We are officially almost through the seventh month of 2020 — also known as the longest decade ever — and it’s times like these when I get nostalgic for a much simpler time. A time when kids could actually go over to their friends’ houses and play in their yard, a time when kids, pizzas and toys ruled.
Fort, now available on preorder from Leder Games, is a game that takes you back to that time — complete with endearing and whimsical artwork. This unique deckbuilder is all about recruiting friends and building forts, and it plays 2-4 players in about 20-40 minutes.
Fort includes four sturdy player boards and a score tracker.
The game box is compact, but it has a lot of neat components in it. The player boards are made of thick cardboard with cutouts to place your pizza, toy and fort tokens in. I love it when player boards do this as it eliminates the accidental swipe of pieces with certain body parts. The cards are glossy, sturdy and colorful, and just a delight to hold in your hand. The game also comes with made-up rule cards and perk cards, which are smaller in size but also made up of the same glossy card stock. Lastly, there’s a scoreboard to keep in the middle of the table and marks the park area for the game.
I love how the tokens fit nicely into the player board.
And then there’s the top-notch artwork from Kyle Ferrin, whose artwork has created the enchanting world found in Leder games. The kid cards come in all types and colors, and they’re are just so fun to play with. I mean, who doesn’t want to play with Puddin? She seems so sassy!
How freakin’ adorable are these kid cards?
So back to the game. On your turn, you play one card, and sometimes you can add extra cards of the same suit (there are six suits in the game) to improve some actions. The one card you played has a public action, which other players can follow, and a private action, which is something only you can do.
Actions on the card range from gaining resources to put into your stuff or your pack, adding cards to your lookout, recruiting friends, or upgrading your fort. The amount of items that can sit in your lookout or pack depends on the size of your fort.
The goal of the game is to upgrade your fort to a level 5, and you’ll have to spend resources to do so when you use an action card that allows you to upgrade it.
The private or public action can be played in any order, and then players can follow your public action if they spend a card matching the suit of the active card. Once that’s done, the active player recruits a kid card from the park, which always has three face-up cards in it, or from their yard or an opponent’s yard.
If you build your level 5 fort, you gain the macaroni sculpture card, triggering the last round of the game.
Then, all your played cards and your best friends — the kid cards with stars on them that you start with at the beginning of the game — go into your discard pile. The unplayed cards are then placed at the top of your player board, putting them in danger of being recruited by others! There’s something a little heartbreaking about the Rocket Bros being taken by your opponent but that’s sometimes how life goes.
Lastly, you draw five cards from your deck. If you can’t draw five cards, you shuffle your discard pile to make a new draw deck. When it’s your turn again, you first clear out your yard of kid cards not taken by others and place them into your discard pile.
Play with your friends close! Don’t let them start wandering into other players’ yards!
I love the mechanism of following the leader’s action. It allows you to take extra actions when it’s not your turn and reduce the amount of cards left over at the end of your actual turn. Both of these mechanisms — hand management and the follow action — are what elevates Fort from your standard deckbuilder. It keeps all players engaged throughout the entire game.
Fort is based on designer Grant Rodiek’s game SPQF from 2018. I love the retheme and update to it, and I think many others will, too. And even though I’ve only had a chance to play this game as a two-player, the game still had plenty of memorable moments. I can’t wait to get this on table with more people when it’s safe to play with other people again.
Thanks Leder Games for sending me a copy of this game!
Truth be told, it’s been a little difficult being inspired to write while we’ve been on lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. But in light of recent events and protests erupting across America, it’s important to take a stance. #blacklivesmatter. Period. There is so much racial injustice happening all over — it’s heartbreaking, and serious change needs to happen. We must do better.
Here in the board gaming community, we can listen, we can educate ourselves, we can speak out against racism and microaggressions, we can create a safe gaming space, and we can amplify black board game designers, artists and creators.
Rap Godz, designed by Omari Akil and Hamu Dennis, came out this year.
Omari Akil is a cofounder of Board Game Brothas and the lead designer of Rap Godz, a game about becoming a hip-hop artist. In this article written by Omari, he discussed how few black board gamers he encounters in the hobby — and even fewer game designers — and he wanted to change that.
