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Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2023

By Meeple Lady | December 29, 2023 | Comments 1 comment

Hello, friends! You’ve made it to the end of 2023. Pat yourselves on the back for surviving the year! I feel so lucky for all that happened this past year, including going back to the Philippines and attending several gaming conventions! And of course lots of gaming in between. Here are the top 10 games I played for the first time this past year.

10. Scout

I often keep Scout in my purse because it’s such a compact game and easy to each others.

Scout is a delightful ladder-climbing game in which cards have two potential values, players may not rearrange their hand of cards, and players may pass their turn to take a card from the current high set of cards into their hand. At the start of the game, you receive a hand of cards, and you can decide if you want to play the values on the top of the card or the bottom of the card — but you must rotate the entire hand, not just the individual cards. When it’s your turn, you must play a card or set of cards (without rearranging your hand) in order to beat what’s already been played, or you’re out of the round. The game plays up to 5, it lasts about 15 minutes, and not at all difficult for new gamers to understand. Plus, the box fits neatly in your purse so it’s easy to travel with.

9. The Gods Will Have Blood

The Gods Will Have Blood is such a unique solitaire gaming experience.

The Gods Will Have Blood, a solitaire game from Dan Bullock based on the book by Anatole France’s 1912 Novel “Les Dieux Ont Soif, The Gods Will Have Blood” is such a unique and grim gaming experience. As an appointed magistrate in 1793 France, you are presiding over show trials of accused royalists and counterrevolutionaries, with the goal of elevating your reputation without tanking the legitimacy of the court. You make some tough decisions in deciding who is guilty and not guilty, and dealing with the consequences — and court momentum — of those choices. The game is artfully designed and comes in a small box, making it easy to bust out a solo game almost anywhere.

8. Voidfall

Voidfall is a beast of a game, one that I’ve enjoyed playing time and again.

In all honesty, I kept going back and forth about adding Voidfall to this list. I’ve enjoyed each game of Voidfall I’ve played but the overwhelming giant-ness of the game can be a turnoff for some. First off, it comes in a giant square box, it takes possibly about 45 minutes to set up a scenario, and there’s endless amounts of icons, which over several plays become more intuitive. What looks like a classic galactic space 4x game really plays like a euro. As the leader of a Great House (complete with house-specific abilities), you play through three cycles, each with a game-altering galactic event, a new scoring condition, and a set number of focus cards that can be played. On each focus card, you select two of the three actions printed on it. You can advance your civilization tracks; manage your sectors’ infrastructure, population and production; or conquer new sectors with your space fleets. It’s an epic game that I’m glad a friend of mine owns and sets up when we decide to play it.

7, Revive

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

Revive features a lot of game mechanisms I enjoy: multi-use cards, tech trees, card-tucking and deckbuilding, all while using dual-layered player boards. The game is set 5,000 years after the destruction of Earth and tribes are now exploring the frozen earth in order to repopulate it and survive. The game is for 1 to 4 players, with each tribe having its own asymmetrical powers. The game is a table hog though, with the main player board, and each player’s tribe board and player board, which holds giant tracks of various machines. Play cards into your board, manage your resources, go up on machine tracks for bonus actions, unlock your tribal abilities and collect artifacts, which counts down the end of the game — there are multiple paths to victory and lots of options to combo your actions, making your turns extremely satisfying.

6. Ark Nova

Building my zoo requires the perfect combination of animal cards and conservation projects.

I’ve logged countless games of this online at Board Game Arena and in person. In Ark Nova, you’re working to build and design a zoo, and support conservation projects around the world. The game consists of five actions, and the strength of the actions depends on where the card is placed in your tableau. The game comes with 255 cards featuring animals, specialists, special enclosures, and conservation projects. As you specialize in partnerships with world zoos and increase your reputation, you’ll be able to increase the strength of your core five actions. If you’re looking for an immersive zoo game, this will not be for you, but as a dry euro fan, this puzzly game is worth checking out.

5. Planet Unknown

Planet Unknown is a fun puzzle where players pick the pieces for you, unless it’s your turn.

I’ve only played Planet Unknown on Board Game Arena but have greatly enjoyed it. Planet Unknown is a competitive game for 1-6 players in which players attempt to develop the best planet. Each round, each player places one polyomino-shaped, dual-resource tile on their planet. The tiles are situated on a Lazy Susan, in which there are two concentric circles holding the various shaped tiles. On your turn, you rotate the Lazy Susan so that you can have the option between two types of tiles – and force others to take the two tiles that result from your spin. When you place the tiles on your planet, you’ll go up the resource track of the type of the tiles you lay down. The Lazy Susan is such a neat mechanism, and the puzzly gameplay keeps everyone engaged at every turn.

