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.
When I started writing this post, I looked back at my 2017 list, and I had to laugh because I was so optimistic that 2018 would be less rage-inducing than 2017. This past year was still rage-inducing in regards to the outside world, but there definitely was plenty of moments of pure joy for me personally and within the board-game world. I have fond memories of the experiences I had in 2018, the friendships and relationships that grew, and most importantly, all the games that I played.
So without further delay, here’s my top 10 list of games I played for the first time in 2018.
Despite the cones, this is not Cones of Dunshire. Dominant Species is brutal and punishing.
This game from GMT Games is a classic. And by classic, I mean 2010, which by board-game standards, is pretty ancient. I played this game for the first time back in January, and I honestly couldn’t believe I haven’t played this game sooner. It’s brutal, mean and literally a game of “survival of the species.” And for such a punishing game, the components itself are quite colorful and cheery: cones and cubes among a sea of bright-colored environments.
Players take on the role of one of the major animal classes (mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid, or insect) and they’re all trying to survive and thrive on various terrains with their asymmetrical powers, all while the impending Ice Age is coming. Players compete to have the most of their species on various hexes as well as being dominant, which is determined by your animal class. Dominant Species plays like a typical worker placement but built from a war-game foundation. Just watch out for glaciers!
This was another game I played early in 2018, and OH MY GOSH — look at all these pink dinosaurs!! I came into this game thinking it would be all kinds of kitschy, but it’s a solid worker placement that comes with variable end-game conditions. Players can pick a short, medium or long game, and the game ends when scoring objectives are completed. And similar to Food Chain Magnate, you can only score objectives in the same round that everyone else does. Once an objective has been scored, the objective is closed for others in future rounds.
Players in Dinosaur Island are competing to build the best dinosaur amusement park. The game plays through several phrases in each round, from collecting DNA combinations to create dinosaurs, upgrading technology and building park attractions, to having actual visitors visit your theme park, and hoping for the best those visitors don’t get eaten. Sure, exciting carnivores will bring more visitors to your park, but if you don’t ensure security gates are at a high level, well, we all know how that plays out in those Hollywood movies, don’t we?
Squee! Let’s have a pie fight! These figurines are way adorbs.
This new family game from Stonemaier Games is just darling! I got a chance to play it for the first time during Gila Monster this summer, and it truly is delightful! The game was created by a father who wanted to game with his daughter, and Stonemaier ended up publishing the fan-made version a year later. My Little Scythe comes with these chibi figurines of the original Scythe characters. ADORABLE.
The game also takes elements from Scythe — choose one of the actions on your player board, but not the same one you just did — and players move across the board, picking gems, apples or quests, and working to score objectives. And instead of combat, the game incentivizes you to drop resources where other players are, because that moves you up the friendship track. In the end, friendship is magic!
Bruxelles 1893 has these dapper gentlemen meeples with top hats.
This is another older board game, circa 2013, but I can’t believe so few people have ever mentioned this game! Bruxelles 1893, a colorful game in the Art Nouveau style, is crunchy worker placement that has a clever puzzle element to it. Workers are collecting resources to build buildings, and buying and selling artwork to gain money.
The game also comes with a dial, which players can adjust to determine which resources are needed to build a building, and players can affect how much pieces of artwork will sell by moving this square across a board. The game continues for five rounds, and it’s another one of those games where you definitely cannot do most of the things you want to do. And at the start of each round, the worker-placement sections of the board are selected, which is another neat element of the game, so the building you built might not even be in play for the round. This game is totally underrated!
I played this new edition of this older card game for the first time this year. Arboretum is gorgeous and unassumingly brutal. At the start of each turn, players take two cards, play one into their arboretum and discard another card. You’re building paths of beautiful trees in order to possibly score that path at the end of the game. But you can only score that tree species if you have the highest sum of those tree cards your hand.
I love balancing that push and pull between keeping cards in your hands versus playing them down into your arboretum. You can also prevent opponents from scoring large paths by hanging on to certain tree cards. The card game is inviting enough to introduce to new gamers but strategic to engage heavy gamers like myself.
Players place ladders in Catch the Moon, and each game has been a masterpiece!
Catch the Moon is such a beautiful game. I just purchased it in November at BGG Con, but it’s already risen to one of my most-played games in 2018. And yes, I know it’s only a 20-minute game, but it’s one that people immediately want to play over and over again. The table presence of this game also draws curious passers-by, and more often than not, they take a seat at the next game.
