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Games I Have Played: Gen Con 2015 Edition
I once again attended Gen Con with the BF and played lots of new games!
7 Wonders: 7 Wonders is a drafting game where you pick a card from a set of cards then pass the rest of those cards on to the person next to you. There are many different types of cards, e.g. some give you military force while others represent scientific development and still others give you resources or money. You also have a "Wonder" (mine was Stonehenge) that you are trying to build. There are three rounds of drafting, with cards in each round being generally better and more expensive than the previous round. After three rounds, you count up points earned and the person with the most wins. There are a lot of different ways to earn points and therefore a lot of different strategies for playing so the game looks very complicated, but the basic principle is surprisingly simple.
I had a lot of fun playing this! Though this may be because I won, haha. We had seven people, which is how the game is designed to play. I imagine that playing with three players is a very different experience from playing with seven because you get to draft from each hand twice in the former's case. We were also told of a two-player variant, but neither the BF nor I thought it sounded much fun. (If we're going to play a two-player drafting game, we'll just play Sushi Go!, which works very well with just two players.) I also think playing with at least one person who's familiar with the game so that they can do the scoring is probably ideal, but I didn't have any problems playing even though this was my first time.
Dungeon Scroll: Dungeon Scroll is a word game with a dungeon exploration theme. Each round you have eight (I think?) cards plus there are two cards in the center (one vowel and one consonant) that everyone can use, and you try to form the highest scoring word you can. Each card has a letter and point value on it, but there are also wild cards or cards that have a value of x2. There is also a dungeon deck comprised of random cards from different sets. (So, for example, the first floor of the dungeon will always consist of three and only three cards, but there is a stack of first floor dungeon cards from which to pick those three.) Each round you progress through the dungeon by flipping over one of the dungeon cards, and these cards set the challenge for that round. For example, you might be facing a skeleton and in order to defeat it, you need to play at least two words. The people with the top three scores each round win some amount of gold, and the person with the most gold at the end of the game wins.
This was fun but not something I felt any particular urge to buy afterwards. There are a lot of games similar to this one out there (Quiddler springs to mind), and the thing that makes this one unique - the dungeon exploration aspect - is not exciting enough for me to want to spend much money on it. This is not to say I wouldn't have fun playing it if someone else brought it to a board game day! ...I feel like I'm damning this game with faint praise, which isn't something I want to do, but while I enjoyed it while I was playing it, I just couldn't work up much enthusiasm afterwards.
True Dungeon: True Dungeon is sort of like LARPing except you don't actually role-play. Which sounds odd, I know. But the basic idea is that you're in a group with nine other people and you each have a class (bard, wizard, rogue, monk, etc.) which gives you certain abilities, and then as a team you progress through a life-sized dungeon solving puzzles and defeating monsters. You also get a pack of ten tokens, which might give you armor or single use scrolls or other useful items, to help you progress. Some people are super into True Dungeon and so spend thousands of dollars on tokens, although the dungeon is designed so that even new people can survive on normal difficulty (there are also hardcore and nightmare difficulty levels as well as a non-lethal difficulty). The not-role-playing aspect comes from the fact that you will need all your wits & skills in order to get through the dungeon, so even if you have a class with low intelligence, you still use all the intelligence you naturally possess to help do things in the group. I did the "Into the Underdark" puzzle-oriented run on normal difficulty.
True Dungeon, I think, really depends on the group of people you're with. If you've got a good group, it can be awesome. It could also be horrible if there are even one or two bad eggs in the group. My group was mostly pretty good. It was me and the BF plus a separate group of eight friends, only one of whom had ever done True Dungeon before. So it was a little awkward working together since they all knew each other, but no one ran away with the game and we did all work as a team. I nominated myself to memorize the clues hanging on the walls of each of the rooms, which ended up being super helpful in the last room and allowed us to solve the puzzle with no one dying there (although we did have two deaths in earlier rooms).
True Dungeon is super accessibility-unfriendly though. Two of the puzzles had color clues, and even though I don't have any color-blindness, three pairs of colors looked basically identical. There was also a room with faces that spoke clues that was very difficult to solve but not because of the puzzle. The faces spoke randomly, so when one started talking you had to rush to it and generally missed the first half of the sentence. And both I and the BF were basically unable to understand the faces even when right next to them from the start due to how horrendous the mics were. (The DM took pity on us eventually and would tell us what the face said when we asked, but it was still super annoying.) The whole area is dark, which adds to the atmosphere, and loud, due to all the people in the area (at any given point in time, there were at least 140 people running through the dungeon). And that is not even considering the two hours you're going to be on your feet without a break in order to run the entire dungeon. You can leave at any time, but if you do you can't come back and sacrifice the treasure at the end plus you leave your team down a person.
