Games Played at Gen Con 2022

Lost Ruins of Arnak

There are a few games that I have had on my shelf where I need to play my copy. Lost Ruins of Arnak from CGE was one of those games. And I got to play two games of it at Gen Con, including one full game. Needless to say, and if you saw the video, I liked it. It is a good game with interesting worker placement, light deck building and a great theme. I was worried that it might be more worker placement than I want, and while everything is mechanical, the theme makes it fun.

Ready Set Bet

This is one that is new, not even out yet. Ready Set Bet is a real time horse racing and betting game. One person is the caller who rolls the dice and shouts out horses as they move forward. The other players, in real time, are putting down bets on horses and trying to make the most money. You can rotate who the caller is, but the game goes so fast, and it is a fun role, that when I played it one person called.

This is a great con game. Everyone is around the table getting excited and shouting or getting into it. And you almost need to stand around the table so you can toss in your bids. It’s clever and fun and plays fast. And I could see getting this one and playing it a few times in an evening and having a great time.

Jekyll vs Hyde

This one I played twice as well. Jekyll vs Hyde is a trick taking game but with a twist or two. Firstly, it’s two player with one person being Jekyll and the other Hyde. The person who is Jekyll wants to keep the number of tricks as even as possible. Win too many or lose too many and Hyde advances on the board to the monster side. The Hyde player wants to get that difference up to get across the board. It is a fun idea and feels different, plus who top suit is determined for a trick is interesting as well. Not a two player trick taking game I need, but one I’d gladly play.

First Rat

First Rat has a silly but great theme. The moon is obviously made of cheese and you are rats trying to build a rocket to get to the moon. It is an interesting game where you are pushing your rat meeples up a track. You can push one up fast, unlock more rats or you can go slower and try and combo getting resources to build your rocket.

What you do on your turn is simple. You move one rat up to 5 spaces, or two rats up to 3 spaces as long as they end on the same color. But just that is a great puzzle. Plus how you pick what you do and what you’re going for works really well. It is a game that I wouldn’t have tried if it weren’t for Gen Con.

Draftosaurus

A game I already know I love and I own everything for. This was later one of the days at the con. I wanted to play a game but most of the bigger ones were either shut down as they take too long or already in the swing of things. Draftosaurus was easy to just sit down and play. The game is so light, but still it’s a lot of fun to play.

NFL Five

One that I demoed and came home with because if you demoed you got a demo copy. This is basically a way to sell packs of football cards, and specific ones, for the game. I describe it was rock paper scissors but instead of there being a tie option, you just need to watch. So it’s a guessing game that you can mess around with a little bit. It’s very light and just fine, but it was free and it was open for demoing so why not give it a shot.

Catapult Feud

Another one I own, this was me wanting to set down my bag after I bought Burncycle. Catapult Feud is fun, it’s fun building the castles and launching balls to try and knock it over. The game is barely there, but the toy factor is so high, who even cares.

Fit to Print

This is one that I believe was on my too demo list. Fit to Print is about making your best front page for a newspaper and scoring points based off of that. It was fun, and interesting because of the real time aspect to it. You start out picking out tiles which are articles, pictures, and ads for your paper. Then when you’re ready you try and set-up your layout as fast as possible to score the most points.

The game is simple and fun, and the real time element that didn’t bother me. I think because the feeling wasn’t intense. I had three minutes to do everything. But I never felt like there is too much time pressure on it. Nor is it like Fuse where it is always counting down. It’s fast moving and light fun, but the real time doesn’t add stress.

Spicy

Spicy was a bit of a miss for me. This is a bluffing game where you put down cards of different spices and they need to go up in numerical order, though you can skip numbers, but always ascending. You need to call out when someone lays down a bluff. Playing with masks makes the game trickier. And at three it was just okay. For me, the concept of the game and what it pulled off was less interesting than a bluffing game like Skull.

Galaxy Trucker

Here’s another game with a real time element that I like. I wanted to demo the new version of it, which I did. And I don’t really feel the need to upgrade my copy. Nothing seemed to have changed too much, so might as well keep what I have. I enjoy Galaxy Trucker because again it’s a real time game or a game with real time elements, but one that doesn’t take itself too seriously. And then if you are lucky, you can build up your ship so it won’t blow up, if you are lucky.