Catch the Moon is a dexterity game in which players take turns adding wonky ladders to a main centerpiece that sits atop a cloud. Roll a dice, and the dice tells a player to either place a ladder that touches exactly one or two ladders, or the new ladder must be the highest point. If any ladders fall or touch the base, or the player doesn’t follow the dice’s directions, they get a tear drop because the moon is super sad. Try to get the fewest tear drops, and don’t get the last tear drop, and you’ll win the game. Each game of this has been different; some creations go up super high, while others stay really low, just barely hanging on and not scraping the cloud base.
Sidereal Confluence is a live negotiation and trading game with asymmetrical alien factions.
Sidereal (which rhymes with ethereal, and, believe me, it took me some times to figure out how to say this word correctly) Confluence is a bonkers real-time negotiation and trading game that plays up to nine players who are asymmetrical alien factions working to research and run various technologies. The kicker is that they often don’t have the resources to run those technologies, hence they need to find the resources from others.
This is one of my favorite games to run at the convention, because you can assemble a large number of participants, as I think a larger player count works best for this game. There’s yelling, trading for future favors and making less-than-ideal trades because you really, really need that one last blue cube, and the time is running out. (I set each trading round to 10 minutes.) And when you have an alien race like Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl (complete with a pronunciation guide), you know the game is gonna be insane.
Teotihuacan was my favorite game of BGG Con this year.
I had the pleasure to play Teotihuacan at BGG Con, and it did not disappoint. In Teotihuacan, each player is a powerful noble family working to build the temple of Teotihuacan. You’re using your workforce of dice to move around the board like a giant rondel. Depending on the value of your dice, you receive various resources at each location, and then at the end of your turn, your dice levels up.
As with its predecesor Tzolk’in, the game is a lot about timing your actions correctly. Instead of the giant wheel cogs in Tzolk’in, the game is all about moving your dice in a way so that it levels up at the right moment, so that you can get resources to build temple steps and gain technology, among other things. Dice are moving in one direction in order to ascend to 6 pips, and then you get a reward and start over again at one location.
Picking between No. 1 and No. 2 was super difficult as these two last games are equally exceptional, but for the purposes of this list, I had to pick which game belonged in which spot. For No. 2, it’s came down to Feudum. Feudum, despite its whimsy artwork and endearing behemoth, is quite a beast to learn and equally to play. But it’s definitely worth it, in my opinion.
Feudum combines elements of Concordia with using card play for taking actions, but adds area control on the board and maintaining influence in various guilds to gain benefits for various actions. It’s one of those games like Lisboa where all the actions itself aren’t difficult per se, but the interconnectivity of those actions and guilds is what makes the game truly shine. This game is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, as I saw some criticisms online about this game being unnecessary complicated instead of complex, but I don’t agree with those assessments. It’s hefty, crunchy and pays off when you find that group of people who enjoy these type of games and are willing to put in the time to peel away at the game’s layers.
I love love this game, even if I’m not very good at it.
And we’re at No. 1! What edged Coimbra a bit past Feudum is its accessibility. Coimbra is an equally crunchy game, but when it’s just four rounds and plays in about two hours, more people will likely dive into this game than Feudum. Plus, people love brightly colored game boards, and there’s lots of dice! But the dice isn’t used for chucking!
In Coimbra, the dice are rolled each round, and players take turns selecting dice in which pips matter for the first half of the round, and then the color of the same dice matters for the second half of the round. In the first half of the round, players collect character cards the give them special abilities or end-game scoring points. Character cards are mostly selected from higher to lower pips, and paid for with either money or military resources. On the second half of the round, the color of the dice will give you that income resource based on there you’re sitting on one of the four tracks. Tracks galore in this game, and I always enjoy balancing all the different resources and having two different incomes. What a fantastic game!
And that’s the end of the list! Let me know what some of your favorites were this year, and what you’re looking forward to next year, either with board games or life happenings.
Happy New Year, and hope everyone has a wonderful 2019!
Holy forkballs! It’s December already! Where did November go? Man, it’s been a busy, fun, amazing few weeks, and now that I’ve had some to come up for air, let’s talk about all the gaming I did at BGG.
This is my fifth consecutive BGG Con, and my fourth year volunteering for Team Geek. If you’re on Team Geek, you work eight 2-hour shifts throughout the course of the convention. And you get to do so in a sweet, sweet jersey. There’s also a volunteer dinner the Tuesday night before the convention so you can meet and hang out with fellow volunteers before the con gets underway on Wednesday. Here’s a photo of Team Geek from Jenny, who is also on team Geek:
I arrived in Dallas on Tuesday morning, had a wonderful breakfast with an old Phoenix friend at Yolk. What an adorable breakfast place, and my skillet was hearty and tasty. I was pleasantly surprised that they had an option for turkey sausage, considering I’m in the heart of Texas, where everything is all about other meats that I don’t eat.
