This past weekend, I was at the Game On Expo in downtown Phoenix at the convention center. Game On Expo is a large gaming convention that covers all types of gaming — from video games to arcades, to RPGs and board games.
The convention took place from Aug. 10-12, and among the big guests are voice actors from popular video games such as Overwatch and The Walking Dead series. There were guest panels, signings, a vendor hall, vintage arcade games and even a cosplay contest.
Lots of vendors sold artwork and other nerd-related merchandise. I think I see Link in this photo.
Attendees were also able to listen to music each night. I caught this band called Sergio and the Holograms, which literally was a dude and holograms of himself playing music. That’s actually kind of a brilliant idea, if you know how to play all the instruments!
it’s Sergio and the Holograms. This is a very cool concept, and the music was fun!
I also attended a panel hosted by voice actor Troy Baker. He told a story about how he initially rejected a gig to voice the Joker because he didn’t think he was good enough. The head of the video game finally convinced him that he was perfect for the part, and that was huge turning point in his career. The takeaway, he said, was to believe in yourself and don’t let doubt or fear get in the way of that.
Troy Baker gave some heartfelt advice regarding his career and his dreams during his panel.
Time for some board games
At Game On, the board-game library provided by Arizona Game Fair and Crit Hit organized scheduled board gaming among content creators in the Valley. My buddies GloryHoundd, Greg Dickson, and I were all on the schedule to showcase and teach some of our favorite games to conventiongoers.
It’s me with Andrew Long, who runs Arizona Game Fair and SpielPro.com, and GloryHoundd.
GloryHoundd taught me how to play Starship Samurai, an area-control and action-point game. The game comes with these detailed miniatures of all the samurai, which all have different abilities.
Here are two of the samurai miniatures for Starship Samurai.
For my scheduled demo, I picked Sentient because, in addition to it being my favorite, it’s a crunchy game that can be taught and played in about an hour, perfect for this convention’s atmosphere. There’s no way I’m busting out Lisboa to random passers-by — no matter how much I wanted to! A couple groups walked by looking interested in the game and sat down, so I was able to teach it and spread the love for this excellent, mathy game. Everyone ended up really enjoying, so that was a total win in my book!
One of the groups that came by to play Sentient. They all seemed to really enjoy the game.
A totally new experience
The biggest surprise for me at this convention was that I played an RPG — FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME. Yes, that’s probably a shocker to most of you folks, but I never grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons or anything of the like, and my core gaming group are all eurogamers, so it has NEVER EVER come up ever in any of my game days.
I randomly happened upon this game starting when I saw some friends sitting at a table. I asked them, “what are you guys playing?” Andrew Long of Arizona Game Fair responded, “An RPG.” I’m like, “I’ve never played an RPG before.” And he’s like, “Well, sit right down!” and before I could take off my backpack, a few character sheets were placed in front of me to pick from. I picked The Bard, and the GM, Adam of FullMetalRPG, was super friendly and helped me fill it out, and the game started. FYI, I named my Bard Lisboa. (You can take the lady out of board gaming but you cannot take the board gaming out of the lady.)
And we’re off on our Dungeon Worlds adventure!
I had no idea what to expect! It was like an interactive movie unfolding before my eyes. I kept staring down at my character sheet, trying to figure out all the different things my character could do, and a little freaked out as I had no idea what I should do next. As a true eurogamer at heart, I had to just let go and enjoy the ride on this chaotic adventure. We were playing out of Dungeon Worlds, which a lot of folks on Twitter said was a good one to get into as your first RPG.
One guy, another Andrew, kept randomly setting things on fire. (I think he was a giant lizard, but I wasn’t 100 percent sure). The arson kept angering the fish folk, leaving the Bard unable to use his true skills of conversation to diffuse the situation. One of the guys later was impaled by the giant trident, and in a deal with the God of Death, tried to kill me. The scenario then went downhill after that. I rolled for my last dying breath and was able to also make a pact with the God of Death, survived and took another traveling companion down. It was glorious. And lastly, there was a giant sea creature being ridden like a jet-ski by another character. End scene. It was loads of fun.
This cool guy hosts Crit Hit events all across the Valley.
Lastly, I’d like to thank Crit Hit for reaching out and having us showcase our favorite games. I had a fun time at Game On Expo and hope to see even more board gaming there next year!
Here’s Mario and me. Alas, still no love for Waluigi.
