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!
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!
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