4. People Power

I never thought I’d see a board game on a pivotal moment of history for my people.

In one of my most highly anticipated games of the year (for the past few years actually, since I wasn’t sure when this was going to come out!), People Power is a game about my people and the insurgency in the Philippines during 1981-1986. People Power plays in about 2 hours, which is fairly short for a COIN. And you know what that makes it? Accessible to more people. Seeing people of color in a board game as well as not needing a 30-minute video to explain the battle action are some of the very things that would help diversity this very niche area of board gaming. The actions in People Power are streamlined, the player aides are very easy to follow, and, with such a small map, it makes the game tense and fast-moving game to play. This is a COIN that I can actually teach to others — I could not have said that with previous COIN titles.

3. Fit to Print

Feel the pressure of reporting and assembling a front page of a newspaper!

In Fit to Print, players take on the roles of editors-in-chief assembling the front page of the tiny town of Thistleville’s newspaper to be balanced with news stories, photos and advertising. All of these items are represented in over 130-plus unique block tiles, which are placed in the middle of the table face down. The game goes through three rounds: Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with each subsequent newspaper front page getting larger. Fit to Print captures the stress of a daily deadline when laying out your newspaper, all wrapped up in a cutesy theme of woodland creatures. When I brought this to a game night recently with some journalist friends to play, one lady said she had stress dreams later that night about missing the deadline. It’s an enjoyable real-time puzzle for 1-6 players, but it’s up to you how fast-paced you want your games to go.

2. Lacrimosa

This gorgeous euro is trying to continue Mozart’s legacy.

The theme drew me into Lacrimosa and it’s the gameplay that has me coming back to this game again and again. Mozart is dead and his final wish was to finish composing the Lacrimosa movement of his Opus Requiem. Players work as Mozart patrons helping to sell or exhibit his works, commission missing parts of the requiem and travel across Europe to various courts and theaters. Lacrimosa is a deckbuilder that isn’t a true deckbuilder but instead filled with multi-use cards that you can upgrade later by buying stronger cards. You draw a few action cards each turn and decide to use them for actions or rewards based on how you tuck them into your dual-layer player board. It’s a gorgeous board that beautifully merges a strong theme and euro-style gameplay, something that doesn’t happen too often in board games!

1. Votes for Women

Did you guess my top game of 2023 was Votes for Women?

What can I say about this game that I haven’t already? I am constantly talking about this game and bring it with me to every convention I go to in order to teach it to whoever wants to play it. Votes for Women is a card-driven game in which each side has its own set of cards. The goal of the game is two-fold. The suffragists want to push to Congress the 19th Amendment and campaign to have 36 states ratify it. The Opposition will try to prevent Congress from proposing the amendment or if they fail to do that, have 13 states reject the amendment. Votes for Women is a game that I can see myself in (a rarity in this hobby). It’s a game that new gamers and experienced gamers alike can play. I like it best as a 2-player but it can be played 1-4 players, with various team options for the suffrage side and the opposition. The game is beautifully done with awesome components, with lots of history in the cards as well as replicas of historical documents relating to the historic moment in women’s rights.

So that’s my top 10 games that I played for the first time in 2023. Which ones have you played? And what is on your top 10 list? I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season, and here’s to a wonderful 2024. Some of my new year’s resolutions include playing more games more regularly, and possibly attending a convention that I have yet to attend.

Votes for Women: Campaigning to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment

By Meeple Lady | December 14, 2023 | Comments 1 comment

This review of Votes for Women is featured on Episode 134 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features HerStory, Detective Rummy, Steam Up and Don’t Talk to Strangers.

There are very few board games where I can imagine myself in. Did I, as a young Filipina lady growing up in Los Angeles, ever dream about trading in the Mediterranean or breeding sheep in the German countryside? No, of course not. But joining in the women’s suffrage movement and being eternally grateful for those people who helped usher in my right — and many other women’s rights — to vote? Sign me up! That’s a game I wholeheartedly support. Votes for Women, a game that came out in 2022, is equally educational and enjoyable.

And if you are the type of gamer that thinks, oh, this game is just so political (an actual review I’ve seen online about this), well feel free to skip ahead. Just move along, sir.