I first encountered Rap Godz through my partner Chris who received his copy a few months ago. Chris enjoyed playing a demo of it at a local Unpub event in North Carolina in 2018 and ordered the game when it hit Kickstarter. We’ve had so much fun playing it since, often jamming along with one of our rap playlists!
This is hands down one of the most unique and colorful games I’ve ever played.
Rap Godz is a 2-4 player game that plays in about 60 minutes. Each player plays as an up-and-coming rapper trying to take over cities, hit career goals and earn the most record-sales plaques through three albums.
The whole board is laid out like a giant turntable, with crossfader markers indicating which album and track players are on. The entire game is three albums’ worth, with five tracks — or turns — for each album. That’s fifteen turns for everyone, which leaves a short amount of time to go platinum! Painted grooves on the record represent the three resource tracks: swag, skillz and street.
Turn up that track! Isn’t this crossfader piece just so cool?
On a player’s turn, they get a card and play a card. To get a card, they can draw one from the current album deck or discard three cards to grab one of the face-up Come Upz cards.
Cards give you resources and plaques. The ones with a lock and key can only be played if you’ve reached or passed that number on the resource track.
Players then play a card from their hand in front of them and create a timeline of their career. Played cards dole out plaques and resources to the player. Some cards though feature a lock and key, and players cannot play that card until they have equal to or more than the number of resources shown in the lock.
Players can also instead play a Beef card. When they do this, they pick another rapper to start beef with, roll their die and the red die. The other person rolls their die. The player with the highest number on a single die wins the beef. The loser puts the Beef card into their timeline and hands over resources and plaques on the Beef card to the winner. The winner collects a red Beef cube, which can help score an objective at the end of the game.
Do you have enough swag, skillz and street to be the top rapper?
As players cross resource thresholds on the record, they collect Pick Upz tokens, which gives resource, beef or card bonuses and can be used for a later time. The goal of the game is to score objectives by collecting Goalz, Citiez (each city has a different objective such as having the most Yellow cards in your timeline) and the most plaques. The player who has the most points after three albums is the Rap God.
The Goalz (pictured) and Citiez end-game scoring conditions change with each game.
The game has lots of replay value, as the Goalz and Citiez objectives change every game, and the interaction between the players by starting beefs always makes for a fun time. You also have 24 characters — and their distinct abilities and end-game scoring objectives — to choose from, and even Troopers and Cthudus want to be rappers!
The unique theme and components set this game apart. The game comes with a hefty gold medallion to indicate the first player, and I enjoy how the game ramps up with phased in album and Come Upz cards. Giving otherwise regular resource tracks a unique look is pretty creative. I also love and appreciate the diversity of artwork and experiences represented on the game cards.
I love the diversity of the artwork, including the range of looks on these female POCs.
One of the biggest things I’ve been an advocate for is representation in the board gaming community. Often, whenever I walk into a room at a game convention, there aren’t many people who look like me, and I want to see more people of color break into and thrive in this hobby I love. And we can do our part by taking action and fostering a more diverse and inviting community.
My oh my, how much life has changed in the past few weeks. I hope this blog post finds you all healthy and safe — and with enough toilet paper! Yeah, I still don’t understand why people are hoarding that.
I’m now entering my third week of working from home, and, if I’m being honest, the extrovert in me had a really tough time in the beginning not being able to hang out with coworkers and friends on the daily.
Me, working from home, my board games keeping me company.
Sure, I take my daily walks outside with my dog and then my partner comes home from his workday, but it’s really not the same when you can’t do all your favorite activities because of social distancing. Even my weekly game nights have been canceled in order to stay healthy and not catch the coronavirus.
So what have I been doing in the meantime? We’ve all jumped online.
I wrote about online gaming years ago, but now we are knee deep in it. Our current gaming workflow has been logging into boardgamearena.com and a Discord channel so that we can all talk to each other while we game. Though, just an hour ago, my buddy said that premium members can now activate the voice chat room on BGA. I’m very excited to try this out next time we game!
BGA has a bunch of games, and most are free. To play the rest of the games, you’ll need a premium membership, which is $4 a month. I like having access all the games and I feel like I’m doing my small part to keep the website running in tiptop shape now that we’re all online.
Some of the games I’ve been playing are Sushi Go, Takenoko, 6 Nimmt, Caylus, Race for the Galaxy and, of course, backgammon.
Who doesn’t love cute sushi? My girlfriends and I have been playing Sushi Go online.