On the other hand, now that I've complained a lot, it was a lot of fun if these things are less of a concern for you! True Dungeon really does try to translate D&D into some sort of actual skills test rather than having everything be based on dice rolls. So, for example, fighting is done by having a picture of a monster on a shuffleboard that's divided into different areas, and you slide a puck to hit the monster. I played a monk, which meant that I got to slide two pucks (representing my two fists) one after the other. I was honestly pretty horrible at sliding my pucks, but I'm not sure I would have been any better at any of the magic-wielding classes; they have to do memory tests in order to get the most use from their spells. (On the other hand, I know I would have been horrible at rogue which requires you to do an Operation-like skills test.) And when you're confronted with a room full of lava that has tiles floating on the lava to step on, there actually is a giant carpet painted like lava with tiles on it, or when you have to defeat a giant spider, there actually is a giant spider that jumps out at you from behind a wall!
So I had a lot of fun doing this as did the BF, and we both plan to do it again next year, hopefully with some more friends as part of our group. I think it's one of those things that can be super fun and is a unique experience, but also something where you need to be aware of the potential pitfalls before you decide whether this is something you want to do or not.
Ascension: I covered Ascension last year, and once again I played in the world championships. The short description of Ascension is that it is what you'd get if you combined Magic: The Gathering with Dominion. The championships used the Dawn of Champions set, which introduced the concept of what is essentially "planeswalkers" to the game. I feel like this set is the set with the most random chance involved. You can play perfectly well, but if your opponent gets a couple good rally streaks, they can demolish you. (On the other hand, I apparently said the set used for last year's championship seemed to have a high luck factor, so I don't know if this opinion is sour grapes on my part or if Ascension is getting more random with every set.)
I really do enjoy this set; it's a lot of fun to play casually because of said luck factor. At home who wins and who loses is less important because the BF and I will play enough games that we both get to win and lose some without it being really unbalanced. Sadly, however, I went 4-3 in the tournament, my worst showing in three years. The BF, on the other hand, did really well! I still had a really fun time competing, and I was the calmest I have ever been doing so. I even called over a judge for a couple strange interactions without any hesitation! It helps that all the competitors for Ascension are super cool, and one thing I really like about the Ascension championships is that it has a not-insignificant number of women competing.
Ubongo: Ubongo is that puzzle where you have to fit the weirdly shaped blocks into a defined area made into a game. You have a set of twelve weirdly shaped blocks plus a set of boards with defined areas. The board has a set of icons with blocks next to it, and you roll a die to determine which set of blocks you use. Each board also has an easy side and a difficult side; the easy side requires you to fit three blocks in the area while the difficult specifies four blocks. When you finish, you get to pick a random gem from a bag, and the people that finish first and second get an extra gem. The gems come in four different color, with each color being worth a different number of points. Whoever has the most points after nine rounds, wins.
This is a pretty fun game! And I did surprisingly well at it! This sort of puzzle is normally one I find tough because spatial reasoning is not my forte. The biggest problem I see with Ubongo is the issue of replayability. I know if I played this regularly with the BF, he would soon have all the boards memorized because that is how he operates. So while I would enjoy owning this game and playing it, I think it would only get pulled out when we had other people over. It is, however, a unique style of game (as far as I know) that is easy to understand and quick to play. There is also a strong luck element because of the random gems you can pull when you solve the puzzle, so I don't know whether the "winner" is actually the best player of the game, especially for a two person game. (We did one four-player game and two or three three-player games, all of which took a total of less than an hour to complete.) I think this game could be a good fit for households with young children.
Machi Koro: Machi Koro is a card drafting game with a random element due to die/dice rolling. There are a number of cards you can buy, each with a number from 1-12 at the top, that do things when you or someone else rolls the number at the top. For example, the 1 card gives you one coin any time anyone rolls a 1. The 4 card gives you three coins but only when you roll a 4 on your turn. Each player has four specific cards that they're trying to build (the four cards are the same for each player), and the winner is the first one to build all four cards. Building these cards also gives special abilities, like the ability to roll two dice or to reroll your roll.
This game is pretty fun! I like the dice rolling aspect, which adds some needed randomness. Otherwise, the game is basically a clone of Dominion which the BF approaches like a math problem and which neither of us enjoy playing. The art on the cards is cute too, something I always appreciate. I was the least far along in building my four cards when the game ended, but it was also my first time playing as opposed to the other three players I was playing with. I am looking forward to playing again at some point!