I arrived at the Hyatt Regency at DFW after breakfast, checked in, took a quick nap (don’t judge — I flew out of Phoenix at 5:30 a.m.), and started volunteer shifts. As a veteran Teek Geek member, I got the first selection on volunteer shifts, so I was able to knock out three of my shifts on Tuesday before our welcome dinner of Mexican food. Yums!
Julie was leading volunteers on Tuesday who had signed up to work that day. Jon of JonGetsGames stopped by to help, too!
After dinner, we got our badges and free games, one of which was a sweet Everdell glass pint, and started gaming! First up was Teotihuacan: City of Gods, which was high on my to-play list for BGG. Kevin Russ, who I had met at RinCon two months prior, taught us how to play, and man, do I love this game!
Teotihuacan was my favorite game of BGG Con this year.
In Teotihuacan, each player is a powerful noble family working to build the temple of Teotihuacan. You’re using your workforce of dice to move around the board like a giant rondel. Depending on the value of your dice, you receive various resources at each location, and then at the end of your turn, your dice levels up.
The board looks incredibly intimidating but the iconography is clear in terms of what rewards you’ll receive at each location, and game play, in my opinion, is pretty straightforward. Making the most of those actions is much more difficult.
As with its predecesor Tzolk’in, the game is a lot about timing your actions correctly. Instead of the giant wheel cogs in Tzolk’in, the game is all about moving your dice in a way so that it levels up at the right moment, so that you can get resources to build temple steps and gain technology, among other things. Dice are moving in one direction in order to ascend to 6 pips, and then you get a reward and start over again at one location. Can’t wait until my game group gets of a copy of this game!
Next up, I learned and played Catch the Moon for the first time from Eric. I can’t say enough great things about this darling game. It’s one of the few games I purchased at BGG Con because I immediately fell in love with it. And true story: Eric is really good and mean at this game!
Catch the Moon is darling! Don’t mess up and make the moon cry!
Besides it being just adorable to look at, this dexterity game is easy enough for people to jump into and interesting enough to keep even the heaviest of gamers engaged. On your turn, you roll a die, and you place a ladder onto the cloud either touching one other ladder, two other ladders, or it has to be the highest point on the cloud platform. If you make ladders fall, the moon gets super sad and you receive a teardrop. If you get the last teardrop, the game ends and you’re eliminated, and the person with the fewest teardrops wins the game.
Getting some pre-con gaming in with Netters, Mitch, Eric, Daniel, Kimberly and Sum Fat Kid.
I then played Tokyo Jidohanbaiki, which is a game about Japanese vending machines and drinks. It’s a little — literally, teeny tiny — game where place your smol soda bottles on drink crates and not have them explode, but also when you choose for them to explode, you can wipe out your opponents.
Look at these teeny tiny soda cans!
Wednesday
Today was the first day of the convention. I worked two shifts at registration, which I love doing. I love greeting folks and seeing everyone’s excited and happy faces on Day 1.
I then met up with some Arizona folks to play some games before dinner that evening. I got a chance to play Meeple Circus for the first time. That game is a riot, and the circus soundtrack adds a nice touch for this game. I’m not normally a fan of adding apps or tech to board games, but this was stupid fun. I mean, who doesn’t love stacking meeples in a dexterity race while circus music is playing in the background?
Stacking meeples and animals in real time in Meeple Circus, which has its own circus soundtrack.
We then all went out to dinner to a vegan restaurant called Spiral Diner. This was all of our first time visiting this place, and, even though it’s quite a haul from the Hyatt Regency, it’s definitely worth checking out.
It’s Greg Dickson of Hooked on Geek, Andrew, Dr. GloryHogg and GloryHoundd!
I ordered an El Paso burger with a cashew patty and pistachio ice cream for dessert. Both were super yum and tasted like what I would normally eat as a non-vegan.
I ordered a cashew-based patty for my El Paso burger.
I had to try the pistachio ice cream. Excellent!
We then arrived back at the hotel to teach my favorite game to run at a convention: Sidereal Confluence. I enjoy having a large amount of people playing this game since it makes for a better economy, and luckily, seven people signed up to play. And I know live negotiation games aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, or that maybe I’m not even the best teacher of it, but I do enjoy sharing this game with others as I feel like it’s not a game that would normally get on table on a regular game day.