I love how I’ve been playing with my gaming groups as well as my girlfriends, whom I all made sign up on BGA for the first time. Every online session with friends makes me feel a little bit more human during these uncertain times.
Luckily for me, my partner also likes to play games. We’ve been playing games that don’t take up a lot of table space, as my workstation has taken over half of the dining table. I’m home all the time now, but I have less space to bust out that giant Lacerda. Talk about bad timing!
Recently I really enjoyed playing Bruxulles 1897, the card game of Bruxelles 1893. It’s quite enjoyable and equally tight as the original, but with a much smaller footprint.
Bruxelles 1897 is a card game worthy of its predecessor Bruxelles 1893.
So what games have you all been playing, and what are some of the new routines life has foisted upon you? Also, is it too soon to play Pandemic? What about Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, my favorite iteration of the game?
Anyway, here’s hoping the state of the world improves quickly. Stay well, avoid others, wash your hands, and practice self-care and check in with your friends. We’re all in this together!
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?
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.
I don’t play too many monster-themed board games. Unless it’s in the Cthulhu world, and even then I’m referring strictly to Arkham Horror or Cthulhu Wars, monster games don’t usually draw me in. That is … until Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein by Plaid Hat Games. This worker placement game is strategic and fun, and, surprisingly, oozes with a unique theme that even a sometimes curmudgeonly eurogamer like me can appreciate.
In Abomination, scientists are working in Paris to “collect” muscles, organs, blood and bone, and the occasional animal part when really, really needed it. And I say “collect,” because what you’re really doing is raiding hospitals, morgues, cemeteries and other suspicious Parisian locations for the freshest cadaver parts required to create your very own monster!
The board features locations across Paris where you can collect cadavers, atone or do research, which will help you gain expertise and make better creatures.
Each player comes with a player board to place your resources, and three dials that keep track of your humanity, reputation and expertise. They also get a character card, which gives you variable player abilities, as well as two assistants and one scientist meeples. Later in the game, as your reputation increases, you can add an additional assistant, and you can trade them out for scientists, too.
The player board features dials, which are various tracks that will give or take VPs, as well as other benefits.
Acquiring more scientists is important because locations on the board have placement restrictions and they show which type of meeple will activate that location. Some are either/or, but the majority of them are reserved for scientists. If you don’t have an available scientist during the round, you cannot place your meeple there. Also, some locations give you more benefits if you place your scientist there instead of your assistant.
Abomination goes for 12 rounds, with four phases each round. At the start of each round, the event phase happens, and the first player draws from a deck filled with events or encounters for the round. The city phase is when players place their meeples one at a time on the player board. In addition to locations to find cadavers, there are also places where you can work for money, gain expertise or reputation, buy and sell items at the market, or hire some questionable characters to acquire some resources.
Abomination plays for 12 rounds, with an event or encounter happening each round.
In most eurogames, when a meeple is placed at a location, that location is closed to the rest of the players for the round. This isn’t the case for Abomination. Players can pay money to bump a meeple, so that the location will be available for them to use. There are only three meeples that can be bumped in each round, and those meeples go to the bump track at the bottom of the board. The bumpee pays the person who is being bumped 1 franc (or 2 francs if it’s the third and last bump in the round) to go there (or pay nothing if you’re bumping yourself). There is a lot of bumping that goes on in the middle of the night.
Bump, bump, bumpity bump. Such a fun mechanism!
Lastly, the person who took the first-player spot can place that meeple can make a legal move to an open location. We always call this mechanism the Waterdeep move (because in Lords of Waterdeep, there are meeples that get to move after everyone has taken their turn.). The person who took the first-player spot cannot be bumped during the round.
When everyone passes or have no more legal moves to make, the lab phase occurs. This is when people turn in their resources to make body parts, according to the resource and expertise requirements. Complicated body parts like the head require more expertise than say an arm. You gain VPs based on the decomposition of the body parts, as well as 1 expertise.
If you time it correctly, you can actually gain the expertise and VPs by building body parts in a certain order, so that you can meet the next expertise threshold. Super neat! Players can also complete a monster part, which involves collecting blood in addition to body parts, by flipping over their body part from the muscle side to the skin side up.
These are the requirements to start a monster part. The head needs the most expertise of course.
