Die Macher

Before the convention, I signed up for this classic gaming monster. It’s a game about the German election, it’s complicated and epic. The game takes place over six rounds, each having an election in a different German state. The last round has two state elections back-to-back. The order of a round is that you bid on turn order (which is very important, as you can get to see what other people do first), and then change your party’s platform to match that of the people and take secret actions in each of the states. Then you form coalitions with other players, and you need to, because it’s rare to win it alone. You can control the media and change what issues the people want. You “hold meetings”, which are basically just putting out some cubes.

Next, you bid on the opportunity to publish opinion polls, which influences either your party’s popularity or another party’s. You can even bury the poll and not publish it at all! After all of that, you can convert those “meeting cubes” into actual votes. Finally, you conduct the election and get victory points and money. Before the start of the next round, you decide whether or not you want party contributions (think of it like a PAC). Money’s always good, but it means that some people will leave your party. At the end of the game, you tally up how well the national agenda (which is based on how each individual state went) with your agenda. In all, it’s just a ton of moving parts. I played with a fun group, it took us the entire morning and even into the early afternoon, but it was delightfully challenging, even if it’s not for the faint of heart.

Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra

If you haven’t played the original Azul, this one is much like it. You get the opportunity to draft pretty tiles from several central groups, trying to use them to score points. Rather than making a mosaic, like in the original, each row is a pane of stained glass. The twist in this game over the original is that you have a figure above your board in this one that indicates which row you can add tiles to. You can move the figure to any row to the right, but if you want to add to a row to the left, you have to pass and move your figure back to the left-most row. This makes for a slightly more thinky game, but overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

credit: daloester

Hokkaido

I was not impressed by this follow-up to Honshu, as the ideas here were not all that fresh or original. This is still at its heart a type of card placement game, where you’re playing overlapping cards to build a city in a tableau. However, rather than the innovative possible trump and trick-taking/drafting mechanism in Honshu, this is just a simple card draft, and here you just turn in resources in order to slightly alter your map. This does add a mountain range to the game so that you’re balancing your city on either side of it, but that’s really the only thing I like about this implementation. I do recommend that people try Honshu if they have a chance, as it was a quality title.

credit: jason2043

House of Borgia

This game is based on the classic Liar’s Dice, but with a bit more meat to it. You have a secret cardinal that you are backing for pope, and all the cardinals are in a tableau on the middle of the table. Each time you make a bet, if it’s unchallenged, you’re able to take an action with the cardinal. This means that your initial bluffs could not even be about what is on the collective set of dice, but just that you wanted to take that particular action in order to manipulate the order of the cardinals. Additionally, you also need to keep your cardinal secret, as if he’s exposed, you’re eliminated, so you can also bluff regarding the various cardinals. With higher player counts, I do think it’s better to play with the variant than an exposed cardinal costs you some influence rather than completely eliminating you, as it’s harder to bluff in that type of game.

The post Smiley’s BGG.CON 2018 Board Game Reviews appeared first on Pikes Peak Gamers.

Saturday – BGG.CON Day 4

Fuji

Another fun co-op where all players roll a set of D6 dice with three colors on them. The goal is for all players to reach the village safely before the lava reaches them. Each tile that you attempt to move to has a couple conditions that will determine your total on the square. In order to succeed, the sum of the matching dice must beat the other players sitting next to you. We were 0-2, but it was a great game. The mechanic of the volcano reminded us of The Downfall of Pompeii.

The River

A polished worker placement that plays quickly with clean mechanics. Each player has their own board to which they are upgrading the spots as the snake through the river and try to match up land types. The first player to build 4 building cards or fill their player board triggers the end of the game. This would be a fantastic game for someone new to the hobby that is just getting into resource management games.

Gang Schon Clever

Similar to Qwixx, each player has their own dry erase game board that is trying to maximize points in 5 different categories. For four players, there were four rounds where each of us rolled a set of six different colored D6 dice. Any dice greater than the value of the die you selected would determine any dice that would be set aside. You would then use that die and cross off the appropriate space on your board. Each color had a different way to use the number. The white die was wild, and also used to sum the value used in the blue section. This game would be great with two players.