Sidereal Confluence is a table hog! I also love using my giant tweezers in the game.
I then ran across Eric teaching Eco Links, which is another real-time path-building game in which you’re trying to connects animals through a path. Even though the game is light, it reminded me of playing an 18xx because you’re playing these tiles on a board and looking for that sharp curve.
Eco Links is a real-time tile-laying, road-building game where players connect all the bears.
Thursday
On Thursday, I woke up early (for me) to game with Moe and play Fort Sumter at 9:30 a.m. Fort Sumter is a 2-player card-driven game that pits the Unionist and Secessionist player against each other. The game plays for 25-40 minutes, and takes place over three rounds and ends with a Final Crisis confrontation.
Here’s Moe teaching me to how to play Fort Sumter early Thursday morning.
Similar to other CDGs like Twilight Struggle, players have a hand of cards and play them for events or action points. What’s different about this game, besides it taking a fraction of the time of a game of Twilight Struggle, is that in each round, you get a secret objective that you’re playing toward for extra victory points.
Fort Sumter plays in 25-40 minutes, and it’s a tense CDG!
I enjoyed the push and pull of this game, and that escalation of the game as more cubes come into play. This game is part of the GMT Lunchtime Games series, strategic games designed for the lunch hour. It’s a great game to play if you’re interested in learning how to play a card-driven game and don’t have an entire half-day to play.
Next up was lunch with Netters and Mitch, and then Netters taught me The Estates. Jeremy and @fencedingates also joined in on the game. This game is right up my alley! It involves bidding and blocking people, and is all kinds of mean! You are bidding to build pieces to place along three different streets, and any incomplete streets will score negative points in the end. Players can also dictate how long the game will go, and I love the closed economy of it.
Netters did a great job teaching this game. I enjoyed the bidding and just hanging out with all these cool folks. I wish Netters and Mitch lived closer to me!
I then taught this game I had heard about on Tuesday from JonGetsGames: Eye My Favorite Things. This game can be a tad absurd but it’s fun with the right folks. You pick a category for the person on your right, and they write down their top 5 items for that category and rank them, as well as something they hate in that category and rank them as a zero. Then you get the cards they wrote on, and then it becomes a trick-taking game based on what you think they ranked all the items they wrote on their cards. You do this three times, and then the person with the most VPs wins the game. It’s a game that compares random categories like soup, world problems, board games and ice cream flavors altogether.
Eye My Favorite Things was the biggest surprise of BGG Con!
I then met up with some friends at a meetup for female content contributors and their friends. Netters and I organized one last year and it was a nice refuge from the hustle and bustle of the main convention floor, and it gave people a chance to get to know each other in a smaller setting. The two games I played were — yep you guessed it — Catch the Moon and Eye My Favorite Things.
Oh, hai, friends! A great time was had by all!
FridayF
I started my Friday with a lovely game of Coimbra with these cool folks, Joe, Julie and Chris. I absolutely adore this game, and, even though I’m completely horrible at it, I’m always down to play it. It was a wonderful way to start my morning.
Coimbra is soooo good! So many tough decisions and working hard to make all your character cards work well together.
Chris and I then went to meet Jason and Donna Dinger for lunch, and Jason taught us Ground Floor, designed by David Short. In Ground Floor, you’re the CEO of a company, and you have to manage hiring new employees, expanding your office and scheduling your shipments. In addition, you’re literally building floors into your office building. That was a neat visual component to the game! The game plays for about two hours, and man, you quickly start running out of actions and can’t do everything you want to. I had a great time playing this!
Each player has their own board, which you start to build out for your company.
Jason then taught us another game, The King of Frontier. It’s one of his favorite games, and he managed to secure a copy of the first edition, since the new one has been completely revamped with a completely different aesthetic. I mean, who doesn’t want to play a game with these stick figures?
This little stick-figure guy is ready to build his lan, and do some funky dance moves, too.
It’s a neat tile-laying game that has a follow mechanism, and you’re building out a little kingdom and collecting resources on your player mat. Jason showed me photos of what the new edition looks like, and I think it has lot a lot of its charm with the new art.
I then attended a meetup from the Inside Voices Network. I played Wangdo with a different Eric and Chris. It’s a cute little area-control game where you draw bears from a bag in order to place them on the board. But you can only place a bear when you have the appropriate colored bears matching the spots surrounding that location. There are also cards you can play to benefit yourself or hurt an opponent, and the game is a race to collect all the tokens.
