Top 10 Games to Demo at Gen Con 2022

10. 3000 Scoundrels

I love a weird west themed game and this one seems like it does that in an interesting way. Plus, cards or sleeves that allow you to upgraded character, or get scoundrels, I believe with different powers, this is going to be an interesting game. And then add the aesthetic on the box and the cards, this one I am very curious about. I hope that with kind of that in your face wild west that it isn’t too much take that.

9. Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum

Steam Up is a game that I almost backed on Kickstarter. But I want to mess around with this one because it looks amazing with steam baskets for your ingredients. It is one of those games that will get noticed for it’s toy factor. It doesn’t look like too heavy a game mainly focused on set collection, but I’m fine with that. If it is one that can easily make it to the table, it’ll be one that I checkout when it comes, if it comes to retail.

8. Starship Captains

I really don’t know a ton about this game other than the artwork is very Star Trek like. I enjoy Star Trek, so I am curious about this, plus there is something about the artwork that looks cartoony in a good way, like it should give a laugh for two. The game itself looks like a deck or engine building game with drafting, so two things that I enjoy and will want to checkout.

7. Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles – Episode 1 and 2

Another game that was on Kickstarter, the Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles is a game with dinosaurs. I don’t even love Jurassic Park that much, which is where a lot of people my age got their love of dinos, but I just enjoy that as a theme. First episode you build out a foot hold on the island where you end up, or location. Second one you are trying to defend it against a dinosaur onslaught. It’s from Mindclash Games so I expect it to be heavier, but I really want to try this one as I like the theme and look.

6. Mosaic

Mosaic is one that is getting talked about a fair amount. It is going to be a civilization building game, a genre of game that I don’t often play. But one with card drafting and it just looks neat. However, while it is one that I really want to demo and see what it’s like, I suspect it’ll be a harder one to get to the table, so might only be a demo.

5. Heroes of Barcadia

An RPG game where you life is what is left in your drink. I really like the gimmick of this game, much like the dungeon crawl with quarters. It takes something that I like and gives it a weird twist. I don’t know how you’ll demo this one at Gen Con, but It’s one that I want to see and mess around with because I could see this just being a goofy good time.

4. Fit to Print

The animal theme on this is a bit odd, but Fit to Print looks very fun and interesting. You are trying to create the perfect front page for a news paper. It is a drafting, tile laying and real time. I don’t love the idea of real time, except that it doesn’t appear to be only real time. You draft tiles and then print as fast as you can until you think that you’re ready, or you can draft from tiles and go slower in a more relaxing version. Really both sound like they could be fun.

3. Jurassic World: The Legacy of Isla Nublar

I’ve talked about this one before as well when it was on Kickstarter. I passed on it then, and I really don’t want to demo it too much or see too much. But I doubt they will show too much. I don’t want to because it is a legacy game. But seeing the pieces, that seems interesting, they appear, though, to be doing their events through paid demos, since they knew it would be popular. And I believe those are all full.

2. First in Flight

Speaking of Kickstarter, First in Flight was on there just recently. First in Flight is going to be a deck building or engine building game. You are building up your airplane and building up a deck that allows you to fly the furthest. Now, things won’t always work out as planned. But I love the artwork on this game, I love the historical aspect of this game. Overall, I think, while it doesn’t look too heavy, it might be a theme and game style that really works for my group.

1. Clank! Catacombs

Finally we have Clank! Catacombs. I really love Clank! In! Space! and Clank! is a game I need to play more. Plus, I want to start a game of Clank! Legacy. So a new version of Clank! I am interested. Do I need all the versions of Clank!, probably not, but I might want them. Plus catacombs does something different as you build out your map through the game. I don’t need anything to breath new life into Clank! for me, but this sounds like a fun twist.

What Do You Want to Demo?

Let me know what you are looking forward to demoing. Like I said, I have 45 games that are just available for demo at Gen Con 2022 that I’m interested in. But I really do think a lot of these games will be ones I am very interested in. There are a few bigger games on the list, Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles or Mosaic, that might be fun to demo but not for me to buy.

But let me know your top few, and if you want someone to demo them with, let me know as I’m up for trying most any games.

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Osprey Games

Undaunted Battle of Britain

Take to the sky. It’s continuing the series of games. Undaunted games are deck building and war games. This is going to add in airplanes with is different. Undaunted is one that I would like to try. I really do enjoy deck building and while the theme isn’t my normal one that I love, I think that it could be a game that I enjoy a lot to play. And there is an expansion to what is already out there that makes it solo.