Let’s Dig for Treasure

A push your luck game. This one is very simple, you pull cards until either an evil skeleton gets you or pull up two worm cards. But you can bank your points whenever you want. The artwork on the game is fun, and as the person who demoed it said, it’s a restaurant or bar game. One that’s small enough you can take it along and pull out and play easily. Not much thought or strategy to it, but it works well enough.

FYFE

This is a random game that I got to try because the table was open. It reminds me a bit of Village Green and Calico. You are putting down discs to complete different scoring objectives in rows and columns. But you need to think about rows and columns so that you can score as many things as possible. It gets tricky as you start to have limited options to fill in and now which thing do you think it’s more likely to be able to get and score. Not one I needed to add to my collection but not a bad game.

Knights of the Hound Table

This is a small game that I was tempted to pick up. Knights of the Hound Table is a head to head battler. You put down one hound as an attacker, one as your defender, and one for their power. Then you compare, take damage and buy cards to improve your deck of hounds. The artwork is cute on the game, the game play with picking which power to use is interesting. Better for a small box head to head game than I expected.

Village Rails

I mentioned Village Green, Village Rails is from the same company and it shows. You are making rail routes to score points. Keeping track of where the tracks are going is trickier than what is in Village Green. But you don’t have the column and row scoring in Village Rails. So it is slightly easier, I’d say, and just as fun. Plus the artwork on the cards is amazing and the game itself felt pretty relaxing. A small box game I’d want to add to my collection.

Coatl

Not a new game but Coatl is about building out your best Coatl to score points. The game play is fine, it is basically collect pieces then build out your Coatl. I wish that the game would move slightly faster than it does because of how light it is. The toy factor is fun, but that is not enough for me to really recommend this game. It is more going to be one of those fine gaming experience that I’d play again but wouldn’t seek out.

Flamecraft

Flamecraft was only there for demo, I was kind of hoping it’d be there for sale. But Flamecraft is a worker placement game with dragons. You are trying to collect resources to improve shops and end up with the favor in the end. How you play is simple, you either go to a place and collect resources or to fulfill a contract. What makes this game is the artwork. I wish I had backed it for that, and now that I’ve played it, at least a few rounds, I suspect I’ll add it because of how cute it is.

Starship Captains

A new game from CGE, I snuck my way into a game the first day. And I got to play the full game which is nice. It is an action selection game where you build up a little bit of an engine, fly around, and try and complete contracts and defeat space pirates. The game moves quite fast, I would say too fast, though that’s probably a good sign that it leaves you wanting to do more and to try again to do even more.

Meadow

Meadow is one that I knew I wanted to see because it’s pretty. But looking at it and watching the GloryHoundd play of it, I thought it likely wasn’t for me. You can watch their video below. But the game itself was fun to sit down and try. I’m still torn on it because it’s a very thinky and pretty game. I am worried that AP would set in too much if I picked it up. I even found myself having to think through what I was doing for a bit. It’s one I’d love to try again though.

Asking for Trobils

Another one that was played on the GloryHoundd Youtube channel. You can see that play below. A worker placement game that is very light but a good amount of fun. You are basically building up traps and things to get Trobils which are worth points. Two players was fine with the game, I feel like it’d do a bit better with more and with a tighter board where you bounce each other more.

Twilight Inscription

One of the big games I wanted to try out at Gen Con. This is a 2 hour roll and write game based in the world of Twilight Imperium. It delivers on what it promises. And I don’t think that the game is too difficult to follow. There is just a lot later in the game when you get a ton of resources to spend and figuring out how to do that in the most efficient way.

The game comes with four boards. So you activate one board each time, whether combat or exploration, or whatever else they might be. And you do need to do a bit of everything, but you can really focus in on how you want to score your points. A fun game that I want to add to my collection.

Dwellings of Eldervale

Another game that I own but I hadn’t played. Sitting down at Gen Con is a great way to learn a game that you don’t know or you want to know more about. Dwellings of Eldervale was a lot of fun to mess around with. The core game play is fun for it and I like that this is a worker placement game but it feels so much bigger than that. You can do a ton of big things and just have fun with it. And there is no trading in the Mediterranean.