Codenames: The idea behind Codenames is that there are two teams, a red team and a blue team, each with a spymaster and a number of agents in the field. Before the agents is a 5x5 grid of agents' code names (i.e., a bunch of random nouns), and it is up to the spymaster to give one word clues followed by a number (to let the field agents know how many code names that clue applies to) to the field agents to help them find their fellow agents. The spymasters have a grid in front of them that tells them which code names belong to which team. There are also a number of names belonging to civilians and one belonging to an assassin. Finding the assassin makes your team lose the game.
This game is so much fun! I wanted to buy it so bad, but unfortunately the publisher had a bunch of preorder copies and quickly sold out of the few non-preorder copies they had. The people I played with used the game as an excuse to make as many Archer jokes as they could, which was pretty fun. So the red team was actually Barry and Other Barry, while the blue team was Mallory and Archer. I highly recommend this game if you regularly get together with at least four people to play board games!
ETA 2015-08-25: I forgot two games!
Fish, Fish, Squish!: In this game, each player starts with five play-dough fish. You lay a bunch of tiles face down, and everyone takes turns flipping tiles over one at a time. Each tile has a picture of one of three different fish on it. If you get three different fish in a row when you flip a tile, then you get to squish one of your opponent's fish! Last one standing wins.
This is very definitely a game for little kids, but I sat down to demo it precisely because I have a young nephew. And I thought it was pretty fun! For all that complex and strategic games can be fun, I also really like being able to play something without having to think about it too deeply and without out it taking too long to finish. This game fits that niche nicely.
Moose Caboose: This sort of reminds me of a simpler version of Mexican Train. All the cards are parts of a train with a color on the left side, right side, or both sides. You start with the four engine cards (color on the right side only) on the board, and you go around in turns playing a card from your hand that matches one of the colors on the board. Most of the cards form the middle of the train with colors on both sides. Eventually, someone will play a caboose card (color on the left side only), and they then get to collect all of the cards in that train minus the engine. The game is over when no one can play anymore cards, and whoever collected the most cards wins.
Another pretty simple game that I played because I thought my nephew might like it. But, again, I often enjoy quick, simple games like this. The cards are nicely illustrated, and I bet the train theme makes the game appealing to a large percentage of kids. I'll probably get both this and Fish, Fish, Squish! for my nephew.
Once again, lots of new-to-me games played that I really enjoyed.
7 Wonders: 7 Wonders is a drafting game where you pick a card from a set of cards then pass the rest of those cards on to the person next to you. There are many different types of cards, e.g. some give you military force while others represent scientific development and still others give you resources or money. You also have a "Wonder" (mine was Stonehenge) that you are trying to build. There are three rounds of drafting, with cards in each round being generally better and more expensive than the previous round. After three rounds, you count up points earned and the person with the most wins. There are a lot of different ways to earn points and therefore a lot of different strategies for playing so the game looks very complicated, but the basic principle is surprisingly simple.
I had a lot of fun playing this! Though this may be because I won, haha. We had seven people, which is how the game is designed to play. I imagine that playing with three players is a very different experience from playing with seven because you get to draft from each hand twice in the former's case. We were also told of a two-player variant, but neither the BF nor I thought it sounded much fun. (If we're going to play a two-player drafting game, we'll just play Sushi Go!, which works very well with just two players.) I also think playing with at least one person who's familiar with the game so that they can do the scoring is probably ideal, but I didn't have any problems playing even though this was my first time.
Dungeon Scroll: Dungeon Scroll is a word game with a dungeon exploration theme. Each round you have eight (I think?) cards plus there are two cards in the center (one vowel and one consonant) that everyone can use, and you try to form the highest scoring word you can. Each card has a letter and point value on it, but there are also wild cards or cards that have a value of x2. There is also a dungeon deck comprised of random cards from different sets. (So, for example, the first floor of the dungeon will always consist of three and only three cards, but there is a stack of first floor dungeon cards from which to pick those three.) Each round you progress through the dungeon by flipping over one of the dungeon cards, and these cards set the challenge for that round. For example, you might be facing a skeleton and in order to defeat it, you need to play at least two words. The people with the top three scores each round win some amount of gold, and the person with the most gold at the end of the game wins.
This was fun but not something I felt any particular urge to buy afterwards. There are a lot of games similar to this one out there (Quiddler springs to mind), and the thing that makes this one unique - the dungeon exploration aspect - is not exciting enough for me to want to spend much money on it. This is not to say I wouldn't have fun playing it if someone else brought it to a board game day! ...I feel like I'm damning this game with faint praise, which isn't something I want to do, but while I enjoyed it while I was playing it, I just couldn't work up much enthusiasm afterwards.