Arcane Wonders

10 Years of Arcane Wonders

A new logo for Arcane Wonders as they have reached 10 years. They talked about some games that they have already announced.

Foundations of Rome

New Kickstarter August 2nd. I believe this is going to have a new expansion. The announcement that they officially had was just the 10 years of being around and the new logo.

Horrible Guild

The Great Split

The Great Split is where you are drafting cards, collecting riches and trying to get the most prestigious of all of them. You split your cards and your opponent picks one, so you split and choose. Looks like a very light game but also one that is going to be a lot of fun as you try and figure out what to collect and how to get points. Honestly looks like one that I’ll enjoy a lot.

Pencil First Games

Floriferous Pocket Edition

Continues the trend of taking their games and making smaller editions of games. They take everything and basically make it smaller. So it’s going to be the same game but in a smaller package. I don’t know that it needs a smaller edition, the game is already small and I own it and I really enjoy it. But I’ll look at it as maybe a small stocking stuffer for people I know.

Forbidden Games

Mosaic Wars and Disasters

Adds in more cards to the base game. This is a civilization themed game. I am curious about the game as I’ve heard very good things. But It’s also a big game and that means that it is going to be a longer game. Mosaic was a try before I buy and Wars and Disasters seems intriguing but it doesn’t change the fact it’s a try before I buy. Coming to Kickstarter in September. This is a chance to get the game if you missed out on it though. And who knows, maybe I’ll back it if I can demo it at Gen Con.

Unexpected Games

3000 Scoundrels

Old west game that definitely looks to have some weird west vibes to it. And it is going to have cards and sleeves that change up characters. It seems to have a lot of interesting things to it. There are in fact 3000 unique scoundrels. It is going to be an engine building game with some push your luck as well to it. I really love the aesthetic of the game that’s for sure. More information is going to come out tomorrow for more details and is coming out Fall of 2022 or demo it at Gen Con.

Pegasus Spiele

Caldera Park

This is a tile placement game where you are trying to place large herds of animals. The active player is picking what you do and you play them on your own map. It sounds interesting, you try and place things out so that you can not block yourself out for what other people pick, because you are trying to get large herds. I like this a lot reminds me of Tiny Towns.

Spaceship Unity

A space themed game, I don’t know a ton about it at this point in time. It has some great artwork and a fun video introducing it. It is going to be a campaign game over 5 episodes. You need to interact with your own house, I am less convinced on that. They want it to be kind of that Star Trek or Orville theme but to me that sounds too odd.

Dan and Cora Hughes

Cora Quest: Keep on Questing

It’s a family dungeon crawling game. This is more for the game, more quests. It’s coming to Kickstarter in October. It’s going to be adding in more to the game, leveling up characters, more items things like that. Just basically more for the game, so if you like it, you know, and you know if you want more. And there is a box design contests or things for kids from all over the world to get artwork on the box.

Portal Games

Basilica

A 2nd of the game. I don’t know much about it, but it looks quite euro. A two player tile laying game. Ignacy described it as Carcassonne with combat and area control. I like tile laying, I don’t mind area control, especially as two players. So I am curious about it but it is a try before I buy easily. It’s going to be an Essen Spiel release.

Granna

Space Craft

You are building a space craft. You get different resources to let you buy different ship pieces. One interesting piece of the look is that the pieces click together. Plus you are trying to build your space craft to get orders completed. There is some interesting movement to gather your resources and how they are limited. This is one that I’m curious about just because it is building a space craft, and while it’s 2D it looks like a lot of fun. It’s going to be premiering at Essen Spiel.

Matagot

Peter Pan

It’s panic in Neverland as the lost children has been kidnapped. It looks like a game with players trying to figure out where the lost children were taken while avoiding Captain Hook. I think it looks like a lot of fun, it’s a dry erase board which allows you to figure out information. And there is a campaign mode which is interesting. It reminds me of Treasure Island but this one being cooperative is way more interesting to me.

Smirk and Dagger

Tesseract

An other dimensional tesseract is collapsing down. Can you figure out how to control it or will it blow up and destroy our earth. The goal of the game is to get cubes off of the Tesseract and get them into a matrix. If you can contain a cubes into matrix. It’s all about collecting different sets of cubes to fill up that matrix. Looks like a fun puzzle of a game and is going to be cooperative as well. Coming to Kickstarter in October. And it has a lot of cool dice in it.