Oathsworn: Into the Deep Woods

And yet another game that I own. Oathsworn just came in before I left for Gen Con. I was almost tempted to move it to the top of the queue but Stars of Akarios First. We didn’t do the city and story part of the game. I say city, it could be different map locations where the story is happening. But we got into the combat and that was fun.

What I really like is how you can push your luck. You can draw cards for hits and you can pick how many to draw. You can roll dice and pick how many to roll. The more you roll of the white dice the more damage you can do. But at the same time the closer you are to busting.

Hero Realms

Hero Realms is one that I played day one and bought day two. And I even got crushed when I played it. But I really enjoyed the lighter deck building of the game. And I thought that it worked well for what it is. Plus it’s a two player game and battler game that is easy to learn. And the deck building combos are not hard to understand. I picked up the cooperative expansion as well which will be fun to mess around with.

Batman: Everybody Lies

I actually got this to the table last night again. But I did a prologue for it at Gen Con at an event. I’ve written and talked about it twice before. See my Highlights here for more information. But this is basically the Detective system with Batman theme from Portal Games.

The biggest change to it is adding in hidden personal goals. It means you might advocate for something for your character that you might not otherwise think about. Or that you might suspect is a red herring because it’ll answer a question for your character. It still is not competitive and the main focus is on the main case. But because of that personal goal it makes it different to play via Zoom like I did last night.

Long Shot – The Dice Game

I almost forgot that this was at Gen Con. But I’m glad I didn’t. A horse racing roll and write game, Long Shot is a lot of fun. I even picked up a copy to bring home. In this game you roll dice and move horses forward around the track. At the same time you are putting bets on horses, filling in spots on your board, and trying to be the person who has the most money at the end of the game. The whole track and physical board element of the game makes it feel different and the game isn’t that complex.

Caesar’s Empire

This is another one of those sit down and play a game because I needed something to do. And Caesar’s Empire is a just fine game. You basically are building our routes to get to cities and score points. The two player game needs a slight rules clarification, possibly. But the whole idea is that you can build off of other people’s roads. Is it worth it to get some points if you are giving them more points. All you do is build onto routes each turn. The game is okay, not one that I’d recommend that highly.

Paint the Roses

Paint the Roses is a great deduction game. It is hard to explain, I feel, without the board but with the board it is easy to explain. The general idea is that you’re trying to get the garden perfect and not have the queen of hearts take off your head. But each of you have a hidden (or multiple throughout the game) things that the queen wants. It might be two red roses next to each other or a diamond and heart shaped topiary next to each other.

You place a tile on your turn and then everyone puts down their clue tokens if it matches. So if I have two red roses and I place down a red rose next to two others. I put down two cubes. Basically giving information that I have two matches. And everyone puts down their clues. Then you need to make a guess on someone’s card. If you get it right you move ahead and the queen of hearts moves ahead one. If not, she moves head faster. Really great puzzle that I want to play again now.

Mythic Mischief

Probably one of the hotter games of the con, I got to play Mythic Mischief in a two versus two game. I suspect I’d like it better as a one versus one game. I also suspect I’d like it better in the blitz mode where you only can take so much time to do your turn.

Mythic Mischief is an abstract game with some fun powers and cool characters. But it’s also a game that induces a ton of AP (analysis paralysis) and for me that knocked the game a lot. The game just isn’t heavy enough to make it worth the amount of time and thought. If I want something like that, I want a big game, not this lighter heavily produced game.

Final Thoughts

I did what I wanted to do, I played a ton of games. I believe that is maybe up to 29 plays and 27 games? But either way, it is a lot and I had so much fun with it. I do want to do a Top 10 list of all of those games, see which my top ones were. So expect to see that tomorrow most likely.

What were the top games that you got to see if you went to Gen Con? And in particular, which ones were the top you got to play or demo?

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So what is drafting, probably the easiest way to look at it is what is common in the rest of our culture. We have the NFL draft and NBA draft’s that are televised, people draft teams for Survivor or Fantasy Football. When you are drafting you are selecting one thing out of a pool of many things and that one thing is yours and no one else can have it. Game do something similar either with dice, actions, cards, whatever it might be.

