Happy 2020 Everyone!

Wow, two months since I've last posted. Where did the time go? I guess there hasn't been a ton of new developments, but there are a couple.

Nebula

The bulk of my time over the past couple of months has been going into my Nebula roll-and-write game. (Picture above.) While I'm not completely ready to divulge all the details of the game, know that I've been through a ton of iterations since I last posted. (Last time I was on...  what...  version 2? I'm working on version 10 now.)

The game has been coming along relatively well. Sure, I've had some failures; I've tried a bunch of mechanics that didn't fit well or just didn't work at all. But each time I cut something and try something new, it feels like I'm inching a bit closer to the goal. (I kind of lost that feeling with the other projects I was working on, hence why this one has captured my attention so completely.)

Without giving too much away, at least I can mention the game's (possible) theme:

- The theme of Nebula is that the players are captains of cargo ships travelling through FTL. Each ship hit an unknown space anomaly and was forcefully ejected from lightspeed, getting badly damaged in the process. The only two pieces of good news are that the ship's power reactors are intact and functioning, and the ships are stranded in the middle of a gigantic nebula, meaning there is a virtually unlimited supply of raw materials nearby to repair the ships with. The players are using their tractor beams to suck up clumps of gas and dust and using that to fabricate replacement bits to get their ships working again.

One glitch I've already hit is the name; I don't think I can keep the name Nebula because there is already a game with that name. Granted, it's over 40 years old, but I still don't see the point of tempting fate. I'm trying to decide if I should just change the name a little (call it "Nebula 13" or "Nebula 4913" or "Nebula Roll & Write" or somesuch like that) or try to come up with something completely new. All of the completely new names I've been able to think of just don't fit the feel I'm trying to go for.


Escape Winter Convention 2020

In other news, the first run of the Escape Winter Convention happened this past weekend. Great stuff! This one was created by the people that previously ran the Dice Tower Con in Orlando, so you know they know what they're doing. Unfortunately for me, I managed to get sick right before the convention started so I was kind of dragging throughout the whole con and couldn't enjoy it to its fullest, but at least I managed to get a few games in. Here's what I was able to play:

- ​Fleet: The Dice Game (4/5 Liked) [own]

I picked this game up 'for research purposes' as someone suggested it would be an example of well done roll and write; I should be able to take some inspiration from this game. Turns out this was pretty good advice. I think this is a solid, if complex, take on a roll and write game. The core mechanic is pretty simple; twice per turn, roll a pool of dice, and everyone drafts one. Each player gets the effect of the die they drafted, plus the one leftover die that nobody drafted. Each die effect lets you mark off boxes in a particular section of your player sheets. Each section has various bonuses that activate when enough spaces are checked off. But that simple rule doesn't say anything about the staggering array of options that you have to pick from. In fact, I'd say the game's only major weakness is that there is a huge number of strategy options and you really can't grok them all until you've played the game a couple of times. I'm glad I picked up a copy of this as I can see it will get a lot of use, both as a good short-to-medium length game and as an example design to work towards.

- Azul: Summer Pavillion (4/5 Liked)

I really liked the first Azul game. The second, not so much. I'm happy to say that I like this third one as much as the first. The tiles are diamond-shaped instead of square, and you're making starburst patterns instead of a square mosaic, but otherwise it's a very similar to the previous games with the immediate scoring for adjacency and endgame scoring for completed patterns. Placing tiles around certain board features will allow you to take more tiles from a designated bonus pool. More than just losing points for taking the first player tile and 'dropping' tiles, now you also lose extra points for all the tiles you take along with the first player tile, so if you can see yourself getting hit with that then taking it early to minimize the damage is a possible option.  Finally, some tiles are wild, but the color of which tile is wild changes in a predictable pattern so you can plan ahead for what tiles you want to hang on to. Overall I think it's a solid addition to the Azul family and I'll be happy to play it again.