Paper Tales

This game was a little strange but was very quick. Over four rounds, the first thing you would do is draft a hand of five cards. Once you had your characters, you would set out a two by two grid that would determine your attack strength. You would compare your strength level with the players sitting next to you. All ties or treated strength would score you points. Next, you would build if you were able to, and then finally age all of your characters. Once your character aged twice, they died and you would then be able to choose another one.

---

Friday – BGG.CON Day 3

Belratti

In this co-op, the players take the role of a museum curator (The Cats), or the artists (The Owls). The Cats request 2-7 paintings that meet a theme based on two random pictures. The artists then decide how many each of them will contribute without showing their cards. The criminal Belratti then adds four of his “forgeries”. All the paintings get shuffled and the Cats have to determine which paintings are the authentic ones and which them they belong to. Think a much lighter Mysterium meets Dixit.

Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition

A very cool game where you create your own network of highways and railroads based on the dice rolled. There are 12 exits and the goal is to create as long of a path with no unfinished work (open ends). Can’t wait to pick this up!

---

Thursday – BGG.CON Day 2

X-Code

Playing on a fancy tabletop for a new release called X-Code. A co-op, fast ordering card game for 2-8. Luckily, we were in a smaller room as we were quite loud. This game could be described as “Pit” meets “Fuse.”

Arboretum

A fantastic rummy-esque card game with beautiful artwork. It takes about 4 minutes to learn, and 40 minutes to finish with four players. A copy of this gem has been added to the PPG Vault.

Drop-It

A super fun and light dexterity-dropping game. At first glance, it looks like plinko, but you have to watch out. You only score if you aren’t touching the same color, shape or defined zones on the sides and bottom.

---

Wednesday – BGG.CON Day 1

Anachrony

A very complex worker placement game that was new to all of us. This game had much buzz last year and so reserving it at the library was a good decision. The game took the better part of our afternoon, but it was a very memorable first play at the con.

Nocca x Nocca

The game is an amazing little abstract containing 5 black and 5 white dice. The board is simply a 5×8 grid. Purchased in Japan, we have already logged 13 plays. It takes 5-10 minutes per game, but the moves demand much attention and cleverness.

Tales of the Northlands

A delightful worker placement, resource management game based on an old British cartoon called Noggin the Nog.

---

Tuesday – BGG.CON Day 0

Betrayal Legacy

After a very early flight to DFW, a few of us decided to try out the new legacy game – aptly named: “Betrayal Legacy” – based on the classic Betrayal At House on the Hill.” You never know who will become the Betrayer. Our lofty goal is to finish all 12 chapters (one Prologue)…we will try our best.

The post BGG.CON 2018 Board Game Reviews appeared first on Pikes Peak Gamers.

Essen, Germany – Home to largest annual board game trade show.

The biggest trade show in the board game industry takes place in Essen, Germany, at the end of October every year. Every year, just before Thanksgiving, the good people that are loosely affiliated with the board gaming website boardgamegeek.com put on a convention, BGG.CON, that inspired our own PPG CON. One of the cool things that BGG.CON does is that they attend Essen and bring many of the latest and greatest games from Essen back with them, so that convention-goers can enjoy them. Some of these games haven’t been released in the U.S., and some might never even be.

As part of preparing and making the most of my time at the convention, I do some research on what generated buzz at Essen. Not everything is brand-new (one title came out way back in 2016!), but most of it is. As your sommelier, I’d like to share with you my thoughts in advance of attending. Sometime after the convention is over, and I’ve got some sleep, I’ll follow up with you on what I played and what I thought, and what I’ll be lobbying to try and get included in our collection for PPG CON 2019.

Before diving into the list of the games, I wanted to let you know that the numbers and rankings in parenthesis at the end of each game snippet is how well they finished as part of the buzz at Essen. Fairplay is a German magazine, GeekBuzz is something that boardgamegeek.com does while they are out there, and Hall9000 is the convention’s own rating system, if I’m not mistaken. I also give player counts and game length, according to what’s on the box. Don’t forget, this is just one man’s opinion, and happy gaming!