There are primarily two types of drafts, the first being, I have a selection of things to pick from, you have a selection, we both pick, we both do our thing, and then we pass selections and repeat until they are all gone. This is how Sushi Go Party! works. You have a hand of cards, you pick one card putting it face down, once everyone has picked, you put them face up at the same time, pass your hand of card and repeat. Once all the cards have been drafted, you score, shuffle the cards back up, and repeat, passing the other direction this time, and then you do that once more back the original direction. It’s very common to draft in rounds like this where it goes one way and then another.

The other type of drafting is from an open pool. This is how something like fantasy football works, items are just removed from a general pool. In board games, this is how Sagrada and Roll Player work. You grab a certain number of dice, generally number of players plus one or twice the number of players, so that no one gets stuck with a single item to pick. You roll the dice, that’s the pool to draft from, then one person picks, and so on and so forth until all of the dice, except for one, are picked. Or if you do twice the number of players for the dice, you start selecting down one way and once everyone has gotten a die, the last person to pick a die gets the first pick of it going backwards, so last to first to select their second die.

The big difference between the two is open information and hidden information. With the general pool of things, the information is open, you and everyone else know what is available. But either way can bring up another item that is a part of drafting, which is hate drafting. Hate drafting is the idea that you take something that might not be the best for you, but would have been really good for the next person picking from the pool. It’s a balancing act of taking something that will still potentially help you, but might potentially give your opponent more points. Now, good game balance should generally make it worth it for you, except maybe late game, to take what you need versus what would block someone else. And while hate drafting is certainly a viable move, most of the time as a complete strategy it won’t help you win.

So let’s look at some games that use drafting:

Intro/Gateway Game

Draftosaurous – I really like this little drafting game that is somewhere between a roll and write game and a drafting game. In it you are drafting dinosaur meeples and placing them on your board to either creates sets or get as many of a type as you can and then passing your fist full of dinomeeples to the next player and getting a new set from another player. So the main thing is drafting and you are just putting the dinomeeples down depending on what was rolled on a die and how it’ll help you with scoring. The roll and write aspect comes from the die roll that tells you were to place stuff, but also that the scoring is very similar to a lot of roll and write games as is the board. It’s a super fast and very fun little game.

Medium Weight

Sagrada – This is just a beautiful game where you are trying to make the best stained glass window possible. In it you are drafting translucent dice and putting them, based off of various color and number restrictions on your board. The trick comes that you can’t have the same number adjacent to each other, or the same colors, so you have to consider where you are placing dice. Now, this would get really hard at the end, but they give you tools that allow you to manipulate the dice, which adds to the complexity of the game. This game just looks great on the table and has a lot of replayability with all of the tools, the different scoring cards, and just how the dice roll.

Heavy Weight

Roll Player – Now, I don’t think that Roll Player is a ton heavier than Sagrada, and I could have picked some other games, like Blood Rage that have drafting as a part of the game and a whole lot more going on as well. But Roll Player is my choice because drafting is the biggest part of it. In this game you are building an RPG character by picking dice out of a pool and placing them in for one of your six stats, strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. You’re also getting to manipulate those dice or already played dice by which score you put them into. Beyond that you are buying skills and traits and getting equipment, all of which can help you score more points. Along with that, based off of your class, you need your stats to be at a certain level, based off of your background, you need certain dice to be in certain place, and based off of your alignment, you can use traits to manipulate it and get it close as possible. The main mechanic of the game, draft a die, place it, and do what it says to do in that stat is very simple, but there’s a lot to keep track of.

Overall, I really like drafting games. Now, I only have one in my three suggestions where that has you pick at the same time, which makes a lot of drafting games very scalable, but there are a lot of out there like that such as Sushi Go Party!, 7 Wonders, and even Blood Rage. What are some drafting games that you like? Does drafting seem like an interesting mechanic to you?

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So, to some people, this concept might seem kind of absurd or obvious, but too often, there is a line drawn between liking Star Wars and liking sports. There are some who believe that if you like sports, you really can’t be a true fan or as much of a fan of Star Wars as they are, because they don’t waste their time with stupid sports. And some people on the other side of the equation believe that if you really like Star Wars but don’t like sports, that probably means that you are living in your parents basement and have no social life.