Players can also throw the switch to shock their monster to life, but they also run the risk of inflicting damage, which can degrade your body part if you have enough of it. The dice rolls are this stage in the round can be a little punishing, but there are research cards you can gain at the Academy location that can mitigate the dice effects. Plus, gaining expertise will give you the option to use the more favorable blue dice.
When you’re ready to throw the switch, you roll 2 dice per Leyden jar you have charged.
The last phase of the round is the reset phase. This part, in my opinion, features the most clever mechanism of the game. On your player board, when you find a cadaver, the cadaver card will give players either expertise or body parts. If you go to the hospital, you will receive Stage I or Stage II body parts; if you go to the cemetery, you’ll get less fresh parts, more likely Stage III or Stage IV parts.
These are a few examples of cadavers and the body parts you’ll get for them. Or you can forgo body parts and move up in expertise, which is the brain symbol.
During the reset phase, after you’ve built your body parts for the round, all your unused body parts will decompose one stage. This timing element is important because when you build body parts with less-fresh body parts, you will net fewer VPs. If you haven’t used your body parts by Stage IV (or preserved your materials from the lab phase), they you lose them. You can purchase ice from the Market to stop the decay though. The reset phase also wipes cards on the board for new ones and moves the round marker forward.
The VPs you receive when you build a monster part depends on the resources’ state of decomposition. The fresher, the more VPs.
Abomination is great for horror fans and heavier gamers alike. Even though the box says 60-120 minutes, I cannot imagine ever getting through a game in under two hours. The 12 rounds take a while — even though there are events or cards that can move the round marker meeple forward — and there are a lot of difficult decisions to make, with decomposition creeping up on you.
I love the variety of locations on the board, including the Dark Alley, where you’ll get the freshest body parts — and a lot of them — for the dark price of some of your humanity. You can always visit Saint-Roch to atone though, but if you murder too many times, well, you’re irredeemable because the humanity dial locks you into that super negative space, and you lose a lot of VPs in the end. The events and encounters keep the rounds different, and the objectives also help factor into the decisions you make in the game.
I love the diversity in the cast of characters, even on the box cover!
The artwork in Abomination is gothicly interesting, and I appreciate the diversity in the cast of characters, even if it can be a bit too morbid for some folks. The game is not light by any means, so you’ll need to devote some time to playing it. The game really comes alive as people start assembling their monsters, which takes a few rounds to get going, and hopefully your creature is alive at the end as well!
Thanks Plaid Hat Games for sending me a copy of this game!
Do you like wargames, whether COINs or the hex-and-counter variety? Well, you need to come down to Consimworld! This 8-day wargaming convention happens every year in Tempe, Arizona, literally in my very own backyard. I love attending this convention every year it allows me to play some games that normally wouldn’t come out at other conventions, plus I get to hang out with some of the wargaming legends!
Look at all that cardboard, plexiglass and chits! Gaming is officially underway.
Consimworld was June 22-29. Sorry for the delay of this post; it’s been a whirlwind few weeks. Consimworld is located at Tempe Mission Palms, and the location is so convenient. You don’t need a car as the hotel provides a shuttle to the airport, or you can take the light rail to it. The best part too is that there are plenty of food options in walking distance. (I’m giving a lot of other conventions the side-eye here.)
I arrived on Day 1 and learned to play Maria with my buddy Dan flew into town from Milwaukee. This 3P game is so freakin’ awesome! It’s set during the War of the Austrian Succession. One player is Austria, the second player is France and Bavaria, and the third plays as Prussia and the Pragmatic Army. Each army has their own set of cards, and armies battle each other based on the suit of the location they’re fighting from. You have to manage your card hand, as well as ensuring your troops are still within range from their supply line. I really want to get a copy of this game!
Maria is such a great game! It’s a 3P wargame, where battles are resolved based on the suited cards your hand and which suitted terrain you’re sitting on.
Dan then showed me his game that’s he’s working on. It’s an Age of Sails wargame that plays in about 2-3 hours set during the Battle of Virginia Capes, a crucial naval battle during the American Revolutionary War. One player plays as the French, and the other as the British, and they move and position their boats along a checkered board (in accordance with the wind direction), and they take turns battling each other. You then both secretly decide which order your ships will fire, and you roll dice to fire upon your enemy.