Last month, Jason Dinger did a giveaway on Twitter for a couple copies of Coal Baron: The Great Card Game, one of his favorite card games, and I won one of the copies! Thanks, Jason! How awesome is the board-game community! Prior to this giveaway, I had only vaguely heard of Coal Baron and didn’t even realize there was a card version of the original game. But man, this little card game really impressed me, and we’ve been having a great time playing it recently. Why aren’t more folks talking about this game?
Stacks of cards make up the various actions players can take in the game.
Coal Baron: The Great Card Game is 2-4 player game that plays in about 50-80 minutes. There’s no main board, just these long and narrow player boards that represent loading docks from which you collect lorries and build your trains. To begin, you sort the cards by types and place them face up on your table, with the lorry and wagon cards split into two piles each. But be warned, even though the game is essentially a bunch of cards, it does take up quite some space on your table.
The objective of the game is to efficiently collect lorries, build trains, complete orders and gain end-game scoring objectives. What I love most about this game is that it’s essentially a worker-placement game, in which your workers are represented by cards in your hand in various fix amounts. Each player has 10 worker cards: five 1s, two 2s, and one each of a 3, 4 and 5.
Each player has the same hand of worker cards. Spend them wisely or else you’ll get shut out of an action location.
To activate a location, you spend a worker card and take the card at the top of the stack. If you or another player wants to activate that same location, you must spend exactly one more worker to do. For example, if a location already has been activated with one worker, then you must spend two workers to activate that location — either by using two 1 cards or a 2 card.
Having a fixed amount of worker cards where you must spend exactly one more worker results in a pretty crunchy game regarding action selection. Do you activate this location now, or can you a wait a turn and spend more workers to do so — and have the exact amount of worker cards in your hand? Or maybe you’ll get shut out because you can’t add exactly one more worker to the action space. It’s such a tight balance of timing and hand management!
Here are examples of a lorry (left) and wagon card. The symbols have to match on the lorries, wagons and the row they’re being loaded into.
So what are the cards you can grab? You want to collect lorries, which will sit in a single row to the left of your player board. The order is important because you can only load the right-most lorries into your wagons. Wagon cards have symbols that can only sit to the right of your player board in the row that matches that symbol. Additionally, lorries have symbols on their cards, too, and can only be loaded into a matching wagons. Lastly, you collect one engine per row, and the row loads or expands until you make a delivery.
Players add lorry cards to the left of their player board, and build trains on the right side.
But before you make a delivery, which is an action spot in itself, you need to collect order cards. Order cards show where you’re delivering the goods and how many lorries are required before the order is complete. You collect the majority of your victory points through order cards and the VPs on most lorry cards.
Here are other cards players can get: engines, objectives, orders, innovation and share cards.
There are also innovation cards, which give you extra actions or workers. Lastly, there are share and objective cards, which work toward end-game scoring. In addition to the loading and delivery actions, there is a wild action card that allows you to look at the top four cards of any deck and keep one of them and placing the other three at the bottom of the pile. We call this the Scouting Action, a la Battlestar Galactica.
Different action cards dictate how many load actions you can do on your turn.
Players spend workers to take an action, and then pass if they have no more workers or are unable to spend the correct amount of workers to activate a location. After everyone passes, the shift ends, and the last player to activate a specific loading action takes an action-shift token, which is 1 VP each at the end of the game.
To take an action spot, you must spend worker cards. It gets more expensive the more the action is taken.
Depending on the number of players, the game continues for five, six or seven shifts. After the shifts are depleted, it’s the end of the game and players calculate their VPs and end-game scoring. Share cards are assigned to exactly one order that matches the location symbol on the card. The person with the most VPs wins the game. In the case of a tie, the person who received the last shift token wins the game.
I can’t say enough about how wonderful this card game is! I really enjoy the fact that it’s a true worker-placement game, but with workers as cards in your hand, which is a mechanism I don’t think I’ve specifically encountered before. Who else has played this game before?
It’s been two weeks since Consimworld (I had an LA trip in between since so I apologize for the write-up delay), and all I want to do is play more wargames! Consimworld, short for conflict simulation, is a wargame convention that lasts for eight days in Tempe, Arizona. You need eight days, because some of those games take literally three days to play!
I was lucky enough to be a special guest at the convention, now in its 18th year. I went the entire first weekend, and each day after I got off of work for the rest of the week. I got a lot of gaming in, folks! And of course, it was great seeing out-of-town friends and hanging out.
The front of the gorgeous Tempe Mission Palms, my home away from home for a week.