Neither of these are nice or accurate things to say about someone who likes Star Wars and not sports, or vice versa. There have been issues for a long time between those who are considered the “jocks” and the “nerds.” One side bullies the other physically, and the other side bullies the other mentally. Both of these things happen way too often, and too frequently, both sides fail to realize how similar they really are to the other. I’m fortunate that I know and enjoy both football and Star Wars quite well. I haven’t read a lot of the Star Wars books, but I want to read some of them, and I never played football in school, but it would have been cool if I had been able to. So I’m coming from a point where I can say with confidence that while I’m not a true expert, I’m a nerd who nerds out over sports as much as I do over Star Wars.

With the Super Bowl happening last weekend, it brought up a few things for me, and way too often, I saw my nerdy, non-sports-loving friends complaining about how much stuff there is around the Super Bowl, and how people expect them to care, and how noisy Super Bowl parties are. It also then made me think of when Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out a month and a half earlier, and what that was like as well. When the Super Bowl happens, there are advertisement telling you to stock up for Super Bowl Sunday, get that new TV, get your snacks ready, get your beer, and get ready to enjoy the game. This can be seen as annoying to people who don’t care about it. Why should I be bombarded with something I don’t care about? But before Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out, there was another massive advertising blitz — you could get soda cans with Star Wars figures on them, there were many advertisements for Star Wars products on television, and even your clementine oranges were being brought to you by BB-8.

So, then, leading up to the Super Bowl, people at work talk about who is going to win the game, what is going to happen in the game, and where they are going to be watching it. And in the weeks leading up to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, people at work talked about who Kylo Ren is, who Rey is, what the storyline might to be, theories about why Luke wasn’t in the trailer, and when and where they were going to be watching the movie.

Starting to see some similarities?

So now comes game day for the Super Bowl, and release weekend for the movie. People show up at your neighbor’s to watch the game, and you can hear them through the old apartment wall, even though you don’t care to be hearing it. And the weekend prior to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, you watch some of the original trilogy with your friends (and, if you are brave, the prequel trilogy), and your neighbors end up hearing the party you have.

Finally, the Super Bowl is done and you’ve seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens. What do you do now in either case? You talk to your coworkers about it. You try to be nice to anyone who might have had to DVR the game, but you’ll probably accidentally spoil it or they’ll have it spoiled online. You talk to those who have seen The Force Awakens about all of the surprises, and you tell those who haven’t gone yet that they should see it, without accidentally spoiling it, even though it’ll probably be spoiled for them online.

But you really don’t like sports, and you don’t want to hear anything about it — what do you do? Do you complain to your friends about how annoying it is? Do you say how stupid it is that people watch grown men play a game (even though you know you’ve watched TableTop)? Do you post comments on Facebook and Twitter saying “Oh, is there something big happening in sportsball today?”

The answer to all of those questions is no, you don’t. Because you know how annoying it is when people call Star Wars dumb; you know how annoying it is to have something that you like labelled in a derogatory way; you know that you watch things on TV and online that other people don’t care about as well. You let other people be nerds in their own way; you let them play their fantasy sports while you read your fantasy novels. If they talk to you about it, you listen politely like you’d want them to do if you talked to them about your favorite fantasy novel. You let them geek out over the game like you geeked out over Star Wars: The Force Awakens. You do that because you want the same respect when you geek out over what you care about.

But maybe they don’t listen, or they change the subject when you bring up something nerdy. Maybe they use negative terms towards something you love. Maybe they seem annoyed when they can hear your movie marathon. So it’s okay to just poke a little fun at them, at least to your friends, or maybe put something up on Facebook about it, right? Most of your friends really don’t like sports anyway.

NO!

Don’t be a bully. Don’t cut down what other people like, and if someone cuts down something you like, just walk away and don’t complain. Why? Because that’s how mature, smart people handle situations like that. You lead by example instead of being passive aggressive about it; you don’t make fun of people behind their backs, and you don’t post derogatory terms in your Facebook posts.

We are nerds! We are supposed to be smart, and now that we are starting to get our culture much more widely accepted, let’s not undo that work by showing how not-smart and petty we can be. I’ve borrowed this line from The RPG Academy before about role playing games, but it is very true about everything nerdy: “If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right.” So let the people who love Star Wars have fun and do it right for themselves, and let the people who love the Super Bowl or other sports have fun and do it right for themselves, too.

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