True Dungeon: True Dungeon is sort of like LARPing except you don't actually role-play. Which sounds odd, I know. But the basic idea is that you're in a group with nine other people and you each have a class (bard, wizard, rogue, monk, etc.) which gives you certain abilities, and then as a team you progress through a life-sized dungeon solving puzzles and defeating monsters. You also get a pack of ten tokens, which might give you armor or single use scrolls or other useful items, to help you progress. Some people are super into True Dungeon and so spend thousands of dollars on tokens, although the dungeon is designed so that even new people can survive on normal difficulty (there are also hardcore and nightmare difficulty levels as well as a non-lethal difficulty). The not-role-playing aspect comes from the fact that you will need all your wits & skills in order to get through the dungeon, so even if you have a class with low intelligence, you still use all the intelligence you naturally possess to help do things in the group. I did the "Into the Underdark" puzzle-oriented run on normal difficulty.
True Dungeon, I think, really depends on the group of people you're with. If you've got a good group, it can be awesome. It could also be horrible if there are even one or two bad eggs in the group. My group was mostly pretty good. It was me and the BF plus a separate group of eight friends, only one of whom had ever done True Dungeon before. So it was a little awkward working together since they all knew each other, but no one ran away with the game and we did all work as a team. I nominated myself to memorize the clues hanging on the walls of each of the rooms, which ended up being super helpful in the last room and allowed us to solve the puzzle with no one dying there (although we did have two deaths in earlier rooms).
True Dungeon is super accessibility-unfriendly though. Two of the puzzles had color clues, and even though I don't have any color-blindness, three pairs of colors looked basically identical. There was also a room with faces that spoke clues that was very difficult to solve but not because of the puzzle. The faces spoke randomly, so when one started talking you had to rush to it and generally missed the first half of the sentence. And both I and the BF were basically unable to understand the faces even when right next to them from the start due to how horrendous the mics were. (The DM took pity on us eventually and would tell us what the face said when we asked, but it was still super annoying.) The whole area is dark, which adds to the atmosphere, and loud, due to all the people in the area (at any given point in time, there were at least 140 people running through the dungeon). And that is not even considering the two hours you're going to be on your feet without a break in order to run the entire dungeon. You can leave at any time, but if you do you can't come back and sacrifice the treasure at the end plus you leave your team down a person.
On the other hand, now that I've complained a lot, it was a lot of fun if these things are less of a concern for you! True Dungeon really does try to translate D&D into some sort of actual skills test rather than having everything be based on dice rolls. So, for example, fighting is done by having a picture of a monster on a shuffleboard that's divided into different areas, and you slide a puck to hit the monster. I played a monk, which meant that I got to slide two pucks (representing my two fists) one after the other. I was honestly pretty horrible at sliding my pucks, but I'm not sure I would have been any better at any of the magic-wielding classes; they have to do memory tests in order to get the most use from their spells. (On the other hand, I know I would have been horrible at rogue which requires you to do an Operation-like skills test.) And when you're confronted with a room full of lava that has tiles floating on the lava to step on, there actually is a giant carpet painted like lava with tiles on it, or when you have to defeat a giant spider, there actually is a giant spider that jumps out at you from behind a wall!
So I had a lot of fun doing this as did the BF, and we both plan to do it again next year, hopefully with some more friends as part of our group. I think it's one of those things that can be super fun and is a unique experience, but also something where you need to be aware of the potential pitfalls before you decide whether this is something you want to do or not.
Ascension: I covered Ascension last year, and once again I played in the world championships. The short description of Ascension is that it is what you'd get if you combined Magic: The Gathering with Dominion. The championships used the Dawn of Champions set, which introduced the concept of what is essentially "planeswalkers" to the game. I feel like this set is the set with the most random chance involved. You can play perfectly well, but if your opponent gets a couple good rally streaks, they can demolish you. (On the other hand, I apparently said the set used for last year's championship seemed to have a high luck factor, so I don't know if this opinion is sour grapes on my part or if Ascension is getting more random with every set.)
I really do enjoy this set; it's a lot of fun to play casually because of said luck factor. At home who wins and who loses is less important because the BF and I will play enough games that we both get to win and lose some without it being really unbalanced. Sadly, however, I went 4-3 in the tournament, my worst showing in three years. The BF, on the other hand, did really well! I still had a really fun time competing, and I was the calmest I have ever been doing so. I even called over a judge for a couple strange interactions without any hesitation! It helps that all the competitors for Ascension are super cool, and one thing I really like about the Ascension championships is that it has a not-insignificant number of women competing.