Lists: Games I Must Play, Games I’d Like To Play, Games That Are Just Meh

Games I Must Play

Ganz schon clever

Ganz schon clever is a dice-rolling and write game, ala Yahtzee. But way, way better. Toward the end of the game there are super-fun combos that you can generate that seem quite satisfying. Given the short and light play time, this is at the top of the list.

• #11 Hall9000
• 1-4 players
• 30 minutes

Coimbra

Coimbra is a Euro game where there are many ways to score (“point salad”). You are drafting dice in various colors and then obtaining cards from there. The interesting thing is that the values of the dice are how much the cards cost to buy and how well you are doing on the track corresponding to the color of the dice indicates how much of a reward you recieve. A solid, thinky game.

• #4 Fairplay
• #3 GeekBuzz
• #3 Hall9000
• 2-4 players
• 60-90 minutes

Belratti

Belratti is a cooperative game where you are managing an art gallery. The game is trying to introduce fake paintings into the gallery, and you have to collectively identify the forgeries and get them out of there! You also change roles from supplying the paintings to choosing the forgeries. Just seems like something where everyone would be engaged, and a delight to play.

• #1 Fairplay
• #108 GeekBuzz
• 3-7 players
• 20-45 minutes

Trick n’ Trouble

Trick n’ Trouble is a co-operative trick-taking game. I had no idea there was such a thing! It compares to Hanabi, in that you don’t have all the information but are still working together. This is something I really want to play; the only downside is that it only plays just 3.

• #13 Hall9000
• 3 players
• 15-30 minutes

Fuji

Fuji is a cooperative game where you trying to descend from a volcano before it erupts. You roll your dice to move, and then you have to decide where to go, and you don’t know exactly what other people have, and it’s only after you see what they’ve got as to whether or not you’ve successfully moved along, or if you lose some stamina. This sounds really interesting.

• #13 Fairplay
• #17 GeekBuzz
• 2-4 players
• 30-45 minutes

Men At Work

Men At Work is not about the 80s band that had great music. J Instead, it’s a beautiful title and a dexterity game. From the pictures, you’re building a structure with a whole bunch of construction workers on it. Seems like it would be fun.

• #125 GeekBuzz
• #4 Hall9000
• 2-5 players
• 30-45 minutes

Krass Kariert

Krass Kariert is a trick-taking game where you’re trying to go out first (like in Tichu). You can’t reorder your cards, though, but there is a bidding element I believe in this. Seems like it could be fun and different to try.

• #24 Hall9000
• 3-5 players
• 30 minutes

Paper Tales

Paper Tales is a card drafting game like the classic 7 Wonders. The interesting thing here is that your cards age, so you only get to have them around for a round or two before they’re gone. Seems like an interesting twist on a well-known game.

• #13 Fairplay
• #192 GeekBuzz
• #28 Hall9000
• 2-5 players
• 30 minutes

Railroad Ink

Railroad Ink comes in either the Deep Blue or Blazing Red Editions. In this, you roll the dice, and you draw out a railroad network. This type of thing just really appeals to me, and considering its brevity, I would really like to play this.

• #9 GeekBuzz
• 1-6 players
• 20-30 minutes

X-Code

X-Code is a timed co-operative game where you are trying to come up with a code. It’s light and plays fast, so I’m sure I’ll get the chance to play it and see if it’s really too easy as to not be that interesting.

• #14 Hall9000
• 2-8 players
• 15 minutes

Blackout: Hong Kong

Blackout: Hong Kong is meaty Euro game set in Hong Kong. You play cards to select actions, then roll dice that determine what is produced, which you can tweak by spending some tokens or victory points. From there, you complete various objectives. It’s been compared to Great Western Trail and Mombasa, a couple of my favorite recent titles, so I’d really like to give this a shot.

• #5 FairPlay
• #6 GeekBuzz
• 1-4 players
• 75-150 minutes

Dice Settlers

Dice Settlers is a lighter, dice manipulation game. It plays quickly and you are accumulating your bag of dice from which to use, reminding me of Orleans or Altiplano, a couple of games I really enjoy. There have been complaints about the components not being all that nice, but it sounds like the gameplay here is quite good, moving it near the top of my list.