Dan always has the fanciest prototypes! Here are the ships battling each other out at sea.
Hit points are marked on individual boat cards and designated to an area on your boat based on your opponent’s directive, which makes for interesting player decisions of how to allocate damage. If your boat can no longer move, then it’s removed from the game. The French are trying to last 12 rounds — which killing British ships shortens the game — while the British are trying to move up a track by destroying French ships. The game was tense and super fun, and I liked being able to allocate where on my enemy’s boat they should mark the damage. (It’s like a wargame roll-and-write!) I’m crossing my fingers that it gets picked up by a publisher.
Dan created these ship cards that you mark you hit points on with a dry-erase pen. If your ship can no longer move, it’s out of the game.
Next up was Fire in the Lake. The last time I played Fire in the Lake was at last year’s Consimworld. Man, I was so rusty! And the last few times I had played as the NVA (because I like red), but this time, I played as the VC for the first time, and it took me a bit to start terrorizing and spreading out my VC guerrillas. This game lasted way late into the night, and we had to call it. It looked like the Americans were winning.
Fire in the Lake has the most vibrant board and is one of my favorite COIN games.
Day 2 began early by cracking open Gandhi. Fire in the Lake ended so late on Saturday night that it was a quick turnaround for a 9 a.m. game of Gandhi, one I had briefly looked over the rulebook, but luckily another player read the rulebook as well, and we all decided it was going to be a learning game that morning.
Gandhi is the latest COIN game from GMT Games.
I had been excited to see how a nonviolent factions play out for a COIN, and was equally surprised to see that two of the factions do not have any currency. The British Raj’s actions are tied to the Restraint track, and the Revolutionaries’ actions costs resources. I played as the British and particularly liked being able to affect how much my actions cost. I plan to write more about this after a few more games under my belt. All I can say is this: Gandhi is a great COIN and seems more accessible than the other ones. Here’s me playing Gandhi:
— Harold Buchanan 🔜 Gen Con (@HBuchanan2) June 23, 2019
I then played the first of many games of Pax Pamir (second edition) this convention. Oh. My. Goodness. Love at first play! I’ve played Pax Porfiriana and Pax Renaissance before, and while I enjoyed both of them a lot, the game ALWAYS seemed to take so much longer to explain than the actual game itself. And especially with Pax Porfiriana, it was difficult to visualize and keep track of who is dominating what.
Look at these amazing components! Pax Pamir is really well done.
That’s not the case with this second edition of Pax Pamir. The added map and individual player dials make this game much, much easier to see which faction is dominating. The components are gorgeous, and each game I’ve played of this has been different. There are just so many cards, and I ended up playing this game two more times during the course of the convention. I played it as a 3P and as a 5P. I think Pax Pamir plays best at 4P, even though I did end up winning my 5P game.
I absolutely cannot get enough of Pax Pamir! I wish I owned a copy of this game.
Saturday night ended with another awesome game of Battlestar Galactica. This is the second year in a row I’ve played with Dan, Mike, Harold and Jordan. We even got Kurt into the mix! These guys are always so much fun! I became a cylon sympathizer during sleeper, and despite two cylons and me as the sympathizer, we still lost to those awful humans. The worst!
These guys are so much fun! I look forward to avenging my loss next year!
I took a day off on Day 3 since it was a Monday. I played a quick game of Sekigahara, and by quick it was about 2 hours. The game continued through all seven weeks and came down to victory points. I love this game so much!
My favorite part of Sekigahara is the hidden info of which armies are going toward you.
I then played my other two games of Pax Pamir at the various player counts. I then got a chance to play Rococo. It’s a shame that this game isn’t more widely available! It’s a deckbuilder about making dresses. Players collect materials at various locations on the board, and ultimately, it’s an area control game in regards to where you display your dresses and coats. The game plays out over seven rounds.
Making dresses in Rococo can be cut-throat!
In the middle of Rococo was the welcome ceremony. John Kranz took time to welcome everyone and give expo updates. Altogether, over 350 people had signed up, with more than 60 newcomers. Very cool! He also highlighted those who came from afar — some as far as the Philippines and Bahrain! That’s super neat to see people travel for all the wargames!
Everyone’s all gathered! John Kranz likes to give updates about the convention, and there’s a giant raffle at the end of this meeting as well!