The convention is super informal; there isn’t a sign-up sheet for gaming. Instead, there’s an Excel file online and you can contact people who have expressed interest in playing a specific game. The only events scheduled are the Mega Games, which require official participation since they take a few days to play. There are also nightly seminars, a large flea market and an auction at the end of the week. I got an excellent deal for Thurn and Taxis at $20!
Consimworld is held at the Tempe Mission Palms, which is right off Mill Avenue in downtown Tempe. That means plenty of food options within walking distance and convenient light-rail access. Pretty darn sweet.
It was great seeing Harold Buchanan (center), of the San Diego area, and Dan Bullock, who is from Milwaukee.
My buddy Dan Bullock, designer of No Motherland Without, came into town and we started the first day by playing Pax Porfiriana, Churchill and John Company. I ended up losing Churchill on the die roll because I was 17 points ahead. It was a fun experience though as we played all 10 rounds, which was my first time playing the long scenario.
I ALMOST won Churchill as FDR in our long scenario. Alas, that die roll.
Harold Buchanan, podcaster and game designer of Liberty of Death, taught us the John Company. I ended up playing this game twice during the convention — first as a 6P and then as a 5P. I liked the experience much more as a 5P. John Company is so bonkers! There’s a lot of randomness in the game, but I’ve come to appreciate that at its heart, it’s a negotiation game moreso than an economic game, which is what I had originally thought it was going into the first game. I ended up winning my second game with zero points. ZERO?!?
Should we let the company burn? But I need to retire first! And watch out for that elephant. John Company is all kinds of bonkers.
Day 2 of Consimworld started with Fire in the Lake, my favorite COIN game from GMT Games. I’m most familiar with this war compared with the other COINs I’ve played, and the board is just gorgeous.
I love using my giant tweezers to pick up cubes.
Dan then picked up a copy of The Big Push, a new game from Hollandspiele, and he cracked it open and learned how to play the game right on the spot! I don’t think I could ever do that; the pressure would be so huge that I’d completely mess up a first play.
The Big Push is the newest game from Hollandspiele, who were at the convention selling games and gave a presentation.
The Big Push is a 2P World War I strategic card game in which you program your cards along various battle areas on the board, and resolve them. The order by which you resolve battles matters, and depending on which cards you play, you can add to your attack or defense value with leftover cards in your hands. Lots of tough decisions about timing and card play in a game that played in about 90 minutes. I’m still kicking myself for not picking up a copy. I did purchase Supply Lines of the American Revolution though!
Lots of tough decisions about where card placement, and if that battle is attacking or defending. Crunchy!
Dan, Harold and I then finished Day 2 with a game of play Battlestar Galactica, my favorite! I ended up being a cylon this time. One guy was being super shifty, so Harold brigged him and I became the CagMiral (Cag and Admiral). I was able to just let resources die down for the cylons to cruise into victory. It was marvelous!
About 270 people attended Consimworld, held at the same hotel for the past 18 years. There were 54 newcomers this year. Some attendees even came in as far as New Zealand and Japan!
I arrived on Day 3 after getting off work. I attended the Welcome Reception, where I learned that the convention has been going strong for 18 years! Even more impressive was that there were a group of folks who had attended every single year. The organizer, John Krantz, is now based out of Texas but used to live in Phoenix when he first started the convention and has kept it at the same location since its inception. Which is awesome for me as a local gamer! The reception also raffled off a lot of games!
Here’s me with John Krantz, organizer extraordinaire of Consimworld.
Dan and I also got a chance to play Flashpoint: South China Sea, Harold’s new game. Flashpoint is a 2P card-driven game that pits China and the U.S. in the hotly-contested area of the South China Sea. The Chinese player works to influence countries while the U.S. is works to maintain influence in the region and keep China in check. Meanwhile, tensions between the two countries can escalate through events and actions that take place.
We’re about to play Harold’s Flashpoint: South China Sea. And Tom Russell hung out with us, too!
The game takes place over four rounds in under 60 minutes, and Dan and I had the chance to play the prototype. At the start of each round, a new crisis card is flipped and the text is triggered. Each player then draws up to a hand size of seven event cards and selects a card to bid for initiative. On each event card, there’s a number for action points as well as an event. When bidding for initiative, the event does not trigger, and the person with the higher number on the selected card is the winner. The winner then gets to decide who goes first.
Here’s the prototype board for Flashpoint: South China Sea.