Gale Force Nine

Enola Holmes: Finder of Lost Souls

It’s an all versus one game of reasoning and deception. I like the idea of a one versus all game where it is set-up with figuring out what the one has set-up. It’s made as a family weight game which to me is interesting but probably not for me. I find that one versus all are hard to get to the table. And it sounds like there is a bit of Mastermind element to it as well. For me, I’d play this but I don’t think I’d ever pick it up not because it looks bad, but it doesn’t look like it’s for me.

Plaid Hat Games

Hickory Dickory

You are trying to collect different things to get points. Now, that sounds boring or standard. But there is a clock with a moving hand around the board. Which I think is pretty interesting. And it isn’t just collecting sets, it’s collecting rows and columns. And the artwork is amazing for this game. I actually think I want to pick this one up because the game just looks so pretty on the table. And Q4 in 2022 for the release date.

Grey Fox Games

Prophets of Doom

You’re the leader of a doomsday cult but you are really bad at figuring out what is happening. You’re trying to get followers and build up your compound. It’s a fun theme and fairly unique. Honestly, don’t know what I think about this, the artwork is nice. The theme, like I said is fun, but also I don’t know too much about how it’s played. And it’s a Q1 game in 2023.

Reavers of Midgard Expansion

I haven’t played Champions or Reavers of Midgard. I think that they look pretty but also they don’t seem like my type of game. But if you like Reavers of Midgard, then this is going to be interesting to you. It’s a game that I wouldn’t mind playing. And it’s coming to Kickstarter or crowdfunding towards the end of 2022.

Navoo Games

Raising Robots

It’s interesting strategy game with robots for 1 to 7 players. I find that interesting because that’s a big number of players but they have engine building, simultaneous action selection and variable player powers. I really love the artwork from Howard McWilliam. The game looks like it’s going to be pretty heavy which is not a bad thing, but it might be heavier than the art makes it look. Looks like a try before I buy because there is a lot going on. And while you do stuff simultaneously, it looks like you pick actions and then set stuff up then everyone activates. It’s one you can checkout at Gen Con.

Rebel Studio

Meadow Downstream

An expansion for Meadow. It is releasing at Spiel Essen this year. There is a river board and water tiles that you use. It’s going to add more to Meadow and if you like Meadow then you are probably going to want more of this

Meadow Adventure Book

Another expansion but this one is going to be adding in scenarios. It will be legacy like experience in 2023. So think adding rules as you go and playing the specific scenarios. They said legacy like, though, so I am assuming somewhat replayable. Meadow is a game that I should try and checkout at Gen Con because I love the artwork and look but don’t want to take the plunge to buy it yet.

Chronicles of Avel: New Adventures

It’s adding in three more scenarios and three modules. This is going to be an expansion, if that’s not obvious, for Chronicles of Avel. This is a game that I keep on seeing at stores. I believe it’s an adventure game for a younger audience, or at least that is the feeling that I’ve gotten. I don’t know if this is making it more complex, but the game always interests me. Another one I’d love to checkout at Gen Con. And the components really do look amazing for this game.

Avel the Card Game

This is going to be a deck building game set in the Avel setting. There is no shuffling of the cards. This is going to be a bit of a step up, and is going to be a cooperative card game that they call as a next step game. That definitely makes me think that Chronicles of Avel might be too light for me, at least until the kid is a bit older, but this one could be intriguing for playing with more casual gamers.

Rock Manor Games

Set a Watch: Forsaken Isles

This is going to be a standalone expansion, which they have done before, for their Set A Watch game line. You face off against monsters, new ones, with new adventurers. But it still maintains mix and match ability with the other Set a Watch stuff you already have. This is one, Set a Watch, that is on my shelf that I need to get played. I am not sure that I need to grab more of it, but we’ll see once I get my copy of Set a Watch played, which I should soon.

City of Games

Race to the Raft

From the designer and company that brought you Isle of Cats, this is about the cats left behind. A cooperative game where you play as the cats to try and get the ones left behind off the island on the last remaining raft. It definitely is interesting to me. I like Isle of Cats and I want to try City of Kings. I like the idea of cooperative with those same cats and cat artwork. Definitely one I’ll be keeping an eye on.