One slide featured a nice tribute to my buddy Tom Wells. I miss gaming with him; there was never a dull moment gaming with him.
I finished Monday night with another tense game of Maria! My buddy Mark and I did better this time, but Dan still beat us. (It’s one of his favorite games, after all.)
Dan and Mark are too much fun! Dan and I are heading to SD Historical Con in November. I’m looking forward to that!
The rest of the week I worked during the day but I stopped by afterwards to get in a game or two. On Tuesday night, I got a chance to play a prototype of Barrage. What a clever eurogame with very specific spatial and timing quality to it! You are all companies trying to harness the power of water to get electricity. You have to build dams, conductors and power factories on this hill so that you can capture that energy as water flows down.
There’s an intricate network of how things need to be powered, and when you spend resources to build your buildings, they’re locked up on this wheel on your personal board, and they can only become available to you again when you build more buildings, which you probably won’t be able to do since your resources are tied up in this wheel! What a dilemma! You can, however, spend actions on this main board to move that wheel along. The main board is where the majority of the worker placement happens.
Stuff rolls downhill! Here are are trying to harness the power of water, and hoping someone’s dam doesn’t get in your damn way.
Each player has a team of engineers, and you can allocate however many you want to an action spot when it’s your turn. Players take turns placing their engineers until they’re have no more workers and must pass. So you need to manage your pool of engineers with the actions you want to do, while also trying to complete objectives during each round. Lastly, the last piece of the puzzle is that water isn’t always available each round. It will flow according to the cards drawn, and if someone else’s dam blocks water flow to your buildings, well, that’s a damn shame.
On Wednesday, I fangirled sooooooo hard. I got a chance to sit in as the awesome Mark Herman taught one of his games, Pericles: The Peloponnesian War to John Butterfield, Nick Karp and Bruce. They all go way back to Victory Games, and it was like being among the wargaming legends.
Here’s me being chill, even though I’m fangirling so hard inside.
Mark taught one round of Pericles, and I jumped into a second round, (holding my own I might add!) and pushing the Demogogues forward. It was great hanging out with them and hearing about old industry stories. Also, achievement unlocked below: my dinosaur dress got into a C3i report!
The last night I attended Consimworld, I played Root twice, first with Kurt and Jordan, and then we picked up a fourth player for our second game. Kurt LOVES, LOVES Root (and if you want to be highly entertained, next time you see Kurt at a convention, ask him about COIN games.)
Our first game of Root that evening. I won as the cats!
And just like that, an entire week of wargaming ended. I always have such a great time at Consimworld, and I always feel included among all the gamers here. That said, I’d love to see more younger folks here, especially more women and people of color. If you’re interested in these types of games, please let me know and maybe we can schedule something special for next year. I’d love a chance to teach some of these heavy games! Save the date: next year’s convention will be June 6-13, 2020. You’ll find me in the back with some giant tweezers pushing some cardboard chits.
Thanks for having me, Consimworld! Can’t wait until next year’s con!
Sekigahara has been on my wishlist for a while, and I couldn’t have been more ecstatic when I saw this at game for $30 at a recent Arizona Game Fair flea market — unstickered!
Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan is a 2-player game published by GMT Games in 2011. According to the description, “the battle of Sekigahara, fought in 1600 at a crossroads in Japan, unified that nation under the Tokugawa family for more than 250 years. Sekigahara allows you to re-contest that war as Ishida Mitsunari, defender of a child heir, or Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan’s most powerful daimyo (feudal lord).”
Sekigaha plays out for seven weeks, with each week consisting two movement and battle phases for each player. The game comes with 119 wooden pieces, which you’ll need to sticker yourself. There is a lot of stickering. But it isn’t too bad as the wooden pieces are substantial and it’s not too hard to align the stickers with the edge. Mitsunari’s forces are yellow, while Ieyasu’s forces are black.
Stickering took some time, and I thought I had lost one sticker but I accidentally placed it on a second side of one block. This is what happens when you’re up late stickering. Friends don’t let friends sticker after midnight.
Sekigahara also comes with 110 cards as each player has their own deck to draw from. Lastly, there’s a mounted map, rulebook and a handy-dancy player aid for each person. The game isn’t difficult to learn compared to other wargames, as the rulebook is well written.
The game lasts about 3 hours, but the time goes by quickly because there’s little downtime, as there is constant movement on the board, and you’re always strategizing your next move.