Votes for Women is a card-drive game that plays 1 to 4 players in about 60-75 minutes.

Votes for Women, designed by Tory Brown and art by Brigette Indelicato and Marc Rodrigue the second, is published by Fort Circle Game, which designs historical games with a particular focus on United States political and military history.

Indeed, the women’s suffrage movement that ended with the women’s right to vote in the United States happened just a little over a hundred years ago. That is not too long ago in the grand scheme of American history, and something we should work hard to not let the younger generation forget and take for granted.

Votes for Women is a card-drive game that plays 1 to 4 players in about 60-75 minutes. I’ve only played this game as two players — one for the suffrage movement and the other for the opposition — but you can play this game with either two suffrage players and/or two opposition players.

Each side has their own deck of cards for gameplay. Buttons also let you reroll dice.

Having that kind of flexibility is great because I foresee this game as being introduced to gamers and non-gamers alike. And having teams for two suffrage players can make the barrier to entry for playing this CDG less daunting. Additionally, the rulebook is 12 pages. How amazing is that? How many historical games can you say has a rulebook that’s easy to follow?

The game is beautifully designed, with a map of the U.S. and many wooden pieces that include an array of campaigners, green checkmarks, red X’s, influence cubes, and an assortment of dice. The game also includes a historical supplement and copies of historical documents during that time. Pretty neat for those who want to learn more about this!

The goal of the game is two-fold. The suffragists want to push to Congress the 19th Amendment and campaign to have 36 states ratify it. The Opposition will try to prevent Congress from proposing the amendment or if they fail to do that, have 13 states reject the amendment. Each side receives their own deck of cards to play during the game, which, if you’ve ever played other CDGs, eliminates the fraught decision making with playing cards that would benefit your opponent. The tension in this game comes from the tug-of-war campaigning across the U.S.

Cards are phased with events during the early, middle and late part of the movements, complete with snippets of history and/or historical figures in the flavor text. This shows that a lot of research and care went into the development of this game, and not just slapping a theme on a tried-and-true mechanism commonly seen in wargames.

Game play goes for six turns, in which there are 6 rounds for each turn. On each round, the suffrage player or the opposition player plays a card either for the event, to campaign, to organize or to lobby. Players start with 7 cards each turn.

The opposition (pictured) and suffragist side both have campaigner meeples.

Playing a card for an event is just that. Follow what’s written on the card and then end your turn. To campaign, players roll a specific dice based on how many campaigners they have on the board, and then they add cubes to those regions that the campaigners are in. To organize, players discard a card and collect a number of support buttons based on how many campaigners they have on the board. And lastly, to lobby, players roll a specific die and if they get a 6, they can either remove or add a congressional marker to the track on the board. The suffragists need 6 of these to achieve one of the victory conditions, whereas the opposition doesn’t want the suffragist side to send the 19th amendment to Congress.

Only 9 state cards are randomly in play for each game. There are 12 altogether.

There are state cards also in play. If a player places a fourth influence cube in a state that’s in play, they gain the state card and can use its benefit on a future turn. There are also strategy cards that also offer a benefit that players can bid on at the start of a turn using support buttons.

There is a lot of strategy in the order of the cards you play. The suffragist side is also racing to send the 19th Amendment to Congress as it’ll lock down states who vote for it once four cubes are placed into that state. The opposition side, though clearly on the wrong side of history, feels like it has an uphill battle fighting against the two suffragist movements, which are represented by the purple and yellow cubes. For the suffragists though, either cube works toward their influence goals. The suffragists also start with two campaigners on the board, increasing the amount of resources and the ability to campaign across the map.

Winning strategy cards can give you special abilities to help your cause.

If the game reaches the end of turn 6, and the suffragists haven’t sent the 19th Amendment to Congress, they immediately lose. If it did get sent to Congress, and neither side has placed all their x’s or checkmarks onto the board, players enter Final Voting where they will go state by state w;ho’s undecided and roll a die to see who wins that state. If there are influence cubes on that state, they’re added to the dice roll.

The player who places their final X or checkmark wins the game. If I’m being honest, it’s such a great feeling when the Suffragists win, and it’s pretty defeating when the Opposition wins.

I love how the game comes with replicas of historical documents from the era.

For those people not familiar with the United States’ geography, this game can be a little difficult to navigate but the game provides a reference sheet to help you with states’ locations.