WizKids

Ascending Empires Zenith Edition

A new version of Ascending Empires. I don’t know anything about this game, it’s a Sci-Fi themed 4x game with about a 60-90 minute play time. Whenever I hear 4x, I am intrigued, but I also know I have troubles getting the ones I own to the table. It’s a new edition so it’ll be interesting to checkout for me as there is a dexterity element to the game with how you move your ships. I do like games with dexterity but again, it is still 4x. For sure it is one that I’d want to try. And like a lot of games now, it is going to add modules to allow you to change it up. I often wonder how likely I am to play with a module, I need to try them in Isle of Cats.

CMON

Stranger Things Upside Down

If you could have seen me when I saw what the announcement was. It is by Rob Daviau from Pandemic Legacy which I love. And Cthulhu Death May Die which I need to see. I literally got goose bumps and I had to pause the video because I am so excited. There was an Asmodee Stranger Things social deduction game announced. This, however, is not that.

It is coming to retail in 2023. Not a ton of details yet for it, but I don’t need to know more about it. It is Rob Daviau, it is a cooperative game. And you are trying to save Hawkins from the Upside Down. I don’t need to know more, I will get this game. I don’t know that I have ever had a reaction to a board game announcement like I did now. Maybe for Frosthaven but that would be about it. Shut up and take my money!

Dire Wolf

Dune Imperium – Immortality

I really need to play Dune Imperium. I assume that anyone who knows the game is going to be exciting. This expansion is going to be more for the deck building element. Plus there is also going to be research track as well, which is interesting. It is definitely making the game more complex, and I think it could be exciting. Dune Imperium is one that I should track down and play, but it never shows up used that I’ve seen. Expected to be available around the end of 2022.

CGE

Deal with the Devil

It’s an engine building Euro game. it is going to have secret roles, though, which is going to be changing up the standard thing. The game looks interesting on the table with buildings that are player screens to hide who you are and what you want to do. Not my type of game, but it is going to have a table presence for sure. And there is going to be an app that hands out the roles as well, which is intriguing. I would try it just because it seems to add in a little bit more than just a standard Euro game but then again, there is social deduction. It is a Gen Con first look coming out around Essen Spiel.

Final Thoughts

There are a ton of games in this announcement. There are some that aren’t all that interesting to me, but then again, there are others that I am clearly excited for. I will be finding out everything I can about the Stranger Things game. Like I said, it is going to be on that I immediately seek out and it’s a theme that I want a great game with it. Rob Daviau is a designer that I want to doing it. But besides that, I got to say, I think that Race to the Raft and The Great Split interest me the most next.

What is the game that stood out to you that you want to try out or need to get?

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So let’s talk about the different options that I am considering. I think that there are a few interesting ways that you can improve or change as a game goes on.

Possible Campaign Elements

Character Progression

The first one is character progression. I think that is fairly important if you have characters in your game. I don’t find it a major knock against Paper Dungeons because it’s so loosely a campaign. But you start with your heroes as level one in every game and level them up as you go.

For my idea, I want to have a separate character sheet, much like in an RPG, that you level up your stats. You get bonuses based off of how many bubbles you fill in, in a row. And you fill in a certain number, always, at the end of the a scenario.

If this is a competitive game, the person who wins gets a bonus. But if it is cooperative, there might be a bonus if you do the best in a scenario, like first pick of gear. For cooperative, though, you’d not see as much character development and splitting off.

Skill Tree

Building off of that character progression, skill progression is a great way to cause differences to happen. But the idea of a tree is that you can split off what you are doing. If you are a Gunslinger class, or something like that, you might unlock your first ability at level 1, but then at level two, you have three options. The one that you pick will limit what you can do further down.

Now, while I like this idea, it really causes things to become different and gives progression, I am worried that it’d make the game a bit more complex. I think a lot of the abilities would just need to be things that bump up health or statistics.

Items and Gear

Items and Gear would likely be one time use things, or maybe something like a pack mule to eventually being able to get up to a wagon. Something that can carry more items. Maybe skills are going to be more abilities that’d be used in every game since you are unlocked.

So things like health potions (or alcohol), magic scrolls, dynamite, things that you’d use once. Or maybe some gear like “armor” whatever that might look like. Basically wearable items or weapons. I don’t think I would ever add in ammo because I don’t want to track that type of thing. Plus I like giving more things versus losing things in a campaign game.