- Silver & Gold (4/5 Liked) [own]

Technically a roll and write game, but not really what you'd think of when mentioning the term. This is a very quick and light tetris-style game that lets you write on its cards. Each 'treasure map' card has a small grid of squares that must be marked off to complete the card and get its points. Each player has two such cards out at a time, and immediately gets a new one when one is completed. Each turn, a card with a polyomino pattern is flipped over, and players must mark off squares on their cards corresponding to the pattern, with the ability to flip and rotate the pattern. Some treasure cards have other features like X symbols (let you mark other squares for free) and coins (bonus points). Most points wins. Quick, easy to learn, and enjoyable. The gimmick of writing on the cards struck me as odd at first but quickly made sense and fit right into place. A friend gifted me her copy and I don't think I'm ever going to get rid of it. :)

- The Quacks of Quedlinburg: The Herb Witches expansion (3/5 Neutral)

So, I definitely liked the Quacks base game when I first played it. I was eager to give the new version a try; expanding the game to five players seems like a big plus to me. While that in itself was good, it seemed like the rest of this expansion fell flat for me. The expansion adds two new 'sets' of effects for the bag tokens, three one-shot 'witch' powers usable by all players, and one new type of bag token: Locoweed. Granted, I've only played the base game with the 'Set 1' effects (good for beginners, I'd think) so I'm not familiar with how the game changes with the various effect sets, but it seems like the effects in the expansion just weren't that appealing. The new token type was almost completely unused in our game. One witch power was really nice, the others mostly useless. Really the mvp of the game was the 6-power orange pumpkin tokens, which I never had the resources to buy; the player that won managed to get two of them. I might enjoy the expansion more now that I understand how some of the new effects work, but as of now the expansion is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition for me; I'll play with it if someone else has it but almost definitely won't be buying it.


Mystic Tiger Games Store Closing Soon

On a slightly sad note, I'm going to be closing my web store soon, probably within the next week or two. While I have made a few sales through my store, I'm definitely not bringing in enough revenue that way to justify keeping it open.

However, all is not lost! Besides being available at larger conventions through the Indie Game Alliance, and working with Atheris Games to make my games available at smaller conventions, my games will also be available through Cool Stuff Games! If you haven't already, pop over to their website and give them a look. Good news is that, if you've gotten a gift certificate or discount code for their site, then you can put that towards a copy of Manaforge! Oh, and if you don't mind a little bit of box smooshing, they have 'damaged' copies as well that you can get for a bit of a discount.

I'm not sure if it'll work like this, but theoretically this link should search their inventory for my games:
https://www.coolstuffinc.com/sq/?page=1&submit=search&s=bg&f%5BPublisher%5D%5B%5D=Mystic+Tiger+Games%2C+LLC


Thanks for reading everyone! Have a good 2020!

Hello everyone! As 2019 comes to a close, I've started looking around at what I've accomplished this year, where I stand now, and where I want to go next year.

On the surface, it doesn't seem like a lot has happened in 2019. I haven't published any new games, commissioned any artwork, or put anything new on Tabletopia or Tabletop Simulator. I've only sold a handful of copies of Manaforge, and I've only been to a couple of game conventions.

However, behind the curtain, a lot has been going on. I've put a lot of energy into designing the expansion for Manaforge, developing Sky Pirates, and getting my newest design Nebula off of the ground. And, of course, all of those required playtesting. LOTS of playtesting. Also, of the conventions I attended, one was Dice Tower Con, where IGA sold several of my games; another was the first year of Orlando Games Con, where Zack Crawford of The Thirsty Gamers did a good job of organizing a play space for lots of board games; and a third was HoliCON, where I was invited to demo Manaforge.

Here's a breakdown of what's been going on:


Manaforge Expansion

The project I want to complete most is to finish the expansion for my first game Manaforge. It's been difficult trying to settle on what exactly should be in the expansion; Manaforge has a ton of untapped design space and I'm struggling to figure out exactly what the expansion should do. Here's the list of design goals I'm fighting with:

• Add More Cards [mandatory]: Create more item cards, give more choices in the recipe market, add more variety to the card effects. This is one of the things I'm trying to accomplish with the 'dark item' cards; two dark items are dealt out alongside the six standard items, giving the players more choices and more variability in what the cards do. This variability needs to be in both card effects and card power; there can and should be cheap but weak cards that leave resources free for other things, and super-expensive cards that give tons of points but leave you unable to do anything else in the turn.
• Add More Resource Outlets [mandatory]: Create more ways to spend resources. When I see Manaforge played, either when I'm playing or when I'm watching others play, I always sense some disappointment in the first couple of rounds of the game, when players are getting resource generation cards but not having any place to spend those extra resources. When I'm teaching the game, "I'm not allowed to build another card?" is a common question I get early on. I created the 'customer' cards to try to combat this, giving the players something else to spend mana on.
• Add More Point Vectors [mandatory]: Create another strategy option for scoring points. Right now, there are two major ways to do well in the game: build a solid engine in your workshop for churning out points each round, or build lots of high-point cards (typically done by going all in on wands). I want a third option, a third strategy that players can focus on. I was hoping to accomplish that with the customer cards, giving a chaotic but steady source of point opportunities for the players. I'm not convinced what I have now does that well, though; players often treat the customers as a side note instead of as a primary target.
• Increase Player Interaction [optional]: Add ways for your actions to affect other players and for other players to influence your decisions. Manaforge is not very good at this; really the only major interaction in the game is drafting the item cards, where you might take something that someone else wanted. My original idea was to add take-that effects but I learned that that doesn't fit well into the game's current feel. Right now I'm adding the customer cards, which are a first-come-first-served source of points, but that is just more of the same; taking something your opponent wants. I've been trying to add card effects that pull the other players into whatever it is that you're doing but those tend to get passed over in favor of more straightforward cards. I haven't found the formula for this yet.
• Vary the Value of Existing Game Elements [optional]: Best described as an 'event deck', the game might benefit from having periodic things happen that change the landscape of the game. For one round, fire items give bonus points, or water items are cheaper, or everyone gets a free earth gem, or whatever. Force the players to react to some sort of source of chaos. Or course, the game already has plenty of creating order from chaos in it, but this could be something completely out of the player's control. Dunno if this is needed, but it's something to investigate.

For the moment, the Manaforge expansion is 'on hold'. I haven't given up on it, but it's currently sitting on the back-burner, waiting for some new ideas and a fresh perspective to help figure out where it needs to fit into the base game.


Sky Pirates

The project I have that is more finished is my area control game Sky Pirates. This game is in very good shape; the mechanics are pretty solid, the theme seems to fit well, and the balance isn't far off. Right now the game just needs a ton of playtesting to help chase out any problems I'm not seeing. I also need to put another big dent in the rulebook; the first draft is done and playable but I need to make some terminology and description changes to go with the results of my most recent playtests. This game is kind of in a holding pattern as well, but for a different reason: I'm trying to decide if I want to publish the game by myself or have someone else help me with it. Game development and production I can handle, it's the marketing and Kickstarter aspects that I'm not very good at. Dunno if I just need to find an adviser or two to help, or if I should bring in another publisher.


Nebula

My current focus is my new roll-and-write game, code named "Nebula" (pictured at the top). I'm still keeping this mostly under wraps for right now; I'm trying something new with a roll-and-write game that, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't been done before. (Of course, I say that, and then someone will come out with a new game that does exactly the same thing. Oh well.) It's still a novel idea, and I'm hoping it generates some attention by that alone.

I'm on my second prototype version of Nebula. The first idea was pretty much a disaster; it was slow and boring. I recently finished a rework of it and got to playtest it a couple of times. It's...  well, slow and boring. But at least it's less so this time. Last time I playtested this, it didn't seem to go over well at all. This time, it seems like there might be a spark. I need to do some rebalancing to see if it's just the way the game is currently paced that's the problem. Hopefully in a couple of iterations it will start to become an interesting game.