Players then take turns going back and forth playing a card and taking actions based on the action points on the card. In this phase, no matter what, the event always triggers first, and the text is supposed to be taken literally. Dan and I had to get out of the mindset, a la Twilight Struggle, that the event will only affect you negatively. Some of the event cards will say something like “Chinese remove 1 Economic influence from Vietnam,” which means that the Chinese player can remove either the U.S. or Chinese influence cube from the board. (They will likely remove their opponent’s cube, unless there aren’t any left. In that case, then they have to remove one of their own cubes.)
A sampling of the event cards for Flashpoint. The event always triggers first for this game.
After the round ends, countries are scored based on majorities, and players have the option to add add cubes from the Political Warfare track to boost majority. I really enjoyed playing Flashpoint! There’s so much tension in a relatively short game, making hard decisions about the order to play your cards or forgoing an action you had originally planned to instead reduce the Tension track so you can put influence cubes back on the map. Plus, it plays so quickly in 60 minutes, so every majority and VP matter. I can’t wait until this game comes out!
On Day 4, I attended an evening seminar from Hollandspiele. Tom talked about how he and Mary started the company, and how using a print-on-demand business model allowed them to enter the board-game publishing company. Thus, in having their own company, they can publish the idiosyncratic wargames that they want to.
Here’s me with Tom and Mary Russell, who are Hollandspiele. It was lovely meeting them and seeing how they work so well together.
On Day 5, I played The Grizzled twice and learned how to play Cataclysm: A Second World War. It’s a recent release from GMT Games, and the “learning round” took 2 hours to play. The game uses a chit-pulling mechanism, in which your flags and operations are placed into a cup or put on an initiative track. Play is determined by which chit is pulled, or if you’d like to use an interrupt with your chit on an initiative track.
One of GMT Games’ latest releases is Cataclysm. It’s a very long game, my friends.
I then spent the next two nights playing this game, and we only got to Round 5. The first two rounds breezed by, but by Round 3, whenever you do an action that’s next to another power, they get a flag that’s placed into the cup. So then the length of these future rounds exponentially gets longer as more and more chits need to be pulled from the cup. The box says the game lasts for 90-600 minutes. I believe that!
The Cataclysm maps usually go side by side, but we placed them this way because we were on a round table. So many chits!
On Day 6, I stopped by the room where Mr. President was on display. I sat with Gene Billingsley, Rick and Tom as they playtested a scenario for the upcoming title from GMT Games. Mr. President is a ginormous solo game about being president for four years, about advancing your agenda, dealing with diplomatic and war crises, and keeping the U.S. safe.
This is Mr. President. Not shown is a board to the left that dictates the round sequence and tracks your Cabinet, bipartisan cooperation, scandals and a whole host of other things.
This board is a giant map with a bunch of tracks that tell the story of your diplomatic relations and threat levels in various regions across the world. There are events from Crisis cards that come into play, and at its core, it’s a resource management game. It was so inspiring and humbling to sit in on the playtesting process where they were tinkering with various track values. These guys know so much about that point in history! Mr. President aims to give a deep and immersive experience for the solo gamer. But man, it looks so intimidating!
It’s always great seeing Gene! I hope to make it back to GMT Weekend one year.
Lastly, Harold interviewed me for his awesome podcast, Harold on Games. If I’m being honest, it’s always nerve wracking being on the opposite side of the interview chair. I’m used to interviewing people and asking the questions. Check out the episode and listen to all his other interviews as well!
I first met Harold over a year ago at Strategicon in LA. He hosts his own convention in San Diego in November called SD Historical Con.
And then just like that, an entire week of gaming passed. I had a great time at Consimworld, playing both old and new-to-me games. If you love wargaming, then this is the convention to be at. Next year’s dates are already set. Hope to see you there on June 22-29, 2019!
Thanks for having me, Consimworld! Can’t wait for next year!
I had heard about High Society from folks online because of its gorgeous artwork. Then the game went on sale for $10.99 from Book Depository (with free shipping!), and I immediately snatched up a copy without knowing anything about the game. And folks, I have no regrets!
Osprey Games reprinted this old Reiner Knizia game, which originally came out in 1995.
High Society is a bidding card game from Osprey Games that plays 2-5 people in about 20 minutes in which you’re hobnobbing with rich folks and showing off your fancy style while trying not to go broke. It’s designed by Reiner Knizia, and the artwork is done by Medusa Dollmaker in this 2018 reprint. The cards feature a diverse cast of characters, which is wonderful, all illustrated in an Art Nouveau-inspired style.
I seriously love this freaking artwork. Insert all the heart-eye emojis here.