There’s a beautiful quote from the game designer Tory Brown included in the game’s historical supplement book. It reads “I created Votes for Women as a love letter to one of the most successful movements in American history.” Votes for Women is a wonderful love letter that everyone should dive into.

I got a chance to meet Tory in person at SDHist Con, and it was such a pleasure hearing her talk about the design process and what inspired her. And just a few days ago, the convention announced that Votes for Women is the winner of this year’s Summit Award.

I got to meet Tory Brown during SD Hist Con this year!

And that’s Votes for Women! This is Meeple Lady for The Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok as Meeple Lady, or on my website, boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to vote! Bye!

SDHist Con 2023: Molly House, Shores of Tripoli, Fire and Stone: Siege of Vienna, Ahoy

By Meeple Lady | November 15, 2023 | Comments 3 comments

On Nov. 2, 2023, I made the trek from Phoenix to San Diego for SDHist Con, an annual historical board game convention that was founded by game designer Harold Buchanan. This year it was held on Nov. 3-5, 2023. It’s my second time attending the convention in person, and after last year’s convention, I knew this one was a must-attend-every-year convention for me. This year, about 150 tickets were handed out, a combination of gamers, designers and publishers alike. It’s the convention to playtest and pitch your game, meet with wargaming companies, and, just overall, enjoy the sea, sun and seafood that San Diego has to offer!

SDHist Con held a meet and greet the night before the convention at Eppig Brewing.

I arrived late Thursday afternoon, checked into my airbnb (though there are plenty of motels and hotels near the convention location), and met up with Dan Bullock before heading to Eppig Brewing for a pre-convention meet and greet. SDHist Con provided pizza and salad and reserved space for convention goers at an outdoor beer garden overlooking a San Diego marina. I tried all the sour beers Eppig had and they were all quite tasty.

Dan Bullock and I went over and ran into Candice Harris of BGG!

I met some cool people for the first time and I really enjoyed the evening. More conventions should schedule a meet and greet beforehand! It’s a great time to meet new people in a low-key social setting before diving head-first into nonstop gaming the following morning.

Me with Candice Harris (center) of BGG and Liz Davidson of Beyond Solitaire.

Friday

On Friday morning, SDHist Con began! This year’s convention was held at the S.E.S. Portuguese Hall of San Diego nestled in the Point Loma Marina area of San Diego. There are lots of restaurants, coffee shops and breweries within walking distance, including Point Loma Seafoods, a seafood counter place where you can buy food and eat at picnic tables overlooking the marina. The hall was such a great location, and it’s quite near the airport, so you don’t really need a car to get around, unless you’re exploring more of San Diego.

SDHist Con was held at the SES Portuguese Hall in San Diego.

First up, I ran into Alex Knight, designer of Land and Freedom: The Spanish Revolution and Civil War. I really enjoyed his game when I played at Consimworld this past fall and was excited to meet him in person and ask him to sign my game. It’s a great historical game that plays at 3P, fighting against a common enemy while trying to balance your faction’s needs.

Met designer Alex Knight for the first time!

My first game of the con was Shores of Tripoli from Fort Circle Games, a card-driven historical wargame on the First Barbary War. It’s a 2-player game (the Tripolitania and its allies, vs. American and its allies) and I played as the side of the Americans. Each side had their own deck, and the game takes place over 6 years,starting in 1801, with four seasons (a card play each season) in each year. Army. If neither player has achieved victory by the end of 1806, the game ends in a draw. It’s a neat card-driven game that plays in about an hour. Those who played Shorts of Tripoli (there were four games simultaneously going) were entered into a raffle, and I won a copy of the game!

Playing Shores of Tripoli by Fort Circle Games. I’ve been enjoying their games!

I stopped by to see Dan doing a demo of his game Blood and Treasure. This is such a great game, and I really hope a publisher picks it up soon! I’ve played it twice before and think it’s such a unique game.

Dan Bullock’s Blood and Treasure prototype about military contracts during the Afghanistan War.

I then signed up for a teach of Matthias Cramer’s The Promised Land, a game that covers the Israelian-Arabian conflict between 1960 (end of War of Independence) and 1978 (Camp David). It’s a card-driven mostly political game, but players can go to war while also negotiating the peace treaty as well. The game has a lot of tracks, and in addition to playing a card from your hand, some dice rolls can determine which actions you can take.

Matthias Cramer has a new prototype called The Promised Land.