• #10 GeekBuzz
• #2 Hall9000
• 1-4 players
• 45-60 minutes

Games I’d Like to Play

Tudor

Tudor was hard to get a lot of detail on it. From what I can gather, the way in which you select actions is through the placement of them on various fingers and rings, and that is something that is pretty unique and original. The core part of the game, which is to collect cards and move up tracks, seems to be a bit uninspired, but I’d like to try this to see the novel action-selection mechanic.

• #7 Fairplay
• #167 GeekBuzz
• 2-4 players
• 90-120 minutes

Roll Player

Roll Player is a game where you’re rolling dice and manipulating for creating a character that would be used in a role-playing game (like Dungeons & Dragons), except all you’re doing here is building the character. Apparently, the dice manipulation is fun for gamers, I think it would been even more interesting, considering I played some D&D as a kid.

• #13 Fairplay
• #171 GeekBuzz
• 1-4 players
• 60-90 minutes

Carpe Diem

Carpe Diem is a tile placement game with a bunch of different ways to score points. It seems a bit light, just take a tile, place it on your board, and how you do so gives you a variety of different scoring combinations. Because Stefan Feld was the designer, I think it got a bunch of buzz. Because I like some of his other games, this is definitely something I’d like to try.

• #7 FairPlay
• #32 GeekBuzz
• #7 Hall9000
• 2-4 players
• 60 minutes

Brass:Birmingham

Brass:Birmingham is a card-playing, economic Euro game that is the modern update to the classic Brass (now called Brass: Lancashire). This supposedly adds more industries and variability to the play vs. the original, and the original is a solid, meaty Euro, so I’m excited to try this version.

• #14 GeekBuzz
• 2-4 players
• 60-120 minutes

Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra

Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra is a reimplementation of the tile-claiming Azul. This one seems to be more gamey but definitely worth playing to see if it adds more meat to the original, or if it will leave me longing for the original.

• #9 Fairplay
• #1 GeekBuzz
• #6 Hall900
• 2-4 players
• 30-45 minutes

Wurffelland

Wurffelland (or Diceland, if translated to English) is also a roll-and-write game. Everyone marks a space on their board based upon whatever someone has rolled, and the first to finish the special spaces wins. The interesting thing is that there is a press-your-luck element to this, if you roll too many of whatever color you were looking for, you can’t use it! I think this will be light and fun.

• #25 Hall9000
• 2-4 players
• 20 minutes

Welcome To

Welcome To is another roll-and-write game, although in this one, you’re drawing tiles instead of rolling dice. Seems like it’s solid and fast, and the write-ups have generally been favorable.

• #13 Fairplay
• #171 GeekBuzz
• 1-100 players
• 25 minutes

Reykholt

Reykholt is a worker-placement, farming game in Iceland. Uwe Rosenberg designed this, and he’s one of my favorites. The tension is in making choices between when to harvest your vegetables and how much of an investment to make in future rounds. Longtime gamers will be familiar with Gates of Loyang, which this is compared to. There’s a “story mode”, which I’m not quite sure what that’s all about.

• #22 GeekBuzz
• 1-4 players
• 30-60 minutes

Illusion

Illusion is a light filler game where you are putting cards in order based upon how much color is in each card. Timeline does the same thing, but uses dates, and has a trivia element to it. I don’t think this is going to be amazing, but certainly seems like something fun to pull out and play.

• #21 Hall9000
• 2-5 players
• 15 minutes

Chronicles of Crime

Chronicles of Crime is a cooperative crime-solving game. A smartphone app with VR provides much of the content that you’ll need to figure out the clues and solve the crime. It sounds like you would only want 2 players, maybe 3 at the most, since much of the content is on the phone. I’m interested just to see how well it blends the digital and the physical.

• #13 Fairplay
• #5 GeekBuzz
• 1-4 players
• 60-90 minutes

Teotihuacan: City of Gods

Teotihuacan: City of Gods is a worker placement game, using dice for the actions to build a Mayan pyramid. It compares to T’zolkin, another game, and there is some debate as to whether or not it is a good as that game, and seems to be a bit more complicated than that one. I certainly am interested to see how this one shakes out.