Wangdo is a fun quick area control, set collection bear game.
And the bear pieces look like yummy gummy bears.
Squee! These cute bears are not candy though.
Next, we played a prototype that Chris was demo-ing called Hour Town by LO5 Games. This game is a real-time worker-placement game where you collect resources to build buildings, some of which are multiple levels tall. And there’s also an area-control element in which you contributed the most resources toward a building. I like the up and down frantic-ness of this game, which lasts about 20 minutes. I hope this game gets published!
Hour Town is a fun prototype that Chris taught Eric and me. Sand timers galore!
I then played a game of Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra. I was a little skeptical about this game, mostly that it was relying too much on being gorgeous and like how could it be better than Azul, which was one of the top games I played in 2017.
I didn’t think it was possible to make Azul tiles look more like candy, but here we are!
The verdict is that this sequel is worth playing! It changes up gameplay to make it more puzzly, and more importantly, it’s a fixed amount of rounds. You’re working to complete vertical columns, and there’s an added element where you only score columns to the right of the pawn. Thus scoring can ramp up if you build your window in the right order. I enjoyed that extra elements to the game. And it comes with this little cardboard box to discard pieces in it, which makes it easier to pour back into the bag. I don’t need both copies though. One should suffice in your game collection.
I ended Friday night with my usual BGG Friday Night Shenanigans by playing Yummy Monster and Coconuts with my girlfriends.
My girlfriends and I are ready to feed the monsters! Now where’s the food items?
Yummy Monster is a flinging dexterity game in which each player is feeding a monster. Each player wears a mask over their face and slides cardboard claws onto their hands, and you throw pieces of food into the monster’s mouth, which is depicted as one of four walls you set up in the game box. It’s super ridiculous, but we had a lot of fun.
And of course, we love Coconuts. So much shenanigans.
Fun fact: the longer we play this game, the worse we become at it. How does that happen?
Saturday
Saturday began with seeing some sun (even though it was freezing outside) when Rand, who is originally from Dallas, invited us and took a car-load of us to his favorite BBQ joint Lockhart. The place is a tad farther from the convention, but definitely worth checking out if you have access to a vehicle. The meat was tasty, and there wasn’t a 40-minute wait for the meats, which is the case when we go out to Hard Eight This place is casual, homey and right in the middle of the Dallas arts district.
Amid the chowing down of the meats, I completely forgot to take a table photo of what we ate. But trust me, guys, this place was yum!
Saturday gaming began with Rescue Polar Bears. I’ve already been bracing myself for this game because everyone has been telling me how hard it is, and when you lose, these little guys die.
Please save my polar bear family!
This game is a co-op action-point-allowance game where you’re trying to save the polar bears before all the ice melts. Brutal! But these components are just darling, and they make you super motivated to try to win the game by getting polar bears onto your boat and helicoptering them away!
We gotta rescue the polar bears before all the ice melts!
Saturday night was closing ceremonies. This is always a great time because so many game prizes were awarded! One year, I’ll totally win a prize package.
The main ballroom is packed for closing ceremonies. People want to win games!
I then unknowingly started a new tradition with my friends: teaching Battlestar Galactica immediately after closing ceremonies. This is my absolute favorite game, and I love teaching it to new people. I played this with Greg, Chris, GloryHoundd and DrGloryHogg. It’s my third year in a row that I’ve done this on the Saturday night at the convention.
All of our happy faces before the cylons tried to take over. Those dirty toasters!
GloryHoundd even had this shirt on, which I totally should’ve guessed she was the cyclon. She later revealed she was, after DrGloryHogg brigged her and Chris. DrGloryHogg has no reason to brig Chris but Chris ended up being the other cylon. Good job, humans!
GloryHoundd was absolutely the cylon.
The final game of BGG Con for me was Iki. The game is based in Edo, Japan, where artisans, street vendors and professionals are setting up shop. Players move their meeples along the city like a rondel. There’s also a track showing how protected your stores are from fire, and that determines the order for choosing how many spaces you want to move in the next round and the order to purchase character cards. This entire game has many clever elements! And some of the Japanese professionals are charming and based on historical writings.
When you do business with shop owners, you get resources and the shop owners gain experience. Timing also plays a large role because as shop owners maximize their experience, they move off the board and into your personal supply. So you might be expecting some resources, but another player has triggered your shop owner to be removed from the board. Iki is such a hidden gem, and I’m super sad that I can’t find a copy of it that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
And then just like that, six days came and went, and it was time to return to Phoenix, which was Chris’ first time visiting. Every year I say that I had an excellent time at BGG, and this year is no exception. It’s my one giant con for the year, and it’s truly an amazing experience hanging out and gaming with people I call my friends, even though they live all across the U.S. This year’s BGG was particularly special for me. Board-game Twitter just brings people together, you know?