I learned the game with all these cool people. We played through one war to get the gist of the game before our scheduled time was up. So many games, so little time!

A bunch of us learning The Promised Land with the designer himself! Matthias Cramer is on my left.

Next up was Molly House. This was the game I was most excited to check out at this convention! Molly House, which just wrapped up its BackerKit campaign, is the latest from Wehrlegig Games. Players take the roles of the gender-defying mollies of early 18th century London. Molly House has masquerade balls, back alleys for cruising and moments of joy within the queer community. But, there could be a constable among you that’s threatening to ruin all the fun!

Molly House was such a fun experience! I can’t wait until this comes out!

I love the inclusive and unique theme, and I know when the final product is released, the components will be top-notch. This demo included fun fancy pieces, and I immediately backed the game after playing it at the con.

I then attended a panel on creating written content, which was hosted by Andrew Bucholtz, and featured Dan Thurot, Candice Harris of Board Game Geek, and The Players Aid. SDHist Con has an entire schedule of panels and discussions in addition to scheduled gaming in the main hall.

SDHist Con had a whole schedule of panels during the con. Here, Andrew Bucholtz (from left) leads the panel with Dan Thurot, Candice Harris of BGG and the Players Aid.

It was really neat listening to all the panelists discuss their backgrounds and how they got into creating board-game content. I always love listening to fellow writers to get some inspiration! Plus, I got to meet the Players Aid guys for the first time!

I got to meet the guys at Players Aid! They have so much good wargaming content on their channels!

After dinner, I played an unnamed 2-player card prototype from Joe Schmidt. It’s a quick area control that is played out over three rounds, and the map itself is just four different cards, with the player first to 7 points wins the game. Meeples are either pawns (when they’re lying down) or knights (when they’re standing up) Your card has an initiative number, one of two actions you can do, and where the action can take place. It was really easy to pick up and doesn’t require a lot of space on table (or in your bag!), while still being tense and enjoyable.

Joe’s Schmidt’s prototype was a card game on area control where you use knights and pawns. Interested to see how this will develop!

I then played Lost Legacy, a spin-off of Love Letter, where you draw and play a card, with the hopes of finding the “Lost Legacy” card. I had so much fun playing with these cool folks that I actually forgot to take a photo of the game itself!

Joe Schmidt, Liz Davidson, Dan Thurot and Cole Wehrle are about to play Lost Legacy, and Drew Wehrle stopped by for the photo!

I then taught a game of My Favourite Things, a trick-taking icebreaker card game that’s one of my absolute favorites! You never really know how this game will play out when playing with people you don’t know too well, considering a lot of these people I met for the first time in real life at this convention. But it was a hit! My demo copy of the game was sent to me from the publisher, so this may or may not be the final look of the game.

My Favourite Things is just delightful chaos. Look at all the different categories written here.

Players pick a category and ask their neighbor to write down their top 5 favorite things in that category, plus one they hate, into these card sleeves, at the end covering up their number ranking when you slide the card back into the sleeve. You then play these cards as a trick-taking game, guessing the best way you can about which items are ranked more favorably than others. We got some absurd categories and even more absurd things. It was a riot! It was such a fun way to end the first day of SDHist Con.

Saturday

I began Saturday by teaching Lacrimosa. I always bring a few games with me to SDHist Con in case anyone would be interested in playing a non-wargame. I taught a 3P game and everyone seemed to enjoy it! The theme is unique – we did have a few “Weekend at Bernie’s” jokes about Mozart traveling across Germany – and the components and dual-layer player boards are just exquisite.

Growing Mozart’s legacy after his death in Lacrimosa.

I then had lunch at Point Loma Seafoods. SDHist Con actually had this place on the convention schedule, which provided an easy option for gamers to have lunch, plus a good reminder to get some food to fuel your day. I had some fish and chips. I was not disappointed!

I ordered some fish and chips are Point Loma Seafoods. So yum!

I then played Fire and Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683, which places you in one of the most dramatic sieges in history. Each player has their own set of cards, and you’ll be playing them to attack, dig tunnels and advance your forces, while your opponent is doing exactly that, or you can use the event written on the card. I enjoyed taking my Ottomans toward the Habsburgs in the Vienna capital.

Fire and Stone is a 2P wargame about sieging or defending the city of Vienna.

Fire and Stone plays in about 60-90 minutes, and with its familiar card-driven mechanism and large hex-based map (instead of a daunting map of teeny-tiny ones), it’s one that makes it perfect as a finalist for the 2023 Summit Awards.

