’s the sequel to Cat Lover, a game I reviewed on Episode 117 of The Five By, and it introduces new elements such as Tricks and Traits to change up the card drafting. Players are rescuing dogs to feed them and can score even more points if the doggos become trained, go on walks and collect their favorite things. 

I just adore the artwork in Dog Lover!

Next up, I played Honey Buzz, which I purchased after talking with GameFreekGeekGirl at the Elf Creek Games booth. The awesome components drew me in, but the puzzly aspect of the game is what sold me! Honey Buzz is a bee worker placement game, where you place your beeples on a central board to expand your beehive, produce nectar and make honey. Expanding your beehive requires you to collect honeycomb tiles, which you then place into your area, and how you configure them will produce resources to complete objectives. There’s also a “bear market” where you can sell nectar, which are these semi-squishy beads in various shapes and sizes to correspond with different honey types. 

The beeples and components in Honey Buzz are cute!

I then attended a Twitch streamer event and met these wonderful ladies!

All these hard-working ladies are making such a positive impact in the board-gaming community: Amanda Panda, Beneeta and Monique, from Before You Play!

I then ran into Ta-Te Wu, the designer of Art Decko, originally released as Promenade, and beloved cat games like Cat Sudoku and Cat Rescue.

I finally got to meet Ta-Te Wu in person!

I then had a chance to playtest a new game he’s working on! Players are using cards from their hands to take control of a suit and place their meeple on it. It’s a neat bluffing, majority control card game that doesn’t have an official theme on it but I’m excited to see where this goes as all of Ta-Te’s games have such cute artwork on it. 

Chris and I got to playtest one of the games Ta-Te is working on.

I then got a chance to play So Clover! Uhh, this game is bonkers! Players are dealt cards with words on its four sides, and you randomly place it onto your plastic clover. You then write one word so that other players can guess which two words from the cards belong on that side of the clover. When it’s your turn, you remove the cards from the clover and are dealt a fifth dummy card, which then you place into the center of the board with the clover so that other players can choose which cards to place on which clover side. I can see how this is a fun party game, but man, the addition of the fifth card after you write your clues seemed to derail all of our games!

This game is bonkers! It still doesn’t beat my current party game at the moment, Just One, but it’s still fun!

I then played Floating Floors, a ninja dexterity game where you’re moving your piece across floating floorboards that you or your opponent have placed. Each turn, you roll three dice to determine which small shapes you’ll take and place them on the cards and add a floor on top of it. Ninjas then make their way across the matching squares in order to pick up bansen seals. 

Our ninjas precariously balancing on floating tiles.

Dice Tower West had plenty of events throughout the con. We took a break and watched Paula Deming’s live show. She sang, did some improv and chatted with the audience, and showcased her videos. It was a nearly full house! 

Lots of people came out to Paula Deming’s live show.

Amanda Panda then taught us Project L! This game is so neat! It’s a puzzly engine-builder game with polyominos where you collect objective tiles to place your puzzle pieces on it and as a prize, you receive another puzzle piece. The more puzzles you complete, the more pieces you’ll have to complete high-value tiles. The components and the square box are top-notch! It’s like a more brain-burnery NMBR9.  

Project L combines engine building and puzzle-building!

I finished Friday night with two quick games of Seasons. My buddy and I always fall back to this game because neither one of us owns it, and it’s a fast-paced game since we both know how to play. Plus, chonky dice! 

Seasons, an oldie and a goodie! I always love rolling these dice.

Saturday

I randomly caught the start of the Flea Market, which was hopping! We purchased an Oink game Mr. Face and Quixo, a wooden game that belongs to a series of games that my husband loves. 

Tic-Tac-Toe-ing our way around this wooden puzzle.

I then played Squaring Circleville. Love this game! I first played this game as a prototype back in BGG Con 2019 (which seems like a lifetime ago!), and the Kickstarter finally delivered this game earlier this year. I love the historical background of this game, where Circleville, Ohio, which was built in a circle, razed down structures to square off its town into a modern grid. Plus, it’s got a cool rondel action mechanism. 

I’ve been waiting for Squaring Circleville to be released, and it did not disappoint!

We then played Twin Palms with Greg and Stephanie, a very cool trick-taking game with only two suits and retro beach artwork that’s currently on Kickstarter. This game was so enjoyable, with such a clever twist on trick-taking! The Kickstarter is ending very soon, so if this is up your alley, I highly recommend backing it!

I love the artwork on Twin Palms! Plus, the unique trick-taking mechanism makes it easy for new gamers to join.

Next up was a party game prototype that my buddy Treg has been working on: My Soundtrack. I haven’t seen Treg for many years since we first met at GMT Weekend, so I was happy to run into him and his wife here. In the style of Apples to Apples, this music party game is all about building your life soundtrack. 

My husband played this winning card for this song on the soundtrack of my life. LOL

There are two stacks of cards: soundtrack cards and cards with song names and the artist on it. If it’s your turn, you draw two theme cards and pick one. The next two people to your left will each play a song card, and you have to pick which song is best. The winner of that duel has to compete one by one with everyone else at the table to pick the better matching song. The owner of the winning song gets a guitar pick! I like how in this game you aren’t competing with the entire table, but one by one, and even if you don’t know the songs, the game still makes hilarious gameplays based on the title alone. The person with three guitar picks wins the game, and there’s one final round where players get to choose who has the best soundtrack!

Fun times gaming with Treg; his wife, Jenny (right); and Maddy!

We also then all played Meeple Party, a cooperative puzzle-solving game, where players are moving meeples into and around a house party. Each player has photo conditions they need to complete, such as having two purple meeples and one yellow in the Dining Room, but also disaster cards, in which the meeples get all stressed if you don’t avoid it. It was quite challenging throwing a successful party to last until midnight! 

I haven’t been a house party this hectic since college!

After a lovely dinner off strip, I got a chance to finally play Merv, a game I purchased last summer but finally just pulled off my Shelf of Opportunity. I love the spatial puzzle of this game with the tile activations, and how in reality, you’re only taking 12 turns in the entire game, but each turn is so crunchy! Players are collecting resources to travel and trade along the Silk Road, as well as gain influence and power within the city walls. At the end of Year 2 and Year 3, there are Mongol hordes that will burn down your city, unless city walls are built or soldiers are placed at sites. Really enjoyed this one, and I can’t wait to play it again! 

And that concluded two days of gaming and events! Since it was the first large-ish convention I’ve attended since the pandemic, I took a more laid-back approach to gaming instead of trying to squeeze every single minute with an activity. It was so fun to enjoy Vegas being the con, get some gaming in, and see old friends and make new ones.

The West Coast contingent of the Five By podcast: (from left) Ruel Gaviola, Jose Chavez and John Gonzalez.

I think next time Chris and I will want to stay for a longer time. And with back-to-back conventions, next up is Arizona Game Fair this weekend, I feel like the world is slowly starting to return to the Before Times. And that makes me so joyful.

Hope to see you in 2023, Dice Tower West!