I miss all these cool people and many others who had left by Saturday night! Can’t wait until we can all game again!
Anywho, if you’re interested in going to BGG Con next year, it’ll be moving to a bigger location in downtown Dallas, which means more tickets will be on sale! Staying at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Dallas will result in access to restaurants and nearby attractions, something I’m very much looking forward to. Because, man, does it get expensive uber-ing out of DFW to get some good grub.
If you made it all the way here, thanks for reading about my experience at BGG Con! I hope everyone is having a wonderful December!
This past weekend was RinCon down in Tucson, which is a two-hour drive from Phoenix. Last year, I was only able to attend for one day. This year, the convention invited me to be a special guest, and I got to speak on some panels regarding subjects that are near and dear to me! How frakking awesome is that?
I drove south to Tucson on Friday after work and immediately jumped into a 7-player Sidereal Confluence, my new favorite con game after I busted it out at Strategicon. I’ve been bringing this game to conventions because I figure I can get a large player count for this game, which is absolutely fun and bonkers — if you love live negotiating! I got a chance to play this with friends I saw at Gila Monster, and a good time was had by all.
Sidereal Confluence is a live negotiation and trading game with asymmetrical alien factions.
We then played two games of Deception: Undercover Allies. The original Deception game is my favorite deduction-style game, so it was great playing this expansion. The new roles such as the Inside Man and Protective Detail made for some real nail-biters in finding the murderer. Plus, the microscopes and the police badges are a sweet addition.
I got a chance to play the expansion of my favorite social-deduction game.
On Saturday, I hopped into a game of At the Gates of Loyang, which is from my favorite designer Uwe Rosenberg. This has been one of my grail games to play, as I don’t know anyone local who has it. It’s an older game from 2009 and has the farming and harvest elements that are similar to his other games. I really liked the card-drafting mechanism for Loyang, in which players are placing cards from their hands into the courtyard to later pick two action cards. The player has to both pick a card from their hand and from the courtyard for their two card actions in that round.
I’m playing an Uwe game where I’m planting and harvesting fruits and veggies!
Then in typical Uwe fashion, you can plant and harvest your fruits and vegetables and complete orders from various customers. If you can’t satisfy some customers, then you’ll get a penalty. I need to find a copy of this game for my collection!
I then spoke from my first panel for the convention on diversity and inclusivity. Personally, I don’t have much experience doing public speaking so I’m always a little bit nervous doing these things, but everyone was so friendly that you can’t help but get caught up on discussions about making board gaming a better place for everyone. Topics such as how to promote welcoming spaces came up and how to best amplify those diverse voices in the industry. I was on the panel with Erin Escobedo, Jamie DuBois of Do Better Gaming, Jahmal Brown and Camdon Wright.
There was some good discussion on making gaming more welcoming and inclusive. (Photo by CritHitAZ)
I then met up with RinCon special guest Sarah Reed who taught me how to play her games Oaxaca and Project Dreamscape. It was a real treat finally meeting her in person and hanging out with her all weekend. I love the colorful artwork of Oaxaca and had a little too much fun activating some of the Handicraft Cards to target my opponents.
I love the colorful artwork in Oaxaca. You can target some of your opponents with some of the cards. But ultimately, the game forces you to specialize and be more efficient with gathering and crafting.
Come to think of it, we also started getting a little mean for Project Dreamscape! There’s an option to flip over cards, making it more expensive to get the cards we all want. Both games were really fun to play. I also learned about how Oaxaca came to be and gained useful information about creating prototypes during Sarah’s panel on Game Design, which also included David Short and James Earness of Cheapass Games.
It’s me and game designer extraordinaire Sarah Reed, who is originally from Sacramento. I’m glad we got a chance to meet in real life and hang out!
After that panel, I participated in a women in gaming panel with these lovely ladies: GloryHoundd, Marissa Kelly of Magpie Games, Sarah Reed and Griffin Maria. We talked about our experiences — good and bad — of being a female gamer, the role models we have or wished we had, and what motivates us to create content in a sometimes inhospitable environment. We all had different experiences and come from various corners of the board-game world. It was inspiring to listen to all these women speak.
Loved being on a panel with all these wonderful ladies. Karen Arnold Ewing (behind me in purple) is in charge of the convention and moderated the panel.