SDHist Con founder and game designer Harold Buchanan!

The Summit Award aims to recognize a historical board game published in the preceding year that most broadened the hobby through the ease of teaching and/or play, uniqueness of topic, or novel approach. I’ve played all four of the Summit Awards nominees, and they’re all different yet fantastic games. I’ve reviews Stonewall Uprising and Votes for Women on The Five By, and John Company I had the pleasure of playing at last year’s SDHist Con with Cole and Drew Werhle! The diversity of these games’ themes and accessibility of gameplay are what I would love to see more of in the historical gaming corner of our hobby.

Tory Brown, designer of Votes for Women, talking about the game’s map.

I then attended a seminar from Tory Brown, the designer of Votes for Women! I seriously was fangirling the entire time. I’ve taught Votes for Women countless times, to experienced gamers and newer gamers alike. The game has appealed to my girlfriends simply because of the topic, and with that, they jumped into a wargame they wouldn’t otherwise and learned what a CDG is. Tory’s seminar also reiterated how much time and commitment it takes to design a game. She said she started in earnest in April 2020, in the midst of the early pandemic, and worked on the game full time, which was finally released earlier this year. I don’t know how all you designers do it! Props to you all and your time-management skills.

It was so lovely to meet Tory Brown! I asked her to sign my game.

I then stopped by to listen to the start of a demo for Tyranny of Blood: India’s Caste System Under British Colonialism, 1750-1947 by Akar Bharadvaj. The game is the winner of the 2021 Zenobia Award, which is both a competition and a mentoring program in which game designers from underrepresented groups develop and submit historical tabletop game prototypes. I didn’t get a chance to play Tyranny of Blood but hopefully next time!

A look at the Tyranny of Blood prototype by Zenobia winner Akar Bharadvaj.

I then played one of the new factions in Ahoy by Leder Games. Like with all Leder Games, this game just looks so darling, and I have fun playing the Blackfish Brigade. Ahoy is a lightly asymmetrical game where two to four players take the roles of swashbucklers and soldiers seeking fame on the high seas. The latest Backerkit campaign introduces four new factions, one of which is the Blackfish Brigade whales.

The Blackfish Brigade is one of the four new factions for Ahoy.

In Ahoy, you roll dice at the start of the round and use those dice to fill in sections of your board to take actions. The actions may have certain dice requirements, which will affect which actions you can do on your turn. I did a lot of moving my whale pod around and dropping off fins in order to score area-control points at the end of the round.

Look at all the cute components in Ahoy!

A big group of us went to get Asian dumplings for dinner down the street at Meet Dumpling. The sweet corn and chicken dumplings hit the spot for me. Look at this fun group!

Alex Knight (from left), Cole Wehrle, Liz Davidson, me, Dan Bullock, Taylor Shuss, Dan Thurot and Drew Wehrle get dinner at Meet Dumpling.

We then walked over to Craft Creamery for some ice cream, and I seriously squealed when the ice cream of my childhood was being sold at this shop. I spent a lot of time at Fosselman’s Ice Cream after school and totally had to order ube ice cream.

I had to get ube ice cream from Fosselman’s, which was being sold at Craft Creamery.

When we got back to the hall, the giant Liberty or Death board game was about to start. Look at the costumes!

Giant Liberty or Death, costumes optional!

I then ran my largest game of Fit to Print yet at 6P. This game is so, so fun! There’s nothing like being on deadline! Upkeep at 6P was a little daunting but everyone was having a good time analyzing their front page and what they could do better in the next round that nobody seemed to mind the time I spent adding up the scores.

Sunday

On Sunday morning, I attended the SDHist Con board meeting, as the public was invited! They talked about the state of the convention, what events are planned for next year, and just overall how they can increase diversity and accessibility at their events. I love hearing discussion on this because it’s a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. There have been countless times I’ve attended events where I’m the only person who looks like me and have even been asked if I’m waiting for my husband or boyfriend. I was not, thank you very much, I was there to play some games.

The awesome people who make up the SDHist Con member board and advisory board.

SDHIst Con is a convention where I’ve never felt out of place and have always been welcomed. I love schmoozing with all the game designers, listening to their design process, learning new games, and understanding the ins and outs of publishing without our hobby. There’s so much helpful knowledge and feedback being passed around at this intimate, laid-back and friendly convention. And bonus, you also learn a lot of about historical battles and moments in history that people are very passionate about!