There’s something about bidding games that makes my friends and me lose our freaking minds. It truly becomes this intense game of chicken, and we have so much fun egging on folks to make the next bid. Hilarious bidding escalation always ensures, but you cannot go broke or be the one with the least amount of money at the end of the game before the scoring phase or else you’re eliminated. The first time I played this, we immediately played it again a second time. It was that fun!
Up to five people can play High Society, and each player gets their own set of money cards.
Each player begins with their set of 11 money cards, in values from $1 to $25. As you can see, there aren’t cards for every value in this range. The money cards will be used to bid for various socialites as they come up in the deck. Socialites are worth different points, and some will double your points at the end of the game.
To bid, a player must play one or more money cards in an amount that’s higher than the previous bid. If you pass, you pick up all the money cards you just played and return it to your hand. You’re then out of the bid. The player who bids the most money wins the socialite and discards his or her money cards. The winner then flips over the next socialite card and starts the auction round again.
The disgrace cards. Check out that Scandale! card, also known as the panicked look of when you jump out of your lover’s window because their significant other has come home.
There are also three disgrace cards, which change the bidding ever so slightly. If you are unable to bid or outbid a previous bid on a disgrace card, you will end up taking the card. The disgrace cards either remove one of your socialites, reduce your score by 5 points or half the amount of points you have at the end of the game.
The four prestige cards, which work as the timer in the game. Geez, that Scandale! guy is seriously everywhere.
There are four cards with the green background in the deck, the prestige cards. When the fourth green card comes up, the game ends immediately. But before scoring can happen, the person with the least amount of money is instantly eliminated from the game. Then players can score their socialites, and the person with the most victory points wins the game!
High Society is a short, but delightful, bidding card game that’s easy to teach. The box is small and easily transportable, and the card quality is excellent. Plus, seriously, look at that art! The only people I see not liking this are those who don’t like bidding games. So if you don’t mind bidding games, High Society is a great card game to add to your collection. Who out there has played this?
I got the chance to go to BGG Spring in Dallas for the first time at the end of May. My lovely friends from Phoenix, Ohio and Atlanta wanted to meet up somewhere in between all of them, and we all stayed at an airbnb near DFW Airport. I had an amazing time with these guys, and it was just what I needed to de-stress from a chaotic few months. We usually met up yearly for Friendship Con, which I’ve written about here and here.
There’s a misconception among a few people (namely some men I’ve dated) that I’m horrible at math. But in reality, I’m actually pretty decent at math; I just can’t for the life of me do it in my head. Give me some writing utensils and/or my cell phone, and I’ll be able to calculate things and cruise into board-game victory any day.
The first time I encountered Sentient from Renegade Game Studios was late last year, and I was so blown away by it that it immediately made the list for my top 10 games I played for the first time in 2017. Sentient is a clever set-collection, area-control, dice-manipulation game that sometimes involves math. I seriously squealed and said, “That’s FOIL!” when one particular card came out in that first game. …
I first encountered No Motherland Without last October at GMT Weekend and immediately fell in love with the game. Game designer Dan Bullock was there, and I had the pleasure of gaming with him and a few other folks I met that weekend. I was drawn to No Motherland Without because it’s a card-driven game similar to Twilight Struggle and 1960: Making the President, both of which I love, plus it also has some unique elements that make this game stand out. It’s set in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the game is now on Kickstarter! (Edit: The Kickstarter has since been cancelled, as the designer is deciding how to progress. Stay tuned!)
For the past two years, every time there was a board-game garage sale or flea market, I’d always be on the lookout for Wasabi! It’s an older Z-Man game from 2008, and it’s on my list of grail games that I wished I had a copy of. Recently, my Hooked On Geek podcast co-host Greg randomly mentioned in an episode that it was a grail game of mine, and then two weeks ago, Mike said he was going to send me his copy because it never got played. Wow!! The board game community is seriously just so frakkin’ awesome.
So Feudum has arrived on our table, and, despite its whimsy artwork, it’s quite a beast. A behemoth to be exact. And maybe a sea serpent. My buddy @idontknowrules has been seriously talking about this game since forever, and we got it on table pretty much as soon as it hit his doorstep. The game mechanics aren’t too difficult to learn, but understanding how the system works is quite brain burnery and puzzly. ‘Tis super excellent.
Hello, friends! It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I’d like to say I’ve been busy gaming and just haven’t been writing but it’s been a combination of life events that has slowed down all the gaming I’d like to be doing. Inspired by Jamey Stegmaier’s personal blog, I thought I’d share some personal updates with you all. By the way, have you read how much that guy writes on his work and personal websites? It’s pretty amazing.