The Women’s Space came up in discussions as well. For the first time ever, RinCon dedicated a separate space for women to game in. This room was beyond fantastic — it had fresh-baked goods, snacks and a well-kept stash of products people could dig into.
Who doesn’t love fresh-baked goods? Women do it right!
Whenever I went into the Women’s Space, most folks were gaming but there were a few who just needed a quiet break away from the hustle and bustle of the main gaming areas. I think this is such a wonderful idea and hope that more conventions set up a place like this.
The Women’s Space was set up in a hotel suite away from the main convention floor. It was a nice retreat.
After the panel, I learned Gizmos, which is nothing like Potion Explosion despite marbles and a contraption from which the marbles come out of. It’s a quick engine-building game where you’re building these machines and scoring victory points. Certain machines will increase your capacity to hold various cards, which then will make your engine more efficient.
David Short taught us how to play Gizmos, a quick engine-builder that has marbles and a contraption that spits out marbles.
I then played Coimbra, which is my second time playing this game after Gila Monster. I cannot get enough of this game, with its crunchy decisions in a not-super-long eurogame. It’s essentially dice drafting in which pips matter for the first half of the round, and then the color of the dice matter for the second half of the round in receiving income or resources of the matching dice color. So crunchy! This is one I would love to add to my collection.
I love love this game, even if I’m not very good at it.
Lastly, I played Ginkopolis, which I first played at Arizona Game Fair. This game has card drafting, area control and multi-use cards. We played a 5P game that lasted into the wee hours of the night, briefly interrupted by some Eegee’s frozen treats at midnight. Also, on Friday night at midnight, the convention brought in some free pizza for a pizza party. Such cool perks from the con!
We played a 5P game of Ginkopolis that lasted in the night on Saturday night.
On Sunday morning, I signed up to teach Lisboa, one of my absolute favorite games and which I actually learned at last year’s RinCon, to some women in the Women’s Space. It’s a beast to teach, and I wanted to share my love of this game in a chill environment where people can ask all the questions they want. We got through the first half of the game before the time ended, but it seemed like most of them got the gist of it, enough to figure out if they would want to buy it. Also, the giant tweezers were a bit hit and made it very easy to point out iconography.
Had a good time teaching these ladies Lisboa. Hope they enjoyed the session!
After Lisboa, I purchased Oaxaca and found Sarah to say goodbye to her and have her sign my new game before making the trek back to Phoenix. The biggest surprise of the convention was finding out that RinCon named a drink after me! That is seriously the coolest thing! The drink was super yum and had a dragon on it to match the convention’s theme! Squee!!
I got a drink named after me! My life has totally peaked, and I can die happy.
And just like that, the weekend was over. I had a wonderful time gaming with old and new friends. I loved that the convention is so supportive in creating a safe and inclusive space for all types of gamers, especially with the addition of the Women’s Space. And thanks, RinCon, for having me as a special guest! Can’t wait until next year!
Cheers! And hope to see you at the next convention!
This past Saturday, a large-ish group of us decided to meet up and play games, specifically new releases from Gen Con. It was an informal gathering of gamer friends who decided to try something new and shell out money to reserve a room at the Mesa Convention Center for an event dubbed Gila Monster. It was great seeing local friends and friends from Tucson, and, more importantly, we all plan to expand the guest list for next year.
Choo-choo! Who doesn’t love Russian Railroads at 8 a.m.? Yes, it’s insanely early for me, but I love this game so much that I didn’t mind teaching.
The day started super early at 8 a.m., and first up was teaching Russian Railroads to three other folks. This game is one of my absolute favorites, and I am always down to teach it. It’s a classic worker-placement game, and I love how the scoring ramps up with each round. I also own the American Railroads expansion, which is also great, but I didn’t want to throw that expansion into our learning game. The group had fun, and one couple actually purchased the game from someone at Gila Monster who was selling it. Score!
Next up was My Little Scythe. OH. MY. GOODNESS. This game is just too adorable! It has the same mechanisms of Scythe, but it really encourages you to be friendly to go up the friendship track. You’re still moving along the board, collecting resources and racking up trophies. You can also pick a pie fight, but really only to claim a trophy for winning a fight. There are cute gems and apple pieces. One person on the table said that she wouldn’t have ever picked up this game to play, but was really glad that I suggested we play it. It was delightful!
Let’s have a pie fight! These figurines are adorbs. And like Scythe, you can’t take the same action twice in a row.