HoliCON

I recently attended a convention in Ocala called HoliCON. I was invited by one of the convention organizers to go and demo Manaforge, get some extra exposure for the game. I had never heard of this convention before then, but I decided to give it a try, and I'm glad I did. While not a particularly large convention, there was a great group of friendly people that made us feel welcome there. I got in a few Manaforge demos, and even managed to sell a copy there due to my showing it off. I didn't have time to play many games, but I did manage to try something new:

- Fantastic Factories (4/5 Liked)
I played this game for the first time at HoliCON, and I'm glad I did! Interesting mix of dice placement and engine building. You use rolled dice to generate resources which you use to gain cards and add them to your tableau. Some cards give you ways to transform resources, while others you have to activate by using up your dice. Lots of fun! I kind of think of this in the same family as Gizmos, but with an extra level of complexity on top. Dunno if I would buy it (maybe if I found a cheap copy), but I'd definitely play it again if someone offered.


Other Games

While I've played a lot of games over the year, one of them bears mentioning because it helped me with my designs:

- Terraforming Mars: Turmoil expansion (4/5 Liked)
I recently received the latest expansion to Terraforming Mars, and it didn't disappoint! So far I've played this a couple of times; once as a 2-player game with all of the expansions mixed in, and a second time in a 5-player game also using the Prelude expansion. Overall, I think it's a good addition to the game. The expansion adds a political aspect to the game, where six political parties wrestle for control of the planet. Players may add their own delegates to various parties, and at the end of each generation the party with the most delegates becomes the one in charge. Each party gives a bonus for having certain tags, and imposes a rule that gives benefits to certain types of actions for the next generation. The expansion also introduces global events, which give players penalties or bonuses based on certain criteria, and the effects of the events can be altered (improved, for good events, or reduced for bad events) based on how the players' delegates are positioned. The expansion has a couple of rough points, like the complexity of calculating the delegates at the end of each generation slows the game down, or how a run of bad events can be brutal on all the players, but overall I enjoyed playing with this expansion and will be using it again.

This expansion is notable because it gave me some fuel for the Manaforge expansion. The event cards in Turmoil help to mix the game up and divert some of the player's focus away from the main task of building their engine. But in a way that's good because navigating the events correctly can actually give you a boost to your resources. Maybe Manaforge needs this kind of randomizing element, some global event that changes the way players value certain actions. There needs to be some care in there, though, as players don't have perfect flexibility to do anything they want, especially when it comes to the game's four elements; an event that benefits fire cards is great for someone playing all fire but is useless to someone playing water. The randomness needs to be, on some level, equally beneficial (or harmful) to everyone.


Cool Stuff Games

More of a side note, but I recently got Manaforge listed for sale on the CoolStuffInc.com website. Yay! Gamers now have an additional outlet to buy Manaforge. In addition, there are a few 'ding & dent' copies listed for sale on there, so if you're looking to get a bit of a discount on the game and don't mind a little box damage, then check that one out!


Looking Towards 2020

That's everything I have to report on for now. I likely won't post again until the new year. I still need to do a design post on the idea of Cognitive Load, but I haven't had much inspiration towards that recently. I'm going to need to give it a good push soon.

I hope everyone had had a good year, and I'm looking forward to what 2020 will bring. Happy gaming!

Haven't made a blog post in a while. Time to fix that.

Anyone that has been following me on social media knows that I attended Dice Tower Convention 2019 at the beginning of July. What a great con! Five days of board gaming with lots of friends, old and new. Unlike last year, where I was mostly tethered to a demo table trying to show off (and sell) Manaforge, this year I had a lot more time to actually play games. Sure, I got some demo time in, but not nearly as much.

I also was able to get in a few playtests of the latest iteration of Sky Pirates. The game is looking very good! It definitely needs some polish; little bits like inconsistencies in the terminology and confusing rules that need to be ironed out, but the core mechanics seem to be solid. A couple of the card abilities are underutilized and need to be improved or just removed entirely, and I'm thinking newer players are shying away from the hard to understand parts, so there's still work to be done. But I'm at the point where I'm open to the idea of a publisher picking it up. Of course, I can publish it myself, but publishing is a lot of work and I'd prefer to save my time for working on Manaforge if at all possible. We'll see how that goes.

Okay, on to the games! Here's a list of what I played at this convention. (At least, this is all I can recall; played so many games that I may have forgotten one somewhere.)