• #13 Fairplay
• #2 GeekBuzz
• 1-4 players
• 90-120 minutes

Pulsar 2849

Pulsar 2849 is a dice-drafting game, with a sci-fi exploration theme. The better the dice you get, the more of a penalty you take in the action phase, which seems like it creates some good tension. There also is a bit of an exploration element to this one. It looks pretty cool, something I’d like to try. Apparently this was out last year, but still made some buzz even at this year’s Essen.

• #68 GeekBuzz
• #15 Hall9000
• 2-4 players
• 60-90 minutes

NEOM

NEOM is tile-drafting and then tile-laying game, where you’re building a city in front of you. It seems like a nice blend of 7 Wonders (for the drafting mechanic) and Suburbia (for the tile placement aspect). I think this game would be good.

• #4 Fairplay
• #54 GeekBuzz
• 1-5 players
• 45 minutes

Barrage

Barrage has a ton of stuff going on in it, worker placement for various actions, powers generated from building different building, rondel for resources, contracts to fulfill, and an income track. It’s a very heavy game about managing hydroelectric power. It looks fascinating. It’s also only on Kickstarter. I decided to back it, and although unlikely, it’s supposed to arrive in time for PPG.CON. I guess their prototype got enough buzz to show up on the Essen list.

• #15 GeekBuzz
• 2-4 players
• 60-120 minutes

Gugong

Gugong was hard to put my finger on. It seems that there’s a bidding and worker placement element to this in order to make your decisions. I think I’d have to play it first to see whether or not I like it.

• #13 FairPlay
• #7 GeekBuzz
• 1-5 players
• 60-90 minutes

Everdell

Everdell is a worker placement game that is really beautiful – all the information I read talked about how stunning it was. The theme appears to be a bit unqiue, as you’re creating a town of critters. From a gameplay perspective, it sounds like a fairly straightforward worker placement game, so I’m not sure how much is truly new here.

• #4 GeekBuzz
• 1-4 players
• 40-80 minutes

Newton

Newton is a game where you are selecting action cards, and as you get more cards in your tableau, the more powerful those actions become. There was some criticism that there are not lots of different ways to win, but perhaps there’s just tension to do the core thing in the game (in this case, publish books). Something I’d like to try, I guess.

• #8 GeekBuzz
• 1-4 players
• 90 minutes

Games That Are Just Meh

Rise of Queensdale

Rise of Queensdale is a legacy game where you are manipulating dice and managing resources. The story may be more interesting that the very popular Charterstone. Not something I’ll probably try at the convention, but might be interesting to buy and play within our group.

• #10 Hall9000
• 2-4 players
• 45-60 minutes

Underwater Cities

Underwater Cities is card placement on a tableau, action-drafting game. The information on this was mixed and not particularly striking, something that I probably would only try if someone else really wanted a go.

• #13 GeekBuzz
• 1-4 players
• 80-150 minutes

Farben

Farben is a party game where you get cards with colors and words, and then you tell stories to associate the colors with the words. At the end of the round, you then have to remember everyone’s colors. While an interesting party game idea, I’m not sure how much fun I’ll have with this, although if we have a bit of time to kill, I might end up suggesting it.

• #21 Hall9000
• 3-5 players
• 45-75 minutes

Ground Floor

Ground Floor is an economic, city building game. It uses worker placement in order to build up a company from the ground up. This is a new edition of a game that came out back in 2012. It seems that the highlight of the game, other than the puzzle of the resource management, is the various upgrades that are available to you. It seems like it would be decent, if a bit long.

• #8 Hall9000
• 1-5 players
• 90-150 minutes

Architects of the West Kingdom

Architects of the West Kingdom seems to me just to be a pretty generic worker placement game, and nothing special.

• #11 GeekBuzz
• 1-5 players
• 60-80 minutes

The post New Finds: Essen and BGG.CON 2018 Preview appeared first on Pikes Peak Gamers.