The last game of the convention was Heat: Pedal to the Metal, which I was happy to play alongside Harold, fearless leader of SDHist Con! I’ve been playing Heat a lot on Board Game Arena lately, so I was familiar with the game, but it can’t compete with zooming your little plastic car around a hairpin turn and pressing luck by not spinning out.

The last game of the convention for me: Heat!

And with that, three days of gaming in San Diego came to a close and I began my drive back to Phoenix, which takes about 5.5 hours. Not too bad! I don’t have the dates yet for next year’s convention, but I’ll definitely be there again! I’d love to spend some extra time in San Diego, too, next year.

Lastly, here are the games I acquired during the convention. I purchased Dan’s The Gods Will Have Blood, a solo game set in France in April 1793 about presiding over trials and influencing the legitimacy of the court, a copy of Shores of Tripoli that I randomly won for playing, and Shikoku 1889. Thanks, Grand Trunk Games for giving me a copy! I can’t wait to get it on table!

I got a chance to play The Gods Will Have Blood a few days after leaving San Diego. What a cool solo experience! Shikoku 1889 is the last one of this group I haven’t played.

Thanks for reading, friends! Let me know if any of these games look interesting to you. And if you made it all the way down here, here’s a cute photo I took of a driver and his canine companion in San Diego. It’s a sunwoof!

RinCon 2023: Back better than ever in Tucson!

By Meeple Lady | July 6, 2023 | Comments 6 comments

What a difference nearly a year makes! After holding last fall’s convention in tandem with Tucson Comic- Con, RinCon held its annual board-game convention on its own again — and in a new location at the Casino Del Sol Resort and Casino in June.

Having the option to stay at the hotel (which I did) where the convention is happening makes the entire weekend more relaxing and convenient. I didn’t have to schlep all my games around, and, if I needed a quick break, I’d just hop on up to my hotel room, which is easily accessible from the convention gaming area, which had plenty of room and tables. There resort also had a second hotel tower that was a little bit of a walk from the convention floor, but still not too bad of a walk. The facilities and gaming space were much nicer than previous places where RinCon was held, and there were plenty of food options at the resort, and grocery stores were about a 15-minute drive outside of the grounds.

This is the pool and view from the Casino Del Sol Resort and Casino in Tucson.

I arrived at the con Friday afternoon after making the two-hour drive from Phoenix. First up on the agenda: teaching Votes for Women in the Women’s Space. I love teaching games in this space! It’s quieter and more intimate than the rest of the open gaming area, and the Women’s Space is so welcoming and a place to ask all the questions about whatever game is being taught.

Will America vote into law the right for women to vote?

Votes for Women is a 2-4 player game in which the suffragists are working to pass the vote to allow women to vote in the U.S., while the Opposition player works against that. It’s a card-driven area-control game. I love the subject matter of this game, and as each side has their own player deck that’s phased in, the game removes the fraught decisions that otherwise come with other card-driven war games, lowering the barrier to entry for more types of gamers. A win-win!

This little bot plays as the third person. It was totally getting in the way of our grids!

After dinner, I signed up to play Power Grid with the Brazil map. I am always down for a game of Power Grid and had never played this map before. Only two of us signed up for the game, so we played with the Robot, which is something I had also never used before! It’s neat building the robot to plan its bot actions, but it seemed like a heavy lit remembering all the things it did. The Brazil map restock rates heavily leaned toward oil and trash, which changed the feel of the game vs the original game. I invested heavily in oil power plants, and that was the path to victory.

For once, I was not a dollar short in many rounds of Power Grid.

The last game I played on Friday night was Golem. The game is based on the 16th-century legend of the Golem of Prague, an anthropomorphic creature that Rabbi Loew animated from a clay statue to protect his people. I enjoyed this game but there is SO MUCH going on! There’s a main board, individual player boards, and a marble contraption where drop marbles at the start of each turn to randomly indicate how strong each action will be for the round.

The main board starts with two golems for each player that move along tracks and perform actions, but if your golems pass your student, which is a separate track, there’s a cost to pay at the end of the round.

There is a lot going on in Golem! But the combo-ing of actions is so satisfying!

At the start of your turn, you pick a marble in the slot with the action you want to do, and picking a specific color marble will also matter for end-of-round bonuses and activations on your player board. You take that action, which then can combo into a bunch of other actions depending on what you do and how you’ve upgraded your personal player board. It’s important to keep a balance between your resources — wisdom, coins, artifacts, etc. — but you also cannot do everything you want to do. I would love to play this game again!