In a nutshell, Sekigara is a card-driven wargame that involves blocks on the board, which represent a unit that warriors that correspond to a daimyo You are marching your forces across Japan to defeat your opponent’s leader, and using cards in your hands to deploy warriors and inflict war casualties. The cards are suited, and their symbol must match the daimyo warrior block you’re deploying.
This is the setup for Sekigahara. Starting blocks have a symbol for their starting position on the board, and a few random blocks drawn from a bag are added to various locations.
The coolest thing about this game is the hidden information. Your warrior blocks are facing toward you; and your opponent’s blocks toward them. You can see a giant formation of blocks marching toward you, but you don’t always know how strong the warriors are who are coming down to attack you and which leaders accompany them.
At the start of each week, players must play a card to bid for turn order. If your card has the highest number, you get to decide if you want to go first or second in each phase. Turn order stays the same throughout the week.
When it’s your turn, if you play zero cards, you can discard any number of cards and redraw from your deck, or you can move exactly one stack. If you discard one card, you can move three stacks. If you discard two cards, you can move all your stacks. Additionally, you can muster blocks from your recruitment box in place of a stack movement. The recruitment box is filled with a specific number of blocks at the start of each round, and they just sit there until they’re recruited.
Decisions, decisions! The cards in your hand are used for movement and battle.
Cards also come into play during the movement phase. Each stack has a base movement of one space. Highways; leadership from a leader, castle or capital; and a force march from discarding a card will give you movement bonuses, while the size of your stack will negatively affect your movement total. The larger the army, the slower they’ll move. And to get a leader bonus, you’ll actually have to show a leader from your stack, which can make for some revealing moments. When you enter a space with your opponent’s blocks, the movement stops. If you have four times as many forces than they do, their block is overrun and it gets removed from the game. Otherwise, battle occurs.
When players battle, the attacker deploys the first block by playing a card with the matching symbol. Initiative is calculated based on the number of symbols, plus bonuses for matching special attack symbols as well as matching the symbols from previous blocks deployed in this battle. The losing side holds initiative then and keeps playing cards to deploy blocks until they take the initiative lead. There are also Loyalty cards that can be played as an interrupt, and if the recipient doesn’t show a card with the matching symbol, the impact for that block gets calculated for the other side.
The battle continues until one side declines further deployments. The impact is then calculated. For every 7 points worth of impact, the opponent removes one block from the game. And the losing side also removes one block. For every two blocks removed, that side gains 1 card. Both players then redraw for every card used in battle.
These are some cards I used in a battle. The one with the double symbol allows you to deploy two blocks, with impact resolved for each block individually.
When the two phases are done, the week ends and the reinforcement phase begins. Players discard half of their cards, draw five cards and draws blocks from their bag to add to the recruitment area. There are also various locations on the map, that when controlled, either give you more cards at the start of the week or more blocks to add to your recruitment area.
The game ends immediately if the Tokogawa block is destroyed, or the Ishida block or Toyotomi disk is destroyed. If neither of these things happen after seven weeks, VPs are calculated — 2 VPs per castle and 1 VP per resource location to whoever controls it, and the person with the most points wins the game.
Ishida’s forces are surrounded! This battle might not have ended well for the Ishida side.
Sekigahara is so much fun to play! The combat is very in your face, and you have to make tough decisions about how to spend your cards. You need a lot of cards to move around the board quickly and to be successful in battle, but you also need the right type of cards to be able to deploy your warrior blocks. There were some moments when one of my blocks just got annihilated because I didn’t have any cards that corresponded with that stack. I’ve learned that it’s a good idea to keep your armies varied, so that you can be prepared for anything. But you’re at the mercy of which cards are drawn, and which blocks enter the game. And man, you can blow through your hand so quickly when discarding to move stacks around.
If you’re looking for a great introduction to wargames — and have a few hours to spend — Sekigara is just so much fun! The game is visually appealing, and the blocks and use of suited cards make the game accessible to many types of gamers. The game mechanics are simple and streamlined, but there’s so much strategy and history in the game. I immensely enjoyed the hidden information aspect of it, and I can’t wait to get this on table again! Hopefully at next week’s Consimworld — let me know if you’re going to be there!
Sekigahara is just delightful. Have you played this?