Story Progression

Finally, story is going to be an important element to the game. Right now that is what makes Paper Dungeons a campaign game. A tiny bit of story that you read in between games. And while I do enjoy that, I wish there was more. Or more so, I wish the story felt like it mattered a bit more.

I can pull out any card, read the story and play, and it doesn’t matter. I’d love to add in more story to the game. Maybe even give it some choices. Like, make a decision and that unlocks certain items, gives a stats bump, or maybe causes you to lose some money. But all based off of choices that players make. I even, at least once, maybe twice, would want to change up what the players interact with on a map because of a decision that they make.

That makes it feel more like a fun experience to me. The decisions that we make, for example, in Roll Player Adventures or Tainted Grail, change up what can happen in the game later. And that is very cool to have as part of the experience. It takes it from being told a story to character story.

How Much Should Their Be?

That is the question that I’m asking myself, because with enough campaign elements and campaign progression elements, the game can get large. Part of the fun of a roll and write, even Paper Dungeons which has a lot to look at on the sheet, is that it is a sheet.

I want there to be enough decisions that it makes the game feel cool. On the flip side, I don’t want there to be so many decisions that it makes the game hard to play. Looking, again, at Paper Dungeons, now that I’ve played it a few times, I know what to do every time I come back to it. I looked up one rule last time, but I mainly know what I need to do.

A campaign is going to be bigger. It is going to offer more challenges of remembering how to play. But with a nice little sheet of what to do on the turn, or even printing on the sheet the round actions, I hope to make it simple enough that it’s a fast refresher. Which means, things like skills, those are a bit harder to implement, potentially. But that comes down to being clever with how I design the game and work with that idea.

What campaign element would you want most?

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The idea for this campaign is clearly the wild west, we’re looking to create something that feels less like high fantasy and more like cattle rustling and duels at high noon. And, borrowing a little bit from the Lord of the Rings, the people mining for gold have dug to deep. And now monsters are pouring out of the mines and troubling the towns and villages out in the wild.

The players can start out with some smaller things, some cattle going missing, accusations and weird occurrences happening down by the mine. I’d almost give it another worldly vibe to it, to borrow a little bit from the board game Shadows of Brimstone.

Now, you have a couple of ways you could go for the bad guys, you have have the mines leading into the underdark and going so deep for some special magical material has caused them to disturb the residents down there and get them to fight back. Or, I think most interestingly, make it the Gith. The reason the Githyanki and Githzerai are more interesting is because you wouldn’t expect them. But they live in a limbo area and almost have a pirate vibe to them, so give them a stagecoach, train robbing vibe and they are out there to get this magical materials that makes magic much more common. Almost an Eberron style where there are trains, people have their wands which is a common weapon that can just sling six charges of something like a six shooter.

So as the players dig deeper they find out that what they thought was happening isn’t actually it. The Githyanki and Githzerai are certainly causing issues as their magical materials are being grabbed from the mine, but what the materials are being used for is now being called into question both by the Githyanki and Githzerai but also by the people who run the mines and give the players a mystery of what is happening there.

This unravels a big conspiracy that leads all the way to some other monster who is the real monstermind behind the mines and who is getting these magical materials in order to invade limbo and take out the Githyanki and Githzerai and make them into mindless drones, in fact, some sort of massive mind flayer would make a lot of sense here as the Gith do not like Mind Flayers.

Finish the campaign with some sort of epic western battle, the mind flayer is coming to town for a showdown at high noon, but the players don’t have a shot with a direct confrontation, so their only hope is to intercept the flayer while they are still on the train. And if you don’t want to do a mind flayer, do something like a vampire or someone who can glamour or mind control their way into the hearts and minds of the people.

That could be where you wrap up the campaign, but now that you’re touching limbo and the outer reaches of the worlds and planes because of the mine, and now that the magical material has such value, you can even have a bigger bad come after it. Maybe while all of this is going down and the players are dealing with the big bad mind flayer or vampire, there’s a cult that suddenly springs up with a charismatic Rakshasa as it’s head who is working on summoning something even more powerful from the outer edges of the multiverse into the world to rule it all and for the Rakshasa to rule under it. So similar feeling to the first part of the campaign, but different in that instead of going out somewhere like the vampire or mind flayer was planning on doing, it’s trying to bring something here, and even if something happens to the Rakshasa, it will be back.

So what do you think about it, is this a campaign that you’d play in or run? What part stands out to you as the most interesting?