You also have a player board that marks your resources, and you can add extra golems to the board.

On Saturday morning, I did a quick lap around the vendor area. I may or may not have purchased a bunch of earrings. I do love dangly earrings. Next up was teaching a game of Scout. I love this trick-taking game where you can’t rearrange your hand and often bring it with me because it’s so compact and easy to teach.

I carry Scout with me a lot, because it’s fun and it fits nicely into my purse.

After Scout, I was scheduled to teach a game of Twilight Inscription back at the Women’s Space. Twilight Inscription is my top new game that I played for the first time in 2022. It’s quite an epic game and I enjoyed teaching it to two other people that afternoon. Even though the game can hold 8 people, I capped the table to hold 4 people, and 3 ladies showed up to learn.

Twilight Inscription looks bonkers but once you’re underway, the iconography is easy to follow.

I then learned how to play Woodcraft. In Woodcraft, you’re gathering wood and crafting goods for customers in your workshop in the woods. This game has a delightful action-selection wheel — as actions get taken, the slide of the wheel gets moved ahead to the next section, giving bonuses to actions that haven’t been taken.

Chopping down some wood and fulfilling contracts.

If an action keeps getting picked, it will become ineligible until some of the other actions have been taken and the wheel’s inner circle rotates for more bonuses. It’s such a cool mechanism! Meanwhile, you’re planting trees and processing wood to fulfill contracts, while upgrading your workshop to be more efficient.

Got a chance to hang out and game with David Short and JJ during the convention!

The last game I played on Saturday night was Sabika. Full disclosure: I had never heard of this game before but I’m so very happy I got to play it. This game has three rondels! You can’t see my face right now but it is definitely beaming. <Insert heart eye emoji here>.

Players are constructing towers, gardens and palaces as well as establishing trade routes by sending ships out through Europe. Meanwhile, you’re also carving poems and reactivating them for bonuses. Each rondel has different actions and different workers on them, and on your turn, you move 1 to 2 spaces to activate the action location. If you land where someone else is, you have to pay. This game was a lot of fun.

During this game, the clock hit 11 p.m. You know what that means? It’s Eegee’s time. RinCon always treats the convention attendees with this Tucson favorite! Yums!

I mixed and matched my Eegee’s flavors. So refreshing during hot desert nights!

On Sunday, I took another lap around the gaming area. I saw Trailblazer: The Arizona Trail being demoed. It’s the follow-up to Trailblazer: The John Muir Trail, designed by Dan Rice of the Phoenix area. I did not get a chance to play it but the copper color scheme, representative of the Southwest, and the miniatures are just gorgeous! It’s set to come to Kickstarter in February.

Dan Rice’s first game Trailblazer was a success! I’m looking forward to this new one.

A nearby table was playing Dead Reckoning. Look at this neat pirate ship!

The last game of the convention for me was Lacrimosa. I had seriously hunted down a copy of this game to learn at this con and I was so happy that David Short had a copy and was willing to teach this game. The theme was what drew me in — Mozart is dead, and his final wish was to finish composing the Lacrimosa movement of his Opus Requiem. Players work as Mozart patrons helping to sell or exhibit his works, commission missing parts of the requiem and traveling across Europe to various courts and theaters.

I really liked the music theme of Lacrimosa, plus its multi-use cards.

The game is a deckbuilder that isn’t a deckbuilder that’s filled with multi-use cards. You draw a few action cards each turn and decide to use them for actions or rewards based on how you tuck them into your player board. And instead of buying new cards, you’re upgrading your cards and discarding the old ones. This was probably my favorite game that I played at RinCon. I immediately bought a copy at my local FLGS when I got back into town.

Here’s how you use the cards to take actions or bonuses. You tuck them into your player board.

I cannot express how much fun I had at this year’s Rincon. Last year’s gaming was tough, if I’m being honest, but this year made up for it tenfold. The new venue is fantastic, and the leaders and volunteers always work so hard to make the convention inclusive, inviting and so enjoyable to attend. The RinCon chair Karen had estimated that over 600 people attended this year’s convention. What a great turnout, and I can’t wait to go back next year! P.S. If RinCon is back at the Casino Del Sol next year, I highly recommend getting donuts at Sweetscapes Desserts inside the casino. The donuts are amazing!