Ubongo: Ubongo is that puzzle where you have to fit the weirdly shaped blocks into a defined area made into a game. You have a set of twelve weirdly shaped blocks plus a set of boards with defined areas. The board has a set of icons with blocks next to it, and you roll a die to determine which set of blocks you use. Each board also has an easy side and a difficult side; the easy side requires you to fit three blocks in the area while the difficult specifies four blocks. When you finish, you get to pick a random gem from a bag, and the people that finish first and second get an extra gem. The gems come in four different color, with each color being worth a different number of points. Whoever has the most points after nine rounds, wins.
This is a pretty fun game! And I did surprisingly well at it! This sort of puzzle is normally one I find tough because spatial reasoning is not my forte. The biggest problem I see with Ubongo is the issue of replayability. I know if I played this regularly with the BF, he would soon have all the boards memorized because that is how he operates. So while I would enjoy owning this game and playing it, I think it would only get pulled out when we had other people over. It is, however, a unique style of game (as far as I know) that is easy to understand and quick to play. There is also a strong luck element because of the random gems you can pull when you solve the puzzle, so I don't know whether the "winner" is actually the best player of the game, especially for a two person game. (We did one four-player game and two or three three-player games, all of which took a total of less than an hour to complete.) I think this game could be a good fit for households with young children.
Machi Koro: Machi Koro is a card drafting game with a random element due to die/dice rolling. There are a number of cards you can buy, each with a number from 1-12 at the top, that do things when you or someone else rolls the number at the top. For example, the 1 card gives you one coin any time anyone rolls a 1. The 4 card gives you three coins but only when you roll a 4 on your turn. Each player has four specific cards that they're trying to build (the four cards are the same for each player), and the winner is the first one to build all four cards. Building these cards also gives special abilities, like the ability to roll two dice or to reroll your roll.
This game is pretty fun! I like the dice rolling aspect, which adds some needed randomness. Otherwise, the game is basically a clone of Dominion which the BF approaches like a math problem and which neither of us enjoy playing. The art on the cards is cute too, something I always appreciate. I was the least far along in building my four cards when the game ended, but it was also my first time playing as opposed to the other three players I was playing with. I am looking forward to playing again at some point!
Codenames: The idea behind Codenames is that there are two teams, a red team and a blue team, each with a spymaster and a number of agents in the field. Before the agents is a 5x5 grid of agents' code names (i.e., a bunch of random nouns), and it is up to the spymaster to give one word clues followed by a number (to let the field agents know how many code names that clue applies to) to the field agents to help them find their fellow agents. The spymasters have a grid in front of them that tells them which code names belong to which team. There are also a number of names belonging to civilians and one belonging to an assassin. Finding the assassin makes your team lose the game.
This game is so much fun! I wanted to buy it so bad, but unfortunately the publisher had a bunch of preorder copies and quickly sold out of the few non-preorder copies they had. The people I played with used the game as an excuse to make as many Archer jokes as they could, which was pretty fun. So the red team was actually Barry and Other Barry, while the blue team was Mallory and Archer. I highly recommend this game if you regularly get together with at least four people to play board games!
ETA 2015-08-25: I forgot two games!
Fish, Fish, Squish!: In this game, each player starts with five play-dough fish. You lay a bunch of tiles face down, and everyone takes turns flipping tiles over one at a time. Each tile has a picture of one of three different fish on it. If you get three different fish in a row when you flip a tile, then you get to squish one of your opponent's fish! Last one standing wins.
This is very definitely a game for little kids, but I sat down to demo it precisely because I have a young nephew. And I thought it was pretty fun! For all that complex and strategic games can be fun, I also really like being able to play something without having to think about it too deeply and without out it taking too long to finish. This game fits that niche nicely.
Moose Caboose: This sort of reminds me of a simpler version of Mexican Train. All the cards are parts of a train with a color on the left side, right side, or both sides. You start with the four engine cards (color on the right side only) on the board, and you go around in turns playing a card from your hand that matches one of the colors on the board. Most of the cards form the middle of the train with colors on both sides. Eventually, someone will play a caboose card (color on the left side only), and they then get to collect all of the cards in that train minus the engine. The game is over when no one can play anymore cards, and whoever collected the most cards wins.
Another pretty simple game that I played because I thought my nephew might like it. But, again, I often enjoy quick, simple games like this. The cards are nicely illustrated, and I bet the train theme makes the game appealing to a large percentage of kids. I'll probably get both this and Fish, Fish, Squish! for my nephew.
Once again, lots of new-to-me games played that I really enjoyed.