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!
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?
We’ve made it to the end of 2021. Give yourselves a big pat on the back! 2021 was by far not an easy year for many, but I was thankfully able to play more games this year in person with close friends and family. Here are the top 10 games that I played for the first time in 2021.
The resource wheel in Red Cathedral, where you can pick up jewels, bricks and other materials.
Players in Red Cathedral are working to construct portions of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. They claim sections of the wall, and then later deliver goods to complete construction. Players can also decorate theirs and other player’s sections with decorations, in an attempt to gain area control majorities along each column of the cathedral. The mechanism that I adore about this game is the resource wheel where you collect resources based on where the die’s pips on the wheel. It’s a neat puzzly addition to your typical resource collection and delivery. Plus, it comes in a box half the size of your typical euro game.
Villagers is a chill drafting game where you’re building out your village.
This darling card drafting game had been on my radar for a while but I never got a chance to play it until this past year. In Villagers, you are refugees who have survived the Great Plague working to start your own village again. You get to decide who can come set up in your village, whether crafts people, tradespeople, etc. The artwork is just so adorable, and it’s a chill low-stakes game of city building and manufacturing VPs. The game plays 1-5 players, which fulfills many game-night player combinations.
I got a chance to play Angola! this past summer at Consimworld.
Angola! is probably one of the most unique wargames I’ve ever played — it’s played in teams and you pre-program your commands, one of which must be a dummy command. Bonkers! Two factions are backed from the U.S. (FNLA and UNITA), and the other two are backed by the Soviets (FAPLA and MPLA). It’s a neat element I have not encountered. Also, if more wargames were team-based, I can see people being less intimated to jump into these types of games.
I’ve only played Beyond the Sun on Board Game Arena, but it totally made my top 10 list.
Tech tree — the game! It kind of floors me that somehow a game designer managed to make a board game with a space theme that is incredibly dry, and I should know because I’ve played my fair share of crunchy yet incredibly dry eurogames. Most of the space games I’ve played are dripping with thematic epicness, and this game manages to turn that theme into cube-pushing in space. But, Beyond the Sun is oh, it’s so much fun! There’s something really satisfying about moving up the research tracks and managing your resources as you unlock portions of your player board. And sure, you’re “exploring” and “colonizing” in space over on this side of the board, it all just comes down to how many more ships do you have than the other player to collect these resources. Full disclosure though, I’ve only played this game on Board Game Arena.
In Unfathomable, you’re on a cruise ship trying to survive the Deep Ones and all sorts of bad stuff.
Nope, this will never replace my beloved No. 1 game of all time Battlestar Galactica, but this reskin is worthy enough to hit my top 10 this year. Unfathomable is now set in the horror mythos world of Cthulhu and H.P. Lovecraft, with characters sailing across the Atlantic on the SS Atlantica. The game is immediately out to get you, and you don’t know which of your fellow boatmates have been turned into Deep One hybrids. While this game does not streamline the original BSG game (as some gamers had hoped for before Unfathomable was released), it’s still an immersive and haunting experience worth playing.
Mercado de Lisboa is like Lisboa without a million steps in between action.
Lisboa is one of my absolute favorite games, but sometimes you just do not have the bandwidth to play such a long and complex game. Enter Mercado de Lisboa, a short puzzly brain-burner that clocks in at about 30-45 minutes, co-designed by Vital Lacerda himself. Players are building stalls and restaurants in order to bring in customers looking to pay for those goods. And like the storefront building portion of the original game, you’re trying to open in a location that will score up to three times.
The wooden tokens and hexagon terrain tiles make Cascadia such a gorgeous game.
This game was a surprise hit for me this year. Cascadia is just absolutely gorgeous, a tapestry of the Pacific Northwest. Players are building out their habitats and placing animals on hexagonal tiles in order to score objectives, either for the animal and/or largest continuous habitat. The dual drafting of the tiles and animals (players one of the four sets) adds strategy and depth to an otherwise basic tile-laying game. And its artwork is sure to lure nature lovers in for a game.
I had been anticipating this sequel to the original GMT game and it did not disappoint. Dominant Species: Marine is a more streamlined game than the original, and while gameplay is also similar, a big difference is that your special abilities are not tied to your species (there are only four in this game), and they can be replaced as cards come into play. I also like the special action pawn spots that players can accumulate when they’re dominating in a habitat. Calculating domination is easier to do in this game, making the game less fiddly than the original, and the striking artwork makes this game a draw to the table.
You get a gift, I get a gift, everyone gets a gift in The Field of the Cloth of Gold!
Quite absolutely my favorite 2-player game of this year, The Field of the Cloth of Gold is simple to learn and quick to play, yet completely agonizing and just plain maddening! Every time you take a turn, you present a gift to your opponent, the random tile that’s placed on that action spot. This very thing creates an unbelievably high tension between you two, a strategic dance to avoid giving your opponent the tile they need, which often sits on the action you truly want to take. It’s an absurd gift-giving mechanism that forces you to hand over a gift while you smile through gritted teeth. It’s so unbelievably good.
Yes, this game looks super busy, but eurogamers will catch on quickly in this game.
Here we are at the top of the list! Praga Caput Regni was an instant love from the first play at Consimworld back in September. Not enough euros incorporate a timing element to game play (Tzolk’in is one of the few that come to mind), and this game does not disappoint. Various actions that players take on their turn cost more money or hand out victory points, depending on their point in time on the Action Crane, which rotates every turn. It’s very clever! In Praga, players are working to improve New Prague City by building city walls, bridges, the cathedral or other civic projects.
And just like that, we’ve reached the end of 2021. Where exactly did 2020 and 2021 go? It simultaneously feels like a blur and an eternity all at the same time. I feel fortunate for having been able to play a lot of new games this year, enough to craft a top 10 list. And for those who aren’t on social media, I also celebrated a personal milestone this past fall and married this wonderful gent.
We are now Mr. and Ms. Meeple Lady. 🙂
Here’s to a wonderful 2022! May we all be safe and healthy, and play a bunch more games! What are some of your favorites of the past year?