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Now, that could be less exciting, because there are a lot of generic themes out there, and a lot of games that are using themes over and over again. Especially now with copyrights not being extended to kingdom come, there are more works that are now public domain. A few years ago Sherlock Holmes became public domain and HP Lovecrafts work some time before that.

So what are some of my favorite themes on board games?

Epic Fantasy –
Super generic, but I really do enjoy a good fantasy game. Especially since a lot of them have a better developed story than most. Now it helps that I’m a big fantasy fan, so I can quickly understand what is going on with the various fantasy tropes and it allows me to get quickly into the story being told. Games like Gloomhaven and Legends of Andor do a good job of baking story into the actual game play themselves. I think what I like about the fantasy theme on board games is that it gives me a bit of that feeling of playing an RPG in a lot of the games and I can make my decisions like I am that hero. In a lot of ways it scratches my itch to play an RPG when I can’t be in a game as a player or as the GM.

Lovecraftian –
I did a big board game battle post about all of the Fantasy Flight games that I’ve played with the HP Lovecraft world theme on them. I’m a bit surprised with how main stream Lovecraft is in board games, but it works in most of the cases. I will say that it gets slapped onto a lot of games that don’t need it. Like in Unspeakable Words, you’re just doing a pretty standard word game, but it has the Lovecraftian theme and cute Lovecraftian artwork on it. Now, that’s fine because it takes a game that wouldn’t have artistic direction and gives it some, but it’s kind of silly. Then there are games like Arkham Horror, Mansions of Madness, and Arkham Horror LCG that are just steeped in theme. Those games seek to make you feel like an investigator of some background who is really going through this world, dealing with the monsters, progressing the story, looking for clues, and sometimes dealing with the events of the normal world. It also does a good job of setting an aesthetic that is generally pleasing to play in but also being a horror focused game. It really doesn’t rely on blood and guts like some horror games would.

Sci-Fi –
Another super generic option, like epic fantasy, but I figured I should say more than just Star Wars. While the Star Wars games are great that I’ve played, Imperial Assault and Star Wars: Rebellion, there are other sci-fi games out there that I’ve liked as well. It’s interesting because you have a wide variety of scope with games in the Sci-Fi genre. Games like Star Wars: Rebellion, Battlestar Galactica, and Cosmic Encounters are planet level Sci-Fi games. And while Cosmic Encounters doesn’t feel like quire as grand a scope as Rebellion, it’s still a bigger game in some ways. Compare that to Imperial Assault and Clank! In! Space!, those games have a focus that is much more on a smaller part of the world. You’re on a planet or in a space ship dealing with things, but you aren’t as worried about the whole cosmos. Having that variety is what makes Sci-Fi such a strong genre to me.

Now, there are so many more genres out there, but you’re not going to have that much issue finding games in these genres, and I tend to gravitate towards them. There is one that I want to see more of though.

Weird West –
I really enjoy the weird west setting. Some might say that it’s a bit Lovecraft mixed with the wild west, and that’s probably pretty accurate. But when people say a Lovecraft game, that’s generally meaning 1920’s and Arkham area. Weird west can be a lot more than just that, and I like Shadows of Brimstone for that, though I’ve only gotten it to the table once. I need to go back and fix the monsters and hopefully stream that game at some point in time so I can actually play it some more. But the game is interesting and has some cool big moments to it.

Mythological –
Now, some might say this is part of fantasy, but I think I would qualify it differently than “Epic Fantasy”. Theming of games like Lords of Hellas, which I haven’t played or Santorini which is really an abstract game, but has the Greek mythology added to it, that’s a theme that I can get behind. What makes it generally pretty thematic is that all the deities have their own powers which really do track with the mythology that you’re in. Even if you aren’t going the standard Greek, there are now a lot of games with Norse Mythology. Blood Rage on the cards you draft does a really good job of creating that mythological feel for each deity that you can draft cards from. In fact, those cards are where you really get the theme of Norse Mythology in Blood Rage.

I could go on talking about more themes in board games. There are games with a heavily influenced theme by Japan and/or Anime. There are games t hat have cool adventuring themes that give you the Indiana Jones feel. There are a few themes that I’ll generally avoid though. If a game has the “trading in the Mediterranean” theme, that’s a hard pass for me. I’m also kind of done with the zombie theme at this point. I do like Dead of Winter, so I’m not opposed to it, but a zombie themed game isn’t all that interesting to me most of the time.