Rating scale:
5/5 Loved: would play again and probably suggest, want to own
4/5 Liked: would play again, maybe suggest
3/5 Neutral: would play again
2/5 Disliked: could possibly be convinced to play again
1/5 Hated: will never play again

- Lanterns Dice: Lights in the Sky (4/5 Liked)
Great game! Roll and write. Love the way that the dice substitute for the tiles but still have the same mechanic of other players gaining resources based on seating orientation. Fill in tile squares on your board, gain 'gift' marks to use special powers, and cover up completed squares in specific patterns with 'firework' polyomino tiles for bonus points. Interesting choices all around.

- Nemesis (2/5 Disliked)
Played this twice at the con. First time, the decks were not shuffled correctly. My character got eaten by the queen. Second time, the ship exploded due to fire breaking out. I wanted to like this, but the never-ending stream of bad dice rolls and token pulls just made the games feel pointless.

- Root (4/5 Liked)
Enjoyed this game, and not just because I won. I like the very different play style of all the races, and yet all races are similar in that they must be kept in check or they will run away with the game. I think that's what happened to me; other players left me alone and I just became unstoppable. Game felt easy because of that. Want to try the other races for comparison.

- Chocolatiers (4/5 Liked) [own]
Cute filler game about the best food in the world. Set collection and tile placement. Gain cards, play cards to get tiles, place tiles with chocolates of the same type clustered together. Surprisingly good array of strategy options for a light game. Was gifted with a copy at the con and I'm never letting this go. :)

- Fire in the Library (1/5 Hated)
Another game that I wanted to like but did not. Press your luck by pulling cubes out of the bag. Luck was completely against me; I constantly pulled 'fire' cubes and lost my turn where other players got point cubes. The game has 'tool' cards to score extra points and mitigate bad luck; but even using those I still lost my turn more often than not. I won't play a game where my choices are meaningless.

- Century: A New World (4/5 Liked)
Enjoyed this! I'm a fan of the first game, not so much the second. The final chapter in the trilogy was as much fun as the first. Worker placement but with the same theme of transforming resources. I own the first two so I'll probably be picking this up at some point.

- Space Base (5/5 Loved)
I know this isn't new, but I played it for the first time at this con. Now I want to buy it. :) Totally kicks Machi Koro to the curb. I like the multi-use nature of the cards and the way the game escalates. I see so many ways I could've played better after just one play, the mark of a game brimming with depth but not drowning in complexity.

- Ethnos (4/5 Liked) [own]
Okay, I've played this before but didn't own it. I bought a copy at the flea market and broke it open with friends at the con, introducing it to them. Love the mix of set collection and area dominance. Haven't played with all of the races yet, but I'm sure we'll fix that. :)

- Kami-Sama (3/5 Neutral) [own]
Shout out to AJ Lambeth, the designer of this game; he personally came over and taught us how to play! Interesting game idea; a rotating circular board divided up into quadrants. You can only play on the portion of the board facing you, and the board rotates every turn. Asymmetric player powers require a different strategy for each. A lot of push and pull; players are constantly kicking each other out of spaces on the board. I didn't have the expansion with me, but the base game felt... just okay. I'm hoping more playthroughs and adding in the expansion content will make it more engaging.

- Lockup: A Roll Player Tale (4/5 Liked) [own]
I'm a fan of Roll Player, and this very much not-Roll-Player game managed to be a lot of fun, even if it didn't invoke the character building theme of Roll Player at all. Worker placement, but the worker tiles have different power values, and some tiles can be face down to keep your opponents guessing. Highest power gets the best reward, lower values get less rewards or get moved to the 'library' to get a sometimes-useful one shot ability. Dodge 'suspicion' cubes or get raided, losing a significant number of points. Glad I backed this one; it sold out at the con fast.

- Empires of the Void II (1/5 Hated)
I guess this was someone's attempt at a 4X-lite? The rules were very confusing; it took a good chunk of an hour to figure out how to play and set everything up. And even then we had to open the rulebook basically every turn. Fly around space on tracks, play influence markers on planets to gain their special powers, or attack them to gain real estate. Upgrade your empire by paying resources to take tokens off of your board and place them on planets, then gain whatever powers were uncovered by removing the token. I suppose we could've started attacking each other, but we stopped the game before we got to that point. Won't touch this again.