I then jumped into a game of Coimbra, a new Gen Con release. This game is tracks galore! The dice are rolled at the start of each round, and players take turns drafting dice. (Your player board actually comes with these cute little dice houses that you place the dice in, so that people will know which dice you picked on the board.) You place your dice on certain tracks, which resolve in a specific order based on the number of pips, so that you can collect cards. These cards increase your income on resource tracks and give you certain abilities.
Coimbra is a great dice-drafting action-selection card-collecting game with four different resource tracks.
At the end of the round, the color dice you picked will you give you resource income based on where you are on that track of the same dice color. Whoa, right?!? So good and thinky balancing which cards you want to take with which dice (because the pips matter for turn order), and then ultimately, which income track you want to go up on. And the board is just colorful and gorgeous. Plus, dice houses!
Dice in Coimbra sit in these little houses so people will know who drafted the dice.
Next up, I played Newton, also another Gen Con release. This game is combo-tastic! It has the same feeling of Lorenzo Il Magnifico or Council of Four of a tight euro game in about 2 hours. You play cards onto your player board, which allow you to take a specific action depending on the symbol of the card. If you play another card with the same symbol in the same round, then that action’s strength will increase — either moving farther along your route or accessing more powerful cards or covering harder-to-reach bookcases.
In Newton, you’re traveling across Europe to meet with scientists, build new tools and discover new theories.
At the end of each round, you tuck one of your cards under your player board so that you have an extra power of that action type. So if collect cards that work well together, you can really crush it with a specific strategy. My scientists helped me cover my bookcase quicker, and I ended up picking up a card that gave me points for all the books I had — ensuring my path to victory. It’s so satisfying playing cards that all work well together.
Look at my pretty bookcase and all my books! Players play cards one at a time on their board to activate actions. At the end of each round, you tuck one card to have an extra strength of that action.
I also got a chance to play Reef. In Reef, players collect pieces of coral to place on their board and score points based on patterns or stack requirements from cards in their hands. The game is quick to teach and quick to learn. On your turn, you either play a card to collect coral and possibly score the pattern listed on the card. Or you can collect a card from the market. That’s it. The key is to collect cards that will give you resources to score points from cards you also have. We played this game in about 20 minutes, and that includes teaching. The pieces are so colorful and vibrant! It’s definitely eye-catching.
Reef has these gorgeous components. It’s a light puzzly game where you score points from cards in your hand based on stacks or pattern formations.
I then took a quick dinner break with friends to Republica Empenada in Mesa. It was my first time going, and I immediately regret not stopping by this place sooner. This place is so yummy! I ordered two empanadas: a jalapeno potato popper and a chicken one. They were both yummy, but I loved the jalapeno popper one better. For dessert, I ordered a banana cream empanada. Heaven! (Banana cream pie is my favorite pie). And I got a Maui Brewing Co. Coconut Porter to wash it all down.
These empanadas are the bomb! Definitely worth checking out this place if you’re in downtown Mesa.
After dinner, I taught some folks Forbidden Sky, which, in my opinion, is the hardest of the Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert family. It has some neat elements we’re battling — literally! There’s wind trying to push you off the sky island, and lightning that will lower your health points. And then building the sky island with the tiles is much more puzzly because you have to get the rocket ship’s components out as well as the launch pad. I taught the game because I had recently played this game.
Once all the components are on the board, you’ll have to wire them together from lightning sources, and all the players need to get to the launch pad (cue my Arnold voice here) before someone dies or the storm threat level maxes out. One guy ended up dying, so we all lost. Womp womp. But the game has an awesome rocket ship! It makes a little blast-off noise when the components are all wired up, which is pretty neat! I totally forgot to take a photo of our game, but here’s a video of the rocket ship in a game I recently played. We also lost then.
The last game I played is an oldie but goodie: Tzolk’in. Full disclosure, I like lugging this game around because it’s excellent and also because I love my painted gears. Our three-player game played in about an hour because all three of us had played before. It was nice ending a full day of gaming with a game that was familiar and nobody had to teach it.
I love Tzolk’in! I think the wheel/timing mechanism is so unique!
And before you knew it, it was almost 10 p.m. and our room rental was about to expire. I had a lovely time gaming with good friends, friends I don’t usually see unless we’re at a convention. I’m also kicking myself for not learning rules for more games because there were a lot of new releases that I wanted to dig into but couldn’t find a teacher for. So for next year, I’ll plan on doing that.
And lastly, this event was an invite only among friends who wanted to try something new and if we’d have fun renting out a room to game. We definitely talked about expanding the guest list for next year with even more friendly gamers who play the types of games we do.