What are some themes you like in board games. What are themes that you want to see more of in board games?

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I think the biggest reason that there aren’t more of them is because publishers and writers want something that feels familiar. A writer can feel like it’s their own unique twist on something that is familiar and safe, and a publisher can look and see how well things have sold. Now there is plenty of variety within the standard epic fantasy that we often think of and that we see published most often, but there’s always some medieval feel to it that feels normal and allows us to jump into a world quickly and pick up the edge cases about the world that are different from others.

What are some of the tropes of fantasy that are used often?

While it’s less the case now, it often feels like fantasy is the clear good versus evil. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are both clear examples of this where there is clearly a good side and there is an evil side, and there really isn’t ground in between. Sometimes you really want that delineation, but fantasy can lean too much so into the good versus evil and it simply being that and nothing more.

Also there is the medieval feel, or what we attribute to a medieval feel. There are going to be knights most likely, though they might be called something else, a king, either good striving against the evil forces coming to the lands or evil keeping the people oppressed so a rebellion must rise up and there’s not all that much in between. Lots of castles, sprawling forests, and generally a lot of what you’d expect from Robin Hood shows up in your standard epic fantasy. Even in urban fantasy, there is often some leftover feel of the medieval period. In the Dresden Files, the wizarding council holds old traditions, in Harry Potter, Hogwarts is literally a giant castle.

Finally, while it’s not in all fantasy, there is very often some form of magic. This is often where fantasy diverges the most as different people use different things for magic. It could be that the magic comes from the divine, it could be that magic is steeped heavily in ritual and must be done at ritual locations, or it could be a quicker and dirtier magic that can be done on the fly. Magic can be fine and precise wielded like a scalpel or it can be swung around like a club, bludgeoning everything. So there’s plenty of leeway for magic, but it is something that is commonly found in fantasy.

That’s epic fantasy, is all fantasy like that or are there different types of fantasy?

While that might be the type that people think of when they think of fantasy thanks to Lord of the Rings, it certainly isn’t the only type of fantasy out there. There’s paranormal fantasy, urban fantasy, low fantasy, dark fantasy, or even steampunk would qualify as a different type of fantasy. Probably the biggest growing type of fantasy falls into that area of urban fantasy. The Dresden Files series is one of the biggest or Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman are two of the better known. But TV shows like Grimm also fall into that Urban Fantasy sub-genre of fantasy.

There are a few that I really want to call out, though, the first being Urban Fantasy. This is one of my favorite genres of fantasy as taking a modern world and putting magic not just into the world as a whole, but a densely populated area and really focusing the story down into that world can be done so well. In all of Neverwhere, Grimm, and The Dresden Files, there’s a grittier side of the world that you don’t a lot in fantasy. That grittier side of things is what sets it apart from contemporary fantasy which would qualify as something like Harry Potter where it’s in a modern setting, but doesn’t deal as directly with the modern nature of the world.

Another one can either be modern or not, but it’s a non-standard medieval fantasy. That’s a long name, but basically, it’s looking at fantasy that really goes outside of the normal sword and sorcery that you can see and takes us to another world or part of our world than London or the medieval European equivalent. An example of this is the Daughter of Smoke and Bones trilogy. Those books are set in Prague, so different location than normal, but they also deal with a very different subset fantasy with how they talk about a number of fantasy tropes, which you can see from above, and the creatures that you see. You don’t really have your standard goblins, trolls, and faeries. It’s often a bit jarring not to have your standard fantasy tropes, but it’s also refreshing to see fantasy step away from it’s roots and branch out into new areas.

Finally is a sub genre of fantasy that I want more from, and that’s the Weird West. But this can also fall somewhat into historical fantasy as well, so I’ll use that genre so I can talk about  more things. But in the Weird West genre, you’re getting something that we’re familiar with, because of westerns, and adding in some mix of magic, steampunk or advanced technology, aliens, or monsters. The movie, Wild Wild West is an example of what Weird West can be. But when you expand it to look at other parts of history, you see it around WWI and WWII, even something like Wonder Woman which falls under the umbrella of Superheroes, but the movie was as much an alternative history fantasy movie as it was a superhero movie because of Wonder Woman’s backstory and Ares being a Greek god.

Now, there’s so much more you can go with into fantasy. And a lot of what I’ve talked about with world building before for RPG’s or just in writing in general you can pull into fantasy as well and use it to help shape your thoughts around fantasy. I’m going to be doing a follow up article soon on magic and high, medium, and low magic as well as different ways of using magic that I touched on here in this post.