- The Quacks of Quedlinburg (4/5 Liked)
This game kind of came out of nowhere for me. I think I had heard of it before the con, but walking around the gaming hall I saw it being played practically everywhere. My friend managed to borrow a copy from the game library, so we tried it out. Lots of fun! Press your luck game with bag building; each player buys tiles to add to their own bags, so you can customize what special abilities you can get. Pull tiles and add them to your cauldron, but stop before you draw too many bombs or else your turn ends and you lose half of the rewards. Wide array of tile powers, and the powers change with each play. I might pick up a copy of this if I can find it cheap.


And that was my convention! Playing new games, meeting up with remote friends that I don't see often, and just having a good time. Tiring but rewarding. Not sure what to think about next year, though. From what I'm hearing the Dice Tower Network is taking complete control of the convention starting next year, meaning that a different crew will be responsible for running the convention. This year the con ran very smoothly; I'm skeptical that the transition to "Dice Tower East" will be painless. We'll see.

I have more info to post about the Manaforge expansion (or lack thereof), but that will have to be a separate post. Soon, hopefully!​

So, I haven't posted on here in a while. But there's been a good reason for that: I was at Dice Tower Con a couple of week ago. What a great convention! Five full days of nothing but board games and the people that play and create them. This was my third time going to this convention, and for me it's gotten bigger and better every year.

However, the thing that surprised me most about this convention was the amount of *work* it was compared to previous years. Before, when attending Dice Tower, I was going to play new games, meet new people, learn about being a developer and publisher, and just have fun. But this year, I spent about half of my time in the vendor hall demoing Manaforge. definitely work, but the good kind of work. I was able to use one of the demo tables in front of the Indie Game Alliance booth, where my games were being sold (along many others). It seems like from the time I started demoing, to when the vendor hall was getting ready to close, I had demos running almost continuously. Tiring to be sure, but definitely a good problem to have! Within ten minutes of one demo finishing, there was another group of people ready to see the game. I lost track of how many demos I did, but I do know I spent well over twenty hours demoing across the entire convention.

Totally worth it, though! Because of all time spent demoing, plus the lure of being taught the game by the designer, and the felt component bowls we were giving out with the games, the IGA booth actually ran out of games. That's right, I now have "Achievement Unlocked: My Game Sold Out At DTC" to add to my list! Great feeling!

Aside from games, I also attended a couple of panels, with various board game media celebrities. One was a talk about media content creation and interviews with some of the personalities, and the other was a 'game show' styled panel of the audience trying to guess how the celebs would answer various questions. Good stuff!

And, of course, there was getting to see and chat with old friends. And meeting new ones. And attending parties and mixers. Plus something I'm still not used to, random people coming up to me and saying hello. (I have a terrible memory for names and for people that I only meet for a couple of a minutes. Please don't take it the wrong way if you come up and chat with me and I don't remember who you are.) I suppose I should be flattered but really it's more the introvert in me bubbling up and making it an awkward meeting.

As far as game development went, I had a little bit of progress there. I got in two plays of Sky Pirates with a couple of friends. It was good to see my latest round of changes in action. I have to say that separating the locations from the ship cards was an excellent idea; I'm hoping that will be the last major design change to the game, and the rest of the development will be balancing the cards and effects.

For actual games played, I really didn't get to do much. Not for lack of wanting, just that there wasn't time. Here's the stuff I did play (in no particular order):

- The Expanse (1/5 Hated: would not play again)
Area control game based on the sci-fi series. Fly ships around the solar system, drop influence cubes, and score points based on who has dominance. Very interesting dual-use cards; you can play a card for it's Action Points (more powerful) or it's Special Ability (many varied effects), but if you play a card for it's AP then others players have a chance to use the Special. Overall, I didn't like this, because it's a very cutthroat game and I'm more of a carebear player. Just not my type of game. Also, the card special abilities were *too* varied, with no iconography, meaning a pause in the game every turn to decipher the wall of text on each card. 