But I’ll leave you with the question, what are some of your favorite genres inside fantasy, and some of your favorite books or TV shows or movies in that genre?

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Imagine yourself in the wild west, you’re in a small town with a saloon, sheriff’s office, a blacksmith, and it’s a mining town. The mine itself produces a mysterious magical stone, but as you dig deeper into the mine, you come across some crazy creatures that you’ve never seen before. They have tentacles and look like the things from your nightmares, but you kill them or run away from them and push deeper into the mine until you see a shimmer up ahead, what is that up there? You turn to the US Marshall with you and say, “Well, we’ve come this far, there’s no going back now.” You plunge through the shimmer and find yourself in a mysterious land that is like nothing you’ve seen before and there is a giant monster standing in front of you, larger than any others that you’ve seen. “Maybe this was a bad idea.” And you draw your six shooter.

This is Shadows of Brimstone. It’s a cooperative dungeon (or in this case mine) crawl game that is set in the weird west. You can take one of four archetypal roles from the Wild West and you form a band that heads down into the mines to try and keep the darkness and the monsters from escaping. I’d describe this game as D&D lite. There’s still plenty of dice chucking to be done, and you have a chance of facing off against monsters in every room of the mine, but you don’t need a dungeon master to tell the story. In fact, you don’t even have to use one of the adventures that the game comes with, you could simply go down into the mine and battle, or you could play it as a campaign and keep your characters from game to game. Shadows of Brimstone has a great look and theme to it where what you do does seem to fit into the game not that the theme was put around what you are doing.

So, now after saying all of that, let me say that I’ve played this game once thus far, but I do want to play it more, and ideally a lot more.

This game, to me, was a nice way to be able to do combat and kind of mess around in a dungeon/mine type environment as compared to normally running a game. When I played we didn’t get too heavily into the role playing aspect of it (though you definitely can), instead we were learning the rules and figuring out how all the mechanics work. I think in future playing of this we’ll start to dig into more of the story aspect to it. And that is actually how the game wants to be played. In the core rules (there is a separate book with the adventures) it gives you a little adventure to go on, this allows you to figure out the mechanics without really jumping too far into the game. I’m excited to take a deeper dive into the game once I get the minis glued back together again (glue gun does not work, get model glue for model airplanes/cars) and we can find a consistent group of people to try it with (or even a semi-consistent group). Besides being able to play in an RPG type of game (or dungeon crawl really), I also really enjoy the theme, all of the characters are thematic, the weird monsters thing is something I always love, and the game feels the right weight. By that I mean that it doesn’t seem like too much of a slog to play, but it doesn’t seem like there isn’t any strategy to it, which we figured out when we died at the end of the game.

Talking about components/quality wise, it seems like it’s good quality, and all of the card board pieces seem like they are solidly made. The cards are nice, which is great because there are a ton of them. The one complaint I would have is with the minis, they actually went together quite quickly, but now with so many minis being 3d printed or coming in a single piece, I just wish this game were a bit newer so that they could have done that. Still, it wasn’t hard to get the models out of the die cast sheets and gluing them went fast and will go fast again, if only I had used the right glue to start out with. Another thing about this game is that I wish it had come with about 10 plastic bags, no real reason not to just drop them into each game. We have sandwich bags so it’s easy enough for me to get all of the cardboard pieces into their own bags for now, but I’ll probably end up getting a cross stitch thread plastic box to store and sort them in, but those things are cheap and really nice, it would have just been nice to have it’s own bag.

Overall, I like this game. While the rules seem daunting and I’m sure we weren’t playing all of the rules correctly, they actually read quickly and they make a lot of sense. It allows everyone to play and not have to have someone who is running the game. It’s cool to look at and it’s cool that the mine doesn’t always come out the same way each time. There are plenty of other fun mechanics that make the game harder as you go. I don’t know that this game would be for everyone, it has so many pieces that it seems intimidating just looking at the box.

Overall Grade: B+

Casual Grade: C+

Gamer Grade: B

(So, I know that doesn’t average out to B+, but I think this game kind of hits that curve where it’s probably fine for everyone to play and that if you’re super serious and play with other super serious players, it might be a little light for you strategy wise, if you are casual, it might be intimidating, but it’s a good game to blend groups.)

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