- Fantasy Realms (5/5 Loved: definitely want to play again, would suggest)
Bought this game on the spot after I played it. Simple filler card game about building the best hand. Start with seven cards, each turn draw one then discard one. Cards have point values, plus many varied special abilities that combo with other cards. Build the best hand of cards before the game ends. Simple, quick, plays a lot of players, and the only learning curve is learning what cards are in the game. Great fun!

- Heaven & Ale (2/5 Disliked: might be convinced to play again)
This was one on my want-to-play list. Rondel action selection, tile placement on personal boards. Move around a track on the main board, taking actions you can afford. Take hex tiles and add them to your board, then activate them for their benefit by taking other actions. Beware, though: each method of activating tiles can be used only once, so you have to think ahead about which tiles you take and how you place them. Benefits include money (needed to take tiles) and resources (needed to score). At game end, the resource you have the *least* of determines your score. I found the game play to be enjoyable, but I didn't like the scoring system at the end because it was both convoluted and unforgiving. If you're unable to get all of your resource markers above the zero line at the end scoring (they start at negatives), then you score *zero* points for the game. The confusion at the end was because you are required to move your highest-valued resources down in order to move your lowest-valued resources up, but the exchange rate between the two is horrible (sometimes as bad as 5:1). Might give it another try now that I understand it better but I'm not in a hurry.

- Lords of Xidit (3/5 Lukewarm: would play again but not suggest)
I own this one but had never played it. Action programming, pickup-and-deliver, area control. You must plan moves ahead; each round you dial in five actions onto a personal board, then everyone reveals their boards and performs their movements. Move around the board, recruit fighters, then 'spend' those fighters at monster spaces to kill the monsters. The reward is to either gain coins or place one of two types of control markers on the board. At the end of the game, rather than counting victory points, instead the player(s) with the *least* of a particular reward (coins or control) are eliminated, meaning that to be successful you must gain spoils of three different categories instead of focusing on one. Would have been a good game if not for that wonky winner selection system.

- Puerto Rico (3/5 Lukewarm: would play again but not suggest)
I own this one, played it a few times. Classic role selection and resource management game. Build plantation tiles, hire workers, gain resources, sell resources for money to buy more plantation and building tiles, or ship resources for victory points. Players take turns selecting role cards; each player does the role action but the player that selected it gets an extra perk. Points come from shipping produced goods and what tiles are on your board at the end of the game. I do like this game, though I'm not particularly good at it, but it often gets ignored in favor of newer, shinier stuff.

- Coimbra (4/5 Liked: want to play again, might suggest)
I hadn't even heard of this one before DTC. Dice drafting, dice placement, resource management, card drafting. Draft dice, then place them to be able to purchase cards. Highest-numbered die gets first choice of cards, but also pays the most to buy the card. (Cool mechanic!) Dice color determines the type and amount of income you get at the end of the turn; push your counter up on the color tracks to get more income from that color of die. Move your meeple around the map and drop markers to gain one-shot bonuses. Took a couple of rounds to really grasp the flow of the game, but after that it was great fun! Might have bought a copy, if there were any left; I think I heard this was a pre-release batch, so they only had a *very* limited stock. Sold out on the first day if I understand it right.

- Rajas of the Ganges (4/5 Liked: want to play again, might suggest)
This was another one on my want-to-play list. Heavy euro with worker-placement, tile-laying, and resource management where the dice *are* the resources. Innovative scoring system, similar to Red Dragon Inn: you gain money (which can be spent) and fame (only goes up), but the tracks are pointed in opposite directions. When your two tokens on the two tracks cross each other, you win! Various worker actions gain you dice, which you roll and store. Other actions expend dice, returning them to the pool. Some actions require high dice values, others low values. Buy tiles to add to your personal board for money and fame, plus build routes on your board for extra one-shot bonuses. Enjoyed this a lot! Could possibly buy this in the future, though because of the game weight it might be difficult to get to the table.
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And that's my Dice Tower Con, in a nutshell. This is really the only major convention I can attend, due to time and money constraints. Hopefully in future years I will be able to travel to others, but for now this convention is really my only big chance to catch up with a lot of people. Already looking forward to next year!